Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies 9027214050, 9789027214058

Table of contents :
Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies
Editorial page
Title page
Copyright page
Table of contents
Introduction
1. Critical (cognitive) Discourse Studies and Cultural Linguistics: A sketch of the frameworks
2. Common ground
3. Contributions to the volume
References
Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors by English and German L1 speakers
1. Introduction
2. The ubiquity of metaphor variation
3. Variation in metaphor corpora
3.1 The English L1 sample
3.2 The German L1 sample
4. Comparison
5. Conclusions
References
Conceptualising presidential elections
1. Introduction
2. Conceptualising presidential elections: Some standard alternative metaphors
3. Deliberate or purposeful? How to analyse metaphors in political rhetoric
4. Competing metaphorical models: Trump versus Clinton
5. Obama’s alternative model
6. Summary and conclusion
References
Opening the thinkgates?
1. Introductory remarks
2. Analysing metaphors in dynamic, computer-mediated discourse: Critical Discourse Analysis, conceptual blending and metaphor shifting
3. Empirical study
3.1 Data, research questions and methodology
3.2 Results
3.2.1 Overview of source domains and topoi
3.2.1.1 Conventionalised metaphors
3.2.1.2 Novel creations and less established metaphors
3.2.2 Mixed metaphors and their argumentative function
3.2.3 Metaphor continuation strategies in reader comments
4. Discussion, conclusion and outlook
References
Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes
1. Introduction
2. The use and variation of metaphor
3. Data and methodology
4. Analysis of the data: The use of goat metaphors
4.1 The great chain of being metaphor
4.2 Gender and sexuality
4.3 Religion
4.4 Politics
5. Discussion and conclusion
References
Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese
1. Introduction
2. Analysis of cooking verbs in Japanese
2.1 Componential analysis
2.2 Revised lexical organization of Japanese cooking verbs2
3. Cultural conceptualization and linguistic tools
4. Conclusion
References
Wellness
1. Introduction
2. Methodology and overview of the data sources
3. Historical and emerging concepts of health and wellness
4. Mind, body, and spirit
5. Wellness and pseudoscience
5.1 Doctors and science
5.2 Detoxing, cleansing
5.3 Toxins and ‘risk’
6. Summary
7. Conclusion
References
Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)
1. The context/s: Who is the Other?
2. The framework: Cultural Linguistics and Critical Cultural Linguistics
3. The role of language in the cultural conceptualization of the Other as the enemy
4. The role of foreign languages and foreign language education in problematizing and challenging the cultural conceptualization of Otherness
4.1 An activity9 conducted in class
4.2 The advantages of a foreign language
5. The critical mandate of foreign language education
Acknowledgements
References
What can attitudes reveal about prejudices?
1. Introduction
2. Ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and prejudices
3. Identity
4. Attitudes
5. Persuasion
6. Overcoming ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and prejudices
7. Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

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discourse approaches to politics, society and culture

Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies edited by Monika Reif Frank Polzenhagen

103

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies

Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC) issn 1569-9463

The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction – disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see benjamins.com/catalog/dapsac

General Editors

Jo Angouri, Andreas Musolff and Johann Wolfgang Unger

University of Warwick / University of East Anglia / Lancaster University [email protected]; [email protected] and [email protected]

Founding Editors

Paul Chilton and Ruth Wodak

Advisory Board Christine Anthonissen Stellenbosch University

Michael Billig

Loughborough University

Piotr Cap

University of Łódź

Paul Chilton

University of Warwick

Teun A. van Dijk Universitat Pompeu Fabra,

Barcelona

Konrad Ehlich

Free University, Berlin

J.R. Martin

University of Sydney

Greg Myers

Lancaster University

Hailong Tian

Tianjin Foreign Studies University

Joanna Thornborrow

John Richardson

Cardiff University

Luisa Martín Rojo

Lancaster University/University of Vienna

Christina Schäffner

Sue Wright

Keele University

Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Aston University

Louis de Saussure

University of Neuchâtel

Volume 103 Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies Edited by Monika Reif and Frank Polzenhagen

Ruth Wodak

University of Portsmouth

Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies Edited by

Monika Reif Frank Polzenhagen University of Kaiserslautern-Landau

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/dapsac.103 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2023026694 (print) / 2023026695 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 1405 8 isbn 978 90 272 4952 4

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© 2023 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com

Table of contents Introduction Monika Reif & Frank Polzenhagen

1

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors by English and German L1 speakers 15 Andreas Musolff Conceptualising presidential elections: Competing metaphorical models, and alternative approaches to their critical analysis 36 Olaf Jäkel Opening the thinkgates? The discourse dynamics of migration metaphors in online debates Monika Reif Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes Kader Baş Keškić Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese Natsuko Tsujimura Wellness: A cultural linguistic analysis of the conceptualisation of health Penelope Scott

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127 146

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL): Challenging the cultural (re)production of Otherness 170 Paola Giorgis What can attitudes reveal about prejudices? Michael B. Hinner

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Index

211

Introduction Monika Reif & Frank Polzenhagen

University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU)

The present book is one of three collective volumes that grew out of the 2018 LAUD/CLIC symposium “Cultural Linguistics: Current and emerging trends in research on language and cultural conceptualisations” held in Landau (Germany). LAUD/CLIC 2018 was a joint conference, constituting the 38th International LAUD Symposium and the 2nd Cultural Linguistics International Conference. The conference was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), the Gillet Foundation (Edesheim) and the University of Koblenz-Landau. Most of the papers in the present volume were contributions to the theme session “Cultural Linguistics, Ideologies and Critical Discourse Studies” at this conference. The aim of this theme session was to explore common ground between Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, primarily (but not exclusively) from a cognitive-linguistic vantage point. In our introduction, we will sketch the rationale underlying this exploration, provide a brief overview of the research strands involved and then situate the individual contributions in the overall framework.

1.

Critical (cognitive) Discourse Studies and Cultural Linguistics: A sketch of the frameworks

The first comprehensive handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (Geeraerts & Cuyckens 2007), published 15 years ago, included a chapter on “Cognitive linguistics, ideology, and critical discourse analysis” (Dirven, Polzenhagen & Wolf 2007) and one on “Cognitive linguistics and cultural studies” (Dirven, Wolf & Polzenhagen 2007). In fact, the original conception of the handbook from 2003 did not envisage to give each of these topics a chapter of its own. It was the initiative of René Dirven that both topics were covered individually, although the cognitive-linguistic approach to these research areas was still in the early stages of development at the time, with but a limited body of studies available along these lines. Seen in retrospect, Dirven’s initiative had much foresight. Since then, both research areas have been impressively thriving fields of investigation rooted https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.intro © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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in or related to Cognitive Linguistics (CL), and they contributed much to the refinement of CL theory. On the one hand, CL-oriented studies have come to be a major, if not dominant, strand within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). On the other hand, and in a parallel fashion, we witnessed the rapid development of Cultural Linguistics as a genuine research paradigm strongly communicating with CL. CDA had had, of course, a rich history prior to the advent of CL. It emerged in the late 1970s, as a heterogenous movement rooted in the then dominant strands in the social sciences (e.g. Bourdieu, Bakhtin, Foucault) and, in terms of its linguistic framework, mainly associated with functional approaches, in particular Halliday’s systemic functional grammar and text linguistics. Key authors include Fairclough (e.g. 1989, 1995), Fowler, Hodge, Kress (e.g. Fowler et al. 1979; Hodge & Kress 1993) and Wodak (e.g. Wodak 1989). There were also socio-cognitive approaches, most notably through the work of van Dijk (e.g. 1998). By the end of the 1990s, this more traditional CDA had grown into an impressive research programme, as documented in Toolan’s (2002) 4-volume reader, and it constitutes a highly productive framework still today. In the 1990s, the field was joined by linguists with a background in CL. Early critical cognitive-linguistic analyses of political and media discourse were mainly metaphor-based, against the backdrop of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) in the Lakoff & Johnson (1980) tradition. It is not surprising that the CMT framework was applied to these fields almost right from the start. First and foremost, its key notions such as ‘highlighting-and-hiding’, the understanding of metaphor and metonymy as fundamentally conceptual phenomena, and the related insight of their ubiquity and systematicity both in the conceptual system and in terms of their linguistic manifestations clearly invited a re-consideration of the fairly limited attention paid to metaphor and metonymy in traditional CDA, and, more generally, the application of CMT to the study of ideology. Furthermore, major CMT proponents, most prominently George Lakoff, were and still are leading political activists in the progressive camp and thus sensitive to this field of application. Lakoff ’s own early contributions include his analysis of framing during the first gulf war (Lakoff 1992) and his highly influential account of family metaphors in conservative and progressive thought in US politics presented in Moral Politics (1996) and a series of follow-up publications (e.g., Lakoff 2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2008; see also Goatly 2007). Critical CL approaches gained momentum in the early 2000s, and the range of topics and discourse fields addressed from this analytic perspective broadened significantly, covering, e.g., the representation of (im-)migration (e.g., Santa Ana 2002) and of gender as well as business discourse (e.g., Koller 2004), to name just a few. The twin volumes by Dirven, Hawkins & Sandikcioglu (2001) and Dirven,

Introduction

Frank & Ilie (2001) that grew out of the 6th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (1999) document both important theoretical refinements of the framework and various case studies. Several of these studies already foreshadow the strong link to a cultural-linguistic perspective, which was addressed in more detail at LAUD 2002, whose output can be found in Dirven, Frank & Pütz (2003). They also project significant challenges of the original CMT framework that resulted in a far-reaching revision of the notions of metaphor and metonymy in CL over the years to come. Several lines of development stand out in CL-oriented critical discourse studies during the last two decades, following the early phase reviewed in the handbook chapter mentioned above (Dirven, Polzenhagen & Wolf 2007). We will highlight some of them since they manifest in various contributions to the present volume. i.

While studies in the early phase were dominated by the CMT approach, the investigations have been more and more extended to CL notions beyond metaphor and metonymy. This development is documented and illustrated, e.g., by Hart (2014, 2015). Relevant theoretical notions include force-dynamic constellations, event construal, perspectivation and viewpoint placement, and profile/base. This extension yields far more comprehensive analyses, addressing, for instance, grammatical choices and structure as well as argumentative and persuasive strategies used in texts. ii. The notions of conceptual metaphor and metonymy themselves have been subject to important re-considerations. These include the recognition of the socio-cultural basis of metaphor and hence of variation across socio-cultural groups in this realm (e.g. Kövecses 2005) and the awareness of the influence of various dimensions of context and co-text (Kövecses 2015; Semino 2008; Chilton 2004; Cameron 2003, 2008). Another important elaboration comes from the insight that metaphors and metonymies are embedded in specific scenarios in discourse; this point has been developed most prominently by Musolff (e.g. 2006) and recent studies along these lines include Semino, Demjén & Demmen (2018) and Koller & Ryan (2019). It also yielded a return to the recognition of the rhetorical functions of metaphor, a perspective that was backgrounded in the original CMT. The contributions by Jäkel, Musolff and Reif in the present volume exemplify this refined view and analysis of metaphor. iii. Following and fostering the general development within CL towards usagebased approaches, discourse-analytic studies along these lines have turned to systematic empirical bases for their analyses, e.g. corpora of various designs (Deignan 2005; Charteris-Black 2004). We witness this development in the

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present volume: Jäkel uses a corpus of political speeches as his basis, Musolff compiled an extensive corpus of interviews for his analysis, Reif collected below-the-line comments from online newspaper fora. iv. There is a growing trend of adding historical depth to critical discourse studies by taking into account the discourse history of a particular socio-political debate and, in particular, by addressing the relevant history of ideas (see, e.g., Wodak & Meyer 2001; Charteris-Black 2014). Musolff ’s (e.g. 2010) account of the body politic metaphor is paradigmatic in this respect. In the present volume, the contribution by Scott includes such a historical perspective. In a parallel fashion, more and more studies are available that use a comparative approach across cultures, again exemplified by Musolff (2021) as well as his contribution to the present volume. Both Cognitive Linguistics and Cultural Linguistics form part of what has come to be called the “second” cognitive turn in the humanities (cf., e.g., Sinha 2007), and more specifically, in linguistics. Right from the start, they shared a number of key commitments as well as analytical tools. However, there were differences in several crucial respects. Most importantly, in Cultural Linguistics, the respective socio-cultural group is considered as the locus of conceptualisations, leaning on the notion of distributed cognition (cf. Sharifian 2003, 2011, 2017a). This withinthe-group cognitivism contrasted quite sharply with the between-the-ears cognitivism dominant in early Cognitive Linguistics (Sharifian 2017a). It is true that with the turn to a socio-cultural view of language in contemporary mainstream CL, this difference has become smaller. However, it still constitutes distinct foci. Furthermore, in their original conception, the two approaches differed quite significantly in terms of their self-image: While CL perceived and presented itself as a genuinely new paradigm, Cultural Linguistics has always seen itself very explicitly as a continuation of long-standing strands in the humanities that put the nexus of language and culture centre-stage. In particular, Cultural Linguistics stresses its roots in anthropologically-oriented approaches to language in the tradition of Humboldt, Boas and Sapir, in ethnolinguistics and in the ethnography of speaking (cf. Sharifian 2015b). This spirit also guides the Handbook of Language and Culture (Sharifian 2015a), which documents the research programme of Cultural Linguistics. By embracing these traditions, Cultural Linguistics has been characterised by vectors of interdisciplinary pluralism different from those of the original CL, which aligned primarily with cognitive psychology and enactivism. Again, these differences have become smaller with a growing number of cognitive linguists seeing language as a chiefly socio-cultural phenomenon and thus seeking contact with the social sciences for their own analyses.

Introduction

A comprehensive theoretical foundation for Cultural Linguistics was first laid out by Palmer (1996). Its current core, in the view advocated by Sharifian (e.g. 2017a), is the notion of cultural conceptualisations, with a subsequent distinction between cultural categories, cultural schemas and cultural metaphors. This framework has been applied to a wide range of linguistic phenomena in numerous languages, as documented in a series of collective volumes (e.g. Sharifian & Palmer 2007; Sharifian 2017b) and in the issues of the International Journal of Language and Culture published since 2014. A research field that has become central to Cultural Linguistics over the last decade is the study of cultural conceptualisations across varieties of English (e.g. Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009; Wolf, Polzenhagen & Peters 2017; Callies & Onysko 2017; Sadeghpour & Sharifian 2021), a strand that meets and partly overlaps with the emerging cognitive-sociolinguistics branch within the wider context of CL (e.g. Kristiansen & Dirven 2008; Pütz, Robinson & Reif 2012). Again, several LAUD symposia were important platforms for these developments, e.g. 1996 on the topic of cultural context in communication across languages, 1998 on linguistic relativity, 2006 on intercultural pragmatics, 2010 on Cognitive Sociolinguistics, and, finally, 2018 the joined LAUD/CLIC symposium on Cultural Linguistics.

2.

Common ground

From the sketch given in the previous section it should be obvious that there is considerable common ground between (cognitive) Critical Discourse Studies and Cultural Linguistics. First and foremost, from a cognitive perspective, there is a significant overlap of the key notions of these two paradigms, i.e. ‘ideology’ and ‘culture’. Dirven (1990), for instance, takes a broad understanding of ideology going beyond any specific philosophical or political sense (for the distinction between covert and overt ideologies, see below). In this view, ideology is, broadly defined, “a system of thought”, “an implicit or explicit set of norms and values which provide patterns for acting and/or patterns for living within a given social network” (Dirven 1990: 565). ‘Culture’ is defined, at least in cognitive anthropology, in similar terms, albeit with a much wider range of phenomena in mind to be included and accounted for. For Hofstede, for instance, culture is “the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from those of another” (Hofstede 2001: 9). This overlapping concern has been pointed out continuously by proponents of both frameworks. In his overview of Cultural Linguistics, Sharifian (2015c), for instance, includes a chapter on political discourse analysis, explicitly stressing mutual benefits of both approaches in this endeavour. However, we are certainly

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not suggesting that Cultural Linguistics and Cognitive Discourse Studies can be or should be fused into one and the same paradigm. René Dirven’s far-sighted awareness mentioned above remains apt: We are dealing with distinct research programmes, distinct perspectives and distinct foci. What we are suggesting, however, is that both research programmes meet in some, though certainly not all, of their trajectories. This meeting ground can be seen as a continuum stretching between a cultural-linguistics and a criticaldiscourse-studies pole. Depending on the specific topic and scope of an investigation, this meeting ground can be fruitfully explored to varying degrees, from the perspective of both poles. We wish to make this point, even at the risk of oversimplifying, since we believe that it is borne out by the body of the studies that are available and since it corresponds to our own experience from working in the field. The traditional CDA approach is primarily concerned with overt ideologies, e.g. xenophobia, racism, sexism, all the facets of what has come to be termed “ableism”, etc. To traditional CDA, ideology is a ‘modality of power’, i.e., structures and attitudes that claim and exert dominance, and thus are structures of suppression. Fairclough (2003: 9; leaning on Bourdieu), for instance, states that “ideologies are representations of aspects of the world which can be shown to contribute to establishing, maintaining and changing social relations of power, domination and exploitation.” The focus of CDA is hence to analyse how this power is exerted and manifest in the language used by representatives of a specific ideology. However, when pursuing this type of analysis, CDA scholars inevitably come across systems of covert ideology (i.e. taken-for-granted stances that are not made explicit; cf. Dirven, Polzenhagen & Wolf 2007 for this distinction) on which the overt ones rest and feed. Pursued further, the analyst will meet deeply entrenched systems of cultural conceptualisations underlying both overt and covert ideologies. For instance, overt ideologies such as xenophobia, racism, sexism, ableism, etc. have a common basis in an us versus them distinction, applying it to specific groups and imbuing it with a value matrix. Consider the well-studied case of the Third-Reich rhetoric, in particular the representation of Jews in Nazi ideology. The racist labels used for Jews included parasite, subhuman and various linguistic disease metaphors. Studies such as Hawkins (2001) and Musolff (e.g. 2008, 2010) show that these terms relate systematically to a number of general salient conceptualisations with a long tradition in Western thought, in particular the great chain of being and the body politic metaphor. It is against the background of the latter that Jews are represented as a disease threatening the health of the Volkskörper (i.e. the nation as an organism/body). In a parallel fashion, the Nazi representation of Jews as parasites or subhuman positions them as lower life forms within the great chain.

Introduction

These background structures, however, are not in themselves ideological. The conceptualisation nation is an organism, for instance, brings forth such unspectacular and fully lexicalised expressions as head of the state, the great chain of being is one of the central conceptualisations underlying proverbs, e.g. via the human behaviour is animal behaviour metaphor (cf. Lakoff & Turner 1989). From a strict CDA perspective, we are hence outside the genuine scope of analysis. Instead, we are moving on the home territory of Cultural Linguistics. Furthermore, ideological systems other than the Nazi ideology frequently draw from the same background conceptualisations; in fact, these background conceptualisations belong to the common stock of many ideologies. From a strict CDA perspective, this type of analysis may thus be seen as moving away from the immediate ideology targeted by the study. However, the cultural-linguistic perspective contributes new facets to the critical analysis of the respective ideologies. The relevant background conceptualisations have been interpreted and employed in very specific and quite distinct ways over the centuries. For the great chain of being, this has been shown, for instance, in Lovejoy’s classic study from 1936, and for the body politic metaphor by Musolff (e.g. 2004, 2010, 2021). Such insights invite a comparative analysis which works out the construal specific to a particular ideology. Furthermore, this type of analysis shows how ideologies use anchor points in the general system of cultural conceptualisations. Studies along these lines thus also reveal an important aspect of why specific ideologies are appealing to people; they are appealing, to a significant extent, because they feed on shared, taken-for-granted and largely unconscious, conceptual patterns in the target group. In a parallel fashion, the continuum between CDA and Cultural Linguistics can be fruitfully explored from the vantage point of the latter. Again, this exploration is often an extension that comes naturally. The example we wish to give comes from the work of one of the present authors. Wolf & Polzenhagen (2009) provide an analysis of the cultural model of community in (West) African English, an endeavour firmly within the territory of (anthropological) Cultural Linguistics. They show that, in this context, community is conceptualised along the lines of the family concept, with community members being kin, leaders being fathers/mothers, etc. Mutual obligations within the community are construed as an eating and feeding pattern. These sets of conceptualisations also dominate political discourse. Political and socio-cultural groups are construed in terms of family membership, and the political system is largely based on an order of (virtual) kinship relations (cf., e.g., Schatzberg 2001). Thus, family conceptualisations take the central place occupied by the body politic metaphor in the Western context (see above). Discourse on power, in turn, is a metaphoric discourse along the lines of the eating and feeding pattern, as aptly expressed

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in Bayart’s (1993) notion of African politics being a ‘politics of the belly’. Wolf and Polzenhagen’s analysis of the cultural model of community thus blends into an analysis of political discourse. They also show how another central element of the community model, i.e. its spiritual dimension, is exploited in the realm of politics, and add a case study on the conceptualisation of corruption (Polzenhagen & Wolf 2021 [2007]). These two examples illustrate the meeting ground between Critical Discourse Studies and Cultural Linguistics along the continuum overt ideologies – covert ideologies – cultural conceptualisations.

3.

Contributions to the volume

The present volume reflects, first of all, the disciplinary plurality of the field. It includes papers written from an explicitly cognitive-linguistic, more specifically metaphor-based, perspective (e.g. Musolff, Jäkel, Reif ), from a cultural-linguistic background (e.g. Baş Keškić, Scott) as well as with a vantage point in social psychology (Hinner), intercultural communication (Giorgis) and cognitive semantics (Tsujimura). The contribution by Andreas Musolff adds to the wealth of his earlier studies of the body politic metaphor. He presents selected data from a large-scale questionnaire survey conducted among speakers of various languages on the interpretation of metaphors pertaining to the conceptualisation of the nation as a body. In his paper, he compares some of the results obtained from the groups of English and German L1 speakers, in both a qualitative and quantitative analysis. He identifies significant similarities as well as differences between the two groups. The latter reflect the groups’ specific historical experiences as well as different pragmatic stances, in particular with respect to ironic uses of the relevant metaphors. Olaf Jäkel analyses competing conceptualisations of the 2016 presidential elections in the US which manifested in the media coverage as well as in campaign speeches by the then candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. The theoretical background to his study is Charteris-Black’s notion of purposeful metaphor. For Donald Trump, for instance, Jäkel identifies the conceptualisation of elections as a trial / law suit. In the logic of this metaphor, members of the political caste such as Clinton have to stand a trial with the voters giving a verdict on them (Lock her up!), while Trump, according to his self-framing, is counted out from the trial as being an anti-establishment candidate. Hilary Clinton, in turn, makes use of the metaphoric model of elections as a job interview, alluding to Trump’s history as the reality-TV boss in “The Apprentice” and thus questioning Trump’s fitness for office (You are fired!). In the remaining part of his paper, Jäkel

Introduction

compares the above-mentioned metaphors employed by Trump and Clinton to Obama’s use of the conventional journey metaphor, based on a corpus of eight of his speeches. The corpus study by Monika Reif investigates the uptake, mixing and (non-)continuation of metaphors and metaphor scenarios related to migration/ migrants in reader comment sections of selected British broadsheets and tabloids. It is shown how certain facets of the source domain are highlighted and backgrounded in order to serve the argumentative interests of the writer. At the same time, potential correlations between specific conceptual metaphors and argumentative topoi are investigated, with a particular focus on mixed metaphors. Reif argues that the combinations of conceptual metaphors found in instances of mixed metaphor often create cognitive dissonance, but that the wish for dramatic effect through exaggeration appears to justify the merger of two seemingly incompatible metaphors. The argumentative aim thus seems to be more important than the internal coherence of the mixed metaphor itself. She further finds that in their comments, language users repeatedly draw on specific lexical items linked to a restricted area of the source domain. It is not surprising, therefore, that the discourse surrounding the topic of migration comes across as highly conventionalised at times, especially within socio-political echo chambers. Kader Baş Keškić contributes a comparative corpus-linguistic study on animal metaphors in African Englishes and British English, more specifically metaphors involving the concept of goat. Her data come from ICE-corpora of the respective varieties as well as from the Nigerian and Ghanaian component of the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE). Her focus is on the use and implications of goat metaphors in two West-African varieties of English (Nigeria, Ghana) and the cultural background to these metaphors. The key theoretical background to her study is Lovejoy’s notion of the great chain of being, which has been used in many cognitive and cultural-linguistic investigations. She analyses goat metaphors in three discourse domains: sexuality, religion and politics. Natsuko Tsujimura takes a semantic approach to cultural concepts, with the respective lexical items as her anchor point. Her example is cooking verbs in Japanese culinary culture. Here, we find an extensive set of distinct lexicalisations for the various ways of processing food. Tsujimura provides a detailed description of this set, comparing the respective lexical fields in English and Japanese, which leads her to a reanalysis of earlier accounts. She then focusses on the rich inventory of mimetics and verb-verb compounds that specify manner of cooking. Here, she identifies patterns that are parallel to the well-known case of mannerof-motion verbs. The resulting stock of items allows for a fine-grained linguistic representation of cooking processes and preserves culturally constructed conceptualisations of food preparation.

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Penelope Scott analyses the current discourse on “clean eating” from a cultural-linguistic vantage point. She first traces the evolution of concepts of health in Anglo-Saxon culture, with texts from the Old English period as her reference point. This way, she anchors the current discourse on “clean eating” in a long tradition of Western medical notions of balance, cleanness and wholeness. She then presents a qualitative analysis of podcasts and Reddit posts linked to the “clean eating” community, showing how these traditional notions are recontextualised in current discourse. Paola Giorgis takes a cultural-linguistic perspective on the notion of Othering. In the first part of her paper, she traces strategies of Othering in various fields of discourse. She discusses, inter alia, examples from literary texts (e.g. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels), the construction of political enemies (e.g. in the US and Russia during WW II), the representation of Jews in Nazi Germany (based on Klemperer’s classic study of the language of the Third Reich) and the discourse on immigrants in the US and elsewhere. She then focusses on the role of language in the construction of the other since a foreign language (an-other language) can be seen as a crucial element in defining the other in terms of an us versus them dichotomy. She argues that the field of foreign language education is a predestined context to counter stereotyping and Othering, and she presents a case study of a classroom activity she conducted to this end. Stereotyping and, more specifically, prejudice, are also the concern of the contribution by Michael Hinner. His paper is guided by the observation that in order to counter, overcome and ultimately avoid prejudiced conceptualisations, one needs to be aware of the (cognitive) mechanisms underlying the formation of stereotypes. Thus, he provides a review of relevant theories and concepts in social psychology that shed light on elements and factors contributing to the construction of prejudiced conceptualisations. Several of the theories addressed by Hinner have served as important background models in CDA, Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cultural Linguistics. Van Dijk’s work in CDA, for instance, is strongly informed by social psychology. Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory was instrumental, inter alia, to Kristiansen’s (2003) study of allophones as cognitive reference points for social cognition. Key notions that are covered by Hinner’s contribution include the formation of attitudes, self-image and identity as well as mechanisms of persuasion. Hinner calls for educational programmes that are informed by these theoretical insights and sees a particularly strong potential in schemes that combine foreign language instruction with multicultural education and diversity training. Most of the contributions present original empirical studies. These analyses explore the meeting ground between Critical Discourse Studies and Cultural Linguistics sketched above in Section 2 to varying degrees. Jäkel, Reif and Musolff

Introduction

move along the continuum with a vantage point in (Cognitive) Critical Discourse Studies. Baş Keškić and Scott, in turn, come from the Cultural-Linguistics end and reach out to the territory of political discourse. Again, we are not suggesting that the two frameworks should be fused into one. What the volume wishes to illustrate is that travelling along the continuum is a natural and fruitful endeavour for both approaches.

References Bayart, Jean-François (1993). The State in Africa: Politics of the Belly. London/New York: Longman. Callies, Marcus & Alexander Onysko (Eds.) (2017). Metaphor Variation in Englishes around the World. Special issue of Cognitive Linguistic Studies 4(1). Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in Educational Discourse. London/New York: Continuum. Cameron, Lynne (2008). Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk. In: Mara Sophia Zanotto, Lynne Cameron & Marilda C. Cavalcanti (Eds.), Confronting Metaphor in Use. An Applied Linguistic Approach (pp. 45–62). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004). Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2014). The discourse-historical approach. In: Jonathan Charteris-Black (Ed.), Analysing Political Speeches. Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor (pp. 123–152). Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chilton, Paul (2004). Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Deignan, Alice (2005). Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dirven, René (1990). Metaphor and ideology. In: Jean P. von Noppen (Ed.), La pratique de la métaphore: How to do things with metaphors. Special issue of Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire LXVIII (3): pp. 565–575. Dirven, René, Bruce Hawkins & Esra Sandikcioglu (Eds.) (2001). Language and Ideology. Volume 1: Theoretical cognitive approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dirven, René, Roslyn M. Frank & Cornelia Ilie (Eds.) (2001). Language and Ideology. Volume 2: Descriptive Cognitive Approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dirven, René, Roslyn Frank & Martin Pütz (Eds.) (2003). Cognitive Models in Language and Thought. Ideology, Metaphors and Meanings. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Dirven, René, Hans-Georg Wolf & Frank Polzenhagen (2007). Cognitive linguistics and cultural studies. In: Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert Cuyckens (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 1203–1221). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dirven, René, Frank Polzenhagen & Hans-Georg Wolf (2007). Cognitive linguistics, ideology, and critical discourse analysis. In: Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert Cuyckens (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 1222–1240). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fairclough, Norman (1989). Language and Power. London: Longman. Fairclough, Norman (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.

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Fairclough, Norman (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London and New York: Routledge. Fowler, Roger Robert Hodge, Gunther Kress & Tony Trew (Eds.) (1979). Language and Control. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Geeraerts, Dirk & Hubert Cuyckens (Eds.) (2007). Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goatly, Andrew (2007). Washing the Brain. Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hart, Christopher J. (2014). Discourse. In: Ewa Dabrowska & Dagmar Divjak (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 322–345). Berlin: De Gruyter. Hart, Christopher J. (2015). Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury. Hawkins, Bruce (2001). Ideology, metaphor and iconographic reference. In: René Dirven, Roslyn Frank & Cornelia Ilie (Eds.), Language and Ideology. Volume II: Descriptive Cognitive Approaches (pp. 27–50). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hodge, Robert & Gunther R. Kress (1993). Language as Ideology. London: Routledge. Hofstede, Geert (2001). Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Koller, Veronika (2004). Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse: A Critical Cognitive Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Koller, Veronika & Josie Ryan (2019). A nation divided: Metaphors and scenarios in the media coverage of the 2016 British EU referendum. In: Christopher Hart (Ed.), Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Text and Discourse: From Poetics to Politics (pp. 131–156). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kövecses, Zoltán (2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Zoltán (2015). Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kristiansen, Gitte (2003). How to do things with allophones: Linguistic stereotypes as cognitive reference points in social cognition. In: René Dirven, Roslyn Frank & Martin Pütz (Eds.), Cognitive Models in Language and Thought. Ideology, Metaphors and Meanings (pp. 69–120). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kristiansen, Gitte & René Dirven (Eds.). 2008. Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. Lakoff, George (1992). Metaphors and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf. In: Martin Pütz (Ed.), Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution. Studies in Honour of René Dirven (pp. 463–481). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lakoff, George (1996). Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George (2004). Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. The Essential Guide for Progressives. White River Junction, VT.: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Lakoff, George (2006a). Thinking Points: Communicating our American Values and Vision. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Introduction

Lakoff, George (2006b). Whose Freedom? The Battle over America’s Most Important Idea. New York: Picador. Lakoff, George (2008). The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics. New York: Penguin Books. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Turner (1989). More Than Cool Reason. A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1936). The Great Chain of Being. A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Musolff, Andreas (2004). Metaphor and Political Discourse. Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Musolff, Andreas (2006). Metaphor scenarios in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 21(1), pp. 23–38. Musolff, Andreas (2008). What can Critical Metaphor Analysis add to the understanding of racist ideology? Recent studies of Hitler’s anti-semitic metaphors. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines 2(2), pp. 1–10. [http://cadaad.org/ejournal]. Musolff, Andreas (2010). Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust. The Concept of the Body Politic. London: Routledge. Musolff, Andreas (2016). Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury. Musolff, Andreas (2021). National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic. Singapore: SpringerNature. Palmer, Gary B. (1996). Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin (Texas): University of Texas Press. Polzenhagen, Frank & Hans-Georg Wolf (2021 [2007]). Culture-specific conceptualizations of corruption in African English: Linguistic analyses and pragmatic applications. In: Marzieh Sadeghpour & Farzad Sharifian (Eds.), Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes (pp. 361–399). Singapore: Springer. [rev. reprint from Farzad Sharifian & Gary B. Palmer (Eds.) (2007), Applied Cultural Linguistics (pp. 124–168). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins]. Pütz, Martin, Justyna A. Robinson & Monika Reif (Eds.) (2012). Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Special issue of Review of Cognitive Linguistics 10(2). Sadeghpour, Marzieh & Farzad Sharifian (Eds.) (2021). Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes. Singapore: Springer. Santa Ana, Otto (2002). Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse. Austin: University of Texas Press. Schatzberg, Michael G. (2001). Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Semino, Elena (2008). Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Semino, Elena, Zsófia Demjén & Jane Demmen (2018). An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer. Applied Linguistics 39(5), pp. 625–645.

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Sharifian, Farzad & Gary B. Palmer (Eds.) (2007). Applied Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sharifian, Farzad (2003). On cultural conceptualisations. Journal of Cognition and Culture 3(3), pp. 187–207. Sharifian, Farzad (2011). Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sharifian, Farzad (Ed.) (2015a). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. London: Routledge. Sharifian, Farzad (2015b). Language and culture: Overview. In: Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture (pp. 3–17). London: Routledge. Sharifian, Farzad (2015c). Cultural linguistics. In: Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture (pp. 473–492). London: Routledge. Sharifian, Farzad (2017a). Cultural Linguistics: Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sharifian, Farzad (Ed.) (2017b). Advances in Cultural Linguistics. Singapore: Springer. Sinha, Chris (2007). Cognitive linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. In: Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert Cuyckens (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 1266–1294). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Toolan, Michael (Ed.) (2002). Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. 4 Vols. London: Routledge. Van Dijk, Teun (1998). Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage. Wodak, Ruth (Ed.) (1989). Language, Power and Ideology: Studies in Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wodak, Ruth & Michael Meyer (Eds.) (2001). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE Publications. Wolf, Hans-Georg & Frank Polzenhagen (2009). World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wolf, Hans-Georg, Frank Polzenhagen & Arne Peters (Eds.) (2017). Cultural Linguistic Contributions to World Englishes. Special issue of International Journal of Language and Culture 4(2).

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors by English and German L1 speakers Andreas Musolff

University of East Anglia

One of the key-metaphor complexes in conceptualizing national identity is that of the nation as a body or a person. Nation -embodiment and -personalization have had a long conceptual history and still figure prominently in present-day political discourse. However, the sociopsychological impact of these metaphors is still in question: does the occurrence of embodied and personalized nation-depictions in public discourse mean that recipients understand and interpret international relations in terms of inter-body or inter-personal relationships? New empirical evidence from a metaphor interpretation survey conducted in 30 countries suggest that such conceptualizations do indeed occur and lead to creative elaboration and inter-metaphor blendings. Moreover, it can be shown that the elicited metaphor interpretations relate to culture-specific discourse traditions. The chapter compares data from the English and German L1 survey samples and discusses their implications for the analysis of metaphor understanding. Keywords: conceptual metaphor, culture, pragmatics, variation, universal vs. relative

1.

Introduction

When asked to apply the “metaphor of the nation as a body” to their own nation as part of a project of cross-cultural metaphor comparison (Musolff 2020, 2021), four students from Britain, the United States, Germany and Austria gave the following answers: (1) England is an organism. Its head is the Queen, its torso and limbs are the state and government. Its heart is culture and history, its brain is parliament. Its [sic] feet is the economy. (E, UK, M, 25) https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.01mus © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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(2) […] like Frankenstein [i.e.: Frankenstein’s monster], we have an abnormal brain commanding the body, which is causing our country to act and react with more negativity and distastefulness. (E, US, 48, F) (3) The German body has a strange form, which causes it to be very diverse. Because there are so many different viewpoints, it always is in conflict with itself. To cure this conflict and to forget about past events, the body sedates itself with lots of beer. (G, G, 21, M) (4) Austria is a slightly overweight blonde man in his early 50s. […] He’s about 1.8m tall, a pretty average size to display his mediocrity. (G, AUST, 27, M)1

These ‘personalized’ descriptions of the nation are remarkable in various respects, but first and foremost they may surprise as answers to a prompt that only asked for a “body”-related answer. For the respective respondents, the metaphor of the nation as person seems compatible, if not synonymous, with that of the nation as body. This association could be motivated in principle by the metonymy body for person, which in its turn may be grounded in a folk-theoretical assumption that prototypical ‘bodies’ are (like) human ones. But does that mean that everyone interpreting the nation as body metaphor is basing it on that metonymy? Furthermore, in the above-quoted examples the nation as person metaphor is used as a kind of conceptual platform to construct detailed characterizations of the nation-person as a child, or a bipolar personality, or a mediocre man. These specifications are vivid, with dramatic and/or narrative elements and allusions, as well as explicitly and implicitly evaluative. Are these narrative and evaluative aspects implied in the metaphor, or are they additional, cohort- and contextspecific interpretations? In other words, we can ask whether it is best to describe the examples as instances of one single metaphor, or as conceptually and/or pragmatically different sub-versions. This chapter aims to relate these theoretical aspects of metaphor variation to an empirical survey of metaphor interpretations and to propose a distinction between conceptual and pragmatic levels of variation.

2.

The ubiquity of metaphor variation

The study of variation phenomena in metaphor use and reception has become a highly productive sub-field for investigations in the already vast domain of cognitive studies of figurative language. This was not always so. In his 1993 chapter on 1. Italics in these and other examples are by the author. Omissions or additions are in square brackets. Abbreviations in rounded brackets indicate respondents’ first language, nationality, age and gender.

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors

“the contemporary theory of metaphor”, G. Lakoff laid down an “invariance principle” which stated that “inherent target domain structure limits the possibilities of mappings automatically”, i.e. the source domain ‘matches’ are selected without the speakers’ conscious choice on the basis of image or conceptual correspondences (1993: 215–216, 245). Accordingly, Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) focused on the systematicity and stability of metaphorical mappings and on their fundamental role as a universal, unconsciously operating principle of mental organization that was grounded in basic bodily experience or “embodiment” (Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003: 7–13 and 1999: 9–44; Kövecses 2002: 67–106, 163–182). Psycholinguistic experiments on metaphor understanding that were inspired by CMT demonstrated the high speed and ease of processing and of target referent identification for conventional metaphors and thus reinforced assumptions of their “automatic” and “unconscious” comprehension and the notion of metaphorical meanings as being as “invariant” as literal ones (Gibbs 1994: 80–119 and 2005: 182–187). Creative metaphors, especially in poetry and other art forms, as well as in rhetorical uses (irony, satire, etc.), whose interpretation has always been known as varied, were deconstructed as instances of “elaborations” of more basic primary mappings or as “blendings” of multiple source inputs and target inputs that could be conceptually incongruent and give rise to counterfactual and/or fictional utterances (Lakoff & Turner 1989: 67–70; Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 221–222). Two areas of metaphor use where CMT has accepted and tried to account for variation are cross-cultural metaphor comparison and the investigation of political metaphor. In cross-cultural comparison, lexicalized metaphorical idioms have been intensively investigated for conceptual contrasts and the effect of such contrasts on language acquisition and multilingualism (Lakoff 1987; Idström & Piirainen 2012; Kövecses 2002: 183–198, 2005, 2015: 73–96; Littlemore 2001; Littlemore & Low 2006; MacArthur et al. 2012; MacArthur et al. 2015; Musolff et al. 2014; Niemeier & Dirven 2000; Sharifian 2010, 2014; Yu 2008, 2015). Kövecses’ (2015: 95) solution for the ‘linguistic relativity vs. universality’ question in this field is a view of conceptual metaphors as “a gradient with bodily basis at one end, cultural basis at the other, with doubly motivated cases of conceptual metaphors in the middle”. This seemingly Solomonic verdict still has, however, an inbuilt bias in favor of the ‘universalist’ side, because all metaphors can of course be subsumed under general schemas of body-based experience such as more is up, abstract entities are objects, time is movement, etc., so that culturespecific metaphor variation can always be viewed as secondary to ‘primary’ universal mappings. Analyzing ideologically motivated variation of political metaphors has also been a mainstay of CMT research since the seminal publication of Metaphors We

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Live By (see Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003: 156–157) and has become a focus for a multitude of studies that combine cognitive, corpus-linguistic and discourseanalytical approaches. Many recent studies (e.g. Ahrens 2009; Musolff 2004, 2016; Charteris-Black 2004, 2014, 2019; Chilton & Lakoff 1995; Perrez et al. 2019) analyze variation as corpus-based evidence of differential preferences for specific metaphor variants across ideological or party-political stances of users as well as across genres, topics and situational contexts. In addition, experimental “response elicitation” studies of metaphor reception/understanding have shown differential “framing”, i.e. attitude-reinforcing or -changing, effects (Brugman & Burgers 2018; Burgers et al. 2016; Flusberg et al. 2018; Thibodeau & Boroditsky 2011, 2013, Thibodeau et al. 2019). They measure speed and physiological conditions of recipients’ responses with the aim of testing hypotheses about the metaphors’ impact on the categorization of target topics and on attitudes towards them. But where such tests seem to provide supporting evidence of such impact, there still remains the question of whether the respective metaphors are “a cause or a symptom of urgency” (Thibodeau et al. 2019: 183–184). The question of the reception/understanding of metaphorical utterances has also been given much attention in “Relevance Theory” (RT), which initially accounted for metaphors under the category of “loose uses of language” (Sperber & Wilson 1995: 234) within the wider framework of a pragmatic theory of “ostensive-inferential communication” (Sperber & Wilson 1995: 50, passim). Metaphor “and a variety of related tropes (e.g. hyperbole, metonymy, synecdoche)” are thus viewed as “creative exploitations” of contextual effects of an utterance in the “search for optimal relevance” that leads a speaker “to adopt, on different occasions, a more or less faithful expression of her thoughts” (1995: 237), so that the hearer can work out its implications without much processing effort. Metaphors, as one main type of “loose uses” of language, are arraigned on a cline of creativity, with those at the top end where “a variety of contextual effects can be retained and understood [by the hearer] as weakly implicated by the speaker” (1995: 236) and at the other end conventionalized, near-literal uses. RT proponents have expanded on this account, effectively distinguishing two types of metaphor understanding: “rapid on-line ad hoc concept formation” in everyday communication and “slower, more reflective interpretive inferences” that are required for creative metaphors (Carston & Wearing 2011: 310). Of particular interest for our discussion are attempts to merge CMT and RT in a “Hybrid Theory of Metaphor” (Tendahl 2009), in which these theories “complement” each other (Gibbs & Tendahl 2011). Both CMT and RT reject models of metaphor understanding that assume a laborious progression from an initial literal interpretation, to be followed by the hearer’s realization of its falsity or absurdity and then a further mental operation that “indirectly” works out some version of the

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors

speaker’s intended meaning. Instead, CMT and RT acknowledge that the processing effort for metaphors and other “loose uses of language” need not be greater than for literal language use. On this basis, Tendahl and Gibbs assign the analysis of “enduring metaphorical knowledge” to CMT and the study of “pragmatic inferential processes” in diverse situational contexts to RT (Tendahl & Gibbs 2008: 1861). This division of labor between the cognitive and pragmatic (RT) accounts looks very neat but seems to replicate CMT’s universalist bias in that (pragmatic) variation is relegated to the conceptually contingent situation context, whereas “enduring metaphorical knowledge” is dealt with by the cognitive approach. In terms of our research questions, the variation in Examples (1)–(4) would then just be the appearance of nuances in applying one and the same conceptual metaphor. But is such a neat separation of universal metaphors and their ‘merely’ situationally motivated variation plausible?

3.

Variation in metaphor corpora

Political metaphor variation serves to define ideologies as well as political groupings, as shown by G. Lakoff in his studies of the strict father and nurturant parent models of the nation as family metaphor, which divide ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’ in US political discourse (Lakoff 1996; Lakoff & Wehling 2016). Methodologically, however, this ‘discovery’ of opposing metaphor variants is open to criticism for being circular, given that its database has been derived from assumptions about political ideologies which then led to finding ‘fitting’ examples. The occurrence of these examples is indisputable but what is their significance? Some of the response elicitation experiments mentioned above have tried to overcome this problem by combining conceptual and psychological evidence, but as stated above, the exact nature of the relationship between metaphorical stimuli and responses (i.e. whether it is causal or symptomatic) remains under discussion. A further empirically oriented avenue to test hypotheses of metaphor variation is represented by corpus-based analyses of metaphor use (Charteris-Black 2004; Deignan 2005; Musolff & Wong 2020; Perrez et al. 2019). It is within this context that I discuss data from a cross-cultural survey of the nation as body metaphor that included the Examples (1)–(4) cited above, with a specific focus on metaphor reception. The project was triggered by a surprise result of a vocabulary check on the term body politic in a seminar of international students in 2011 (Musolff 2020). The responses fell into two groups: those given by students from Britain, the US, Spain, the Ukraine and Arab countries described states and/or nations as bodies and/or persons but the other set of responses, given by Chinese students, linked geographical places (cities, regions) to parts of the human anatomy and

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constructed analogies between them and political institutions based in the respective cities (e.g. government in the capital) or provinces, thus conceptualizing their nation as geobody. As the initial group of informants (n = 14) was far too small to furnish reliable conclusions, a much larger sample of responses was needed, as well as a simple questionnaire that avoided the term body politic with its historical baggage and morphologically archaic structure (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 2002, vol. 1: 258). With a small research team, we devised the following task: “The concept of ‘nation’ can be described by way of a metaphor or simile that presents it in terms of a human body. Please apply this metaphor to your home nation in 5–6 sentences”. The deliberate vagueness of both the source and the target concepts (nation, body) was designed to leave room for creative interpretations. Beyond that one question-task, we asked the respondents (who remained anonymous) to provide sociolinguistic information on their first language, nationality, age and gender. As could be expected, the age-range of respondents was concentrated in the 18–25 bracket. The gender distribution was slanted in favor of female informants, with usually more than 55% and in some cases more than 70% female students. The questionnaire was distributed from 2012 onwards, with the generous support of colleagues and students, in language- and communicated degree programs at universities in thirty countries, resulting in nearly 2100 completed questionnaires from respondents. Some 200 of these failed to answer the question in a meaningful way and were discarded from the database, which left a total of 1850 relevant completed questionnaires; these were reduced further to 1772 questionnaires grouped into 24 different L1 backgrounds, excluding mini-samples. The selected L1 samples in the corpus were: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (i.e. Mandarin and Cantonese), Croatian, Dutch/Flemish, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Pasto and/ or Urdu, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian. The body and geobody interpretations that we encountered at first as well as the person version (Examples (1)–(4) were used many times over and formed distinctive textual patterns in the corpus. Such patterns can be regarded as “scenarios” in the sense of concept clusters combining lexical and textual framing material (i.e. membership in semantic fields, collocations and coherent storylines). Such scenario-based corpus analysis has been employed in a number of studies of metaphor usage in public discourse (Deignan 2010; Heyvaert 2019; Semino 2008, 2016; Semino et al. 2018; Musolff 2006, 2016) but not yet in the investigation of metaphor reception. When applied to the corpus of nation as body responses, the scenarios of body, geobody and person covered the vast majority (80%+) of answers but two

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors

further sub-variants were found which were conceptually and pragmatically distinct, i.e. depictions of the nation as part of a (larger) body and as part of ego’s (i.e. the writer’s) body. The following examples illustrate these additional scenarios: (5) England is like an appendix, not very significant anymore but can still cause trouble and make you realize it’s there if it wants to. (E, UK, 18, M) (6) I grew up in my nation like I grew up in my body, getting to know better both of them with age. It’s the place my heart is at. Both act as the foundation of who I am. (G, G, 24, F)

In (5), England is seen as a body part which is stereotypically useless but can still cause pain to its larger body. In (6), the writer equates her nation with herself and in particular a place in her heart, thus expressing patriotic identification. With these supplementary scenarios in addition to body, geobody and person, the multitude of recorded body/person-related source-concepts in the survey corpus, which ran into more than one hundred for many L1-samples, could be summarized into five scenario-clusters. Coding for source concepts was carried on the basis of the MIPVU-procedure (Steen et al. 2010), and for scenarios on the basis of collocation patterns and narrative links. Pragmatic implicatures were also coded if sufficient context (in the sense of manifest co-text) was provided in the answer. Many short responses did not provide enough context to allow unambiguous pragmatic assessments, so eventually only emphatically negative and ironical scenario versions as well as the (few) humorous ones were coded. In the following sections I present findings for the English and German L1 samples, with a particular focus on culture-specific allusions and pragmatic aspects such as irony, humor and evaluation.

3.1 The English L1 sample The sample of responses from informants with English as their first language was collected across Britain, the USA, New Zealand, and Australia as well as from various European universities. It includes 183 responses altogether, 59 by British nationals, 34 by US, 42 by New Zealand and 46 by Australian nationals, one by an Irish and one by a Canadian national. This sample generated 232 scenario instances, which showed the following distribution: Given a history of body politic lexicalization which goes back 500 years, and of political theory traditions that conceptualized the nation state as a body reaching back to the Middle Ages (Harvey 2007; Nederman 2004), there can be no surprise that the body scenario is the dominant one in the English L1 sample. It implies a hierarchical structure and interdependence, i.e. a top-down orientation of life-essential vs. non-essential, ‘noble’ and ‘lowly’ organs/limbs. The body part

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Table 1. Scenario distribution: English L1 Number of scenarios overall: 232 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

person

Tokens

103

59

23

2

45

Percentages

44%

25%

10%

1%

20%

scenario allows authors to comment on aspects of the body politic that they want to hold up to praise or ridicule. It overlaps with the geobody-scenario, which assigns the respective national capitals top status (head, brain or heart), whilst some places or regions are relegated to ‘lower’ and even taboo regions in the nation-body, which can be exploited for humoristic or polemical effects: (7) The backside of England is Hull

(E, UK, 19, F)

(8) […] certain parts of [America] (specifically the upper eastern, but not on the coast) [are] referred to as the “armpit” of the nation, implying that it is stinky, and gross. (E, US, 31, F) (9) Tasmania is the nether regions of Australia.

