164 research outputs found
Creativity in Metaphor Interpretation
This paper looks at corpus- and survey-based evidence of innovative interpretative metaphor use that changes the default meaning of well-established figurative constructions. Specifically, we look at interpretation induced changes in the meaning of corporeal metaphors, on the basis of a corpus of British political discourse and a questionnaire survey of more than 1000 respondents from 31 linguistic backgrounds in 10 countries. The corpus-based evidence consists of metaphor-production data that show how situational variation in metaphor use can over time create a semantic-pragmatic drift that changes the dominant meaning of a conventional metaphor expression. The questionnaire survey reveals four distinct models for BODY focused readings (i.e. NATION AS GEOBODY, AS HIERARCHICAL FUNCTIONAL WHOLE, AS PART OF SPEAKERâS BODY, AS PART OF LARGER BODY), plus a further set PERSON-focused readings. The two most frequent BODY-focused interpretations, i.e. NATION AS GEOBODY and NATION AS HIERARCHICAL FUNCTIONAL WHOLE, as well as the PERSON-stereotypes versions show divergent frequency and elaboration patterns across the Chinese- vs. English-L1 respondent groups, which may be linked to specific cultural conceptual and discursive traditions. Both data sets indicate a strong creative element in metaphor interpretation, which accounts for a significant degree of variation in the creation of new metaphorical concepts
The âlegitimationâ of hostility towards immigrantsâ languages in press and social media: Main fallacies and how to challenge them
On the basis of internet forum and press media data, this article studies the expression of hostile attitudes towards multilingualism and multiculturalism in the context of debates about immigration. The forum data are drawn from the BBCâs Have Your Say website, which is a moderated forum that excludes polemical and abusive postings. Nevertheless, it still seems to provide its users ample opportunity for airing strongly anti-immigrant attitudes. The narratives in which these attitudes are being expressed are exemplary stories of the postersâ supposed encounters with the use of foreign languages in the street, in the workplace or at school. This presence of foreign languages in the British public sphere is evaluated as being (at least) problematic and is âexplainedâ as a result of mass immigration, which serves to reinforce the scenario of a culture mix that will destroy British âhomeâ culture. Media coverage of immigration partly supports such vilification of multilingualism and multiculturalism, and the reports and comments often seem to be drawn from similar narrative-argumentative templates as those of the discussions on Have Your Say. In conclusion, we argue that counterspeech informed by Critical Discourse Analysis has to develop alternative narratives and figurative scenarios that question the bias against linguistic and cultural diversity
Wilhelm IIâs âHun Speechâ and Its Alleged Resemiotization During World War I
Kaiser Wilhelm IIâs speech to a German contingent of the Western expedition corps to quell the so-called âBoxer Rebellionâ in 1900 and develop the imperialist drive for colonies further, is today remembered chiefly as an example of his penchant for sabre-rattling rhetoric. The Kaiser's appeal to his soldiers to behave towards Chinese like the âHuns under Attilaâ was, according to some accounts, the source for the stigmatizing label Hun(s) for Germans in British and US war propaganda in WW1 and WW2, which has survived in popular memory to this day. However, there are hardly any reliable data for such a link and evidence of the use of âHunâ as a term of insult in European Orientalist discourse. On this basis, we argue that a âmodelâ function of Wilhelmâs speech for the post-1914 uses highly improbable and that, instead, the Hun-stigma was re-contextualised and re-semiotized in WW1. For the duration of the war it became a multi-modal symbol of allegedly âtypicalâ German war brutality. It was only later, reflective comments on this post-1914 usage that picked up on the apparent link of the anti-German Hun-stigma to Wilhelmâs anti-Chinese Hun speech and gradually became a folk-etymological 'explanation' for the dysphemistic lexeme. The paper thus exposes how the re-semiotized term Hun was retrospectively interpreted in a popular etymological narrative that reflects changing connotations of political semantics
The afterlife of an infamous gaffe:Wilhelm IIâs âHun speechâ of 1900 and the anti-German Hun stereotype during World War I in British and German popular memory
Kaiser Wilhelm IIâs speech to a German contingent of the international expedition corps, sent to quell the so-called âBoxer Rebellionâ in 1900, is today remembered chiefly as an example of his penchant for boastful, sabre-rattling rhetoric that included a strange comparison of his soldiers with the âHuns under Attilaâ. According to some accounts, this comparison was the source for the stigmatizing label Hun(s) for Germans in British and US war propaganda in WW1 and WW2, which has survived in popular memory and continues to be used, though mainly in ironical senses, by British and German media to this day. This paper charts the history of the Germans-as-Huns analogy and argues first, that the usage data render highly improbable any âmodelâ function of Wilhelmâs speech for post-1914 uses. Furthermore, present-day uses presuppose an awareness of the WW1 and WW2 meaning on the part of readers, which serves as a platform for echoic allusions. In the British media these allusions often lead to the ironical (including self-ironical) subversion of preceding uses, while in German public discourse they focus more on historical commemoration and comparison
"You keep telling us different things, what do we believe?â:Meta-communication and meta-representation in police interviews