(E, AUS, 19, M)

(10) Canberra is the ass of Australia

(E, AUS, 20, M)

On the other hand, regions can be emphatically and ‘patriotically’ endorsed, most often as the heart, in the symbolic sense of the ‘seat’ of the soul of the respective nation: (11) Britain’s […] heart is in Yorkshire

(E, UK, 21, F)

(12) Uluru is the heart of Australia, soulfully connecting us to our surrounds (E, AUS, 18, M) (13) I grew up in the upper Midwest (Dakotas), and have always known it as “the heartland” for two reasons. First is that it is in the middle of the country, just as the heart is said to be in the center of the body. I have also heard it in terms of the fact that the people who live in the Midwest have a lot of heart (E, US, 31, F) (14) The Gaeltacht is the heart/soul of Ireland

(E, IR, 19, F)

part of ego examples are only minimally in evidence,2 whereas the nation as person scenario, which accounts for one fifth of all instances, is used to depict

2. E.g.: “Our culture is the feet we stand on” (E, UK, 21, F); “No matter where we are in the world, Australia is still in hearts, allowing me to grow keeping them beating.” (E, AUS, 18, F)

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors

the respective nation in a personal (e.g. age-specific) role, with (supposedly) corresponding ‘typical’ behavior and character traits, as in the following examples: (15) England is an ageing person, one that has been going for a long time. […] England used to have many other clothes (colonies) to dress itself in. However, it has since given away all of it’s [sic] clothes. (E, UK, 18, F) (16) My nation is fat. Lying supine, its head is in the center, as well as its feat [sic]. […] Its fat is a combination of future pregnancy, a bloaded [sic] past and an uncontrollable metabolism. (E, US, 25, M) (17) New Zealand is like a little brother chasing after the nations of the world and clamouring for attention. (E, NZ, 18, F) (18) I would equate Australia to a body during adolescence. Ideologies are developing and changing at a rapid pace, though not without internal conflict. The brain is exposed to new hormones such as the older generation of Australia is exposed to multiculturalism and expected to adjust to it. The parasites are the people who reject these inclusive notions. (E, AUS, 18, F)

When such explicitly biased personalizations are combined with similarly evaluative body and body part conceptualizations, we count 94 judgmental comments that depict the respondents’ home nations in an explicitly negative perspective (39 instances) or ridicule it implictly, i.e. ironically (45 instances) or give a sympathetic-humorous (10 instances) characterization. When calculated as a percentage of scenario instantiations, this yields a figure of 41%, which is the highest across all sizeable cohorts (i.e. those with more than 50 scenario instances). Within the English L1-sample we find subtle differences between the distinct ‘national’ cohorts, although the imbalance of sub-sample sizes makes it difficult to gauge their statistical significance. The British sub-sample is characterized by matching amounts of critical and ironical comments (n = 18 for each type) and a small minority of four humorous comments, yielding 40 instances altogether. The ironical remarks are still polite, focusing mainly on vaguely ridiculous body parts and employing euphemisms (appendix, belly button, backside). In the smaller US cohort, the overall number of examples for all three types is 17. Here the criticism is more sarcastic, with references to bipolar brain function, Frankenstein-like features (Example (2) above) and deadly cancer threatening the body politic. The New Zealand sample has 14 relevant examples, the majority of which are creative, humorous references to the nation as an inexperienced person (child; see Example (17)), as being emotional rather than rational, or as a body part of uncertain status (middle toe). The 23 examples in the Australian cohort, on the other hand, show a distinct predilection for taboo body parts and drastic conceptualizations

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(butt, nether regions, ass) that serve outspoken and sarcastic, rather than implicit ironical, criticism.

3.2 The German L1 sample Among the European non-English L1 samples, the German L1 sample is the largest with 229 completed questionnaires. These were collected at the Universities of Heidelberg and Bonn in Germany and at the “Alpen-Adria University” in Klagenfurt (Austria) as well as from a few guest students in the UK and USA. There were no informants from Switzerland. The Austrian sub-cohort includes 22 students in Klagenfurt and 9 students at German universities, so that 31 students altogether have an Austrian background. Out of a total of 319 of scenario instances, their scenario distribution in the German-L1 sample shows an even stronger preponderance of the body scenario than the English L1 sample, and it has person, not geobody, as its second-most frequent scenario: Table 2. Scenario distribution: German L1 Number of scenarios overall: 319 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

person

Scenario tokens

177

25

19

19

79

Percentages

55%

8%

6%

6%

25%

In order to facilitate the comparison with the English L1 sample, I will discuss the scenarios in the same order: body, geobody, body part, part of ego, person. This ordering has the advantage of ending on the person scenario, which provides the strongest contrasts vis-à-vis the English L1 sample and also includes most Austria-specific conceptualizations. The German L1 sample is even more dominated by the nation as (whole) body scenario than the English L1 sample and has more lexical instances, i.e. 613, across 44 body sub-concepts (the latter are fewer than in the English-L1 sample) and 19 health/illness-related sub-concepts (i.e. almost double the number of English-L1 concepts). This finding can be explained by the fact that the nation as body metaphor in German, whilst lacking one outstanding lexicalization such as body politic, has at least as long a historical track record as the English metaphor going back to the 16th century (Musolff 2010: 121–136). As in the English L1-sample, the (whole) body scenario often serves to highlight the interdependency of all body parts:

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors

(19) The nation is a functional system made of several smaller organisms as is the body. For the nation to function groups of people have to fulfil certain tasks. This is comparable to human organs that accomplish a task within the body. (G, G, 20, F)

Also similarly to the English L1 sample, the head signifies the highest place in the political body-hierarchy. Both Germany and Austria have the institution of a “federal president” who could occupy that slot. However, as it is referred to only once in the German L1 sample (i.e. for Austria), it seems that the head of state-position in the German-speaking countries does not match the kudos of long-established heads of state in other countries, such as a ceremonial monarch or a president as most powerful office-holder. The head position is instead either occupied by the most powerful national politician, i.e. in Germany and Austria alike, the Federal Chancellor, or the government or parliament, or the abstract notion of a rulegoverned state: (20) The chancellor is the head of the German nation as he/she can be seen as the brain that controls and leads every other part of the body. (G, G, 21, F) (21) Just as the human body, my home nation has a head, consisting of rules, boundaries, concepts and other structures. (G, AUST, 30, F)

The heart concept is used predominantly to refer to the people/population or its social system, as a target for emotional or ethical identification, which brings the head/brain vs. heart dichotomy (metonymically standing for reason vs. emotion/character) into play: (22) While people represent the heart of a democracy, our government sort of acts as its brain, even unwillingly so. (G, AUST, 22, M)

hands, arms, feet and legs are used as source concepts for designating subordinate ‘executive’ institutions and/or their personnel as well as other significant parts of society. In the Austrian sub-cohort, arms feature mainly as a source for highlighting its welcoming, friendly attitude towards other nations and/or immigrants, i.e. in fact as a person-attribute: (23) The media can be referred to as the hands and arms because they interact and influence the way the whole system behaves. (G, G, 19, F) (24) My home nation [is] always willing to help out others. Its arms are wide open to welcome everybody. (G, AUST, 19, M)

In contrast to the English-L1 sample, the use of ‘lower’ or taboo body parts for categorizing aspects of the nation is rare. The liver is employed once to characterize the justice system because of its cleansing function, i.e. not with deni-

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grating implications. Likewise, the stomach or belly is positively connoted as a “vital organ” and refers to the people. Taboo body part concepts only appear twice (NB: both times supplied by male informants). One informant called the government an ass (because “they constantly produce … [sic]”; G, G, 18, M). Another one denounced a far-right wing party as an aggressive male sexual organ: “The Alternative für Deutschland, a party that recently emerged, can be described as a penis that penetrated our nation” (G, G, 24, M). Apart from these cases of taboo body part ascription, negatively loaded body-related concepts in the German L1 sample are mainly drawn from the health-disease sub-domain. They are infrequent (with only 36 instantiations altogether = 6%) but highly differentiated, often targeting historical or current political problems, e.g. scars (“scarfs [sic] from history”), injury (“invasions during a war could be considered injuries”), infection (for “dangerous mindsets, conjuring up horrific visions of past times”), cancer (for “racism”), paralysis (“Germany is paralyzed with shock”, due to acts of terrorism).3 The immune system is related to the police. Political reform as a medical treatment includes the sub-concepts therapy, medical aid and doctor. In comparison with the nation as body scenario, the nation as part of (a larger) body and nation as part of ego scenarios’ frequencies in the German L1-corpus are small, amounting to less than 10% each. Among the source concepts, heart, head, brain, face, eyes and hands are the most frequent ones. Within the nation as body part scenario there is a clear divide between two main versions. One of these, which is used exclusively by German nationals, relates their nation to Europe/the European Union as the larger whole, with an explicit leadership claim, as in this example: (25) Germany is the “heart” of Europe […] since the heart is the place where all other parts are connected to and get the oxygen that is needed from. (G, G, 20, F)

The other version does not specify the larger body but focuses on the nation as body part’s inherent qualities. This version is shared by German and Austrian respondents: (26) The nation can present itself first and foremost in the form of the human brain, able to recall past events and adapting present behavior and attitudes to that history. (G, G, 20, F)

3. Written after a terrorist attack in Berlin in December 2016, when the questionnaire was coincidentally distributed in a German university.

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors

(27) Austria in terms of nation is like a hand. It helps other nations, but as a stand alone [sic] it does not hold much power. It’s needed to fulfil a lot of things [sic], but in order to accomplish anything, it needs other nations/body parts. It’s like a left hand in a world of right handed people. (G, AUST, 19, F)

The last cited example is ambivalent in first portraying the hand Austria in a positive way, as helping other nations, but then voicing skepticism to the point of allocating the nation the less useful role of a left hand in a world of right handed people. In the German L1-cohort’s nation as body part scenario versions, the absence of negatively loaded or taboo sources is even more conspicuous than in the nation as body scenario. The most dissociating uses are two interpretations of face and arms that exploit their conventionalized symbolism (as expressions of specific attitudes) to imply a narratively extended critique of the nation as person: (28) Germany may seem as a face with two sides. This [sic] two faces may divide the nation in east and west; conservative – progressive; urban – rural; German – not-German. Nevertheless, there is one nation as there is one face but with a different outward appearance. (G, G, 29, M) (29) Austria is like folded arms, because the people are reserved and introverted. A person with folded arms holds back and thinks about something, without getting too much attention. (G, AUST, 21, M)

These critical examples are unique. By contrast, the arms concept has ten positively slanted uses of arms as “open” or “extended” to welcome or link up with other nations in the German and Austrian sub-cohorts (see Example (24) above), and face appears 6 times, mainly as a friendly face of the Austrian or German nation-person. Almost predictably, given its high ‘identification’ potential, the nation as part of ego scenario includes only patriotic statements: (30) Nation could be the skin colour or tongue. Standing together as the face of the nation. (G, G, 21, F) (31) Austria is like the warm summer skin. The feeling of your skin is the same feeling you get when you explore the country. (G, AUST, 24, M)

Both the part of body and part of ego scenarios overlap with the person-scenario, on account of the fact that some body parts can be interpreted both physically and symbolically, as some of the examples cited above have already shown, e.g. references to open or folded arms, helpful hand, friendly face, friendly heart. We will take up the personalization topic after discussing the geobody scenario.

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The geobody scenario plays a significantly smaller role in the German L1-sample than in the English L1 one. As in the latter, the capital cities feature as the heart and/or head/brain in the German L1 responses. The other parts of the two countries’ geobodies are being presented in two main interpretive perspectives. The first of these is praise or humorous criticism of the landscape as a body-scape: (32) The typical Austrian body consists of huge mountains […] The eyes of the body are a mixture of green and blue just like the many lakes we have in Austria. […] Throughout the body are paths just like veins because Austrians like to go skiing, running or riding their bikes. (G, AUST, 21, F) (33) Germany is as full of hills as a person with acne.

(G, G, 22, M)

The second perspective, which is exclusive to the German cohort, is an economicpolitical pro-Western ranking of federal states along the former East-West German dividing line: (34) Germany could be described as a body because it consists of various regions (= body parts). These regions differ from each other, there are different accents, mentalities, but also different chances on job market/education. Maybe the west would be the front of the body, while the east is the back. (G, G, 20, F) (35) […] due to the federal structure one might apply the main organs to the financially strongest states, such as Bavaria, Hesse or Baden-Württemberg. Simultaneously, the eastern German states could be viewed as belonging to the periphery (limbs) due to their number of population. This is of course historically incorrect as the current eastern German states were the former “heartland” of Germany. (G, G, 27, F)

The reference to a German “heartland” in the last example implies a problematization of the geo-social ranking of different German regions, with the region that is now ‘Eastern’ Germany being conceptualized in a central position vis-à-vis the even more easterly regions on the one hand (now = part of Poland) and Western ones on the other, as historical “peripheries”. On the basis of our limited data set it is impossible to judge whether this pro-West biased ranking is only characteristic for West German informants or is shared nationally. The person scenario in the German L1 sample makes up one quarter of all scenario instances and ranges over 31 sub-concepts with 108 distinct lexical instantiations. The most frequent of these is the character trait generosity/ friendliness with 14 instances, which are distributed equally between the Austrian and German sub-cohorts:

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors

(36) My home nation has a heart as good as gold, always willing to help out others. Its arms are wide open to welcome everybody. The nation’s mind is strong and powerful, aiming to make changes and decisions in favor of the population. No matter what, it always keeps its smile and tries to stay positive. (G, AUST, 20, F) (37) Nation is strong and respectful. My nation is like the good mother Theresa. The arms of my nation are open for everybody. My nation is openhearted for any problems in the world. (G, G, 22, M)

The strong emphasis on a generous national character in the German and Austrian cohorts may have to do with the fact that some questionnaires were distributed in the period 2015–2018, i.e. at a time when both countries experienced mass immigration of refugees from the Middle East. This immigration target topic is always viewed in a positive light, when mentioned, which is doubtlessly related to the social selection of university students with an interest in foreign languages. It is not representative of the respective national populations. Other positive national character traits highlighted by German and Austrian informants are their nations’ liveliness, hard work, protectiveness, gentleness, rationality and ability to move forward as well as the role as father: (38) […] a nation is like / should be like a caring father trying to spark the brains of his children for being able to establish a consciousness based on moral [sic]. This father should guide his children until they are able to stand on their own feet and contribute to an appropriate social life with opportunity and tolerance. (G, G, 20, M)

With six instantiations in the German L1 sample, father assignations are not abundant but are three times more frequent than mother assignations. In just two cases they are explicitly linked to the term “fatherland”, in German: Vaterland, which is a historically highly loaded term linked to nationalist ideologies (Townson 1992). More ambivalent characterizations are couched in the form of an extended, apologetic depiction of an old man with a problematic past who has lots of experience and is able to give advice to the young generation but is also “shy” or “shadowy” and appearing (or anxious) to be “not very influential”: (39) The way Austria stands is like an old man. Bend [sic] back, lots of wrinkles that show what tolls life took, tired eyes and yet a bright smile, excited what the future still holds. […] You see, Austria, has been thru [sic] a lot [of ] dark days and brighter ones. (G, AUST, 22 F) (40) “Bundesrepublik Deutschland” [= Federal Republic of Germany] as a metaphor in terms of a human body to me would be a naive old man who tries

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his best and contributes to society while helping others as much as possible. He also has a criminal past but fully recovered by now. (G, G, 21, F)

The student writers in their early or mid-twenties convey a critical-butsympathetic attitude towards an authority figure of the previous generation whose weak or dark sides are known to them but are considered to belong to the past. Unambiguously critical depictions of the national “character” in the German L1 sample refer explicitly to the Nazi-history: (41) We still carry the heavy load of history on our shoulder, but working together, taking everyone serious [sic], we can work for a better future. Sometimes, politics thinks [sic] that they can just ignore a rotten tooth and pretend it doesn’t exist, but the only way is to amend and address the problem and the needs [sic] to fix it (e.g. talking about Pegida).4 (G, G, 25, F)

As the reference to current right-wing extremist movements such as Pegida shows, the Nazi-past of the German nation-person is seen by some respondents as connected with its present-day behavior, and therefore as a responsibility or commitment not to repeat the crimes of the past. Two informants refer to the post-2015 upsurge in immigration but, significantly, derive from it a positive characterization of the German nation as a “mixed and colorful ‘person’” (G, G, 21, F) or as an “integrated” body in which “everyone is accepted and belongs to another, no matter where they come from” (G, G, 20, F). Whilst ‘serious’ positive, mixed and negative nation as person characterizations are roughly evenly represented, ironical or sarcastic examples, which formed a distinct sub-strand in the English L1 sample, are rare. However, they do resemble the English L1 examples in playing on national stereotypes of drinking habits, albeit mainly beer-, not tea-related: (42) [My nation is] a white male holding something typical german [sic], like beer, Sauerkraut, etc. Dressed in clothing not made in Germany, mostly soccer stuff. (G, G, 18, F)

4.

Comparison

Overall, English and German L1 speakers’ conceptualizations of their nation(s) as bodies or persons show some significant similarities and contrasts. The most obvious parallel is the preponderance of the body-concept of the nation state with

4. “Pegida” is a German acronym that stands for Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamicisation of the Occident’) and is the self-chosen name of a far-right wing, nationalist and xenophobic movement in Germany.

Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors

a hierarchically ordered anatomy and functional interdependence among the different body parts as its two governing principles. However, in comparison with the English L1 sample, the German L1 cohort shows a stronger tendency to use health problem concepts to indicate historical and political topics, especially those connected with the legacy of Nazism, World War II and right-wing extremism, usually in a ‘serious’ way (scars, injury, infection). Vis-à-vis this body scenario, those of the nation as body part and as part of ego remain ephemeral, which is broadly similar to the English L1-cohort. The two samples differ most significantly in the remaining scenarios. geobody, which plays a significant role in the English L1 sample by providing opportunities for polemical or sarcastic denigration (‘place/region X as the anus, armpit, etc. of the nation’) but is much less important in the German-L1 sample and its formulations there serve predominantly to praise or neutrally describe their referents. The only observable similarity here is a shared preference for head and heart as the most important organs, of which the latter invites emotional identification, giving rise to expressions of patriotic enthusiasm (my nation is warm/open hearted, etc.). On the other hand, the conceptualization of the nation as a person is the second-ranking scenario in the German L1 sample (third in the English L1 sample) and gives rise to strong evaluations. They express either enthusiastic praise for the nation’s friendliness and generosity or criticism of its troubled and difficult personality. The latter aspect is linked to the historical experience of Nazism, Holocaust and World Wars, which are portrayed by the conventional metaphor of a heavy burden on the nation’s shoulder. This perspective, although not hugely frequent, is characteristic of the German L1 sample, across both Austrian and German sub-cohorts. It has no equivalent in the English L1-sample and is articulated in a self-consciously ‘serious’ way. Where it is foregrounded (see Example (41)), it is often used to reach a quasi-didactic conclusion, i.e. of learning from the past for the present. In its implicit uses (Examples (39), (40) it is euphemistically hinted at in the context of the caricature of the nation as a grumpy old man. These cases overlap with the relatively few ironical hints at stereotypes (beer-drinking) that portray the nation as a ridiculous but nonthreatening man. Compared with the explicit problematizations of the Nazi past, these depictions appear understated. Overall, the statistics of irony (8 occurrences) and humor (6) in the German L1 sample are low. Even when combined with non-ironical criticisms (16), they amount to 30 out of 319 scenario instances, i.e. just 9% of all scenarios.

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5.

Conclusions

In this chapter I have shown that conceptual variation in response to a metaphor interpretation task is by no means exceptional and that it can be systematically related to culture-specific discourse traditions. In general, the nation as body metaphor is a schematic, cross-culturally accessible mapping, with an apparently nation-affirmative bias. At this abstract, general level, all respondents process the metaphor in a similar way, i.e. they recognise it as a metaphor and then start on the process of enriching the abstract mapping, building interpretative scenarios and culture-specific views on the target concept nation. The contrasts between the English and German L1 samples are manifested at this scenario level in two ways: as different scenario distribution (e.g. contrasting scenarios in second place: geobody vs. person), and by way of pragmatic enrichment, such as the use of evaluations, irony or sarcasm, and allusions to prominent historical or current topics. The culture-specific contrasts presented here need to be further validated, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Still, they show that the focus on the ‘universal-vs.-relative’ dichotomy, or the ‘gradient’ perspective (universal body-based schema –> culture-specific variation phenomena) are oversimplifying. All examples discussed here are body-based, so are in principle universally interpretable. But at the level of documented interpretations such as those in this interpretation survey, we can observe distinct conceptual-semantic variants (“scenarios”). These scenarios in turn function as reference points of platforms for various pragmatic effects which open up the full range of interpretation variation, involving sociolinguistic and discourse-historical information about culture- and community-specific preferences in conceptualizing the nation as body.

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Sharifian, Farzad (2010). Cultural conceptualizations in intercultural communication: A study of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Journal of Pragmatics 42(12), pp. 3367–3376. Sharifian, Farzad (2014). Conceptual metaphor in intercultural communication between speakers of Aboriginal English and Australian English. In: Andreas Musolff, Fiona MacArthur & Giulio Pagani (Eds.), Metaphor and Intercultural Communication (pp. 117–129). London: Bloomsbury Linguistics. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2002). Ed. by William R. Trumble & Angus Stevenson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson (1995). Relevance. Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Steen, Gerard, Aletta G. Dorst, Berenike Herrmann, Anna Kaal, Tina Krennmayr & Trijntje Pasma (2010). A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tendahl, Markus (2009). A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor: Relevance Theory and Cognitive Linguistics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Tendahl, Markus & Raymond W. Gibbs (2008). Complementary perspectives on metaphor: Cognitive linguistic and relevance theory. Journal of Pragmatics 40, pp. 1823–1864. Thibodeau, Paul. H. & Lera Boroditsky (2011). Metaphors we think with: The role of metaphor in reasoning. PLoS ONE 6(2): e16782. Thibodeau, Paul. H. & Lera Boroditsky (2013). Natural language metaphors covertly influence reasoning. PLoS ONE 8(1): e52961. Thibodeau, Paul H., James Fleming & Maya Lannen (2019). Variation in methods for studying political metaphor: Comparing experiments and discourse analysis. In: Julien Perrez, Min Reuchamps & Paul Thibodeau (Eds.), Variations in Political Metaphor (pp. 177–194). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Townson, Michael (1992). Mother-Tongue and Fatherland. Language and Politics in German. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Yu, Ning (2008). The relationship between metaphor, body and culture. In: Roslyn M. Frank, René Dirven, Tom Ziemke & Enrique Bernárdez (Eds.), Body, Language and Mind. Vol. 2. Sociocultural Situatedness (pp. 387–407). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Yu, Ning (2015). Embodiment, culture, and language. In: Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture (pp. 227–239). London: Routledge.

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Conceptualising presidential elections Competing metaphorical models, and alternative approaches to their critical analysis Olaf Jäkel

Europa-Universität Flensburg

This contribution investigates the metaphorical conceptualisation of USpresidential elections. A solid onomasiological metaphor study (cf. Jäkel 2003) brings out alternative and even competing models. One point of this paper is to decide which approach to the analysis of political metaphor is better suited for a critical discourse analysis: Steen’s (2008, 2011a) concept of deliberate metaphor on the one hand, or Charteris-Black’s (2012) purposeful metaphor on the other hand. This is discussed on the basis of authentic discourse data from the US-presidential campaign of 2016 and the 2018 midterm elections. Following a concise analysis of some conventional metaphors instatiating standard alternative models in the public media domain, Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s uses of metaphor are compared to results of an investigation of former US-president Barack Obama’s metaphorical language in a corpus of eight of his major speeches held between 2008 and 2012 (cf. Jäkel 2012). Keywords: purposeful/deliberate metaphor, political discourse, onomasiological metaphor analysis, critical discourse analysis, presidential elections

1.

Introduction

The hypothesis that highly abstract domains of discourse are prone to some experiential grounding via systematic metaphorical mappings from some more concrete source domains is one of the central tenets of the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor, alternatively called Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1993; cf. Jäkel 2003). The language of politics certainly constitutes a highly abstract domain, and thus lends itself to an investigation of the metaphorical use of certain lexemes, which, if systematic, can be analysed as motivated https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.02jak © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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by conceptual metaphors. Such onomasiological metaphor analysis (Jäkel 2003) therefore can contribute to a cognitively motivated critical discourse analysis of the language of politics (cf. Jäkel 2012). This contribution will focus on one particular issue of US-American politics: the presidential elections and midterm elections, and the language used by politicians and their commentators in the public media domain to talk about them. It will be argued that based on a solid onomasiological analysis, we can find alternative and even competing metaphorical models of political elections. Apart from well-known examples like the election as a war, or the election as a crossroads, we will analyse such alternative conceptualisations of the election as a lawsuit versus the election as a job interview, as exemplified in authentic discourse data from the US-presidential campaign of 2016, and the 2018 midterm elections. One additional theoretical point of this paper is to decide which approach to the analysis of political metaphor is better suited for a critical discourse analysis: Steen’s (2008, 2011a, 2011b) concept of deliberate metaphor on the one hand, or Charteris-Black’s (2011, 2012) purposeful metaphor on the other hand. This will be discussed on the basis of authentic discourse data from the US-presidential campaign of 2016, and the 2018 midterm elections. Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s uses of metaphor will also be compared to results of an investigation of former US-president Barack Obama’s metaphorical language in a corpus of eight of his major speeches held between 2008 and 2012 (cf. Jäkel 2012). The comparison with Obama’s use of metaphor is intended to help in getting a firmer grip on the issue of deliberateness or purpose of fully contextualised metaphorical language in a larger corpus (about 44,000 words) of authentic language. All of the rhetorically motivated metaphors in this investigation have mainly persuasive functions: e.g., convincing the audience, generating pathos, creating consensus and confidence, or avoiding precision. The structure of this paper can be outlined in short like this: I will start with an analytical section (2.) on some standard alternative metaphors conceptualising presidential elections. I will then (3.) interpolate a short theoretical discussion of the preferred model for the analysis of non-standard metaphors in political rhetoric as deliberate or purposeful. This will be followed by more detailed analyses of competing metaphorical models conceptualising presidential elections, with section (4.) focussing on the 2016 contestants Trump versus Clinton. Section (5.) on Obama’s use of metaphor will include the results from a corpus study of eight of his speeches. The paper will end with a short summary and conclusion.

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2.

Conceptualising presidential elections: Some standard alternative metaphors

In discourse about US-American elections, we can find some highly conventional metaphors in the context of talking about states and their alleged, predicted or actual voting results. This section will analyse the four compound nouns or noun phrases swing state, toss-up state, battleground state, and purple state, all of which are near-synonyms, and any of which can serve as antonym to the label of safe state. Safe states have been won by one and the same of the two major parties for years on end. If this is not the case, any of the four alternative labels mentioned can be applied. In all of these nominal constructions, the first constituent receives a metaphorical sense through being combined with the head state as its co-text (cf. Jäkel 2003: 44, 127). None of these metaphors is creative or novel, but all have to be regarded instead as utterly conventional ways of talking about elections and their outcomes. The examples in this section are all taken from the public news coverage on television and in newspapers in the run-up to the midterm elections of 2018; sources are indicated. It will be argued that each of the four linguistic metaphors is based on a different conceptual model of political elections. Moreover, the underlying metaphors carry different implications, which in some cases even contradict those of competing models. However, it will be argued that none of these ways of talking about political elections seems to suggest that we are dealing with conscious choices made by rhetorically aware speakers. Here are some exemplifications: (1) Those swing states are absolutely vital. (2) Why Virginia is still a swing state.

[CNN, 7/4/2018] [NBC Washington, 11/9/2017]

Without having made an exact count, the term swing state (Examples (1), (2)), which came to be used in the 1960s, is in all likelihood still the most frequently used of the four terms.1 The underlying conceptual model of swing states sees elections as a pendulum, and politics as a clockwork. The image-schematic idea is that of a kind of mechanism which is characterised by some regular motion to and fro. The mapping of that regular pattern to the target domain of political elections results in the implication that the outcome of the elections is almost predictable: Like the pendulum that will swing from one side to the other and

1. This observation is confirmed by a check of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), which yields the following frequency counts: swing state(s) 2639, followed by battleground state(s) 1693, purple state(s) 107, and toss-up state(s) 55.

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back, the voting results from a swing state will rather swing in the opposite direction from the one taken in the previous election. Though denotationally synonymous, the term toss-up state, in comparison, exemplifies an alternative conceptual metaphor, which conceives of elections as a lottery, and politics as a gambling game (Examples (3), (4)): (3) New Mexico is no longer considered a toss-up state. (4) Florida now a toss-up.

[CNN, 1/17/2018]

[CNN headline, 4/10/2018]

Motivated by the image of the actual tossing of a coin in order to make a decision, the idea here is that of sheer luck, and a chance result. In marked contrast to the previously discussed model, the mapping of the coin flip to the target domain of political elections results in the implication that the outcome of the elections is completely unpredictable. The coin flip counts as the very model of unpredictability. Though statistically, both possible outcomes are likely to appear over time in equal shares, no one is able to predict which outcome will be the next. The next term, battleground state (Examples (5), (6)) is probably the oldest label of the four, going back as far as the 1860s: (5) Some states, like Florida, are perennial battleground states. [NBC Washington, 11/9/2017] (6) Virginia was solidly red until 2008, when it became a battleground state. [NBC Washington, 11/9/2017] Grounded in a very traditional and established conceptualisation, battleground states are a linguistic exemplification of the metaphorical model elections as war, which represents a special case of the well-known conceptual metaphor politics as war. In the context of that model, political opponents figure as adversaries, with armies soldiering and fighting in opposed partisan camps. The rich metaphorical mapping includes hard-fought campaigns, the implications of which are of elections as an extremely martial enterprise. Again, we will see that in direct comparison this makes for a clear contrast with the next model. Of all the four alternatives, the term purple state (Examples (7), (8)) represents the latest addition to the field, having come into use only after the year 2000. In 2004, it was even chosen as ‘Word of the year’ by The American Dialect Society: (7) Virginia is no longer a purple state.

[Washington Post, 6/12/2017]

(8) Farmsworth said he thinks Virginia is moving in a ‘bluer direction’, but it’s definitely still a purple state. [Washington Post, 6/12/2017]

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This colour symbolism is based on the relatively recent colour coding of electoral maps since the year 2000, in which states with a majority of votes for the Republican candidate were coloured in red, while states with a majority for the Democratic candidate were coloured in blue. If some commentators derive the label of purple states, the underlying metaphorical model could be described as elections as painting. While the US-American electoral system in general works on a ‘winner takes all’ principle, which yields those blue states versus red states results, a more detailed representation uses maps in which the colour purple is used to mark some of those unsafe states. The metaphorical mapping from the source domain of painting includes the possibility of a peaceful blend of red and blue resulting in some shades of purple, which goes against the ‘either-or’ logic. What this implies is a much more reconciliatory view, which stands in stark contrast to the martial war model inspected above. Maybe it is not too far-fetched to mention the different shades of purple worn on Joe Biden’s inauguration day 2021 – violet by Vice President Kamala Harris, and magenta by Michelle Obama – as symbolising unity, reconciliation, and even the promise of bipartisanship. So far, the analysis of alternative metaphors has revealed fundamental differences between conceptual models of political elections. In addition, it has even identified two contrasting pairs, as far as metaphorical implications are concerned: On the one hand, the model of swing states, with elections as a pendulum, seems to be diametrically opposed to the model of toss-up states, with elections as a lottery, as the first implies predictability whereas the second implies unpredictability of political election results. On the other hand, the model of battleground states, which conceptualises elections as war, contrasts with the model of purple states, which conceptualises elections as painting, in that the first supports a rather martial view of political elections, whereas the second favours a much more reconciliatory view. All of this said, however, it should not be concluded that any of these expressions will, under normal circumstances, be chosen deliberately or on purpose. As stated above, all four expressions are denotational equivalents of each other which can be used as near synonyms. In fact, no basic difference in use depending on context (e.g. different states, different majority margins, different political stances or convictions of commentators or their media outlets) could be detected. Moreover, the four expressions can all be regarded as highly conventional ways of talking, which may be chosen by speakers or commentators without any awareness of their metaphorical underpinnings. One further argument to support this claim lies in the fact that in the discourse of political commentaries, the linguistic realisations of alternative metaphorical models can very often be seen to appear in close proximity as mixed metaphors, as the following Examples (9), (10) reveal:

Conceptualising presidential elections

(9) Battle for the toss-up states.

[CNN headline, 10/14/2008]

(10) Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have always been covered as battleground states despite them voting blue, but 2016 was the first time they actually swung. [NBC Washington, 11/9/2017] The slightly dated Example (9) proves that more than one of these metaphors – here: the war plus the gambling game type – can be combined in the minimal space of a short headline, and have been used without any problems with this mix of metaphors for more than ten years now. Notice that Example (6) above also combined two different metaphors, with instantiations of the painting plus the war model. The little story told in the slightly longer Excerpt (10) even features a collection of three different metaphors, unabashedly combining the war model with its alternatives of painting and pendulum. The normality of such mixed metaphors proves that in the cases analysed so far, we have been dealing with standard alternative conventional metaphors.

3.

Deliberate or purposeful? How to analyse metaphors in political rhetoric

Before we continue to analyse the use of metaphors in political discourse with a view to speakers consciously trying to create certain rhetorical effects, a short theoretical interpolation is due. With the rhetorically aware speaker we are approaching a field of metaphor use that was the traditional homeground of classical rhetoric and the Aristotelean theory of metaphor (see Jäkel 2003), which is not exactly what the Conceptual Metaphor Theory in the wake of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) focussed as its centre of interest. This, instead, was the systematic analysis of conventional metaphorical expressions and idioms giving voice to underlying systems of conceptual metaphors. The metaphorical language was so unspectacular and normal that in most cases its metaphoricity went unnoticed by both speakers and addressees – until exposed to analysis by Cognitive linguists following Lakoff and Johnson (1980). In recent years, however, a kind of backshift has been noticeable which, though still firmly rooted in the Cognitive approach, focuses again on the conscious use of well-chosen metaphors and their possible or intended rhetorical functions. Among other, less interesting proposals, two contributions deserve to be mentioned here: Gerard Steen’s so-called deliberate metaphor approach (2008, 2011a), and Jonathan Charteris-Black’s alternative approach to purposeful metaphor (2011, 2012).

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When Steen first came up with his notion of deliberate metaphor, it could be seen as a welcome supplement to the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor. This view was supported by definitions of deliberate metaphor like the following (Steen 2008: 222): “A metaphor is used deliberately when it is expressly meant to change the addressee’s perspective on the referent or topic that is the target of the metaphor, by making the addressee look at it from a different conceptual domain or space, which functions as a conceptual source.” While this and similar statements could at least be read with a focus on the speaker’s intention to influence the audience, “meaning to change the addressee’s perspective”, Steen as the sole copyright holder of the notion of deliberate metaphor used later publications to shift his definition away from this reading, which may not have been what he had in mind in the first place. Instead, he has replaced it by now explicitly focussing on the actual addressee’s attention and way of processing a certain metaphor, as in the following, more recent definition (Steen 2011a: 84): “[A] metaphor is deliberate when addressees must pay attention to the source domain as an independent conceptual domain (or space or category) that they are instructed to use to think about the target of the metaphor.” If the addressee is somehow forced to (“must”) process a metaphor consciously by actively paying “attention to the source domain as an independent conceptual domain”, for that metaphor to count as deliberate, we are no longer talking about the speaker’s alleged intentions, but about the recipient’s side of the communication. There is a methodological problem here, as in discourse data there is hardly ever unambiguous evidence for any addressee’s way of processing an incoming metaphor. Moreover, his publications show no sign that Steen himself has ever taken pains to investigate the actual processing of metaphor by other means than recourse to discourse data. Theoretically at least, this could be done by testing recipients under controlled conditions – maybe by some sophisticated neuro-imaging technologies, or, in the absence of these, by at least systematically asking informants to reflect consciously about their processing of metaphors, however unreliable this would be. For somebody rooted firmly in the Cognitive approach (cf. Jäkel 2003) looking for a pragmatic supplement of the onomasiological metaphor analysis, this development made the deliberate metaphor approach unattractive as a method of (critically) analysing conscious metaphor use by rhetorically aware speakers. Instead, I will now turn to Jonathan Charteris-Black’s approach to purposeful metaphor, which offers itself as a more attractive and viable alternative. To amend the Cognitive approach, I share the general view expressed by Charteris-Black (2011: 247): “[A]nother dimension of metaphor that is revealed by Critical Metaphor Analysis … is the way that metaphor selection is governed by the rhetorical aim of persuasion.” Based on this principle, Charteris-Black’s definition

Conceptualising presidential elections

of purposeful metaphor is as follows (2012: 2): “I propose the term ‘purposeful metaphor’ for a theory of metaphor in communication where there is linguistic and contextual evidence of purpose.” In contrast to the more recent versions of deliberateness outlined by Steen, this definition and notion of purposefulness in metaphor use proposed by CharterisBlack seems more useful and promising for critical discourse analysts interested in investigating conscious metaphor use in authentic discourse data. Why this instrument is particularly prone for application to political discourse such as investigated in this paper is argued in more detail in the following explanation by Charteris-Black (2012: 1): “‘[P]urposeful metaphor’ contributes to an explanation of metaphor use in political and legal discourse, and other persuasive genres. Linguistic evidence for purposefulness is in the interaction between textually complex use of metaphor and contextual features such as political purpose.” The “textually complex use of metaphor” indicating purposefulness can make use of the very same indicators used in Steen et al. (2010), then still for deliberateness. These indicators included truly novel metaphors (cf. Cameron 2003) as well as explicit similes (cf. Steen 2008: ‘direct metaphors’). And, as even conventional (‘indirect’) metaphors can be used on purpose (‘deliberately’), further indicators are found in the occurrence of numerous metaphorical expressions as instances of one conceptual metaphor, like in reoccurring metaphors, local clusters of metaphors, or creative extensions of established conventional metaphors, plus emphatically poetic metaphors. Equipped with this toolkit, the following sections (4 and 5) will exemplify the use of purposeful metaphor as an instrument of critical discourse analysis.

4.

Competing metaphorical models: Trump versus Clinton

In the context of their 2016 election campaign for president of the United States, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as the two contestants displayed some striking uses of metaphor that can only be analysed as purposeful in the sense explained above. The general persuasive purpose is obvious: in order to get elected, convincing voters to vote for you is required of the candidates. Focussing on the competing models of political elections explicitly voiced by the contestants, the analysis in this section will zoom in on one “textually complex use of metaphor” (Charteris-Black 2012: 1) from each of the two candidates, starting with Donald Trump: (11) On election day, the politicians stand trial before the people. The voters are the jury. Their ballots are the verdict. [Donald Trump 06/22/2016]

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The unique metaphorical model displayed in this passage (11) is one that conceptualises the election as a lawsuit. The metaphorical mappings from the source domain of lawsuits to the target domain of the presidential election feature the political candidates as the accused, standing trial. If we remember that during his entire campaign, Trump staged himself as the anti-establishment candidate who ran as a non-politician, it may dawn on us that somehow he manages to ingeniously count himself out from “the politicians” having to stand trial, leaving only Hillary Clinton as the accused. The metaphorical mapping further includes a particular role for the voters, who figure as the jury, giving their verdict. The logical implication of this lawsuit model has it that “the verdict” can only be negative, against the candidate found guilty. Again, this of course needs to be seen in the larger context (cf. CharterisBlack 2012) of Trump’s campaign, in which he was constantly attacking his opponent Hillary Clinton for illegal actions or even criminal offences, and holding out the prospect of putting her to trial as soon as he was elected for president. Trump’s election rallies notoriously culminated in his audience joining in long “Lock her up!” chants, which would be directed by Trump as cheerleader indulging in that eerie celebration. As can be witnessed here, the general persuasive purpose of any candidate of getting elected took a very particular form in Donald Trump’s campaign. More than positively trying to convince voters to vote for him, he spent much of his energy in the negative attempt at demolishing his opponent’s credibility as a serious politician. Today we know that he succeeded. What is remarkable, though, is how well thought out, how elaborate and how purposeful the use of Trump’s central metaphorical model of political elections was. Hillary Clinton’s campaign also featured a central metaphorical model of political elections, albeit one completely different from Trump’s. Talking about the presidential campaign in the run-up to the televised presidential debates, she came up with the following passage: (12) It’s like a big job interview. You’re hearing from two people that you might hire. And I, frankly, think it’s better for us to have an economy where you hear ‘You’re hired’, instead of ‘You‘re fired’. [Hillary Clinton 08/03/2016] The special metaphorical model displayed in this passage (12) is one that conceptualises the election as a job interview. For the conceptual analysis it does not really make a difference that due to the “like” particle, the metaphor is introduced as an explicit simile (in Steen’s terminology, a ‘direct’ metaphor). The metaphorical mappings from the source domain of job interview to the target domain of the presidential election feature the political candidates as the applicants for the biggest job advertised. The role reserved for the voters in this mapping is that

Conceptualising presidential elections

of the bosses, or at the very least, the heads of human resources, who are in charge of deciding. Their aim, implied in the logic of this metaphorical model, is hiring the best qualified candidate for that most important job. In marked contrast to her opponent, Hillary Clinton of course takes care to point out that when it comes to qualifications for the job as US president, nobody is better suited than her, who has long experience in public office, including her service to the country as foreign secretary under President Obama. While this is the positive advertisement to support her application for the big job, she also includes a jab at her opponent in the passage analysed, linking her vision of a growing economy with an allusion to Trump’s reality-TV appearance as boss in “The Apprentice”. In that popular reality-TV show, her opponent would notoriously end each episode on the note of “You‘re fired!”. This is now held against him as a presidential candidate, who if elected would be responsible for a national economy in need of more employment rather than less. Even if Hillary Clinton’s election campaign, in comparison to her opponent’s, was more based on pointing out her own factual knowledge, international experience and, therefore, focused on actual qualifications, the choice of her central metaphorical model of political elections was by no means less rhetorically clever than that of Donald Trump. Even if in hindsight we know that she lost the election against him, the metaphorical model proposed by Hillary Clinton was just as well thought out, elaborate, and purposeful. In both Examples ((11), (12)) analysed in this section, the evidence of purposeful metaphor use lies in the elaborate local cluster of linguistic metaphors motivated by the same conceptual model. Moreover, both conceptual metaphors are quite novel. In Clinton’s case (12), the evidence is even strengthened by the use of an explicit simile.

5.

Obama’s alternative model

In this final analytical section, two things will be done. First, in order to widen the perspective after inspecting the two competing models used by Trump and Clinton against each other, we will bring in another metaphorical model of presidential elections, which was employed by former President Barack Obama when he was running for his second term in office. Second, in contrast to the models analysed in Section 4, Obama’s election model can be analysed as an integral part of a relatively conventional conceptual metaphor he favoured and purposefully exploited in many of his speeches. In addition, the comparison with Obama’s use of metaphor is intended to help in getting a firmer grip on the issue of deliberateness or purpose of fully contextualised metaphorical language in a larger corpus (~ 44,000 words) of authentic language, as for this I can draw on

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my own investigation of eight speeches held by Barack Obama between 2008 and 2012. To begin with, here is Obama’s central metaphorical model of presidential elections, which he proclaimed towards the end of his convention speech in September 2012, when he was running for his second term: (13a) And on every issue, the choice you face won’t just be between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America, […]. (13b) The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place. […] (13c) America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won’t promise that now. Yes, our path is harder, but it leads to a better place. Yes, our road is longer, but we travel it together. We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. […] we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon, knowing that Providence is with us, and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on Earth. [Obama 9/2012, Convention Speech, including the final passage] The metaphorical model displayed in this passage (13) is one that conceptualises the election as a crossroads, very much in keeping with Obama’s favourite journey metaphor (cf. Jäkel 2012). The metaphorical mappings from the source domain of a journey to the target domain of the presidential election feature the political candidates as competing scouts, offering to lead in the right direction. The role assigned to the voters by this model is that of travellers, choosing between different paths (Example (13a)). Next (Examples (13b), (c)), we find Obama offering himself as the inspired leader, heroically advocating the more difficult path. Notice the religious overtones, including a Biblical allusion (to Matthew 7: 13; cf. Jäkel 2003: 278), also expressing care for the weaker travellers and mutual support, not to forget hope for a better future that lies ahead in the distance. In all likelihood, this speaker shares the general persuasive purpose of all candidates to get (re)elected. In comparison with Trump’s and Clinton’s rhetorical strategies, however, we may notice that presidential candidate Obama, without overtly denouncing alternative options (which figure as alternative paths to travel), manages to model himself as prophet, wise and caring leader, and heroic scout. All of this is achieved by means of another well-chosen, elaborate, and purposeful metaphorical model of political elections. If we continue the comparison, Obama’s election model shows more striking differences. The investigation of eight important political speeches held by Obama between 2008 and 2012 reveals that his election model forms an integral

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part of his alltime favourite, the conceptual metaphor of politics / political progress as a journey. This metaphor is already featured in Obama’s Victory Speech from November 4, 2008 (cf. Jäkel 2012): (14a) The road ahead will be long. (14b) Our climb will be steep. (14c) We may not get there in one year or even in one term. (14d) But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. (14e) I promise you, we as a people will get there. [Obama 2008, Victory Speech] In a critical discourse analysis (Jäkel 2012: 263f.), I analysed Obama’s elaborate use (cf. the examples in 14) of the rather conventional journey or path metaphor as purposefully chosen to attune his listeners to strenuous long-term efforts, which are supposed to be worthwhile in view of the common goal that can be reached. The rhetorical ‘surplus value’ of this conceptual metaphor progress as journey (cf. Lakoff 1993: 206–08; Jäkel 2003: 263–64) lies in the fact that the speaker, relying on the persuasive power of the metaphor, can avoid specifying concrete and particular goals, which might jeopardise the miraculous consent of the stereotypical onwards and upwards metaphor for progress. The suggestive pathos of progress – but where? – shows that purposeful metaphors cannot only be employed to highlight certain aspects, but also to hide – in this case, in order to avoid precision. Further elaborations of his favourite journey metaphor can be found in virtually every speech by Obama. I will quote two more exemplary passages (15), (16), both from his first Inaugural Address, held on January 20, 2009: (15a) Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. (15b) It has not been the path for the fainthearted […]. (15c) [I]t has been the risk-takers […] who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom. […] (15d) This is the journey we continue today.

[Obama 2009, Inaugural Address]

Both Examples (15) and (16) show elaborations of the journey metaphor that repeatedly point out the strenuousness of the path (Examples (15b), (c)) as well as carrying religious undertones (Example (16c)) we already encountered above. (16a) Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end,

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(16b) that we did not turn back nor did we falter, (16c) and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us (16d) we carried forth that great gift of freedom (16e) and delivered it safely to future generations. [Obama 2009, Inaugural Address, final passage] In Example (16), we finally witness a creative extension of the journey metaphor as a cross-generational relay race (cf. Jäkel 2012: 269), in which the precious freedom of the target domain politics (Example (16d)) figures as the baton (Example (16e)). As in the previous Section 4, all of the Examples (13), (14), (15), (16) analysed in this Section 5 clearly indicated the purposeful use of metaphors through elaborate local clusters of linguistic metaphors motivated by the same underlying conceptual model. What distinguishes Obama’s model from those analysed in Section 4 above is the fact that both Trump and Clinton employ rather novel metaphors, whereas Obama purposefully elaborates and extends a conventional conceptual metaphor. As argued, however, in all three cases, there can be no doubt about the purposeful use of metaphor. After analysing some exemplary passages, I will shortly summarise the results of my own corpus study investigating Barack Obama’s general use of metaphors. The corpus included the following eight political speeches held by Obama between 2008 and 2012: – – – – – – – –

Victory Speech (Obama 11 / 2008) Inaugural Address (Obama 1 / 2009) Prague Speech (Obama 4 / 2009) Cairo Speech (Obama 6 / 2009) State of the Union Address (Obama 1 / 2010) State of the Union Address (Obama 1 / 2011) State of the Union Address (Obama 1 / 2012) Convention Speech (Obama 9 / 2012)

In total, this yielded a corpus of about 44,000 words. The investigation made use of a simplified model of the “MIPVU” metaphor identification procedure propagated by Steen et al. (2010), with a manual search of the complete corpus, identifying and counting all linguistic metaphors. The metaphor frequencies found in the eight individual speeches are given in the following list: – – –

Victory Speech (11 / 2008) 3.84% Inaugural Address (1 / 2009) 5.64% Prague Speech (4 / 2009) 6.00%

Conceptualising presidential elections

– – – – –

Cairo Speech (6 / 2009) 2.44% State of the Union Address (1 / 2010) 4.37% State of the Union Address (1 / 2011) 4.46% State of the Union Address (1 / 2012) 4.97% Convention Speech (9 / 2012) 3.17% → Corpus average: 4.36%

The investigation of Obama’s speeches resulted in a general metaphor frequency of 4.36% (2.44–6.00%). The share of purposeful metaphors however remains debatable: Similes were extremely rare (totalling two in the whole corpus), as were other ‘direct metaphors‘ (there was one single case of parable). What could be detected as other potentially purposeful metaphors were many reoccurring metaphors, several local clusters of metaphors, sometimes including creative extensions, and some poetic and novel metaphors. While in this paper I have focused on metaphor, it has to be said that Obama’s speeches are characterised by the ingenuous use and combination of all kinds of rhetorical devices, including not only metaphor, but also metonymy, pairs and triads of structures, etc. (cf. Jäkel 2012). All of these have mainly persuasive functions, e.g., convincing the audience, generating pathos, creating consensus and confidence, avoiding precision.

6.

Summary and conclusion

After this tour of detailed metaphor studies from the realm of US-American political discourse with a focus on the target domain of (presidential) elections, which was amended by the results from a medium size corpus study of former President Obama’s use of metaphor, a summary and conclusion is in place to round off this investigation. First of all, a solid onomasiological metaphor analysis (cf. Jäkel 2003) has shown that in public media discourse, political elections are conceptualised by means of a number of alternative conventional metaphors. Although these can be regarded as denotational equivalents, they display certain differences in their metaphorical focus: aspects that are highlighted or hidden. Methodically we may conclude that investigating the role of conceptual metaphor in the representation of political events by means of onomasiological metaphor analysis can contribute to Critical Discourse Analysis. Studying purposeful uses of metaphors for presidential elections in political speeches reveals particular rhetorical functions/purposes: e.g., convincing the audience, generating pathos, creating consensus and confidence, avoiding precision.

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While in general, what has been discovered here are different realisations of the mainly persuasive function of metaphor, we found that it is not only the metaphorical highlighting that can be performed purposefully, but also the hiding. Thus, in investigations of political discourse, especially if focussing on the use of metaphor, a critical approach is needed. In this context, the analysis of purposeful metaphors in authentic (political) discourse in particular can make a valuable contribution to an Applied and Critical Cognitive Linguistics. It may be concluded that combining the onomasiological analysis of metaphor with the investigation of other rhetorical devices as well as with a thorough study of textual structures seems most promising. In these analyses, context should of course be taken into account. If it was claimed a while ago that “the theory of deliberate metaphor still needs more deliberation, discussion, and eventually, research” (Steen 2011b: 59), the same surely holds today for the analysis of purposeful metaphor. The studies and analyses presented here are meant to contribute to this enterprise. Investigating the purposeful use of metaphor can be regarded as a welcome amendment to the onomasiological approach based on the Cognitive theory of metaphor.

References Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in Educational Discourse. London/New York: Continuum. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2011). Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (second edition). Houndmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2012). Forensic deliberations on ‘purposeful metaphor’. In: Metaphor and the Social World 2(1), pp. 1–21. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). [https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ last accessed 10/06/2022]. Jäkel, Olaf (2003). Wie Metaphern Wissen schaffen: Die kognitive Metapherntheorie und ihre Anwendung in Modell-Analysen der Diskursbereiche Geistestätigkeit, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Religion. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač. Jäkel, Olaf (2012). ‘No, they can’t’ … translate President Obama into German: A case study in critical cognitive linguistics. In: Alina Kwiatkowska (Ed.), Texts and Minds: Papers in Cognitive Poetics and Rhetoric (pp. 259–273). Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. Lakoff, George (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In: Andrew Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought (pp. 202–251). 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Steen, Gerard (2008). The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol 23, pp. 213–241. Steen, Gerard (2011a). From three dimensions to five steps: The value of deliberate metaphor. metaphorik.de 21, pp. 83–111.

Conceptualising presidential elections

Steen, Gerard (2011b). The contemporary theory of metaphor – now new and improved! Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9(1), pp. 26–64. Steen, Gerard J., Aletta G. Dorst, Berenike J. Herrmann, Anna Kaal, Tina Krennmayr & Tryntje Pasma (2010). A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Opening the thinkgates? The discourse dynamics of migration metaphors in online debates Monika Reif

University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU)

This corpus study investigates the uptake and (non-)continuation of metaphors and metaphor scenarios related to migration/migrants in news reader comment sections of selected British broadsheets and tabloids. It is shown how scenarios are modified and aspects of the source domain foregrounded/backgrounded in order to serve the argumentative interests of the respective writers. At the same time, potential correlations between specific conceptual metaphors and argumentative topoi are analysed, with a particular focus on mixed metaphors. It is argued that the combinations of conceptual metaphors found in instances of mixed metaphor often create cognitive dissonance, but that the wish for dramatic effect through exaggeration appears to justify the merger of two seemingly incompatible metaphors. The argumentative aim thus seems to be more important than the internal coherence of the mixed metaphor itself. With regard to the use of concrete metaphorical linguistic expressions, the corpus data further reveal that language users repeatedly draw on specific lexical items linked to a restricted area of the source domain. It is not surprising, therefore, that the discourse surrounding the topic of migration comes across as highly conventionalised at times, especially within socio-political echo chambers. Keywords: migration discourse, news reader comments, Critical Discourse Analysis, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, mixed metaphors, argumentation

1.

Introductory remarks

The unprecedented number of people crossing the Mediterranean to seek protection under the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention has turned into a highly salient and contentious socio-political issue in many European countries, including the U.K., Germany, Greece, Italy and Hungary, to name just a few. Especially in the U.K., where the Brexit debate has been inextricably linked with the immigration https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.03rei © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

debate due to the fact that both touch on ‘big’ national issues such as parliamentary sovereignty, mobility rights, economic prosperity and national security (cf. Cap 2019), images of overcrowded boats and refugee camps have dominated the front pages of national newspapers ever since the pre-referendum phase. Given the recent, disconcerting rise of anti-migrant sentiments in various European countries – a development which has been found to go hand-in-hand with an increase in political support for right-wing populist parties such as UKIP in the U.K. and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany (cf. Sola 2018; Dennison & Geddes 2019) – the media coverage of the “migration crisis” has become an object of much interest to human rights organisations and migration policy institutes (e.g. ARTICLE 19 2003; ICAR 2005, 2012; Oxfam 2007; UNHCR 2015; The Council of Europe 2017; Threadgold 2009). Their main aim is to investigate why migration is increasingly perceived as a challenge for national-cultural identities, a danger to public order, a threat to domestic and labour market stability and an imposition on the welfare state. Concomitantly, a considerable upsurge in publications on the so-called “European migration crisis” and its impacts could be witnessed in various research fields: Political scientists and sociologists seeking to explain the recent rise of right-wing populism in Europe; psychologists and cognitive scientists aiming to understand more thoroughly the determinants of attitudes towards refugees and migrants within their host communities; and linguists and cultural studies scholars critically analysing the verbal and pictorial representation of refugees in the traditional news media, the social media and political speeches/documents, in order to establish possible media effects on “the society”. There seems to be broad consensus across the disciplines that the press has been playing a central role in framing the arrival of refugees to the European shores as a “crisis” (although significant regional and institutional differences as well as event-related shifts1 can be attested). What has been repeatedly criticised is the frequent use of potentially discriminatory metaphors such as a tidal wave of or an invasion by refugees, the blurring of boundaries between concepts such as ‘refugee’, ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘economic migrant’,2 a disproportion 1. For instance, while the photograph of the drowned refugee child Aylan Kurdi turned the migrant crisis into a refugee crisis (Parker 2018), prompting humanitarian responses worldwide, the media coverage of the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, sparked a wave of anti-migrant sentiments. 2. Following the BBC terminology, I will use the term “migrant” in this paper to refer to “all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants.” (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46722157)

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between (conservative) politicians’ voices and refugees’ voices in news reports, a high visibility of the stereotype of the ‘threatening young male’ in media images, fearmongering through vague and poorly founded predictions concerning the numbers of new arrivals (e.g. millions of displaced), and the use of the pronominal dichotomy us vs. them, leading to othering of the out-group.3 Within the field of linguistics, two complementary research strands with partially shared objectives have established themselves when it comes to researching migration discourses. The first one is rooted in the tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), including the Discourse-Historical Approach, and focuses extensively on argumentation in anti-immigration discourses. The second one draws on the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (CL), in particular Conceptual Metaphor and Conceptual Blending Theory, and aims to uncover naturalised ideological patterns in the representation of migrants and migration.4 Both approaches seek to investigate the complex relationship between language use, mental representations and societal structures (cf. Hart 2015b; Dirven, Polzenhagen & Wolf 2007). However, while CL sees itself as a primarily descriptive discipline interested in finding out more about the interaction between language and human cognition, CDA clearly intends to be interventionist, emphasising the social responsibility of academia to unveil latent ideologies, especially instances of misrepresentation and discrimination, in public discourses. The past decade has witnessed an increased incorporation of CL constructs into critical discourse studies and vice versa (e.g. Cap 2019; Charteris-Black 2006; El Refaie 2001; Gabrielatos & Baker 2008; Hart 2015a; KhosraviNik 2009, 2014; Musolff 2015; Parker 2015; Petersson & Kainz 2017; Philo et al. 2013; Santa Ana 1999; Semino 2008), as well as the publication of several discussion papers explicitly outlining potential synergy effects of an “alliance” between CDA and CL (e.g. Stockwell 2001; Hart 2015b, 2018 & 2019; Musolff 2012b). Methodologically, the use of corpus linguistic techniques seems to have become a standard in critical approaches to discourse, particularly in the analysis of mass media texts (cf. Baker et al. 2008). Since wider patterns such as argumentative topoi or highly context-sensitive features such as irony cannot be easily detected through quantitative statistics like frequency distributions or collocate 3. In line with Richardson (2007: 7), the underlying view of the function of journalism in this paper is that “it exists to enable citizens to better understand their lives and their position(s) in the world”, and that aims such as entertainment, PR or even profit should always come second. Furthermore, journalistic ethics should inform both “an ethical process of newsgathering and an ethical product in the form of the news itself ” (ibid.: 83). 4. For an application of CL approaches other than Conceptual Metaphor/Blending Theory to texts on the topic of migration, see for example Hart’s (2011a,b) papers on construal operations and force-interactive patterns in immigration discourses.

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

counts, corpus-assisted discourse analysis usually involves a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The latter allow the researcher to take into account the larger text-internal co-text as well as intertextual references and sociopolitical contexts when examining and interpreting concordance lines. With regard to the topic of migration, the predominant objects of linguistic investigation have been mass media texts belonging to the genres of news reports/ feature articles/opinion pieces, and political speeches/interviews. Notable exceptions include Bennett's (2016) study on politicians' tweets in the online debate on migration in the U.K., as well as Musolff 's (2015) analysis of the language of reader comments as documented in online blogs and discussion fora. News reader comment sections, which have evolved into an engrained part of the digital news sphere in the U.K. and other countries, are also the primary genre of interest to the present study. The reception of this form of user-generated content by news professionals, media communication researchers and political scientists can be described as highly ambivalent. On the positive side, the idea of user comment spaces is appreciated for having the potential to enhance deliberative processes5 by opening up new opportunities for citizens to engage in democratic dialogue (Ben-David & Soffer 2019; Manosevitch & Walker 2009; Rosenberry 2005). Such interactive mechanisms allow readers to share their (subjective) concerns and opinions and to submit their expertise and testimonies from personal experience to content provided by professional journalists. This could, at least theoretically, result in a multiplicity of perspectives and diversity of opinions that can rarely be found in a single news article (Ben-David & Soffer 2019; Gastil 2008; Manosevitch & Walker 2009; Ryfe 2005), including voices that might otherwise be filtered or blocked by the gate-keeping mechanisms of traditional media. Thus, in an ideal scenario, public engagement in deliberative online fora – if it adheres to the principles of Habermas’ discursive ethics – may eventually lead to betterinformed and more consensus-oriented political decision-making. The reality seems to look slightly different (and darker), though: Quite a few discussion fora and comment sections have gained a “dubious reputation for giving voice to strongly polemical discourses or hate-speech” (Musolff 2015: 41), especially in debates touching upon sensitive issues such as migration or Brexit.6

5. Habermas is probably the most prominent defender of deliberative (or discursive) democracy, a system in which public deliberation and consensus are central elements to community problem solving and political decision-making. Advocates of deliberative democracy hoped that the internet might be able to provide new platforms for an improved public sphere. 6. The American journalist Leonard Pitts Jr. even goes so far as to describe online comment sections as “havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety” (Pitts 2010).

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Depending on the type of platform/newspaper and the extent of moderation/gate-keeping exerted by the responsible institution, one encounters varying levels of what has been loosely termed “negatively marked online behaviour (NMOB)” (cf. Hardaker 2017) such as aggressive argumentation, inflammatory language and trolling.7 Furthermore, these kinds of online platforms have the tendency of turning into echo chambers in which users’ existing views are amplified by “communication and repetition inside a closed system” (Butler & Halpern 2020: 169). The question has been rightly raised by various researchers, therefore, if and to what extent such user discussion fora (on news sites and on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter) do actually encourage constructive discussion leading to informed political opinion formation (see, for example, Braun & Gillespie 2011; Bucher 2019; Hermida & Thurman 2007; Manosevitch & Walker 2009; Rowe 2015b; Ruiz et al. 2011). Warnings have even been voiced by authors such as Lee (2005) regarding a potential “normalization” of flaming, meaning that a person who is getting used to reading offensive and discriminatory comments will eventually consider these comments as unmarked and “normal”, which on the long run might turn flaming into less salient and even acceptable behaviour within the (online) community (cf. also Rosenberg 2017). A similar danger resides in recurring conceptual metaphors within the migration debate: For one thing, metaphors are often part of blatant flaming, for instance when migrants are explicitly referred to as “vermin” or “illegal aliens”. But bias might also be activated implicitly,8 through continuous exposure to more subtly discriminatory conceptual metaphors such as migration is a natural disaster, migration is an invasion, migrants are animals or nations are containers (whose borders need protection because the container might implode due to an overwhelming inflow from the outside and culture clashes on the inside). The lexical choices made by the writers – choices between literal and metaphorical expressions, choices between competing metaphors9 – do not only reflect the authors’ own ideologies and intentions, but may also contribute to the 7. Various explanations have been put forward for why flaming seems to occur more frequently in computer-mediated communication than in face-to-face communication: reduced social cues in online fora leading to de-individuation and anonymity; the salience of particular social groups in discussion fora that display a high level of in-group homogeneity and a tendency to polarize within echo chambers; a different set of behavioural norms associated with the computing sub-culture in general (cf., for example, Lea et al. 1992; Garimella et al. 2018). 8. Implicit and explicit biases are regarded as related yet distinct concepts, the difference between the two centring on levels of awareness (Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity 2013). 9. As Eubanks (2000: 26–27) phrases it, metaphors are always “in conversation with conforming and contrasting literal concepts and metaphors”.

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

formation of (negative) short- and long-term mental representations on the part of the recipients. In the present study, the use of metaphorical language in reader comment sections dealing with issues of migration in the online editions of the Guardian, the BBC, the Daily Mail and The Sun/Sunday Express will be examined. My main area of interest is the uptake, continuation and (argumentative) function of metaphorical expressions and conceptual metaphors in news reader contributions, for several reasons. Firstly, a positive correlation between metaphor use in the news articles and metaphor use in the respective reader comments would be yet another indicator that metaphors shape the public discourse on and perception of migration; in the case of discriminatory metaphors, this would implicate that the news discourse possesses the potential to exacerbate negative attitudes towards the out-group.10 Secondly, comment data yield evidence on how the use of metaphors by journalists and politicians is received by their audience. It is not uncommon for readers to start a meta-discussion on the acceptability of certain metaphors and the question of deliberate vs. non-deliberate11 metaphor use. Thirdly, instances of (non-)continuation of certain metaphor scenarios, mixed metaphor and metaphor re-contextualisation can provide valuable insights into argumentative strategies employed in the migration debate and might, at the same time, contribute to theory-building in the field of metaphor studies.

2.

Analysing metaphors in dynamic, computer-mediated discourse: Critical Discourse Analysis, conceptual blending and metaphor shifting

For the present study of metaphorical language use in reader comments and news articles on the topic of migration, an appropriate theoretical framework needs 10. Of course, we can never be entirely sure if the metaphor in the comment was actually triggered by the metaphor in the article, since further contexts (e.g. previous private face-to-face conversations on the topic; input from further news reports/opinion pieces; the wider political discourse) may also have influenced the writer’s output. However, since mass media texts reach a large segment of the population and (partly) also determine the private discourse on migration, the metaphor at hand – if conventionalised – may at least have played an indirect role. 11. According to Steen (2017) and Reijnierse et al. (2017), deliberate metaphors draw attention, in their production or reception, to the source domain as a separate domain: “A metaphor is potentially deliberate when the source domain of the metaphor is part of the referential meaning of the utterance in which it is used” (Reijnierse et al. 2017: 137). Steen (2016) further argues that in the case of mixed (i.e. adjacent and sometimes conflicting) metaphors, at least one deliberate metaphor may be needed for the phenomenon to be recognised.

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to be set up which allows for linguistic, socio-cultural and cognitive aspects to be integral parts (cf. also Cameron 1999: 4). Let us start with a closer look at the twofold aim of critical discourse studies. It is an essential tenet of critical approaches to (public) discourse that linguistic structures and strategies are not just “textual objects”, but constitutive forms of “sociocultural practice” (Van Dijk 1993: 96). The study of discourse should thus involve both a descriptive account of the patterns and strategies used and an analysis of the dynamic relationships between these textual properties and the relevant structures of their cognitive, socio-cultural and discourse-historical contexts (ibid.: 96). Linguistic data are valued as an ‘access gate’ to prevalent ideologies within certain social communities. At the same time, written and spoken texts, especially in public domains, are assumed to play an essential role in the (re)production, legitimisation and resistance of ideologies, given that the acquisition of ideologies (and also prejudices) happens discursively to a considerable extent (e.g. Van Dijk 1993, 2000b, 2015; Fairclough 1995; Fairclough & Wodak 1997; Wodak 2001; Hart 2018). In the CDA approach, language is not assumed to be powerful on its own, but rather to “gain power by the use people make of it and by the people who have access to language means and public fora” (Baker et al. 2008: 280) – mainly symbolic élites such as politicians, journalists, influential entrepreneurs and educators who dominate and control public discourses. In line with Semino (2008: 90), ideologies will be treated here as “cognitive phenomena, i.e. as (shared) conceptualizations of particular aspects of reality”. Since ideologies are conceptual systems of a particular kind (Lakoff 1996: 37) and since language (use) reflects and shapes conceptual structures and processes (Hart 2015b: 326), it follows that linguistic phenomena such as conventional metaphorical patterns in discourses can afford us an insight into ideologies shared by members of particular social groups (ibid.: 326; cf. also van Dijk 1987, 2000a; Chilton & Schäffner 2002; Dirven, Frank & Pütz 2003; Semino 2008). Already four decades ago, Lakoff and Johnson noted that “metaphors create realities for us, especially social realities” (1980: 56). The term “metaphor”, in this context, was most likely intended to refer to various instantiations of a common underlying conceptual metaphor which has become conventionalised in a speech community and which may also carry certain ideological associations (cf. also Dirven, Frank & Pütz 2003: 7). To provide an example from the migration discourse: If migrants (as a social group) and migration (as a social process) are continuously referred to in news articles as a “tidal wave” or a “tsunami” “pouring” or “streaming” into Europe, as a migratory “flow” or a mass “influx” – particularly in contexts where antiimmigration policies are being advocated –, this is indicative of the larger con-

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

ceptual metaphor migration is a natural disaster12 (cf. also Santa Ana 2002; Semino 2008; Kainz 2016). However, after a while the use of such terms may not be perceived as metaphorical and ideologically-loaded anymore by the in-group (non-migrants), but regarded as the “natural” way of talking about refugees and migration. As Hart (2019: 83) puts it, “toward the more conventional end of the cline from novel to conventional metaphor, […] language users are not aware that they are producing or processing metaphor”. However, while the negative connotations linked to the source domain of natural disaster and the ideological set of assumptions tied to this metaphor may not be consciously noticed anymore by the in-group,13 linguistic expressions such as the ones above may still be perceived as offensive and discriminatory by the out-group (migrants). Moreover, negative associations may be subconsciously activated in language users belonging to the in-group and projected onto migrants and their arrival in Europe. The metaphorical use of “tidal wave” or “influx” contributes to the mental construal of the scenario as particularly uncontrollable and threatening, therefore supporting the topos of “danger” (e.g. Reisigl & Wodak 2001; Semino 2008; Hart 2015a). The reasoning goes as follows: Refugees and asylum seekers are entering Europe in large numbers; their arrival will continue unless abated; this may cause major (economic and socio-cultural) disruption for the receiving countries and their in-groups; as a logical consequence, restrictive political measures must be supported and implemented (cf. also Semino 2008: 88). According to El Refaie (2001: 368), the constant repetition of conventional metaphors such as migration is a natural disaster seems to “act as a frame for the way in which events and groups of people are perceived”. Semino (2008: 88) warns that such metaphors in news articles can have “significant […] consequences for the short-term mental representation of the particular situation which readers will form” while engaging with the news text. As Allport (1954: 200, cited in Mutz & Goldman 2010: 241) already noted, stereotypes are “socially supported, continually revived and hammered in, by our media of mass communication”. Stereotyping might in turn lead to negative attitudes and prejudices towards the out-group (in this case migrants), which might in turn affect the judgement and behaviour of individuals belonging 12. The use of the water theme seems to be particularly popular in the migration discourse, not just in English-speaking contexts but also in the German, Swedish, Bosnian-Herzegovinian and Lithuanian media landscapes, to name just a few. The prevalence of this theme might be explained by the fact that many refugees arrive on European shores by boat and that a comparison of mass migration to water masses seems a rather obvious choice, at least in antiimmigration discourse. Dangerous waters metaphors have been heavily criticised in migration studies because of their “dehumanizing and panic-inducing nature” (Kainz 2016). 13. That is, the expressions are not necessarily processed any more via a cross-domain mapping or conceptual blending operation.

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to the in-group and produce inequitable treatment of members belonging to the out-group (Diekman et al. 2010: 209). Regarding the mental representation of e.g. social groups and events, Semino (2008: 87) suggests that we need to distinguish between two main types of mental representations, namely “the short-term mental representations that we form while processing a particular text” and “the long-term mental representations […] that make up our background knowledge and world-view”. These two types are supposed to interact with each other: On the one hand, short-term mental representations are “partly formed on the basis of long-term representations”; on the other hand, short-term mental representations may themselves become entrenched and become “part of long-term memory” (ibid.: 87). Both novel, adhoc creations and more conventionalised metaphors are therefore of interest when it comes to analysing authentic language use and its potential impact on the formation of representations and ideologies.14 In order to operationalise conceptual metaphors (and systems of conceptual metaphors), it is often considered useful to view metaphors as “conventionalised products of collective practices” (Müller 2008: 23). Most traditional conceptual metaphor models therefore exhibit a dualistic structure, depicting (i) a source domain and (ii) a target domain onto which certain features, relations and evaluative associations from the source domain are mapped, as is reflected in the formula migration is a natural disaster (see, e.g., the well-known models contained in Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) seminal work and in Kövecses’ (2002) introduction). However, when it comes to the analysis of dynamic discourses, particularly of the continuation of certain metaphor scenarios in interactive computer-mediated communication, the focus needs to be shifted onto “the constructive processes involved in conceiving and perceiving metaphors” (Müller 2008: 23). According to Müller (ibid.: 26ff.), we should keep in mind that the parallel activation of the two domains or concepts is triggered by language, i.e. by the metaphorical expressions in the text. She therefore prefers a metaphor model with a triadic structure which systematically includes the role of the mediating entity or process, namely the linguistic sign that – when being processed – connects two non-linguistic concepts or domains. Hart (2015a: 113ff.) goes one step further by suggesting that in order to analyse metaphor at the interpretation stage, Conceptual Blending Theory is “more 14. As Gibbs (2017: 57) notes, “speakers typically employ some combination of conventional and novel metaphorical phrases as they express their thoughts about abstract topics. […] This flexibility in metaphorical language use highlights people’s abilities to rely on both entrenched linguistic conventions and more innovative metaphorical conceptions when describing their experiences”.

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

appropriate” than Conceptual Metaphor Theory because the former is “a theory of conceptualisation during discourse” (emphasis MR), while the latter is “a theory of conceptual organisation”. The ideas and constructs underlying the conceptual blending model can be summarised as follows: In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, ‘blended’ mental space. The projection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations. (Fauconnier & Turner 1998: 1)

We will see later on in the empirical analysis that blends do indeed seem to operate according to their own logic, and that this logic is highly dependent on which “skeletal properties” (ibid.: 24) of the two input spaces are brought into the blend. It is important to note that this selection is – at least partly – dependent on the co- and context. To provide just one example: Depending on whether bees are construed as useful insects in need of our protection or as killer bees waiting to attack mankind, the migrants are animals/insects/parasites metaphor can be (deliberately) interpreted in diametrically different ways, as one of the comment sections will reveal. Importantly, the interpreter’s view of and attitude towards migrants, i.e. the target domain, has a profound impact on the kind of information that is selected and projected from the source domain. Moreover, in conceptual blending – and also in more recent conceptual metaphor models (e.g. Kövecses 2015, 2020) – we do not presuppose a unidirectionality of mapping operations from source to target. Instead, the inferences can go from the blended space to both of the input spaces (Fauconnier & Turner 1998: 25). By taking a discourse-dynamic perspective on metaphor, we thus no longer see metaphor as a static and fairly fixed conceptual mapping, but rather as “a temporary stability emerging from the activity of inter-connecting systems of sociallysituated language use and cognitive activity” (Cameron et al. 2009: 63). The term “socially-situated language use” implies that in order to make sense of a metaphorical expression, close attention needs to be paid to the immediate co-text, the discourse genre, as well as the socio-cultural and discourse-historical contexts of the utterance.15 Eubanks (2000) further stresses the importance of the richly patterned regularities which identify the rhetoric of a specific discourse and also govern and constrain the use of metaphors typically associated with this discourse: 15. See e.g. the chapters on “contextual factors” and “context and metaphorical creativity” in Kövecses (2015) for a discussion of potential priming effects of contextual factors on the human mind to establish metaphors.

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Since conceptual metaphors are shared across cultures, inhere to particular cultures, and take on specific regularities within communities of discourse, regularities of use are fundamental to the composition of metaphor. In other words, it is not enough to note that a conceptual metaphor is often said. We also have to understand how it is often said. (Eubanks 2000: 26; emphasis MR)

In order to give full credit to the complexities of discourse dynamics and to the fact that metaphors often occur in networks and clusters16 within a text and across texts, a multi-level analysis seems most appropriate, following e.g. Cameron (1999), Semino, Deignan & Littlemore (2012) and Vogelbacher (2019). Systematicities of metaphor use can be found at the local level (an extended metaphor or combinations of metaphors within one particular text), the discourse level (recurring conceptual metaphors within a specific discourse tradition or community; recontextualisation of metaphors across genres and registers), and the global level (basic metaphors reflecting fundamental underlying ways of thinking) (cf. Cameron 1999: 16). Since the present study looks at metaphor use within different genres (i.e. news reader comment sections and news reports/opinion pieces) on one specific topic (i.e. migration) with a longstanding discourse history, the main focus will rest upon the local level (intratextuality) and the discourse level (intertextuality), and upon the types of conceptual metaphors Hart (2015a: 114) refers to as “metaphors in cultural domains”. These kinds of metaphors are assumed to “be based in discourse and have become conceptual through processes of cultural and cognitive entrenchment”.17 (The migration is a natural disaster and migrants are animals/insects/parasites metaphors discussed above are prominent examples of such cultural metaphors.) Musolff, in his scenario approach, likewise takes a more pragmatic, discoursecentred and dynamic perspective on metaphors in order to link the conceptual side of metaphor to its usage patterns in socially situated discourse (e.g. Musolff 2006, 2016). [S]cenarios include narrative, argumentative and evaluative frame-aspects, which suggest a specific, pragmatically loaded perspective for inferences about the target topic. These inferences are not cognitively or logically binding but rather a set of assumptions made by […] members of a discourse community about […] typi16. In the analysis at hand, a distinction is made between metaphor networks (groups of metaphorical expressions belonging to the same conceptual metaphor) and metaphor clusters (combinations of metaphorical expressions belonging to different conceptual metaphors), both occurring with high density across a particular stretch of discourse. 17. As opposed to primary metaphors in domains such as as time or love, which are claimed to be grounded in our bodily experience (cf. Hart 2015a: 114).

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

cal elements of the source concepts (participants, story lines, default outcomes) as well as ethical evaluations, which are connected to social attitudes and emotional stances prevalent in the respective discourse community. (Musolff 2016: 64)

Scenarios enable the speakers to not only apply source to target concepts but to draw on them to build narrative frames for the conceptualization and assessment of sociopolitical issues and to ‘spin out’ these narratives into emergent discourse traditions that are characteristic of their respective community. (Musolff 2006: 36) Since the migration discourse abounds with well-established metaphors and narrative frames and since reader comments in discussion fora sometimes display creative continuations of and intentional deviations from conventionalised scenarios, Musolff ’s framework lends itself well for the analysis at hand – in combination with Conceptual Blending Theory, which helps us to operationalise the cognitive construal of the respective scenarios and to draw inferences about intended evaluative and affective perlocutionary effects. In addition to the various context levels, we also need to consider the communicative purpose(s) of the interaction at hand, including argumentative aims, in order to identify the overall “point” of the metaphor, i.e. whether it is descriptive/explanatory or evaluative, uplifting or degrading, serious or humorous (cf. Steen 1999; Semino, Deignan & Littlemore 2012). In the migration debate, certain topoi, i.e. content-related warrants connecting the argument with the conclusion (cf. Kienpointner 1992: 194), tend to recur and to be connected with particular conceptual metaphors (for a list of frequent topoi and fallacies see, for example, ch. 2 in Reisigl & Wodak 2001 and table 6.2 in Charteris-Black 2014). Calculating metaphor-topoi correlations might thus be a useful strategy for detecting patterns related to typical communicative purposes and argument schemes. In this regard we need to be careful though to distinguish between the acts of claiming and ascribing. It makes a considerable difference to the overall “point” of a metaphor whether it is claimed by its author or whether it is ascribed to someone else:18 When we utter a metaphor, we do not necessarily intend the metaphor, as it is typically inflected, to represent our view. Thus, we either claim the metaphor and its understood commitments, or just as often, we utter it only in order to represent someone else’s viewpoint: we ascribe it. Degrees of claiming and ascribing are possible. (Eubanks 2000: 27–28)

18. Cf. also Semino (2008: 89) and Chilton (2004: 202) for the distinction between claiming and ascribing

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If a discriminatory metaphor such as “flatten it19……… and remove the vermin” (The Sun, comment section, 11 Nov 2016, paul bennett; emphasis MR) is claimed, this reflects the author’s negative, hostile stance towards migrants. By contrast, ascribing a metaphor can be seen as a meta-representation, that is, a representation of others’ views of the world, as in “Hungarian police have herded hundreds of migrants into a stark ‘Alien Holding Centre’ surrounded by 13ft fences topped with razor wire” (Daily Mail, article, 7 Sep 2015; emphasis MR) or “Cameron calling Calais migrants a ‘swarm’ is nothing short of disgraceful” (Guardian/Twitter, comment section, 20 July 2015, Andy Burnham; emphasis MR). By putting the metaphors “Alien Holding Centre” and “swarm” into scare quotes, the writers signal that the expressions have been borrowed from some other source’s idiolect (e.g. Fairclough 1992; Predelli 2003) and that they want to distance themselves from the views held by these sources – the Hungarian Police and former British Prime Minister David Cameron, respectively. In a sound analysis of metaphor in discourse, a close inspection of the individual tokens is therefore indispensable. To describe precisely how metaphors are developed in the reader comments to either make an argument for/against current immigration policies or to assess the acceptability of certain metaphors in the discursive context of migration/ migrants, previous studies by Chilton & Ilyin (1993), Cameron (2008) and Musolff (2004) offer preliminary templates for analysis. Despite their different labels – metaphor formulation, metaphor shifting and scenario modification, respectively – the three categorisation schemes show substantial overlap, as we will see in Section 3.2.3.

3.

Empirical study

3.1 Data, research questions and methodology The texts to be analysed were selected from a pool of news articles (reports and features) plus comment sections published in periods of increased reference to the so-called “European migration crisis”, which started in 2015 when the conflict in Syria, violence in Afghanistan, and poverty in sub-Saharan African countries escalated. All texts stem from British national newspapers and were sampled from the respective online sites in the period between July 2015 and December 2016, with a fairly equal balance between broadsheets with a more liberal, left-oriented editorial stance (e.g. The Guardian, The Independent, BBC News) and tabloids with a more conservative, right-oriented agenda (e.g. The Daily Mail, The Sun/The Sun19. By “it”, the author is referring to a refugee camp in Paris, France.

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

day Express). The vast majority of comment sections were directly attached below the respective articles to be accessed publicly, but were still gated, meaning that in order to post a comment the user had to provide some information (as well as a nickname) to the website. Only a few of the discussions were “outsourced” to Twitter, usually by political actors starting a discussion (e.g. by posting a provocative quote/statement) on their own Twitter page which was then linked to the news article itself. News readers did not need to be registered on Twitter to follow the discussion online. In terms of size, the corpus comprised 20 articles and over 7,000 reader comments; the comments were of differing lengths, ranging from individual words (“Flock”), short phrases (“A calamity”) and simple sentences (“Well they are swarming”) to rather elaborate texts containing complex lines of argumentation and narratives. The criteria for inclusion in the corpus were threefold: First, since the focus of this study rests upon metaphor uptake and (dis-)continuation, both the article and the comment section had to contain at least one metaphorical expression related to the topic of migration. Second, as metaphors are frequently employed for argumentative purposes in the migration debate and as the correlation between conceptual metaphors and argumentative topoi is of immense interest here, the news articles had to address diverse issues linked to migration (e.g. refugee camps, human trafficking, migration data, the economic impact of migration, national security, integration measures) to make sure a variety of topoi are present. Third, in order to get a more comprehensive picture of the function of metaphors in the migration debate, both topic-related discussions and languagerelated meta-discussions were taken into account, the latter yielding particularly interesting findings on metaphor continuation. Since former British PM David Cameron’s “swarm comment” on Calais migrants20 caused a lot of furore among politicians, human rights organisations and the general public, one part of the corpus exclusively consists of comments on the (un)acceptability of the swarm metaphor. The study was guided by the following research questions: (1) Which of the migration metaphors (both conceptual metaphors and metaphorical linguistic expressions) present in the news articles are taken up in the comment sections, and to which purpose(s)? (2) How do metaphors interact with argumentative topoi, especially in anti-migration discourse, and what precisely seems to be the discourse function of mixed metaphors? (3) Which metaphor continuation

20. In an interview on ITV, David Cameron labelled migrants trying to get into the UK as “a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life” (emphasis added), a term that was heavily criticised by the Refugee Council and various Labour politicians.

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strategies can be identified in the meta-discourse on the (un)acceptability of potentially dehumanising metaphors? In order to find metaphorical expressions in the corpus, the following procedure was employed, loosely based on the metaphor identification procedure (MIP) first suggested by the Pragglejazz Group (2007) and later modified by related research groups (e.g. Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit [MIPVU] by Steen et al. 2010; Deliberate Metaphor Identification Procedure [DMIP] by Reijnierse et al. 2017).21 When a word, including multi-word items such as compounds and phrasal verbs, appeared to be used indirectly and that use could be “potentially explained by some form of cross-domain mapping from a more basic meaning of that word”, the word was marked as “metaphorically used” (Steen et al. 2010: 25). For the purpose of the current study, only those metaphors were considered whose target concept related to the larger social group of refugees/asylum seekers/economic migrants, their behaviour and characteristics, to the phenomenon of migration in general, and to all steps, procedures and effects associated with the migration process. The metaphorical expressions were grouped according to their underlying conceptual metaphors, and it was further noted which linguistic form they took and whether they co-occurred with specific argumentative topoi22 (such as economic burden, threat to national security, cultural differences/culture clashes). Particularly interesting uses of metaphor (e.g. novel creations, mixed metaphors and instances of potentially deliberate metaphors) were marked in the data set for subsequent qualitative analysis. Table 1 is meant to illustrate the makeup of the corpus and to provide some representative examples. Please note that all quotes appear as they were originally phrased, including typos, punctuation mistakes, grammatical and lexical errors and awkward stylistic choices. Table 1. Corpus data (selection) Form/ structure N1 is N2

Corpus examples (emphasis added)

Conceptual metaphor(s)

“illegally entering a country in mass is migration as an invasion. UK must defend itself invasion against invasion” (Twitter comment, 30 July 2015, forgotten ppl)

Topos/topoi physical danger/ threat

21. See Deignan (2017) for criticism of Steen’s five-step model. 22. The categories of topoi were based on ch. 2 in Reisigl & Wodak (2001) and table 6.2 in Charteris-Black (2014).

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

Table 1. (continued) Form/ structure

Corpus examples (emphasis added)

Conceptual metaphor(s)

Topos/topoi

“not infested. Infected with the disease migrants as that is illegal immigwants.” disease (Twitter comment, 31 July 2015, JeSuisABiyatch)

physical danger/ threat

“They are behaving exactly like migrants as swarms of locusts, devouring insects everything in their wake, and leaving destruction behind.” (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Scroggins)

physical danger/ threat

“These people are attracted to Britain as bee’s are to flowers.” (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, annie m.)

migrants as insects

quantity/ numbers (& financial burden)

structural blending

“we don’t want your criminal parasite rapugees” (The Sun, comment section, 10 Nov 2016, trev stans)

migrants as criminals/rapists

physical danger/ threat

source domain expressed in VP

“They’ll be being fed and watered with safe shelter” (Daily Mail, comment section, 7 Sept 2015, gonetothedogs67)

migrants as livestock

rightful inequality & economic competition

source domain expressed in postmodified NP

“An endless conveyor belt of agitated migrants as massyoung men” produced goods (Daily Mail, comment section, 5 Sep 2015, implant26B)

quantity/ numbers & physical danger/ threat

“you will soon find yourself undercut by an influx of foreign workers who are more willing to take lower wages” (Guardian, Comment Is Free, 24 March 2015, Topher)

migration as natural disaster

quantity/ numbers & economic competition

source domain expressed through idiom

“This country is bursting at the seams, can’t understand why more isn’t being done to stop them.” (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Jphill49)

receiving country as container

quantity/ numbers & financial burden

N1 is/ behaves like N2

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Table 1. (continued) Form/ structure

Corpus examples (emphasis added)

Conceptual metaphor(s)

Topos/topoi

source domain expressed in AdjP

“More correctly described as an migrants as uncontrollable, violently thuggish scroungers mob” (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Jimmy R)

financial burden/ abuse

mixed metaphors

“These useful idiots of the West are currently destroying European civilization by encouraging and demanding permissiveness and openness regarding the mass immigration wave that is invading Europe.” (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, Melissa Mészáros)

migration as natural disaster & migration as invasion

cultural threat

metaphor scenarios

“this is all caused by Merkel …she threw the doors wide open, so they all started to flood there, now she slams them shut and leaves all the countries en-route the Germany to face the consequences” (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, WorkingBloke)

receiving country as container & migration as natural disaster

quantity/ numbers (& physical danger/ threat, economic burden)

3.2 Results 3.2.1 Overview of source domains and topoi

3.2.1.1 Conventionalised metaphors Given that human migration is a recurring phenomenon and that its underlying logic, the in-groups’ reactions to it and the discourses surrounding it have been remarkably consistent over the years, it is not surprising that the majority of metaphors found in my data on the current migration debate are conventionalised metaphors (see Figure 1). The most frequent source domains used to talk about the process and potential consequences of migration in the corpus at hand are the domains of natural disaster and war. Interestingly, the natural disaster metaphors almost exclusively make use of scenarios involving water-related hazards with forces and

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

Figure 1. Common source domains in the current British migration discourse

impacts of different scales, ranging from tsunami analogies to motion verbs directly or indirectly indicating a slow but steady influx (e.g. flow, pour in; turn off the tap). That is, we can observe a restriction in the mapping scope to a particular type of natural disaster, and language users seem to draw repeatedly on specific lexical items linked to this area of the source domain, most notably influx (N), flow/inflow (N), wave/tidal wave (N), flood/flooding (N), to pour (V ), floodgates (N), to flood (V ), tide (N), to stream (V ) and to sweep (V ). The fact that water plays a crucial role in the migrant journey itself, with a considerable number of migrants having to cross oceans in boats23 and being dependent on human trafficking, might have initially triggered these water-related scenarios. Over time, the above-listed verbal metaphorical expressions have gotten progressively entrenched in the migration discourse and have now become naturalised. 23. Interestingly, lifeboats – which stand in a metonymic relationship with the migrant journey – are sometimes also used as source domains in metaphors where the receiving country or unit is compared to a container with limited room and resources, as in “It’s physically impossible to fit a Pint into a Half-Pint glass and, similarly, it’s impossible for our already overcongested little island of very finite resources to be the world’s lifeboat” (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, Sin_Signalling).

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Similarly, the majority of war metaphors tend to evoke one particular scenario, namely the scenario of an invasion by a foreign army, which is reflected in lexical choices such as invasion (N), to be invaded (V ), invaders (N), army (of refugees) (N), the receiving country being under siege (PP), to besiege (V ) and intrusion (N). The host country is usually assigned the semantic role of ‘patient’ or ‘affected entity’ in this scenario, which can be seen by the predominance of passive voice constructions with the verb invade. Only in the (self-)destruction scenario that occurs a couple of times in the corpus does the host country play a more active role; here, the noun self-destruction puts blame on political actors, either U.K. “lefties” or representatives of the E.U., for the current crisis. The invasion metaphor clearly positions the migrant as a source of conflict, and one could even argue that it is encompassed by a perception of moral inferiority of the out-group (cf. also Taylor 2021: 465). Historically seen, Taylor (ibid.: 463), in her diachronic study on migration rhetoric, found that while the liquid/natural disaster metaphor has persisted through a long period of time (her corpus comprising texts from 1800–2018), the invasion metaphor is more recent in its conventionalised form (starting around 1940). Both the natural disaster and war metaphors are employed in arguments for a restrictive immigration policy and correlate positively with the topoi of “physical danger”, “cultural threat” and “economic burden”. They are used to legitimise political action and sometimes even physical violence against migrants. Depending on the degree of “intensity” of the respective source domain scenario drawn upon, different measures – and also different projections for the future of Britain/Europe if no measures be taken – are suggested. For instance, tsunami and flood references tend to go hand in hand with Armageddon scenarios involving water, as can be seen in Examples (1a,b), while invasion references often cooccur with predictions of the violent destruction of Britain/Europe and its values, whereby the political units of Britain/Europe are usually objectified or personified, as in Examples (1c,d). (1) a. It’s started a few years ago and the tsunami that is going to hit billions of people is already beginning. […] Somehow other Ms. Merkel does not see the handwriting on the wall and seems very interested in foolishly taking care of German problem of short duration that will sink all in the EU. (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sept 2015, foggy2; emphasis added) b. […] accepting this reality is happening will eventually see our vessel sink with all lost, fix the leak, fix the middle East before it all spills over into Europe. (Guardian, comment section, 4 Sept 2015, Reia Hriso; emphasis added)

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

c. A Muslim Invasion that will change the face of Europe forever. Destroyed, the freedoms hard fought for a millennia, gone. (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sept 2015, bigquestionmark; emphasis added) d. I do not understand why politicians try to destroy Europe, European culture and our values, this is invasion” (Daily Mail, comment section, 5 Sept 2015, Sunnydee; emphasis added) The destruction scenario can also be frequently found alongside metaphors comparing migrants/migrant behaviour with animals/animal behaviour. Analogies are drawn to the categories of insects (such as bees, wasps, flies, locusts, ants, cockroaches, fleas), parasitic animals (such as leeches), rodents (such as rats), serpents, and livestock that is kept in herds. In the “Great Chain of Being”, the cultural model still prevalent in Western societies which places human beings at the top of a vertical scale encompassing hierarchically “higher” and “lower” beings, these groups of animals are positioned very low (cf., for example, Lakoff & Turner 1989 and Hawkins 2001 for a more detailed description of the “Great Chain of Being” from a cognitive linguistic perspective, and Lovejoy 1933 for an outline of the history of this philosophical idea). The groups of animals listed above have been culturally assigned negative qualities: In Exodus 10, a plague of locusts invades Egypt and devours everything growing in the fields; the serpent is one of the oldest mythological symbols and is connected, among other things, with evil, venom, and a lack of trustworthiness; bees, while generally considered busy and useful animals, nonetheless feature in quite a few horror/science fiction movies and action video games in a predatory role, e.g. in The Swarm (1978), Deadly Swarm (2003), Swarmed (2005), Black Swarm (2007), Killer Swarm (2008) and Attack of the Killer Swarm (2006). The use of such discriminatory language to talk about migrants shows considerable overlap with e.g. the way Jews were characterised in the anti-semitic discourse of Nazi Germany or the way members of the minority group of Tutsi were referred to in radio broadcasts during the Rwandan Civil War. While the natural disaster and war metaphors discussed above are present in both sub-corpora, i.e. the one derived from more liberal, left-leaning news outlets and the one derived from more conservative, right-leaning papers, animal comparisons almost exclusively occur in the Daily Mail and Sun sub-corpora and clearly reflect racist ideologies.24 With regard to argumentative topoi, it can be said 24. The discourse surrounding David Cameron’s use of the swarm metaphor will be analysed in more detail in Section 3.2.3 of this paper.

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that animal metaphors correlate positively with the argument that migrants pose a financial threat to the social welfare system of the receiving country (“economic burden”), as well as the strategy of explicit dissimilation of the in-group’s and out-group’s cultural values (“cultural threat”) (cf. also Charteris-Black 2014: 135; Reisigl & Wodak 2001: 48). Throughout history, animal comparisons and imagery have been used to justify social exclusion on moral grounds and have been deliberately placed “to fuel or promote aggressive behaviours against unknown individuals” (Andrighetto et al. 2016: 630). This is also the case in the corpus at hand, as can be seen in Examples (2a–c). Exclusion of and aggression against a particular social group can be carried out with less moral restraint if this group is depicted as non-human, inferior, and potentially harmful. Explicit dissimilation is furthermore articulated through xenonyms such as illegal aliens, alien culture and alien holding centre (for ‘refugee camp’). In the value system attached to the “Great Chain in Being”, aliens even stand outside “life as we know it” (cf. Hawkins 2001: 44). According to the commenter below (2d), migrants belong to the category of aliens “either by choice or design”, the latter phrase clearly hinting at a racist ideology. (2a) build it……….. and they will come……… are the French that thick ?…… flatten it……… and remove the vermin (The Sun, comment section, 11 Nov 2016, paul bennett; emphasis added) (2b) @Bella I agree 100%! Why are these illegal immigrants allowed to just walk into Europe and demand that we look after them? They should either be denied entry or rounded up and deported ASAP. … WE DON’T WANT THEM FFS! (The Sun, comment section, 11 Nov 2016, John Tunstall; emphasis in italics added) (2c) if you don’t want them, protect your borders. we don’t want your criminal parasite rapugees. (The Sun, comment section, 11 Nov 2016, trev stans; emphasis added) (2d) Actually we can stop calling them migrants now because this lot are actually illegal aliens either by choice or design. (The Sun, comment section, 11 Nov 2016, David Willey; emphasis added) Another metaphor that occurs predominantly in conservative, right-leaning papers is the sponge metaphor. In the Daily Mail comment sections, for instance, migrants are repeatedly referred to by nouns such as “spongers”, “scroungers”, “parasites” and “leeches”, and their behaviour is described by verbal expressions such as “to sponge”, “to suck up (our benefits)”, “to feast (on benefits)”, “to leech off (other countries)”, as well as adjectives such as “thuggish” (see Examples 3a,b).

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

There is, of course, some overlap and interaction between the animal and sponge metaphors since animals such as leeches, which have suckers at both ends and are associated with the procedure of drawing blood from human beings, do also feature in sponging-scenarios. (3a) Well they are after all like fleas sucking up our benefits, so swarm sounds OK to me. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, BillyRN; emphasis added) (3b) Welcome brothers, remember to claim asylum yeah. You will get your own house, kettle and teabags to make me an English cuppa when I come to visit. Don’t forget the Victoria Sponge x (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, honeymoon; emphasis added) Since the migration debate and the Brexit debate are intricately intertwined, it is not surprising that the topoi of “economic burden” and “physical/cultural threat”, which prevail in both discourses,25 stand in the foreground in those comments whose main aim it is to spur on other readers to support Brexit and/or UKIP. In comments with a decidedly pro-UKIP stance,26 and also in comments by readers whose nicknames already hint at pro-UKIP or pro-Brexit bias, the receiving political unit and its population are often conceptualised as bodies that are negatively affected by migration, and migration itself as some form of illness or infestation. body-state analogies have been used in political discourse for a considerable amount of time (cf. Musolff 2010 for a historical overview of the body politic metaphor). The present corpus data shows that especially those source domain aspects which are linked to illness – along with some related argumentative application patterns – are still prevalent today in the conceptualisation of the socio-political consequences of migration. Again, we can see some similarities to the discursive manifestation of Nazi ideology: The alien invader (in Nazi Germany, ‘The Jew’) is the (source of ) illness about to destroy the health, and eventually the existence, of the receiving political unit, and therefore needs to be exterminated (cf. Musolff 2010: 35–36). As becomes evident from the examples below, the illness sometimes takes the shape of dangerous, alien ideologies which the in-group needs to prevent from spreading to their nation body, hence feeding into the topos of “cultural threat” (see 4a,b). In other instances, the metaphor 25. Cap (2019: 69) even identifies Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration campaign as the main cause of the Brexit referendum outcome: “Specifically, the anti-immigration discourse in 2013–2016 was instrumental in instilling a sense of public uncertainty and ever-growing anxiety, inspiring isolationist stances and explicitly xenophobic attitudes, which found their outlet on the day of the referendum.” 26. Such comments frequently entail directive speech acts such as “Vote UKIP!”.

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scenario of a body bleeding dry is set up, in which blood is construed as a valuable commodity essential to the survival of the body (see 4d). By highlighting the source domain aspect of a liquid (here: blood) the body can run out of, the writer taps into metaphorical vocabulary that we also find in economic discourse (e.g. public finances running dry; financial liquidity; the ebb and flow of cash), hence serving the topos of “economic burden”.27 If the illness or infestation cannot be stopped, it is predicted that the nation body will become extinct (see 4e) – hence the call for extermination of the infectious out-group (see 4f ). (4a) There is a pretence of restriction, but this Government and the previous one have signally failed to prevent criminals, gold-diggers and malignant alien influences from infesting our country. […] Vote UKIP. Even a few strong voices in Parliament will have some influence on our behalf. (Guardian, Comment Is Free, 24 March 2015, TGSSchweik; emphasis added) (4b) I feel bad for the refugees as people, but they’ve all been infected by a very dangerous ideology and should not be allowed to spread it in Europe. (Guardian, comment section, 4 Sept 2015, Goldenbird; emphasis added) (4c) “Swarm” sounds an appropriate metaphor to me – they want our pollen and we’re getting stung. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Anonymous; emphasis added) (4d) They are like a swarm of insects – Cameron is right!! We don’t want them here bleeding us even more dry than what we already are (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Jules; emphasis added) (4e) Bees gather round a honey pot its a known fact – there is no bigger honey pot for every bee than the UK – vote UKIP or like the bees we will become extinct ! (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, ouchagain; emphasis added) (4f ) A “swarm” is how Cameron described these people. And what do we do with “swarm” critters; extermination with bug spray. Come, Cameron, act like a man and not that a Merkel. Get a grip and pull the trigger. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Alex Swann; emphasis added) 27. The topos of “economic burden” also features in (4c), where “our pollen” stands for the economic resources of the in-group and the action of stinging (“we’re getting stung”) for the alleged financial exploitation of the in-group.

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

However, as already noted by Hart (2015a: 130–144), the main metaphor running through the migration discourse when it comes to conceptualising the receiving political unit (in the present corpus Britain and/or the E.U.) is the one recruiting a container schema. This schema allows for a binary set-up which draws a boundary between the inside and the outside of the container, and in which social groups are assigned the status of insiders (the in-group) or outsiders (the outgroup). This framing of the situation creates barriers and distance between the groups involved and inevitably leads to othering. Depending on the lexical specification of the metaphor, the concept of containment either remains implicit and vague (see Examples 5a,b), or the container takes on a more concrete shape (e.g. that of a house with front/back doors that can be opened or locked, see Examples 5c–e, or that of a lifeboat taking on more and more passengers, see Example 5f). These more specific instantiations of the container schema are bound up with culture-specific associations and assumptions (cf. Hart 2015a: 137–144). For instance, a house is a valuable place that you need to build and maintain, a social space that you share with like-minded people, a secure place that you can feel safe in, and a private space which you have the right to refuse entry to (cf. Chilton 1996 for a list of cultural assumptions linked to the concept of home in Cold War discourse). Gate-crashing, on the other hand, is a type of behaviour that is considered immoral and unwanted (see 5e). In the corpus at hand, the container metaphor is frequently combined with other metaphors, most prominently natural disaster (see 5g). (5a) This country [the U.K.] is bursting at the seams (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Jphill49) (5b) #wearefull (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sept 2015, Pugnamus Amo Leo) (5c) Its like the EU is a house with no lock on the door (Guardian, comment section, 4 Sept 2015, Reia Hriso) (5d) […] an open door to allcomers just makes us a doormat (Guardian, comment section, 4 Sept 2015, Ray Mich) (5e) Mr.Cameron did not adequately describe gate crashing tactics by just uttering ‘swarming’. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, chembukkavu) (5f ) How many can the lifeboat save before it sinks under the weight of bodies? (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sept 2015, digamey) (5g) I would not be surprised if Cameron would happy open the flood gates as part of his plan to wipe us out. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Vinni)

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All of the above-mentioned conceptual metaphors display a tendency to be accompanied by exaggerated figures for the number of refugees/migrants entering (or about to enter) the country/political unit. Either concrete numbers are “quoted” without being attributed to a (reliable) source, such as the Home Office or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), or speculations are voiced featuring vague predictions, e.g. “the sheer numbers of people now pouring into Europe” or “Keep an open door and you will have millions in a few years”. Also, quite a few of the conventionalised metaphors referred to above already imply large quantities themselves, e.g. “[t]he tidal wave flooding into Europe”, “It is not in our interest to take a massive influx of immigrants”, “the beginnings of a mass exodus”, or “hoards of young non-christian men” (all examples taken from corpus; emphasis added). In addition to these conventionalised expressions and scenarios that recur time and again in the debate revolving around numbers, the present corpus also contains some novel metaphors. One Daily Mail commenter, for instance, speaks of “an endless conveyor belt of agitated young men” (Example 6; emphasis added), thus dehumanising and collectivising young male refugees by comparing them to mass-fabricated, uniform products. (6) An endless conveyor belt of agitated young men. This is something to be WORRIED about. (Daily Mail, comment section, 5 Sep 2015, implant26B) An allusion to more conventionalised metaphorical uses of the expression conveyor belt may also be intended: The metaphor is regularly employed by meteorologists with regard to jet streams, i.e. fast-moving, narrow, meandering air currents which may act as conveyor belts for storms. Applied to the script of the migrant journey, it could have been the writer's intention to suggest that those male migrants who are seeking to become residents in one of the E.U. member states often act as “conveyor belts” for further family members, leading to a “storm” of refugees. This brings us back to the more common comparison of migrants to natural disasters such as tsunamis and floods. The following two sections are going to take a closer look at less common metaphors in the migration discourse and how they feed into the argumentation, as well as the (presumably deliberate) mixing of metaphors.