Quotation and reflective interpretation of previous statements are common features in police interviews. Of particular importance is the uncovering of apparent contradictions between earlier and current responses in interviews of suspects. Conflicting statements can be used by officers as triggers to elicit new responses that explain inconsistencies. In linguistic pragmatics, such reflective commenting on utterances is categorized as metacommunication, i.e. âcommunication about communicationâ, which includes metarepresentation, i.e. second-order representation of another representation through some form of quotation. Such instances of metacommunication are key-instances of negotiating the communicative interests of its chief participants, which in a suspect interviews consist on the one hand in the interviewersâ purpose of establishing grounds for a potential criminal charge and, on the other hand, the intervieweeâs interest in avoiding such a charge. This article analyses exemplary cases of metacommunication in multilingual police interviews from the perspective of quotation pragmatics. The results suggest that police interview training should pay special attention to this area in order to optimise cognitive results
Friedrich Max MĂŒllerâs Cultural Concept of Metaphor
This paper analyses MĂŒllerâs concept of metaphor, which he expounded in the eight of his second series of Lectures on the Science of Language (1863). It highlights the central role that metaphor played in MĂŒllerâs theory of mythology, as well as his critical appraisal of the latter as a form of âdiseased languageâ. This critical âdeconstructionâ of metaphors and mythology was, however, no end in itself but an application of the comparative, âhistoricalâ philology that had clarified the âgenealogicalâ relationships of (Indo-European) languages and was now to be applied to cultures. MĂŒllerâs position in the history of metaphor theory is that of an outsider, but his emphasis on the role of metaphor reinterpretation in cultural history remains a challenge for philosophy and linguistics
Introduction: Language aggression in public debates on immigration
In Europe and the US, xenophobic discourses against immigrants have been elaborated by populist movements, with far-reaching effects on election campaigns, on referenda and on the relationship of the public with governing elites, not least through the use of social media. Such discourses have been linked with claims of âregainedâ national, cultural or ethnic identity and âliberationâ on the part of the anti-immigration âwe-groupâ that have fostered demands, and sometimes near-triumphalist assertions of âtakingâ oneâs (own) country âbackâ from an unspecified alien occupier. The immigrant is thus seen as an aggressor who threatens to take away oneâs identity, and in a kind of âidentification with the aggressorâ by proxy, the projected national Self feels entitled to defend and reconstitute itself through asserting its own supremacy, wholeness and faultlessness. Conversely, it feels entitled to deny such qualities to immigrants (or also to further âOthersâ, such as current or historical âenemyâ collectives who are implicated in dealing with migration) and to demonize them
Metaphor, irony and sarcasm in public discourse
In public political discourse, figurative expressions used by one participant are often followed up and âcounteredâ by other participants through ironical and/or sarcastic allusions or quotations, which are aimed at denouncing the preceding version and/or deriving a new, contrarian conclusion from it. What is the relationship between the figurative template expression and its ironical or sarcastic variants? Using data from a corpus documenting 25 years of debate in Britain about the nationâs place at the heart of Europe, this paper investigates the interplay of metaphor, irony and sarcasm in public discourse. We show that the âdiscourse careerâ of this metaphorical slogan bifurcates into two strands, i.e. an affirmative, optimistic use vs deriding and ridiculing uses that depict the heart of Europe as diseased, dead, non-existent or rotten. It is argued that discourse participants need to retain the optimistic template version as a reference point in discourse memory to achieve the intended ironical and/or sarcastic effects, and that the latter are essential to keep the metaphoricity of the slogan âaliveâ
Truth, lies and figurative scenarios:Metaphors at the heart of Brexit
This article studies one of the key-metaphors that has dominated British EU debates for the past 25 years, i.e. the slogan, Britain at the heart of Europe. The discourse career of this metaphor up to the Brexit referendum shows a decline in its affirmative, optimistic use, and a converse increase of deriding uses to the point of declaring the heart of Europe irredeemably diseased, dead, non-existent or rotten. We argue that these changes in the metaphor scenario of the heart of Europe concept helped to entice the British public to integrate the information supplied by pro-Brexit campaigners into a narrative of a dying EU, which motivated their voting preferences. Even statements that were exposed as factually wrong or implausible before the Brexit referendum were still accepted as fitting the narrative and thus considered as more reliable than unframed pieces of counter-information supplied by the Brexit critics
Hostility towards immigrantsâ languages in Britain: A backlash against âsuper-diversityâ?
Sociolinguists have adopted the concept of âsuper-diversityâ from cultural anthropology to analyse multidimensional changes in ethnolinguistic identities resulting from recent mass migration. Sociolinguistic super-diversity is thus understood as a central aspect of shifts in migration patterns that have increased the complexity of cultural identities beyond traditional, more static âmulticulturalâ diversity, both in Britain and globally. How is the presence of more complex and diverse linguistic identities viewed by the public? This paper explores attitudes towards perceived increased multilingualism and multiculturalism expressed in the BBCâs Have Your Say Internet forum. The majority of postings blame immigrants for communication problems with the British âhomeâ community and allege their unwillingness to learn English; many also assume that (only) a monolingual national community guarantees social coherence and they are dismissive of any language mediation services. In view of these âfolk-sociolinguisticâ assumptions and linguaphobic attitudes, the notion of super-diversity needs to be reconfigured so as to include the (unintended) adverse impact of the migration-induced increase in the diversity and complexity of imagined ethno-linguistic identities
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