3.2.1.2 Novel creations and less established metaphors When it comes to the discussion of push- and pull-factors and the debate surrounding terms such as refugee, asylum seeker and economic migrant, metaphors

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

with religious roots (e.g. “the land of milk and honey”,28 “the Promised Land”), metaphors taken from mythology (e.g. the Irish myth of the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”), and metaphors with more secular, consumerist imagery (e.g. “country shopping”, “asylum shoppers”, Angela Merkel as the refugees’ “sales aid”) are very popular in the corpus at hand (see 7a-d for examples). Especially the shopping scenario seems to have enjoyed a revival in the discursive context of the Brexit. As Moore (2013) found, the use of the term “asylum shopping” peaked between 2001 and 2003 in U.K. newspapers, a period during which further enlargement of the Schengen area, introduction of the E.U.-wide fingerprint database EURODAC, as well as the Dublin Regulation were prevalent topics in the news, and then dropped continuously up until 2011. It looks like the fact that the migration debate was at the heart of the Brexit referendum and that the two discourses were woven together caused the shopping metaphors to resurface. Within the shopping scenario, Europe is construed as a store holding several items (countries) on offer from which the costumers (the migrants) can pick freely. German chancellor Merkel is described as a sales aid advertising the strengths of certain E.U. countries, hence encouraging migrants to embark on a journey to western European countries such as Germany and the U.K. Merkel’s optimistic phrase “Wir schaffen das [‘We will manage’]” has been repeatedly described as a catastrophic mistake in anti-migrant discourses, both in comments from the general population and in interviews of politicians such as Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. (7a) These people are nit fleeing. They are country shopping for the best welfare they can find. Sympathy is becoming non existent for these chancers and violent demanding thugs. (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, Blossomy) (7b) And Italy, Germany, Spain, France and all the other countries that were not good enough for them on their journey to the promised land of milk, honey and JSA. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, mr gorsky) (7c) Congratulations to Frau Merkel for her absolutely absurd statement welcoming all migrants to the EU . People smugglers throughout Africa, the Indian sub continent and the Middle east now have the perfect sales aid in persuading people to engage their services to get to the promised land of Germany. (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, jeanshaw1)

28. “On that day I swore to them that I would bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands.” (Ezekiel 20: 6; Old Testament, Standard English version)

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(7d) If we left the EU and stopped handing out free houses and benefits then they’d have nothing to come here for,as long as there is that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow then they will continue to come. We’ve not got the money or resources to help everyone, we’ve got our own problems here in the UK with work shy scroungers (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, ME) By claiming that the vast majority of newly arrived people are just “shopping for the good life” (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, SaraNovember) and consider themselves entitled to pick their “dream land of Germany, Sweden, France or the UK” (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, AnnaBurton), the commenters automatically place them in the category of economic migrants and deny any possibility that the out-group may have a rightful claim to asylum on humanitarian grounds. Metaphors such as “country shopping” construe the respective countries of destination as valuable commodities and play down the dangers of the migrant journey by comparing it to a pleasurable shopping experience. German chancellor Angela Merkel is referred to as the migrants’ “sales aid” who is pointing them in the direction of Europe (and Germany in particular), which additionally impugns Merkel’s political authority and capability. The solution to the “problem” is usually presented in the form of Brexit. At the same time, however, some of the commenters contest that the positive qualities we associate with the “land of milk and honey” can actually be mapped onto the target destination. Either they explicitly demand for the financial resources to be spent on people in need belonging to the in-group (instead of outsiders), or they paint scenarios of what might happen once the newcomers realise that Europe’s “streets are not paved with gold”, implying that the economic situation in some European countries is already precarious and might destabilise even more due to the additional burden migrants impose on the welfare state. (8a) Possilby this generation, certainly the next, will realise that the streets are not paved with gold and the benefits of European life not quite as good as foretold. Be ready for a huge crimewave and IS-type terrorist acts commited by Syrian gangs/individuals. Our children and grandchildren will damn us in our graves….. (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, adie74) (8b) There are many unfortunates of all races living in the UK, but nobody seem to bat an eyelid at their plight. […] Dont you understand that we have a humanitarian crisis in our own country which nobody seem to want to resolve, because it cost money. […] Show some compassion for what is happening infront of you. (Guardian, comment section, 4 Sep 2015, Yolandi Lakes)

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

In this context, orientational metaphors with a downward direction come in, as is reflected in various kinds of nouns, verbs, adverbs and prepositions. Especially transit countries such as Greece are claimed to be “sinking under the weight of these migrants” (Daily Mail, comment section, 5 Sep 2015, Nell); liberal parties are described as “the architects of the downfall of the welfare state” (Guardian, comment section, 4 Sep 2015, notaAGWsheep); and in the nation as a container/ house scenario it is predicted that migrants who are refused benefits burn down the house in revenge: (9) […] Now, 3,000 people are knocking on your door. Some of them are desperately in need of the medicine that your pound/dollar/euro could help – it could literally save their life. Others have come along and, even though they have their own savings and already have medicine, decide to join the crowd and demand some of yours. […] Now, after you have given out the 100 pounds/dollars/euros, plus your own family’s savings that would have provided them with medicine when they got sick, and the rest of the crowd who have gone without your generosity then ransack your house, take everything you own, smash the place up and burn it down, what do you do next? (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, goodoldboy82) Another more recent metaphor in the migration discourse evokes (online) gaming scenarios and correlates with the topos of “economic burden”. The migrant journey is compared to a game and migrants to gamers who know “how to play the system”, that is, how to receive benefits from the welfare state without being entitled to them. (10a) They know all about their ‘human rights’ before they come here, and police and the law mean nothing to them when they come from lawless societies. They will have been taught how to ‘play the system’ to get exactly what the want. If our government could only see that the ‘carrot’ that draws them here is the benefits they are assured of, and the freedom they will enjoy, with no ‘tough laws’ to worry about. […] If politicians would take away the ‘carrot’ of automatic benefits, and adopt a far tougher stance – like bringing in the army to defend our country, with orders to shoot anyone who tries to force their way in then this unholy mess might just begin to subside! (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Kate) (10b) […] Look at their faces.It is all one big laugh for them evading the undermanned French Police force. It is a just another game for them.Getting one over on all of us tax payers.Grinning all the way to the benefits and housing departments. […] (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, oh dear 10)

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(10c) Looks like good fun to some of them. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, squarepeg) Not seldomly are migrants’ outward appearance, mimics and gestures (e.g. clothing, facial expressions, hand gestures towards the police) in the photo footage accompanying the news articles seen as “proof ” that they are not actually fleeing from war or persecution, but that everything is “just another game” and “good fun” to them, as various Daily Mail commenters remarked. The gaming idea is taken one step further by commenter Apollo 17, who recontextualises the script of the migrant journey by turning it into a computer game. Elements of a typical computer game narrative are blended with elements of the “migrant journey” script. (11) It would be a good idea for a computer game I see it now, ‘new life’,like gta but you have to get through the tunnel,negotiating police and border patrols,to the promised land,also multiplayer as you team up and become part of a swarm! (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Apollo17) The title “New Life” is probably chosen in analogy to the online virtual world “Second Life”, in which the users create avatars and get them to engage in educational experiences, start businesses, build their dream homes, and socialise with other “residents”.29 The storyline developed in the comment above involves various Britain-specific steps, e.g. getting through the Channel Tunnel, and the characters have to overcome several obstacles, e.g. negotiating with the authorities. Britain, once again, is conceptualised as the “promised land”, and it is implied that the goal of the game is to reach the promised land. The players are allowed to “team up”, forming a “swarm” in the process, a term that is intentionally used here in reference to former British PM David Cameron’s comment on ITV in July 2015. Through this conceptual blend, the migrants’ situation becomes fictionalised and their struggles trivialised. In the world of gaming, players can easily manipulate their environment, and the cost of failure is to go one level back in the game. Not only does the comment above downgrade refugees to players who are just having a bit of fun playing the “New Life” game, but it also plays down the actual risks of the migrant journey (including death) to a considerable extent. 3.2.2 Mixed metaphors and their argumentative function What is striking in the corpus at hand is the fairly frequent occurrence of mixed metaphors. It needs to be noted, though, that this paper takes a rather liberal view on what can be subsumed under “mixing”. In line with Barnden (2016), both parallel mixing and serial mixing are taken into account here. While parallel mixing 29. Consult the official website for a more detailed description.

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

entails that “the same target A is viewed both as B and as C more or less at the same time in a piece of discourse, with B and C being distinctly different source subject matters”, serial mixing involves what Barnden calls “metaphor chaining”, that is, “A is viewed as B where B is in turn viewed as C” (ibid.: 76). A case that is not included in Barnden’s account but still considered in this analysis is the use of the same source in order to conceptualise two different targets (more or less) simultaneously. In the majority of instances of mixing attested in this corpus, the source domains involved in the mix are well-established domains in the discourse history of migration metaphors. We find combinations of container and natural disaster, natural disaster and invasion, invasion and animal, animal and nation body, amongst others. More often than not, these mixed metaphors are at first glance “imagistically incompatible”, as Kövecses (2016: 5) puts it, and a number of questions arise: Why are such seemingly incongruent combinations selected at a particular point in the discourse? Do the incongruencies need to be resolved by the reader in order to attain comprehension of the intended message? To what extent may the creation of such mixed metaphors (as well as the discourse participants’ reactions to them) be able to feed into the ongoing debate on the cognitive processing of metaphor? Both linguistic and cognitive metaphor theories have run into difficulties explaining why metaphors are mixed in discourse, and furthermore why the mixing rarely causes breakdown of communication or even difficulties in understanding. It has been argued that if verbal metaphoric expressions do indeed activate an underlying conceptual system during discourse, this should hinder discourse participants from combining metaphors with inconsistent aspects of semantic and pragmatic meaning, instead supporting the use of further linguistic items related to the same conceptual metaphor (cf. Kövecses 2016: 3; Müller 2016: 38). Several possible explanations have been put forward to account for the occurrence of mixed metaphors, each of them focusing on different levels of language (e.g. the clause level; the distribution of metaphoric expressions across conversation turns), context (e.g. the immediate co-text; the wider discursive context), and cognition (e.g. imagistic (in)congruence; (non-)deliberateness of metaphor use). Kimmel (2010: 110) suggests that “many mixed metaphors are processed unproblematically because the grammatical structure of the passage exercises little pressure to integrate them conceptually”. According to Kimmel, the less connected and embedded the clauses are within which the clashing metaphors appear, the less necessity there is to resolve the clash. Cameron (2016), after examining how people use mixed metaphors in the flow of situated talk, argues along similar lines. She finds that metaphor clusters do not seem to pose a hindrance to comprehension but should rather be viewed as “discursive resources that contribute to

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the flow of jointly-constructed meaning” (ibid.: 17) – for instance because they go hand in hand with a shift in discourse topic or because they happily combine into more complex, more or less coherent metaphorical scenarios. Cameron claims that from a discourse-dynamics perspective, the perception “that our multiple metaphors sometimes seem to clash is mostly an illusion perceived from outside of discourse” (ibid.: 29). A similar conclusion is reached by Müller (2016), who also focuses on the meaning and function of metaphors in a specific discourse context. Based on the observation that “people attend to meaning in a dynamic and flexible manner, responding to the moment-by-moment affordances of the communicative encounter they are immersed in”, Müller suggests that mixing metaphors is “a consequence of shifting one’s attention to uncommon aspects of metaphoric meaning” (ibid.: 31; emphasis added). That is, the mixing of metaphors is supposed to “change the semantic salience structure, creating different versions and degrees of activated metaphoric meaning” (ibid.: 32). While in Müller’s account, only selected and non-conventionalised facets of the source and/or target are activated or foregrounded in mixed metaphor production and comprehension, Kövecses (2016) assumes that entire conceptual domains may enjoy different levels of activation in natural discourse. To account for the fact that most language users are not bothered by the seeming incompatibility of domains involved in mixed metaphors, Kövecses suggests that “the various (near-)adjacent source domains are [only] activated to a low degree. This way, the low level of activation for a given source does not interfere with the low level of activation of another source” (ibid.: 11). Finally, the notion of deliberateness is addressed by Steen (2016: 114), who claims that conceptual clashes between adjacent metaphors only get noticed if the two (or more) conflicting metaphors are “used deliberately as metaphors”. Whilst it is sometimes difficult to decide for the corpus examples at hand (i) if the metaphors used are intended as metaphors (cf. the definition of ‘mixed metaphor’ by Steen 2011, 2017), and (ii) if the reader is even expected to conceptually integrate the information involved in the mixed metaphor, we can at least try to find evidence in the co-text as to whether the mixed metaphors (including potential semantic clashes) are perceived as such by looking at the discourse participants’ reactions to them. Let us first consider instances of mixing where the items are syntactically integrated (e.g. NP postmodified by PP) or directly related to each other (e.g. subject [agent] + verb [action performed by agent]). (12a) Describing them as a swarm was correct – unpalettable to the hand wringers and do gooders but there is no stopping them – like an army of locusts. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, Weir Engineer; emphasis added)

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

(12b) This is an invasion and not a crisis. It’s like a swarm of crickets invading Europe, causing mayhem and upset in our western societies. (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, saynomore666; emphasis added) (12c) How else can you describe the hordes of pests that are mustering with intent to invade the UK. (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, RWP; emphasis added) The examples above are representatives of animal + invasion mixing and seem to pose little cognitive challenge to the reader, or at least we can find no indication of perceived incongruity in the subsequent comments. There may be several reasons for that: Firstly, verbs such as invade and muster can generally be used with both human and animal agents/patients. A COCA collocates search reveals that the noun slot in front of invade can be filled with human agents (such as army, troop, soldier, enemy and neighbor) as well as animal agents (such as insect, ant, bee, coyote, snail and worm). Likewise, the verb muster (in its sense of ‘gather in one place’) can be found both in military contexts (e.g. with nouns like army, militia, squad, infantry) and in farming contexts (e.g. to muster horses, sheep, cattle, storks). Therefore, it makes no significant difference whether the source concept or the target concept of the migrants are animals metaphor is more salient to the text interpreter when processing the mixed metaphor, since both domains can be readily combined with lexical items from the domain of invasion. Secondly, the expression “an army of locusts” (Joel 2, NIV ) might already be familiar to those well-versed in the Bible, and it does not take too much imagination to conjure up an image of locusts equipped for warfare wearing helmets, carrying spears, etc. (13) this is all caused by Merkel …she threw the doors wide open, so they all started to flood there, now she slams them shut and leaves all the countries en-route the Germany to face the consequences (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, WorkingBloke; emphasis added) Equally unproblematic is this combination of containment and natural disaster, which stretches across several clauses and evokes a fairly elaborate script. First the German government propagates an “open house” policy, throwing the doors to their country wide open (= allowing refugees to enter Germany unbureaucratically) and giving migrants an incentive to flood there (= to move there in large numbers); then they slam the doors shut (= tighten border controls and reject certain groups of asylum seekers), which causes difficulties to those countries located en route to Germany. The container and water metaphors work well together since,

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as we all know, a container can only hold a limited amount of water before it bursts; likewise, anyone inside the container (in our scenario, the in-group) is at risk of drowning when water masses enter the confined space. Imagistically, this mixed metaphor does not seem to disrupt online processing either because the compatibility of the two conceptual metaphors allows for their imagery to be simultaneously activated and to become integrated into one scenario. However, the same cannot be said for the following example of mixing: (14) These useful idiots of the West are currently destroying European civilization by encouraging and demanding permissiveness and openness regarding the mass immigration wave that is invading Europe. (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, Melissa Mészáros; emphasis added) Although the natural disaster metaphor (“wave”) and the invasion metaphor (“is invading”) are common to the migration discourse, a combination of the two may lead to cognitive dissonance. The verb invade does not usually collocate with the noun wave and it is difficult for the reader to mentally picture the scenario. The question arises, therefore, why a noticeable number of metaphor instances in the corpus involve such mixed metaphors. Considering the co-text of the metaphor within the turn above (“these useful idiots of the West”, “are […] destroying European civilization”; emphasis added), as well as the contents of further turns by the same author, the most likely explanation seems that the mixed metaphor is supposed to reinforce the threat scenario. That is, the wish for dramatic effect justifies the merger of two seemingly incompatible metaphors which, however, can traditionally be found with the topoi of threat/danger and quantity/ numbers. The argumentative aim thus appears to be more important here than the internal coherence of the mixed metaphor itself. Based on multiple instances in the corpus where the mixing of metaphors seems to have a primarily hyperbolic function, more precisely the effect of exaggerated enlargement, I would like to propose the following: By combining two metaphors that either exaggerate the dimension of migration and/or implicate a negative view of migration, the language user emphasises his/her emotional orientation, i.e. negative stance and maybe even outrage, towards this state of affairs. According to Claridge (2011: 20), hyperbolic expressions do not just have a quantitative meaning, but also some kind of qualitative value in that language users “communicate their emotional orientation, as a rule positive or negative evaluation”, towards a certain state of affairs. While hyperbole is one means of intensification in the sense of gradability, […] it is also intensification in the emotional sense, i.e., emphasis or what Labov (1984) calls ‘intensity’. Emphasis as such is not dependent on a degree scale, but gener-

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

ally heightens the force of the proposition and marks the intensity of speaker involvement and commitment. This means that while the speaker is certainly not bound to the literal meaning of his utterance, s/he is committed to the deeper emotional and interactional, thus social, truth of the statement. Emphasis or intensity is an automatic effect of hyperbole and certainly its raison d’être […]. (Claridge 2011: 12)

Potential semantic incongruities involved in the mixed metaphors, as well as obvious discrepancies between the hyperbole and the situation “in reality”, are accepted by the text interpreters if they recognise the main function of the expression, namely to emphasise a point and at the same time convey an affective stance. Henkemans (2013: 5), who investigates the role of hyperbole in the argumentation stage, suggests that arguers resort to hyperbole for the sake of making a strong case (cf. also van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2002), since the amplification of crucial aspects of the argumentation might make them appear more forceful and strengthen the argument. (15a) A police boss last night called for the British Army to be sent in to halt the flood of migrants trying to swarm through the Channel Tunnel at Calais. (The Sun, 29 July 2015; emphasis added) (15b) Isn’t it outrages how all the exodus of people have mentality they they have right to invade sovereign countries […]” (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sept 2015, NE123rdLane; emphasis added) Exaggerated enlargement is also the main point in these two examples, where the expressions “the flood” (of migrants) and “the exodus” (of people) are both used with a quantifying function. The fact that a flood cannot swarm through the Chunnel and an exodus cannot invade a foreign country is neglectable because the original lexical meanings of flood and exodus are backgrounded here. Semantically, the head of the prepositional phrase is turned into a quantifier and the reader connects the verb (to swarm, to invade) to the prepositional complement (migrants and people, respectively). Lastly, the corpus contains quite a few examples where the same source domain is used in order to conceptualise two different targets. While in some of the examples, the same aspect of the source domain is profiled in connection with the targets, in others different facets and associations are highlighted. (16) Merkel has opened the floodgates, and wave of humanity is now washing over Europe – humanity with a way of life almost diametrically opposed to Europe’s. (Guardian, comment section, 20 Sep 2015, Goldenbird; emphasis added)

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The first clause in Example (16) contains a metaphor that seems to be internally consistent. The expression to open the gates indicates that the E.U. is construed as a container with boundaries and with openings through which external entities may enter into the confined space. Due to the choice of the compound noun floodgates, further aspects are added, namely the large quantity in which external forces are spilling in, the desire to protect what is within the container from external danger, and the possibility of disastrous consequences if the inflow does not abate eventually. The fact that a specific agent, i.e. German chancellor Angela Merkel, is mentioned who “has opened the floodgates” gives us a first hint that the comment is intended to assign blame to a politician/political party for their open door ideology and to call for a more restrictive migration policy. One reason for this demand is explicitly stated in the phrase in apposition: the author describes the migrants’ “way of life” as “almost diametrically opposed to Europe’s”, thereby homogenising intercultural differences between diverse migrant groups, on the one hand, and diverse European communities, on the other hand, and trying to evoke fear of culture clashes. Interestingly, migrants are referred to as “humanity” in this phrase, a dissonance which can only be resolved (at least partly) by looking at the previous clause. Here, the writer claims that a “wave of humanity is now washing over Europe”, a metaphor which can be interpreted in two different ways. One potential target concept is the so-called German “welcome culture”, a strong pro-migrant attitude which at least initially received international praise. A second reading of the metaphor shifts the focus onto the effects of Merkel’s politics, namely that a wave of humans (rather than humanity) is flooding Europe. This second interpretation is then also set relevant in the subsequent phrase, since only humans, not humanity, can possess “a way of life”. That is, in the mixed metaphor above the source concept wave is employed to simultaneously evoke images of (a) a general feeling of kindness and responsibility and (b) large numbers of humans/ migrants spreading across Europe. The reader might further draw the implicature that (b) is a direct result of (a). In both cases, the same facet of the source domain is profiled; the writer aims to indicate large quantities by means of the metaphorical expressions wave and is washing. (17) Bees gather round a honey pot its a known fact – there is no bigger honey pot for every bee than the UK – vote UKIP or like the bees we will become extinct! (Daily Mail, comment section, 30 July 2015, ouchagain) By contrast, in (17) we can witness a shift in focus with regard to the source domain. Different facets of the same source domain are dynamically foregrounded in each the two instances of metaphor use, their salience depending on the respective target (and the co-text, of course). While the bees gathering

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

round the honey pot, representing the out-group, are guided by instinct and are potentially greedy creatures, the bees that are under threat of becoming extinct, standing for the in-group, are an endangered species in need of protection. That is, different characteristics of the source are highlighted in different parts of this mixed metaphor, and the reader is expected to shift from a negative attitude towards the bees to a positive one. This evaluative aspect is, at least in my view, not necessarily inherent in the lexical meanings of the word “bee” and the idiomatic expression “like bees round a honeypot”, but is added in the process of blending the source and the target at this particular discourse stage. A critical stance towards the out-group is a prerequisite for interpreting the idiom in a negative fashion. What this example shows is that rather than being static, metaphoric meaning does indeed seem to be “the product of a process of cognitively activating selected facets of source and target” (Müller 2016: 31), and that the mappings and projections involved seem to be multi- rather than unidirectional, as has been claimed by Conceptual Blending theorists (cf., for example, Grady, Oakley & Coulson 1999; Fauconnier & Turner 2003). Further evidence for discoursedynamic shifts can be found in the meta-discussions on the (in)appropriateness of certain metaphors in the context of migration. 3.2.3 Metaphor continuation strategies in reader comments Interestingly, the corpus data did not provide cogent evidence to support the claim that the use of conventionalised, potentially discriminatory metaphors such as an endless wave of refugees in news articles is likely to exert (direct and quantifiable) influence on subsequent debates. If, for example, a news article contained multiple lexical manifestations of the conceptual metaphor migration is a natural disaster (such as influx, wave, to flood), this metaphor still would not necessarily turn out to dominate or even show up in the respective reader comment section. Sometimes, but not always, an individual water-related expression would be taken up in the discussion, but an obvious trigger effect could not be attested. At the same time, metaphorical expressions belonging to the migration is a natural disaster scenario would come up in reader comment sections linked to articles that themselves did not contain any lexical instances of the sort. Looking at the internal progression of such online debates, it almost seems as if they have developed “a life of their own”, jumping from topos to topos, from time to time resorting to metaphors already entrenched in the migration discourse without the need for external lexical triggers. Furthermore, those conventionalised metaphors which can be considered as less extreme (e.g. the above-mentioned water-related expressions, as opposed to highly derogatory animal or alien comparisons) did not receive meta-comment, probably due to a previous naturalisation process.

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Here, the question arises to which degree, if at all, the source domain is still salient to the discourse participants. With more blatantly offensive metaphors, however, we can witness a different story. Especially if these were uttered by a public persona – an incumbent politician, a showbiz celebrity – their acceptability would be discussed at great length in the reader comment sections. In these meta-discussions on (context-)appropriate metaphor use, modifications of the original wording or scenario can often be found, modifications which in themselves seem to function as argumentative instruments. In the following paragraphs, one specific sub-corpus (labelled the “swarm corpus”) will be revisited to illustrate to which purposes metaphor continuation strategies can be employed in argumentative discourse. Special attention will be paid to discourse-dynamic shifts that highlight or hide certain aspects of the source/target domains involved. The “swarm corpus” comprises approximately 3,000 reader reactions posted in the wake of former British PM David Cameron’s “swarm comment”. (18) Look, this is very testing, I accept that, because you’ve got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain, because Britain has got jobs, it’s got a growing economy, it’s an incredible place to live. But we need to protect our borders by working hand in glove with our neighbours, the French, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. (David Cameron in an interview on ITV News, 30 July 2015; emphasis added) A qualitative analysis of the metaphor continuation strategies used in reader comments has revealed that the discursive moves which could be identified mostly served a twofold argumentative function: (i) to indicate the commenter’s assessment of Cameron’s word choice, i.e., to serve as a meta-linguistic comment on the acceptability of the “swarm” metaphor, and (ii) to advocate the commenter’s stance towards migrants and/or the current migration policy by the government. At this point, it should already be noted that the majority of comments revealed either a clear pro-migrant or a clear anti-migrant orientation, with very few of the commenters adopting a differentiated view of events. Furthermore, consensus did not seem to be a goal of the argumentative process, with most commenters just wanting to convey their standpoint and/or express their anger. In order to indicate approval of the term “swarm” and a restrictive migration policy, readers would either repeat the exact same wording (“a swarm”, see 19a,b), use a lexical derivate of the term “swarm” involving a word class shift (see 19c,d), or enrich the metaphor scenario by adding details about the behaviour of “migrant swarms” (see 19e). Often, the metaphor would just be repeated; only

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

rarely would it be accompanied by an explicit evaluation (such as “an accurate description” in 19b and “an appropriate metaphor” in 19e). In addition to verbally reconfirming and reinforcing the metaphor, some readers would make reference to photographic “evidence” in news footage, hence tapping into the idea of seeing is knowing and the photographic truth claim (see 19a,b). (19a) looks like a swarm to me ….

(Robert Mullan, 31 July 2015)

(19b) I saw them filmed from above and they looked like a swarm to me I’d say swarm was an accurate description (Shaytan is truth, 2 August 2015) (19c) Well they are swarming.

(Lee Corner, 30 July 2015)

(19d) Happy to see someone else’s country swarmed by these people! (The Truth, 31 July 2015) (19e) “Swarm” sounds an appropriate metaphor to me – they want our pollen and we’re getting stung. (Anonymous, 30 July 2015) A second strategy used to indicate approval involved a pretended, feigned rejection of the metaphor, only to suggest an unambiguously discriminatory alternative instead. This often went hand in hand with a recourse to inflammatory right-wing populist rhetoric. (20a) … swarm of migrants is so wrong,the collective noun is a scum of migrants. (iansmall, 31 July 2015) (20b) Swarm was a totally inappropriate word. Virus or parasite would be more accurate. (beastinblack, 31 July 2015) The play on deliberately profiled and deliberately suppressed aspects of the source domain seemed to be of central importance in those posts which, on the surface, looked like the commenter had consulted a dictionary just for clarification of the term “swarm” and for an objective evaluation of the term. However, by selecting or highlighting one specific dictionary definition, the focus was shifted onto one potential sense extension of the word, pushing the main sense (and all other senses) into the background and rendering them less salient (see Figure 2). In some of the comments quoting dictionary definitions, attitude labels such as “often contemptuous” or “offensive” were deliberately omitted in order to make the entry fit the argumentative purpose. Focus shifts were also employed by arguers with a strong pro-migrant attitude, to a different effect of course. In a first step, they would exploit the collocational structure of the construction “a swarm of X” and insert a specific collocate into the slot, such as “a swarm of bees” or “a swarm of locusts”. That is, one poten-

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Figure 2. Profiling dictionary definitions for argumentative purposes

tial collocational candidate was highlighted while others were backgrounded. In a second step, a certain facet of the selected concept was profiled in order to make an argumentative claim. Either positive characteristics of the source domain were outlined, e.g. “useful things bees”, or negative allusions were rendered explicit, e.g. “‘swarm’ (of locusts?) maybe using biblical allusion there?”. The conclusions to be drawn from these focus shifts concern different levels of the migration debate. In the positive reinterpretation of the term “swarm [of bees]”, the contentrelated conclusion “[t]he more the better” is drawn, linking to migration policy, whereas the negative reading in (22b) leads to the language-related judgement “[w]eaponized language”, rejecting the metaphor in the context at hand. (21a) useful things bees. The more the better.

(Bev Turner, 30 July 2015)

(21b) ‘Swarm’ (of locusts?) maybe using biblical allusion there? Weaponized language. (Shelley Bones, 30 July 2015) The source concept bees became highly contested ground in the debates. While the “pro-migrant” commenters would make use of the current media coverage of pollinator decline, construing bees as useful and endangered species in need of protection, the “anti-migrant” camp would reference cultural artifacts such as horror movies and action video games featuring swarms of killer bees, construing bees as aggressive attackers. The latter construal was then rejected by the “promigrant” side, sometimes by parodistic and hyperbolic scenario continuations (see 22a,b). In general, what such diametrically opposed construals show is the multidirectionality of mappings involved in conceptual metaphors. The source domain does not seem to be pre-equipped with an inherent meaning focus which is then mapped onto the target domain, but the foci that are selected for mapping

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

emerge in the discursive context, through the interaction between source and target and the dynamic creation of salience structures and shifts (cf. also Kövecses 2013: 16–17). Using the terminology of Conceptual Blending Theory, the inferences go from the blended space to both of the input spaces, highlighting specific shared facets of source and target (cf., for example, Fauconnier & Turner 1998: 25). (22a) somebody ought to point out to him that they are people and not killer bees… (Rachel Foote, 30 July 2015) (22b) soon “Migrants attempt to Zerg Rush us”.

(Tomjez, 30 July 2015)

Both pro- and anti-migration arguers seem to excessively rely on already established content-related topoi in the migration discourse, in the case of the bee metaphor on the topoi of “usefulness” and “danger/threat”. The positively/negatively connoted mappings serve as triggers of inferences for supporting a conclusion. The topos of “usefulness” has been paraphrased by Reisigl and Wodak (2001) and Charteris-Black (2014) as follows: If an action (i.e. admitting migrants into one’s country) under a specific relevant point of view (i.e. the current population age structure of the host country) is expected to be accompanied by positive consequences (i.e. counteracting workforce shortage, strengthening the national economy), this action should be supported. By contrast, the topos of “danger/ threat” leads to the conclusion that caution and restrictiveness are in order when it comes to migration because migrant communities may conceal terrorists, thus posing a threat to the safety of the in-group. These conventionalised lines of argumentation are not explicated in the comments, but the commenters presuppose the readers’ familiarity with common topoi in the migration discourse, so that shifting the salience onto one particular facet of the source domain (usefulness vs. threat) suffices to activate entire argumentative scripts. (23a) Shoppers swarmed through the opening doors and up the aisle in an effort to find sale bargains… (John Vorster, 30 July 2015) (23b) […] Not a single one of these issues appears in any meaningful form. If the one thing the Labour Party ought to have aplenty, it’s intellectuals. Those clever people who swarm in higher education and Islington and Camden, some of whom are very smart and able to think. […] (Patently (E)uropean, 30 July 2015) Argumentative scripts can also be triggered by the strategy of re-contextualisation, which is a further strategy used for interactional positioning. In (23a), it looks – at first glance – as if the commenter just intended to post a sample sentence containing the verb “to swarm”. Only against the backdrop of the (revitalised) shopping

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metaphor in the current migration debate is it possible for the reader to deduce an anti-migrant attitude from the comment, substituting “shoppers” with “economic migrants”, “the opening doors” with “the E.U. borders”, “sale bargains” with “welfare payments”, and so forth. Here, the topos of “economic burden” is activated, and it can be inferred from this that the commenter embraces the negativelyconnoted term “swarm” in the context of migration. Re-contextualisation could also be frequently found in comments with an ironic slash against certain (supposedly “pro-migrant”) groups in society, such as left-oriented journalists and politicians. By quoting stretches of texts in which the term “swarm” is used to refer to e.g. Guardian journalists or Labour politicians, the commenter leaves the reader with only two options. Either they would have to admit that the term is acceptable with human referents, or they would have to deal with the criticism levelled towards them (see 23b). (24a) Yes, the media are buzzing about this

(David Llewellyn, 30 July 2015)

(24b) Is that a “smarm” of Andy Burnham? Seems to have backfired #OutOf Touch (Masamah PAI, 30 July 2015) Lastly, word play based on metaphorical extensions/polysemy (e.g. “[the media] are buzzing”) and conversion/blending mechanisms (e.g. “a smarm”) could be found with quite a few of the comments, mostly with the intent of criticising the media hype surrounding Cameron’s use of the word “swarm”. What this analysis of metaphor continuation strategies has revealed is that language users make creative use of previously instantiated metaphor scenarios for interactional positioning, both with regard to issues of language use in the context of migration and with regard to migration policies and migrants. The table below is an attempt to provide an overview of the various metaphor continuation strategies employed, the terminology being loosely based on Chilton & Ilyin (1993), Musolff (2004), Cameron (2008) and Vogelbacher (2019). Table 2. Metaphor continuation strategies in argumentation Strategy

Form

Repetition

Repetition of the same metaphorical expression Use of a lexical derivate

Extension

Use of further metaphorical expressions belonging to the same conceptual metaphor

Possible argumentative functions a. Supporting and reconfirming the claim b. Rejecting the claim (in cases of irony) Elaborating, specifying or modifying the claim

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

Table 2. (continued) Possible argumentative functions

Strategy

Form

Focus shifting

Rendering different characteristics of the source domain salient

a. Providing evidence for the claim b. Rejecting the claim

Recontextualisation

Re-use of the same metaphorical expression or a lexical derivate with a different target and/or topic

a. Providing evidence for the claim b. Rejecting the claim c. Creating a humorous effect

Substitution

Substitution of the original conceptual metaphor by a different conceptual metaphor

a. Proposal of an alternative, more extreme claim (hyperbolic function) b. Counter-proposal to the original claim

4.

Discussion, conclusion and outlook

What the analysis of the present corpus has confirmed is that the majority of metaphors in recurring cultural discourses such as the migration debate can be categorised as “discourse metaphors”. That is, the texts are permeated by metaphorical linguistic expressions which have become conventionalised within this particular discourse and which point to relatively stable metaphorical mappings functioning as key framing devices (cf. also Zinken, Hellsten & Nerlich 2008; for similar findings on the migration debate, see Bennett 2016). Especially in the actual news reports and feature articles, writers would repeatedly draw on a restricted set of tokens linked to the natural disaster and invasion scenarios. In this respect, the question arises as to which extent the facets of the source domain which might once have motivated the metaphor are still salient to the discourse participants. This question would require empirical psycholinguistic investigation, and it would be particularly interesting to see if different groups of discourse participants (i.e. participants with a migrant background vs. participants belonging to the “in-group”) provide different evaluations of such metaphors, e.g. with regard to their perceived discriminatory effect.30 30. For a discussion on the possibility of eradicating problematic but ingrained metaphors in (deliberative) discourses on migration, please see Bleasdale (2008). For a theoretical framework to study the relations between socio-political discourse and cognition, I would like to refer you to Van Dijk (2002).

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Furthermore, looking at the British migration discourse from a diachronic perspective, it could be seen that the degree of prevalence of certain conceptual metaphors varies over time. As Moore (2013) illustrated, the expression “asylum shopping” entered the political and news discourse surrounding migration in the early 1990s, peaked in frequency in the early 2000s, and then faded into the background again. Moore sees the reason for the intermittent popularity of this metaphor both in the dominating narratives at the time (EURODAC, E.U. asylum policy) and in underlying culture-specific logics associated with Britain’s postcoloniality, on the one hand, and its neoliberal modernity, on the other (ibid.: 351, 354–360). The fact that the shopping metaphor seems to be on the rise again in the current migration debate (starting in 2014/2015) lets us wonder about the conditions of its re-emergence. I would like to argue that the dense interwovenness of the most recent migration discourse with the Brexit debate has caused the shopping scenario to resurface. Novel, or at least less common, metaphors could mainly be found in the below-the-line comment sections. These sections were also more susceptible to the mixing of metaphors. In the corpus at hand, mixed metaphors seemed to primarily serve an argumentative function. In the majority of instances, the main point of mixing two conventionalised conceptual metaphors (such as “the mass migration wave that is invading…”, “a flood of migrants trying to swarm…”) was exaggerated enlargement. Through hyperbole the arguers tried to strengthen their point and, at the same time, to communicate their emotive stance towards migration and pro-migrant policies. Potential cognitive dissonances arising from the mixing of metaphors that are difficult to conceptually integrate did not seem to be an issue for the discourse participants; at least they were never explicitly addressed and the discursive flow was not interrupted by the use of mixed metaphors. This would speak in favour of discourse-dynamics approaches to metaphor (mixing), which claim that metaphoric meaning is not static, but arises in discursive contexts, and that the salience and activation of certain facets of the source and target domains mainly depend on the co- and context of the metaphor in question (cf., for example, Cameron 2016; Müller 2016). That is, the source domain does not seem to be pre-equipped with an inherent meaning focus which is then mapped onto the target domain, but the foci that are selected for mapping emerge in the discursive co- and context, through the interaction between source and target and the dynamic creation of salience structures and shifts (cf. also Kövecses 2013: 16–17). Salience shifts also appear to play a significant role when it comes to metaphor continuation strategies. In the “swarm sub-corpus”, such shifts were exploited for agumentative purposes and interactional positioning. The example of the bee metaphor lends itself well to illustrate this point: Bees have been construed in dif-

Discourse dynamics of migration metaphors

ferent ways throughout different cultures, time periods and (art) mediums. The representation of bees as beneficial pollinators worthy of protection and the representation of bees as killer swarms trying to eliminate mankind are certainly the two extreme poles of the continuum prevalent in many contemporary western cultures. By shifting the focus onto one of these facets of the source domain and at the same time backgrounding all others, both the advocates and the critics of David Cameron’s use of the word “swarm” managed to convey their standpoint without explicitly commenting on the (non-)acceptability of this term in the migration context. Moreover, by highlighting certain (positive or negative) qualities of the source concept, such as “useful things bees” or “the … bee stings”, topos-related argumentative scripts were triggered, which were then picked up in subsequent turns of the debate. Especially the topoi of “usefuleness” and “danger/ threat”, both of them very common in the migration discourse (cf., for example, Reisigl & Wodak 2001; Charteris-Black 2014), were activated by shifting the discourse participants’ attention to specific aspects of meaning. A quite surprising finding concerns metaphor uptake in reader comments. The hypothesis that migration metaphors used in news articles may exert direct influence on the rhetoric of the below-the-line debates to follow could not be confirmed by the data. While it is certainly true that some of the conceptual metaphors and metaphorical expressions overlapped in the two sub-corpora, concrete trigger effects between an article and its associated comment section could not be attested (the only exception being the meta-linguistic debate on David Cameron’s use of the swarm metaphor). Instead, the metaphors employed in reader comments seemed to be largely governed by the argumentative topoi of the migration debate. However, since mass media texts reach a large segment of the population and to some extent also determine the private discourse on migration, it is immensely difficult, if not impossible, to decide what exactly motivated the choice of metaphor X at a particular stage of the discourse. Lastly, and somewhat sadly, it was striking that apart from the ‘bees = useful’ comments, the corpus barely held any appreciative metaphors relating to migrants. Of course, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau wisely observed, “[t]he hardest things to observe are those which one sees every day”, so there might be a chance that some positively-connoted metaphors have been overlooked during the close reading of the material. Nevertheless, also judging from the findings of other researchers – and there exists quite an extensive body of literature on contemporary migration rhetoric, migration metaphors included – there does indeed seem to be a tendency for metaphors used in public discourse to negatively

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frame migrants.31 A few exceptions in which metaphors construe migrants more favourably, e.g. as guests, as valuable commodities or as victims in need of assistance, are referenced in Taylor’s (2021) diachronic study on migration metaphors in the Times Online corpus and in Boeva's (2016) analysis of British and American news sources. Such representations were absent from the present corpus, though, which ties in with Taylor’s observation that the guest metaphor is mainly used to refer to past migration movements rather than recent or still ongoing ones, and with Bennett's (2016) hypothesis that the nature of the migration discourse always shifts in reaction to specific events. Since there is preliminary evidence of existing discrepancies between metaphors used in self-representations by migrants and migration metaphors used by/in the mainstream media (cf., for example, Catalano 2016), one desideratum for the future would surely be to find more migrant voices – including their preferred metaphorical framings – represented in news texts and public discussions on the topic.

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Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes Kader Baş Keškić This chapter takes a Cultural Linguistics approach to research on World Englishes and is primarily concerned with the use and variation of animal metaphors in West African Englishes, namely Nigerian and Ghanaian English. In order to provide a sound basis for the aspects of variation, other varieties of English such as British English, Tanzanian English, and Kenyan English will be included as points of reference. In this way, this research intends to reveal the role of different cultural settings on the usage of figurative language in general and variation of animal metaphors in particular, taking the conceptualization of goat as the immediate case in point. The current dataset includes the components of the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE) and the International Corpus of English (ICE) pertaining to the aforementioned varieties of English. Therefore, the main methodological approach follows corpus linguistic analyses of the data. The results show both similarities and differences in the ways that goats are conceptualized in these varieties. Close examinations of figurative usages of goat expressions further contribute to the study of metaphor variation in Englishes spoken around the world. Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, cognitive sociolinguistics, World Englishes, West-African English, animal metaphors, cultural conceptualizations

1.

Introduction

Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is the study of the way in which features of language reflect certain aspects of human cognition, and research into metaphor within CL provides a fruitful area of inquiry to explore the link between language use and the human conceptual system. The publication of Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) paved the way to the study of metaphor from a cognitive perspective which considered metaphor not only as a matter of language, but also and foremost as a matter of thought. This perspective gave way to Conceptual https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.04kes © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Metaphor Theory (CMT), the theoretical and empirical framework of which has encouraged a wealth of interdisciplinary studies. Large amount of research on metaphor from various disciplines has also induced several criticisms to CMT. These criticisms mostly gather around the idea that CMT emphasizes the embodied nature of metaphor while neglecting the existence and importance of variation that occurs across cultures and languages. The focus on embodiment further stimulates the focus on universal metaphors, again overlooking the interplay between language and culture. On the other hand, CMT does not contradict the socio-cultural aspect of metaphor use and understanding. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggest that we cannot separate our cultural assumptions, values and attitudes from our bodily experience, since our culture is intrinsically tied to our experiences. They argue that “the most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture” (Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 22). These perspectives on the cognitive theory of metaphor and its application inspired many scholars to investigate the effect of culture on metaphorical language use and different aspects of its variation. One of the major recent developments in this respect can be found in the emergence of Cognitive Sociolinguistics that investigates language variation by converging the methods and theories developed within Cognitive Linguistics and Sociolinguistics (Kristiansen & Dirven 2008). The common interests of the two fields, such as their usage-based commitment, contributed to the emergence of this synthesis. In this respect, Cognitive Sociolinguistics is not only concerned with the structure of language but also the applied aspects of language use. This interdisciplinary characteristic of the field aims at understanding the construction and variation of meaning while explaining the possible reasons for variation across languages and cultures (Pütz, Robinson & Reif 2014). In the larger framework of Cognitive Sociolinguistics, studies to date have concentrated on lexical, semantic, constructional, and pragmatic variation. Lately, the studies have focused also on metaphor variation in cultural contexts (Kövecses 2000, Sharifian et al. 2008). This line of research seeks to show how metaphorical mappings differ across social and cultural groups in particular and in terms of cultural conceptualizations in general. In this way, the cognitive sociolinguistic perspective on metaphor further emphasizes the significance of cultural background for the interpretation of metaphors and cultural conceptualizations. Within the field of World Englishes, this perspective has been applied in several book-length publications (Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009; Onysko & Callies 2017; Callies & Degani 2021). Given the main objectives of cognitive sociolinguistic research, one of the major contributions of its application to the World Englishes research lies both in its cognitive and cultural focus on the conceptualizations underlying language,

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

highlighting the systematic use of language while demonstrating variety-specific structures. Cultural conceptualization research in World Englishes is a popular area of inquiry within Cultural Linguistics, which, as a general research field, investigates the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations. Cultural conceptualizations refer to the ways in which members of different cultures construe their worldviews, thoughts, feelings and experiences (Sharifian 2015). This line of research mainly focuses on the identification of cultural conceptualizations in a given variety of English and its respective culture. World Englishes offer rich data in order to study the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations. The growing body of research in the field continues to provide insight into varieties of English. In view of these theoretical frameworks, this study aims at investigating figurative conceptualizations of goat in West African varieties of English, namely Nigerian and Ghanian English. Aspects of variation will be explored with regard to other varieties of English such as British English and East African Englishes. With this scope, the present chapter investigates the cognitive view of metaphor in relation to culture as well as its cognitive sociolinguistic and cultural linguistic explorations in World Englishes. The methods applied in this chapter provide a better understanding of the use and variation of metaphor in English-speaking contexts.

2.

The use and variation of metaphor

The relationship between metaphor and culture has long been discussed within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. Kövecses (2005) elaborates on the effect of culture on the use of figurative language and discusses the cross-cultural and within-culture dimensions of variation as well as the possible aspects of such variations. With regard to Lakoff and Johnson’s claim that conceptual metaphors are based on universal bodily experiences, Kövecses (2005: 4) states that universal experiences does not necessarily lead to universal metaphors, and metaphors are not only based on bodily experience but also cultural practices. Moreover, he also expresses that primary metaphors are not necessarily universal just as complex metaphors may potentially show universality. Against the background of these views, metaphor variation can be seen as a continuum, where the variation may occur at the conceptual level or at the level of metaphorical linguistic expressions (Onysko 2017). In light of the recent advancements in the field, one of the earlier works published in the field is a book-length research conducted by Hans-Georg Wolf and

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Frank Polzenhagen (2009) which introduces a cultural model of community in African varieties of English by investigating the kinship concepts. The purpose of their research is stated as a contribution to the newly emerging field of Cognitive Sociolinguistics and its application to the World Englishes (WE) paradigm. Farzad Sharifian (2003, 2006, 2008) proposed a cultural linguistic perspective to the study of cultural conceptualizations in World Englishes. Looking into kinship terms and the category of family in Aboriginal and Australian English, he finds culturally shaped usages and understandings of such terms between the two communities. A recently published special issue presents a wide range of studies on metaphor research within the framework of World Englishes with a special focus on metaphor variation (Callies & Onysko 2017). Despite the growing body of research exploring the use and variation of metaphors from cognitive sociolinguistic and cultural linguistic points of view in World Englishes, only a few of these works actually focus on the use and variation of animal metaphors in varieties of English. To the best of my knowledge, none of these studies provides a closer look at the use of expressions pertaining to the concept of goat. This is very surprising considering the productivity of the concept of animal and of its metaphoric extensions, especially the human is animal metaphor. The existence of this metaphor in different varieties of English as well as different languages and cultures has been documented in several case studies such as the cross-cultural study of animal metaphors in English and Persian (Talebinejad & Dastjerdi 2005), the conceptualization of monkey in West African Englishes (Fiedler 2016), the entailments of the people are animals metaphor in Zulu (Hermanson & Du Plessis 1997), the use of animal metaphors for the representation of women in Bukusu and Gusii proverbs in Kenya (Barasa & Opande 2017), the realization of the a man is a lion metaphor in Mandarin Chinese and British English (Lixia 2011), to name a few. This common metaphor entails that the notion of conceptualizing human beings in terms of animals occurs across languages and cultures. This also presupposes the conceptualization of animals in terms of human beings, as the characteristics attributed to animals do not reflect actual behavioral patterns of animals but the way they are perceived by humans. That is, initially, the concept of human is mapped onto the concept on animal, which is then mapped back onto the concept of human. Based on this overview, a few questions will be addressed within the framework of this paper: (i) what types of expressions occur that pertain to the domain of goat in these varieties, (ii) to what extent are these expressions used figuratively, (iii) in what ways do these figurative expressions reflect cultural values, (iv) how do these cultural conceptualizations contribute to the study of metaphor variation in varieties of English.

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

3.

Data and methodology

CMT provides both a theoretical and an empirical framework for the study of metaphor. As stated earlier in this paper, CMT has been criticized for its theoretical framework. Further criticism was directed to its empirical status, especially with respect to the method of analysis. Some scholars complained about the lack of clarity regarding the methodological steps followed in identifying and/or extracting metaphors. Keeping these criticisms in mind, methodology is one of the focal points of this chapter in that I will try to clearly lay out the steps taken for the analysis of the data. First, I will introduce the type of data used for the analysis. The current dataset consists of selected components of the International Corpus of English (ICE) (Greenbaum 1996) and the Corpus of Web-based Global English (GloWbE) (Davies 2013; Davies & Fuchs 2015). The ICE components analysed in this study are ICE-NG and ICE-EA, representing Nigerian English and East African Englishes (comprised of Kenyan and Tanzanian English). As widely known, each component of the ICE consists of one million words of spoken and written language, which may be challenging for a comparative study of low frequency items. Therefore, GloWbE, a larger source, is also included. This web-based corpus comprises 1.9 billion words derived from 1.8 million web pages written in twenty different varieties of English. The parts included in the present study are the downloaded versions of the Nigerian and Ghanaian English subcorpora of GloWbE and its British-English component. The Nigerian component comprises approximately 41 million words while the Ghanaian components has approximately 37 million words. Being the largest sub-corpus of GloWbE, the British component contains nearly 388 million words. As British English is used as a reference point in the present study, only selected phrases that were deemed to be prominent in the other components are analyzed. A list of these phrases is presented in the following section. When working with GloWbE, one needs to keep in mind the limitations of this corpus, such as duplicates and issue of authenticity. As the corpus is webderived, it is possible that certain webpages appear in more than one variety. Even though the compilers are working on improving this situation, it still continues to be a point of concern. Another issue that is harder to control is to make sure that the webpages belong to the respective countries in the corpus. In an attempt to compensate for this problem, the compilers provide the users with hyperlinks to the original sources of the articles. It is, however, overwhelming and timeconsuming to manually check each and every source for authenticity. Moreover, some of these links have already disappeared. Despite these limitations, GloWbE remains a good source for the study of metaphor use and variation in Englishes

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around the world, as it provides a large amount of data to work with and conduct comparative analyses. Since this study aims at identifying conceptual metaphors in corpora, the main methodological approach is a corpus-based analysis of the data. Corpusbased research on metaphor has gained importance over the last two decades (as in other areas of linguistics). With more and more corpora being available, the empirical basis for metaphor research has enlarged significantly, and corpuslinguistic tools offer multiple and new ways of studying conceptualizations across languages and cultures (Stefanowitsch & Gries 2006). In order to conduct the present analyses, the latest version of the WordSmith tools was utilized (version 7.0). These tools allow the analyst to create word lists and keyword lists and conduct concordance analysis. There are also a number of utility programs embedded in the tool for further analyses. Since this study focuses on the figurative conceptualizations of goat, the initial step was to determine the frequency of the given lexical item using the aforementioned tools and programmes. This analysis was conducted for the item goat and its plural form goats for each component included in this study. The next step was a manual extraction of the metaphorically-used words in all the corpora. The identification of metaphors followed the guidelines of the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrje University (MIPVU; Steen et al. 2010), which was developed from the earlier Praglejazz Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP; Pragglejaz Group 2007) developed to identify metaphorically-used words in discourse. A unique contribution of the MIPVU is the inclusion of “like” as a metaphor signal; it inspired the addition of “like (*) goat(s)”-searches in the present analysis of GloWbE-GB, which yielded a larger but still manageable number of tokens for the study. In a final step, the metaphorically marked expressions were further grouped in terms of their source and target domains. In the following section, I will discuss the most frequent source and target domains involved in the formation of the metaphorical goat expressions identified in the data.

4.

Analysis of the data: The use of goat metaphors

In this section, I will present the results and discuss them along the lines of the theoretical and empirical frameworks introduced so far. As stated earlier in this paper, this study focuses mainly on uncovering the cultural conceptualizations of goat in West African varieties of English, namely Nigerian and Ghanaian English. The coexistence of local languages and English in these countries provides a diverse linguistic and cultural setting for the development of their varieties of English, which allow the speakers of these varieties to express themselves in a

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

unique way. In Kachru’s (1985) Three Circles model, both Nigerian and Ghanaian varieties belong to the outer circle, which is the most dynamic one. This dynamic nature of the new Englishes has been further emphasized by cyclic models (see Schmied 1991; Schneider 2003, 2007). Despite the diversity of these settings, one can still expect to find many similarities, and one may assume an inventory of common metaphors that have been adopted from English and many others that have emerged independently of this influence. In this regard, it is my intention to explore to what extent the people speaking different varieties of English share their metaphors and in what way they differ from each other. Table 1 presents both the raw numbers of occurrences of the items under investigation and their frequencies per 1 million words for the total number of occurrences in each component. As we can see in the table, these items most frequently occurred in the East African component of the ICE corpus. This is followed by the ICE-NG, GloWbE-NG, GloWbE-GH, and GloWbE-GB, respectively. These numbers are important as a starting point, as the frequency of items is an indicator of cultural keywords, which “can be studied as focal points around which entire cultural domains are organized” (Wierzbicka 1997: 16). Table 1. Overview of the occurrences of the items per component Corpus

goat

goats

total

per million words

GloWbE-NG

 571

 385

 956

22.41

GloWbE-GH

 349

 328

 677

17.46

GloWbE-GB

1760

1248

3008

 7.76

ICE-EA

  26

  61

  87

61.07

ICE-NIG

  42

   9

  51

50.30

Table 2 shows the number of figurative uses of the items under investigation. Although ICE-EA had the highest frequency of goat(s), only one token was metaphoric. The highest percentage of metaphoric usages appears in the Nigerian component of the ICE corpus. It should be noted, however, that all of these tokens occur in the same text, which revolves around a conversation between a lion and a goat. Therefore, the numbers do not tell us whether this is the conventional usage of the item in actual discourse in the said variety. This serves as another justification for the inclusion of GloWbE or other large corpora for the investigation into figurative language use, particularly with regard to low frequency items. Table 3 shows the list of search items used to analyze GloWbE-GB, their raw frequencies, the number of metaphorically used expressions, and the percentage of these expressions relative to the total number of tokens. This list was

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put together after the metaphor identification procedure was completed for both GloWbE-NG and GloWbE-GH and is restricted to the most salient expressions and phrases found in the other two components. It includes expressions following the [like a/an/the + animal name(s)] formula. Table 2. Overview of the number of figurative uses of the items per component Corpus

goat

goats

total

%

GloWbE-NG

287

91

378

39.53

GloWbE-GH

113

55

168

24.81

ICE-EA

  1

 0

  1

 1.14

ICE-NG

 30

 6

 36

70.58

Table 3. Frequencies of the search items in GloWbE-GB Raw frequency

Metaphoric usage

Metaphoric usage (in %)

he-goat(s)

   3

   1

33.3

she-goat(s)

  14

   2

14.2

sacrificial goat / to sacrifice a/the goat(s)

   21

   12

57.1

separate the sheep from the goat

   3

   3

100

scapegoat

1424

1196

83.9

like * goat(s)

  30

  16

53.3

Search item

During the initial identification process, there were several instances of nonfigurative conceptualizations of goat that provided insight into certain cultural practices and inspired further research into conceptualizations of goat. It is important to present such examples, too, since they constitute the wider conceptual background to figurative uses. For instance, in ICE Nigeria, one of the texts reviews a song which depicts a tradition of slaughtering a goat to welcome a bride, in a ritualistic, celebratory fashion. (1) …the goat that would be slaughtered the day following the dusk that the bride was brought. (ICE_NG) In a similar vein, there is another tradition which requires the groom to bring four goats as “bride price” to the family of the bride. (2) First when you’re going to meet them you take beer and take four goats one the people eat and the other three are kept. (ICE_EA)

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

In both examples, goats serve as a part of the ‘bride price’ as stated in the source text of Example (2). The following example refers to a ritual that needs to be performed in order to avoid bad luck. (3) He had to sacrifice a goat or else bad luck could befall him.

(ICE_EA)

Non-figurative examples show that goats play an important role in certain cultural practices and rituals that are performed in both East and West African cultures. Such examples encountered in the ICE corpora have stipulated the inclusion of larger data. The data, obtained from GloWbE Nigeria and Ghana, demonstrated a variety of conceptual metaphors and underlying cultural conceptualizations that involve the lexical items in question. The following sections will take a closer look at the examples from the corpora and discuss them within the framework of this paper.

4.1 The great chain of being metaphor The productivity of the human is animal metaphor across languages and cultures, as illustrated in earlier research in the field, is considered to arise from the fact that this metaphor is so easily accessible, as it is grounded in the great chain of being metaphor (Lovejoy 1936; for a cognitive-linguistic elaboration, see Lakoff & Turner 1989). The Great Chain places God, angelic beings, humans, animals, plants, and minerals in a hierarchical order. In this order, humans occupy a unique position, connecting the world of spiritual and earthly beings. They are spiritual beings, just like angels, tied to a physical body which separates them from the spiritual world. They also possess characteristics similar to the animals, such as pain, hunger, and sexual desire (Lovejoy 1936). Furthermore, the great chain metaphor incorporates a moral matrix that ascribes a division between the good and the bad. This matrix can be presented as the reason for the negative attributes demonstrated in certain animal expressions and animal labels as swear words when used especially with reference to humans. As morality is deeply affected by culture, this matrix adds to the aspect of cultural variation. Depending on the prevalence of this ideology, we can expect to find many similarities in conceptualizing animals across varieties of English, as well as differences. The results show several examples of the continuity and productivity of this notion in the varieties under investigation. It appears in the form of comparisons, which is only logical considering that it represents a hierarchical order, emphasizing the power of humans over animals, animals over plants, and plants over inanimate objects. Given the lexical items central to this research, the comparisons usually occur in the form of humans vs goats, goats vs other animals, hegoat vs she-goat, and dead/dying vs living goats. Even though the juxtaposition

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of humans with goats was observed in all the varieties, the distinctions between goats and other animals, he- and she-goats, and dying/dead vs goats that are alive were mainly identified in the African varieties. Each of these occurrences refers to different concepts, providing a deeper insight into the cultural models that are arranged around these concepts. (4) A story of a young girl who is tied like a goat and wiped along the way to a man she never loved for marriage. (GloWbE_GH) (5) Look at the way his people are been slaughtered like goats in their land and yet he cant talk. i have no regard for him. (GloWbE_NG) (6) They will massacre them like goat.

(GloWbE_NG)

In Examples (5) and (6), the speakers talk about people who were cruelly killed. Example (4) expresses a more specific situation in which a young girl is forced to marry a man whom she does not love. Therefore, all three examples convey a similar meaning, which can be classified under the domain of animals for consumption, as these people were treated like goats that are tied, slaughtered, and massacred to meet the needs of people. In this case, the notion of the Great Chain leads to unequal treatment among humans, as the conceptualization of humans in terms of animals may entail a “lower” position for specific humans or social groups. This view is represented both in Nigerian and Ghanaian English. Further examples that describe specific cultural and religious practices hinting at the attitudes towards goats and their role especially in Nigerian culture were identified. (7) No wonder they are killing all you IBOS like christmas goat in the north because you don’t base nor moral standing or common front. (GloWbE_NG) (8) When pronouncement was made in court, his client was shivering like Chrismas goat. (GloWbE_NG) One of such practices reveals goats as Christmas food. Example (7) refers to the large number of goats consumed on this occasion, which indirectly alludes that Igbos are potentially killed in a celebratory manner. A similar reference was made in Example (1). Example (8) draws upon a first-hand experience of observing a goat's fear before it is slaughtered, which may be taken as proof for the ubiquity of this practice. As stated earlier in this paper, many of the metaphorical goat expressions are used to conceptualize different concepts by stressing different forms of juxtaposi-

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

tions. In the following sections, the most prominent concepts that are referred to will be discussed in detail.

4.2 Gender and sexuality The metaphorical goat expressions identified in the corpora, in many cases, rests on the division between he- and she-goat. This division, with reference to sexuality, highlights promiscuous behaviour. In other cotexts, it usually marks the gender of the addressee, but may also refer to an unpleasant behaviour or characteristic. It should also be noted that such uses were mainly identified in Nigerian English (e.g. Example (9)). There was only one instantiation of he-goat in Ghanaian English. In the British English component of GloWbE, he-goat was used three times, while there were 14 instances of she-goat, and only one instance of each item was used metaphorically (cf. Table 3). (9) No matter how good and beautiful, caring and precious the woman is the hegoat will still do the ultimate search. (GloWbE_NG) The he-goat in this example portrays a man who is in a relationship but is not loyal to his partner. This seems to be the typical man who is referred to as a hegoat in several examples encountered in Nigerian English. (10) How could I tell him that what I needed was a he-goat, nose in the air, mad with lust. (GloWbE_NG) In Example (10), this characteristic seems to be referring to female sexual desire in general rather than promiscuous behavior. Other uses of the he-goat pose a general negative connotation of unpleasant behaviour of men and do not necessarily refer to sexuality. Below is such an example emphasizing this view with a proverbial expression. (11) If one kills an animal that defiles is harmful to the earth, he should first kill a he-goat. (GloWbE_NG) In addition to the usage of he-goat, there are a few instances of she-goat in the data. In some cases, this expression was used to mark the gender of a person, while in others, it was used to emphasis an undesireable behavior or undesireable characteristic of a woman as well as promiscuous behavior. However, few of these instances referred to sexuality. In the following Example (11), the expression is used only to mark the gender of a person. (12) A she goat doesn’t suffer in its parturition when an elder is at home. (GloWbE_NG)

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In this proverb, the conceptual metaphor is simply a woman is a she-goat. In the following Examples (13), (14), and (15), different characteristics are conveyed through the employment of she-goat. (13) She will continue to suffer frustration which has lead her into running about seeking 4 attention like she goat on heat period, homeless she goat. (GloWbE_NG) (14) […] dirty smelling she-goat!

(GloWbE_NG)

(15) A woman who does not have no respect or value fellow women […]. A disgrace frustrated she goat. (GloWbE_GH) On a general note, the division between he- and she-goat serves as a marker for the gender of a person who is conceptualized as a goat. What is interesting is that this division does not seem to be necessary when referring to concepts other than sexuality. This holds true for the case of he-goat, which conveys a negative meaning. On the other hand, the usage of she-goat does not necessarily refer to the sexuality of a woman. Another interesting aspect here is that she-goat, when used to mark only the gender of a person, can convey a neutral meaning, which exhibits the only neutral meaning of the conceptualization of humans in terms of goats identified in the data. Other binary expressions compare the value of goats in the society to other animals. These expressions include a comparison between goats and sheep, which are mainly used in religious contexts, while others compare the value of goats to that of cows, which are usually employed in political contexts. Although the division between goats and sheep was observed in both Nigerian and Ghanaian English, the comparison between goats and cows was only present in the Ghanaian corpus. The next section will illustrate the conceptualizations of goats with reference to religion.

4.3 Religion One of the important cultural aspects reflected in the expressions presented in this section is that we get an insight into the different religions that are practiced in the region where the varieties included in the study are spoken. According to the reports of the Association of the Religion Data Archives, Christianity is the dominant religion in both Nigeria (48.8%) and Ghana (59.6%). Islam is the second most practiced religion again both in Nigeria (43.4%) and in Ghana (19.9%). Ethnic religions are reported to be practiced less compared to these two dominant religions with 7.4% in Nigeria and 15.5% in Ghana. The dominance of Christianity can be observed in the Englishes spoken in both countries, especially in figura-

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

tive forms. There are references to goats in relation to Islam and ethnic religions mostly in non-figurative ways that explain certain practices performed along the lines of these belief systems. Such expressions include: (16) Muslims sacrifice a goat or a sheep on the eve of Eid-al-Adha to commemorate Prophet Ibrahim’s [the rest of the sentence is not provided in the source]. (GloWbE_GH) (17) The most important aspect of Saturday’s ceremonies is the killing of a goat (to-gbemi) in the night. The parent of every dipo girl presents a castrated goat for a sacrifice. […]. The ritual is believed to wash away anything that will prevent their growth into womanhood and motherhood. (GloWbE_GH) (18) Before Irosun-Meji came to the world he was advised to make sacrifice with a cock and a tortoise to the misfortune divinity and a he-goat to Esu. (GloWbE_NG) In all three examples, we can observe the non-figurative conceptualization of goats as sacrifice. Their figurative counterparts are rooted in the biblical comparison of the faithful sheep and the sinful goat. Most of such instances describe the day that Jesus will ‘separate the sheep from the goat’. In the Bible, this occasion is already described metaphorically, as it conceptualizes humans in terms of sheep and goats. More specifically, this analogy conceptualizes faithful people in terms of sheep and sinful people in terms of goats, giving way to the conceptual metaphors faithful people are sheep and sinful people are goats. The following Examples (19)–(21) include direct quotations from the Bible and incorporate comments of the writers on the kinds of people that represent goats and sheep. (19) Matthew 25: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 25: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats (those who “act the goat”) on the left. (GloWbE_NG) (20) It is only through Jesus that we can enter the gates of God’s presence (John 10: 7–10) because he is the good shepherd. As the good shepherd he only shepherds sheep, never goats. Goats unlike sheep walk on different paths of life with the aim of seeking God. But they never get to know Him. (GloWbE_GH) (21) Matthew 25: 14–30 When the Son of Man comes in his glory with all of his angels, he will sit on his royal throne. The people of all nations will be

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brought before him, and he will separate them, as shepherds separate their sheep from their goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. (GloWbE_GB) (22) The goats go to the left hand while the lamb go to the right hand. (GloWbE_NG) (23) They are the goats on the left side of Jesus, and not the sheep on the right side of Jesus. (GloWbE_NG) (24) He gave a parable about the judgment seat where the sheep will be separated from the goats. (GloWbE_GH) As the portrayal of goats in the Bible is a negative one, one might think that most of the negative connotations of the metaphorical goat expressions are grounded in this view. However, the non-metaphorical expressions presented in other religious contexts do not hold a negative stance towards goats. This gives substance to the idea that animal metaphors do not reflect the real attributes of animals but their perceived characteristics. Another religious reference encountered in the data arises from the frequent use of scapegoat. This concept appears in several religious texts going back to the book of Leviticus to the Bible. A scapegoat is defined as ‘one of two goats that was chosen by lot to be sent alive into the wilderness, the sins of the people having been symbolically laid upon it, while the other was appointed to be sacrificed’ and further explained as the ‘one who is blamed or punished for the sins of others’ (OED online). The examples identified both in the Nigerian and the Ghanaian component refer to the book of Leviticus. (25) All the sins of the house of Israel committed in the year were confessed by the high priest upon the head of a goat – the so-called scapegoat. This scapegoat, as it were, bore all the sins of the people of Israel committed in the year and was sent by a vibrant, strong, and youthful man into the wilderness, far away from human habitation , to be left there of its fate under the burden of the sins of the people (Leviticus 16: 10, 21–22). (GloWbE_GH) (26) Lev 16: 8 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat. (9) And Aaron shall bring the goat, upon which the Lord’s lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. (10) But the goat on which the lot fell to be scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. (a) The second offering was two goats, which was a sin offering for the people. The two goats combined one offering for the people. One was slain and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat. The sins, which

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

were now atoned for, were symbolically placed on the head of the live or ‘Scapegoat’, which was led out in the wilderness by a fit man. (GloWbe_NG) The occurrences identified in both varieties hold the same meaning also in everyday language. (27) By examining the national character of the Igbos, and the stereotypes that grew around their business activities, he carefully shows us the historical process via which the Igbos became the national scapegoat; we see how one section of the country practiced what he calls “transferred malice”, where the Igbos were singled out for punishment during troubles in which they only played a bit part. (GloWbE_NG) (28) Jose Bosingwa has been under fire recently by fans and pundits alike for his recent performances. Is the criticism valid or is he simply being used as a scapegoat for the poor performances of Chelsea? Let’s take a look at the statistics… (GloWbE_GH) The figurative uses of scapegoat in a religious context were observed only in the British component, with reference to Jesus. The conceptualization of Jesus (and his followers) as goat clashes with the conceptualization of sinful people are goats presented earlier in this section. It also clashes with the general conceptualization of Jesus as a lamb, as lambs (or sheep) represent concepts opposite to goat, i.e. innocence and deviation, respectively. (29) The central dogma of the New Testament is that Jesus died as a scapegoat for the sin of Adam and the sins that all we unborn generations might have been contemplating in the future. (GloWbE_GB_G) (30) And the scapegoat couldn’t be just anybody. The sin was so great that only his son (or God himself, depending on your Trinitarian theology) would do. (GloWbE_GB_G) Moreover, this item does not always appear in the form of scapegoat but more frequently in the variants scape goat, scape-goat, and escape goat in both varieties. The latter variant reflects the original meaning of scapegoat: it derives from the archaic verb scape, meaning ‘escape’, and is based on a misreading of the Hebrew Azazel, meaning ‘the goat that departs’ (Merriam Webster Dictionary Online). (31) Ndigbo who librated Nigeria from slavery, you turned and made them escape goat in all Nigeria problems. (GloWbE_NG)

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(32) Mixed feeling that something went wrong and this poor man is an escape goat, jona loves his wife and did not want to use his wife and he used his brother, all this politicians sold and exchanged their soul and their loved ones for power.all of them in that aso rock are heavy ritualist but na only GOD pass them. (GloWbE_GH) (33) We advise the Nation’s Labour leaders to critically examine the policies of governments (Federal and State) that impinge on the well-being of the people instead of looking for scape-goat for cheap populism. (GloWbE_NG) (34) According to him, the danger of the scenario was that people will now tend not to attach any importance to statements made by Mr. Anyidoho. He further stated that President Mills can not claim he was unaware of the purported suspension of the ECG boss as stated by Mr Anyidoho and believed that the Communications Director at the Presidency was being used as a scape-goat. (GloWbE_GH) (35) We all know, all these officials are into big time fraud, but due to the pressure coming from their bosses, they had to find a scape goat. (GloWbE_NG) (36) The case of the former Sports minister is not tenable because he was not a member of their Party the NPP and thus they were more comfortable to make him a scape goat. (GloWbE_GH) (37) If we do not do this we will see anyone who is trying to mitigate loss and save life using disaster and risk prediction suddenly become much more wary of being hunted down and used as a scape goat to alleviate political pressure. (GloWbE_GB_B) The formal variants of scapegoat present in all the varieties preserve the original meaning. Hence, we can talk about a general conceptualization of a person who is punished for the wrongdoings of others as a goat. Even though its nonfigurative origin rests upon the concept of sacrifice, when used figuratively, its meaning revolves around the concept of injustice. Moreover, Examples (31)–(37) provide a straightforward transition to the following section since they are used to refer to politics, which has been a recurring point of reference thoughout the data.

4.4 Politics Among the several areas in which goat expressions were commonly employed, politics shows a wide range of conceptualizations both in Nigerian and in

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

Ghanaian English. According to the results, most of the metaphorical goat expressions are used in political contexts in both varieties. This brings out both similarities and differences in terms of the phrases used to conceptualize institutions, policies, political parties, and politicians. Prevalent among goat expressions in this realm are those comparing goats to cows. This is more dominantly observed in Ghanaian English. Many examples to be presented here also exhibit a high degree of idiomaticity. To begin with, below are some examples that illustrate the expressions emphasizing the difference in attitudes towards goats and cows. (38) Strange is the word. But, in the world of make-beliefs that enveloped the whole presidential concept, everything was possible. Remember this! In the three and a half years of the Czar’s reign, the official concept was that a goat is a cow. (GloWbE_GH) (39) Baba Jamal had counseled employees of Ghana’s Ministry of Information, so they want non-NDC observers to also draw the same conclusions that they are seeing a cow instead of a goat? (GloWbE_GH) As can be deduced from these two examples, cows are valued more than goats in Ghanaian society. We cannot get a glimpse of the reason why based on these examples; however, a proverb identified in the Nigerian component provides a form of explanation. (40) The poor person’s goat is his cow: We are proud of our possessions no matter how small they are. (We are proud of our belongings however unimportant.) (GloWbE_NG) This proverb also comes with an extended explanation which describes goats as ‘small’ and ‘unimportant’ in comparison to cows. Even though there is a positive encouragement towards owning a goat rather than a cow provided by this proverb, this analogy becomes negative when applied to the context of politics. Based on this view, one can provide a better explanation for the Examples (38) and (39). Therefore, ‘a goat is a cow’ policy depicts a political situation in which an ‘unimportant’ act is presented as a significant one or a poor execution is overlooked. This can also be interpreted as referring to the concept of corruption, which is not uncommon when metaphorical goat expressions are employed in political contexts. This is illustrated by Example (41), using a proverbial goat expression. (41) It is laughable that the Nigerian House of Representatives do not yet understand that the child of a goat would always be goat. How would a corrupt panel deliver an incorrigible report. (GloWbE_NG)

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corruption seems to be a dominant concept in the political context in the Ghanaian component and referred to by different proverbial goat expressions. (42) An old Ghanaian proverb advice goes like this, “What tastes very sweet in a goat’s mouth is what pains or burns his backside when it is coming out”. (GloWbE_GH) (43) As nobody saw him or had a hint of it he went ahead chewing the state money “grabu grabu grabu” like goat chewing salt forgetting that it was going to burn his asshole when coming out one day right? (GloWbE_GH) In Example (43), we see an interpretation of the proverb mentioned in Example (42). This proverb refers to a situation in which something pleases at first, but its pleasantness might hurt in the end. In Example (43), we see that what the goat eats is salt, which stands for money in this case. The person who has access to state money uses it for his own benefit, which probably ‘tastes very sweet’ in the beginning, but once this situation becomes public one day, it will hurt his career. In this regard, this politician has corrupt ways of handling the state money. There is a further conceptualization in play here, namely the money is food metaphor. The prevalence of this particular conceptual metaphor has been pointed out in other works in the field, especially in terms of its use in the political context in West African varieties (see Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009; Fiedler 2016). Another proverbial expression that stresses the dichotomy between dead and/ or dying goat and a living goat was found to dominate the political discourse in Ghana. (44) So, what was Vice-President Amissah-Arthur expected to do?; go down into the gutter with Bawumia, who, more or less, is a dead goat so has nothing to fear. (GloWbE_GH) (45) Desperation is setting-in with Nana Addo as he is now exhibiting the final kicks of a dying goat. (GloWbE_GH) As can be seen in the Examples (44) and (45), a goat can occur both in the form of a dead and a dying goat. A full version of this proverb was mentioned in another text in the Ghanaian component, and the saying goes “a dead goat doesn’t fear knife”. On a general note, this proverb depicts a person who has nothing to lose and thus is unafraid of what comes their way. When this view is used in the context of politics, politicians who are conceptualized as dead or dying goats are presented as people who are already aware of the fact that they are going to lose their positions; and thus, behave recklessly towards this end.

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

5.

Discussion and conclusion

The results presented so far have identified a wide range of uses of figurative goat expressions in both Nigerian and Ghanaian English, evoking different concepts such as the ones discussed in this paper. Some of these conceptualizations refer to culture-specific values and practices while others can be considered as representing shared conceptualizations. As discussed earlier in this paper, the human is animal metaphor is accessible across languages and cultures through the great chain of being metaphor. The human is animal metaphor generates several entailments, including human behavior is animal behavior and further specific realizations (such as promiscous behavior is goat behavior) that are realized and/or elaborated in both similar and different ways. As the analysis demonstrates, the religious metaphors presented in the chapter are generally based on Christianity, which is the dominant religion practiced both in Ghana and Nigeria. This shared view of a belief system yields a shared set of conceptual metaphors such as faithful people are sheep and sinful people are goats. Another expression with a religious origin is scapegoat. This phrase was identified in all three varities in various forms. Although its meaning arises from a religious context, its most frequent reference is not religious when it is used metaphorically. Christmas goat is another expression that is rooted in religious practices. Based on the results, this expression, unlike the previous ones, is observed only in the Nigerian English data. Cultures vary as to what is traditionally eaten on specific occasions such as Christmas. In the Anglo-Saxon culture, for instance, it is common to eat turkey on this occasion. The examples show that the practice is different in the Nigerian culture, featuring goats instead. When used figuratively, the underlying mappings can be formulated as humans killed brutally are goats slaughtered for christmas and frightened humans are christmas goats. A prominent aspect of the conceptualizations of goat manifests in the use of he- and she-goat. While he-goat is more salient in Nigerian English, the use of both he- and she-goat is observed in both varieties. Metaphorical conceptualizations of he-goat are mostly utilized in the context of sexuality, generating the metaphors promiscuous behaviour of a man is the behaviour of a hegoat and a man with sexual desire is a he-goat. According to the Great Chain, sexual desire is associated with animal attributes; therefore, it is not surprising that sexual desire is conceptualized in terms of an animal. Other uses of he- and she-goat allude to a more general concept of undesirable behaviour or undesirable characteristic, and these concepts are elaborated in various ways. Kövecses (2002: 125) discusses the dominance of the notion of undesirabil-

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ity with reference to the human is animal metaphor, specified by the use of shegoat in both Nigerian and Ghanaian English. We have seen so far that many expressions derive from proverbs. Most proverbial expressions are used in the context of politics and often relate to the concept of corruption. As Fiedler (2016: 208) points out, many African countries struggle with the issue of political corruption. Given the fact that proverbs are an integral part of the African oral tradition, it is inevitable to make use of proverbs when talking about such issues. In conclusion, both Nigerian and Ghanaian speakers of English use a variety of different conceptual metaphors. Some of these metaphors are shared by the two African varieties included in this study. Others show similarities to those that are used in more traditionally norm providing varieties like British English. Moreover, goats are conceptualized in a more distinct way in the African context. The linguistic and cultural diversity of both countries might have contributed to the diversity of goat metaphors used in these varieties. A deeper investigation into the aspects and dimensions of variation could provide a better understanding of the cultural models that produce the identified cultural conceptualizations.

References Barasa, Margaret N. & Isaac Nilson Opande (2017). The use of animal metaphors in the representation of women in Bukusu and Gusii proverbs in Kenya. Journal of Pan African Studies 10(2), pp. 82–108. Callies, Marcus (2017). ‘Idioms in the making’ as evidence for variation in conceptual metaphor across varieties of English. In: Marcus Callies & Alexander Onysko (Eds.), Metaphor Variation in Englishes around the World (pp. 65–83). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Callies, Marcus & Marta Degani (Eds.) (2021). Metaphor in Language and Culture across World Englishes. London: Bloomsbury. Davies, Mark. (2013). Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries. [http://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe last accessed on May 31, 2019]. Davies, Mark & Robert Fuchs (2015). Expanding horizons in the study of World Englishes with the 1.9 billion word Global Web-based English Corpus (GloWbE). English World Wide 36(1), pp. 1–28. Fiedler, Astrid (2016). Fixed expressions and culture: The idiomatic monkey in common core and West African varieties of English. International Journal of Language and Culture 3(2), pp. 189–215. Greenbaum, Sidney (Ed.) (1996). Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hermanson, Eric A. & Jan A. Du Plessis (1997). The conceptual metaphor ‘People are Animals’ in Zulu. South African Journal of African Languages 17(2), pp. 49–56.

Conceptualization of goat in West African Englishes

Kachru, Braj B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the Outer Circle. In: Randolph Quirk & Henry G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Languages and Literatures (pp. 11–30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Zoltán (2000). Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feelings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Zoltán (2002). Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Kövecses, Zoltán (2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kristiansen, Gitte & René Dirven (Eds.) (2008). Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Turner (1989). More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lixia, Wei. (2011). A corpus-based study on a man is a lion in Mandarin Chinese and British English. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies 17(2), pp. 1–10. Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1936). The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Onysko, Alexander (2017). Conceptual metaphor variation in meaning interpretation: Evidence from speakers of New Zealand English. In: Marcus Callies & Alexander Onysko (Eds.), Metaphor Variation in Englishes around the World (pp. 7–35). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pragglejaz Group (2007). A practical and flexible method for identifying metaphorically-used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 22, pp. 1–39. Pütz, Martin, Justyna A. Robinson & Monika Reif (Eds.) (2014). Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Social and Cultural Variation in Cognition and Language Use. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Schmied. Josef J. (1991). English in Africa: An Introduction. London: Longman. Schneider, Edgar W. (2003). The dynamics of New Englishes: From identity construction to dialect birth. Language 79, pp. 233–281. Schneider, Edgar W. (2007). Postcolonial English. Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sharifian, Farzad (2003). On cultural conceptualizations. Journal of Cognition and Culture 3(3), pp. 187–207. Sharifian, Farzad (2006). A cultural-conceptual approach and World Englishes: The case of Aboriginal English. World Englishes 25(1), 11–22. Sharifian, Farzad (2008). Cultural models of home in aboriginal children’s English. In: Gitte Kristiansen & René Dirven (Eds.), Cognitive Sociolinguistics (pp. 333–352). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Sharifian, Farzad (2015). Cultural linguistics and world Englishes. World Englishes 34(4), pp. 515–532.

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Sharifian, Farzad, Ning Yu, Rene Dirven & Susanne Niemeier (Eds.) (2008). Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Steen, Gerard J., Aletta G. Dorst, J. Berenike Herrmann, Anna A. Kaal, Tina Krennmayr & Trijntje Pasma (2010). A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification. From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Stefanowitsch, Anatol (2006). Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy. In: Anatol Stefanowitsch & Stefan Gries (Eds.), Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy (pp. 1–16). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Talebinejad, M. Reza & H. Vahid Dastjerdi (2005). A cross-cultural study of animal metaphors: When owls are not wise! Metaphor and Symbol 20(2), pp. 133–150. Wierzbicka, Anna (1997). Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wolf, Hans-Georg & Frank Polzenhagen (2009). World Englishes: A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese Natsuko Tsujimura

Indiana University - Bloomington

This chapter provides a semantic analysis of Japanese cooking verbs in comparison with English counterparts. It will be shown that some of the semantic components that are lexicalized (or incorporated) to form a verb’s meaning reflects a cultural conceptualization of food preparation. Building upon Lehrer’s (1972) analysis of Japanese cooking verbs but further revising it, the chapter will showcase relevant aspects of a culturally constructed conceptualization of food preparation reflected in the Japanese language. Interestingly, a comparison between Japanese and English appears to show a relatively meager inventory of cooking verbs in Japanese. However, while Japanese may have a more limited number of cooking verbs in which semantic components are lexicalized, the language makes available other linguistic means such as use of mimetics and compounding that detail the cooking process. These additional mechanisms help maintain the broad range of fine-grained descriptions pertinent to the cooking process, while simultaneously preserving a culturally constructed conceptualization of food preparation. Keywords: componential analysis, compounds, cooking verbs, cultural conceptualization, Japanese, lexicalization, mimetics, semantic field

1.

Introduction

Cultural Linguistics provides a theoretical and analytical framework that is instrumental to exploring the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations (Sharifian 2011, 2017). Food and foodways (i.e., specific eating habits and culinary practices) in general are a straightforward realm of analysis from this perspective since they are very culture-specific not only in the type of food one consumes but in the language that is used to describe food tastes and cooking methods. One classic area of discussion regarding linguistic variation stemming https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.05tsu © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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from various ways of cultural conceptualization is demonstrated by lexicalization patterns exhibited with cooking verbs and the classification of semantic fields that taste descriptors and their extensions show. As Adrienne Lehrer’s series of works discuss in detail (e.g. Lehrer 1969, 1972, 1975, 1983, 2009), the componential analysis has proven to be effective in making important generalizations in these areas. Lehrer’s examinations demonstrate that cooking verbs in languages are highly structured and are subject to linguistic analysis. Meanings of the cooking verbs can be dissected, and semantic components can be considered relevant to capturing similar and different meaning characteristics among each other. In this chapter, by comparing Japanese cooking verbs with English counterparts, I foreground intriguing ways in which culturally constructed conceptualizations of food preparation interact with general and language-specific linguistic mechanisms. A componential analysis in part accounts for similarities and differences in lexicalization patterns between the two languages, but I further discuss at least two sources of cross-linguistic variability: (i) when two cultures do not share an identical cooking-related concept (i.e. a new concept to the other culture), and (ii) when one culture shows a more narrowly defined version of a shared concept. In each case, language-specific linguistic tools that are available in the language come into play to compensate for the apparent lexical gaps. All these provide an additional reminder that semantic components of cooking verbs highlight the close interaction between culturally grounded concepts and a coherently structured lexicon.

2.

Analysis of cooking verbs in Japanese

2.1 Componential analysis Scholars who are concerned with lexicalization patterns have examined how meaning components are internally specified as part of semantic properties or externally expressed as periphrastic collocates, for instance (e.g. McCawley 1968; Slobin 1996, 2006; Talmy 1985, 2000) (cf. Jackendoff 1990; Pustejovsky 1995). Research on motion verbs, for one, has identified a set of core concepts – such as figure, path, ground, manner, and cause – that are commonly associated with motion events among languages, while examining the range of typological variation as to whether each concept is internally lexicalized or externally expressed. In a similar vein, cooking verbs constitute an interesting area for furthering our understanding of regularity and diversity in lexicalization patterns. Additionally, as will be demonstrated below, cooking verbs offer another semantic field for investigating the way in which cultural conceptualizations of culinary traditions

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

and practices are realized as linguistic components that are built into semantic properties of individual lexical items and the relations among them. With this general premise in mind, I shall start with Lehrer’s work on cooking terms (Lehrer 1969, 1972). Lehrer examines cooking verbs in English and other languages through componential analysis. In this approach, meanings of verbs are dissected, and semantic components are recognized that are relevant to capturing similar and different meaning characteristics among them. Examples of components include, but are not limited to, [+/− Liquid] (use of water), [+/− Direct] (use of direct heat), [+/− Vigorous] (vigorous vs. gentle cooking action), and [+/− Long Time] (long vs. short cooking time). Sample components, indicated in terms of positive vs. negative feature values, and relevant English verbs are given in (1), based on Lehrer (1969). (1) a.

use of water (wine, milk, etc.): boil ~ grill [+Liquid] v. [−Liquid] b. use of fat: fry ~ boil [+Fat] v. [−Fat] c. direct or radiated heat v. conducted heat: broil ~ bake [+Direct] v. [−Direct] d. vigorous v. gentle cooking action: boil ~ simmer [+Vigorous] v. [−Vigorous] e. long v. short cooking time: stew ~ parboil [+Long time] v. [−Long time] f. large amount v. small amount of some substance: deep fry ~ sauté [+Large] v. [−Large] g. additional special purpose: [+To soften] → stew [+Preserve shape] → poach [+Rack or sieve] → steam etc.

For instance, these semantic components distinguish between boil and grill in the use of liquid (as in (1a)), between broil and bake in the presence of direct heat (as in (1c)), and boil and simmer in the involvement of a vigorous cooking action (as in (1d)). The list of components can include special features like [+To soften] for stew that indicate purposes, and necessary utensils such as [+Rack or sieve] for steam (as in (1g)). Combinations of these components lead to a lexical organization based on semantic relations like hyponymy, synonymy, and incompatibility. As we shall see below, the componential analysis provides a helpful apparatus in analyzing cooking verbs within an individual language as well as comparatively across languages. In addition, as Lehrer argues in her series of work on the topic, componential analysis offers several more general advantages since it can apply

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to not just cooking terms but to the vocabulary in other semantic fields. First, although the way in which individual vocabulary items are grouped into semantic fields may not be identical across languages, the set of components (or semantic features) such as presence of liquid, presence of fat, and direct heat for cooking terms, provides basic tools to capture the systematic patterning of semantic fields. This further indicates that word meanings are not random, and that words can achieve a highly structured organization based on their meaning components. Second, as the sentences in (2) show, linguistic anomaly can be attributed to inconsistency between the lexicalized semantic components and externally expressed collocations. (2) a. *Saute the soup. b. *Steam the vegetable in a large amount of oil.

According to Lehrer’s analysis, sauté has the features of [+fat] and [+solids], the latter of which is incompatible with the choice of direct object in (2a). The verb steam is analyzed into [+non-fat liquid], [+vigorous action], [+solids], [+rack, sieve (kind of utensils)]. The prepositional phrase “in a large amount of oil”, in conflict with the feature [+non-fat liquid], leads to an anomaly. So, the range of collocational restrictions of the type shown in (2) mirrors the semantic components that are internally lexicalized as the meaning of a given vocabulary item.1 Third, semantic components and semantic relations are systematically transferred in metaphorical extension. For example, if one member of hyponymy is metaphorically used, other members tend to be metaphorically extended in a similar way. To illustrate, hyponyms of “cook” include boil, simmer, steam, stew, and burn, all categorized under the semantic field of cooking, and these hyponyms can be extended to the semantic field of emotional states, describing anger and agitation. This is shown in (3). (3) a. His comments made me boil. b. His criticism burned me. c. His feelings kept simmering after our fight.

[+vigorous action] [−vigorous action]

Interestingly, the semantic components that define a verb under the field of cooking carry over when it is categorized under the field of emotional states. For example, boil and simmer contrast in the feature of [+/−vigorous action] in the field of cooking. Webster’s College Dictionary definitions include “to be agitated, as with

1. On the other hand, the acceptable sentence “Poach the fish in olive oil”, where the component [+non-fat liquid] associated with the verb poach is incongruous with “olive oil”, may suggest the degree of the anomaly may change depending on various adaptations in culinary methods within the society.

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

rage” for boil and “to be about to break out, as in anger, revolt, etc.” for simmer as extended meaning in the emotion field. These dictionary definitions of boil and simmer seem to reflect the degree of emotional intensity when they are extended to the field of emotional states. That is, the level of emotional intensity of boil as in (3a) is likened to the vigorous action characterizing boil used as a cooking verb; in contrast, simmer in (3c) resembles the emotional build-up sustained for some time without a vigorous outburst parallel to the cooking method denoted by the same verb. Turning to her taxonomy of cooking verbs, Lehrer (1972) recognizes at least 35 cooking verbs in English and compartmentalizes them through componential analysis. For instance, boil1, boil2, simmer, stew, poach, braise, parboil, steam, and reduce are categorized under one type of cook (i.e., cook1), all sharing the most basic characteristics of [+non-fat liquid] and [−fat]. However, they are further distinguished from each other in other specific features such as [+/−vigorous action] (e.g. [+vigorous action] for boil2, steam, and reduce; [−vigorous action] for simmer, stew, poach, and braise), [+/−long cooking time] (e.g. [+long cooking time] for stew; [−long cooking time] for parboil), and additional special purposes (e.g. [+soften] for stew; [+preserve shape] for poach; [+reduce bulk] for reduce). Combinations of the components, then, are formed into a coherent lexical structure, making clear their mutual semantic relations like hyponymy, synonymy, antonymy, and incompatibility. Lehrer’s (1969) analyses of cooking verbs in English are represented by the partial summaries in Tables 1 and 2. Table 1. Partial summary of Lehrer’s (1969) classification under cook cook boil1 simmer

fry

(full) boil (boil2)

sauté pan-fry

broil

French- fry deep-fry

grill

bake

barbecue charcoal

plank

roast

shirr

scallop

Table 2. Summary of Lehrer’s (1969) classification under boil1 (unmarked) boil1 (unmarked) simmer poach

stew

boil2 (full boil – marked) parboil

steam

reduce

braise

Under the unmarked boil1 category in Table 2, poach and stew are hyponyms of simmer. That is, poach and stew are types of simmering. In contrast, Lehrer

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notes that verbs in the same row are incompatible if they are divided by vertical lines. So, by this token, simmer and boil2 are in the semantic relationship of incompatibility.

2.2 Revised lexical organization of Japanese cooking verbs2 Using the same methodology, Lehrer (1972) further compares cooking terms in nine different languages: English, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Jacaltec, Yoruba, Navajo, and Amharic. In what follows below, I will focus on her analysis of Japanese cooking verbs and attempt to revise and refine it. Central to our discussion are Japanese verbs that refer to the cooking processes requiring the use of heat and liquid. In my refinement of Lehrer’s original work, I shall take into particular consideration various fine-grained semantic features that can be attributed to the culturally grounded concepts of cooking processes that are unique to the Japanese culinary tradition. In her original analysis of Japanese cooking verbs that denote the use of water, Lehrer (1972) gives the componential analysis of (4) and organizes them into a taxonomy laid out in Table 3. My reanalysis of Lehrer’s table is summarized in Table 4 although an additional refinement will follow. It should be noted that the English translation of each verb is only for convenience, as the exact semantic nature rooted in localized culinary conceptualizations will be elaborated on during the course of the discussion. (4) niru ‘boil’: [+water, +submerged] musu ‘steam’: [+water, −submerged] yuderu ‘boil’: [+water, +submerged, +long cooking time, +special food (eggs)] taku:

2. The reworking of the classification of Japanese cooking verbs based on Lehrer’s original analysis expands on the taxonomy in Tsujimura (2018b) and is further refined in Tsujimura (2023). There are several reasons to frame my analysis in a componential approch. First, Lehrer’s series of work on cooking verbs provides the sole instance of a lexical semantic analysis of Japanese cooking verbs. The componential analysis adopted there simultaneously gives preliminary descriptions of the verbs’ semantic properties and places Japanese in a typological/taxonomical map. My discussion takes her analysis as a starting point and thus continues to use the same analytical frame. Second, although componential analysis per se may be considered dated, a group of semantic approaches that share similar conceptual tenets (e.g., the literature that I have cited on lexicalization or incorporation earlier) has been actively subscribed to. Third, the range of Japanese cooking verbs examined in this chapter may well be analyzed under prototype theory, but my discussion primarily focuses on specific lexical semantic components that are attributed to a culturally constructed conceptualization, rather than the recognition and degree of prototypes that generally capture cooking processes.

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

Table 3. Partial summary of Lehrer’s (1969) analysis of Japanese cooking verbs      niru ‘boil’

  

musu ‘steam’

yuderu ‘boil’

taku

Table 4. Reanalysis of Japanese verbs of cooking with liquid wakasu ‘boil water’

niru1 ‘boil’ yuderu ‘boil’

niru2 ‘boil in special broth’

 

musu ‘steam’

taku ‘boil+steam (rice)’

hukasu ‘steam (potato, pumpkin)’

yugaku ‘parboil’

The four verbs in Lehrer’s componential analysis in (4), which have been organized in Table 3, share the feature [+water] as they all require the use of water. As is the case with English boil and steam, their Japanese equivalents, niru and musu, contrast in the feature of [+ or – submerged]. Lehrer analyzes yuderu rather narrowly, only referring to the boiling process of eggs, and the associated bundle of features indicate that specificity. Finally, taku is another specific verb to describe the two-step process of cooking rice, namely, niru ‘boiling’ followed by musu ‘steaming’. Just to give a brief initial overview of my reanalysis as summarized in Table 4, three verbs are added to Lehrer’s list, wakasu ‘boil water’, yugaku ‘parboil’, and hukasu ‘steam’. The two verbs yuderu and niru2 are already included in Lehrer’s table, but below I will discuss reasons for the reversed semantic relationship between the two. Finally, while basically following Lehrer’s analysis of musu ‘steam’ and taku ‘boil+steam (rice)’ maintaining their lexical hierarchy, I will suggest further elaborations. In my discussion of these Japanese cooking verbs, I wish to draw particular attention to the ways in which the Japanese cooking process is conceptualized differently from parallel situations in other culinary cultures, giving rise to verbs that may not have identical or similar lexical forms in other languages. The eight verbs in Table 4 are coalesced into a larger group of cooking procedures that are uniquely characterized by the required use of heat and non-fat liquid such as water and broths of various sorts. Since there is no further elaboration needed for the use of heat, the feature specification of [+heat] will not be mentioned in my discussion below. Starting with the top row in Table 4, while niru1 ‘boil’ is presumably the most general, all three verbs refer to a cooking process requiring non-fat liquid: water most commonly for niru1 (although see the dis-

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cussion of niru2), and exclusively for wakasu ‘boil water’ and musu ‘steam’. The degree of intensity in the cooking process as a whole ranges from gentle to vigorous, but all instances initially involve vigorous boiling so that the water reaches the boiling point. The rigorous boiling of the water is also required by the process of musu, but the major difference between niru and musu is whether ingredients are submerged in the water: niru is marked for [+submerged] and musu for [−submerged]. The verb wakasu is interesting in that it refers only to the process of boiling water. That is, nothing – neither liquid nor solid – can be added to the water. In this light, the verb can collocate only with (o)-yu ‘hot water’ but not mizu ‘cold water’ as its direct object;3 so the cooking process referred to by wakasu has quite narrow applications. Furthermore, wakasu is different from niru1 and musu in its lexical semantic nature. The restricted choice of (o-)yu ‘hot water’ for wakasu refers to a product resulting from the boiling process. In contrast, direct objects for niru1 and musu are nouns that undergo cooking primarily for making the ingredients tender.4 Using the terminology for verb classification that is common in the lexical semantics literature (e.g. Levin 1993), wakasu is a verb of creation while niru1 and musu are verbs denoting change of state. Members of the creation type outside of the cooking field include horu ‘dig’ as in ana-o horu [hole-Accusative dig] ‘to dig a hole’ and amu ‘knit’ as in seetaa-o amu [sweaterAccusative knit] ‘knit a sweater’; other verbs belonging to change of state verbs are mageru ‘bend’ as in harigane-o mageru [wire-Accusative bend] ‘bend a wire’ and kowasu ‘break’ as in tokei-o kawasu [watch-Accusative break] ‘break a watch’, among many more. Thus, semantic dissections of meaning components and consequential restrictions on grammatical collocation can lead to another coherent classification of verbs across semantic fields. Interestingly, the water-boiling process pertinent to cooking is extended to preparing a bath, as in (o-)huro-o wakasu [bath tub-Accusative boil] ‘prepare a bath’. Here, the collocated object (o-)huro ‘bath tub, bath room’ is considered 3. Occasionally, especially in informal sites on social media, gyuunyuu ‘milk’ and less frequently mugicha ‘barley tea’ appear as direct objects of wakasu, as in gyuunyuu-o wakasu [milkAccusative boil] and mugicha-o wakasu [barley tea-Accusative boil]. At least in the case of gyuunyuu as the direct object, however, the meaning of the verb is more in line with ‘to warm’ rather than getting the milk to the boiling point. When the object is (o-)yu ‘hot water’, the verb cannot mean ‘to warm’. 4. Typical choices of niru1 include beans, fish, meat, and vegetables; and fish and vegetables are frequent ingredients for musu. The direct objects that correspond to these ingredients for niru1 and musu refer to their fresh – rather than cooked – states. An additional purpose for steaming under the use of the verb musu ‘steam’ is to warm something that has already been cooked.

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

a metonym in that a bath tub contains hot water for the purpose of bathing. Although a bath tub is generally filled by running hot water from the faucet in modern days, historically people filled the tub with cold water first and then heated it to a comfortable temperature by direct fire or gas. The metaphorical extension mirrors such a historical cultural trace. Note further that the classification of wakasu as a creation verb is sustained in the metaphorical extension as well. The direct object (o-)huro under the metonymic interpretation that refers to hot water in a tub for bathing follows the parallel choice of direct object. That is, the collocational restriction that the direct object denotes a product of the heating/boiling process is carried over to the extended meaning of the verb. The componential analyses of wakasu, niru1 and musu are summarized in (5). (5) wakasu: [+water] [+vigorous cooking] [collocate with (o-)yu] niru1: [+non-fat liquid] [+submerged] musu: [+water] [+vigorous cooking] [−submerged]

The feature [+non-fat liquid] for niru1 subsumes the use of water, as will be explained in the description of niru2 below. These three verbs hold a semantic relationship of incompatibility among one another: for instance, wakasu does not imply niru1 or musu; nor does niru1 imply musu or wakasu. Moving to the second and third rows of Table 4, yuderu ‘boil’, yugaku ‘parboil’, and niru2 ‘boil in special broth’ are hyponyms of niru1 ‘boil’, while taku ‘boil+steam (rice)’ carries characteristics of niru1 and musu ‘steam’. I set up niru2 in order to reflect a slightly narrower nuance of niru1. Both cases of niru, i.e. niru1 and niru2, involve cooking solid ingredients in a liquid by submersing them, but niru2 calls for boiling in a special cooking liquid that is not simply water. For instance, such broth may consist of water or dashi, soy sauce, sugar, and mirin – typical ingredients for Japanese-style dishes. The underlying purposes of the cooking process for niru1 and niru2 seem to be somewhat different as well. The purpose of niru1 is primarily to make the ingredients tender, while the boiling involved in niru2 is meant to make the ingredients tender and at the same time to get them to absorb the cooking liquid in order to add flavor and taste. Due to at least these two differences, niru2 is a type of niru1, where the cooking process of niru2 is characterized by more strictly defined ingredients and purposes. Yuderu ‘boil’ and yugaku ‘parboil’ describe similar cooking methods. In both, ingredients are submerged in hot water. A distinctive difference between the two is their cooking time and the underlying culinary reason. Yugaku requires a brief moment of submersion while the cooking time for yuderu can vary depending on the ingredients. This contrast seems to stem from the purpose of each cooking process. The purpose of yugaku is primarily to remove strong – and often bit-

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ter – tastes that are common among leafy vegetables like spinach. The verb yuderu has more general purposes of making raw vegetables tender or getting the heat through other ingredients including meat, sea food, and eggs for varying reasons. Recall that Lehrer’s original analysis in Table 3 includes the feature [+special food (eggs)], limiting the purpose of yuderu to boiling eggs, but the cooking process which this verb denotes is much broader than that and extends to other ingredients. The nuanced differences between the two cooking methods warrant a hyponymous relationship between yuderu and yugaku. An additional verb, hukasu, should be included as a hyponym of musu ‘steam’ to complete the Japanese classification of cooking verbs specified with [+water]. As far as the technical procedures are concerned, hukasu is virtually identical with musu in their semantic characterizations. Hukasu, however, is used specifically for potatoes and pumpkins, and may denote more forcefully than musu that its purpose is to make these vegetables tender. That is, hukasu shares all the relevant semantic components with musu but calls for an additional special feature for narrowly selected ingredients: [+special food (potatoes, pumpkins)]. Finally, as the temporary gloss indicates, taku ‘boil+steam (rice)’ in the standard dialect is generally reserved for cooking rice, the Japanese staple food. Lehrer’s characterization of taku consisting of the two processes of niru1 ‘boiling in water’ and musu ‘steaming’, in that order, is basically accurate. I follow her characterization for now although I will elaborate on the meaning of taku in relation to the nature of musu ‘steam’. Since cooked white rice is one of the most essential food items in the Japanese culinary culture, a unique verb reserved specifically for it seems to have a solid motivation and a need from a cultural standpoint. Given that the verb taku has such a specific purpose, it is straightforwardly understood that taku is virtually always collocated with gohan ‘(cooked) rice’ as its choice of direct object, i.e., gohan-o taku [rice (cooked)-Accusative cook]. It should be interesting to note from the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic points of view that gohan refers to cooked rice while the grain form is called kome, and that the latter cannot be used with taku as in *kome-o taku [rice (grain)-Accusative cook]. It should be remembered that wakasu in the first row of Table 4 is a creation verb and as such a product resulting from the process, i.e., (o-)yu ‘hot water’, must be its direct object. In a similar vein, taku used in the sequence of gohan-o taku to describe the process of cooking rice to be served as a staple food for a meal is also classified as a creation verb rather than a change of state verb. It is worth noting that the verb taku exhibits dialectal variation. In the western region of Japan, taku can be used as an alternative to niru2, especially for slowcooking. Under such a regional usage, imo-o taku [potatoes-Accusative cook] and mame-o taku [beans-Accusative cook], for instance, are equivalents of imo-o niru and mame-o niru in eastern parts of Japan. Like niru2, taku in the western use is

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

considered a change of state verb. In the eastern part of Japan and in general, on the other hand, taku is almost exclusively used for cooking rice in water. The componential analyses of the additional four verbs are summarized in (6). (6) yuderu: [+water] [+submerged] yugaku: [+water] [+submerged] [−long time] niru2: [+water] [+submerged] [+special cooking liquid] hukasu: [+water] [+vigorous cooking] [−submerged] [+special food (potato, pumpkin)] taku: NIRU1 followed by MUSU [+special food (rice)]

The set of semantic components associated with each verb leads to the incompatibility relation among yuderu, niru2, taku, and hukasu. Also following from it is the hyponymy relation between yuderu and yugaku on the one hand and musu and hukasu on the other, as seen in Table 4. We have thus far observed that the verb taku in its general use exhibits an interesting range of linguistic properties, some of which seem to have close ties, at least underlyingly, with culinary concepts pertinent to the Japanese culture. In this connection, I would like to follow up on taku and related verbs, especially with the intention of explaining why taku was analyzed as “niru followed by musu” by Lehrer and has been glossed as “boil+steam (rice)” in the current work. Commenting from my own personal experience, the menu item “steamed rice” at Chinese and Japanese restaurants in the US sounds very peculiar to me because cooked white rice as I know it is not “steamed” in the same sense that steamed vegetables and steamed fish are. As I have discussed above, for the cooking process that results in steamed food items, the verb musu is used. Lehrer’s analysis of dividing the rice cooking process into niru and musu is intuitively on the right track in that the process ends with the stage that parallels what the English verb steam refers to. However, what we have regarded as the “steaming” stage toward the end of the process of rice cooking in the Japanese culinary culture actually has been labelled by the more narrowly defined verb, murasu. At the end of the process of boiling the grain form of rice in simple water, the rice absorbs all the liquid. At this point, the heat is removed or turned off, but in the pot the combination of heat, steam, and moisture still remains. The rice continues to absorb this residual mixture, ultimately resulting in a fluffy, moist, and chewy outcome. So, murasu is a type of musu, but it does not stand as a verb that describes an independent cooking process or method. Instead, murasu seems to be better described as a special type of steaming that partakes in a larger context of cooking rice. For this reason and for lack of a better classification, I tentatively place it within taku.

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(7) taku: NIRU1 followed by MURASU [+special food (rice)]

The fine-grained account of murasu obviously suggests that the verb is very important for the rice culture, but interestingly, it is also used to refer to an initial step of making pour-over drip coffee. As soon as hot water is poured over ground coffee beans, foam appears. The water pouring should stop at this point, and the coffee grounds then need to absorb the first batch of hot water. This process of water-absorption is described by the verb murasu. In both rice cooking and coffee brewing, the process of murasu does not involve an independent application of external heat, but instead relies on residual energy during the process. While rice cooking and coffee brewing seem to have very different cultural orientations as food items, it is interesting to observe that letting boiled rice sit and letting ground coffee steep are parallelly conceptualized and are uniformly embodied by the verb murasu. Table 5. Revised reanalysis of Japanese verbs of cooking with liquid wakasu ‘boil water’

niru1 ‘boil’ yuderu ‘boil’

niru2 ‘boil in special broth’

musu ‘steam’  taku ‘boil +steam (rice)’

murasu ‘let sit’

hukasu ‘steam (potato, pumpkin)’

yugaku ‘parboil’

Table 5 summarizes the lexical organization of the nine cooking verbs based on the semantic components and further elaborations of fine-drawn nuances. The tentative placement of murasu in the revised lexical taxonomy is intended to reflect at least its partial hyponymic relation to musu in that the ingredient (i.e., almost-cooked rice) is not submerged in the water and yet the presence of steam is necessary for the cooking process to be completed. Comparison between the classification of Japanese cooking verbs in Table 5 and that of English counterparts in Table 2 point to two non-identical lexical organizations that have resulted from distinct ways in which semantic components are lexicalized. Furthermore, each taxonomy reflects often unique modes that are motivated by conceptualizations of culinary processes specifically localized to a given culture.

3.

Cultural conceptualization and linguistic tools

Comparing Japanese and English lexical organizations of cooking verbs informs us that the two languages share cooking expressions based on similar concepts

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

while exhibiting clear differences. As is clear from the discussion in Section 2, many of the Japanese verbs are based on culinary concepts specific to the Japanese culture, while others show overlapping characteristics with subtle differences. In light of the fact that the Japanese cooking tradition is rooted in a long and renowned history while its English counterpart is perhaps more modestly perceived, we may expect to have more variety of verbs or expressions in Japanese that refer to cooking processes than what we have observed. There are in fact other ways than by these verbs that we can describe cooking preparation more richly and precisely. As the afore-mentioned research on motion verbs has amply shown, semantic components can not only be internally lexicalized but also be expressed periphrastically, often by relying on linguistic mechanisms that are of wide use in the language. In order to see the range of linguistic tools available in Japanese that enable finer and more elaborate descriptions of cooking processes, let us contrast the English classification of cooking verbs in Table 2 and the Japanese verbs in Table 5. First, as I have demonstrated, parboil and steam correspond to yugaku and musu, respectively, in that each pair shares at least very similar sets of semantic features. Thus, they are virtually translation equivalents, straightforwardly finding semantically corresponding lexical items in independent verbs. Second, the English verbs, stew, reduce, and braise do not have corresponding expressions by independent verbs in Japanese, and yet the concepts underlying these verbs do in fact exist in Japanese cooking. Instead of representing the concepts by individual verbs, at least two linguistic tools are accessible and commonly used in the language: periphrastic phrases and compounds with the verb niru. Some examples illustrating these two methods are given in (8). (8) stew: a. torobi-de niru low heat-with boil b. ni-komu boil-pack (9) reduce: ni-tsumeru boil-pack (10) braise: mushi-ni-ni suru steam-boil-to do

(8a) and (9) present two different types of periphrastic expressions. In (8a) the verb that widely appears in more neutral contexts, niru ‘boil’, is modified by an adverbial phrase that means “in low heat”, alluding to the slow cooking process of stewing. Another periphrastic phrase is formed with the semantically null verb

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suru ‘do’, in (10) along with a compound mushi-ni [steam-boil]. Interestingly, Lehrer analyzes braise as a hyponym of stew in English, but the cooking process has been viewed more in line with steaming in Japanese, as the inclusion of musu – realized as its verbal stem, mushi – in the compound suggests. Compounding is also exemplified by (8b) and (9), both of which include niru (surfaced by the verbal root, ni) as their composite member. Even though there are no freestanding verbs available in Japanese to describe the same cooking methods, these compound words frequently appear in cooking instructions. Third, the slow and gentle cooking in low heat that simmer describes is even more accurately expressed by the use of mimetics (e.g. ideophones, onomatopoeia) like gutsugutsu, torotoro, and kotokoto. The mimetic vocabulary appeals to our senses, and is often said to have more descriptive power than the non-mimetic vocabulary.5 For example, gutsugutsu and kotokoto refer to small, bubbly sounds made during slow cooking; and torotoro evokes an image of food in a pot becoming tender, thick, and hearty. It is not surprising that Japanese recipes are filled with these mimetic expressions (Tsujimura 2018a, 2023), and the reader of the recipe can understand the instructions with mimetics better than those given with an exact temperature in number, for example. Finally, poaching is a concept that is missing at least in traditional Japanese cooking. In such a case, an English loanword supplemented by the semantically empty verb suru is used, forming poochi-suru [poach-do]. The comparison between the two languages suggests that when cooking concepts exist in the Japanese culture but the language lacks individual verbs to correspond to English counterparts, Japanese accommodates the apparent gaps by other linguistic tools. As we will discuss in detail below, the most commonly used mechanisms are compounding and the use of mimetic words. These Japanesespecific linguistic tools are able to give even more detailed and vivid descriptions than their English counterparts. I will demonstrate additional instances of more wide-spread use of mimetics and compounding in cooking expressions. Japanese mimetics form a vocabulary class with an extensive membership, and they play an important role in elaborating on cooking processes. As briefly demonstrated previously, the general cooking verb niru ‘boil’ can be further detailed by an extensive array of mimetics, such as gutsugutsu, kotokoto, satto, gotogoto, and guragura, among many more. The wide range is illustrated in (11).

5. There is a rich set of literature on Japanese mimetics. See Hamano (1998), Akita (2009), Akita and Tsujimura (2016) and references cited there.

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

(11) gutsugutsu niru kotokoto niru satto niru gotogoto niru guragura niru

‘to boil, to bubble’ ‘to simmer’ ‘to boil quickly’ ‘to boil, to bubble’ ‘to boil rigorously’

In these samples and many more like them, the absence of individual, freestanding lexical items to correspond to the specific manner and state of cooking in no way hinders descriptions or recognitions of these cooking modes. Mimetics appeal to all five senses, by sound, appearance, feel (for texture and temperature), taste, and smell; and there is a rich inventory of mimetics belonging to individual and collective senses. As such, they provide more direct ways of portraying and perceiving how a given food item is, and expected to be, cooked. Compounding broadly participates in word formation in Japanese, and it makes a crucial contribution to detailing the cooking process as well. The list in (12) shows various V(erb)-V(erb) compounds where the first member is consistently the root of the general verb niru. (12) ni‑komu ni‑tateru ni‑tsumeru ni‑kaesu ni‑kobosu ni‑shimeru ni‑dasu ni‑tsukeru

‘to boil well, to stew’ ‘to boil up’ ‘to boil down’ ‘to reboil’ ‘to boil and then throw away the liquid (usually followed by another round of boiling)’ ‘to boil x hard (down)’ ‘to extract the essence by boiling’ ‘to boil x hard with soy (and sugar)’

The compound verbs in (12) are frequently used in cookbooks and cooking instructions in general. The second member of these compounds provides information regarding the more detailed manner in which the general boiling process should be achieved. Compounding, thus, is a productive tool to diversify what is understood to be basic methods of cooking without the need to develop new vocabulary that accommodates culinary concepts which are traditionally absent in the Japanese culture. While a quick comparative glance at Tables 2 and 5 may give the impression that Japanese cooking verbs are outnumbered by their English counterparts, the mimetic vocabulary and compounding readily afford linguistic mechanisms to enrich the range of expressions needed to match culinary concepts.

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It should be underscored that the use of mimetics and compounding in cooking expressions is not arbitrary or accidental. As has been noted by many in the literature, similar patterns are adopted in motion verbs. Consider the modification pattern in (13), taken from Hamano (1998: 2). A variety of manners of motion can be expressed by different mimetic words, which modify a general verb of walking, aruku ‘walk’. In a similar vein, mimetics accompanied by the semantically empty verb suru ‘do’ accurately describe the precise nature of various kinds of pain in (14), which is based on Chang (1990: 85–88). (13) dosadosa aruku daradara aruku zorozoro aruku dokadoka aruku sassato aruku

‘with a loud noise’ ‘slowly without enthusiasm’ ‘in great number’ ‘noisily and violently’ ‘speedily’

(14) chikuchiku suru

‘an intermittent pain akin to being stuck by thorns and needles’ ‘one’s head throbbing or feeling as if it is being continuously struck’ ‘to smart; a lingering feeling of pain/irritation on the skin’ ‘a pricking pain’ ‘a splitting pain’ ‘to rankle; a throbbing pain with a pulsing sensation’

gangan suru hirihiri suru piripiri suru kirikiri suru zukizuki suru

Detailing the manner of walking in (13) as well as the type and degree of pain in (14) supplied by a wide gamut of mimetic words is completely comparable to the range of mimetics in (11), which inform us of the precise manner of cooking that supplements the general cooking process denoted by niru. Likewise, compounding provides a parallel situation in motion events, as Matsumoto (1996) extensively discusses. Some examples are given in (15). (15) a.

kake-agaru hai-agaru uki-agaru hane-agaru tobi-agaru b. kake-mawaru aruki-mawaru hashiri-mawaru kogi-mawaru

[run-go up] [crawl-go up] [float-go up] [jump-go up] [fly/jump-go up] [run-go around] [walk-go around] [run-go around] [paddle-go around]

Cooking verbs and the cultural conceptualization of cooking processes in Japanese

c.

koroge-mawaru tobi-mawaru haizuri-mawaru hane-mawaru tobi-aruku hai-aruku ukare-aruku nagare-aruku

[roll-go around] [fly/jump-go around] [crawl-go around] [jump-go around] [fly/jump-walk] [crawl-walk] [be merry-walk] [flow-walk]

Motion verbs like agaru ‘go up’ in (15a), mawaru ‘go around’ in (15b), and aruku ‘walk’ in (15c), which serve as the second member of the compounds, can receive finer-grained descriptions from the first member that complements the basic meaning of the motion verbs. The member in each compound describes a specific manner such as running, crawling, floating, and jumping, among others. Here again, compounding is a common strategy to add supplementary information to a basic motion event type, just as compounding fine-tunes the descriptions of cooking process, as shown in (12). Thus, in order to supply detailed circumstances, we make good use of linguistic mechanisms that are available for manner expressions across semantics fields in the language.

4.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have analyzed a selected class of cooking verbs in Japanese, both internally to Japanese and comparatively with English. Taking into consideration culturally grounded concepts, the vocabulary has been componentially dissected, so that the analysis has led to a coherent lexical organization that reflects semantic features of individual lexical items as well as semantic relationships among them. There is no denying that variability in cultural conceptualization shows a strong connection to unique ways of lexicalizing cooking terms. For instance, we have discussed that wakasu ‘boil water’ is highly restricted in its underlying cultural concept, and the strict collocational restriction on its direct object could be considered one of linguistic repercussions. Another example that showcases strong cultural grounding is in our discussion of the verb murasu ‘let sit’ viewed in continuation of the process denoted by taku ‘boil+steam (rice)’ as well as the narrow interpretation of hukasu under its larger rubric of musu ‘steam’. Clearly, lexicalization of these verbs cannot be explained without invoking culture-specific conceptual paths leading to their linguistic manifestations. However, it should be underscored that the cultural specificity and the regularity in lexical organization are not mutually exclusive. By componentially analyzing the vocabulary of the

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cooking field and by examining lexicalization patterns across semantic fields, we are reminded that the lexicon is uniformly organized in terms of a set of underlying concepts – culture-specific or otherwise – and the semantic components that represent them. I have also discussed several patterns of lexicalization in the Japanese vis-àvis the English taxonomy, and examined various linguistic ways of negotiating the differences. To this end, I have isolated two situations: one in which a given concept is missing in the Japanese culture, and the other in which a given concept is at least partially shared. In the former situation, loanword and periphrastic expressions are primary sources of linguistic negotiation. In the latter, we have observed that Japanese makes an effective use of mimetics and compounding, both of which are considered notably prevalent mechanisms in the language beyond the cooking vocabulary. Besides the direct lexicalization of cooking processes in the form of individual verbs, these linguistic mechanisms common in the language help maintain the broad range of fine-grained descriptions pertinent to cooking processes, while simultaneously preserving a culturally constructed conceptualization of food preparation.

References Akita, Kimi (2009). A Grammar of Sound-Symbolic Words in Japanese: Theoretical Approaches to Iconic and Lexical Properties of Mimetics. Unpublished PhD thesis, Kobe University. Akita, Kimi & Natsuko Tsujimura (2016). Mimetics. In: Taro Kageyama & Hideki Kishimoto (Eds.), Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and Word Formation (pp. 133–160). The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Chang, Andrew C. (1990). A Thesaurus of Japanese Mimesis ad Onomatopoeia: Usage by Categories. Tokyo: Taishukan. Hamano, Shoko (1998). The Sound-Symbolic System of Japanese. Tokyo: Kurosio/CSLI. Jackendoff, Ray (1990). Semantic Structure. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lehrer, Adrienne (1969). Semantic cuisine. Journal of Linguistics 5, pp. 39–56. Lehrer, Adrienne (1972). Cooking vocabularies and the culinary triangle of Lévi-Strauss. Antropological Linguistics 14(5), pp. 155–71. Lehrer, Adrienne (1975). Talking about wine. Language 51(4), pp. 901–23. Lehrer, Adrienne (1983). Wine and Conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lehrer, Adrienne (2009). Wine and Conversation. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levin, Beth (1993). English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Matsumoto, Yo (1996). Complex Predicates in Japanese: A Syntactic and Semantic Study of the Notion “Word”. Stanford: CSLI.

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McCawley, James (1968). The Phonological Component of a Grammar of Japanese. The Hague: Mouton. Pustejovsky, James (1995). The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Sharifian, Farzad (2011). Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Sharifian, Farzad (2017). Cultural linguistics and linguistic relativity. Language Sciences 59, pp. 83–92. Slobin, Dan (1996). From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking”. In: John J. Gumperz & Stephen C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 70–96). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slobin, Dan (2006). What makes manner of motion salient? Explorations in linguistic typology, discourse, and cognition. In: Maya Hickmann & Stéphane Robert (Eds.), Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories (pp. 59–81). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Talmy, Leonard (1985). Lexicalization patters: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In: Timothy Shopen (Ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description vol. 3 (pp. 57–149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Talmy, Leonard (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tsujimura, Natsuko (2018a). Recipe names in Japanese cookbooks as a gateway to interpersonal communication. Names: A Journal of Onomastics 66(4), pp. 233–245. Tsujimura, Natsuko (2018b). From tasty adjective to succulent metaphor: What the language of food reveals. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 25, pp. 309–326. Tsujimura, Natsuko (2023). Food, Language, and Society: Communication in Japanese Foodways. Lanham: Lexington Books.

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Wellness A cultural linguistic analysis of the conceptualisation of health Penelope Scott

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University This chapter presents a Cultural Linguistic analysis of the conceptualisation of wellness as found in contemporary internet language. It considers how cultural conceptualisations found in the discourses of health, wellness and detoxification intersect with other conceptualisations including for example the notions of sacredness and purity associated with religion (Douglas 1966). wellness is structured by three broad cultural models: the ‘detox’ model, which incorporates aspects of Beck’s (1992) notion of ‘Risk Society’, a ‘medical countercultural’ model, and a ‘whole health’ model. This chapter also considers how knowledge of the cultural conceptualisations for wellness affects responses to medical advice from different sources. The analysis takes account of the cultural schemas (Quinn 1987; Sharifian 2011), image schemas (Johnson 1987) and conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) underpinning this view of health and demonstrates the value of Cultural Linguistic approaches in Medical and Health Humanities. Keywords: conceptualisation of health and wellness, Clean Eating, wellness and science, wellness and pseudo-science

1.

Introduction

Concepts relating to health are culturally constructed, dynamic, and flexible, and are dependent on a number of cultural conceptualisations (see Sharifian 2011 and Palmer 1996). From the later part of the 20th Century until the present day there has been a shift towards a ‘holistic’ or ‘wellness-based’ approach to health, which can be seen in collocations including ‘holistic health’, and ‘mind, body and spirit’.1 1. In the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (US Sub-corpus) (Davies 2013) the relative frequencies (per million) of these collocations are as follows: ‘holistic health’ (Rel. freq. 87), and ‘mind, body and spirit’ (Rel. freq. 83). https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.06sco © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

Wellness

Spoel et al. (2012a) identify several conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) underpinning discourse on healthy eating, including food as fuel, food as junk, and healthy eating as balanced eating. In another study (2012b), they examine the moral language of guilt and pollution that pervades discourse on healthy eating in Canadian and UK participants. So far, however, there has been relatively little attention given to ‘wellness’, ‘clean eating’, and the discourse around ‘detoxing’ from linguistic perspectives. While some of the recommendations found within texts promoting this approach to health are congruent with those of public health campaigns, many are not promoted by such institutions, and have attracted criticism from medical professionals in the media and in academia (e.g., Rousseau 2015).2 A disjuncture in terms of conceptualisation therefore exists between some expert and lay communities in terms of wellness and health and a detailed analysis of wellness concepts may therefore be beneficial towards the promotion of understanding and communication of health messaging. This chapter examines the conceptualisation of health as found in discourse focussed on wellness, clean eating, and detoxification in contemporary English. The analysis considers whether wellness constitutes a development of 20th Century models of health, represents a return to a historical and more ‘general’ model, represents a secular religion, or a response to ‘risk society’. I argue that wellness appears to share certain cultural schemas in common with some religious discourse, and also shows evidence of a model of ‘risk’. While a concept of health emphasising the ‘whole’ person, including spirit, is apparent, this conceptualisation is strikingly different from the notion of health seen in the earliest period of English, which is discussed in Section 2. The analysis is framed within Cultural Linguistics, and presents a set of cultural conceptualisations including cultural schemas, categories and metaphors in terms of Sharifian’s ‘Distributed Model’ (2011). Such a granular analysis is successful in modelling this cultural worldview, and demonstrates that cultural models may share component parts of other cultural models. The study begins by examining in detail a selection of podcasts on the subject of wellness and detox from The goop Podcast, which was set up in 2018 as a platform for members of the goop brand to discuss a range of wellness-related topics with guests. In order to gain an insight into predominantly lay perspectives, the chapter also examines the posts and replies of three sub-Reddits: Clean Eating, Detox, and Wellness.

2. For some media discussions of Clean Eating see, e.g., Tandoh (2017), Hardman & Prendergast (2015) and BBC’s Horizon: Clean Eating – The Dirty Truth.

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2.

Methodology and overview of the data sources

This study makes use of two distinct data sources: wellness-themed podcasts from goop, and Reddit wellness-themed communities. These sources have been chosen since they each provide different analytical possibilities and provide distinct insights into the conceptualisation of health and wellness in contemporary (predominantly) US cultures. The Reddit and Podcast sources can be selected by theme, meaning that it is possible to examine the discourse of a health and clean eating focussed community. The podcasts have the additional benefit of an enhanced platform for narrative, giving some insight into people’s personal experiences and reasons for pursuing a particular health lifestyle. The Clean Eating, Detox and Wellness communities on Reddit have been collected to create a small corpus of approximately 33,000 words composed of original posts and replies, reflecting conceptualisations of wellness from (often) non-specialist contributors.3 A selection of podcasts has been examined from The goop Podcast. The goop brand was started by Gwyneth Paltrow as a newsletter in 2008 and is concerned with wellness, demonstrating a particular conceptualisation of health; the website (https://goop.com/whats-goop/) states that “[…] good food is the foundation of love and wellness, that the mind/body/spirit is inextricably linked, and we have more control over how we express our health than we currently understand”. The episodes collected are those explicitly focussed on either clean eating, detox, or food and health, including Detox without deprivation (33 mins, 22/01/2019, with guest speaker Deanna Minich), Gwyneth on detoxes, cleanses, and how she eats (37 mins, 8/01/2019), Is intermittent fasting the key to health? (44 mins, 15/01/2019, with guest speaker Valter Longo), Is detoxing real? (38 mins, 07/06/2018, with guest speaker Alejandro Junger), How to avoid the chemicals that disrupt hormones (41 mins, 29/1/2019, with guest speaker Jessice Helm), and Could changing your diet heal autoimmune disease? (38 mins, 12/04/ 2018, with guest speaker Steven Gundry).4

3.

Historical and emerging concepts of health and wellness

The notion of a new form of health in which the wellbeing of the whole self is promoted has evolved in the Anglo-American linguistic community within the last 3. https://www.reddit.com/r/CleanEating, https://www.reddit.com/r/Detox, https://www .reddit.com/r/Wellness. Posts and replies were taken up to June 2019 and have been anonymised. Spelling and formatting has been retained. 4. The quotations provided have been transcribed by the author.

Wellness

century. According to Dolfman (1973: 492), historically “the story of the use of the word health carries the idea from a generalised beginning to a generalised end”. By this he asserts that in the earliest period of English ‘health’ had the generalised meaning of being “sound or whole”. While it is true that, etymologically, ‘health’ has its origins in the notion of wholeness and covers spiritual and physical health alike, there is evidence for a degree of polysemy as opposed to vagueness within the earliest period of English. It was derived from the Old English adjective hal ‘whole/ healthy’ via the same noun-forming -th suffix that gives us ‘length’ and ‘width’. The adjective hal, the Present-Day English reflex of which is ‘whole’ and from which halig ‘holy’ was derived was also highly polysemous, primarily having a meaning in Old English relating to health while also referring to physical wholeness and spiritual salubrity. In Old English, hælð, and hælu / hæle – another form derived from hal – could refer to one’s physical and mental health, and could be ‘given’, or ‘stolen’ in the sense of a healing miracle transferred through touch: (1) Heo creap ða betwux ðam mannum bæftan þam hælende. and forstæl hire hælu (ÆCHom II, 28: 228.236)5 [She crept then between the men behind the saint, and stole her healing]

In the following example, health is conceptualised as an object that one may or may not possess, alongside nourishment and garments: (2) Mislice angsumnyssa he forbær þa ða he næfde ne bigleofan ne hælðe ne hætera (ÆCHom I, 23 B1.1.25) [Various bodily distresses he forbore when he had no nourishment nor health nor garments]

In a small minority of occurrences (x3 in the Old English Herbarium) health appears to be a destination, with one being ‘led to health’: (3) Hrædlice hyt hi afeormeð & to hæle gelædeð [Quickly it cleanses them and leads them to health]

(Lch I (Herb), 20.3)

Certainly, some aspects of the conceptualisation of health are highly basic, demonstrating a degree of consistency diachronically and cross-linguistically. Notably, each of these examples conceptualises health (a state) in terms of an object or space, which is consistent with Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999) ‘Event Structure Metaphor’, in which various kinds of states are conceptualised in terms of physical aspects including space, force, and movement, and which is basic in

5. All examples from Old English are taken from the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus (Healey et al. 2009), and are labelled following the textual abbreviations found in the corpus. For example, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, First Series is presented as ÆCHom I.

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nature and is argued to be universal. In Present-Day English we can similarly say ‘nursed to health’, or ‘you have your health’, though the range of the Present-Day English term does not usually extend to an object whose ownership can be transferred. Another aspect of the semasiological range of hælð is its use in domains outside of the somatic, serving as a target domain for spiritual health. The wide range of its meaning reveals sense extension by means of systematic processes. For example, spiritual health was modelled in the period on somatic health, as demonstrated by the use of an overt metaphor that constructs spiritual health in terms of physical health, in needs of its own kind of ‘healing’ (see Example 4 below). It is important to be careful not to assume that a cross-domain division exists in a historical culture that may not have had one; as Lockett (2011: 10) observes, there has been a tendency to impose aspects of the modern Western worldview such as the dualism of mind and body upon other cultures, including historical ones. Nevertheless, while mind/body dualism is a product of later centuries, body/spirit dualism appears to be part of the Old English conceptual landscape and I would argue that the evidence suggests that hal ‘healthy’ is polysemous in Old English, being structured in part by conceptualisations including spiritual salvation as physical health. This idea comes through in overt metaphors in religious texts, including for example in the Old English translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, and Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: (4) Se ðe wenð þæt he hal sy. se is unhal; Þæt is. se ðe truwað on his agenre rihtwisnysse. ne hogað he be ðam heofenlican læcedome (ÆCHom II: 274.52) [He who fancies that he is healthy [whole], he is unwhole, that is, he who relies on his own righteousness does not consider the heavenly healing] (5) Ac se gooda læce, þæt is God, lacnað hiora mod [But the good leech, that is God, heals their spirit]

(Bo: 39.134.16)

As the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states, the primary sense of læce was a healer, figuratively applied to God and Christ (OED s.v. leech).6 Similarly, læcedom ‘cure’ refers to physical and spiritual cures. In Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in the Old English version, he states that a “Micel wund behofað micles læce-

6. Though the OED assumes the use of læce to refer to God to be figurative, it is worth noting here that while it may be figurative to refer to God as a healer of sin, the quotation below from Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies makes clear that God can also literally be seen as the healer of bodies. I therefore consider god is a healer to be a cultural schema rather than a metaphor. Regarding the domain split between somatic and spiritual, it is also important to note that cases in which a spiritual malady is seen to cause physical symptoms would not be metaphorical. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this.

Wellness

domes” [great wound requires a great cure] (26.350.19), in which the great ‘wound’ is caused by sin, and the ‘cure’ or treatment is penance including severe fasting. We see another case of a play on words from Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies in this statement, which explicates the literal meaning of hælend ‘savior/healer’, which is usually reserved as an epithet for Christ: “He is hælend gehaten. for ðan ðe he hælð ægðer ge manna lichaman ge heora sawle” [He is called healer, because he heals both the bodies of men and their souls] (ÆCHom II 37, 273.44). In the Old English period, we see the sense of health radiating from a somatic sense to a spiritual one, structured by a set of conceptualisations in which the spiritual target domain is structured by the physical source domain of health, including sin as illness, spiritual cures as physical cures, and spiritual health as physical health, and the cultural schema god is a healer. As we will see in later sections, elements of the spiritual nature of health do indeed later emerge in the 20th century particularly in the case of wellness, but it is of a different kind to that reflected in the earliest period of English. Dolfman (1973) claims that there was a later restriction in the meaning, and that “[t]he notion that health is a disease-free state or condition was extremely popular during the first half of the 20th century, and was recognised by many as the definition of health” (Dolfman 1973: 493, emphasis original). In the later half of the 20th century, however, the term begins to generalise again and can be represented by numerous ‘models’ of health. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, in 1947 defines health not merely as the absence of illness but as “a state of complete physical and mental wellbeing”. Another conceptualisation emerging in the 20th century that Dolfman discusses is the ‘wellness’ model, promoted by Halbert Dunn in 1959. Dunn (1959: 447) defines ‘high-level wellness’ as “an integrated method of functioning which is oriented toward maximising the potential of which the individual is capable, within the environment where he is functioning”. He sees it as “dynamic – a condition of change in which the individual moves forward, climbing toward a higher potential of functioning” (Dunn 1959: 447). wellness, then, is conceptualised metaphorically in terms of an upwards ascent and a journey, while health, for Dunn, is merely a static and passive notion. At the time of his writing, wellness was not a widespread concept, at least not to the extent of being lexicalised; writing over a decade later Dolfman (1973: 496) contends that “the word ‘wellness’ does not exist in the English language”, claiming that the addition of a new term does little to help in the definition of ‘health’. Today, however, the word wellness appears in the OED within Frequency Band 4, and appears in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (Davies 2013) with a relative frequency (per million words) of 5.11 in the US, with the highest relative frequency among the countries represented in the corpus being 10.53 in Canada with 10.53, and the lowest being 1.57 in the GB corpus.

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Another way that ‘wellness’ differs from the WHO definition of ‘health’, or the earlier ‘disease free’ state, is in the addition of ‘spiritual’ health to somatic and mental health; Dunn (1959: 448) asserts that “[m]any of us, as physicians and health workers, have become increasingly dissatisfied with our disciplines which customarily deal only with the body or mind of man, leaving to religion, metaphysics, and philosophy the affairs of the spirit”. Thus, the concept of ‘health’ comes to encompass a wide range of aspects of wellbeing, though the wellness model reflects some major differences from historical health models, despite having breadth of scope in common. Dunn’s (1959) characterisation of wellness as a journey, which is a more specific metaphor subordinate to the well-attested life is a journey7 metaphor described by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), is evident in the goop podcasts and in the Reddit communities: (6) So as I was moving through my journey realising that science wasn’t the be all end all I started exploring different things like reiki, energy medicine and chiropractic naturopathy. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (7) So glad I have started this journey to wellness.

(Clean Eating Reddit)

(8) First off, congrats on your journey.

(Clean Eating Reddit)

(9) I feel like once I venture into the inner isles I get sucked into the processed foods which is exactly what I’m trying to avoid. Good luck with your journey. (Clean Eating Reddit) (10) Hello – I started this journey with clean eating to try and reverse my multiple food intolerances and health issues. (Clean Eating Reddit)

This notion, which is represented well in both the goop podcasts and the Reddit communities, is compatible with Dunn’s (1959) notion of ‘high level wellness’ as dynamic; while health or wellness may be a destination on ‘life’s journey’, as in Example (7), wellness may also be the journey as opposed to being a destination, as in (6).

4.

Mind, body, and spirit

The health of the spirit in the culture of wellness is at times preserved through nurturance and at times by spiritual asceticism, which itself is a cultural model 7. Following Sharifian (2011), metaphors are phrased using ‘as’. However, where an earlier described metaphor is referred to the original phrasing has been retained.

Wellness

typically associated with religion. Logan (2017: 601) states that “goop, perhaps, more than the other lean consumer practices within ‘the gospel of minimalism,’ embraces the spiritual dimensions of depletion”. As a brand that is at the interface between religion and capitalism and is characterised by the limited and exclusive nature of their products, Logan (2017: 604) argues that “goop is premised on the idea that its lifestyle is available not to the masses, but to the few. It presumes limited atonement, a Christian, and specifically Calvinist category”. She clarifies that it is not that goop is Calvinist because it is directly associated with Calvinism, but “because it is a cultural carrier of Calvinism’s sociological tendency to enact a discipline of everyday life as evidence of election” (Logan 2017: 604). Of interest here is the notion of a social movement or brand as a ‘cultural carrier’ of at least a partial set of cultural conceptualisations associated with a different group. Whether it is the kinds of foods that may be consumed, or the outright denigration of corporal satisfaction, the relationship between religion, spirituality and diet is close and complex. Soler (1997) discusses the dietary prohibitions guided by Mosaic laws, claiming that rules stating that only animals with a ‘hoofed foot’, ‘cloven hoof ’ and that ‘chew the cud’ may be eaten relate to the status of the animals as herbivorous or carnivorous, noting that “[c]arnivorous animals are unclean. If man were to eat them he would be doubly unclean” (Soler 1997: 60). Such a system of categorisation in some cases prohibits consumption of animals that are herbivores, indicating the necessity for prescriptive systems of categorisation to be easily applicable and generalisable, rather than going into granular detail. This is perhaps a feature in common with modern day categorisations of foods into ‘clean’ or ‘toxic’. Soler goes on to note that some herbivorous animals are also ruled out by these restrictions, including horses, which could be considered to be ‘blemished’ on account of having a foot shape that ‘deviates’ from the model. Interestingly, such a notion returns us to the etymology of the word ‘health’ in English, which through its derivation hal+ig comes to mean ‘holy’, likely based on the idea of being perfect and unblemished. Within Christianity, fasting has been an important devotional practice, though Bell (1985: 118) notes that “the ascetic impulse has its historical antecedents less in Judeo-Christian beliefs than in ancient Greece and the East”. Gregorie de Nysse warns that “spiritual food for the well-being of our souls” and “sensible food to strengthen our bodies” is necessary (Gregorie de Nysse 1966: 71, cited in Bell 1985: 120). A similarly moderate approach is taken by Ælfric of Eynsham, an Anglo-Saxon abbot and hagiographer, who cautions against excessive asceticism in The Prayer of Moses (ÆLS Prayer Moses: 96–105), saying: (11) ac us secgað bec þæt sume fæston swa þæt hi geswencton hi sylfe forðearle, and nane mede næfdon þæs mycclan geswinces, ac ðæs þe fyrr wæron Godes

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miltsunge. Nu gesetton ða halgan fæderas þæt we fæston mid gerade, and ælce dæg eton mid gedafenlicnysse swa þæt ure lichama alefed ne wurðe, ne eft ofer fæt to idelum lustum [but books say that some fasted such that they afflicted themselves greatly, and no rewards had they for this great suffering, but from that were further from God’s mercy. Now the holy fathers established that we fast with wisdom and each day eat fittingly so that our bodies don’t become weak nor again over-fat to idle lusts]

Ælfric suggests that such fasting did go on, for example beyond the period of lent, or excessively to the point of eating only every other day. Furthermore, this admonishment indicates that such ‘excessive’ fasting was voluntary and not a requirement of the Church establishment. This is analogous to today’s harsh ‘detox’ programmes, which often go against the advice of instituted health organisations. That is not to say that people of a different cultural context and time period are restricting their diets for the same reasons, however, the possibility of the detox model having inherited aspects of a religious cultural model is factored into this analysis.

5.

Wellness and pseudoscience

A notable feature of 'alternative' health and wellness, particularly when concerned with diet, is celebrity endorsement, which is a central aspect of the goop brand. Rousseau (2015) examines the celebrity-endorsed alternative ‘fad’ diet phenomenon from the perspective of attention economics, which explains the persuasive power of alternative diet regimens in terms of the “large (and growing) disparity between the information that we have available to us, and the limited resources we have to navigate that information – chiefly attention, but also time, and often the intellectual skill set to question and understand much of what we are exposed to” (Rousseau 2015: 268). Since a detailed understanding of all aspects and nuances of human health is beyond the expertise of the general population, there is a temptation to believe in ‘quick fixes’. She notes that many alternative health trends are “supported by little or no scientific evidence (because if they were, they would likely cease to be alternative)” (Rousseau 2015: 270). Naturopathic medicine, detoxing and integrative medicine have been argued to promote pseudoscience, which may be characterised by the use of anecdotes as opposed to data. This extends even to the work of certain ‘maverick’ medical professionals who promote certain ‘fad’ diets. As Rousseau states:

Wellness

Often in evidence here, as in most fad diets, is a rejection of nuance and complexity in favor of one new certainty (the elimination of which is often key to the quick fix promised by the diet), for example, the “toxicity” of gluten, sugar or carbohydrates in general, and the support of anecdotes rather than scientific data. (Rousseau 2015: 267)

Many elements of wellness culture are derived from ‘naturopathy’, which has its roots in a 19th Century German ‘natural living’ movement, in which conventional medical knowledge such as germ theory and vaccination was rejected in favour of notions of detoxification (Atwood 2003). Naturopathy is gaining in legal status in the modern day, with five colleges (at the time of writing) in the US having Naturopathic Doctorate programmes, which incorporate subjects typically found in a Medical Doctorate such as pharmacology alongside therapies whose efficacy has in some cases been discredited by medical science such as homeopathy.8 The movement has been criticised for incorporating unproven medical therapies and for discouraging practices such as regular scheduled vaccination (Hermes 2018; Atwood 2003). Naturopathy is predicated on a number of principles, including for example the “healing power of nature”, “doctor as teacher”, “treat the whole person”, and “prevention” (Hermes 2018: 139). Many of these tenets are based on complex belief systems, which are in part culturally specific. For example, ‘treat the whole person’ points to a belief that other modes of treatment treat only ‘part’ of a person, and are therefore inferior. It also structures the concept of a person in terms of a part-whole image schema (Johnson 1987), in which case the composite parts are the mind, body and spirit, with a notion that what affects one affects the others.9 Other aspects of naturopathy may result from universal cognitive learning processes, including the assumption that if A precedes B, A causes B. For example, a belief in the healing power of nature can lead one to assume causality when a remedy is taken and and subsequent improvement in the condition occurs, whether or not the remedy was responsible. What often amounts to a belief in spite of systematic evidence has led to criticisms of ‘pseudoscience’ (Hermes 2018; Atwood 2003; Rousseau 2015 etc.). In recent years there has been

8. In light of this observation, there is an interesting question regarding whether its definition as ‘scientific’ or ‘unscientific’ is contingent on its being included at certain types of institutions, or on other measures such as the nature and quality of the evidence-based studies. This is beyond the scope of this chapter, since the aim is to uncover conceptualisations around health and wellness as evidenced by wellness discourse, rather than to evaluate the medical approaches involved. 9. There is no universal necessity for the idea of the whole person to be divided this way, nor is it a universal idea that the health of each aspect depends on the health of the others; in the Early Medieval English mindset for example bodily health does not lead to other forms of health.

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an increase in ‘functional’ and ‘integrated’ medicine, in which ‘alternative’ and ‘conventional’ medical practices are integrated. Many of the guest speakers on The goop Podcast are proponents of such practices or are practitioners themselves. Critics of Integrated Medicine claim that the ‘alternative’ practices are not science or evidence-based and that their integration with science-based medicine has a deleterious effect on health literacy. On the other hand, an approach to health in which the ‘whole person’ is treated has potential benefits. Rather than assuming health to be simply the ‘absence of illness’ (e.g. the ‘reductionist’ model proposed by Boorse 1977), some scholars have argued in favour of a model in which overall happiness, wellbeing, and the ability to carry out the desired goals constitutes health (Nordenfelt 1993). Since Integrative Medicine draws on both conventional and nonconventional approaches, with differing views on disease aetiology and treatment, it is worth considering how potentially conflicting or competing schemas interact conceptually. According to Lobato and Zimmerman (2018: 26–27), it is possible for individuals to possess two competing schemas at once, which has been evidenced in reaction time tests by Shtulman and Valcarcel (2012) in which participants took longer in assessing the validity of statements that were mismatched in terms of the ‘intuitive’ and ‘scientific’ truth values, suggesting ‘cognitive conflict’. It is worth noting here that the notion of evidence is also a rich cultural conceptualisation that has its roots in British Empiricism. According to Wierzbicka (2010), the use of that particular term has developed in such a way diachronically as to move from a sense of ‘proof ’ and ‘clear knowledge’ to ‘uncertainty’. Interestingly, analysis of The goop Podcast reveals that the discourse of evidence is part of the discourse around wellness, but that there is a different notion of what kind of evidence is acceptable: (12) People who drink five or more cups of coffee a day have almost no evidence of Alzheimers or Parkinson’s. (The goop Podcast – “Could changing your diet heal autoimmune disease?”) (13) Like when you ask them like “don’t you think you don’t want plastic in your body?” of course they don’t want plastic but I don’t know whether… it feels like maybe there are ways we can we can position it or push it or create some evid… some a mountain of evidence to sort of make it part of our lives. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (14) And I think that that’s what you mentioned is really important to sort of… the absence of evidence doesn’t mean the evidence of absence. (The goop Podcast – “Is detoxing real?”)

Wellness

In Example (12), there is a claim but it is unsubstantiated. In (13) there is a topdown approach to evidence, in which an intuitive argument is put forth with the notion that evidence needs to be gathered in order to effect policy change. Example (14) implicitly suggests that belief in spite of a lack of evidence is reasonable since a lack of evidence does not prove a lack of existence. An empiricist notion of evidence is part of this cultural worldview, but it differs from that of ‘scientific’ discourse in the way in which uncertainty is understood. In modern empirical science a claim is only defensible if it is falsifiable in the sense put forth by Karl Popper. In cognitive terms, what this results in is a kind of tentative belief, with schema adjustment or replacement being necessary in the event of new evidence. This final example brings us to another important aspect of the discourse around wellness and clean eating, which is the representation of a perceived dichotomy between the medical establishment, or ‘doctors’, and alternative medicine.

5.1 Doctors and science Proponents of wellness appear to be generally accepting of the idea that there is often a religious and/or pre-modern philosophical basis to certain alternative remedies. However, they reject the notion of ineffectiveness on the basis that there is a lack of evidence. In the podcasts we see the idea that there is evidence but that it is either hidden or not seen due to bias on the part of the establishment: (15) In fact, there’s evidence based on the National Academy of Sciences review that there’s a lot of corruption in the Dietary Guidelines Committee. (The goop Podcast – “What we got wrong about nutrition”) (16) […] doctors see what they believe they don’t believe what they see … And I think younger doctors are coming along that have open minds. (The goop Podcast – “What we got wrong about nutrition”) (17) Yeah, so I think there are, there are doctors that are open minded, and they’re careful but open minded, And there are those that are just refusing to see any changes. (The goop Podcast – “Is intermittent fasting the key to health?”) (18) […] one of the amazing things I’ve learned… and surgeons don’t listen. It’s one of the nice things about surgeons, I taught myself to listen, and I taught myself to believe the female opposite me. (The goop Podcast – “Could changing your diet heal autoimmune disease?”)

The idea of accepting evidence only according to the rules of replicability and statistical significance is seen as ‘closed minded’ and indicative of an inability to ‘see’, or ‘listen’, while the notion of being able to hold several cultural schemas, which may in some cases conflict, is a sign of being ‘open minded’ or able to ‘listen’. This

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sees evaluation of evidence in terms of sensory abilities, which is perhaps more intuitive than the scientific method. A dichotomy between doctors and alternative practitioners is set up using oppositional language pertaining to a battle metaphor: (19) It’s interesting, I sat on a plane next to a guy and we just ended up talking and he sort of volunteered that he had been diagnosed as diabetic and his doctor tried to put him on insulin. And he said, “No”, like, he didn’t really know anything about it but he was like, “I’m not doing it”. And he changed his diet dramatically, and doesn’t have diabetes, and… but it’s interesting, because his… he had to fight his doctor dramatic – , like a major tug of war, and refusing meds. (The goop Podcast – “Is intermittent fasting the key to health?”) (20) We were fighting for clinical trials, we’re saying “let’s test it” you know? And but now say the great majority of big hospitals and big universities are on our side, and basically saying, “Let’s test it”. (The goop Podcast – “Is intermittent fasting the key to health?”) (21) In this current medical climate, you have to be your own champion. (The goop Podcast – “Is intermittent fasting the key to health?”)

The use of such discourse points fosters a sense of inclusion between the speakers and the listeners and presents a monolithic view of the medical establishment. There is also evidence for the idea that science has failed to ‘keep up’, or criticisms of science as internally inconsistent: (22) […] many of the things that I’m interested in are not backed up by science yet. (The goop Podcast – “Is detoxing real?”) (23) Why is there so much conflicting information about diet and nutrition and even science that seems in conflict. (The goop Podcast – “What we got wrong about nutrition”) (24) […] we have followed every single recommendation that the government has given us, we’ve eaten less fat, we’ve eaten more carbohydrates, we’ve eaten less meat, we’ve eaten less eggs, we’ve eaten less, mi…whole milk, we’ve eaten less butter, and we’re sicker and fatter than ever. And so people are confused. And when you look at how we come to conclusions, it’s often based on shaky science. (The goop Podcast – “What we got wrong about nutrition”)

Example (24) signals inclusion by using the inclusive second person and thus drawing an opposition between ‘us’ and the government. Drawing on the standard conceptual metaphor theories are buildings, established science is depicted as ‘shaky’. The idea that food is integral to detoxification processes is also related to a set of cultural schemas: (1) many diseases are caused by a buildup

Wellness

of toxins; (2) many foods are toxic; (3) some foods are ‘clean’ and help to remove toxins. (25) I really kind of wanted to bring a scientific perspective for those MDs who really do believe that food is medicine. (The goop Podcast – “Gwyneth on detoxes, cleanses, and how she eats”)

The notion of spirituality as being a necessary part of the ‘whole person’ is implicit in the following statements, which also are suggestive of a notion in which ‘science’ is seen as a ‘part’, as opposed to a whole. In this view, science is one method amongst many, as opposed to being a more overarching schema structuring the pursuit of knowledge. (26) I started looking under the hood of science but then I realised that I could only get so well with science.(The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (27) So I kind of feel like science and spirituality need to start talking to one another. That art and medicine need to join hands because otherwise we’re fragmented. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (28) […] medicine as healing we’re not robots you know. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (29) […] looking at people as like whole and complicated like not as robots. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”)

Doctors and science are portrayed as being unable or unwilling to see, as being ‘closed minded’ and focussing only on a ‘part’ as opposed to the mind/body/spirit ‘whole’. This oppositional and ‘countercultural’ discourse is particularly strong in the selected goop podcasts, possibly due to some of the guests being active proponents of alternative medicine. The Reddit communities did not provide evidence for this conceptualisation of conventional medicine, indicating the diversity of cultural conceptualisations among individuals with an interest in ‘wellness’.10 One model that was shared between goop and the Reddit communities relates to ‘detoxing’ and ‘cleansing’, which is the focus of the next section.

5.2 Detoxing, cleansing Some of the more restrictive ‘clean eating’ patterns are referred to as ‘detoxes’ or ‘cleanses’, typically predicated on the idea of eliminating certain ‘toxins’ from the diet, or facilitating the process by which they are eliminated from the body by the inclusion of certain ingredients: 10. No tokens of the word ‘science’ or ‘doctor’ were oppositional within the selected SubReddits.

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(30) What are some tips for detox beginners for someone who isn’t particularly health conscious. I mean, again, I would say, cut out sugar dairy and gluten to start with and processed foods, and just try to eat lots of vegetables, good quality proteins, and just start slow. (The goop Podcast – “Gwyneth on detoxes, cleanses, and how she eats”)

This example implies that detoxing is a skill, and the phrase ‘start slow’ is again compatible with the wellness as a journey metaphor. The need for detoxing follows from the naturopathic view of a body that heals itself if and only if it is given the right conditions: (31) And there are a lot of Western doctors that think detox is bullshit and they think that the body detoxifies itself and we don’t need to do anything to aid in the detoxification process. And then, but there are the MDs who are looking at nutrition in a different way. (The goop Podcast – “Gwyneth on detoxes, cleanses, and how she eats”)

In this case, the body requires help to detox, which comes in the form of dietary changes. The self can be conceptualised also as an electronic device in need of a ‘reset’, which is a sub-metaphor of the body as machine metaphor: the self as a computer. (32) […] thats what a detox does it’s it’s a reset. It gets us to look within at kind of our elemental selves. The earth the air the water the fire […]. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”)

In such a case, the detox is followed by the perception of increased productivity and awareness, analogous to the effect of data clearing on a computer. This notion of being aware and ‘awake’ to the body is also suggested in the following example: (33) [detox is] a ritual that I …, I’m not going to say I look forward to it but when it’s done I always feel like it was very worthwhile, I think one of my favourite things about detox is I always feel super awake to my body. (The goop Podcast – “Gwyneth on detoxes, cleanses, and how she eats”)

Example (33) uses religious discourse in conceiving of the detox as a ritual and draws on notions of enhanced awareness resulting through dietary simplicity. There appears to be a relationship between wellness and religion on account of the integration of the ‘spirit’ into concepts of health, along with the potential similarities between strict ascetic detoxing and the spiritually cleansing fasts among medieval saints. The suppression of the body within this religious tradition results, for some individuals, in a sense of spiritual salubrity. However, the metaphors relating to health and religion in Early English are not evidenced in the wellness data; there is little evidence for sin as illness and spiritual cures as physical

Wellness

cures, and the metaphor spiritual health as physical health, needs to be revised. These are no longer metaphorical, but instead reflect the cultural schemas spiritual and mental health effects physical health and physical health effects spiritual and mental health. Rather than the suppression of physical desire leading to spiritual health, we see that the experience of ‘clean eating’ or ‘detoxing’ leads to ‘feeling amazing’ after a period of difficulty during the initial stages, ‘feeling awake to the body’, or ‘appreciating food’: (34) […] and I started feeling amazing by the end. (The goop Podcast – “Gwyneth on detoxes, cleanses, and how she eats”) (35) […] and you get to appreciate food so much more afterwards I feel like. (The goop Podcast – “Gwyneth on detoxes, cleanses, and how she eats”) (36) With that said I am now eating whole and clean along with supplements suggested by Dr. I am feeling so much better. (Clean Eating Reddit) (37) […] but I’ve learned how to avoid indulging every day and it has made food taste SO much better all around. Love the clean eating meals and when I have a cookie or something, I savor it and feel so complete and I don’t have to eat 10! (Clean Eating Reddit) (38) It’s addictive once you start because not only do you see results quicker than anything else ever, you FEEL BETTER. I can’t even stress what a different person you will feel like when you get to running on a super clean diet. (Clean Eating Reddit)

Given that spiritual and mental health effects physical health, for some members the process of asceticism leads to a feeling of physical health. On the other hand, since physical health effects spiritual and mental health we also see the reverse, where fasting seen as a scientifically necessary move towards preserving physical health can have the dual purpose of healing the body as well as promoting a feeling of spiritual wellbeing. (39) When I was doing lots of nutrition protocols with people for detoxing what I would see is that they would start to let go emotionally or mentally spiritually of so many different things. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (40) It’s equally important that we consider the health of the mind body and soul. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”)

The integration of the body and mind within this worldview is also implicit in the following use of the term ‘gut feeling’, which is a common idiom used to refer to an instinctive feeling about something. However, in this case both the literal and figurative meanings are brought out, with the feeling being ascribed to an imbal-

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ance in the gut. Through this a comment on the importance of gut health is made, as well as on the need to pay attention to one’s feelings and instincts: (41) And she said, with within a couple of days, “I was walking, I haven’t walked in years, and I got out of bed”. She just said, you know, “you saved my life. And why? Why didn’t anybody listen to me all these years” and we’re not trained to listen, we don’t actually realize you have a gut feeling. And it is actually coming from your gut. And we have to find out why you have that gut feeling. (The goop Podcast – “Is intermittent fasting the key to health?”)

In this example, the ‘gut feeling’ is part of a patient’s malaise that it is claimed conventional medicine was unable to identify; thus, the perceived failure of sciencebased medicine comes again from its lack of attention to ‘whole health’. Such an anecdote reinforces the schemas food is medicine, physical health effects spiritual and mental health, the self is composed of mind, body and spirit. By signalling that ‘medicine’ lacks these schemas, such anecdotes draw on individuals’ knowledge of cultural conceptualisations to the end that they become very persuasive and may encourage a distrust in the medical establishment ‘other’. The interconnectivity of these domains is a central feature of the concept of health as wellness. This idea comes up a couple of times in the sampled data from the Reddit communities, though it is not as prevalent as in goop, since only one contributor mentions ‘spirit’, and no one refers to the ‘soul’. (42) Get healthy, get lean, get toned, and get happy. Make a commitment to yourself. Don’t just lose weight. Gain control of your life, mind, body, and spirit. (Wellness Reddit)

There is however an extension of ‘detoxing’ from the body to the mind: (43) I have been able to recover faster and improve by practicing mental detox. (Detox Reddit)11

An aspect of the seemingly religious nature of wellness is the notion of ‘cleanliness’, which is often taken to be synonymous with ‘purity’ and antonymous to ‘dirt’ or objects that are ‘unclean’. Interestingly, this is not an accurate representation of ‘clean’ in the podcasts, since the idea of ‘dirty’ foods or ‘unclean’ eating was not found in the selected recordings, though the term ‘clean’ itself was very common. A phrase that was used several times was ‘clean up [one’s diet/a recipe]’, evoking more of a sense of sensible living. However, Reddit, which reflects everyday usage in people who may not be professionally associated with the movement,

11. Notably, the Detox sub-Reddit is primarily concerned with the elimination of alcohol and drugs from the body, as opposed to general environmental toxins as found in the other texts.

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does occasionally speak about other types of diet in more disparaging terms. We see for example one post referring to the ‘dirty dozen’, and another that considers the opposite of ‘clean’ eating to be ‘dirty’ or ‘unclean’: (44) only thing that works for me that I shop on Friday and lock my wallet into the safe box container with timer for 6.5 days = 6 clean days 1 dirty. (Clean Eating Reddit) (45) I lost 60 lbs eating clean 80–20. 80% clean 20% unclean. (Clean Eating Reddit)

There is also evidence for the division of food into ‘bad’ and ‘good’: (46) Finding more bad things: Bubbies pickles and even sauerkraut have chemicals. (Clean Eating Reddit) (47) […] You’ve been conditioned (as most of us have) to believe eating these crap foods are the normal way of life, and so once the huge change like you’ve done, it’s pretty alarming to the body as it becomes dependent on the salt, sugar, and bad fats that are abundant in the modern processed diet, and so there will be withdrawls …. (Clean Eating Reddit) (48) […] as long as youve cut out most bad carbs and sugars then you don’t have to worry as much as about fats. (Clean Eating Reddit)

Overall, the discourse of wellness does appear to encourage a binary categorisation of foods, and while that simplicity is in common with notions of religious purity, there is limited evidence in the Reddit posts for religious schemas underpinning wellness, or the integration of ‘spiritual’ health as a major part of wellness. According to Sharifian (2011: 7–8) in his ‘distributed model’ of cultural cognition, members of a cultural group may not necessarily share all elements of a cultural schema. In this instance, we see that the notion of spiritual health is not necessarily shared across the whole group. Certain other conceptualisations such as the cultural metaphors food as medicine and wellness as a journey are well represented across both data sources. Another conceptualisation that is very wellrepresented relates to the notion of toxins, which is part of the sociological concept of ‘Risk Society’ discussed by Beck (1992).

5.3 Toxins and ‘risk’ Douglas (1992) explains how cultures may differ in their responses to ill fortune, particularly with respect to the assigning of blame. She notes that in many European societies risk has replaced earlier models of blame, including, for example, worldviews in which a person may be held responsible on account of a moral failing. She argues that since many risks come from large corporate systems, the

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individual is less likely to be held accountable, rendering it a relatively ‘generous’ model (Douglas 1992: 16). Within cultural groups with a wellness conceptualisation of health, ‘risk society’ is an important cultural model that is compatible with some of the other schemas we have examined. To begin, we can see the rejection of food companies and government recommendations in the idea that many mainstream foods such as wheat flour are unhealthy. This is a movement coming out of the ‘counter culture’ of the 1960s and 1970s. In the naturopathic understanding of illness and healing in which the body heals itself, environmental toxins are the principal antagonists to this process, explaining why elimination diets to promote healing and health are considered so important. Thus, wellness is intimately related to ‘risk society’ with a high degree of schema overlap. The following examples from goop and Reddit pertain to this worldview: (49) […] throughout time our society has become more and more toxic I mean it’s been estimated that we have something in the order of 80000 different chemicals in the environment and every year close to 2500 new chemicals are introduced. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (50) And then we look at all the chemicals that are out there and try to figure out, first of all, what they are. (The goop Podcast – “How to avoid the chemicals that disrupt hormones”) (51) […] testing hair products for the presence of endocrine disrupting chemicals. (The goop Podcast – “How to avoid the chemicals that disrupt hormones”) (52) There’s really such a wide range of organs and systems in the bodies that are affected by chemicals. (The goop Podcast – “How to avoid the chemicals that disrupt hormones”) (53) […] we’re exposed to toxins. (The goop Podcast – “What we got wrong about nutrition”) (54) I agree like a very profound experience whether you’re framing it under trying to get rid of environmental toxins or you’re just taking a moment to really reframe your life. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (55) I mean they’re [chemicals] all out there in the environment so it’s [detox] a necessity. It’s no longer a luxury it’s truly something that we have to do to stabilise and sustain our health. (The goop Podcast – “Detox without deprivation”) (56) I’ve read that these could be signs that my body is detoxing from the gunk I’ve eaten. (Clean Eating Reddit) (57) I initially started bc once I learned how dangerous the chemicals in traditional food are. (Clean Eating Reddit)

Wellness

The following proposition schemas underpin the toxicity sub-model of ‘risk society’. The latter two incorporate naturopathy and risk. the environment contains many toxins many diseases are caused by a buildup of toxins many foods are toxic some foods are ‘clean’ and help to remove toxins the body will heal itself only if toxins are eliminated Notably, ‘chemical’ is practically synonymous with ‘toxin’ in this discourse, with no neutral usages or suggestions that there are ‘natural’ chemicals. They are eliminated either by restricting the diet and environmental exposure or by purging, which is suggestive of the ideal body as a container that can be cleaned or polluted. In common with early conceptions of purity and pollution is the notion that illness may follow from pollution, but the difference is that it is not spiritual moral pollution, but physical chemical pollution, and instead of the individual being to blame, it is corporations. In other words, some of the historically attested cultural schemas remain the same but when framed in terms of a different model of risk, they change in meaning. However, once a person is informed of this state of affairs, it also implicitly becomes their responsibility to follow the detox tenets in order to protect themselves, meaning that blame ultimately may come to be laid upon the ‘risky’ individual. Detoxing can be seen as a way for people to gain a sense of control over their health. As Beck explains, individuals within the ‘risk society’ become “incompetent in matters of their own affliction” (1992: 53, emphasis original), because the understanding, for example, of whether “DDT is contained in the tea or formaldehyde in the cake, and in what dose, remains outside the reach of their own knowledge just as much as does the question of whether and in what concentrations these substances have a long- or short-term deleterious effect” (1992: 53). This sense of control also links with the ‘countercultural’ approach to health we have seen, in which a loss of trust in the establishment is evident.

6.

Summary

The cultural conceptualisation of wellness, as evidenced in The goop Podcast and in the Clean Eating, Wellness, and Detox sub-Reddits is broadly split into three models, which I will term the whole health, detox, and countercultural models, each of which comprises the following proposition schemas:

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The ‘countercultural approach to science and medicine’ model conventional doctors do not accept new ideas scientific ideas are fixed science changes and is often wrong The ‘whole health’ model the self is composed of mind, body and spirit spiritual and mental health effects physical health physical health effects spiritual and mental health The ‘detox’ model the environment contains many toxins many diseases are caused by a buildup of toxins many foods are toxic some foods are ‘clean’ and help to remove toxins the body will heal itself only if toxins are eliminated

The ‘detox’ model in particular constitutes part of a wider model of ‘risk’ (Beck 1992), and is well-represented by both text types. The schema the body will heal itself only if toxins are eliminated rests on another more general medical schema derived from naturopathy which is the body heals itself. The ‘whole health’ model emphasises the importance of spiritual health, and is particularly prevalent in goop podcasts, as is the ‘countercultural’ model. wellness is also structured by several cultural metaphors: food as medicine wellness as a journey the body as a balanced system whole food as clean food These metaphors for the most part have a long history; the body as a balanced system can be seen in Galen’s humoural theory of medicine, as can food as medicine. wellness as a journey is part of the classic life is a journey metaphor and has implications for the conceptualisation of health and wellness insofar as it ceases to be merely a ‘destination’ within life’s ‘journey’ but can become a journey in itself. whole food as clean food is linked to the countercultural model, since clean comes to entail that which has not been altered by mainstream ‘technological’ or ‘scientific’ processes. In fact, foods that are literally dirtier in the sense of being unwashed come to be ‘cleaner’ within the worldview, as long as they remain ‘whole’.

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7.

Conclusion

wellness reflects one possible conceptualisation of health and represents a cultural model that is shared to a greater or lesser extent by individuals with interests in alternative medicine, spiritual health, and detoxing. This chapter has shown that wellness is structured by three cultural models and is far from homogenous. Some aspects of the models, such as the specific version of the journey metaphor, may be beneficial in allowing for more diverse health states and in the rejection of the overly binary ‘absence of illness’ conception of health described by Dolfman (1973). The perceived control over one’s health may also provide comfort to people experiencing illness. However, the effect of the countercultural approach to science and medicine as well as the oppositional discourse discussed earlier may cause some individuals to reject evidence-based medicine to their detriment, particularly when promoted by individuals sharing the same cultural models. We have seen examples in which narrative is used in such a way as to reinforce these cultural conceptualisations and to emphasise the absence of such schemas within the worldview of the ‘establishment’, resulting in a persuasive discourse. In cases in which such anecdotes promote the rejection of science-based medicine there is the potential for them to be unhelpful. While spiritual health is a component of the conceptualisation of ‘whole’ health, which incorporates the mind, body and spirit, its relationship to healthrelated conceptualisations is distinct from earlier models of health; though the Old English term for health could refer to spiritual health, there was not a sense in which physical health could lead to spiritual health. This essay has argued that Cultural Linguistics is well-equipped to account for a a complex model such as this and is able to reflect the internal diversity of conceptions of wellness that is in evidence.

References Atwood, Kimball (2003). Naturopathy: a critical appraisal. MedGenMed: Medscape General Medicine 5(4), pp. 1–8. [ÆCHom I] = Clemoes, Peter. (Ed.) (1997). Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, Text. EETS s.s.17. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [ÆCHom II] = Godden, Malcolm. (Ed.) (1979). Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, Text. EETS s.s. 5. London: Oxford University Press. Beck, Ulrich (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage: London. [Bede] = Miller, Thomas (Ed.) (1890–98). The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 4 vols., EETS o.s. 95, 96, 110, 111. London: Oxford University Press (reprinted: 1959–63).

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Bell, Rudolph (1985). Holy Anorexia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [BO] = Sedgefield, Walter (Ed.). (1899). King Alfred’s Old English Version of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Reprinted: Darmstadt 1968). Boorse, Christopher (1977). Health as a theoretical concept. Philosophy of Science 44, pp. 542–573. Davies, Mark (2013). Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries. [Available online at http://corpus2.byu.edu/glowbe/]. Dolfman, Michael (1973). The concept of health: An historic and analytic examination. Journal of School Health 43(8), pp. 491–497. Douglas, Mary (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Praeger. Douglas, Mary (1992). Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge. Dunn, Halbert (1959). What high-level wellness means. Canadian Journal of Public Health 50(11), pp. 447–457. Gregorie de Nysse, Michel Aubineau (trans.) (1966). Traité de la virginité. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Gregory of Nyssa, Virginia Callahan (trans.) (1967). Ascetical Works. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. Hardman, Isabel & Lara Prendergast (2015). Not just a fad: the dangerous reality of ‘clean eating’. Spectator online. 22 Aug 2015. [www.spectator.co.uk/2015/08/why-clean-eating-isworse-than-just-a-silly-fad/ access 01/03/2022]. Hermes, Britt (2018). An inside look at naturopathic medicine: A whistleblower’s deconstruction of its core principles. In: Allison Kaufman & James Kaufman (Eds.), Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science (pp. 137–170). Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Johnson, Mark (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. [Lch I (Herb)] = de Vriend, Hubert Jan (1984) 30–233. The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus, EETS 286 (London). Lobato, Emilio & Corinne Zimmerman (2018). The psychology of (pseudo) science: Cognitive, social, and cultural factors. In: Allison Kaufman & James Kaufman (Eds.), Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science (pp. 21–44). Cambridge (MA), MIT Press. Lockett, Leslie (2011). Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Logan, Dana (2017). The Lean Closet: Asceticism in Postindustrial Consumer Culture. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85(3), pp. 600–628. Nordenfelt, Lennart (1993). Concepts of health and their consequences for health care. Theoretical Medicine 14, pp. 277–285. Palmer, Gary (1996). Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Quinn, Naomi (1987). Convergent evidence for a cultural model of American marriage. In: Naomi Quinn & Dorothy Holland (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought (pp. 173–192). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rousseau, Signe (2015). The celebrity quick-fix: When good food meets bad science. Food, Culture & Society 18(2), pp. 265–287. Healey, Antonette diPaolo, Price Wilkin & Xin Xiang (2009). Dictionary of Old English web corpus. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. Sharifian, Farzad (2011). Cultural Conceptions and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Shtulman, Andrew & Joshua Valcarcel (2012). Scientific knowledge suppresses but does not supplant earlier intuitions. Cognition 124(2), pp. 209–215. Soler, Jean (1997). The semiotics of food in the Bible. In: Carole Counihan & Penny Van Esterik (Eds.), Food and Culture: A Reader (pp. 55–66). 3rd ed. 2012. New York: Routledge. Spoel, Philippa, Roma Harris & Flis Henwood (2012a). Healthy living: Metaphors we eat by? Present Tense 2(2), n.p. [www.presenttensejournal.org/wp–ontent/uploads/2012/10/Spoel .pdf]. Spoel, Philippa, Roma Harris & Flis Henwood (2012b). The moralization of healthy living: Burke’s rhetoric of rebirth and older adults’ accounts of healthy eating. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health. (9 April 2012), n.p. [hea.sagepub .com/content/early/2012/04/03/1363459312441009]. Tandoh, Ruby (2017). Bad fad – Ruby Tandoh on how clean eating turned toxic. The Guardian online. 23 Jan 2017. [www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/23/bad-fad-rubytandoh-on-how-clean-eating-turned-toxic access 01/03/2022]. Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Experience, Evidence, and Sense: The Hidden Cultural Legacy of English. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL) Challenging the cultural (re)production of Otherness Paola Giorgis Cultural Linguistics analyses the relation between language and cultural conceptualizations, studying how linguistic interactions influence the development of cultural conceptualizations, and, at the same time, how language structure and use draw on and reflect cultural conceptualizations (Palmer 1996; Sharifian and Palmer 2007; Sharifian 2011, 2017). Yet, if cultural conceptualizations are encoded and embodied in language, they are by no means neutral or accidental. Therefore, I would add a critical perspective to Cultural Linguistics by speaking of ‘Critical Cultural Linguistics’ to sustain the non-neutrality of the conceptualizations that define our experiences, and to foreground how cultural conceptualizations are shaped by contexts, conditions, power relations, unequal access to cultural and natural resources, as well as by socio-cultural and historical factors (Giorgis 2017). I will examine the potential of the Critical Cultural Linguistics paradigm from an interdisciplinary perspective, analysing some examples of how language conceptualizes and (re)produces Otherness and the much too short step between the cultural conceptualization of the Other and the cultural conceptualization of the Enemy. After having examined cases from Literature, the Media, and studies on Critical Linguistics, I will argue that a critical approach to foreign languages and foreign language education can problematize the conceptualization of Otherness. To ground such an argument, I will draw on my experience as a practitioner describing a classroom activity which uses the foreignness that foreign languages foreground to reflect on pre-given assumptions on languages and cultures – one’s own included. The outcome of this activity put into evidence in which way Critical Cultural Linguistics can become a very promising field for both critical (foreign) language education and critical intercultural communication. Keywords: Critical Cultural Linguistics, Otherness (the construction of ), intercultural education, foreign-language education

https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.07gio © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

1.

The context/s: Who is the Other?

In Italy, when children are fussing and don’t want to do what they are told, there is a sentence that parents often say: “Se non ti comporti bene – se non vai subito a letto, se non finisci la tua cena, ecc. – vado a chiamare l’uomo nero” [‘If you don’t behave well – or go to bed immediately, finish your meal, etc. – I’ll go and call the Black Man’]. In the Italian folklore l’uomo nero, the Black Man, is an evil figure: he can be half demon half human, he can be wearing black clothes, but in all representations he is, unmistakably, black; in nursery rhymes and lullabies, the Black Man is depicted as a threatening figure who takes children away from their parents, sometimes also to feed on them. Let’s move to another continent. Raul Pantaleo is an architect who builds hospitals in several areas of the world working for Emergency (www.emergency.it), an Italian NGO which offers free and quality health care to people affected by war and poverty, and affirms human rights through direct action. Some years ago, Raul was building a hospital in Sudan. At the end of a long day of work, he was drinking karkadé [a flower herbal tea] with Elias, the construction foreman, when the man suddenly confided to him that Sudanese mothers threaten their kids by saying: “If you don’t behave well, I’ll go and call the White Man. So, beware of the White Man!”. Therefore, when Elias, as a kid, first saw a white man, he ran away in terror and tears (Pantaleo 2007: 61–62). Though reversed, here we can see the same pattern: the cultural conceptualization of the Other as a dangerous and evil figure. Yet, depending on where/by whom/from which perspective/under which conditions the sentence is uttered, the scaring figure is conceptualized either as black or white. Indeed, “being essentially about social relationships, Otherness depends on context, situational position and time” (Praxmarer 2014–2016, online reference). All these elements converge into the core issue of who has the power to define the Other as such: [T]hree mobility revolutions of the past decades (human migrations, new information and communication technologies and flows, and globalizing markets) have destroyed relatively stable and territorialized figures of the Other and created new, transient, ever changing and space-independent figures, such as the refugee, the immigrant, the migrant labourer, the ‘global nomad’, but also the ubiquitous (inner) enemy or terrorist. (ibidem)

If Otherness “is constitutively and inexorably linked with Sameness and Self – no conceptualization of the Other (‘Them’) is possible without a conceptualization of Same and Self (‘Us’)” (ibidem), the point is who can decide and from which positioning who is ‘Us’ (the in-group) and who is ‘Them’ (the out-group).

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Being constitutive of the relationship within and between individual and collective identities, the construct – and the construction of Otherness – has been widely explored and analysed from several different perspectives and by many disciplines, notably by psychological and anthropological studies which, following their main paradigms, have respectively considered what defines Otherness as related to the Self or as the cultural Other. The focus of this contribution, though, is on the relationship between Otherness and language, and in particular on how language can create or problematize Otherness. And, as one of the most prominent experiences of Otherness is the encounter with an-other language, I will here advance that a critical approach to the experience of foreign languages and foreign language education can problematize cultural conceptualizations of others which are ordinarily taken for granted – as well those regarding the Self, too.

2.

The framework: Cultural Linguistics and Critical Cultural Linguistics “Power, government, war, law, punishment, and a thousand other things, had no terms wherein that language could express them, which made the Difficulty almost insuperable, to give my Master any Conception of what I meant” (Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels)

Encountering the civilized and much too rational society of the Houuyhnhnms, Lemuel Gulliver finds it impossible to explain to his Master the meaning of some words. For example, he notices that they have no names to designate ‘lie’, ‘power’, ‘war’ or ‘pride’: the Houuyhnhnms cannot conceptualize what these words mean because they don’t lie, don’t exercise power, don’t make wars, and have no experience of the vice of pride. Gulliver also notes that the Houuyhnhnms have no terms to express anything that is evil – except for those needed to describe the despicable qualities of the vile Yahoos. While showing us Gulliver’s helpless effort in such endeavour, Jonathan Swift is in reality compelling us to notice that while the Houuyhnhnms don’t need such words, we have execrably built entire civilizations on them. As all throughout his novel Gulliver’s Travels, Swift speaks of the foreigner to unveil the familiar: Swift’s game apparently played on Gulliver’s back is meant to show us the dark mirror of our own cultures, presumptions and certainties, an approach that will be much later explored by Critical Anthropology. To proceed in such a reverse account, Swift rejoices in putting his gullible protagonist in uncomfortable situations, and often obliges him to understand the societies he visits through their languages, in turn obliging the reader to reflect critically on languages and cultures.

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

Indeed, Swift’s interest in the link between language and culture emerges well before Von Humboldt, Boas, and Sapir and Whorf, who, in different ways, sustain the mutual influence of language and culture in shaping the word-world link. The words we need to describe the world around us tell us about our own view of the world, and vice versa, as it is the world around us that shapes the words we need to experience, describe and make sense of it. When, in Aboriginal English, an Aborigine says: “This land is me”, we are not hearing a grammar mistake (the personal pronoun object instead of the possessive) or a figurative use of language, but we are presented with a different worldview which considers humans and the earth as one being, and their relation as based on identity (“I am the land”) rather than on possession (“I own the land”). The vocabulary of a language reflects the physical and social environment: Cultural Linguistics examines the relation between language, culture and conceptualizations (Palmer 1996; Sharifian & Palmer 2007; Sharifian 2017). Drawing from the long tradition of Boasian Linguistics and Linguistic Ethnography, Cultural Linguistics sustains the fundamental role of culture in shaping the language, which in turn shapes the way in which we conceptualize experience. Analysing how cultural conceptualizations affect language and language interactions, Cultural Linguistics has proved to be particularly effective in studying cases of intercultural communication (and miscommunication), showing that, besides linguistic and communicative competence, we should also develop metacultural competence to understand how different speakers conceptualize experience in different languages (Sharifian 2013). Yet, if cultural conceptualizations are encoded and embodied in language, they are by no means neutral or accidental. Our conceptualizations do not come ‘naturally’, but are rather determined and produced by cultural, social, political processes which frame and impact on our experience of the world, of ourselves and of others. Therefore, I would add a critical perspective to Cultural Linguistics by speaking of ‘Critical Cultural Linguistics’ to sustain the non-neutrality of the conceptualizations that define our experiences, and to foreground how cultural conceptualizations are shaped by contexts, conditions, power relations, unequal access to cultural and natural resources, as well as by socio-cultural and historical factors (Giorgis 2017). Therefore, I also foster that studies within the perspective of Critical Cultural Linguistics can cast a light on what lies behind cultural conceptualizations and on how language can (re)produce or challenge them. Being critical, Critical Cultural Linguistics should consider interdisciplinarity as one of its most prominent features, as it is only by interconnecting elements and perspectives, as well as research and practices, that phenomena can be read in their complexity. To evidence such stances, I will discuss some examples of how language conceptualizes and (re)produces Otherness from an interdisciplinary point

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of view analysing several examples from different fields and contexts. Drawing on my experience as a practitioner, I will present a classroom activity which uses the foreignness that foreign languages foregrounds as a critical and intercultural experience to reflect on pre-given assumptions on cultural conceptualizations regarding not just the Other, but the Same, too.

3.

The role of language in the cultural conceptualization of the Other as the enemy “The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so different things” “The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all”. (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass)

From the cultural conceptualization of the Other to the cultural conceptualization of the Enemy there is only a small step. History and contemporary events provide hundreds of examples, as well as reversions: yesterday’s friends (‘Us’) can become today’s enemies (‘Them’), as for example in the case of the Western representations of the Soviets during World War II, when they were portrayed as endowed with all kinds of good qualities, and the representations of the Soviets after World War II, when they were depicted as the source and the perpetrators of every possible evil. Other examples come from two epitomical books, Victor Klemperer’s LTI – Linguae Tertii Imperii – The Language of the Third Reich [1947], (2000), and George Orwell’s 1984 [1949], (2003). They both discuss how totalitarian systems (be it real, as in Klemperer, or fictional, as in Orwell) use language, creating new words or twisting the old ones to manipulate and frame people’s minds and feelings as well as their apprehension and reading of reality, with the consequence that such narratives turn into actual deeds – from private acts of aggression to organized mass crimes. While for Klemperer keeping a diary to analyse the language of the Third Reich was, in his own words, “an act of self-defence” (2000 [1947]: 8) at a time when he, a Jewish university professor in Nazi Germany, was being deprived of everything – his job, his house, his dignity, Orwell’s novel is a desperate warning about the risks of an all-encompassing totalitarianism of the future. There are indeed striking similarities between the two works, as the linguistic mechanisms they unveil are very much the same, such as: the repetition of words used as slogans; the cutting down and the simplification of words and concepts; the utilization of euphemisms, contractions and abbreviations; the rewriting of geography and history to fit the new ideology; the appeal to emotions and

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sentimentalism to replace knowledge with faith; the manipulation of the media and the propaganda machine; the creation of new words, or the reversal of the meaning of the old ones (Giorgis 2018b). Yet, not only totalitarian systems use language in such a way, since also democracies deploy similar strategies. The comparison between how the Jews were depicted during the Italian Fascist Regime and how immigrants are portrayed in Italian contemporary political and public debate presents disturbing analogies. Sentences such as “Gli ebrei considerano l’Italia come un albergo” [The Jews consider Italy as a hotel] (Gli ebrei bàrano, Il Tevere, 22–23 November, 1937; in Pezzetti and Berger 2017: 124) and “Troppi ebrei circolano ancora in Italia, gavazzano e s’impinguano nei luoghi di villeggiatura” [Too many Jews still ramble around in Italy, feasting and fattening in holiday resorts] (Erasmo, Spunti ed appunti, Combattere, Bolzano, 03 November, 1941; ibidem: 127) sound not too far from what Matteo Salvini, the former Italian Interior Minister (2018–2019), repeatedly declared on several public occasions (June 2, June 3, November 29, 2018, to name just a few): “Per i migranti la pacchia è finita. È ora di fare le valigie” [For the migrants the fun is over. Time to pack up]. Such words paint a clearly delineated picture: before Salvini’s macho ministry, the migrants had been enjoying a sort of perpetual holiday in Italy, benefiting from privileges and opportunities denied to the Italians. We should indeed consider the use of the word ‘pacchia’ in this context. In Italian, pacchia is not only connected with the idea of ‘fun’, but also with the idea of getting ‘a free and easy ride’ to one’s goals – concepts which by no means can be associated to the migrants’ experience. The sums the migrants have to pay to human traffickers; the internment in the detention camps in Libya; the perilously crossing of the Mediterranean Sea; the exploitation by gang masters or by criminal groups; the deprivation of food, shelter and dignity: these are just few of the constituents which mark the migrants’ experience. Therefore, in such an utterance there is a strategic subversion and redefinition of the word and the concept of pacchia which is mobilized (and capitalized) to maliciously appeal to the people’s worst instincts.1 The not so hidden sub-text is that while the Italians are struggling to find a job or working hard to earn a living, the migrants arriving in Italy are a privileged social group which is offered all sorts of benefits. The fact 1. Two Italian linguists, Giuseppe Antonelli and Luca Serianni, have analyzed the Newspeak of Italian contemporary political debate devising some recurring strategies such as the use of localisms, dialects, swearwords and even errors, employed with the purpose to show the public opinion that politicians do not belong to an élite, but that they are ordinary people speaking the colloquial language of ordinary people. Antonelli has also coined the word ‘emologismi’ [emologisms] to indicate new words or words whose meaning is subverted in order to create an immediate irrational and emotional response (in Minardi, S., L’Espresso, 18 November, 2018, n. 47: 25).

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that the economic crisis has nothing to do with migrants but rather with neoliberalism (“in many respects the voice of global capitalism”, Holborow 2016) in all its declinations – great finance speculations, delocalization, exploitation of people and of the environment – is rarely, if ever, taken into consideration in the general public discourse. Yet, such a convenient and strategic shortcut for problems is not exclusively Italian. Also, the phenomena of new populisms, the resurgence of nationalisms and even of fascism2 have become global, displaying similar characteristics wherever they emerge: they create and play on people’s fear to justify a severe limitation of rights and an increase of emergency and ‘security’ measures, and fuel on people’s discontent and dissatisfaction to divert them on an easy target, the Other, who can easily be turned into the Enemy, the scapegoat of all evils and problems. Words are therefore by no means neutral in creating conceptualizations and narratives of the Other. Yet, if some politicians use such patterns3 to secure their power by creating consent, they are certainly not alone in playing this game. All sorts of media, both traditional and social, vastly contribute to creating and reinforcing such narratives. When speaking of the migrants, they publish inflammatory headlines or comments using metaphors picked up from the semantic fields of war, invasion and emergency (“Emergency landings continue”; “Invasion of illegal aliens”) or from the vocabulary connected to the animal or the biological field (“Police have herded the migrants…”; “The migrants are swarming …”; “Immigrants are like a spreading disease”). They also depict all migrants as terrorists or define the nation as a ’container’ which is ‘flooded’ by newcomers. In all these examples,4 we are witnessing the deliberate construction of a discourse which installs fear of the Other and, at the same time, dehumanizes him/her with

2. Tracking the lines of the characteristics of what he called ‘Ur-Fascism’, Umberto Eco thus wrote in 1995: “Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. This is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of the lower social groups” (New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995 issue). 3. A clear-cut comment which offers a counter-narrative to such discourses came from a quite unexpected figure. Not from a radical activist or an academic, but from former Bay Watch star Pamela Anderson who, worried for what she calls “a new form of fascism” in Italy, on her Twitter feed on December 5, 2018 wrote: “The solution is not more Macron or more Salvini, they actually need each other and reinforce each other, the solution can only be a Pan-European awakening across borders and nationalities, which would be able to tackle the deep economic, social and ecological crisis of Europe today”. 4. These examples are all part of a linguistic corpus research on the recurring negative topoi on migrants presented by Monika Reif at CLIC-LAUD Conference, Landau, July 2018 (see Reif this volume).

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

the intent to desensitize public opinion and direct their anxieties and discontent against a specific category of individuals. People can be easily indoctrinated to despise and hate certain groups, and as Hannah Arendt (1963) poignantly showed, even the most ordinary person can be induced to perpetrate hideous mass crimes. It is only a short step from words to deeds, as several recent studies have also shown (e.g., Müller and Schwarz 2018), documenting the increase of hate crimes following the proliferation of hate speech. Therefore, how words are used and manipulated is the key factor which creates specific narratives with the power to shape the individuals’ representation and interpretation of reality. Another example of how language can create the enemy by de-humanizing the Other comes from a speech delivered by a veteran of the British Army at the Annual Meeting of the Veterans for Peace.5 The young man overtly declares that language plays a fundamental role in military training, for example through the use of words which de-humanize the person. This young soldier says that, in Afghanistan, he did not think he was shooting at a person or at a family, but at a ‘target’. Through a substitution of words (‘target’ instead of ‘person’), human beings are deprived of their humanity, becoming things, targets to aim at. Such strategic linguistic devices recall the Nazi manipulation of language which used a deliberate ‘scientification’ of words, as for example when men, women and children arriving in the concentration camps were deprived of their humanity to be turned into numbers in the vast bureaucratic system of mass murder; or when the Fascist propaganda used a term taken from the medical jargon to define Jews as ‘un pericolo biologico’ [a biological hazard], an infection which was contaminating and corrupting the pure Italian race. In all these cases, terms taken from the apparently neutral and objective terminology of exact sciences – such as the natural sciences, mathematics, medicine and the like – are used to deprive humans of their humanity and reduce human beings to targets, numbers, or parasites in order to justify and even celebrate acts of oppression, violence and murder against them. Besides the use of neutralized or para-scientific words, democracies often use euphemisms to fondle and confound public opinion, edulcorating meanings to hide hard facts and disturbing truths. A rather interesting example comes, again, from the military context. In Italy, military missions are called ‘Missioni di Pace’ [Missions of Peace] because Article 11 of the Italian Constitution (significantly 5. The specific video I discuss here, which had been online been until July 2018, has now apparently been removed. Here are the references and the link to the video I refer to: Sharrocks, W. (2016). Construction of the Enemy. Speech delivered at The Veterans for Peace UK Annual Gathering, London, Dec. 2016 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzMD5EcaqsI]. There are though many other similar videos at the link of the Veterans for Peace UK: http://vfpuk.org/.

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signed after World War II) explicitly declares that Italy rejects war as a way to solve international conflicts. Therefore, while in US and UK newspapers the military presence of their armies in, for example, Afghanistan was openly defined as a ‘military mission’, the presence of Italian military troops in the same area was represented in the Italian media more like a mission of good will enacted by people who happen to wear a uniform, carry guns and drive on tanks. Different words create different narratives of the same scenario, causing surreal effects in every reader who ventured to open an English and an Italian newspaper reporting the same event. Indeed, the manipulation of language has proved to serve power and its multifold agendas on many occasions and in many directions throughout history. As pointed out well in Monica Heller and Bonnie McElhinny’s (2017) historical account of how language ideologies have contributed to creating inequalities and stigmatizing difference throughout the centuries, “ideas about language play a central role in the making of social difference and social inequality” (2017: 2). The point is therefore to understand how some languages and language ideologies “become hegemonic and others marginalized and erased” (ibidem: 8) and “why and when certain ideas happen, with an explicit argument that ideas also change because material and symbolic conditions for making their meaning and value change” (ibidem: 10; italics in the original). The evidence that languages are affected by ideologies and historically determined can be seen in the current war on Ukraine. In a recent podcast by The Guardian (Dec. 9, 2022), Hannah Moore and Charlotte Higgins, the chief culture writer of the newspaper, discuss how Putin’s war on Ukraine is also a war against Ukranian culture. Putin claims that Ukraine is part of Russia not only in terms of territory, but also of culture and language. Stealing pieces of arts and precious icons, and bombing libraries are war-tactics to annihilate Ukraine people by annihilating their culture. Therefore, Ukranian artists, musicians, video makers, and writers see their works as weapons of resistance against the aggression. Language plays a fundamental role in this act of resistance and defiance: poetry in particular is experiencing a vast production in the country, and poets are writing poems in Ukranian to preserve their language but also as an occasion to decolonize completely from Russian. And many of those who can speak Russian are now refusing to use this language which they associate to the language of aggression, violence and terror. The interweawing of ideology and historical conditions is very clear when observed through the lens of how foreign languages and foreign language education are considered within a specific country and in a determined period of history. Indeed, observing things from an-other perspective or, even better, from several other perspectives, is always a good exercise to destabilize one’s certainties

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

and visualize better what lies inside the folds of discourses and processes that are taken for granted. This is precisely the purpose of this contribution: observing the object ‘language’ from the apparently lateral angle of foreign languages and foreign language education to unveil how language and language ideologies contribute to the construction, the conceptualization and the representation of Otherness. The perspective of foreign languages can help devise which are the mechanisms underlying such processes, posing the fundamental questions of who, on which grounds, from which positioning and for which purposes has the power to define the Other as such and as the ‘foreigner’ – and, consequently, her/ his language as a ‘foreign language’. For example, the imposition of a monolingual policy by totalitarian systems is connected to the construction of a national identity as opposed to other national identities. An instance is that of the Nazis, who spoke of bilingualism as ‘mercenary relativism’ and considered bi- or plurilingual individuals as ambiguous and immoral since they can change their principles and values just like they can change their language (Pavlenko 2006: 3). Yet, depending on whether the foreign language stems from the centres of power or from its periphery, it may be strictly forbidden or brutally imposed: to ‘civilize’ the natives as in the case of colonialism, or to annihilate other national languages and cultures in order to reinforce the centrality of the state, as in the case of the former USSR. In both cases, the repression or the imposition of the foreign language are two sides of the same coin as they converge in the monolingual ideology which is used as a political weapon, thus showing that it really depends from which perspective one has the power to observe/conceptualise/represent ‘foreignness’, the ‘foreign language’, and the ‘foreigner’ as such. In her study on the relationship between national identities and foreign language education policies and practices, Aneta Pavlenko (2003) evidenced how national identity ideologies and socio-political allegiances define and impact on how foreign languages are viewed, taught and learnt. She analysed texts and memoirs to show how foreign language education can be discarded as ‘teaching the language of the Enemy’, as in the case of German in the US on the verge of (and post) World War I, or imposed as the language of the colonizer or the political ally (e.g., Russian in former Eastern European countries after World War II). Bringing forth several documents, Pavlenko demonstrates how the anti-German sentiment of the early 20th century together with American isolationism and nationalism impacted on foreign language ideologies and practices banishing bilingual instruction from most schools, while Russian and Soviet ideology imposed on students of the Eastern countries sometimes incited them to develop critical resistance. As Pavlenko observes when comparing stances toward ‘languages of the enemy’ taken in in the US and the USSR during different time periods,

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we can see that there is more than one way in which such languages can be treated: in some contexts, students are prohibited or at least discouraged to learn the language of the perceived ‘enemy’, and in others they are encouraged to do so. (Pavlenko 2003: 326)

As seen above, both prohibition and imposition involve coercion. Yet, as Gramsci pointed out, there is another route to domination besides coercion – that is consent, which in turn is never entirely spontaneous, as it is a product of economic and socio-political processes. In the last decades, the English language can be taken as a good example of a language whose spread has been moving in-between coercion and consent. As the global language of late capitalism and neoliberalism, it has imposed its own rules (e.g., it has globally colonized the vocabulary of finance, as well as locally renamed all Houssems and Lalis who, from Tunisia and India, have to answer from the call centres as James and Sarah), but it has also represented the perfect example of ‘soft power’ (another way to name ‘consent’ in a non-overtly coercive way) in the creation and standardization of global desires, consumptions and must-haves, sometimes even favouring some forms of empowerment and upward mobility (Sharifian 2009). In the last decades, the manifold manifestations and declinations of the English language have triggered hundreds of studies which examine the link between English, globalization, and power. Some studies advance that precisely because of its global spread English can support projects of mutual understanding between people (Birch and Nasser 2017), or develop counter discourses through critical awareness on language and power (Pennycook 1994); others distinctly denounce its connection with power ideologies, domination and neo-colonialism (Fairclough 1989; Phillipson 1992), in particular when implicated in the dissemination of English via the multinational enterprise of TESOL – Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (Luke 2004; Ramanathan and Morgan 2009). In-between these polarized positions, there are the considerations of those who observe the pluralization of English as a de facto phenomenon that has indeed to be analysed critically, but, at the same time, cannot be dismissed a priori: an ideological opposition to English as the tout court language of power and domination can produce the opposite effect of what it aims to contrast, leading to further marginalization of the most disadvantaged (Luke 2004) and, given the expanded community of users, possibly undermining the possibility of developing critical and insurgent knowledge (Pennycook 1994). Further strands are the studies examining English as a Lingua Franca which, being a language (predominantly) spoken by non-native speakers with different mother tongues and different cultures, definitively moves away from the paradigm ‘one nation = one language = one culture’ and from the construct of ‘nativeness’. English as a Lingua

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

Franca then critically addresses language and language ideologies from the perspective of the plurality of uses and users, rather than from that of the adherence to a specific normative standard of the language (Seidlhofer 2004; Dewey 2007; Baker 2017). Yet, far from pretending to be the magic solution to equal communications across the globe, precisely because it is a language favouring interactions between non-native speakers, English as a Lingua Franca overtly exposes sociocultural disparities and different statuses of power which particularly emerge in asymmetrical relations as, for example, those between refugees and Italian customs officers (Guido 2008). As well evidenced by a critical approach to the paradigm of English as a Lingua Franca, Otherness is not wiped out by the use of the ‘same’ language, as differences meaningfully haul from one language to another (and, incidentally, within one single language too), openly foregrounding to which extent Otherness is defined by power relations, as well as constructed and situated. Within such a framework, it is then relevant to examine how a critical approach to foreign languages and foreign language education can instill a critical vision in the essentialized and stereotypized construction of Otherness.

4.

The role of foreign languages and foreign language education in problematizing and challenging the cultural conceptualization of Otherness Foreign, adj.: Belonging to another and inferior country. Foreigner, n.: A villain regarded with various and varying degrees of toleration, according to his conformity to the eternal standard of our conceit and the shifting one of our interests. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary)

As seen above, language is by no means neutral in (re)producing cultural conceptualizations and narratives on Otherness. Yes, it can also play a role in problematizing and challenging such conceptualizations and narratives, for example through a critical approach to one of the most evident and prominent experiences of Otherness: an-other language. If, according to Pavlenko (2003), foreign languages and foreign language education can serve ideologies to construct the Other (and the Other as the Enemy) and reinforce stereotypes, a critical approach to foreign language education can do the opposite, working in the direction of problematizing Otherness and stereotyped conceptualizations of Otherness. I take stereotypes as conceptualized generalizations assumed to apply to all members of a specific social category (Pierik 2004). Such generalizations are

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based on ascription – when defined by others – and inscription – when selfdefined. While some specific attributes (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.) “generate categories whose membership is not chosen deliberately” (2004: 537), thus impacting on the agency of self-definition; at the same time, “as individuals, persons experience the effects of processes of ascription because they are not judged on their individual character and behaviour, but on their membership in a category” (ibidem; italics in original). Moreover, stereotypes are usually second-hand opinions – you do not meet the group personally. I remember one of my former students, Leonardo, who provocatively declared himself a racist. Quite significantly, he himself came from a mixed background, but he claimed that the ‘Italian race’ was superior to all others. When confronted with the fact that the Italian race (or any) does not simply exist, he insisted by saying that in any case other populations were inferior to the Italians. During the breaks, he was always coupling, smoking and listening to hip hop music with Ahmed, a young man who came from Morocco, and they often met outside of school too. When invited to reflect on how he could combine the evidence of his affection to Ahmed with his racist claims, Leonardo immediately answered: “Ah, but Ahmed is my friend!”.6 By having met Ahmed personally and developed a relationship with him, Leonardo ascribed him to the category of ‘friends’ rather than to the one of ‘the Other’. This example shows that we always meet individuals rather than cultures, evidence that has be kept in mind and highlighted, in particular by teachers and educators, in the endeavour to confront stereotyped, stigmatized or folklorized7 visions of the Other. One of the most relevant (and dangerous) characteristics of stereotypes is that they are invisible. We take for granted, or assume as an undisputed and undisputable truth what, at its best, is a simplified and partial reading of complex stories, and at its worst a deliberate construction to perpetuate discrimination,

6. Incidentally, such a contradiction has also been evidences by one Italian rapper, Salmo, who is vastly appreciated by many young people such as Leonardo and Ahmed. In one of his latest hits, 90 minutes, in which he describes contemporary Italy in bitter tones, Salmo writes: “Ehi ehi, questa è l’Italia, è una mente contorta/Chiudi la bocca o ti levan la scorta/ Informazione, sai, qui non informa/ I razzisti che ascoltano hip hop/ Qualcosa non torna” [Hey, hey, this is Italy, a twisted mind/ Shut your mouth or they withdraw your security escort/ Information, you know, here does not inform/ Racists listen to hip hop/ Something doesn’t add up]. 7. It has to be noted that, though performed with the best of intentions, some intercultural modules risk to fall in the same pattern they aim to contrast, as for example, celebrating diversities without addressing how, by whom, from which grounds and for which purposes ‘diversity’ is defined and (re)produced.

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

prejudice and injustice.8 And, of course, the most invisible stereotypes are the ones that regard the ‘group’ or ‘social category’ we belong to or associate with ourselves.

4.1 An activity9 conducted in class The classroom activity I will illustrate in this section was to get students to reflect upon the question of how Otherness is constructed, conceptualized, represented and disseminated. The activity was part of an interdisciplinary project aimed at developing intercultural awareness in the students as part of the process of becoming ‘citizens of the world’ – individuals who are conscious of all the diversities which constitute our common world, of the challenges and the opportunities that these diversities bring along, and of how we can deal with them. I decided to develop my part of the project from the intercultural perspective of approaching Otherness and Diversity from within, that is starting from a reflection upon one’s own Otherness and Diversity. The class in which I conducted this activity was composed of 21 students, aged between 18 and 20, and coming from different linguacultural backgrounds – from different Italian regions and from Morocco, Egypt and Eastern Europe. Besides their respective national languages, the students with immigrant background spoke native-like Italian too, having attended their school path in Italy since an early age. The activity was carried out in English, a foreign language to all students involved, and developed in the course of several lessons. During the unfolding of the activity, I proposed a series of questions for the students to reflect upon, and encouraged them to bring forth questions of their own, as the activity was not aimed at offering answers, but rather at eliciting questions and doubts, and at problematizing the taken-for-granted. The activity was divided into several steps, and included watching some videos, beginning with the TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story” (2009) by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie, who, swinging between humour and gravity, presents several personal experiences – from children’s literature to peo8. It is worth mentioning that stereotypes are not, per se, negative. According to the Social Cognition Theory, we actually need them as “a functional cognitive device by means of which we systematize our social environment, creating distinct and apparently homogeneous categories” (Kristiansen 2001: 137). The problem arises when, instead of considering stereotypes as socially relative, situated, and partial constructs, we take them as all-encompassing features of a determined social group, and mobilize them to, e.g., trace hierarchical borders between ‘Us’ (the in-group) and ‘Them’ (the out-group). I am grateful to the comment of the anonymous reviewer who allowed me to discuss this perspective. 9. This part is an adaptation of extended versions already published in Giorgis (2018a) and Giorgis (2018b).

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ple’s preassumptions – which exemplify how stereotypes have accompanied her all her life. The video triggered reflections and discussions on what can be the ‘dangers’ of attributing a ‘single story’ to someone, and while discussing we started to realize that by framing the others into a single narrative, we not only lose their multiplicity but ours as well. Such considerations led us to develop the next step, ‘Multiple Me’. I elicited the students’ reflections on how their individual identity profiles change according to the situation, the context, the interlocutors (age, gender, ethnicity, etc.), the language used, the expectations, etc., so that little by little some core questions emerged: how many identities and cultures do we belong to/ affiliate with? How do we perceive or represent our own identity, as well as others’, according to the language we use? Some examples were brought forth, as for example those of a girl who reflected on how she perceived herself as different, and was differently perceived, according to whether she was with her family, with her boyfriend and with her friends – and depending on which friends she was with. Another girl said she felt different when she was speaking in standard Italian with her friends and in a local Italian dialect with her grandparents: she perceived both varieties as ‘warm’, as they represented affectionate links but, at the same time, she realized that they expressed different forms of affections, resulting in a different expression of herself – casual with her friends, and both respectful and protective with her grandparents. We were then ready to move on to the next step, which got deeper in the reflection on the stereotypes, observing how ‘others’ see ‘us’, how ‘we’ see ‘the others’, and how stereotypes are created and disseminated by the media. As the most invisible stereotypes are those which regard the group we belong to or associate with, I decided to work on stereotypes per via negativa, that is to track the path from the opposite end. Thus, I did not start to address Otherness from the perspective of ‘the Other’, the un-familiar, but from the perspective of the familiar, showing the students several videos of stereotypes on ‘the Italians’. Here are some of the stereotypes we pinpointed from the videos: ‘the Italians’ always wear stylish clothes and like to exhibit fashion brands; they are always loud and late; they always drink espresso or red wine; they always eat spaghetti or pizza; they always drive crazily and park even worse; they always gesticulate; etc. While watching these videos, the students began to feel uneasy, noticing that the use of the generic and general word ‘Italians’ did not fit with their many different attitudes, origins and affiliations, and overtly expressed their dissent: “I am not like that!”, “This is not me!”, etc. We therefore began to reflect upon the question of what the word ‘Italian’ means: what does it mean to be Italian? To speak Italian? To be born in Italy? Children of immigrants who were born in Italy and speak Italian are not legally considered as Italian citizens, while people whose Italian origins reach far back, who were born and live abroad, and cannot speak a

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

word of Italian, are.10 Is there something else that can define ‘the Italian’ as such? Due to its long history of invasions and migrations, Italy presents indeed a highly heterogeneous population in terms of languages, dialects, physical features, customs, cultures, and attitudes. We then began discussing that if those inconsistencies emerged so clearly when considering ‘Italian’ as a general category, the same could happen when applying similar general categories to the others, as stereotypes do not consider individual differences, personal attitudes, characteristics or tastes, which may have little or nothing to do with the national or ethnic belonging – the favourite dish of a girl from Romania was, for example, chicken curry, a taste which is linked neither to her national origins nor to her Italian background. The discussion went on and it was very vibrant and participated, and it critically evidenced how stereotypes tell just one part of the complex story of individuals, so that we were ready to continue with the next step and watch a video on how the Other is stereotyped. In the following lesson, we watched a silent video of a young black man who, on St. Valentine’s Day, walks through Milan with a bunch of roses in his hands. He passes along several couples, and they all make a gesture of refusal. He enters a restaurant, and both the waiter and a customer make the same gesture. At the end, the young man finally reaches a table where a girl is waiting for him, and he gives her the roses, making us realize that he is not a flower vendor, but a man who is offering roses to his lover. The video plays on the subversion of our imagined expectations on the protagonist, the context, and the action, and by subverting our expectations and beliefs it exposes our conceptualized stereotype of the young man – he is black with a bunch of flowers = he is a flower vendor, not a man in love. We worked a lot with students on discussing how cultural generalizations of Otherness can lead to viewing the others as compact and static groups, without considering the manifold dynamic and situated differences which compose all of us. The activity continued in the following lessons and through different steps, including the meeting with some refugees, who contributed to problematizing the stereotype of ‘the refugee’ as disseminated in the public discourse: without silencing the problems and constraints they have to deal with, the refugees also offered another part of the story, presenting students with their knowledge, skills and resources. At the end of the activity, we considered whether the path we had been walking together had somehow changed the perspective from which we look at the others and at ourselves too. Students agreed that the activity had indeed helped them pluralize their view of the Other, but of themselves as well. They also reflected on how Otherness is situated as, though often represented as a static 10. For a detailed discussion on the ius soli debate in Italy, see Giorgis (2018b).

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quality of certain groups or individuals, it is rather a general condition: not only are we all ‘the Other’ to someone else, but our ‘Otherness’ also depends on the context and the situation. Yet, students also recognized that ‘some others are more others than others’, and that such a condition is determined by socio-economic disparities and unequal access to cultural and linguistic resources, all constraints and inequalities which do not come ‘naturally’ but are instead produced by sociocultural and economic factors. The students finally acknowledged that meeting Otherness through intercultural dialogue is not a practice we can learn from a list or from a book, as it only begins once we are mutually curious and open toward the reciprocal Other. We also considered that failure in communication should be taken into account in discourses on intercultural dialogue as an opportunity to reconsider causes and contexts from another perspective, to grasp other meanings and, at the same time, to learn about ourselves too. Indeed, much too often failure or misunderstanding are considered as the closure of (intercultural) communication, while they can actually act as their opening, serving the fundamental scope of mutually redefining assumptions and attitudes taken-for-granted.

4.2 The advantages of a foreign language The main intent of this and similar activities I have carried out over the years is to utilize the foreignness that foreign languages foreground to develop students’ critical meta-linguistic awareness on the extent to which linguistic and cultural features are situated, constructed and (re)produced and, by reflecting and dismantling pre-given assumptions on languages and cultures (one’s own included), to open up spaces for intercultural encounters. The aim is to favor the growth of ‘critical’ intercultural beings capable of actively engaging in a dialogue that transcends boundaries – real and imagined. … It is in this context that modern/foreign language (MFL) education and intercultural communication have emerged as key disciplines whose convergence has the potential to effectively address this vision in practice. (Dasli and Díaz 2017: 11)

Moreover, by offering meaningful and contextualized activities, such works are intended to get students to use the foreign language to communicate and exchange ideas and opinions. Diverting the target from the ‘English language lesson’ allows students to feel less judged and more relaxed in using the language, also encouraging the less proficient or more introvert students to participate in the discussion. The fact that English is a foreign language to all students presents the advantage that it puts all of them, both native Italian and non-native Italian, in a similar con-

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

dition of disadvantage,11 a fact which often shuffles roles and further contributes to problematizing Otherness: indeed, who is the Other when everyone speaks a language which is Other to all?

5.

The critical mandate of foreign language education The average citizen of Oceania …. is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself. (George Orwell, 1984)

For all the above reasons, I think that foreign language education has a specific critical mandate which can be efficaciously supported by Critical Cultural Linguistics. Since Critical Cultural Linguistics combines a focus on languages with a critical approach to culture(s) and cultural conceptualizations, it can open up interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives on foreign languages and foreign language education. For example, by working within the word-world gap which opens between the different languages, foreign language education and Critical Cultural Linguistics can address critically the cultural conceptualizations and constructions attributed to each language and culture in order to activate not only an intercultural discourse but a critical intercultural discourse. Through the tridimensional lenses of foreign languages, cultures and criticality, foreign language education and Critical Cultural Linguistics can foreground the construct of Otherness as a marker of inequalities in access to socio-linguistic and communicative resources, showing how they are (re)produced by language, and how language and language ideologies contribute to branding individuals and groups. Such common endeavor is meant to favor a linguistic awareness which can reveal how cultural conceptualizations are situated and linguistically marked, thus evidencing the socio-political imprint of such constructions, hopefully dismantling pre-given assumptions on individuals and groups based on cultural conceptualizations, and foregrounding the emancipatory and transformational potential of language. From very different perspectives, intellectuals, educators and activists such as Antonio Gramsci, Lorenzo Milani and Paulo Freire have passionately sustained that linguistic and political stances go together, and that equality between individuals runs first and foremost through language. Precisely for its approach from 11. Actually, students with immigrant background often perform better at English than their native Italian peers.

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the outside, foreign language education can more overtly reveal what lies within the mechanisms of language which create inequalities and Otherness, in order to problematize and possibly dismantle them, with the purpose pronounced by one of Milani’s students: “Era tornato deciso a imparare le lingue a tutto spiano. Molte lingue male piuttosto che una bene. Pur di poter comunicare con tutti, conoscere nuova gente e problemi nuovi, e ridere dei sacri confini delle patrie” [‘He had returned with the intention of learning languages full-scale. Many languages so and so, rather than one well. In order to be able to communicate with all, meet new people and new problems, and laugh at the sacred borders of fatherlands.’ ] (Scuola di Barbiana 2007 [1967]: 21).

Acknowledgements Few days after the First International Conference of Cultural Linguistics (Prato, Italy, 2016), I wrote to Farzad Sharifian motivating the reasons why I thought that Cultural Linguistics could have considered a critical approach, and proposing to him the term Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL). He encouraged me to go on with CCL, which I did by writing a Key Concept for the Center of Intercultural Dialogue (2017) and proposing a strand on CCL at the LAUD Conference, Landau, Germany (2018).

References Arendt, Hannah (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press. Baker, Will (2017). Culture and Identity through English as a Lingua Franca. Rethinking Concepts and Goals in Intercultural Communication. Berlin / New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Bierce, Ambrose (1911). The Devil’s Dictionary. [http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com]. Birch, Barbara & Ilham Nasser. (2017). Forgiveness as pedagogy in the English language classroom. In: Elizabeth J. Erling (Ed.), English Across the Fracture Lines: The Contribution and Relevance of English to Security, Stability and Peace (pp. 39–47). London: British Council Publication. Carroll, Lewis. (2016 [1871]). Through the Looking Glass. Adelaide, SA: The University of Adelaide Library. Dasli, Maria & Adriana Raquel Díaz (Eds). (2017). The Critical Turn in Language and Intercultural Communication Pedagogy. Theory, Research and Practice. New York: Routledge. Dewey, Martin (2007). English as a lingua franca and globalization: an interconnected perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 17(3), pp. 332–354. Eco, Umberto (1995). Ur-fascism. New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995. Fairclough, Norman. (1989). Language and Power. London / New York: Longman.

Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL)

Giorgis, Paola (2017). Critical Cultural Linguistics (CCL). Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue 88. [https://centerforinterculturaldialogue]. Giorgis, Paola (2018a). The spaces in between. Foreign language education as a critical and intercultural experience. Taboo – Journal of Culture and Education. San Francisco CA: Caddo Gap Press. Giorgis, Paola (2018b). Meeting Foreignness. Foreign Language and Foreign Language Education as Critical and Intercultural Experiences. Boulder, CO / New York, NY: Lexington, Rowman & Littlefield. Guido, Maria Grazia (2008). English as Lingua Franca in Cross-cultural Immigration Domains. Bern: Peter Lang. Heller, Monica & Bonnie McElhinny (2017). Language, Capitalism, Colonialism: Toward a Critical History. University of Toronto Press: Toronto. Holborow, Marnie (2016). Neoliberalism. In: Carol A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons. Kristiansen, Gitte (2001). Social and linguistic stereotyping: A cognitive approach to accents. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 9, pp. 129–145. Klemperer, Victor (2000 [1947]). LTI. The Language of the Third Reich. London / New York: Continuum. Luke, Allan (2004). Two takes on the critical. In: Bonny Norton & Kelleen Toohey (Eds.), Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 21–29). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Minardi, Sabrina (2018). Oggi dialetto, domain sberleffo. Colloquio con Giuseppe Antonelli e Luca Serianni [Today dialects, tomorrow quirks. Dialogue with Giuseppe Antonelli and Luca Serianni]. L’Espresso, 18 November, 2018, n. 47, pp. 24–25. Moore, Hannah & Charlotte Higgins (2022). The artists defying Putin’s war on Ukrainian culture. The Guardian podcast, Dec. 9th, 2022 Müller, Karsten & Schwarz, Carlo (2018). Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime. November 30, 2018. [https://ssrn.com/abstract=3082972]. Orwell, George (2003 [1949]). 1984. With a foreword by Thomas Pynchon. London / New York: Penguin. Palmer, Gary (1996). Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pantaleo, Raul (2007). Attenti all’uomo bianco. Diario di un cantiere in Sudan [Beware of the White Man. Journal of a construction site in Sudan]. Milano: eléuthera. Pavlenko, Aneta (2003). ‛Language of the enemy’: Foreign language education and national identity. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6(5), pp. 313–331. Pavlenko, Aneta (2006). Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression, and Representation. Clevedon [England] / Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters. Pennycook, Alastair (1994). The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London / New York: Longman. Pezzetti, Marcello & Sara Berger (2017). Catalogue of the exhibition: La razza nemica. La propaganda antisemita nazista e fascista. [The enemy race. Nazi and Fascist Antisemitic Propaganda]. Rome, Casina dei Vallati, January 30 – May 7. Roma: Gangemi. Phillipson, Robert (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Pierik, Roland (2004). Conceptualizing cultural groups and cultural difference. Ethnicities 4(4), pp. 523–544. Praxmarer, Peter (2014–2016). Otherness. Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue 39. [http:// centerforinterculturaldialogue.org] Ramanathan, Vaidehi & Brian Morgan (2009). Global warning? West-based TESOL, class blindness and the challenge for critical pedagogies. In: Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), English as an International Language. Perspectives and Pedagogical Issues (pp. 153–169). Bristol / Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Salmo. (2018). 90 minutes. Sony Music Italia & Machete Empire Records. Scuola di Barbiana (2007 [1967]). Lettera a una professoressa. Firenze: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina. Seidlhofer, Barbara (2004). Research perspectives on teaching English as a Lingua Franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24, pp. 209–39. Sharifian, Farzad (2013). Globalisation and developing metacultural competence in learning English as an International Language. Multilingual Education 3(1), pp. 1–11. Sharifian, Farzad (2011). Cultural Conceptualizations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sharifian, Farzad (2017). Cultural Linguistics. Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sharifian, Farzad (Ed.). (2009). English as an International Language. Perspectives and Pedagogical Issues. Bristol / Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Sharifian, Farzad & Gary Palmer (Eds.). (2007). Applied Cultural Linguistics. Implications for second language learning and intercultural communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sharrocks, W. (2016). Construction of the Enemy. Speech delivered at The Veterans for Peace UK Annual Gathering, London, Dec. 2016 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzMD5 EcaqsI]. Swift, Jonathan (2001 [1726]). Gulliver’s Travels. London: Penguin.

What can attitudes reveal about prejudices? Michael B. Hinner

TU Bergakademie Freiberg

The chapter takes a conceptual approach to prejudices in that it reviews and applies the relevant research and literature on the subject and related issues. That is why it first examines the interrelationship of ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and prejudices in order to show how and why prejudices arise. It becomes clear from this discussion that the social environment can have an important and early impact on a person’s predisposition. Another aspect to consider is identity because a person’s self-image and self-esteem can determine whether a person is more susceptible to prejudices or not. Next, the paper examines attitutes and persusion to explain how prejudices can be overcome. Here as well, it becomes clear why some individuals are swayed by messages designed to overcome prejudices and others are not. Taking these factors into consideration, the paper ends with a brief description of what measures need to be undertaken in oder to overcome prejudices. Keywords: ethnocentrism, stereotypes, prejudices, identity, attitudes, persuasion

1.

Introduction

This text examines the origins of prejudices in order to understand why and how they arise in people so as to answer the question of how prejudices could be overcome, if they are already lodged in a person, or prevented from being formed. Prejudices are difficult to overcome once they are established within a person, and simple “one-shot” answers will often not work. A number of factors are responsible for this tenacity. That is why different strategies have to be pursued in order to reduce or overcome prejudices.1 1. The information presented in this chapter is an interdisciplinary amalgamation of previous research. It applies an interdisciplinary approach because specific research and findings in various research fields (e.g. communication science, psychology, sociology) offer different perspectives and insights to such a complex topic as prejudice. The text also relies on various theories because in social sciences established theories have been rigorously tested which means that the https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.08hin © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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The reason for this complexity is found in the origins of prejudices. On the one hand, certain aspects of human identity make some individuals more susceptible for prejudices than other people. On the other hand, human perception makes humans focus on specific information that reinforces prejudices while ignoring other information that contradicts those prejudices. The social environment must also be considered because it either fosters or dissuades prejudices. That is why the present paper first examines ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and prejudices in order to understand the origin and nature of prejudices. Ethnocentrism, i.e. using one’s own culture as the reference point with which other cultures are then compared (Cooper, Calloway-Thomas & Simonds 2007), can set the stage for stereotypes, i.e. oversimplifications of other groups which are then transferred to individuals identified as belonging to that group (DeVito 2015), and make one susceptible for prejudices, i.e. negative opinions of others (Cooper et al. 2007). A look at human identity helps explain how and why identity can predispose a person to be susceptible for prejudices. Since prejudices are essentially negative attitudes people have about others, an understanding of attitudes and attitudinal changes, i.e. persuasion, can offer some clues as to what factors need to be considered in order to overcome prejudices. This chapter is, thus, structured as follows: Ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and prejudices (Section 2), Identity (Section 3), Attitudes (Section 4), Persuasion (Section 5) and Overcoming ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and prejudices (Section 6).

2.

Ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and prejudices

As people are born into and raised within a specific cultural environment, that environment helps shape people’s cognition and perception (Brekhus 2015). If individuals do not come into contact with different cultures, then they are likely to assume that their culture is the normal standard of how the world functions and operates (Klopf 1998; Lustig & Koester 2013; Samovar, Porter, McDaniel & Roy 2013). And when someone encounters a different culture at a later stage, then that person will compare the new culture and the behavior as well as the communication of its natives with one’s own culture. Ethnocentrism refers to evaluating and judging other cultures on basis of one’s own cultural beliefs, values, standards, and norms. People tend to favor the familiar, and they distrust differences. That conclusions of those theories are probably able to explain the described phenomena fairly well. And if it is possible to establish the triangulation of various theories associated with a specific phenomenon, then this increases the probability that these theories might be on to something. For a discussion of this topic, see Berger & Chaffee (1987), Bryman (2017) as well as Frey, Botan & Kreps (2000).

What can attitudes reveal about prejudices?

distrust, possibly even fear, of something new and different can lead to antipathy directed at natives of those other cultures (Klopf 1998; Lustig & Koester 2013; Samovar et al. 2013). All cultures teach their members “preferred” ways of responding to the world which are often labeled as “natural” or “appropriate.” Consequently, people believe that the values of their culture are natural and correct. Culture, thus, provides a person with a frame of reference with which people can compare objects, behaviors, customs, etc. of another culture with their own culture. This permits one to categorize the perceived information (Adler, Rodman & du Pré 2013) which then allows one to make sense of that information because now one can determine and identify how similar or different, how close or distant that perceived information is to something that appears to be comparable or alike in one’s own culture. Because humans are subjective beings, they typically tend to also judge that difference (or similarity) either positively or negatively (Adler et al. 2013). As long as one accepts the cultural standards and norms of one’s own culture, then one will probably identify oneself with that culture and assume that people from other cultures who behave and communicate differently than one is acquainted with in one’s own culture are deviant and not behaving properly (Klopf 1998; Lustig & Koester 2013; Samovar et al. 2013). If, however, one does not identify oneself with one’s own culture, then one may isolate oneself within one’s own culture or seek to find a culture which is more compatible to one’s beliefs, values, and norms. A fundamental aspect in understanding ethnocentrism is the concept of ingroups and out-groups (Klopf 1998; Lustig & Koester 2013; Samovar et al. 2013). As people develop their cultural identities, they learn to differentiate themselves from others in different groups; in other words, people differentiate between in-groups (i.e. those groups and their members with which individuals identify themselves, to which they belong) and out-groups (i.e. those groups and their members to which a person does not belong). In-groups provide a person with a social identity because people typically describe themselves by the groups they belong to, e.g. the family one was born into, the friends one has, the neighborhood one lives in, the school and classes one attended, the hobbies and sports one pursues. Out-groups, in contrast, are perceived as different, and their members as divergent. In line with ethnocentrism, people tend to prefer the known over the unknown. The Social Identity Theory of Tajfel and Turner (1986) emphasizes that people have a desire to enhance their self-image and to differentiate themselves from other groups. The desire to achieve a positive social identity results in a positive bias favoring the in-group (Tajfel & Turner 1986). This should not come as a surprise because ethnocentrism tends to favor the familiar as well. Studies have

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shown that the greater the individual’s in-group identification, the more likely these individuals are to discriminate in favor of the in-group (Gagnon & Bourhis 1996; Perreault & Bourhis 1998). In addition to in-group preference, individuals tend to engage in social competition to preserve a positive social identity when interacting with members of out-groups (Turner 1975). However, when someone cannot identify herself/himself with her/his own group, then that person can project positive characteristics onto the out-group (Tajfel & Turner 1986). According to the Social Identity Theory, if one identifies oneself with an ingroup, then it is likely that one will project negative associations onto the respective out-group(s) (Gagnon & Bourhis 1996; Perreault & Bourhis 1998; Tajfel & Turner 1986). Very often these projections are stereotypes. Stereotypes are fixed impression of a group of people through which we then perceive specific individuals (DeVito 2015; Rubin & Badea 2012; Stangor & Schaller 1996). Cooper et al. (2007) point out that the simplifications associated with stereotypes permit people help reduce the complexity of the world which in turn permits people to understand this complexity. By reducing the complexity to specific categories, it is easier to manage and, thus, respond to this complexity through cognitive and behavioral adjustment. “Stereotypes can be individual or social” (Cooper et al. 2007: 50), which means that they are directed at individual people identified as belonging to a specific out-group as well as against the out-group itself. Cooper et al. (2007: 50) also point out that stereotypes “serve as self-fulling prophecies – the tendency to see behavior that confirms our expectations, even when the behavior is absent.” Because these stereotypes are oversimplifications, regardless of whether those oversimplifications are right or wrong, they are often associated with judgements. That is why stereotypes can lead to prejudices (Cooper et al. 2007) because both tend to become established before actually meeting a member of the other culture. It is these pre-established views which then influence the actual encounter with a member of that other culture and the perception of that encounter as well as that culture, i.e. a self-fulfilling prophecy2 (Cooper et al. 2007). And once an opinion is established within a person, it takes time and effort to overcome them (Devine 1989).

2. A self-fulfilling prophecy refers to the expectations people have of a particular outcome that are based on specific assumptions of these people. These people will then typically act upon on those assumptions and ignore other information that might contradict those assumptions. When these people achieve that anticipated outcome, their expectations will have been fulfilled. This is accomplished because they will have undertaken actions and measures (usually without being consciously aware that they are doing so) that led towards that outcome (Adler et al. 2013; Gamble & Gamble 2012).

What can attitudes reveal about prejudices?

Interestingly, stereotypes that are based on secondhand opinions, i.e. stereotypes derived from the opinions of others or from the media, tend to be: – – – –

More extreme Less variable from one person to another More uniformly applied to others More resistant to change

than stereotypes based on direct personal experiences and interactions because it is easier to project assumptions onto those who are unknown to one (Thompson, Judd, & Park 2000; Yzerbyt, Coull & Rocher 1999). If, however, one has interacted with a person from another culture, then that other culture will not be entirely anonymous and one will probably project the experience with that other person onto the entire group. On the other hand, if one has already accepted specific stereotypes about another group, then subsequent encounters with individuals from that stereotyped group who deviate from one’s expectations based on one’s stereotypes will be considered exceptions or as being atypical of that group (Lustig & Koester 2013). When rejection of an out-group member carries emotional reactions such as anger, disgust, and a desire to avoid contact, it is called prejudice. According to Cooper et al. (2007: 52), “prejudice consist of negative attitudes toward others based on faulty and inflexible stereotypes”; hence, a link is established between stereotypes and prejudices. These feelings may be overt or covert, and they are directed either at a group of people or at an individual who is identified as a member of that group (Klopf 1998). Allport (1954) points out that people ignore information that contradicts their prejudices while at the same time these people attempt to distort contradictory information to such an extent that it supports their prejudices. According to Van Dijk (1987), prejudices tend to be group based and the result of communicating with in-group members. Stereotypes and prejudices are used to describe out-group members. Prejudices fulfill the function of confirming the superiority of one’s own in-group over out-groups and, thus, also satisfy specific social functions by reinforcing the in-group solidarity by highlighting the dominance of one’s in-group over others and by making the others appear less worthy than the in-group members. By discriminating in favor of one’s in-group and discriminating against out-group members, prejudices reinforce the idea that one’s own beliefs, values, and norms are right and correct while those of others are wrong (i.e. practicing ethnocentrism). In fact, people with prejudices often develop those negative attitudes towards others because they feel threatened by those others in some manner, regardless of whether that is actually the case or merely imagined.

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From the above discussion, it becomes apparent that prejudices need to be examined from various perspectives, i.e. the actual individual perspective and the social perspective. People usually identify themselves with specific in-groups and their views including negative opinions directed at out-group members as the Social Identity Theory postulates. In other words, indviduals who identify themselves with an in-group will also assume the attitudes and prejudices prevalent among the in-group members. This means that a child, growing up in a family in which various family members hold prejudices towards certain out-groups and that child identifes herself/himself with those family members, then that child will probably also internalize those prejudices. And if the social peers of that child hold similar prejudices towards those out-groups, then this social environment will reinforce those prejudices in the child. That is why prejudices can be formed early in life as a person develops her or his identity (Chen & Starosta 1998; Klopf 1998; Samovar et al. 2013). At the same time, though, individuals have to be susceptible to such messages and peer pressure which is why also human identity will have to be examined in order to understand why some individuals are more prone to such opinions and behavior than others even though they grew up in the same cultural environment.

3.

Identity

When taking a closer look at identity, it becomes apparent that it is a social construct. People have certain perceptions of themselves that help define their identity. These perceptions include one’s own assumptions of oneself, the opinions others have of oneself and their interaction with oneself based on those opinions as well as the assumed opinions of others that one believes others hold of oneself (Adler et al. 2013). The latter assumptions could in fact be quite different from what the others actually believe; nonetheless, such faulty assumptions can and do influence one’s interaction with others. Identity is not assigned or concrete; identity is created, reflected, and maintained through interactions with people. It is, thus, a social construct (Collier & Thomas 1988; Combs & Snygg 1959; Piaget 1954; Yep 1998). Even though a person undergoes constant change, once identity is in place, it is relatively stable and difficult to alter (Keltikangas 1990). Identity is essentially how individuals perceive themselves, i.e. self-concept or self-perception. It consists of self-image and selfesteem (Adler et al. 2013; Gamble & Gamble 2012). Self-image refers to how individuals see themselves; it can be positive or negative. Those individuals who have a positive self-image tend to have high self-worth, be open-minded, and have a positive other evaluation. In contrast, individuals with a negative self-image tend

What can attitudes reveal about prejudices?

to have poor self-worth, be susceptible to stereotypes and prejudices while also having a negative other evaluation (Adler et al. 2013; Gamble & Gamble 2012). It can, thus, be clearly seen that a person’s self-image is reflected in that person’s opinions and behavior towards others. This means that individuals with a negative self-image will not only evaluate others negatively, but they will also harbor stereotypes and prejudices towards others in part due to their poor self-worth. People tend to blame their own shortcomings on others (Adler et al. 2013; Gamble & Gamble 2012). Self-esteem refers to how much one likes oneself; it can be classified as either high or low. Those individuals with high self-esteem are more willing to communicate with others, think highly of others, are not afraid of the reactions and comments of others (even those comments referring to oneself ), and are able to defend their own position in a dialogue with others. Individuals with low selfesteem, in contrast, are critical of others and themselves. They are also distrustful of others, dislike others, feel threatened by them, and they have problems defending themselves. High or low self-esteem, thus, reinforces a positive or negative self-image. Another important aspect of identity is self- and other-awareness (Rochat 2003). Through the gradual interaction with one’s social environment, a person undergoes various stages of self-awareness that can include other-awareness (Rochat 2003: 720–722); namely: Level 0: Confusion, i.e. no self-awareness Level 1: Differentiation, i.e. one is able to sense that what is perceived in mirror is different from what is perceived in the surrounding environment Level 2: Situation, i.e. one shows the first signs of a contemplative stance towards the specular image Level 3: Identification, i.e. an identified self is expressed Level 4: Permanence, i.e. the self is identified beyond the here and now Level 5: Self-Consciousness or “meta” self-awareness, i.e. the self is recognized from a first person as well as a third person’s perspective It should be noted, though, that not everyone reaches Level 5 (Rochat 2003). Identity, thus, influences how people communicate, i.e. how they create and interpret messages (Doise 1986). For successful interpersonal communication, a person needs self- and other-awareness (i.e. be a high self-monitor) because one needs to be aware of how one’s message is received by others so that one could adjust one’s subsequent messages on the basis of how one’s counterpart reacts (Adler et al. 2013). This permits one to adjust one’s own communication

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and behavior to that of one’s counterpart, i.e. as postulated by the Johari Window.3 The Johari Window describes the relationship of self-disclosure, self-awareness, and other-awareness (Adler et al. 2013). The Johari Window postulates that selfdisclosure is important for relationships because it helps foster trust (i.e. the ability to predict the communication and behavior of one’s counterpart to the point that one assumes one’s counterpart will not use the conveyed information against one). Self-awareness, along with other-awareness, is also important in building positive relationships because it causes one to critically assess one’s own communication and behavior with regard to how it affects one’s counterpart (i.e. metacognition). With sufficient knowledge of and familiarity with another person, one is able to anticipate how that person would react to specific messages; hence, allowing one to adjust and “customize” one’s messages to that specific individual (i.e. social metacognition). High self-monitors have that ability (Adler et al. 2013; Gamble & Gamble 2012; Hamachek 1992). Low self-monitors, in contrast, express what they are thinking and feeling without giving much attention to the impression their communication and behavior creates (Snyder 1987). Low self-monitors with low self-awareness overestimate their own abilities and cannot objectively evaluate their (in)abilities – this is the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect (Dunning & Kruger 1999). According to the research of Dunning and Kruger, this deficit can be overcome by improving the metacognitive competence of those individuals. It may also play a crucial role in overcoming prejudices. It seems that all humans have a need for an identity that is secure, included, predictable, connected to others, and consistent (Adler et al. 2013; DeVito 2015; Gamble & Gamble 2012). But if one interacts with people from another culture, that identity can be threatened because such encounters are often unpredictable (Gudykunst 1988; Lustig & Koester 2013; Samovar et al. 2013). These intercultural encounters are unpredictable because different cultures can use different verbal and nonverbal cues which makes communication less predictable. Many people often feel threatened by unpredictable situations and try to avoid them (Berger & Calabrese 1975; Gudykunst 1988; Lustig & Koester 2013; Samovar et al. 2013). Unfortunately, as noted above, fear of the unknown can lead to prejudices (Pettigrew & Tropp 2008). From the above discussion of identity, it becomes apparent that a person’s selfimage, self-esteem as well as self- and other awareness can make an individual susceptible to stereotypes and prejudice. This is an important insight. Fortunately, the research of Dunning and Kruger indicates that offering training in metacognitive skills can be helpful in overcoming stereotypes and prejudices. Helpful in 3. The term Johari is a blend of the first names of the psychologists who created this technique in 1955, i.e. Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham.

What can attitudes reveal about prejudices?

overcoming prejudices is also an understanding of attitudes because prejudices are negative attitudes as pointed out above (Cooper et al. 2007).

4.

Attitudes

Attitudes are psychological tendencies that are expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor (Eagly & Chaiken 1993). This can include people and groups of people. Attitudes encompass the judgments individuals develop and the evaluative representation of those judgments in memory (Fazio 1986). Attitudes consist of a cognitive, affective, and behavioral component (Breckler 1984). The cognitive component refers to the beliefs and attributes a person associates with the person or entity in question. The affective component refers to the emotions a person associates with the person or entity in question. And the behavioral component refers to how that cognition and those emotions influence a person’s behavior towards that person or entity (Breckler 1984). Attitudes occur within individuals and within interpersonal contexts. That is why they are part of one’s identity because identity is a social construct as noted above (Adler et al. 2013). Attitudes are learned, refer to the feelings and beliefs of an individual or a group of people. These feelings and beliefs define a person’s predispositions towards given aspects of the world. Attitudes can fall in any direction, and they are organized within a person’s established knowledge structures to help explain a person’s perception of the world. According to Albarracin, Johnson and Zanna (2005), attitudes are judgments influenced by external information, the memory of past judgments, prior knowledge, and new judgments which can also be stored in memory. This means that attitudes include an individual and a social component. That is why attitude change involves influencing not just the individual, but also that individual’s social environment – a notion that the Social Identity Theory postulates as noted above. This also means that an examination of persuasion could be helpful in understanding how such an attitudinal change is initiated.

5.

Persuasion

According to Ajzen’s and Fishbein’s (1980) Theory of Reasoned Action, behavior results in part from intentions which are a complex outcome of attitudes. The theory postulates that a person’s intention to behave in a certain way is determined by that person’s attitude towards the behavior and a set of beliefs about how other people would like one to behave (i.e. identity). Each factor – a person’s own atti-

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tude and the opinions of others – is weighted according to its importance. Sometimes, a person’s own attitude is important, sometimes the opinions of others are more important, and sometimes they are more or less equal in weight. The theory, thus, shows how influential the social environment is with regard to attitudes. Attitudes are influenced through socialization, experience, and personal identity as noted above. Social interaction with other people, family members, friends, colleagues, etc. can teach a person to feel favorably or unfavorably towards specific people or entities around oneself (i.e. the Social Identity Theory). The actual and perceived experiences of a person influence that person’s judgment along with the opinion of others who are important to that person. Attitudes can change as a result of persuasive communication (Adler et al. 2013). But a number of other factors need to be considered as well for persuasive communication to be effective because the message itself may not suffice. According to the Social Judgement Theory, people evaluate messages based on their anchors (Sherif & Hovland 1961). Anchors are personal reference points that are the attitudes people have on a particular topic. People’s attitudes can be placed into three categories; namely, the latitude of acceptance, the latitude of rejection, and the latitude of non-commitment (Sherif & Hovland 1961). People tend to respond to messages that fall within their latitude of acceptance whereas people do not respond to messages that fall within their latitude of rejection (Adler et al. 2013). People who have a very strong attitude on a topic will have a narrow attitude of non-commitment while people who care less strongly have a wider attitude of non-commitment (Dainton & Zelley 2015). People’s reactions to persuasive messages, thus, depend on the position they assume on the topic in question (Sherif & Hovland 1961). This means that people with strong attitudes will not be swayed by messages designed to change people’s opinion in a particular direction if that direction does not conform to one’s attitudes. That is why mapping people’s attitudes can be helpful in determining if and what messages might sway people’s stereotypes and prejudices. According to O’Keefe (2002), messages that fall within the latitude of acceptance will be viewed positively (assimilation effect) and messages that fall within the latitude of rejection will be viewed negatively (contrast effect). When a message falls within the latitude of rejection, the contrast effect kicks in. The contrast effect makes a message appear to be farther away from a person’s anchor than it really is, i.e. that person subconsciously exaggerates the difference between the message’s position and the person’s own position (O’Keefe 2002). The assimilation effect is the opposite, i.e. when a messages falls within the latitude of acceptance, the person subconsciously minimizes the difference between the message’s position and the person’s position (O’Keefe 2002). The message, thus, reinforces what the person already believes, i.e. selective perception. According to the

What can attitudes reveal about prejudices?

Social Judgment Theory, attitudes can only be changed if messages are within the latitude of acceptance or on the edge of the latitude of non-commitment (leaning towards acceptance) (Dainton & Zelley 2015). This information needs to be kept in mind when formulating messages designed to change people’s prejudices. According to the Selective Exposure Theory, people tend to look for information that confirms and reinforces existing views while ignoring information that contradicts their viewpoints (Hart et al. 2009; Sullivan 2009; Kastenmüller et al. 2010). It will be recalled that Allport (1954) notes that people ignore information that contradicts their prejudices while at the same time they try to distort contradictory information to such an extent that it fits into and supports their prejudices. When coming across new information, people focus on those parts which make sense within the framework of their own attitudes (Jonas et al. 2001). The Social Judgement Theory comes to a similar conclusion. When people are confronted with information they do not like, they either do not perceive it or make it fit their existing attitudes, i.e. they rationalize as Allport (1954) postulates. In fact, people forget information that contradicts their existing attitudes (Klapper 1960). Klapper (1960) notes that group norms are mediators and reinforce attitudes. In-group norms create a predisposition toward specific attitudes. This is also postulated by the Social Identity Theory, and the Theory of Reasoned Action notes that in some instances the opinions of one’s peers can sway one to accept their views and opinions. Such behavior leads to increased exposure of information that confirms and reaffirms existing attitudes which in turn fuels selective exposure. The Social Information Processing Framework postulates that individuals are motivated to reduce uncertainty and to assimilate with their immediate social environment (Salancik & Pfeffer 1978). That is why individuals rely on existing schemata based on previous experiences with a current understanding of the task at hand and integrate social information collected from their peers into a general interpretation. Consequently, socially constructed realities are mediated by socially relevant others. These peers serve to filter information and channel the expectations of the larger social environment onto individuals (Salancik & Pfeffer 1978). Thus, individual attitudes are socially developed because individuals make sense of their behavior in response to the norms and expectations of their peers. The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger 1957) states that people experience mental discomfort when they are confronted with contradictory and conflicting information (e.g. a message that contradicts a formed prejudice). The difference between one’s attitude and behavior creates a tension that is only resolved by altering either one’s attitude or one’s behavior. When people are confronted with new or unfamiliar messages, people use existing cognitive structures (i.e. frames) to process the new information. For people to understand this new information, they have to find frames with which they can link the new informa-

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tion to existing information. Whenever the new information is inconsistent with previously held attitudes, then people will experience dissonance (Festinger 1957). The theory postulates that people usually seek to minimize this discomfort. According to Festinger (1957), three relationships exist between beliefs/attitudes and behavior: – – –

Irrelevance, i.e. when the new message and existing attitudes are perceived as unrelated Consonance, i.e. when the new message and existing attitudes are perceived as congruent Dissonance, i.e. when the new message contradicts existing attitudes

Festinger (1957) argues that people prefer consonance. Dissonance exists until people can rationalize the new message either by changing their attitudes or their behavior. The more a person can justify contrasting attitudes and behavior, the less discomfort that person feels. This is similar to what the Social Judgement Theory proposes as noted above. In other words, if one’s social environment (or ingroup) favors a particular attitude, then one will also accept that attitude because it is part of one’s social identity. The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance further postulates that people selectively perceive various stimuli in order to minimize their dissonance. With selective exposure, a person actively avoids information that is inconsistent with previously established attitudes. And with selective attention, a person will only focus on information that reaffirms that person’s attitudes and disregard any information that does not support those attitudes. A person subsequently decodes ambiguous information with selective interpretation in such a way that it is consistent with established attitudes. And with selective retention, a person stores only that information which upholds existing attitudes while dismissing or forgetting information that creates dissonance. This is similar to what the Selective Exposure Theory states as mentioned above. People often attempt to persuade themselves that the decision they reached was correct (Gass & Seiter 2014). This might open the possibility of changing people’s attitudes by offering a solution to the inconsistency between the new message and existing attitudes. By presenting an easy solution for the inconsistency, it is possible to minimize a person’s dissonance and discomfort. By offering a solution or a course of action that bridges the gap between inconsistent attitudes, messages may influence people to use these methods to create cognitive consonance. A notion that is also echoed by the Social Judgement Theory. This means that messages designed to overcome prejudices need to fall at best within the latitude of acceptance or at least with the latitude of non-commitment as noted above so that the messages are not rejected outright. Consequently, it is important that the

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encoder of those messages is familiar with the intended receiver of those messages so as to formulate messages in such a way that they are ideally within the receiver’s latitude of acceptance. This may be accomplished by using a questionnaire prior to encoding the message so that it can be adjusted to fit into the receiver’s latitude of acceptance (Sherif & Hovland 1961). However, people are often resistant to change as the Theory of Psychological Reactance postulates (Brehm 1966). People’s desire to resist change occurs when people wish to remain in control over the way they think and act. This need to be in control and the desire for a stable and balanced life provide the foundation for reactance. This implies that provisions must be made for reducing that resistance. When seeking to reduce resistance, it is important to understand whether the resistance is constructive or not – from the resister’s perspective. If resistance is perceived as constructive, persuasion might be difficult or impossible because constructive resistance is often based on deeply held attitudes. A conclusion that is also forwarded by the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Kelman (1961) conducted extensive research on persuasion and concluded that people accept a change for the following three reasons: – – –

Compliance, i.e. publically accepting an appeal, but privately refusing to accept the change Identification, i.e. accepting an appeal to gain satisfaction in being liked by those one admires who themselves have accepted the appeal Internalization, i.e. accepting an appeal which also entails accepting a change in one’s attitudes

While compliance will not change attitudes and actually lead to reactance, identification can produce a change if the resultant change not only maintains the relationship with the ones one admires, but actually intensifies it. This is what the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Social Identity Theory indicate as well. Internalization is difficult to achieve because people must have an incentive to change. And if no incentive exists, then the person in question will not change her/his attitudes. Internalization often includes rationalizing the change so that the change fits into the person’s existing system of attitudes. In other words, the change must be perceived as being consistent with the person’s convictions of what is important in life. But this rationalization varies from person to person. According to Albarracin (2004), individuals with higher self-confidence, i.e. a positive self-image and high self-esteem, are less prone to be affected by selective exposure. In fact, people with higher self-confidence are more likely to look at information that is both consistent and inconsistent with their viewpoints. This means that individuals with a positive self-image and high self-esteem are more likely to accept an appeal and possibly internalize it even though it does not fit

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into their latitude of acceptance as long as the reasoning is perceived as logical. On the other hand, individuals with a negative self-image and low self-esteem will be less likely to yield to such appeals as noted above. However, Dunning and Kruger (1999) have revealed that metacognitive training could lead to accepting these appeals that would otherwise be rejected or ignored.

6.

Overcoming ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and prejudices

It is generally assumed that personal contact and education can help reduce the negative effects of ethnocentrism as well as stereotypes and prejudices (Samovar et al. 2013). It will be recalled that secondhand opinions are more difficult to overcome and often also more extreme than opinions based on firsthand experiences. However, this personal contact has to be a positive experience (Pettigrew & Trapp 2008) and should involve cooperation within a joint project that seeks to achieve a common goal if the stereotypes and prejudices are to be overcome, e.g. working together on a task or playing together in a football team. But Lustig and Koester (2013) caution that not all intercultural encounters result in a reduction of stereotypes and prejudices (Lustig & Koester 2013). For intercultural encounters to be successful, there has to be (Lustig & Koester 2013): – – – –

Support from the top, i.e. high-status persons need to support the contact Participants need to have a personal stake in the encounter, i.e. they need to have a perceived gain Positive experience, i.e. the encounter has to be pleasing so as to encourage further contacts Positive outcome, i.e. both parties ought to either strive for a common goal and/or the interaction ought to result in realizing individual goals

In other words, the social environment is important in eliciting a change in stereotypes and prejudices as is the individual in question. This is confirmed by the Social Identity Theory and the Theory of Reasoned Action as well as the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, the Theory of Psychological Reactance and the research of Kelman as noted above. When it comes to education, two types of educational programs seem to be helpful (Samovar et al. 2013): –

Multicultural education curricula, i.e. the various practices and traditions of different ethnic groups presented from the minority group’s perspective

What can attitudes reveal about prejudices?

–

Cultural diversity training, i.e. teaching the value of diversity to raise awareness of the differences, how to deal with this diversity, and to recognize the benefits of diversity

Education and contact need to reduce or disarm perceived threats because if fundamental aspects of a person’s (cultural) identity appear to be threatened, then that person might become more ethnocentric (Lustig & Koester 2013). If personal encounters result in the other person being perceived as atypical of her/his culture, then this will not reduce stereotypes and prejudices because that other person will be perceived as being unique and different from “the rest” for whom the stereotypes and prejudices still apply (Lustig & Koester 2013) as also pointed out above. A study conducted by the Faculty of Education at the University of Hamburg revealed that French and German pupils actually intensified their stereotypes after having been together a in summer camp. A test before and after the summer camp revealed a more positive self-image and a more negative image of the other group at the end of the summer camp (Wahl 2000). It was concluded that stereotypes block out new experiences and only admit those experiences which reinforce existing assumptions as noted above with the Selective Exposure Theory. During the study it was realized that short-term exposure to another environment or a brief contact with members of the out-group do not change stereotypes or prejudices (Wahl 2000). Instead, individuals need to learn that other cultures are different, but neither better nor worse than members of one’s ingroup (Wahl 2000). A study by Dong, Day and Collaco (2008) shows that ethnocentrism leads to intolerance because ethnocentrism does not accept cultural diversity. This, in turn, leads to negative stereotypes, prejudices, and negative behavior towards out-group members. According to Chen and Starosta (2000), intercultural communication sensitivity increases intercultural communication competence which helps reduce ethnocentrism and such ancillary negative aspects as stereotypes and prejudices. Cultural awareness is the foundation for intercultural communication sensitivity. The more experience one has with cultural difference, the more competent one is in intercultural situations and the less likely one is to rely on stereotypes and prejudices (Dong et al. 2008). A study conducted by Greenholtz (2000) indicates that proficiency in foreign languages tends to increase intercultural communication competence as well because foreign language proficiency usually goes hand-in-hand with cultural awareness. After all, in order to be proficient in another language, one has to also understand something of the people who use that language as their native tongue. Proficiency in another language also usually entails the ability to critically assess one’s use of that language, i.e. apply-

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ing metacognition. Those who are truly proficient in another language, are usually able to predict how their messages will be perceived by native speakers of that language, i.e. being able to apply social metacognition. With proficiency (and metacognition) one could overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect and counter the impact of a negative self-image and low self-esteem. But that would only be possible if a person with a negative self-image and low self-esteem were to achieve proficiency in another language. Dong et al. (2008) conclude that people need to interact with members of another culture in order to increase their intercultural communication competence. Within an organizational context, Likert (1967) proposed the linking-pin function to overcome competition and hostility between various intraorganizational groups. The linking-pin function connects different groups within an organization by having members of different groups working together on various committees. A similar concept has been proposed for overcoming stereotypes and prejudices (Lin 2002; Thomas 2006). The linking pin concept is designed to create new frames of reference that go beyond those of one’s ethnocentric perception.

7.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it becomes apparent that overcoming prejudices is not an easy, “one-shot” process because several factors need to be considered. On the one hand, it ought to have become apparent that the susceptibility for prejudices is also found in our identity. Some people are more prone to accept prejudices than other people. And on the other hand, the social environment plays an important role as well. This means that at minimum a two-prong strategy is needed to overcome prejudices; namely, one strategy that focuses on the individual and another strategy that is directed at society. Education might be the best tool to accomplish both because metacognitive training can be helpful in overcoming the personal motivation to form and maintain prejudices. At the same time, educating society at large could also counter ethnocentric thinking and behavior because the social component is also important in overcoming prejudices as suggested by the Theory of Reasoned Action. This might be best accomplished by making foreign language instruction along with multicultural education and diversity training required subjects in school as early as possible. And if it is possible to integrate pupils of diverse cultural background into the active multicultural education and diversity training sessions, then such integration could function as a linking pin (Likert 1967; Lin 2002; Thomas 2006) to help reduce ethnocentrism, faulty stereotypes, and prejudices. But this has to be done early in life because

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children start learning and forming stereotypes and prejudices at an early age (Chen & Starosta 1998; Klopf 1998; Samovar et al. 2013). However, it is imperative that the messages presented in such courses and training sessions fall ideally within the latitude of acceptance so that they will actually be considered by the individuals (i.e. Social Judgement Theory). Otherwise, such messages would be for naught as several theories postulate.

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Kastenmüller, Andreas, Tobias Greitemeyer, Eva Jonas, Peter Fischer & Dieter Frey (2010). Selective exposure: The impact of collectivism and individualism. British Journal of Social Psychology 49(4), pp. 745–763. Kelman, Herbert C. (1961). Processes of opinion change. Public Opinion Quarterly 25, pp. 57–78. Keltikangas-Järvinen, Liisa (1990). The stability of self-concept during adolescence and early adulthood: A six-year follow-up study. Journal of General Psychology 117, pp. 361–369. Klapper, Joseph T. (1960). The Effects of Mass Communication. New York, NY: The Free Press. Klopf, Donald W. (1998). Intercultural Encounters: The Fundamentals of Intercultural Communication. 4th ed. Englewood, CO: Morton Publishing Company. Likert, Rensis (1967). The Human Organization: Its Management and Value. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Lin, Susanne (2002). Veränderung von Vorurteilen aus sozialpsychologischer Sicht. Berlin: Berghof Foundation Operations GmbH. Lustig, Myron W. & Jolene Koester (2013). Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication across Cultures. Boston, MA: Pearson. O’Keefe, Daniel J. (2002). Persuasion: Theory and Research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Perreault, Stephane H. & Richard Y. Bourhis (1998). Social identification, interdependence and discrimination. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 1, pp. 49–66. Pettigrew, Thomas F. & Linda R. Tropp, (2008). How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators. European Journal of Social Psychology 38(6), pp. 922–934. Piaget, Jean (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Basic Books. Rochat, Phillipe (2003). Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life. Consciousness and Cognition 12(4), pp. 717–731. Rubin, Mark & Constantina Badea (2012). They’re all the same!… But for several different reasons: A review of the multicausal nature of perceived group variability. Current Directions in Psychological Science 21(6), pp. 367–372. Salancik, Gerard R. & Jeffrey Pfeffer (1978). A social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design. Administration Science Quarterly 23(2), pp. 224–253. Samovar, Larry A., Richard E. Porter, Eewin R. McDaniel & Carolyn S. Roy (2013). Communication Between Cultures. 8th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Sherif, Muzafer & Carl I. Hovland (1961; rpt. 1980). Social Judgement: Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Communication and Attitude Change. Westport CT: Greenwood. Snyder, Mark (1987). Public Appearances, Private Realities: The Psychology of Self-monitoring. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman. Stangor, Charles & Mark Schaller (1996). Stereotypes as individual and collective representations. In: C. Neil Macrae, Charles Stangor & Miles Hewstone (Eds.), Stereotypes and Stereotyping (pp. 3–40). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Sullivan, Larry E. (ed.) (2009). Selective exposure. The Sage Glossary of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Index A Ælfric 149, 151, 153–154 animal metaphor 71, 73, 81, 83, 108, 112–113, 123–124 asceticism 152–153, 161 B Bede 150 Bible, reference to 83, 117–118 blending 54, 57, 59–61, 63, 67, 87, 91–92 body politic metaphor 19, 24 body scenario 21–22, 24–25, 26–27, 31 body-part scenario 21–27, 31 Brexit 52, 55, 73, 77–78, 94 C Cameron, David 64–65, 74–75, 88 Christianity 116, 123, 153–154 circles of English 111 clean eating 157, 159, 161–165 Clinton, Hillary 37, 43–46, 48 collocations 21, 89, 90, 130, 134–135, 143 corpora ICE (International Corpus of English) 109, 111–113 COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) 38 GloWbE (Corpus of Global Web-based English) 109–122 Cognitive Dissonance 201–204 Cognitive Sociolinguistics 5, 106, 108 componential analysis 128–133, 135, 137 compound/compounding 38, 66, 86, 139–144 Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) 2, 17–19, 36, 106, 109 corruption, conceptualisation of 8, 121–122, 124

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 2–3, 6–7, 54, 58 cultural conceptualisations 6–8, 106–108, 110, 113, 124, 127–128, 172–174, 181, 187–188 cultural diversity training 205 D detoxing 147–148, 154, 159–161, 162, 165 Dunning-Krueger effect 198, 206 E election as a job interview metaphor 37, 44–45 election as a lawsuit metaphor 37, 44 embodiment 17, 106 emotion concepts 130–131 English as a Lingua Franca 181 entailment 108, 123 entrenchment 6, 60, 62, 69, 87, ethnocentrism 192–195, 204–206 F fasting 151, 153–154, 161 flaming 56 foreign language education 172, 178–179, 181–182, 187–188 framing 2, 18, 75, 93, 184 G gate keeping 55–56 geo-body scenario 21–22, 24, 27–28, 31–32 Ghanaian English 109–111, 114, 116, 121, 123 globalisation 180 great chain of being metaphor 6–7, 71–72, 113–114, 123 H highlighting and hiding 2, 25, 50, 91, 95 hyperbole 18, 84–85, 94

hyponymy 129–131, 137 I ideology 2, 5–7, 72–73, 113, 175, 178–179 identity 179, 184, 192–194, 196–205 image schema 38, 155 incompatibility, semantic 129, 131–132, 135, 137 integrative medicine 154, 156 in-group 56, 59–60, 68, 72–75, 78, 84, 87, 91, 93, 171, 183, 193–196, 201 invariance principle 17 invasion scenario 53, 56, 66, 68, 70–71, 81, 83–84, 93, 176 J Johari Window 198 journey metaphor 46–48, 151–152, 160, 163, 166–167 M mapping 32, 38–40, 44, 59, 61, 66, 69, 90, 94 Merkel, Angela 77–78, 86 (meta-)linguistic awareness 186–187 metaphor, classification of conventionalised metaphor 57–58, 60, 68, 70, 76, 82, 87, 93–94 creative metaphor 17–18, 38, 43, 48–49, 92 deliberate metaphor 37, 41–42, 50, 57, 66, 76 direct metaphor 43, 49 mixed metaphor 40–41, 57, 65–66, 68, 80–87, 94 novel metaphor 38, 43, 45, 48–49, 59–60, 66, 76, 94 political metaphor 17, 19, 37 purposeful metaphor 37, 41–50 metaphor chaining 81

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metaphor continuation strategies 87–88, 92, 94 metaphor identification procedure (MIP, MIPVU) 48, 66, 110, 112 metaphor scenario 21–24, 26–28, 31–32, 55, 59, 62, 64, 70–71, 74, 77, 79, 84, 87–88, 90, 94 metaphor-topoi correlation 63, 65, 70, 72, 79 metaphor variation 16–17, 19, 106–108 metaphorical model 38–41, 44–48 migration and migrants 53–96, 175–176 mimetic expressions 140–142, 144 mind/body dualism 150 motion verbs 69, 128, 139, 142–143 multicultural education 204, 206

nurturant parent model 19

N natural disaster scenario 56, 59–60, 62, 67–71, 75–76, 81, 83–84, 87, 93 naturopathy 154–155, 160, 164–166 Nazism 6, 30–31, 71, 73, 174, 177, 179 Nigerian English 107, 109–111, 114–116, 118, 120–121, 123–124

R risk society 147, 163–165

O Obama, Barack 37, 40, 45–50 OED (Oxford English Dictionary) 118, 150–152 Old English 149–151, 167 onomasiological metaphor analysis 37, 42, 49–50 out-group 54, 57, 59–60, 70, 72, 74, 78, 87, 171, 183, 193–196, 205 otherness, and othering 75, 171–172, 179, 181, 183–188 P periphrastic expressions 128, 139, 144 person scenario 22, 24, 27–28 prejudice 58–59, 183, 191–192, 194–202, 204–207 proverb 108, 115–116, 121–122, 124 pseudoscience 154–155

S Selective Exposure Theory 201–203, 205 self-/other-awareness 197–198, 205 self-esteem 197–198, 203–204 self-image 193, 196–197, 203–206

simile 20, 43–45, 49 Social Identity Theory 193–196, 199–204 Social Information Processing Framework 201 Social Judgement Theory 200–203, 207 spiritual beings 113 spiritual health 149, 151–153, 160–163, 166–167 stereotype 30–31, 54, 59, 181–185, 192–200, 204–207 strict father model 19 T TESOL 180 Theory of Psychological Reactance 203–4 Theory of Reasoned Action 199–201, 203–204, 206 topos 54, 59, 63, 65–74, 79, 84, 87, 91–92, 95 Trump, Donald 37, 43–46, 48, 77 U UKIP 53, 73 Ukraine war 178 unidirectionality, of mapping 61, 87 W World Englishes 106–108

The present volume explores the meeting ground between Critical Discourse Studies and Cultural Linguistics. The contributions investigate culture-specific conceptualisations, ways of framing and conceptual metaphors in political discourse, as well as cultural models, cultural stereotypes and stereotyping. The individual authors use quantitative (e.g. corpus-based approaches) and/or qualitative methods. They address a range of contexts, e.g. Europe, the US, Japan, West Africa, and a variety of topics, e.g. migration, presidential elections, identity, food culture, concepts of health. The papers included in this volume show that ideologies, the key concern of Critical Discourse Studies, cannot be analysed independently of cultural conceptualisations. In a complementary, dialectic fashion, cultural conceptualisation, the central concern of Cultural Linguistics, have ideological implications, sometimes subtle, sometimes very straightforward. The present volume thus illustrates that travelling on this meeting ground is a natural and fruitful endeavour for both approaches.

isbn 978 90 272 1405 8

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY