Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors This page intentionally left blank Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaph...

Author: Kathleen Ahrens

122 downloads 1982 Views 1MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

This page intentionally left blank

Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Edited by Kathleen Ahrens Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong National Taiwan University, Taipei

Selection and editorial matter © Kathleen Ahrens 2009 Chapters © their individual authors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identiﬁed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN-13: 978-0-230-20345-7

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 18

9 17

8 16

7 15

6 14

5 13

4 12

3 11

2 10

1 09

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

vii

Acknowledgements

ix

Notes on the Contributors

x

1 Analysing Conceptual Metaphors in Political Language Kathleen Ahrens

Part I Gender and Conceptual Metaphors in Political Speeches 2 Metaphor, Politics and Gender: a Case Study from Germany Veronika Koller and Elena Semino

1

7 9

3 Metaphor, Politics and Gender: a Case Study from Italy Elena Semino and Veronika Koller

36

4 Gender versus Politics: When Conceptual Models Collide in the US Senate Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee

62

5 Non una donna in politica, ma una donna politica: Women’s Political Language in an Italian Context Gill Philip

83

6 The Metaphorical Construction of Ireland Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio

Part II Gender and Conceptual Metaphors in Political Debates

112

137

7 Metaphor and Gender in British Parliamentary Debates Jonathan Charteris-Black

139

8 Sex Differences in the Usage of Spatial Metaphors: a Case Study of Political Language Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler

166

v

vi Contents

9 Conceptual Metaphors of Family in Political Debates in the USA Karen L. Adams

Part III

Women in Gendered Conceptual Metaphors

184

207

10 Gender, War and Body Politics: a Critical Multimodal Analysis of Metaphor in Advertising Michelle M. Lazar

209

11 Power as a Conceptual Metaphor of Gender Inequality? Comparing Dutch and Spanish Politics Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo

235

12 Gendered Metaphors of Women in Power: the Case of Hillary Clinton as Madonna, Unruly Woman, Bitch and Witch Elvin T. Lim

254

Index

270

List of Tables and Figures Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2A.1 2A.2 2A.3 2A.4 3.1 3A.1 3A.2 3A.3 3A.4 4.1 4.2 4.3

5.1 5.2 5.3(a) 5.3(b) 5.4(a) 5.4(b) 5.5(a) 5.5(b) 5.6(a) 5.6(b)

Keywords in Schröder and Merkel subcorpora 18 Metaphoric expressions of JOURNEY metaphor 20 Results for the JOURNEY source domain 21 Frequent metaphoric expressions of JOURNEY metaphor 23 for each politician Results for WAR source domain 24 List of speeches by Gerhard Schröder included in the 30 corpus List of interviews by Gerhard Schröder included in the 31 corpus List of speeches by Angela Merkel included in the corpus 31 List of interviews by Angela Merkel included in the corpus 32 Results for the SPORTS source domain 50 List of speeches by Silvio Berlusconi included in the corpus 58 List of interviews by Silvio Berlusconi included in the 58 corpus List of speeches by Emma Bonino included in the corpus 59 List of interviews by Emma Bonino included in the corpus 60 Information about US Senate corpora 67 Comparisons of NP versus SF lexemes (raw frequency) 69 as contrasted by different groups Comparisons of NP versus SF lexemes (raw frequency) 74 as contrasted between Obama, Hillary Clinton and McCain Corpus size (running words) and composition 86 Top 10 keywords in Trade&Com corpus 89 Keyword groupings in FamPol 91 LFCW groupings in FamPol 91 Keyword groupings in Trade&Com 94 LFCW groupings in Trade&Com 95 Keyword groupings in RegPol 98 LFCW groupings in RegPol 99 Keyword groupings in EqualOpps 100 LFCW groupings in EqualOpps 100 vii

viii List of Tables and Figures

5.7(a) 5.7(b) 5.8 5.9 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 7.1 7.2 7.3 7A.1 7A.2 7A.3 7A.4 7A.5 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 9.1 9.2 9.3 10.1

Keyword groupings in YouthPol&Sport LFCW groupings in YouthPol&Sport Source domains used metaphorically by the ministers Summary of war metaphors by subcorpus (number of types) Corpus metadata Ahern’s and McAleese’s five key lexical domains Target domains and metaphorical expressions List of the recurrent source domains for both politicians Main subclasses of the metaphor X IS A PERSON Keywords Summary of metaphors used in Commons debates Rhetorical purposes of metaphor Profile of candidates for deputy leadership of Labour Party Source domain ‘journeys’ – literal and metaphoric uses Source domain ‘light and dark’ – literal and metaphoric uses Source domain ‘plants’ – literal and metaphoric uses Source domain ‘health’ – literal and metaphoric uses Metaphorical uses of nouns Metaphorical uses of verbs Metaphorical uses of prepositions Metaphorical uses of nouns Metaphorical uses of verbs Metaphorical uses of prepositions Female and male candidates per debate in different types of races Word count for types of debates (rounded to the nearest 10) Conceptual metaphors Conceptual metaphor: BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR

101 101 103 104 117 119 121 126 129 147 148 150 160 162 162 163 163 174 175 175 176 176 177 186 187 189 212

Figures 5.1 7.1 10.1

Concordances for ‘alimentare’ [feed, fuel] in FamPol A contemporary model for political communication L’Oréal advert

92 141 222

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many people who have contributed either directly or indirectly to the creation of this volume. First and foremost, I would like to thank all the authors for their insightful contributions and timely responses to all requests for revisions and updates. I would also like to thank the staff at Palgrave Macmillan, including former editor Jill Lake, commissioning editor Priyanka Pathak, editorial assistant Melanie Blair, and the anonymous reviewers of this work for their support and guidance in this endeavour. I would also like to thank the colleagues who encouraged me throughout the process: Adele Goldberg, Chu-Ren Huang, John Kieschnik, Regina Llamas, Lily I-wen Su, Zazie Todd and Ruth Wodak. My students who share my interest in politics and language have given me much food for thought concerning metaphor analysis and I would like to thank them for the lively discussions we have had and the insightful comments they have provided, with special thanks going to Paul You-Jun Chang, Siaw-Fong Chung, Justine Sheng-Hsiu Chiu, Ren-Feng Duann, Shu-Ping Gong, Jia-Fei Hong, Katarzyna Proctor, Tiffany Ying-Yu Lin, Louis Wei-Lun Lu, and last, but certainly not least, Sophia Yat Mei Lee, who not only co-authored a chapter with me, but also was my editorial assistant for this volume. Thank you one and all! KATHLEEN AHRENS

ix

Notes on the Contributors Karen L. Adams is a Professor of English/Linguistics at Arizona State University, USA, where she co-directs the PhD concentration in Rhetoric/ Composition/Linguistics and is affiliated with the Gender and Women Studies Program. She has a long-term interest in the linguistic and rhetorical construction of opposition as well as in political discourse. She regularly teaches courses in pragmatics and discourse analysis and language and gender, which are all developed within the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis. Kathleen Ahrens is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. Currently on leave from her position as a Professor at National Taiwan University, she has published extensively on issues relating to lexical semantics, language processing, and conceptual metaphors. Her current research focuses on corpus-based analyses of conceptual metaphor use in political language. Jonathan Charteris-Black is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of the West of England, UK. His major interest is in social and cognitive approaches to metaphor that he describes as critical metaphor analysis and whose purpose is to explore the social motivation and influence of metaphor choices in contemporary discourse types including political speeches, religious texts, the press and other influential social domains of language use. Juliana Goschler is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bremen, Germany. She works in the field of cognitive linguistics, especially on metaphor theory and the linguistic encoding of motion events. Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Granada, Spain, where she teaches a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses on English language and linguistics. Her main areas of research include gender studies, critical linguistics, CDA and corpus linguistics. Veronika Koller is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, UK. Her research interests x

Notes on the Contributors xi

include critical discourse analysis, cognitive semantics and social cognition, as well as language, sexuality and gender. She is currently working on the cognitive and discursive aspects of brand communication. Michelle M. Lazar is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the Faculty of Arts and the Social Sciences, and the Academic Convenor of the Gender Studies Minor Programme at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include critical discourse analysis, feminist and gender studies, media and political discourse, and multimodal discourse analysis. She is the editor of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse (2005), and series editor of Routledge Critical Studies in Discourse. Sophia Yat Mei Lee is a doctoral student at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She was awarded her MPhil degree from the University of Hong Kong for a thesis on complement function in lexical-functional grammar. Her research now focuses on issues related to corpus and computational linguistics. Elvin T. Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, USA, and author of The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: the Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush (2008). He took a BA (first class), MSc and DPhil, all from the University of Oxford. Emanuela Lombardo is Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, and researcher in the European QUING and TARGET projects. Her research concerns theoretical and empirical aspects of gender equality policies. She is co-editor of The Discursive Politics of Gender Equality: Stretching, Bending and Policymaking (2009). Petra Meier is Assistant Professor at the Politics Department of the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She publishes and teaches on theories on democracy and representation, electoral system design, political sociology, feminist approaches to public policies, the women’s movement and state feminism, and Belgian politics. She recently edited The Discursive Politics of Gender Equality: Stretching, Bending and Policymaking (2009). Gill Philip is a Lecturer in EFL in the Interfaculty Centre for Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Bologna University, Italy. She has published in

xii Notes on the Contributors

the fields of CALL, corpus linguistics, lexicography and phraseology. She is currently conducting research on learner corpora, studying the use of conceptual metaphor and phraseology in the writing of advanced learners of English. Elena Semino is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, UK, where she teaches courses in stylistics and English language. Her research interests are in stylistics, corpus linguistics and metaphor theory. She has published on topics such as poetic text worlds, fictional minds, deixis, discourse presentation, and metaphor. Her most recent book is Metaphor in Discourse (2008). Anatol Stefanowitsch is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Bremen, Germany. His research combines corpus-linguistic methods with cognitive linguistic theory, especially in the areas of construction grammar and metaphor theory. He is one of the editors-in-chief of the journal Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory.

1 Analysing Conceptual Metaphors in Political Language Kathleen Ahrens Hong Kong Baptist University and National Taiwan University

The past two decades have seen an increase in the number of women serving in high-level political positions in countries throughout the world. Yet, to date, there has been no contrastive examination of the metaphorical language men and women use in the political arena. This is particularly relevant in light of research that argues that men and women use conversation rituals differently in the workplace: women to engage, men to win (Tannen 1994/2001; Holmes and Stubbe 2003), and that business media discourse involves WAR metaphors, which are regarded as a ‘masculinizing force on both discourse as well as on related social practices’ (Koller 2004: 172). If men and women are using language differently in the workplace, and the language of business has inherently masculine metaphors, what type of conceptual metaphors do women use when they participate in political office? Do they adopt the conceptual metaphors used by the majority (i.e. the men) as seems to happen in much of business discourse, or do they highlight their differences with their male colleagues by using conceptual metaphors that reflect their own perspectives on life and on the political situations as they see it? Or, as Cameron (2007) and Koller and Semino (this volume) suggest, do men and women exhibit certain patterns of linguistic behaviour which may make them appear as either masculine or feminine? The first eight chapters in this volume examine linguistic data (cf. Charteris-Black 2004, 2005) from five countries (Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the United States) to determine to what extent the conceptual metaphors used by women with political power differ from, or remain the same as, those of men. These eight chapters have been divided into two sections: the five chapters in Part I examine the conceptual metaphors that politicians themselves use when speaking to their 1

2 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

colleagues and their constituents; the three chapters in Part II look at the conceptual metaphors used by men and women in political debates in Great Britain, Germany and the United States. Part III discusses data that talk about women: how women are politicised in beauty advertisements in Singapore, how a leading US female senator is viewed by the pundits, and how women are portrayed in policy statements that have to do with women’s rights in the Netherlands and Spain. All authors base their analyses on linguistic data that they collected for the purpose of the study. While the studies in the first two parts take both a quantitative and qualitative approach to the data presented, the studies in the last part are primarily qualitatively based. In ‘Metaphor, Politics and Gender: a Case Study from Germany’, Koller and Semino work with a corpus of interviews and speeches given by the current and former German chancellors, Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schröder, and examine the number of metaphor tokens, metaphor types, as well as metaphoric type-token ratio and metaphor density per 1000 words, in addition to qualitative analyses of the metaphors used. Koller and Semino demonstrate through these analyses that Merkel uses metaphor in a formulaic manner, and that Schröder has a more pronounced use of WAR metaphors. In the conclusion, they argue against a monocausal explanation of gender-driven language use, noting that political party and other contextual information may also influence their results. In ‘Metaphor, Politics and Gender: a Case Study from Italy’, Semino and Koller run similar analyses on the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and on Emma Bonino, a prominent parliament member and former European commissioner for health and consumer protection. Semino and Koller point out that the differences in the metaphors used can be attributed to a range of factors, including: political orientation, goals, topics discussed, institutional roles and national audiences, as well as in the ways each politician strategically uses language associated with masculinity and femininity to reach his or her respective goals. In ‘Gender versus Politics: When Conceptual Models Collide’, Ahrens and Lee take a different approach to the issue of metaphor analysis. They look at the lexemes associated with the two overarching conceptual metaphors of the two major US political parties to determine if male or female senators use lexemes associated with one metaphor model more than the other. They find that gender does not drive either lexical choice or collocation patterns in speeches that occur on the US Senate floor. The chapter ‘Non una donna in politica, ma una donna politica: Women’s Political Language in an Italian Context’, by Gill Philip,

Kathleen Ahrens 3

also takes an innovative approach to metaphor analysis. She looks at the speeches, press interviews and press releases of five Italian women ministers from mid-2006 to mid-2007. She then extracts the lowfrequency content words, groups those words into semantically related categories, and determines whether these groupings fit the criteria for metaphorical source domains. Once this has been done, consistent mappings which indicate the presence of metaphor themes are identified. Philip finds that in the few instances when feminine themes occur, they are related either to the ministerial remit or the influence of journalists. She thus concludes that the metaphors used by female political leaders in Italy do not differ greatly from those of male politicians. In contrast to the previous four chapters, Hidalgo Tenorio, in her chapter ‘The Metaphorical Construction of Ireland’, provides evidence that the Irish president, Mary McAleese, uses metaphorical expressions twice as often as the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern. In addition, Hidalgo Tenorio argues that the five key domains are different for these two politicians, with Ahern focusing on information-oriented language and McAleese using people-oriented language. Although Hidalgo Tenorio acknowledges the influence of background, party loyalty and political role, she does see a clear influence of gender coming through in the choice of metaphors and language chosen by McAleese. The next three chapters all look at debates by politicians. In ‘Metaphor and Gender in British Parliamentary Debates’, Charteris-Black concludes that male Members of Parliament (MPs) in the British House of Commons use more metaphors than females, especially metaphors having to do with the concepts of health/illness and light/dark. He also notes that female MPs tend to use metaphors to make ethical appeals (although metaphor does not necessarily figure in the rhetoric of all female MPs), while male MPs tend to use metaphor to make an emotional appeal. Experienced female MPs employ metaphor more than inexperienced female MPs – though not as much as experienced male MPs which suggests that metaphor is a rhetorical skill that develops over time as female MPs familiarise themselves with the discourse norms of the House of Commons. In ‘Sex Differences in the Usage of Spatial Metaphors: a Case Study of Political Language’, Stefanowitsch and Goschler test whether spatial metaphors are used more frequently by men as compared with women parliamentarians in debates in the German Bundestag (the German parliament), based on the assumption that men are better at certain aspects of spatialization than women. However, they do not find evidence to support this hypothesis, as there is no discernible

4 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

difference in spatial metaphor use. Adams, in ‘Conceptual Metaphors of Family in Political Debates in the USA’, also does not find evidence that female candidates differ from male candidates in the way they use family metaphors in debates at the local, state or national level in the United States. Thus, to sum up the findings from the first two parts, only two out of eight studies conclude that men and women use metaphors differently. In the British parliament, male MPs use more metaphors than female MPs, and they use them differently (Charteris-Black), while the Irish president, Mary McAleese, uses more metaphors than the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern (Hidalgo Tenorio). However, the chapters in the third part, which look at how women are discussed by politicians or pundits or viewed by advertisers, paint a somewhat different picture as women are stereotyped by the metaphors that are used to describe them. In Lazar’s chapter on ‘Gender, War and Body Politics: a Critical Multimodal Analysis of Metaphor in Advertising’, she argues that advertisements for female beauty products are based on a model of political confrontation, with the area of battle being the female body, leading to alienation of the self. In addition, women’s ‘fight’ for beauty also refers to metaphors that relate to securing political rights and challenging the status quo. The irony, of course, is that women are now empowered to ‘fight’ what is perceived as ‘deadly’ about their own bodies. Meier and Lombardo, in their chapter ‘Power as a Conceptual Metaphor of Gender Inequality? Comparing Dutch and Spanish Politics’, examine how ‘power’ is conceptualised in Dutch and Spanish policy documents having to do with the issue of gender inequality in politics, and how conceptual metaphors are employed to describe ‘power’. They find that there is no obvious difference in terms of the conceptualisation of power between Dutch and Spanish policies, even though there are historical differences between the two countries concerning women in politics. In both cases, male power over women emerges as a taboo: it is not explicitly discussed as a problem. The invisible unstated norm of male political power suggests the perpetuation of imbalanced gender relations in political decision-making. Lastly, in Lim’s chapter, ‘Gendered Metaphors of Women in Power: the Case of Hillary Clinton as Madonna, Unruly Woman, Bitch and Witch’, he points out that gendered metaphors have been used to attack Hillary Clinton, especially as she has moved beyond the role of First Lady to the arguably more powerful roles of Senator and Democratic presidential contender.

Kathleen Ahrens 5

The chapters in this volume do not paint a uniform picture of gender and metaphor in the political realm. Some men use both femininity and masculinity to their advantage (the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, discussed in Semino and Koller, comes to mind), and while some women use femininity and what can be construed as feminine metaphors (such as Mary McAleese discussed in Hidalgo Tenorio’s chapter), other women do not (for example, Hazel Blears as discussed in Charteris-Black). Moreover, it can sometimes be difficult to detect differences in how men and women use metaphors (as the chapters by Ahrens and Lee, and Stefanowitsch and Goschler point out). However, the use of metaphor to stereotype women can be seen in the way Hillary Clinton is portrayed by her critics. Thus, though it is possible to find gendered use of metaphors, it is also possible to find many situations in which there are no discernible differences. In short, it seems that in this modern era, both male and female politicians may choose to use femininity and masculinity when it suits their purpose. Moreover, this ability to make the most of the perceived advantages of either gender’s traits can be seen through the variety and range of conceptual metaphors politicians employ as they strive to persuade people of their plans and appeal to constituents for support.

References Cameron, L. 2007. ‘Patterns of Metaphor Use in Reconciliation Talk’. Discourse and Society, 18 (2): 197–222. Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: the Persuasive Power of Metaphor. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Holmes, J. and M. Stubbe. 2003. Power and Politeness in the Workplace: a Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work. London: Pearson. Koller, V. 2004. Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse: a Critical Cognitive Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Tannen, D. 1994/2001. Talking from 9 to 5: How Women’s and Men’s Conversational Styles Affect Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit, and What Gets Done at Work. New York: William Morrow.

This page intentionally left blank

Part I Gender and Conceptual Metaphors in Political Speeches

This page intentionally left blank

2 Metaphor, Politics and Gender: a Case Study from Germany Veronika Koller and Elena Semino Lancaster University

2.1

Introduction

In this chapter, we analyse the use of metaphor in a corpus of interviews and speeches given by the former and current chancellors of Germany, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel. More generally, we will introduce a theoretical and methodological framework for analysing metaphor in discourse which informs both this and Chapter 3. The theoretical background relies on the notion of metaphor as both a conceptual and a linguistic phenomenon, which is combined with a social constructivist view on gender and language. While attention has been given to how female and male politicians are represented in the media (for example Hellinger 2006, Hercberg 2007), there are fewer studies addressing the potentially gendered language use of politicians themselves, a scarcity which this book, and indeed our chapters, are poised to remedy. Like most contemporary researchers of gender and language, we, too, follow the social constructivist view of gendered language behaviour, which rejects the idea of an inherent difference in language use by men and women (Cameron 2007). Essentialist notions of gender assume that biological sex unproblematically translates into gender identity, which in turn leads to gendered behaviour, including language behaviour. A variety of this essentialist view posits that different socialisation positions men and women in different subcultures, which then determine their linguistic behaviour (for example Tannen 1991). Following that line of thought, males would ‘naturally’ identify as men – either because of their biology or their upbringing – and exhibit behaviour that is culturally connoted as masculine. By contrast, the social constructivist approach holds that speakers use language in order to represent themselves as masculine or feminine. Contextual factors play a central role in what image speakers 9

10 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

wish to create and what strategies they employ to do so. In a nutshell, the approach to gender and language that we follow in this and the subsequent chapter does not state that a particular use of language, including metaphor, can be explained in terms of the speaker’s gender, but rather that speakers exhibit particular linguistic behaviour which makes them come across as masculine or feminine, often regardless of their biological sex. Following on from those theoretical considerations, the method section of this chapter introduces an approach to analysing metaphor in discourse which combines quantitative corpus-based investigations with qualitative text analysis. This will be exemplified with speeches and interviews given by the former and current chancellors of Germany, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel. To elaborate on the background to the data we will in the following provide short profiles of the two politicians and then proceed to describe our methods of data selection and analysis. In the empirical part, we will present the results of our analysis. Finally, we will discuss what inferences these allow us to make about gendered metaphor usage by politicians, and more generally about analysing metaphor in political discourse.

2.2 2.2.1

Background Gerhard Schröder

Born in 1944 in North Rhine-Westphalia, Gerhard Schröder comes from a working-class background and first trained as a retail salesman before finishing secondary school at an evening college. He then studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1976, working as a lawyer until 1990. He joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) at the age of 19. His political career took him from the position of chairperson of the Young Socialists to that of the party’s regional chapter and member of the party’s federal board. He was a member of parliament 1980–86 and served as governor (Ministerpräsident) of Lower Saxony between 1990 and 1998. In 1998, Schröder was elected as head of government and became chairperson of the SPD in 1999. He was re-elected in 2002 and continued to lead the coalition government of SPD and the Greens until he was defeated in the general elections of 2005. After that, he resigned from all political offices and now serves on the board of Russian energy company Gazprom. Gerhard Schröder is largely associated with a ‘modernisation’ of the SPD in the image of New Labour in Britain. His budgetary policies included both tax increases and cuts in public expenditure along with social

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 11

policies that comprised liberalising naturalisation laws and introducing same-sex partnerships. During his terms in office, Schröder cultivated an anti-intellectual working-class image, but his penchant for fine clarets and his holiday home in Tuscany meant that he was frowned upon as a social climber. At the same time, he was notorious for curry-favouring businesspeople, leading to the epithet ‘comrade of bosses’ [Genosse der Bosse]. In gender terms, he very much presented himself as a ‘red-blooded male’, sporting all the necessary accoutrements such as cigars and a fourth wife, Doris Köpf. He appeared drunk in public after his re-election and similar speculations were voiced when he bullied Angela Merkel after his electoral defeat by bluntly refusing, in a televised debate, to step down as chancellor. After negotiations that dragged on for weeks, he finally ceded the chancellorship to her. 2.2.2

Angela Merkel

Angela Merkel was born in 1954 in Hamburg but grew up in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). She holds a PhD in physics from the University of Leipzig (1986) and worked as a research associate at the Academy of Sciences between 1973 and 1986. Her political career started after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, when she joined first the Democratic Beginnings movement and, a year later, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). She immediately became the spokesperson for the last government of the GDR, a member of parliament in the same year, deputy federal chairperson of the CDU in 1991 and chairperson of the regional chapter of the CDU in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1993. Under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, she served as secretary for women and young people (1991–94) and secretary for the environment (1994–98). During the Schröder years, she became federal chairperson of the CDU and successfully ran for chancellor in 2005. She has been leading a grand coalition of CDU and SPD since then and has achieved modest successes in reforming and improving the economy. Angela Merkel’s meteoric career has left many baffled; in a conservative party that prefers its key members to be Catholic family fathers from the Rhineland, a childless Protestant woman from eastern Germany is an oddity. Starting out as a nobody from the former GDR, Merkel came to be known as ‘[Chancellor Helmut] Kohl’s little girl’, but fell out with him when she took over the CDU after his electoral defeat in 1998. Compared to the boisterous Schröder, Merkel’s image is that of a well-organised, diplomatic and cool person, who largely refuses to discuss her private life. Merkel is married to her second husband, professor of chemistry Joachim Sauer, who also keeps a very low public profile.

12 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Before analysing the metaphor use of the two politicians, we will elaborate on our theoretical framework and methodological approach.

2.3

Theoretical framework

Conceptual metaphor theory in the tradition of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) posits that metaphor is a way of conceptualising one, usually abstract, thing in terms of another, usually more concrete, one. It is therefore first and foremost a cognitive phenomenon. It is only in a second step that conceptual metaphors find their surface-level expression in language and other semiotic modes of communication. In the mental operation known as metaphoric transfer, knowledge about a source domain, for example JOURNEY, is mapped onto a target domain, for example LIFE, yielding LIFE IS A JOURNEY. At the level of language, this metaphor might then be expressed as I’m at a crossroads. Notably, the mapping process only ever involves partial transfer of certain knowledge about the source domain, in accordance with the cognitive and pragmatic function that the metaphor and its related metaphoric expressions are meant to serve in speakers’ conceptual structure, language and communicative ends. For instance, in the persuasive genres that make up most of political discourse, political activity may be conceptualised, and then expressed, as a journey towards a positively evaluated destination. Mappings are thus likely to centre on determination, perseverance in the face of obstacles and possibly solidarity among travellers, while taking a detour, forgetting vital luggage and missing trains are unlikely to be drawn upon. This not only positions the speaker in relation to their audience, making metaphor serve an interpersonal metafunction (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004), but also represents the world from a particular viewpoint, thus meeting an ideational metafunction. As Lakoff and Johnson recognised (1980: 159), ‘metaphor can create realities for us, especially social realities’. Following on from that latter aspect of conceptual metaphor theory, a number of researchers have further developed the framework by investigating the ideological function of metaphor in discourse (for example, Charteris-Black 2004, Dirven et al. 2001a, b, Goatly 2007, Koller 2004b, Musolff 2004, Zinken 2003). Although different with regards to method and data, the studies listed above all address metaphor as a way of representing the world from a particular viewpoint,1 used in discourse with the aim of persuading, if not manipulating, audiences to accept the speaker’s position. In so far as acceptance of that position would reify the speaker’s relative power vis-à-vis others, metaphor does ideological work in discourse. One area of social life that is notoriously imbued with ideology is

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 13

gender. Particular representations of masculinity or femininity do ideological work in that they help to maintain, or challenge, notions of gender identity that benefit one group while disadvantaging another. In societies characterised by relatively high gender segregation and disproportionate male power, the group likely to have privileged discourse access and therefore to impose their views of gender is representative of what has been called ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell 1995, Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). The role that metaphor plays in constructing gender identities that disadvantage women or express stereotypical gender identities has been investigated for various cultures and discourses, along three main dimensions: • gendered metaphors that reify power asymmetries, for example, by drawing on predominantly male experiences to define aspects of reality (Koller 2004b, Velasco Sacristan 2005, Wilson 1992); • metaphors used to refer to men and women (Hegstrom and McCarlNielsen 2002, Hines 1999, Hiraga 1991, Koller 2004a, Luchjenbroers 1998); • metaphors used by men and women. This chapter and the subsequent one address the third dimension and thereby complement studies on gendered metaphor use in educational contexts (Fiksdal 1999), emotional communication (Fussell and Moss 1998) and media coverage of war (Hollingsworth 2006). The rationale for investigating potentially gendered use of metaphor rests on the assumption that due to their socialisation, women and men perceive the world differently. Accordingly, the argument is that they might conceptualise the world differently (Kövecses 2005: 90) and express these different cognitive models in language features such as metaphoric expressions. Analysis of wo/men’s metaphor use would therefore allow for inferences about the gender identity of speakers as they develop it in a social context characterised by asymmetrical power relations between genders. As indicated in the introduction, however, most contemporary research in the area of language and gender dismisses the essentialist notion that gender identity unproblematically brings about gendered (language) behaviour. Rather, a social constructivist approach sees gender identities as discursively constructed, and regards femininity and masculinity as linguistic resources that speakers of any gender can draw on. The aim of such gendered self-presentation is perhaps not so much to come across as masculine or feminine – although that can also be the case – but to

14 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

capitalise on cultural associations that accrue to gender. For example, Holmes (2006) has shown how managers of either gender use pragmatic and conversational features such as humour, politeness and turn-taking in a hybrid style that combines transaction and interaction, to perform what is culturally associated with masculinity and femininity and to be perceived as competent and determined, or as caring and compassionate. Mills (2005) has found a similar phenomenon for everyday talk. These speakers’ self-presentation was not so much an effect of their gender identity but a strategic choice in order to achieve their goals in a particular context. How does this social constructivist approach square with conceptual metaphor theory and its emphasis on metaphor being ultimately embodied? Undoubtedly, primary metaphors have their source in human beings experiencing their body in three-dimensional space. However, by their very nature, such metaphors rest on universally human, not genderspecific, experiences.2 What we are dealing with when researching gender and metaphor, then, is less the embodied basis but rather the interpersonal and ideational metafunctions of metaphor. Ruling out bodily experiences, the assumption would again be that people of different sexes are socialised into particular gender identities which shape their conceptualisations of the world, including metaphoric ones, and consequently the way these models are expressed in language. While speakers of different genders have been found to use different metaphors to conceptualise the same situation (for example, Fiksdal 1999), it should be kept in mind that gender identity is not as fixed as essentialism would have it. At the very least, gender should be seen as a linguistic resource rather than necessity, as demonstrated in the abovementioned studies by Holmes (2006) and Mills (2006). More importantly still, gender is only one facet of a person’s identity and can be overridden by contextual factors and the aspects of identity prioritised by them. Thus, Holmes’ (2006) informants used language first and foremost in their professional roles, and other studies have shown how gender can combine with other aspects of the self, such as religious identity (Jule 2007). Furthermore, politicians in a democratic state are representatives of their party as well as their constituencies and also have to tailor their language use to various, often multiple, audiences. We would therefore expect to find considerable ‘linguistic variation according to the communicative setting, subject matter, medium, audience, and other factors’ (Kövecses 2005: 95). Last but by no means least, we should not forget that speeches, which form half of our data in this chapter, are actually composed by professional speech writers,

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 15

who are part of the politician’s public relations (PR) team. Indeed, the politician giving a speech often functions mainly as animator, and as a representative of a particular world view carefully designed by PR experts to target a maximum number of potential voters. On the one hand, the politicians’ own conceptualisations result in metaphoric expressions, which are likely to be influenced by factors such as gender, party membership, professional background and historical context. On the other hand, their language use is designed according to pragmatic considerations about audience and current politics. After detailing our methods of data selection and analysis in the next section, we will disentangle these aspects of politicians’ metaphor use in the empirical part of the chapter.

2.4

Methods of data selection and analysis

The comparative study of Schröder’s and Merkel’s metaphor use is based on a corpus of a total of 116,421 words (see Appendix 2.1 for details). The corpus is divided into two subcorpora of just under 60,000 words each, one for each politician. The texts were selected to represent a comparable range of genres, topics and media formats for both politicians. Thus, each subcorpus includes approximately 30,000 words of speeches and a similar proportion for interviews. The Schröder subcorpus contains ten speeches and ten interviews, compared to seven speeches and eight interviews in the Merkel subcorpus. The different genres were included in the corpus for the sake of variety; unfortunately, however, the data sets are too small to discuss them in detail. Therefore, we will only list them in the tables and mention them with regard to some examples. All data are available at http://archiv.bundesregierung.de, the archive page of the official website of the German government. The Schröder subcorpus spans six of the eight years of his chancellorship (2000–5), while the Merkel data are from the years 2005–7. In both cases, speeches address the topics of employment, European politics and the budget. Interviews are more diverse in their subject matter, as interviewers often tick off a list of topics. Interestingly, this for Angela Merkel also includes private matters such as her married life, while the same cannot be found in questions asked of Gerhard Schröder. Rather than being grouped by topic, the interview data cover a range of media outlets such as newspapers (tabloids, broadsheets and financial papers), news magazines, public radio stations as well as public and private TV channels. The data were selected in order to maximise the balance within each corpus in terms of topics and media. It should be noted that this corpus structure is

16 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

slightly different from that for the data for Italian politicians which we present in the following chapter (Semino and Koller, this volume). This is chiefly due to the fact that the two German politicians both held the same office, making the subcorpora much more homogeneous in terms of topics and audience. We started the analysis by using the software suite WordSmith Tools 3.0 to ascertain which words were overused by either Schröder and Merkel and thus get a first idea of the central topics and issues in the two subcorpora. This was done with the help of the word list and keyword programs, which generate frequency lists of the subcorpora and then compare them against each other to see which words are statistically overused in each case (p = .0000001) (Scott 1999). This procedure yielded a list of 19 expressions that are overused in the Schröder as compared to the Merkel data. The respective figure for the Merkel subcorpus is 29. We then selected a subset of approximately 30,000 words of speeches and interviews across topics and media formats. This cross-section was equally divided between the two subcorpora and analysed manually. The analysis was conducted following the metaphor identification procedure put forth by Pragglejaz Group (2007), and resulted in a list of metaphoric expressions used by each politician in those core data. This step of the analysis helped us gain familiarity with the data and identify recurrent source domains. It should be noted that we decided to focus only on particular source domains even at this early stage, excluding overly general ones such as TIME IS A CONTAINER (for example, ‘im letzten Jahr’ [(in the) last year]) or the primary metaphor MORE IS UP/LESS IS DOWN that is prominent in talking about the economy (for example, ‘niedrigste Neuverschuldung’ [lowest level of new debt]). Instead, the analysis concentrated on those metaphors that were used to conceptualise political activity, mainly JOURNEY and WAR metaphors. This first step in the analysis resulted in a list of 39 lexemes for the above source domains. The lexemes, or types, comprised both single words (for example, ‘Schritt’ [step]) and phrasal verbs (‘nach vorn schauen’ [to look ahead]) as well as their different compounds and lemmas (for example, ‘Reformschritt’ [reform step], ‘ich schaue nach vorn’ [I am looking ahead]). We subsequently returned to the WordSmith Tools software and thereby to the whole of the data. This step of the analysis involved running concordances for the 39 types in each subcorpus and checking them for metaphoric usage of the word or words in question. A metaphoric usage was considered relevant when it referred to political activity, and when it involved an individual or collective human actor. Thus, a phrase such as ‘das wird uns nicht von unserem Reformweg abbringen’ [this

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 17

won’t distract us from our path of reform] was included as an instance of the JOURNEY metaphor, while ‘die Steuerreform ist auf dem Weg’ [the tax reform is on its way] was not. Based on the results, we calculated: • the number and percentage of types realised for each of the source domains (JOURNEY and WAR) to see how productively either politician uses the metaphor; • the number of metaphoric tokens, that is, the individual metaphoric expressions; • the metaphoric type-token ratio (mTTR; see Koller 2004b) to ascertain the variety with which each metaphorically used lexeme is realised. The metaphoric type-token ratio shows how often different metaphoric expressions occur in a corpus; the lower the mTTR, the less varied is the metaphor usage in the corpus. It follows that the number and percentage of metaphoric types that are realised does not correlate with the mTTR, because the number of tokens may be disproportionately higher; • the metaphor density per 1000 words to determine the frequency with which the metaphoric tokens in question are used by the two politicians. As ‘quantitative advantage does not necessarily lead to a qualitative advantage’ (Kövecses, forthcoming), we deemed it necessary to relate the results of the computer-assisted corpus analysis back to the wider co-text of the speech or interview. The extended concordances for the lexemes allow us to do so, and to relate the metaphoric expression to other linguistic features that support its effect, such as modality, intertextuality, negation and, as far as the interviews are concerned, co-construction of the metaphor. This quantitative and qualitative analysis combines the dimensions of individual speaker and source domain. (In the next section, we will present the findings along the source domains.) It therefore allows us to discuss the results with regard to gender identities, but also contextual factors such as topic, audience and historical background, all of which can impact on politicians’ metaphor usage.

2.5 2.5.1

Analysis and results Keywords

As mentioned above, the Schröder subcorpus shows 19 statistically overused words, compared with 29 for the Merkel subcorpus. We can

18 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 2.1

Keywords in Schröder and Merkel subcorpora Schröder

Merkel

Role

Bundeskanzler [chancellor] (masc.)

Bundeskanzlerin [chancellor] (fem.)

Abstract issues and entities: political

Gewerkschaften [trade unions]

Verfassungsvertrag [constitutional treaty]

Steuerreform [tax reform]

Koalition [coalition] Präsidentschaft [presidency]

Abstract issues and entities: other

Teilhabe [participation]

Glaube [belief]

Modell [model]

Thema [topic]

Self-reference

wir [we] CDU

Other reference Proper names: countries

Menschen [people] Polen [Poland] Deutsch [German]

Russland [Russia]

Frankreich [France] Emotional states

zufrieden [content]

Verbal processes

sprechen [to speak]

Mental processes

denke [(I) think]

Other

gelegentlich [occasionally]

sehr [very]

deswegen [because of that]

deshalb [because of that]

und [and]

einfach [simple, simply]

übrigens [by the way]

dass [that](relative pronoun)

der [the] (masc.)

(an dieser) Stelle [(at this) point]

(auf der) Basis [(on the) basis]

zum [to the] (masc., neuter)

(nicht) zuletzt

viele [many]

[(not) least]

wieder [again] hier [here] anbelangt [concerning]

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 19

ignore keywords such as the names of the politicians, magazines and interviewers, because those were not actually uttered but only appear in the transcription of the interviews.3 They are therefore excluded from Table 2.1. If we group the remaining keywords into semantic categories (Table 2.1), we can see that Angela Merkel draws on some categories exclusively, such as self- and other reference. There are a few similarities between the keywords in the two subcorpora: in both, references to the politician’s job title (‘Bundeskanzler[in]’ [chancellor]) rank high as keywords, but a closer look at the data shows that they feature as self-reference only 11 times in the Schröder subcorpus and 7 times in the Merkel subcorpus. Further, reference to political issues and entities is very much dictated by the politics of the day. There are, however, differences with regard to other abstract entities such as values; the reference to ‘Teilnahme’ [participation] is as predictable coming from a Social Democrat as is the Christian Democrat’s focus on ‘Glaube’ [belief]. However, the most notable differences concern Merkel’s use of the intensifiers ‘sehr’ [very] and ‘viele’ [many], which contrast with Schröder’s low-affinity ‘gelegentlich’ [occasionally]. Further, Merkel realises the categories self- and other reference as well as emotional states and verbal processes, which are absent in Schröder’s language use as conveyed in our data. The additional fact that he alone realises mental processes makes for a gender stereotypical impression where the female politician addresses not only political issues but also emotional states. In addition, she refers to her understanding for the concerns of the ‘people’ and shows intensification in her speech style. The following analysis of metaphor use will investigate whether this impression of gendered language use is borne out by the types of metaphors used by each politician and the way in which they use them. 2.5.2

Metaphor use

As outlined in the method section, the analysis of the politicians’ metaphor use combines quantitative and qualitative analysis. It will focus on the prominent source domain of JOURNEY and the additional source domain of WAR. 2.5.2.1

The JOURNEY source domain

What we have, for the sake of convenience, simply called the JOURNEY source domain is in fact shorthand for a much more complex conceptual scenario that ultimately goes back to the metaphor PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) and a related SOURCE–PATH–GOAL

20 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

schema (Johnson 1987). In that model, a typically human agent moves purposefully towards a destination, often facing obstacles on the way: PURPOSEFUL ACTIVITY IS MOVING ON A PATH TOWARDS A DESTINATION (see also Lakoff 1993). Motion is usually self-propelled and persists until the goal has been reached. Crucially, the JOURNEY metaphor also serves to positively evaluate certain policies, since the destinations are seen as desirable (Charteris-Black 2004: 93). Due to its bodily basis of selfpropelled goal-oriented motion, the JOURNEY metaphor is extremely productive and has been confirmed for political discourse in countries as different as Britain, China, Germany, Italy, Taiwan and the US (Charteris-Black 2005, Chilton, personal communication, Musolff 2004, Semino 2002, Teng and Sun 2001).4 In our case study, we will look at its particular realisation in German political discourse, and at the individual differences in usage between the two politicians. The 22 types that have been found to realise the JOURNEY metaphor corroborate the basic schema (Table 2.2).

Table 2.2

Metaphoric expressions of JOURNEY metaphor

German original

English translation

Anlauf anstreben antreiben Ausweg Fahrplan führen gehen Geschwindigkeit kommen Kurs Meilenstein mitnehmen nach vorn schauen Pfad Schritt Sprung vor etwas stehen

start (noun) to strive towards to drive exit itinerary to lead to go speed, pace to come course milestone to take along to look ahead path step leap to face something (German: ‘to stand in front of something’) way point (on rail track) turning point goal

Weg Weiche Wendepunkt Ziel

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 21 Table 2.3

Results for the JOURNEY source domain JOURNEY

Overall Metaphoric types

22

Schröder 18 Speeches 16

Metaphoric tokens

395

0.06

3.39

Speeches 16

Interviews 61

Speeches 140

Interviews 0.18

Speeches 0.11

Interviews 85

0.09

2.91 Speeches 3.6

Interviews 15

225

0.11 Speeches 0.15

Metaphor density/ 1,000 words

20 Interviews 11

170 Speeches 109

mTTR

Merkel

Interviews 0.18

3.88 Interviews 2.16

Speeches 4.79

Interviews 2.96

Figures for the mTTR and for density differ between the speakers, indicating that Merkel uses a slightly higher number of different expressions relating to the JOURNEY metaphor and also uses them more densely, particularly in her speeches. However, the mTTRs indicate that her metaphor use is not overly varied. Table 2.3 summarises the results for the JOURNEY metaphor. Merkel’s pronounced, if somewhat formulaic, use of the JOURNEY metaphor is supported by other linguistic features as well. Looking at the core data for her, we see that intensification5 and intertextuality serve to underscore the metaphorically phrased message. For instance, she elaborates the JOURNEY metaphor and adds adverbs (‘ganz entschieden’) to communicate determination. In English, this best translates as a prepositional phrase (‘with determination’):6 (1) … auf diesem Reformweg nicht stehen zu bleiben, sondern ihn ganz entschieden weiter zu gehen. … not to stand still on this path of reform but to continue on it with determination. (AM14) Intensifying adverbs and adjectives are also combined with highaffinity deontic modality to emphasise obligation with regard to the

22 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors JOURNEY metaphor. The speaker uses modal verbs (example 2) and adjectives (example 3) to express a high degree of obligation:

(2) Hier müssen wir nur das Ziel klar definieren. What we have to do here is to clearly define the goal. (AM14) (3) Leipzig [war] eine wegweisende, unabdingbare Weichenstellung für die CDU … wir [müssen] in dieser Richtung weitergehen. Leipzig [was] a groundbreaking, indispensable positioning of points for the CDU … and we [have to] continue in this direction. (AM10) Such an emphatic language use is consistent with the keywords ‘sehr’ [very] and ‘viele’ [many] that we found in the Merkel data. Elsewhere, Merkel echoes the interviewer’s metaphoric expression but disagrees with what it implies: (4) Interviewer: Bedeutet das nun, dass ein völlig neuer Anlauf genommen werden muss? AM: Ich glaube, wir sollten nicht einen völlig neuen Anlauf nehmen. Interviewer: Does this mean that a completely new start will have to be made? AM: I do not think that we should make a completely new start. (AM14) A similar Schröder:

JOURNEY

metaphor is used in an interview given by

(5) Wir [halten] an unserem Konsolidierungskurs fest. We are staying our course of consolidation. (GS14) These statements suggest the politicians’ determination and belief in their own politics, a sentiment that was made (in)famous by George W. Bush’s phrase ‘staying the course’, which is echoed above by Schröder.7 The lexemes that Schröder and Merkel use most often to realise the JOURNEY metaphor are given in Table 2.4. In the Schröder subcorpus, a quarter of all occurrences of ‘Weg’ [way] (his most frequent expression related to the JOURNEY metaphor), can be found in only one speech (GS10), where it is echoed and elaborated in

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 23 Table 2.4 Frequent metaphoric expressions of JOURNEY metaphor for each politician German original

English translation

Occurrences in Merkel

Occurrences in Schröder

Weg

way

37

41

gehen

to go

31

n/a

Ziel

goal

30

35

vor etwas stehen

to face something

n/a

17

kommen

to come

29

16

Schritt

step

28

15

clusters, demonstrating the textual metafunction of metaphor in providing coherence to a text (Koller 2003): (6) Wir wissen, dass der Weg der Reformen kein einfacher Weg ist. Er ist lang und steinig … wir [müssen] auf diesem Weg weitergehen. Die Türkei, indem sie ihren Reformweg konsequent weitergeht … We know that the way of reforms is not an easy way. It is long and stony … we [have to] continue on this way. Turkey by determinedly continuing on its way of reforms … (GS10) The high degree of intertextuality among politicians reinforces the JOURNEY metaphor, as does the high-affinity deontic modality and other intensification devices that could be observed in Merkel’s language use. Given her cool and detached image, especially when compared to the ebullient Schröder, it is conceivable that the current German chancellor strategically uses (scripted) language, including metaphor, to appear engaged and passionate. Apart from being based on the primary metaphor PURPOSEFUL ACTIVITY IS MOVING ON A PATH TOWARDS A DESTINATION (Lakoff and Johnson 1999), the JOURNEY metaphor is further related to the source domain of OBJECT MANIPULATION. This becomes salient whenever the metaphoric concept PROBLEMS ARE OBSTACLES, which forms part of the metaphor, is drawn upon. Consequently, structural reforms can be approached with courage (‘beherzte[s] Angehen von Strukturreformen’, GS7), difficulties can be overcome and reforms tackled (‘Schwierigkeiten [werden] überwunden und Reformen angepackt’, AM6; see also Fairclough [2000: 62] on the verb ‘to tackle’ in the language of New Labour) and tasks can be attacked (‘diese Aufgabe in Angriff nehmen zu können’, AM14). The

24 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

last example shows that aspects of the JOURNEY metaphor tie in with the WAR metaphor. 2.5.2.2

The WAR source domain

Evidence for the WAR metaphor was found in far fewer lexemes (‘angreifen’ [to attack], ‘Kampf’ [fight], ‘Munition’ [ammunition], ‘Sieg’ [victory] and ‘Wagenburg’ [corral] (under siege)), as shown in Table 2.5. While the overall mTTR is very similar to that for the JOURNEY metaphor, density of metaphoric tokens per 1000 words is much lower. With regard to individual speakers, we found the reverse situation to that ascertained for the JOURNEY metaphor: the Merkel subcorpus includes 0.43 relevant metaphoric expressions per 1000 words, in contrast to the above-average figure of 0.72 for the Schröder subcorpus. Of the five types realising the WAR metaphor, by far the most frequent is ‘(to) fight’ (‘Kampf, ‘[be-]kämpfen’), which records 54 of the total 67 metaphoric tokens for the WAR metaphor. Of these 54 tokens, over two-thirds are to be found in the Schröder subcorpus, and most of them in the interviews. Occurrences of ‘fight’ cluster in the interviews GS13–GS15, which were conducted in the run-up to the general election in September 2002. Consequently, the lexeme is mostly realised in the compound ‘Wahlkampf’ [election campaign] (German:

Table 2.5

Results for WAR source domain

WAR

Overall Metaphoric types

5

Schröder 4 Speeches 2

Metaphoric tokens 67

0.07

0.58

Speeches 2

Interviews 29

Speeches 11

Interviews 0.1

Speeches 0.18

Interviews 1.03

Speeches 0.38

Interviews 14

0.16

0.72 Speeches 0.43

Interviews 4

25

0.1 Speeches 0.15

Metaphor density/ 1,000 words

4 Interviews 3

42 Speeches 13

mTTR

Merkel

Interviews 0.29

0.43 Interviews 0.49

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 25

‘fight for the election’). The interviewers largely restrict themselves to that expression, while Schröder shows more varied usage when also realising the lemmas ‘kämpfen’ [to fight] and ‘kampfbereit’ [ready to fight]. His parts of the interview also establish a pattern where the metaphoric expression is: • negated: (8) Interviewer: Sagen Sie damit dem Steuerdumping den Kampf an? GS: Von Kampf kann keine Rede sein. Interviewer: Does this mean you are declaring war on tax dumping? GS: War is not the correct term. (GS19) • used with reference to negatively connoted words:8 (9) Wir haben versucht, die Arbeitslosigkeit […] mit allen Mitteln zu bekämpfen. We have tried to fight unemployment with all means. (GS14) • used with reference to positively connoted words, as in the phrasal verb ‘to fight for’: (10) Ich bitte alle jene, die jetzt die Konjunktur herunterreden, um jedes Zehntel [Wirtschaftswachstum] zu kämpfen. I ask all those who are now talking down the economy to fight for each tenth of a percent [of economic growth]. (GS11) In this context, Charteris-Black has noted that ‘fight is an “attack” metaphor when it collocates with against and a “defence” metaphor when it collocates with for’ (2004: 69), but that both variants can be seen as realisations of what he terms CONFLICT metaphors. The pattern is even more pronounced in Schröder’s speeches, where infighting is rejected as negative, while the speaker presents himself as fighting against unemployment, wage dumping, illegal employment and the negative effects of an ageing population, but for Europe, values, the future, friendship and basic rights. Examples are: (11) Am meisten freue ich mich aber über die deutlichen Fortschritte bei der Bekämpfung der Arbeitslosigkeit. But I am most pleased about the clear progress in fighting unemployment. (GS3)

26 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

(12) Um dieses Europa muss also politisch gekämpft werden. So we have to fight for this Europe in political terms. (GS2) Although the respective figures are lower in the Merkel subcorpus – she uses only 25 tokens related to the WAR metaphor compared to Schröder’s 42 – the same pattern exists: the interviewers only realise the WAR metaphor by mentioning election campaigns, while Merkel, in both speeches and interviews, discredits ‘ideological trench warfare’ (‘ideologische Grabenkämpfe’, AM8). In addition, she sometimes presents herself as fighting crime, unemployment and national debt, but mostly as fighting for positively connoted issues, namely progress, jobs, values, the European constitution, free trade and people’s hearts: (13) Natürlich müssen wir die Kriminalitätsbekämpfung … ständig weiterentwickeln. Of course we have to continuously develop … the fight against crime. (AM6) (14) Wer den Gedanken des freien Handels aufgibt und dafür nicht weltweit kämpft, der wird Europas Chancen minimieren. Who gives up the idea of free trade and does not fight for it globally, will minimise Europe’s chances. (AM3) Metaphorically fighting for or against something shows what the speaker deems desirable or not. While both Schröder and Merkel fight for values and against unemployment, it is noteworthy that Schröder also fights against illegal employment and wage dumping, and thus for the interest of his core electorate of labourers, whereas the conservative Merkel fights against crime and for free trade. Here we can see how the WAR metaphor functions as ‘a heuristic for creating political identity’ (Charteris-Black 2004: 93). The fact that Merkel mostly presents herself as fighting for something rather than against, while Schröder presents himself as doing both in equal measure, corroborates Charteris-Black’s (2004: 70) observation about British political discourse, that is, that Labour manifestos show a more pronounced tendency to fight against what is perceived as social ills. In more general terms, we can account for these differences as typical of an inherently more progressive agenda that seeks to effect social change, for example by fighting against unfair employment practices, as opposed to a conservative agenda that seeks to preserve the positive, for example by fighting for values. On the whole, it seems that in the two politicians’ rhetoric, the fight against political opponents is only permissible in election campaigns.

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 27

Even then, the WAR metaphor is attenuated as ‘fighting for victory’ in the election rather than fighting against a competitor, also by the interviewers: (15) Wenn das für den Wahlsieg reicht, was wollen Sie dann tun? If that should be enough for election victory, what do you want to do then? (GS14) Otherwise, the WAR metaphor seems undesirable, at least in our data, which admittedly do not include election campaign speeches directed at an audience of party members or supporters. In the final section, we will discuss our findings with regard to gender and other factors influencing the observed use of metaphor, and draw general conclusions about analysing metaphor in political discourse.

2.6

Discussion and conclusion

The differences and particularities in the keywords and metaphors used by Schröder and Merkel can be accounted for by a variety of factors. Some features are likely to be due to party membership and concomitant world view, such as the keywords ‘Teilnahme’ [participation] for a Social Democratic politician, as contrasted with ‘Glaube’ [belief] for a Christian Democratic one. Likewise, Merkel’s (self-)presentation as fighting for social values rather than against social ills fits in with a conservative world view and politics that aim to preserve rather than change. Other results are probably due to the politicians’ personality and professional background. For example, the fact that Merkel’s use of more metaphoric types does not translate into a higher mTTR means that she uses metaphor in a rather formulaic way; the same is indicated by the fact that she uses some types exclusively metaphorically or uses them disproportionately often, for example ‘Weichenstellung’ [positioning of points]. This might simply be down to the fact that Merkel, as a trained physicist, has less feel for language than the former lawyer Schröder, who is also more confident in speaking freely. (However, in contrast to anecdotal evidence reported by Köveceses [2005: 108] and Koller [2004b: 13], professional background does not seem to influence the choice of source domains in our data. This may be one more indication that much of politicians’ language is scripted, with such scripted expressions even being echoed in the interviews.) Still other particularities are due to current politics, most notably the more pronounced use of the WAR metaphor by Schröder, especially in the interviews given in the run-up to the general election. The fact that the WAR metaphor in our data pales in comparison to the JOURNEY metaphor, and

28 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

that the SPORTS metaphor is absent altogether, is best explained by the historical context: given the cataclysmic consequences of Germany’s warmongering regimes in the first half of the twentieth century, rhetorical restraint is now seen as desirable in politicians and failure to live up to that ideal will meet with swift criticism which has in the past ended political careers.9 Moreover, our corpus contains only institutional speeches, and WAR and SPORTS metaphors may be more frequently used at rallies. So what has gender got to do with it? We can perhaps establish a link to gendered language use in the (self-)presentation of Angela Merkel. This shows in her keywords that include intensifiers and emotional states, as well as in her intensification of and around metaphoric expressions through devices such as verbs and adverbs, modality and intertextuality. Further, Merkel’s language use in our data also includes the keyword ‘Menschen’ [people]. This is underscored in her usage of the metaphoric expression ‘weh tun’ [to hurt],10 which she uses exclusively with regard to the pain that the government’s austerity policies cause citizens: (16) Wir wissen, dass das weh tut, dass das schwierig ist für viele Menschen. (We know that this hurts, that this is difficult for many people. (AM9) In stark contrast, Schröder only talks about what has hurt him personally: (17) Auch wenn es schmerzt persönlich – und etliches hat mich persönlich geschmerzt – da muss man auch einen Trennungsstrich ziehen können. Even if it hurts personally – and many things have hurt me personally – you still need to be able to draw a line of separation. (GS13) On the face of it, Merkel’s language use signals stereotypically feminine traits such as empathy and passion, and there is indeed no doubt that these characteristics are culturally associated with femininity. However, we do not think that these findings can be explained as a result of the speaker being a woman; apart from our critical position concerning essentialist discourses on gender, the fact that much of Merkel’s public language use is likely to be scripted by PR experts makes such an interpretation untenable. Of course one could argue that the same PR experts attempt to present her as feminine and again, some of her language fea-

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 29

tures, for example intensification, are indeed culturally feminine. However, another possible interpretation is that Angela Merkel is presented as a compassionate conservative, both to counter her image as ‘dry’ and cerebral, and to follow a trend among conservative politicians that was started by George W. Bush in the US and adopted by David Cameron in the UK. This trend uses culturally feminine notions for politicians of both genders in order to soften the image of conservative policies and move them to the oft quoted centre of the political landscape. Judging by her language use, it seems that Angela Merkel is the latest follower of this trend. The fact that she is female and exhibits some feminine characteristics in her language behaviour has led the media to describe her with maternal metaphors, such as ‘matriarch’ (Unger 2007) and ‘mother of the Grand Coalition’ (‘Mutter der Großen Koalition’; ‘Das endlose Ende’ 2007: 28). Yet, it is also conceivable to interpret Merkel’s language use as less, or not only, an expression of femininity but also as the representation of a particular type of conservative politician. In the case of politicians, we are faced with men and women speaking in public, a historically male activity. The problematic position that women face when entering public spaces has come to be known as a ‘double bind’, where the usually masculinist norms of institutions simultaneously demand from them to be and not be feminine. As Shaw (2005) has shown, this double bind leads to contradictory reactions by women politicians, who at the same time try to be non-confrontational and employ masculine adversarial styles, sometimes using femininity strategically but on other occasions trying to downplay it. The role of compassionate conservative may be one way out of this dilemma, as it embodies ‘permissible’ feminine language behaviour. Concerning the analysis of metaphor in political discourse in general, we advocate a theoretical framework that combines conceptual metaphor theory with critical analysis of texts-in-context. Further, we argue in favour of a methodological approach that oscillates between quantitative analysis of large data sets on the one hand and detailed qualitative text analysis on the other. In our view, the first is necessary in order to get a comprehensive overview of the data and to avoid making far-reaching claims based on a few selected examples. Moreover, each speech and interview cumulatively contributes to the construction of the public image of a particular politician and his or her views, and should therefore be seen in the context of a larger corpus. On the other hand, qualitative analysis is needed to gain an in-depth view of selected data samples and thus be able to relate metaphor use to other linguistic features. Finally, we strongly believe that the results gained by such an integrated analysis

30 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

have to be interpreted by taking into account a range of factors, so as to avoid overly simplified monocausal explanations, where gender overrides all other aspects, or, worse still, circularity, where the speaker’s gender somehow makes their language use masculine or feminine. In this chapter, we have developed such a framework and applied it to data from German politicians. The next chapter will provide a complementary analysis of the metaphor use of a male and a female politician in Italy.

Appendix 2.1 NB: Asterisks indicate core data. Table 2A.1

List of speeches by Gerhard Schröder included in the corpus

Number

Year

Speech given at/on

Word count

GS1

2000

Annual meeting of Federal Association of German Employers (Arbeitgebertag)

4,974

GS2

2000

Government declaration on the European Council

4,151

GS3

2001

German Civil Servants’ Association’s meeting on trade union policy

1,764

GS4

2001

Opening of the Franco-German talks ‘After Nizza – Europe running out of steam?’

660

GS5

2001

Meeting of the trade union Construction, Farming and Environment

2,440

GS6

2002

*GS7

2003

Budget report

GS8

2004

Polish forum on the Lisbon strategy

3,215

GS9

2004

Berlin conference on European cultural policy

2,198

*GS10

2005

Eid-ul-Fitr in Istanbul

1,633

Total

‘Franco-German relations in an enlarged Europe’

4,782 4,433

30,250

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 31 Table 2A.2

List of interviews by Gerhard Schröder included in the corpus

Number

Year

Media outlet

GS11

2001

Bildzeitung newspaper

GS12

2001

Focus magazine

1,559

GS13

2002

ZDF TV

6,839

*GS14

2002

Handelsblatt newspaper

2,195

Word count 549

*GS15

2002

Der Spiegel magazine

1,870

GS16

2003

Deutschlandfunk radio

3,585

GS17

2003

RTL TV

2,099

GS18

2003

ARD TV

3,222

GS19

2004

Handelsblatt newspaper

1,950

GS20

2004

N24 TV

4,381

Total

28,249

Table 2A.3

List of speeches by Angela Merkel included in the corpus

Number

Year

Speech given at/to

AM1

2006

Annual meeting of the German Trade Union Congress (DGB)

4,436

AM2

2006

Opening of the International Bertelsmann Forum ‘The Future of the European Union’

3,138

AM3

2006

Annual meeting of Federal Association of German Employers (Arbeitgebertag)

5,241

AM4

2006

German Association for Foreign Policy

5,201

AM5

2006

Frankfurt European Banking Congress

5,129

*AM6

2006

Budget report

4,662

*AM7

2006

Citizens’ representatives (Bürgervertreter) on the occasion of the German EU presidency

1,392

Total

Word count

29,199

32 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 2A.4

List of interviews by Angela Merkel included in the corpus

Number

Year

AM8

2005

Focus magazine

1,848

AM9

2006

N24 TV

3,694

*AM10

2006

Bildzeitung newspaper

1,959

AM11

2006

Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper

2,083

Media outlet

Word count

AM12

2006

ARD TV

11,160

AM13

2007

ZDF TV

2,352

*AM14

2007

Deutschlandfunk radio

3,668

AM15

2007

Bildzeitung newspaper

1,959

Total

28,723

Notes 1 Note that this aspect of metaphor echoes Fairclough’s definition of a discourse as ‘a way of signifying experience from a particular perspective’ (1995: 135). 2 One exception is the BIRTH metaphor. Moreover, young girls and boys experience their body differently, by for example being more or less likely to engage in physical fights. However, we take these gendered bodily experiences to be largely an effect of culture. 3 It is noteworthy, however, that next to ‘Schröder’ and ‘Merkel’, ‘Angela’ is a keyword, but ‘Gerhard’ is not. This suggests a gendered naming practice in the media by which men in public roles are referred to by last name only, while the first name is more often included in reference to women (CaldasCoulthard 1995, 2005). 4 In view of the findings from East Asian cultures, it seems that Kövecses’ claim that the JOURNEY metaphor is particularly salient in the Western world (2005: 124) has to be qualified. However, different aspects of the JOURNEY metaphor may be foregrounded in different cultures, for example a focus on the goal vs a focus on travelling itself (personal communication Paul Chilton, 17 June 2008). 5 ‘Intensification’ is here used to refer to linguistic features used in combination with and around metaphor to reinforce its effect. In contrast, Eubanks (2000) uses the term to mean a reinforcement of the semantic content of the metaphoric expressions themselves. 6 Relevant metaphoric expressions and other linguistic features are underlined in the examples.

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 33 7 Merkel also quotes the then American president when she stresses: (18) Man muss auch kämpfen um die Herzen der Menschen in Afghanistan. One also has to fight for the hearts of the people in Afghanistan. (AM6) However, intertextuality has a mainly rhetorical function and does not necessarily indicate the chancellor’s political sympathies; elsewhere in the above speech, she varies a quote by Social Democratic chancellor Willy Brandt: (19) mehr Freiheit wagen to risk more freedom. (AM6) 8 The semi-fixed phrase ‘fight against international terrorism’ was not included, as this is at least partially literal. 9 For example, the president of the German parliament, Philipp Jenninger, resigned in 1988 after a speech he delivered at the commemoration of the 1938 November pogroms against the Jewish population. He had attempted to make his speech more vivid by employing the rhetorical device of hypothetical thought representation to illustrate the assumed anti-Semitic view of Germans in Nazi Germany. This was perceived by many as expressing sympathies for National Socialism. 10 The metaphoric expressions ‘pain’ and ‘to hurt’ are not only realisations of an ILLNESS metaphor but are also conceptually related to the WAR metaphor.

References Caldas-Coulthard, C. 1995. ‘Man in the News: the Misrepresentation of Women Speaking in News-as-narrative Discourse’, in S. Mills (ed.) Language and Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Longman. Caldas-Coulthard, C. 2005. ‘Man in the News Revisited: the Mis-Representation of Women in News-as-Narrative Discourse’. Paper presented at the 14th Symposium on Critical Discourse Analysis, Athens/Greece, May. Cameron, D. 2007. The Myth of Venus and Mars: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: the Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Connell, R.W. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press. Connell, R.W. and J.W. Messerschmidt. 2005. ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society, 19(6): 829–59. ‘Das endlose Ende’ [The endless end]. 2007. Der Spiegel, 19 November: 26-40. Dirven, R., B. Hawkins and E. Sandikcioglu (eds). 2001a. Language and Ideology. Vol. 1: Theoretical Cognitive Approaches. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dirven, R., R.M. Frank and C. Ilie (eds). 2001b. Language and Ideology. Vol. 2: Descriptive Cognitive Approaches. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Eubanks, P. 2000. A War of Words in the Discourse of Trade: the Rhetorical Constitution of Metaphor. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press. Fairclough, N. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.

34 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Fairclough, N. 2000. New Labour, New Language? London: Routledge. Fiksdal, S. 1999. ‘Metaphorically Speaking: Gender and Person’, Language Sciences, 21(3): 345–54. Fussell, S.R. and M.M. Moss. 1998. ‘Figurative Language in Emotional Communication’, in S.R. Fussell and R.J. Kreuz (eds) Social and Cognitive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Goatly, A. 2007. Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Halliday, M.A.K. and C.M.I.M. Matthiessen. 2004. Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd edn. London: Arnold. Hegstrom, J. L. and J. McCarl-Nielsen. 2002. ‘Gender and Metaphor: Descriptions of Familiar Persons’, Discourse Processes, 33(3): 219–34. Hellinger, M. 2006. ‘Why Merkel is not Enough: On the Representation of Fe/male Politicians in German Newspapers’. Paper presented at the International Gender and Language Association conference, Valencia, Spain, 8–10 November. Hercberg, E.N. 2007. ‘The 2007 Presidential Campaign in France: Language, Media, and Sexual Discrimination’. Paper presented at the Women, Power and the Media conference, Aston University, Birmingham, UK, 15–16 September. Hines, C. 1999. ‘Rebaking the Pie: the WOMAN AS DESSERT Metaphor’, in M. Bucholtz, A.C. Liang and L. Sutton (eds) Reinventing Identities: the Gendered Self in Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hiraga, M. 1991. ‘Metaphors Japanese Women Live By’, Working Papers on Language, Gender, and Sexism, 1(1): 37–57. Hollingsworth, S.B. 2006. ‘The Impact of Gender on the Use of Metaphors in Media Reports Covering the 2003 Gulf War in Iraq’, unpublished MA thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. Holmes, J. 2006. Gendered Talk at Work. Oxford: Blackwell. Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind: the Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jule, A. (ed.) 2007. Language and Religious Identity: Women in Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kövecses, Z. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Z. Forthcoming. ‘Methodological Issues in Conceptual Metaphor Theory’, in S. Handl and H.-J. Schmid (eds) Windows to the Mind: Metaphor, Metonymy and Conceptual Blending. Berlin: de Gruyter. Koller, V. 2003. ‘Metaphor Clusters, Metaphor Chains: Analyzing the Multifunctionality of Metaphor in Text’, Metaphorik.de, 5: 115–34, http://www. metaphorik.de/05/koller.pdf Koller, V. 2004a. ‘Businesswomen and War Metaphors: “Possessive, Jealous and Pugnacious”’? Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(1): 3–22. Koller, V. 2004b. Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse: a Critical Cognitive Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lakoff, G. 1993. ‘The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor’, in A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.

Veronika Koller and Elena Semino 35 Luchjenbroers, J. 1998. ‘Animals, Embryos, Thinkers and Doers: Metaphor and Gender Representation in Hong Kong English’, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 21(2): 105–22. Mills, S. 2005. ‘Contextualised Analysis of Gender and Language’. Paper presented at the Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Gender and Language Study Seminar, 18–19 November, Birmingham, UK. Musolff, A. 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pragglejaz Group 2007. ‘MIP: a Method for Identifying Metaphorically Used Words in Discourse’, Metaphor and Symbol, 22(1): 1–39. Scott, M. 1999. WordSmith Tools 3.0. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Semino, E. 2002. ‘A Sturdy Baby or a Derailing Train? Metaphorical Representations of the Euro in British and Italian Newspapers’, Text, 22(1): 107–39. Shaw, S. 2005. ‘Governed by the Rules? The Female Voice in Parliamentary Debates’, in J. Baxter (ed.) Speaking Out: the Female Voice in Public Contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Tannen, D. 1991. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Ballantine Books. Teng, N.Y. and S. Sun. 2001. ‘Metaphoric Framing: ROAD as a Metaphoric Concept in Political News in Taiwan’, Mass Communication Research, 67: 87–112. Unger, B. 2007. ‘Germany’s Double Act’, The World in 2008, Special Issue of The Economist, 51. Velasco Sacristan, M.S. 2005. ‘A Critical Cognitive–Pragmatic Approach to Advertising Gender Metaphors’, Intercultural Pragmatics, 2(3): 219–52. Wilson, F. 1992. ‘Language, Technology, Gender, and Power’, Human Relations, 45(9): 883–904. Zinken, J. 2003. ‘Ideological Imagination: Intertextual and Correlational Metaphors in Political Discourse’, Discourse and Society, 14(4): 507–23.

3 Metaphor, Politics and Gender: a Case Study from Italy Elena Semino and Veronika Koller Lancaster University

3.1

Introduction

In this chapter we apply the theoretical and analytical framework introduced in Chapter 2 to a corpus containing a selection of speeches and interviews by two contemporary Italian politicians, Silvio Berlusconi and Emma Bonino. As in the previous chapter, we combine the main tenets of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Kövecses 2002) with a social constructivist view of gender (Sunderland 2004) in order to consider the rhetorical functions and ideological implications of metaphor use (see also Koller 2004, Semino 2008). More specifically, we attempt to explain the differences and similarities in the metaphoric choices made by a male and female politician in terms of a range of sources of variation, including political orientation, topics, concerns, goals and audiences (see also Kövecses 2005). These factors help us to interpret the particular ways in which each individual politician performs femininity and masculinity in their public discourse. We begin with a brief introduction to the political careers and identities of Berlusconi and Bonino. We then describe our data and methodology, and present some of the results of our analysis.

3.2 Silvio Berlusconi and Emma Bonino in the Italian political scene Italy has never had a woman as prime minister, or, more precisely, as ‘Presidente del Consiglio’ [President of the Council of Ministers]. We cannot therefore replicate for Italy the comparison that we have made in the previous chapter between Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, respectively the former and current German chancellors. Our decision 36

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 37

to focus on Berlusconi and Bonino is due to the prominent, if different, roles they have played (and continue to play) in Italian politics. 3.2.1

Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi was born in 1936 and is currently Italy’s richest man, thanks to a business empire that started with construction, and grew to include financial services, sports (notably, the football club AC Milan), publishing, cinema and television (notably, three nationwide television channels). Berlusconi’s brother, Paolo, owns one of Italy’s main daily newspapers, Il Giornale. Berlusconi entertained strong political connections throughout his entrepreneurial career (for example Veltri and Travaglio 2001). In 1994, however, he became directly involved in politics by founding his own political party, Forza Italia (which translates as ‘Come on Italy’), and forming a coalition with other existing centre-right or right-wing parties, which he named Il Polo delle Libertà [The Pole of Freedoms]. This coalition was later renamed La Casa delle Libertà [The House of Freedoms]. Berlusconi led his party and coalition to electoral successes in 1994 and 2001, and was Italy’s prime minister in 1994–96 and 2001–6. In both 1996 and 2006, he was defeated by a centre-left coalition led by Romano Prodi. In 2008 he returned to power as leader of a new, broader centre-right party, the Partito del Popolo delle Libertà [Party of the People of Freedoms]. Berlusconi has had two children with his first wife, and three with his current wife, former actress Veronica Lario. He cultivates a rampantly heterosexual image, both by publicly boasting about his popularity with women, and by ostentatiously flirting with young, attractive women at social and political events. It has also been noted that Berlusconi adopts a particularly didactic, condescending and flirtatious tone when addressing female audiences, and tends to describe the role of women in his movement as limited to supportive activities, such as fund-raising (see Bolasco et al. 2006: 121–34). In January 2007, his wife (who usually keeps a low profile) stunned Italian public opinion by complaining about Berlusconi’s womanising in a letter to Italy’s leftwing newspaper La Repubblica, and by demanding an apology. Berlusconi was forced to apologise equally publicly, but dismissed his verbal advances to other women as the result of his playful, self-ironic and irreverent personality. Berlusconi has openly acknowledged undergoing cosmetic surgery to his face, as well as two hair transplant operations. It is also well known that he routinely uses make-up and has his hair dyed. Although these behaviours can be described as

38 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

prototypically feminine, they are compatible with Berlusconi’s attempt to project the image of a strong, youthful and attractive Italian male. 3.2.2

Emma Bonino

Emma Bonino was born in 1948 and first became involved in politics in the mid-1970s, as part of a movement for the legalisation of abortion in Italy. In 1976 she was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies for the first time, and, apart from the five-year period in which she acted as EU commissioner, has been a Member of Parliament ever since. She has also had four terms as a Member of the European Parliament. From 1994 to 1999, she was European commissioner responsible for health and consumer protection. Throughout her political career, Bonino has been centrally involved with the Italian and international Radical movement. In the 1990s, she was president and then secretary of the Transnational Radical Party. The core of her political engagement has been a series of campaigns for civil rights and on a range of humanitarian issues. In Italy, these include the legalisation of abortion, the banning of nuclear energy and a campaign for freedom in scientific research. Internationally, Bonino has campaigned against capital punishment and female genital mutilation, and for the prevention of poverty in Third World countries. Bonino has lived in Cairo, is fluent in Arabic, and is involved in a range of initiatives for the promotion of intercultural relations and of democracy in the Arab world. She is an exponent of non-violent action in civil rights campaigns, including hunger strikes. In Italy, the Radical movement has not always corresponded to a political party. Hence, Bonino has, over the years, stood for election as part of different political formations, which have made alliances with either the centre-right or the centre-left coalitions, or, on other occasions, run independently. In 1994, the Radicals joined Berlusconi’s Polo delle Libertà, but this alliance was short-lived, due to profound differences in the conception of ‘liberalism’. In the 1999 European election, Bonino headed her own list, which gained an unprecendented 8.5 per cent of the votes. In 2006, Bonino and the Italian Radicals were part of a grouping which joined the centre-left coalition that won the elections. As a result, from 2006 to 2008 Bonino was minister for international trade and European affairs in the centre-left government led by Romano Prodi. Bonino has never married and has no children. In 1975, she gave herself up to the authorities after having an abortion, since this was illegal in Italy at the time. For several years, she fostered two children

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 39

until they were able to return to their family of birth. She has publicly declared that she has attempted, and failed, to become pregnant by artificial insemination, and has openly discussed the end of a longstanding heterosexual relationship. Overall, however, she does not tend to publicise her private life, and does not cultivate the fashion-conscious and often sexy femininity that is adopted by some Italian female politicians. Rather, her public image can be described as sober, elegant and tough. During her mandate as EU commissioner, she famously got herself dropped by helicopter onto a Spanish fishing boat in order to intervene directly in a dispute between Spanish and French fishermen. Apart from its potential as a publicity stunt, this initiative inevitably showed Bonino in a normally masculine, and rather unflattering, situation, which dramatically contrasts with Berlusconi’s tendency to stage-manage his public appearances in order to present a slick and groomed image.

3.3

Data and method

In order to conduct our comparative study of Berlusconi’s and Bonino’s use of metaphoric language, we assembled a corpus containing a total of 119,911 words. The corpus is divided into two subcorpora of approximately 60,000 words each, one for each of the two politicians. Each subcorpus includes approximately 40,000 words of speeches and 20,000 words of interviews. The Berlusconi subcorpus contains 14 speeches and 8 interviews, while the Bonino subcorpus contains 13 speeches and 21 interviews. Both subcorpora span a period from 1999 to 2007, which means that, for each politician, our data include material both from periods of office and from periods of opposition (see Appendix 3.1 for details, and for the labels we will use to refer to individual speeches and interviews). In addition, we included, for both politicians, similar proportions of different kinds of speeches, including speeches given in institutional contexts (for example, the Italian or European parliaments) and addresses given to supporters at political conferences and rallies. Our Italian data are therefore more heterogeneous than the German data discussed in the previous chapter, which relates exclusively to Schröder’s and Merkel’s respective terms as German chancellor, and only includes institutional speeches and interviews. As a consequence, the discussion of our findings in this chapter has a slightly different structure from the discussion of the German data in the previous chapter. It is also worth noting that the involvement of speech writers may be less systematic in the speeches included in the Italian corpus.

40 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Generally speaking, Berlusconi’s speeches are more likely than Bonino’s to be the result of teamwork, due to his institutional role from 2001 to 2006 and to his personal resources. In addition, speeches delivered by both politicians in non-institutional contexts are more likely to include some element of improvisation, which is something that Berlusconi in particular tends to take pride in. The steps we followed in the analysis of the Italian corpus, however, are the same as those we followed in the German case study. We began by using the Keywords facility in the WordSmith Tools 3.0 software package (Scott 1999) in order to obtain an overview of lexical contrasts between the two subcorpora. We then carried out a manual analysis of metaphoric expressions in a ‘core’ section of the corpus containing approximately 35,000 words, equally divided between the two subcorpora (see starred items in the Appendix). This analysis was conducted on the basis of the metaphor identification procedure described in Pragglejaz Group (2007), and resulted in lists of metaphoric expressions used by each politician in the core data. These lists were then expanded by examining the complete word lists for each subcorpus (as provided by WordSmith Tools) in order to identify further potential candidates for metaphoricity. This led to the compilation of extended lists of potential metaphoric expressions, which were grouped according to the source domain that they can be said to evoke (for example JOURNEYS, SPORTS, VISION). We then selected a small set of source domains which displayed the most interesting contrasts across the two subcorpora (including SPORTS, WAR, NATURE, RELIGION, VISION), and employed the Concordance facility in WordSmith in order to (a) find all instances of the expressions relating to each of these source domains, and (b) identify all metaphoric uses of those expressions in the corpus. In the rest of this chapter we present and discuss a selection of the findings of our analyses.

3.4

Keywords in the two subcorpora

The Keywords tool in WordSmith can provide a preliminary overview of differences between the two subcorpora in terms of main topics and concerns. We employed this tool to compare with each other the complete word lists of the two subcorpora, and chose a p-value of 0.000001 for calculating statistical significance (Scott 1999). This resulted in a list of 39 words that, in our data, are used more frequently by Berlusconi than by Bonino, and a list of 36 words that are used more frequently by Bonino than by Berlusconi.

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 41

3.4.1

Berlusconi’s keywords

Out of the 39 words that are statistically overused in the Berlusconi subcorpus, 25 can be subsumed under the following broad topics: 1. Freedom: ‘libertà’ [freedom(s)]; 2. Government and the state: ‘governo’ [government], ‘stato’ [state]; 3. Left-wing forces in Italian politics: ‘sinistra’ [the left], ‘l’Ulivo’ [the Olive Tree] (the latter is the name of Prodi’s left-wing coalition); 4. Italy and the Italians: ‘Italiani’ [Italians], ‘Italia’ [Italy]; ‘nazionale’ [national], ‘popolo’ [people], ‘cittadini’ [citizens]; 5. Taxation: ‘tasse’ [taxes], ‘imposta’ [tax], ‘fiscale’ [fiscal]; 6. Crime and security: ‘sicurezza’ [security], ‘reati’ [crimes], ‘ordine’ [order], ‘criminalità’ [criminality]; 7. War and Iraq: ‘iracheno’ [Iraqi], ‘Iraq’ [Iraq], ‘dell’Iraq’ [of Iraq], ‘guerra’ [war]; 8. International politics and the United Nations: ‘risoluzione’ [resolution], ‘dell’ONU’ [of the UN]; 9. The opposition between ‘them’ and ‘us’: ‘loro’ [they/their(s)], ‘nostro’ [our(s)]. Not surprisingly, Berlusconi deals more frequently than Bonino with traditional right-wing concerns, such as taxation (group 5) and law and order (group 6). He also mentions Italy and its people more frequently (group 4), and makes more references to the leftwing forces to which his party and coalition are opposed. This is shown not just by group (3) above, but also by group (9): in most cases, the word ‘loro’ [they/their(s)] is used to refer to the left, while ‘nostro’ [our(s)] is used to refer to those groupings whom Berlusconi feels he represents: his party, his coalition, his government, his electorate and, generally, all those Italians he describes as hard-working and freedom-loving. The word ‘libertà’ [freedom(s)] is used by Berlusconi not just as part of the name of his coalition, but also as a value that sets his political side apart from the left, which he consistently describes as undemocratic. When it comes to international politics, groups (7) and (8) can be related to Berlusconi’s time in office between 2001 and 2006, when he supported the US administration’s strategy in the ‘war on terror’ following the 9/11 attacks, and deployed Italian troops in the ‘post-war’ operations in Iraq.

42 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

3.4.2

Bonino’s keywords

Out of the 36 keywords that are statistically overused in the Bonino subcorpus, 27 can be subsumed under the following broad topics or grammatical categories: 1. The Radical movement: ‘Radicali’ [Radicals], ‘radicale’ [radical], ‘Marco’ (reference to Marco Pannella, the most prominent member of the Italian Radical movement); 2. Referenda and the collection of signatures: ‘referendum’ [referendum], ‘firme’ [signatures]; 3. Non-violent methods in political action: ‘nonviolenza’ [non-violence], ‘nonviolenta’ [non-violent]; 4. Women: ‘donne’ [women], ‘femminile’ [female]; 5. Problems and issues for which the radicals and Bonino have campaigned: ‘ricerca’ [research], ‘scientifica’ [scientific], ‘divorzio’ [divorce], ‘aborto’ [abortion], ‘diritti’ [rights], ‘problema’ [problem], ‘temi’ [themes]; 6. Alternative conjunctions: ‘o’ [or], ‘oppure’ [or]; 7. Negative expressions: ‘non’ [not], ‘né’ [nor, neither], ‘neanche’ [not even]; 8. Adversative, concessive and hypothetical conjunctions: ‘ma’ [but/yet], ‘però’ [but, however], ‘se’ [if]; 9. Hedging expressions: ‘credo’ [I believe], ‘magari’ [possibly, perhaps], ‘forse’ [perhaps, maybe]. It is not surprising that Bonino talks more frequently than Berlusconi about the Radical movement, the variety of issues for which they have campaigned, and the methods they have used, notably referenda and non-violent protest (groups 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). What is more striking is that the expressions we have grouped under (6), (7), (8) and (9) are mostly grammatical words, which are used to introduce alternatives, contrasts and qualifications. The hedging expressions listed under (9), in particular, are used by Bonino to make explicit the expression of her own beliefs, and, in a few cases, to suggest tentativeness. In fact, Bonino also repeatedly uses VISION metaphors to signal that she is putting forward her own personal, subjective opinions, as in the expressions ‘per come vedo io le cose’ [as I see things] and ‘a mio modo di vedere’ [in my view/in my way of seeing]. We have found no matching expressions in the Berlusconi subcorpus. These patterns point to an important contrast between Berlusconi’s and Bonino’s political discourse.

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 43

3.4.3 General differences between Berlusconi’s and Bonino’s political discourse Both politicians are passionate in their rhetoric, and present themselves as entirely committed to their respective causes. However, Berlusconi constructs himself as a strong and entirely confident leader, with a clear vision of what is right and wrong, good or bad. This allows little space for any expression of uncertainty, or any allowance for nuances or alternative possibilities (see also Bolasco et al. 2006). As compared with Berlusconi, Bonino uses a more reflexive and intellectual political discourse, which includes alternatives, scalar differences, expressions of doubt, and openness to others’ opinion. These differences can partly be explained by the fact that Bonino cannot aim for the highest office, and often addresses a more select portion of the public. However, this contrast can also be related to some traditional gender distinctions, and particularly to the stereotypically male characteristics of strength and decisiveness, which Berlusconi unequivocally embodies. Indeed, Berlusconi’s frequent self-descriptions (as well as his tendency to speak of himself in the third person) reflect a rampant and almost naive self-confidence: 1. … se c’è qualcuno che ha qualche possibilità, che è capace di mandare avanti tante cose insieme questo è il sottoscritto. Ho guidato il governo più longevo nella storia di questo paese. Ho fondato aziende. Ho portato per otto volte il Milan alla finalissima di champion league e ho vinto cinque coppe. Sono io il più concreto, il più pragmatico. (SB22) … if there is anyone who has any chance, who is able to keep many things going at the same time, this is yours truly. I have led the longest-lived government in the history of this country. I have founded companies. I have taken AC Milan to the Champions League final eight times and I have won five Cups. I am the most concrete, the most pragmatic. (SB22) More generally, it is widely recognised that Berlusconi brought into Italian politics a simple, direct, colourful and emotive vocabulary, which is a far cry from the abstraction and obscurity of traditional Italian political language (Amadori 2002, Bolasco et al. 2006). He also consistently presents himself as a non-politician – someone who, unlike professional politicians, comes from the ‘real’ world of work. In contrast, Bonino positions herself within a more intellectual political and philosophical tradition, which appeals to reasoning as well as to the emotions, and which makes fewer allowances for those sections of the

44 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

audience who are not well versed in political thinking and history. Indeed, while reflecting on a recent electoral defeat, Bonino commented self-consciously on the metaphoric ‘distanza’ [distance] of her movement ‘dal paese reale’ [from the real country] (EB2). These general patterns and differences provide a useful background to the analysis of some aspects of metaphor use in the two subcorpora.

3.5

Metaphor use in the two subcorpora

The lists of metaphoric expressions we obtained from our data suggest that, broadly speaking, both Bonino and Berlusconi draw from a set of source domains that have a wide metaphorical scope in Italian, as well as in English (see Kövecses 2002). These include particularly: • • • • • • • • •

and VIAGGI (MOVEMENT and JOURNEYS) and AGGRESSIONE (WAR and AGGRESSION) SPORT (SPORTS) COSTRUZIONE and EDIFICI (CONSTRUCTION and BUILDINGS) SALUTE and CORPO (HEALTH and BODY) VISIONE (VISION) SONNO and SOGNI (SLEEP and DREAM) MOVIMENTO GUERRA

BUSINESS NATURA (NATURE)

Several of these source domains (for example MOVEMENT and WAR) have been found to be dominant in the discourse of politicians in other countries, particularly the United Kingdom and the United States (for example Charteris-Black 2005). There are, however, differences in metaphor use between our two subcorpora, which we discuss in the rest of this chapter. We begin by considering how Berlusconi and Bonino use metaphor to construct different target domains, which correspond to their different individual concerns. We then show how the two politicians use a particular source domain (that of SPORTS) in very different ways. 3.5.1

Berlusconi’s metaphors for the left and taxation

As we have already mentioned, an important element of Berlusconi’s rhetoric is the description of the political left in Italy as a dangerous force, whose access to power would lead to a loss of freedom and democracy. Throughout his political career, Berlusconi has supported this claim by stating that the apparent respectability of the left (as embodied, for

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 45

example, by Romano Prodi) conceals its continuing links with its communist past, and particularly with a Stalinist version of communism. A number of rhetorical strategies are used by Berlusconi to construct the left as menacingly communist. These include the provision of figures for the number of people killed worldwide under communist regimes, and metaphoric expressions such as Examples (2) and (3) (here and throughout, we underline only the relevant metaphoric expressions): 2. Ho già detto che un albero non può cambiare frutti, un albero dà sempre gli stessi frutti. E l’albero di questa sinistra ha le sue radici in una cultura anticapitalistica, in una ideologia che possiamo chiamare francamente con il suo vero nome, che è il comunismo ortodosso, il comunismo di allora e di sempre. (SB11) I have already said that a tree cannot change its fruits, a tree always gives the same fruits. And the tree of this left has its roots in an anticapitalistic culture, in an ideology which we can frankly call with its real name, which is orthodox communism, the communism of then and of always. (SB11) 3. la Sinistra ha sempre avuto un’attrazione fatale per la dittatura, sapete, e non furono portati in tribunale perché la Sinistra fece infiltrare i suoi uomini in tutti i punti nodali dello stato, cioè le scuole, i giornali, le stazioni TV, la magistratura, nel sistema nervoso centrale dello stato. (SB17) the left has always had a fatal attraction for dictatorship, and they weren’t prosecuted because the left infiltrated its men into all of the nodal points of the state, that is, the schools, the newspapers, the TV stations, the judiciary, into the central nervous system of the state. (SB17) In these examples Berlusconi uses a range of different metaphors to present what he sees as the pernicious and deceptive aspects of the left. Goatly (1997) has referred to this phenomenon as ‘diversification’: the use of a range of different source domains for the same target domain. In (2) a particular scenario from the NATURE source domain is used to suggest that the link between the current left-wing parties and communism still applies today and always will: the left is presented as a tree that has its roots in ‘orthodox communism’. Within the source scenario, a tree cannot change the location of its roots, and this notion

46 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

of an inevitable connection is projected by Berlusconi onto the target domain of the left and its characteristics. In (3) the relationship between the left and dictatorship is metaphorically presented as a ‘fatal attraction’, and the activities of the left are described via the verb ‘infiltrare’ [infiltrate], which, in Italian, still retains the physical meaning of ‘penetrating’ (usually by gases or liquids). What is being infiltrated is various parts of the Italian state, which are also described metaphorically as its ‘punti nodali’ [nodal points] and personified via the expression ‘sistema nervoso centrale’ [central nervous system]. This ‘reds-under-the-bed’ tendency in Berlusconi’s rhetoric is well known (for example see Bolasco et al. 2006: 77–90), and is often derided as anachronistic. Nonetheless, its appeal to part of the electorate is supported by the fact that left-wing coalitions have often included two parties which retain the label ‘Communist’ in their name. What Berlusconi’s claims conveniently ignore, however, is not just the fact that these small parties are entirely committed to democracy, but also that Italy’s main left-wing party moved away from communism well before Berlusconi entered politics. The fact that Berlusconi’s coalition includes a post-Fascist party (Alleanza Nazionale/National Alliance) constitutes a further underlying inconsistency in Berlusconi’s claims. A related aspect of Berlusconi’s political discourse concerns taxation. Berlusconi is openly committed to low taxation, and systematically associates the left with the threat of excessive and unfair taxes. As part of these claims, the levying of taxes is metaphorically described via expressions such as ‘furto’ [theft], ‘rapina’ [robbery], ‘sequestro della ricchezza’ [seizure of riches/wealth], ‘saccheggiare i nostri redditi’ [ransack our income] and ‘mette(re) … mani rapaci’ [laying … rapacious hands] on families’ lifelong savings. A further example is given below: 4. Mai in cinque anni ho portato sul tavolo del Consiglio dei ministri un provvedimento che permettesse al fisco di mettere le mani in più nelle tasche dei cittadini. (SB11) Never in five years have I taken to the meetings of the Council of Ministers a law which gave the Inland Revenue a greater ability to put its hands into the pockets of the Italians. (SB11) This extract contains Berlusconi’s most frequent figurative description of taxation as involving ‘mettere le mani nelle tasche’ [putting one’s hands in the pockets] of the Italians. The noun ‘tasche’ occurs five times in our corpus, and all cases are part of descriptions of taxation similar to Example (4). This use of ‘tasche’ can be seen as metonymic,

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 47

since money is traditionally kept in pockets. However, the expression ‘mettere le mani nelle tasche dei cittadini/degli Italiani’ [put one’s hand in the citizens’/Italians’ pockets] evokes a pickpocket scenario, which is used metaphorically to present the levying of taxes as a surreptitious and immoral activity at the expense of hard-working citizens. This tendency to describe taxation as theft is not simply an element of populist right-wing discourse, but has particular significance in relation to Berlusconi and to the Italians’ attitude to taxes. Tax evasion is endemic in Italy, and Berlusconi himself has been repeatedly prosecuted for tax fraud and false accounting, as well as other crimes. In several cases, trials ended with acquittals (in some cases with a dubitative formula), while in others Berlusconi was cleared of charges because the statute of limitations had expired (in fact, the statute of limitations for crimes such as fraud was shortened during Berlusconi’s time in office). On the whole, tax evasion tends to be perceived by many Italians as a minor offence, or not an offence at all. By using metaphors such as those we have mentioned above, Berlusconi therefore taps into the views and emotive reactions of large portions of the Italian public, who may feel vindicated in their own attitudes and practices. 3.5.2

Bonino’s metaphors for identity

Diversification, that is, the use of different source domains for one target domain, can also be found in the Bonino subcorpus, but the target domains in question are different from those we discussed in relation to Berlusconi. One such target domain is the notion of identity, and particularly European identity. Bonino deals with this issue in various speeches given both to Italian and international audiences. Here we focus on a speech delivered at the 2004 Conference of the Italian Radicals, in which she responds to the claim that the Judaeo-Christian tradition is a central component of European identity, and should therefore be included in the EU’s constitution. In this speech, Bonino begins by questioning the validity of a view of identity as based in a shared past, a view that she explicitly associates with the metaphor of ‘roots’ [radici]. Her own alternative view is expressed via two different metaphors. One draws from the source domain of CONSTRUCTION/BUILDINGS, and presents identity as a ‘progetto’ [plan/project] that involves a gradual process of ‘costruzione’ [construction]. The other draws from the source domain of VISION, and constructs identity as a process that involves ‘guardare avanti’ [looking forward] to the future rather than ‘guardare indietro’ [looking back] to the past.

48 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Bonino then goes on to replace the conventional ‘roots’ metaphor by drawing from different aspects of what we may call the TREE source scenario: 5. Siamo sicuri invece che la nostra identità […] è un’identità progettuale, è un’identità di divenire. La nostra storia, se vogliamo prendere la metafora della pianta […] non sono le nostre radici sono le foglie e gli innesti, quello che riusciamo a costruire. (EB8) Rather we are convinced that our identity […] is a project identity, it is an identity of becoming. Our history, if we want to take the metaphor of the plant, […] is not the roots it is the leaves and graftings, what we manage to build. (EB8) Here the CONSTRUCTION metaphor is combined with a novel and explicit use of the TREE metaphor for identity. In Lakoff and Turner’s (1989) terms, Bonino extends the traditional metaphor of identity/shared history as a tree by drawing from normally unused elements of the source scenario, namely leaves and graftings. More specifically, she replaces the normally used element of the source scenario (the roots) with two normally unused elements. The notion of grafting in particular accommodates the possibility of new people, races and culture being included in a shared identity – something that the metaphor of roots does not easily allow for. Later in the same speech, Bonino uses a different metaphor to question the view that Muslim immigrants pose greater problems for Europe and its identity than Christian immigrants: 6. Non preoccupa, appunto, di che fede religiosa sono, ma se entrano in una casa – come dice lei – o in una famiglia che sa chi è, non perché sa chi sono i suoi genitori ma perché sa chi sono i suoi fratelli e le sue sorelle. (EB8) I am not worried, in fact, about their religious faith, but about whether they enter a house/home – as you say – or a family who knows who it is, not because it knows who its parents are but because it knows who its brothers and sisters are. (EB8) Here Europe is metaphorically presented first as a house/home (a metaphor attributed to Senate speaker Marcello Pera), and then as a family. However, the FAMILY source domain is used in a rather unconventional way. Prototypically, identities within families depend on links with

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 49

previous generations, and with parents in particular. Indeed, sibling relationships are defined in terms of shared parentage. In extract (6), Bonino juxtaposes an identity based on knowledge of one’s parents to an identity based on knowledge of one’s siblings. This relies on a looser view of sibling relationships, which are implicitly presented as something that can be acquired independently of shared parentage. Hence Bonino advocates a notion of European identity as being based on current relationships of coexistence and intimacy among different groups of people, rather than on shared origins (be they racial, cultural or religious). Bonino’s metaphors are sophisticated and potentially powerful, especially in combination with one another. However, they are also likely to be more demanding than the conventional metaphors she is attempting to replace, and do not rely on the well-established emotional associations of metaphorical expressions such as ‘roots’. In this sense, Bonino’s political discourse, and metaphor use in particular, differ considerably from Berlusconi’s in terms of their potential for mass appeal. In the next section we will show that similar conclusions can be reached by considering a particular source domain. 3.5.3

The

SPORTS

source domain

metaphors are a well-known staple of political discourse (for example Balbus 1975). Berlusconi, in particular, has been associated with the use of SPORTS and, more specifically, FOOTBALL metaphors, particularly at the beginning of his career as a politician (see Semino and Masci 1996). The very name of Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia, is an expression used by supporters of the national football team. Berlusconi regularly refers to his decision to enter politics as ‘scendere in campo’ [enter the field/pitch], and originally described his goal as that of giving Italy a strong ‘squadra di governo’ [government team]. These expressions are often also accompanied by reminders of Berlusconi’s successes as the owner of the AC Milan football club, which provide a powerful literal motivation for his choice of metaphor (see also Semino 2008). SPORTS metaphors carry a particularly strong gendered bias, since most sports are prototypically male activities, and supporters are also more likely to be male than female (for example Segrave 1994). In addition, it is male teams and competitions that receive most media attention, especially in the case of sports such as football. In Berlusconi’s case, the association with football and the use of FOOTBALL metaphors contribute to the construction of his masculine identity as strong, active and competitive. It is therefore interesting to compare Berlusconi’s use of SPORTS metaphors in our data with Bonino’s. SPORTS

50 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Overall, we have identified in our data 202 occurrences of metaphoric expressions (metaphoric tokens) that can be related to the SPORTS source domain. These 202 occurrences realise 28 different lexemes, or, for our purposes, metaphoric types (for example, different occurrences of the verb ‘vincere’ [to win] can be subsumed under a single metaphoric type). Altogether, these metaphoric types show an mTTR (metaphoric typetoken ratio) of 0.14, and a density of 1.68 sport-related metaphoric tokens per 1000 words. As shown in Table 3.1, we actually identified more instances of SPORTS metaphoric tokens in the Bonino subcorpus than in the Berlusconi subcorpus (126 tokens as opposed to 76, resulting in a higher density per 1000 words).1 The number of types is also higher in the Bonino than the Berlusconi subcorpus (20 vs 16), but the mTTR is lower for Bonino (0.16 vs 0.21). In other words, there is greater variation in the SPORTS metaphoric expressions used by Berlusconi than in those used by Bonino, but she uses her particular set of SPORTS metaphoric expressions more often. Out of a total of 28 metaphoric types, 10 are found in both subcorpora, and constitute highly conventional metaphoric expressions that realise central elements of the SPORTS source domain as a whole or of particular sports, such as: ‘avversario’ [opponent], ‘vincere’ [to win], ‘campo’ [pitch] and ‘traguardo’ [finishing line]. The speaker-specific metaphoric types, however, are much less conventional in the Bonino subcorpus than in the Berlusconi subcorpus. Indeed, our quantitative results cannot be properly interpreted without a qualitative analysis of the ways in which SPORTS metaphors are used by each politician. 3.5.3.1

Berlusconi’s SPORTS metaphors

The SPORTS metaphors we have identified in the Berlusconi subcorpus draw from a variety of sports, as shown in Examples (7)–(9): 7. Senza spirito di squadra non si affronta nessuna gara. Così come senza patriottismo non si va da nessuna parte. (SB15)

Table 3.1

Results for the SPORTS source domain Whole corpus

Metaphoric types Metaphoric tokens mTTR Metaphor density/1,000 words

28 202 0.14 1.68

Berlusconi 16 76 0.21 1.26

Bonino 20 126 0.16 2.1

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 51

Without team spirit one cannot face any race/match. Equally without patriotism one cannot go anywhere. (SB15) 8. Il processo di modernizzazione non si è mai arrestato […] fino a toccare il traguardo storico dell’aggancio al plotone di testa dei paesi più progrediti. Il mio governo è impegnato fortemente per continuare a farne parte. (SB15) The process of modernisation has never stopped […] until we reached the historic goal/finishing line of catching up with the leading group of the most advanced countries. My government is strongly committed to ensure that we continue to be part of it. (SB15) 9. In quel guizzo imprevisto, che ci fa riguadagnare il centro del ring ogni volta che siamo messi all’angolo, molti vedono il riflesso fortunato del famoso stellone d’Italia. Io sono convinto, invece, di vederci il patriottismo degli italiani di buona volontà. (SB15) In that unexpected dart/move, that enables us to get back to the centre of the ring every time we have been pushed into a corner, many see evidence of Italy’s famous lucky star. In contrast, I am convinced that I see in it the patriotism of all Italians of good will. (SB15) In Example (7) the general notion of ‘team spirit’ is used metaphorically to present patriotism as necessary in international relations, which are implicitly constructed as a ‘gara’ [race/match]. In Example (8) Italy’s successful effort to be included in the Eurozone (which was achieved by the first Prodi government) is expressed via a CYCLING metaphor. In Example (9) a BOXING metaphor is used to express Italy’s ability to remain among the most advanced nations against all expectations. In the same extract, the expression ‘di buona volontà’ [of good will] is also an example of the frequent intertextual references to the Catholic liturgy or the Bible which Berlusconi uses to support his claim that he represents the Catholic electorate in Italy. In other words, Berlusconi tends to present national or international politics as a match or a race, and draws from aspects of various sports in order to emphasise the efforts and successes achieved by Italy, or by himself and his government/supporters. Such uses of SPORTS metaphors are mostly conventional in Italian political discourse, both in terms of the linguistic expressions that are used and in terms of the underlying conceptual mappings. More specifically, Berlusconi’s SPORTS

52 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

metaphors tend to exploit the audience’s sense of identification with the teams they support and the positive emotional associations of sporting victories. Berlusconi himself is also constructed as either participating in or facilitating difficult but ultimately successful sporting enterprises. 3.5.3.2

Bonino’s SPORTS metaphors

Bonino’s SPORTS metaphors include a number of instances that radically contrast with Berlusconi’s conventional uses, since they exploit aspects of the source domain that are not conventionally used in metaphorical mappings. Consider Examples (10)–(12): 10. … l’assenza di regole ha consentito in passato e consentirà ancora a Bossi e ad altri opportunisti e/o avventurieri della politica di cambiare squadra e casacca nel corso della partita. (EB2) … the absence of rules has allowed and will still allow Bossi and other opportunists and/or adventurers of politics to change team and shirt in the course of the match. (EB2) 11. Perché a noi è successo quel che accadrebbe a una squadra che si iscrive a un torneo mettiamo di pallacanestro – con difficoltà, perché la pallacanestro non è il nostro sport preferito – e che al momento di scendere in campo viene informata di dovere giocare non più a pallacanestro ma a pallanuoto. (EB2) Because what happened to us is what would happen to a team who sign up for a tournament let’s say of basketball – with difficulty, because basketball is not our favourite sport – and who at the time of entering the pitch are informed that they no longer have to play basketball but water polo. (EB2) 12. Vede, signor Presidente, lei […] ci ha dimostrato che il senso delle Istituzioni non è il suo forte. Certamente lei è un esperto di calcio e di calcio mercato, quindi, per spiegarmi con un esempio, lei – signor Presidente–cosa direbbe di un campionato dove una squadra, magari la sua, è costretta a chiudere il calcio-mercato un mese prima delle altre? Lei direbbe che è un campionato fasullo, sleale, illegale. (EB13) You see, Mr President, you […] have shown us that a regard for institutions is not your forte. Certainly you are an expert in football and football transfers, so, in order to make myself clear with an example, you – Mr President – what would you say of a

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 53

championship in which a team, perhaps your own, is forced to end the transfer season a month before the others? You would say that this is a fake, unfair, illegal championship. (EB13) In all three cases, Bonino uses SPORTS metaphors to criticise the Italian political context, and particularly the absence of precise and fair rules concerning elections and the allocation of parliamentary seats. This, she argues, allows practices that consistently damage the chances of electoral success of political formations such as her own. In Example (10) Bonino stigmatises the fact that Northern League leader Umberto Bossi and other party leaders tend to move in and out of different coalitions, thus unfairly altering the political scenario. In Example (11) an extended SPORTS metaphor is used to denounce the fact that preelection rules were changed in such a way as to reduce the chances of success for her list. In Example (12) Bonino pretends to address Berlusconi himself (who was then prime minister), and prefaces the use of a FOOTBALL metaphor with a reminder that he is an expert in football and in the transfer of players. This metaphor is used to describe a situation in which, according to Bonino, her own list received little or no media exposure in the run-up to the elections, in contrast with the main political parties. Our data contain further examples of similar metaphoric expressions, such as ‘gioco impazzito’ [a game gone mad] and ‘giocando una partita truccata’ [playing a fixed match]. In other words, Bonino primarily uses SPORTS metaphors to expose what she sees as unfair and illegal practices. In the source scenarios, her own role is that of a (reluctant) player/ team who is damaged by the absence of clear rules for the game, or by the fact that others can change the rules as they please. These uses of metaphor exploit the SPORTS source domain in unconventional and sometimes counter-intuitive ways. In several cases, the metaphorical scenarios Bonino outlines are actually impossible, or, minimally, implausible in the source domain: players cannot normally change teams half way through the match, and it is unlikely that a team will be forced to play a different sport than what they were expecting. This, in a way, is Bonino’s point: her metaphors show that what is possible in Italian politics would be outrageous if transferred to a sporting context. In this sense, the improbable nature of the metaphorical scenarios she uses is potentially very effective. On the other hand, however, Bonino’s metaphor use is less immediately accessible than Berlusconi’s, and does not exploit the most obvious sources of emotional involvement provided

54 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

by the source domain, such as the elation and pride associated with winning. Indeed, it could be argued that Bonino uses SPORTS metaphors not because they are the most natural choice for her, but because she is forced to employ them by their dominance in political discourse, particularly as represented by Berlusconi himself (as can be seen by the fact that she address Berlusconi directly in (12)). However, she uses these metaphors in a way that goes against the grain of the source domain itself, and that reflects her own lack of familiarity and identification with it. In Kövecses’s (2002: 109–12) terms, it can be argued that Berlusconi normally exploits the ‘main meaning focus’ of the SPORTS source domain (that is, the concepts of competition, physical struggle, victory), whereas Bonino relies on other aspects of sporting activities, which are not normally used metaphorically and may even be improbable in the source domain (see also the ‘Mapping Principles’ proposed in Ahrens, forthcoming). We do not have the space in this chapter to consider the use of other source domains in our data. However, the patterns we have found in relation to several other source domains are similar to those we have described for the SPORTS source domain, in terms of the different degrees of conventionality, accessibility and emotive potential of the metaphors used by the two politicians. This applies particularly to the WAR source domain, which is closely related to SPORTS. Both Berlusconi and Bonino exploit the WAR source domain in ways that are similar to those we have discussed for Schröder and Merkel in Chapter 2 (that is, they present themselves as ‘fighting for’ positive outcomes and ‘against’ negative situations). However, Berlusconi also consistently uses WAR metaphors in order to construct the Italian left-wing parties as a threat to freedom and democracy, and as engaged in constant aggression against him in particular, which requires self-defence on his part (see also Bolasco et al. 2006: 95–7). Bonino also uses WAR metaphors for the Italian political scene, but usually to criticise the excessively adversarial attitudes of both the centre-left and the centre-right coalitions, and to construct herself and her colleagues as belonging to neither camp. In addition, on several occasions she exploits the WAR source domain in unconventional and counter-intuitive ways. For example, she self-consciously chooses WAR metaphors to emphasise the effectiveness of non-violent methods of political resistance, and, on one occasion, describes Europe as ‘questa cittadella, che vediamo sempre più assediata e che in realtà si assedia da sé’ [this citadel, which we see as more and more under siege and that in fact puts itself under siege], in order to question the perception of migratory movements as a threat for EU countries. In other words,

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 55

as we have noted with the SPORTS source domain, Berlusconi’s WAR metaphors mostly exploit the main meaning focus of the WAR source domain (that is, the presence of an enemy, attack, defence, etc.), while Bonino often constructs ad hoc source scenarios (for example selfimposed siege) and/or unconventional cross-domain mappings, which are more creative but also potentially less immediately accessible and involving than Berlusconi’s metaphors (see Ahrens, forthcoming for evidence of the lower acceptability and interpretability of metaphorical expressions that do not rely on conventional cross-domain mappings).

3.6

Concluding remarks

The differences we have noted in the metaphors used, in our data, by Berlusconi and Bonino can be explained in terms of a range of factors, including: • Political orientation and tradition (Berlusconi’s populist right-wing tradition vs Bonino’s Radical tradition); • Goals (Berlusconi’s aim to be elected or confirmed as prime minister vs Bonino’s aim to obtain particular civil rights, and to gain an inevitably modest proportion of the votes in elections); • Topics (Berlusconi’s focus on the left, tax and security vs Bonino’s focus on civil rights, women’s issues and cultural issues); • Institutional roles (Berlusconi as prime minister or leader of the main opposition party, Bonino as member of the Radical movement, Italian and European MP and leader/member of various national and international initiatives); • National audiences (Berlusconi’s mass audience of centreright Catholic supporters vs Bonino’s more restricted party audience, as well as a wider national audience on some civil rights issues). In addition, we have shown that differences in metaphor use can also be related to the particular ways in which each politician performs masculinity or femininity. Berlusconi embodies many of the characteristics that have been associated with contemporary charismatic (male) right-wing leaders (Eatwell 2005): a Manichean world view in which the forces of ‘good’ are opposed to the forces of ‘evil’, a special personal mission to

56 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

save the nation and its people, a view of himself as both superior and ‘one of the people’, and an attractive, magnetic personal presence. Berlusconi’s metaphors are one of the strategies he uses to convey this particular image, which is associated with strong, heterosexual masculinity. As we have shown, a range of different metaphors are used in his speeches and interviews to set up frightening scenarios in which Italy is under constant threat from a communist left, and to construct internal politics in terms of competition and aggression. Against this background, Berlusconi presents himself as a prototypically masculine heroic leader who remains strong in spite of continued attacks, and who alone is capable of ensuring that Italy is free, democratic and successful. On the other hand, however, Berlusconi also tends to appeal to instinct, the emotions, and the irrational (as opposed to reasoning, intellect and rationality). This can be seen as a characteristic that is stereotypically associated with femininity. Indeed, in a speech addressed to Forza Italia’s women movement (analysed in Bolasco et al. 2006: 121–34), Berlusconi explicitly praises women for having contributed to the party a tendency to act on instinct as opposed to rationality. Bonino’s use of metaphor also reveals a complex interplay between the realisation of both masculine and feminine roles. Unlike Berlusconi, Bonino tends to put issues and goals centre-stage rather than herself. She also makes her own limitations explicit, and often hedges her own opinions (whether via metaphor or otherwise). This is a tendency that is often associated with femininity, in contrast with Berlusconi’s prototypically masculine confidence and certainty. On the other hand, however, Bonino presents herself as tough and passionate, and uses metaphors drawn from source domains that correspond to typically masculine activities, such as SPORTS and WAR. However, she tends to exploit these source domains in unconventional ways, in order to make particular points and to challenge dominant views. In particular, she appears to use SPORTS metaphors as a concession to dominant, male-centred political discourse, but makes non-obvious, againstthe-grain uses of SPORTS scenarios, and attributes to herself the role of a reluctant and disadvantaged sportswoman. Overall, Bonino’s unconventional uses of metaphor are likely to make greater interpretative demands of her audiences, and tend to appeal to their intellect and reasoning abilities more than to their emotions. In this sense, Bonino allies herself with a more intellectual and sophisticated political tradition than Berlusconi, and adopts a role that is more associated with masculinity.

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 57

We do not have the space here to carry out a cross-cultural and crosslinguistic comparison between our findings in this chapter and the previous one. Such a comparison would be worthwhile, however, since we have noted a much greater use of novel, extended and deliberate metaphors in the Italian corpus. This can partly be seen as a result of the differences between our German and Italian corpora, which we mentioned above. However, we would also argue that the Italian data reflect a tendency in contemporary Italian politics toward the use of simpler, more vivid and colourful language than was the case before the early 1990s (which marked the end of what is known as Italy’s ‘First Republic’). The cause of this change has been identified in the rise of political figures such as Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, and, even more, Berlusconi himself, whose language has, appropriately in our view, been described as exhibiting a distinct lack of ‘restraint’ (for example Bolasco et al. 2006). Arguably, Bonino’s unconventional SPORTS metaphors reflect an attempt to adapt to these changes while at the same time distancing herself from some central aspects of the source domain. In conclusion, our analysis in this and the previous chapter suggests that the performance of gendered identities should not be ignored when considering variation in metaphor use at the level of the individual. We have also shown, however, that such variation can only be properly explained by taking into account the interaction of a range of factors, of which the performance of masculinity and femininity is one.

Note 1 In a corpus-based study, Bolasco et al. (2006) have noted a decrease in Berlusconi’s reliance on FOOTBALL metaphors in the course of his political career, and an increase in WAR metaphors.

58 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Appendix 3.1 NB: Asterisks indicate core data. Table 3A.1

List of speeches by Silvio Berlusconi included in the corpus

Number

Year

Speech given at/to

SB1

1999

‘Security Day’ demonstration

9,342

*SB2

1999

‘Tax Day’ demonstration

8,985

SB3

2003

Italian Chamber of Deputies

3,339

SB4

2003

Italian Senate

1,770

SB5

2003

EU Intergovernmental Conference

1,067

*SB6

2004

Italian Chamber of Deputies

2,527

SB7

2004

Italian Senate

2,010

SB8

2004

Ceremony for the signing of the EU constitution in Rome

SB9

2005

Italian Senate

SB10

2005

Italian Senate

SB11

2006

Forza Italia youth clubs

SB12

2006

Italian electorate via radio

*SB13

2006

American Congress

SB14

2006

Anti-government demonstration

Total

Word count

632 2,272 706 2,135 500 2,108 2,480 39,873

Table 3A.2

List of interviews by Silvio Berlusconi included in the corpus

Number

Year

Media outlet

SB15

2001

Ideazione magazine

4,474

*SB16

2002

Ideazione magazine

1,666

SB17

2003

The Spectator magazine

3,466

SB18

2005

Libero newspaper

*SB19

2006

RAI 3 TV programme

1,378

SB20

2006

RAI 1 TV programme

5,887

SB21

2007

Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper

1,696

*SB22

2007

La Stampa newspaper

Total

Word count

259

936 19,762

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 59 Table 3A.3

List of speeches by Emma Bonino included in the corpus

Number

Year

Speech given at/to

EB1

1999

Event organized by the Radical movement

5,769

*EB2

2001

Coordinating committee of the Radical movement

5,436

*EB3

2002

Meeting of EU centres in USA

1,112

EB4

2002

Spanish SLA association

1,660

EB5

2003

Conference for the prevention of female genital mutilation in Cairo

1,234

EB6

2004

EU Parliament

EB7

2004

Meeting of Italian association of women elected to high office

1,594

EB8

2004

Congress of the Italian Radicals

6,198

*EB9

2004

Suzanne Mubarak, Women for Peace International Movement

3,845

EB10

2005

EU Parliament

EB11

2005

Luca Coscioni, association for freedom of research

3,915

EB12

2005

Event organised by the Radical movement

3,409

*EB13

2006

Congress of SDI-Rosa nel Pugno

4,960

Total

Word count

802

411

40,345

60 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 3A.4

List of interviews by Emma Bonino included in the corpus

Number

Year

Media outlet

EB14

2000

La Repubblica newspaper

2,980

*EB15

2000

L’Espresso magazine

1,010

EB16

2000

Il Messaggero newspaper

EB17

2003

Welfare Cremona online magazine

EB18

2004

La Repubblica newspaper

646

*EB19

2005

Liberal Café online newspaper

837

EB20

2005

Noi Donne online newspaper

EB21

2005

National Council of Accountants

613

EB22

2005

Il Messaggero newspaper

483

EB23

2005

La Repubblica newspaper

551

EB24

2005

Il Corriere della Sera newspaper

380

EB25

2005

Uninetwork, a network of Italian universities

668

EB26

2005

Sistema Italia association

699

EB27

2006

RAI 3 TV programme

863

EB28

2006

RAI 3 TV programme

1,378

*EB29

2006

RAI 3 TV programme

1,043

EB30

2006

Veneto Radicale association

676

EB31

2006

Il Corriere della Sera newspaper

660

EB32

2006

L’Espresso magazine

EB33

2007

Il Corriere della Sera newspaper

760

EB34

2007

La Voce Repubblicana online forum

536

Total

Word count

958 2,007

1,123

1,060

19,931

Elena Semino and Veronika Koller 61

References Ahrens, K. Forthcoming. ‘Mapping Principles for Conceptual Metaphors’, in L. Cameron, A. Deignan, G. Low and Z. Todd (eds) Researching and Applying Metaphor in the Real World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Amadori, A. 2002. Mi Consenta: Metafore, Messaggi e Simboli. Come Silvio Berlusconi ha conquistato il consenso degli Italiani. Milan: Libri Scheiwiller. Balbus, J. 1975. ‘Politics as Sport: the Political Ascendancy of the Sports Metaphor in America’, Monthly Review, 26 (10): 26–39. Bolasco, S., G. Luca and N. Galli de’ Paratesi. 2006. Parole in Libertà: Un’analisi statistica e linguistica. Rome: Manifestolibri. Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: the Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Eatwell, R. 2005. ‘Charisma and the Revival of the European Extreme Right’, in J. Rydgren (ed.) Movements of Exclusion: Radical Right-Wing Populism in the Western World. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Goatly, A. 1997. The Language of Metaphors. London: Routledge. Koller, V. 2004. Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse: a Critical Cognitive Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kövecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor: a Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kövecses, Z. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Turner. 1989. More than Cool Reason: a Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pragglejaz Group. 2007. ‘MIP: a Method for Identifying Metaphorically Used Words in Discourse’, Metaphor and Symbol, 22 (1): 1–39. Scott, M. 1999. WordSmith Tools, Version 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Segrave, J. O. 1994. ‘The Perfect 10: “Sportspeak” in the Language of Sexual Relations’, Sociology of Sports Journal, 11: 95–113. Semino, E. 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Semino, E. and M. Masci. 1996. ‘POLITICS IS FOOTBALL: Metaphor in the Discourse of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy’, Discourse and Society, 72: 243–69. Sunderland, J. 2004. Gendered Discourses. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Veltri, E. and M. Travaglio. 2001. L’odore dei soldi: Origini e misteri delle fortune di Silvio Berlusconi. Rome: Editori Riuniti.

4 Gender versus Politics: When Conceptual Models Collide in the US Senate Kathleen Ahrens* and Sophia Yat Mei Lee** *Hong Kong Baptist University and National Taiwan University **The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

4.1

Introduction

One of the main purposes of political speeches is to persuade others of one’s opinion. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the floor of a democratically elected legislative body, where legislators gain floor time to convince others of the validity of their points of view. One method political leaders employ to this end, either consciously or unconsciously, involves incorporating appropriate conceptual metaphors into their speeches. Recent work has focused on the analysis of metaphors used by presidents and prime ministers (Charteris-Black 2004, 2005, 2007, Chilton and Ilyin 1993, Lu and Ahrens 2008, Semino and Masci 1996). However, less attention has been spent on political leaders at the next level of statesmanship: the senators, cabinet ministers and members of parliament, an area which several chapters in this volume now address (Chs 5, 7–9 and 12). In this chapter, we examine the use of lexemes associated with two conceptual metaphor models in US senatorial speech from 2000 to early 2007 in order to determine if gender, political party affiliation, or a combination of both gender and party in the US Senate influences the conceptual models invoked by the senators. We find that as a group, senators do not invoke a particular conceptual model on the basis of gender. Instead, the conceptual model most often invoked across all groups is the model that Lakoff (1996/2002) postulates to be associated with the Democratic political party.

4.2

Conceptual models used in American politics

Lakoff (1996/2002) postulates that the American political system is based on a conceptual model of a family and that the two modern US 62

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 63

political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, have their own particular version of this general model. Each version reflects the conceptual world view of that political party which is, in turn, postulated to be based on the moral values which that party holds. For example, Lakoff (1996/2002) argues that the Republican Party utilizes the Strict Father (SF) model, which is based on a traditional nuclear family where the father has the primary responsibility to support and protect the family. The primary metaphors for this model are MORALITY IS STRENGTH and MORALITY IS AUTHORITY. Within the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Kövecses 2002), a more abstract concept is understood in terms of a more concrete concept (relatively speaking). Thus, in the previous case, MORALITY is the abstract concept in the target domain understood in terms of a more concrete source domain, such as STRENGTH.1 Lakoff (1996/2002) postulates that the Republican Party in America bases its values on this model and that Republicans primarily use metaphors (such as MORALITY IS STRENGTH) which support this model. Some policy entailments that arise from this particular world view include the idea that self-discipline and self-denial allow one to build moral strength and that there is a moral authority and moral order in the family, and by extension in the social and political universe. The alternative model, the Nurturant Parent (NP) model, is postulated by Lakoff (1996/2002) to be used primarily by the Democrats. The NP model is based on a family where responsibility is shared among family members, and there is mutual caring and support given to all family members. The primary metaphors for this model are MORALITY IS NURTURANCE and MORALITY IS EMPATHY. Thus, according to Lakoff, both political parties acknowledge and incorporate the primacy of the family into their political models. However, the Republicans use the family model to emphasise that strength and authority are the primary responsibilities of a family leader (and by extension, a political leader), while Democrats use the model to emphasise that nurturance and empathy are the primary characteristics of a family or political leader. In addition to differing in terms of underlying assumptions of a family and their extensions to the political world, these models differ with respect to women’s roles in the moral order. In the SF model, men are considered to have moral authority over women, while in the NP model, neither men nor women have moral authority over the other gender (Lakoff 1996/2002). This fact may explain the ‘party’ gap; that is, Democratic women held double the number of seats of their Republican counterparts in 2007 (50 versus 21 House members, 11 versus 5 senators,

64 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

and 6 versus 3 governors).2 This could be argued to be the case precisely because the moral value system of the Democrats supports women as leaders. Yet, there still are female Republican leaders at the highest levels of government in the United States. These women do, de facto, have authority over the men and women in their staff. They are the voice of representation for the men and women in their state. Given that the conceptual models give rise to different ways of viewing women’s roles, does being part of the Republican Party mean that these female leaders incorporate the MORALITY IS STRENGTH conceptual model into their world view? In order to answer the above question, we need to first address what it means to incorporate a conceptual model into one’s world view. One possible way of evaluating this issue is to determine what conceptual metaphors are used by speakers and then determine if these metaphors are part of the proposed conceptual model. For example, as CharterisBlack (2005) points out, Republican president George W. Bush uses many moral accounting metaphors, which are considered to be part of the SF model (Lakoff 1996/2002). However, Charteris-Black did not specifically investigate whether Republicans and Democrats used one model (that is, NP or SF) more than the other. To look at the literature on the hypotheses generated by the Lakovian family model, we need to turn to Cienki (2004, 2005a, b) and Ahrens (Forthcoming). Cienki (2004, 2005a, b) examines conceptual metaphor use of George W. Bush (Republican) and Al Gore (Democrat) in the televised debates before the US Election in the year 2000. In Cienki’s (2005a) paper, he found that the verbal gestures used by the two candidates supported the models, although the data were sparse. However, none of Cienki’s papers demonstrated support for the consistent use of verbal metaphors which exemplified the conceptual metaphors proposed in Lakoff’s models. Cienki (2005b) notes that since direct evidence for the validity of the proposed model is lacking (that is, evidence based on verbal metaphors), it might be necessary to come up with a new methodology that tests non-metaphorical entailments. Ahrens (Forthcoming) suggests such an approach by investigating whether there are different frequency patterns in presidential usage for lexemes relating to ‘strength/authority’ (in the SF model) and ‘nurturance/ empathy’ (in the NP model). To test this hypothesis, corpora from online sources, including the State of the Union Addresses for American presidents from 1980 to 2006 and radio addresses for the same period, were created. Indeed, the data demonstrate that Reagan, a Republican, used more lexemes related to the SF model, while the Democrat Bill Clinton

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 65

used more lexemes related to the NP model. In this chapter, we take a similar approach by looking at the pattern of lexeme usage by Democratic and Republican senators with respect to the terms related to the SF and NP conceptual models.

4.3

Lexeme selection

Following Ahrens (Forthcoming), we employed a similar methodology to create a corpus of speeches and examine the frequency of lexical use of words associated with the SF and NP models. The choice of relevant lexemes was determined by using WordNet 3.0 (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/), an online lexical reference system in which nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organised into synonym sets, each representing one underlying concept. The appropriate sense in WordNet was then selected for each of the following four words: strength and authority (the top two source domains for the SF model) and nurturance and empathy (the top two source domains for the NP model). Next, concrete nouns and verbs (underlined below in (1)–(4)) were selected from the WordNet definitions and direct hypernyms. After they were selected, we then discussed and discarded any verb or noun that was considered either too polysemous or too vague to be useful in the analysis (indicated with shading in (1)–(4)). (1) Selected sense and its direct hypernym for ‘strength’ Selected sense: (n) force, forcefulness, strength (physical energy or intensity) Direct hypernym: (n) intensity, intensiveness 3 (high level or degree ; the property of being intense) (2) Selected sense and its direct hypernym for ‘authority’ Selected sense: (n) authority, authorization, authorisation, potency, dominance, say-so (the power or right to give orders or make, decisions) Direct hypernym: (n) control (power to direct or determine) (3) Selected sense and its direct hypernym for ‘nurturance’ Selected sense: (n) nurturance (physical and emotional care and nourishment) Direct hypernym: (n) care, attention, aid, tending (the work, of providing treatment for or attending to someone or something )

66 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

(4) Selected sense and its direct hypernym for ‘empathy’ Selected sense: (n) empathy (understanding and entering into another’s feelings) Direct hypernym: (n) sympathy, fellow feeling (sharing the feelings of others (especially feelings of sorrow or anguish)) Nouns were searched for in both singular and plural word forms as well as in verb form if the lexeme was categorically ambiguous, as ambiguities would exist for plural nouns and the third person singular verb form. In addition, verbs were searched for in present tense (first and third person), past tense and past participle forms. All lexemes and associated word forms are listed in Appendix 4.1.

4.4

Corpora design

The corpora we used were created from the US Senate floor speeches available in html text on the official government websites of male and female US senators (that is, name.senate.gov). All floor speeches were downloaded to text files. Next all headers and introductory remarks made by someone other than the senator were removed. The list of senators included in the corpora are given in Table 4.1, along with the gender, the political party, the state the senator is from, the number of words in each corpus and the time frame of the speeches included in the corpus. The time period under consideration includes the very end of Bill Clinton’s presidential administration (for Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry’s speeches), with the majority of senatorial speeches taking place during the administration of G.W. Bush, the forty-third president of the United States. The last speeches were taken in May 2007 (for Senator McCain). These speeches were given during a time of relative prosperity (that is, they were gathered before the financial crisis of 2008), but they also occurred during the time that America was engaged in a ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the year 2000, the Republicans had a slim control of the Senate, until one of their members defected to the Democrats, at which point in time it came under Democratic control. This lasted only until the elections of 2002, and then the Republicans remained in control until the elections of 2006, at which point the Democrats regained control, mostly on the basis of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the fact that America was still at war (or even went to war in the first place), or dissatisfaction with the way the war was progressing. Thus, during the time period under study, Republicans held control of the Senate for the majority of the time.

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 67 Table 4.1

Information about US Senate corpora

Politician

Gender

Party

State

Corpus size (number of words)

Time frame

Dianne Feinstein

Female Democrat

California

52,787

1/2006– 4/2007

Barbara Boxer

Female Democrat

California

19,896

3/2005– 9/2006

Hillary Clinton

Female Democrat

New York

74,196

2/2001– 2/2007

Barack Hussein Obama

Male

Democrat

Illinois

46,606

2/2005– 1/2007

Edward Moore Kennedy

Male

Democrat

Massachusetts

127,427

5/2000– 2/2002

John Kerry

Male

Democrat

Massachusetts

47,354

3/2000– 4/2007

Elizabeth Dole

Female Republican

North Carolina

41,790

2/2003– 1/2007

Kay Bailey Hutchinson

Female Republican

Texas

124,026

1/2005– 4/2007

Lisa Murkowski

Female Republican

Alaska

1,480

11/2005

John McCain

Male

Republican

Arizona

16,965

1/2005– 5/2007

Lindsey Graham

Male

Republican

South Carolina

30,069

2/2004– 9/2005

Lamar Alexander

Male

Republican

Tennessee

171,437

2/2003– 4/2007

In terms of the protocol in the US Senate, debate takes place in an orderly manner, unlike in the House of Commons, discussed in CharterisBlack’s chapter (this volume). The first rule of debating (taken from the Standing Rules of the Senate at http://rules.senate.gov/senaterules/rule19. php) highlights the formality of the discourse of debate on the Senate floor: When a Senator desires to speak, he shall rise and address the Presiding Officer, and shall not proceed until he is recognized, and the Presiding Officer shall recognize the Senator who shall first address him. No Senator shall interrupt another Senator in debate without

68 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

his consent, and to obtain such consent he shall first address the Presiding Officer, and no Senator shall speak more than twice upon any one question in debate on the same legislative day without leave of the Senate, which shall be determined without debate. Thus, the US Senate allows a speaking environment where a prepared position on a given topic is presented to persuade their fellow senators to vote in a particular way. These speeches are recorded in the Congressional Record, which is made available to the public in libraries and online (http://thomas.loc.gov), and nowadays many floor speeches appear on the websites of the senators themselves. In this study, we took the floor speeches that were listed on each senator’s own official website, and not those listed in the Congressional Record. We did this because we assume that the senator is making available the floor speeches that they consider most important. For example, although Diane Feinstein gave many floor speeches in June 2006 (as seen on http://thomas.loc.gov), she only listed two on her own official website (http://feinstein.state.gov): ‘Democratic Women’s Checklist for Change: Stem Cell Research’ (28 June 2006), and ‘Statement on the Flag Protection Amendment’ (27 June 2006). To sum up our hypotheses before we move on to the data analyses, if ideology is the overriding factor, male and female Republican senators will have comparable levels of usage of both SF lexemes (high) and NP lexemes (low) in their Senate floor speeches, while Democratic male and female senators will have the opposite pattern. This finding would be the strongest support for Lakoff’s proposal that Republicans and Democrats have different views of morality as expressed in different conceptual models. However, if gender overrides ideology, then we may find that women senators of both parties have a high usage of NP lexemes, and a low usage of SF lexemes. To foreshadow our findings, what we will show below is that neither of these predictions holds. Instead, we find that the NP lexemes are used most often in the speeches of all senators: male, female, Democrat and Republican.

4.5

Data analyses

For the data analysis, we calculated the total token count and normalised that to the number of total tokens per 10,000 words to analyse the overall pattern of usage. The frequency of use of NP and SF lexemes for four groups (Democratic female, Democratic male, Republican female, Republican male) was then compared with the overall frequency of use in the British National Corpus (BNC) using the z-statistic.4 The first

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 69

three groups all use NP and SF lexemes more frequently than is found in the BNC (p < .001), while the Republican males use NP lexemes less frequently than in the BNC (p < .001), with no difference in frequency of use for SF lexemes as compared with the frequency of occurrence in the BNC (p = .208). Thus, the first three groups utilize both SF and NP lexemes in their speeches more often than expected, while the male Republicans use NP lexemes less frequently than expected and SF lexemes only as frequently as expected. In addition, in order to follow up the research hypotheses mentioned above, a direct comparison is made between the proportion of SF and NP lexemes used by the groups under study: (1) males versus females; (2) Democrats versus Republicans; (3) female Democrats versus female Republicans; (4) male Democrats versus male Republicans; (5) male Democrats versus female Democrats; and (6) male Republicans versus female Republicans. Table 4.2 shows the comparisons of NP versus SF lexemes among different groups. As the ratio of frequencies of NP lexemes and SF lexemes in corpus is .614 (200,265/ 326,418) rather than 1, we test whether the ratio in a group’s speech is different from .614 statistically.5 As can be seen from Table 4.2, both male and female senators used significantly more NP lexemes than SF lexemes relative to the corpus (z = 4.915, Table 4.2 Comparisons of NP versus SF lexemes (raw frequency) as contrasted by different groups Group

Total NP lexemes

Total SF lexemes

Corpora size

z

p

Male

1,017

1,345

439,858

4.915

.001

Female

1,052

1,416

314,175

4.603

.001

Democrats

1,321

1,823

368,266

4.521

.001

Republicans

748

938

385,767

5.199

.001

Female Democrats

520

758

146,879

1.936

.026

Female Republicans

532

658

167,296

4.595

.001

Male Democrats

801

1,065

221,387

4.258

.001

Male Republicans

216

280

218,471

2.466

.007

70 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

p < .001; z = 4.603, p < .001, respectively).6 Democrats and Republicans both used significantly more NP lexemes than SF lexemes relative to the corpus (z = 4.521, p < .001; z = 5.199, p < .001, respectively). In addition, both female Democrats and Republicans used significantly more NP lexemes as compared with SF lexemes (z = 1.936, p < .026; z = 4.595, p < .001, respectively). Moreover, when we compare the floor speeches of male Democrats and male Republicans, we find that both groups use more NP lexemes than SF lexemes (z = 4.258, p < .001; z = 2.466, p < .007, respectively). Male and female Democrats also used significantly more NP lexemes than SF lexemes (z = 4.258, p < .001; z = 1.936, p < .026, respectively). Lastly, male and female Republicans used significantly more NP lexemes than SF lexemes (z = 2.466, p < .007; z = 4.595, p < .001, respectively). These findings do not accord with the predictions of the Lakovian model (1996/2002), or with previous findings (Ahrens, forthcoming). One reason for this may be that the model is simply wrong, or that some key lexemes or key collocations are skewing the results, or that it is not appropriate to use this type of analysis on groups, as the results become diluted across individuals. In order to explore the latter two possibilities, we will compare the two most frequent collocational patterns for males and females, as well as Democrats and Republicans, and then we will examine the lexeme usage of three senators that went on to vie for the 2008 presidential election: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

4.6 Most frequent lexemes and their collocational patterns After we searched for each word form individually using Wordsmith 3.0, we entered the number of tokens found into an Excel file, and totalled the number of word forms for each lexeme. We found that two lexemes predominated in each group we looked at. We then examined the collocational patterns for the top two lexemes, by looking at one to five positions to the left of the keyword as well as one to five positions to the right of the keyword. After examining all these patterns, it was found that the collocational patterns one word to the left of the keywords had systematic differences (see Appendix 4.2), except for the keyword ‘provide’.7 4.6.1

Male vs female

In terms of NP lexemes, both male and female senators used ‘care’ and ‘provide’ most often (males = 7.25 tokens per 10,000 words and 9.03 tokens per 10,000 words respectively; females = 9.42 and 13.3 tokens

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 71

per 10,000 words respectively).8 In terms of NP lexemes, ‘health care’ is the top collocational pattern for ‘care’ in its nominal form for both men and women (male = 4.48 and female = 3.41). In fact, ‘health care’ accounts for one-third of the female uses of ‘care’ (that is, 107 out of 296 instances) and two-thirds of the usages of ‘care’ for men (197 out of 319 instances). The fact that the issue of ‘health care’ received priority in Senate floor discussion for the time period under analysis may be one reason for the predominance of NP over SF lexemes. Yet, it is also necessary to see how ‘health care’ is used in context to determine if the speaker is arguing for or against it or has a neutral stance; that is, to determine if the use of ‘health care’ should be categorised as an NP lexeme. In fact, when the data are examined more closely, it can be difficult to interpret. Almost every senator is for ‘health care’ as an abstract concept (which would seem to be in line with our coarsegrained method of counting it as an instance of a lexeme being used in the NP model), but the devil is in the detail: who deserves it, who pays for it and who administers the health care programme (that is, the government or private insurance companies). Thus, depending on the level of discrimination one would like to see, it may be that the current frequency-based lexical analysis is too coarse-grained to get at the differences between how men and women are using language. In terms of SF lexemes, both groups used ‘force’ (male = 5.18 and female = 6.37) and ‘right’ (male = 11.34 and female = 17.67) most often. Moreover, when we look at the collocational patterns of men and women for one word to the left of the keyword (L1), we find that both men and women have ‘air force’ (male = 0.18 and female = 0.44) as the top collocating pattern for the nominal use of ‘force’ in the singular form.9 For the nominal plural form of ‘right’, the top two L1 collocational patterns for men and women are ‘voting rights’ (male = 0.7 and female = 1.15) and ‘civil rights’ (male = 1.14 and female = 0.92). Thus, we can conclude that in terms of a broad comparison between men and women senators, there is no obvious difference in terms of their lexical usage of items or collocational patterns for the lexemes examined from the NP and SF models. 4.6.2

Democrats vs Republicans

Similarly to the male vs female comparison, both Democrats and Republicans used ‘care’ (Democrats = 10.21 and Republicans = 6.2) and ‘provide’ (Democrats = 14.77 and Republicans = 7.02) most often in terms of NP lexemes, and both political parties used ‘force’ (Democrats = 7.47 and Republicans = 3.97) and ‘right’ (Democrats = 19.14 and Republicans = 9.05) most often in terms of SF lexemes.

72 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

In terms of the collocational patterns, we notice that there is a similarity in frequency patterns between Democrats and Republicans. For the NP lexemes, ‘health care’ is the top collocational pattern for ‘care’ in its nominal form for both political parties (Democrats = 2.06 and Republicans = 0.16). In terms of SF lexemes, we find that both Democrats and Republicans have ‘air force’ (Democrats = 0.08 and Republicans = 0.49), ‘task force’ (Democrats = 0.11 and Republicans = 0.16), ‘police force’ (Democrats = 0.05 and Republicans = 0.08) and ‘military force’ (Democrats = 0.22 and Republicans = 0.05) in the top five collocating patterns for ‘force’ in its nominal singular form. The top three collocational patterns for the nominal plural form of ‘right’ include ‘voting rights’ (Democrats = 1.68 and Republicans = 0.13) and ‘civil rights’ (Democrats = 2.06 and Republicans = 0.08). However, there is an interesting difference in the frequency of usage of the top three patterns for ‘rights’, as Democrats use ‘civil rights’ and ‘voting rights’ much more frequently than their Republican counterparts. For example, if we look at ‘voting rights’ it is mentioned only five times by Republicans, all by the same senator, Senator Graham, in the two exchanges in Examples (5) and (6): (5) When it comes to voting rights, as I understand – and we talked a lot about it, and we probably know more than all of us ever dreamed we would know about the Voting Rights Act – that you were implementing a policy of President Reagan that wanted to pass the Voting Rights Act in its form that you received it. Is that correct? (Graham, 13 Sept. 2005) (6) We talked about the Voting Rights Acts. Proportionality test in the Reagan administration’s view was changing the Voting Rights Act to create its own harm. Is that correct? (Graham, 14 Sept. 2005) In these exchanges, Senator Graham is not indicating support for voting rights; he is merely inquiring about the details of the act itself. Democrats, on the other hand, discuss voting rights extensively (62 times overall), and in doing so, show clear support for the concept of voting rights for all citizens, as Examples (7)–(9) demonstrate: (7) I don’t believe we can permit these provisions to expire and leave the next generation of Americans without full protection of their voting rights. That is why I am very proud to be a

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 73

cosponsor of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Cesar E. Chavez Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendment Act of 2006. (Feinstein, 20 July 2006) (8) Mr. President, I have fought hard to support the voting rights of the disenfranchised voter. (Clinton, 16 Oct. 2002) (9) The memory of Selma still lives on in the spirit of the Voting Rights Act. Since that day, the Voting Rights Act has been a critical tool in ensuring that all Americans not only have the right to vote, but the right to have their vote counted. (Obama, 20 July 2006) In the above examples, all three senators are arguing for support of the right of all American citizens to vote without impediment. This inclusivity is a central tenet of the Democratic Party, and of the NP model, which Lakoff suggests (1996/2002) involves the fair distribution of nurturance, that is, the fair distribution of rights that an individual needs to grow and participate in society. The above account of Democrats and Republicans suggests that there is no significant difference between the two groups regarding which SF and NP lexemes or collocational patterns occur most frequently in the Senate speeches. Moreover, both Democrats and Republicans use NP lexemes more than SF lexemes, suggesting that the NP model might be considered a prevalent way of conceptualising in the US Senate, which suggests that the model proposed by Lakoff (1996/2002) regarding how Democrats and Republicans view the world does not receive straightforward support from a lexical frequency pattern analysis. However, this may be because the supraindividual analysis hides individual patterns of speech, an issue to which we turn below.

4.7 Frequency patterns and collocational patterns of Clinton, Obama and McCain In what follows, a particular contrast is drawn below between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, as they were the two leading contenders for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2008. A contrast is also drawn between Senator Obama and Senator McCain as they ended up being the respective nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties in that same election.10

74 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 4.3 Comparisons of NP versus SF lexemes (raw frequency) as contrasted between Obama, Hillary Clinton and McCain Political party

Total NP lexemes

Obama

151

H. Clinton

354 50

85

McCain

Total SF lexemes

Corpora size

z

p

291

46,606

–1.706

.044

390

74,196

5.128

.001

16,965

–0.237

.406

For the comparison between Obama and Hillary Clinton, we find in Table 4.3 that Obama used more SF lexemes than NP lexemes (z = –1.706, p < .044), but this difference does not reach significance.11 Clinton, on the other hand, used more NP lexemes (z = 5.128, p < .001). Thus, Clinton is following the overall pattern to use more NP than SF lexemes, while Obama does not. Interestingly, they selected the same subgroup of items in both NP and SF categories. They used ‘care’ (Obama = 8.58 and Clinton = 17.93) and ‘provide’ (Obama = 11.16 and Clinton = 16.17) most often in terms of NP lexemes. Unlike the general trend of the choice of SF lexemes as discussed in the previous sections, they both used ‘right’ (Obama = 29.4 and Clinton = 22.64) and ‘decision’ (Obama = 8.15 and Clinton = 6.47) most often in terms of SF lexemes. In contrast to Clinton and similarly to Obama, there was no significant difference for NP and SF usage for McCain (z = –0.237, p < .406). McCain’s collocations patterned differently from those of Obama and Clinton as he used ‘provide’ and ‘understand’ (11.2 and 6.48, respectively) most often in terms of NP lexemes, and ‘force’ and ‘right’ (11.79 and 11.20, respectively) in terms of SF lexemes. In terms of frequency patterns, both Obama and McCain used more SF than NP lexemes, and although this difference was not significant, it was different from the overall pattern found for other senators and for Clinton. Thus, it is important to contrast the findings for individual senators with the groups as a whole in order to see where each senator stands in terms of lexical choice in relation to his or her colleagues.

4.8

Discussion

Several findings emerge from this study, but several caveats remain. First, based on frequency comparisons with BNC usage, Republican male senators show a different pattern from the other three groups (who use both SF and NP lexemes more frequently than is found in the

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 75

BNC). With respect to the lexemes under study, male Republicans do not employ the SF lexemes more often than would be seen in terms of average frequency. This is unexpected, given the hypotheses proposed by Lakoff (1996/2002) that Republicans employ an SF world view. At the same time, it is not surprising that they employ NP lexemes less frequently than the average, as that does fit in with Lakoff’s proposal that the NP conceptual model is not part of the Republican world view. However, the fact remains that they do not use either SF or NP lexemes more than would be expected given their frequency of occurrence in the BNC, which indicates that as a group they are the most conservative in their lexical use. In terms of directly comparing frequency of use of NP and SF lexemes, we find that, across the board, NP terms are used more frequently than SF terms for all groups. This is unexpected in light of the fact that, as mentioned above, Republicans controlled the Senate (and had a Republican in Presidential Office) for the majority of time for the period under study. One might therefore assume that the paradigm that would be invoked most often would involve the Republican world view, even by those who may not hold that world view. However, that is not what we see in these results. In addition, the ‘collision’ we find between gender and the conceptual metaphor models posed for American politics by Lakoff (1996/ 2002) is not the one we expected, as we postulated that perhaps Republican women senators might invoke the SF model, which assumes that men have power over women. Instead, we find that all groups are using lexemes associated with the NP model, a model that assumes shared power and responsibility between the two genders. Thus, the ‘collision’ comes from the fact that male Republican senators are using lexemes associated with the NP model more than with the SF model (but see also the caveats given below with regard to the strength of this finding). This finding can be contrasted with previous findings on lexical frequency patterns found for the four US presidents since 1980 (Ahrens, forthcoming), which demonstrated that Bill Clinton and Reagan, in particular, used expressions that dovetailed with the conceptual model associated with their respective political parties. The presidents were talking to the American people on issues that they selected themselves in the State of the Union addresses and radio addresses (and were not related to specific bills that needed to be passed, as on the Senate floor). This aspect certainly differs from the types of speeches that are given in the Senate. But what is interesting to note is that Hillary Clinton does pattern differently from Obama on the Senate floor, while Obama and McCain pattern similarly, and they became the two presidential

76 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

candidates (for the Democratic and Republican Party respectively) in the 2008 election, with Obama winning the election. It seems from the analysis done above and previously (Ahrens, forthcoming) that more information can be gained from an analysis of lexical frequency patterns at the individual level, as opposed to looking at a particular cultural group.12 However, this study has several limitations which preclude arguing categorically that the NP model pervades and makes up the language of the Senate. First, given the number of examples involved, we were unable to examine if the sense of the word matched the sense that is associated with the particular conceptual model. For example, ‘right’ can also be used in the sense of ‘turn right at the corner’. This sense would not reflect an SF world view, and would lead to a different interpretation of our findings. Although we printed out and looked over all the instances under discussion, and we did not feel that this was a serious area of concern, it is still an area that could be improved on in future research. Second, not all lexemes that we looked at were used to the same extent. ‘Provide’ and ‘care’ were the top two choices for NP lexemes, while ‘force’ and ‘right’ were the top two choices for all groups for SF lexemes. This is to be expected, of course, since the words were not chosen as exemplars of lexemes that would necessarily be used in the Senate speeches, but instead were selected following empirically constrained and replicable steps based on linguistic criteria. However, the fact remains that the results we discussed above rely to a large extent on a narrow set of lexemes within the original list of possible items. In addition, it should also be noted that the discussion on the Senate floor takes place in a rarefied atmosphere with a narrow and predefined audience, which could be one reason why the lexical frequency patterns we see here are so similar across groups. This might also be the reason that the phrase ‘health care’ occurs so often, as it is an issue that has been discussed frequently by the senators during this time period. Thus, the nature of what is discussed in the Senate may be skewing the results toward the NP model, and is an issue that needs to be examined in further studies. Third, we were unable to more than cursorily examine how lexemes were used in a particular context. That is, the frequently used lexemes given above appear in proper noun usage (that is, as in ‘Air Force’ and ‘Civil/Voting Rights’) or in fixed phrases (that is, ‘care’ often appears in the phrase ‘health care’). This is potentially cause for concern, especially if the usage is not in line with the conceptual model it is associated with, as we saw with the discrepancies in frequency of use of ‘civil

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 77

rights’ and ‘voting rights’. It is hoped that future studies will be able to look more closely at the use in context (in addition to overall frequency and collocational patterns) so that a more accurate and detailed analysis can be obtained. To sum up the current findings, it can be concluded that there are no differences in lexical usage with respect to the NP and SF models for male and female senators, as the frequency and collocational patterns are very similar and examination of individual usages shows no particular patterns. Democratic and Republican senators, however, show one interesting frequency of use difference with respect to collocation, as in the case of how ‘rights’ is used in context. In addition, our findings demonstrate that the Lakovian hypothesis that Democrats hold an NP model world view of government and Republicans hold an SF model world view of government does not find support from a lexical frequency pattern analysis of lexemes associated with these two models based on speeches from the Senate floor. The analysis of individual senators, however, seems to be somewhat more promising in that each senator can be contrasted with their overall group, which has the potential to shed light on how a senator aligns with or differs from the patterns found in his or her own party.

4.9

Conclusion

The line of research on lexical frequency patterns taken in this chapter can be viewed as an extension of recent work on political conceptual metaphor use, which focused on identifying metaphorical expressions (Cienki 2005a, Charteris-Black 2004, 2005) within corpora.13 However, as Cienki (2005a) notes, often linguistic metaphorical expressions are too few on which to base a conclusion. The study herein is designed to overcome to some extent this particular difficulty, while retaining the capability to test conceptual models. This chapter proposes that one such way to do so is to identify the source domain involved in the conceptual metaphor, select the appropriate sense from WordNet, and then select the keywords from the selected sense and its hypernyms and search for those lexemes (in all word forms) in the corpora. In addition, the findings in this chapter suggest that it may be more productive to examine these patterns of use at the individual (versus group) level, and that collocational patterns should be investigated, as should (ideally) each example found, in order to ascertain that the keyword has been used in that particular context in a way that agrees with the conceptual model that it is associated with. This latter goal is

78 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

ambitious (and fraught with difficulties about what it means to ‘agree with’ a conceptual model). Nonetheless, it would be beneficial to integrate aspects of corpus- and frequency-based analyses with aspects of textual and discourse analyses in order to have a richer understanding of both language use and meaning.

Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge the support from the National Science Council (grant number: NSC-96-2411-J-002-069-MY3). We would also like to thank Crystal Hsin-Shao Chang, Paul You-Jun Chang, Chung-Ping Cheng, Justine Sheng-Hsiu Chiu, Siaw-Fong Chung, Ren-Feng Duann, Shu-Ping Gong, Katarzyna Proctor, Louis Wei-Lun Lu and Sherry Wu, for their help, comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter. Any errors remain ours.

Appendix 4.1

List of word-forms used

Lexemes associated with the SF model Authority (authorities) Authorization (authorisation) Control (controls, controlled, controlling) Decision (decisions) Determine (determines, determined, determining) Direct (directs, directed, directing) Dominance Force (forces, forced, forcing) Forcefulness Intensity Order (orders, ordered, ordering) Potency Power (powers) Right (rights) Strength (strengths) Lexemes associated with the NP model Aid (aids, aided, aiding) Anguish (anguishes, anguished, anguishing) Attention Care (cares, cared, caring) Empathy

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 79

Feeling (feelings) Nourishment (nourishments) Nurturance Provide (provides, provided, providing) Share (shares, shared, sharing) Sorrow (sorrows) Sympathy (sympathies) Tend (tends, tended, tending) Treatment (treatments) Understand (understands, understood, understanding)

Appendix 4.2 groups

Collocational patterns across different

Force (L1)

Rights

Care

Female Corpus size 314,175

(14) air force (8) military force/ task force (3) use force

(36) voting rights (29) civil rights (18) the rights

(107) health care (23) take care (17) the care

Male Corpus size 439,858

(8) air force (4) a/police force (3) and/full/ the force

(50) civil rights (31) voting rights (22) the rights

(197) health care (15) child care (8) medical/ take care

Democrats Corpus size 368,266

(8) military force (4) a/task/ use force (3) air/and/ the force

(76) civil rights (62) voting rights (35) the rights

(180) health care (21) child care (20) take care

Republicans Corpus size 385,767

(19) air force (6) task force (4) full force

(5) minority/the/ voting rights (3) abortion/civil/ property rights (2) their rights

(124) health care (12) medical care (11) take care

Notes 1 Source domains often are experientially based, that is, we know the concept of strength through our own body’s relative ability to lift heavy objects (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). 2 The US Senate and the US House of Representatives are part of the US Congress. Senators and representatives are chosen directly by a one-person,

80 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

3

4

5

6 7

8 9 10

11

12

one-vote balloting system. There are 100 senators (two per state) who serve staggered six-year terms, so that approximately one-third of the Senate is elected every two years. The House and the Senate equally share in the legislative process, although the US Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to ratify treaties and approve major presidential appointments. Intensiveness was also excluded as it was considered very similar to ‘intensity’ in meaning but much less frequently used, and was not found in our corpus. More information about the British National Corpus can be found at http:// www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/. Unfortunately, no corpus of a similar size (100 million words) can be found for American English, so we used the BNC to determine the frequency of each word form in this general corpus before comparing it to the frequency of the word form in the senatorial corpus gathered for this study. As Professor Cheng Chung-Ping (personal communication, 12 Jan. 2009) notes, if one wants to compare proportions of two kinds of lexemes, say A1, A2, in one’s speech, the proportion of A1 (p1) and the proportion of A2 (p2) cannot be compared directly because frequencies of lexemes differ in corpus. However, this can be dealt with by testing the ratios of frequencies based on the result of Scott and Seber (1983). For example, if the ratio of frequencies of two kinds of lexemes in corpus is a constant, say a, in other words, p1 / p2 = a in corpus, then what is at issue is whether the ratio in one’s speech is higher than the ratio in corpus. So the null hypothesis can be set as p1 = a * p2, or equivalently, p1 – a * p2 = 0. Thus, what is being compared is the difference between p1 and a*p2 rather than the difference between p1 and p2. If the null hypothesis is rejected, and p1 – a * p2 < 0, it means that this person or group says more A2 lexemes than A1 lexemes relative to the corpus. If the null hypothesis is rejected, and p1 – a * p2 > 0, the person or group says more A1 lexemes than A2 lexemes relative to the corpus. The alpha level for significance is set at .05 when comparing groups. It might be that no clear collocation pattern emerged for ‘provide’ either in the L1 window or any other window examined for any group because it can only occur as a verb, while ‘care’ and ‘force’ and ‘right’ all occur in both verbal and nominal forms, and the nominal forms is where we found collocational patterns occurring. All remaining numbers referring to collocational frequencies indicate the number of total tokens per 10,000 words, and are raw frequencies. Figures for the top three collocational patterns of ‘force’, ‘rights’ and ‘care’ can be found in Appendix 4.2. Note that the discussion below is based on speeches given in the Senate, and not on the campaign speeches of these candidates, which would be an interesting area of comparison for future study. As the statistical tests here are exploratory, the issue of inflated Type 1 error should be taken into account. The Bonferroni correction was used when comparing the proportion of SF and NP lexemes used in the individual’s speech. Thus, in Table 4.3, the alpha level is set at .05/3 = .017. See Steen (1994), Gibbs (1999) and Cienki (2005a) for further discussion of this notion of whether metaphorical models should be posited at the ‘supra-individual’ level.

Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee 81 13 Work on lexical frequency patterns in general in political language can also be found in Ahrens (2006), Hart et al. (2005) and Lim (2002, 2008).

References Ahrens, K. 2006. ‘Using a Small Corpus to Test Linguistic Hypotheses: Evaluating “People” in the State of the Union Addresses’. International Journal of Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing, 11(4): 377–92. Ahrens, K. Forthcoming. ‘Examining Conceptual Worldviews through Lexical Frequency Patterns: a Case Study of US Presidential Speeches’, in Hans-Joerg Schmid (ed.) Windows to the Mind. Applications of Cognitive Linguistics Series. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: the Persuasive Power of Metaphor. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, J. 2007. The Communication of Leadership: the Design of Leadership Style. London and New York: Routledge. Chilton, P. and M. Ilyin. 1993. ‘Metaphor in Political Discourse: the Case of the “Common European House”’. Discourse and Society, 4(1): 7–31. Cienki, A. 2004. ‘Bush’s and Gore’s Language and Gestures in the 2000 US Presidential Debates: a Test Case for Two Models of Metaphors’. Journal of Language and Politics, 3(3): 409–40. Cienki, A. 2005a. ‘Metaphor in the “Strict Father” and “Nurturant Parent” Cognitive Models: Theoretical Issues Raised in an Empirical Study’. Cognitive Linguistics, 16(2): 279–312. Cienki, A. 2005b. ‘The Metaphorical Use of Family Terms versus Other Nouns in Political Debates’ in Lagerwerf, Luuk, Wilbert Spooren and Liesbeth Degand (eds) Identifying Information and Tenor in Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 27–39. Gibbs, R. 1999. ‘Taking Metaphor out of our Heads and Putting it into the Cultural World’, in Raymond Gibbs and Gerard Steen (eds) Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 145–66. Hart, R., S. Jarvis, W. Jennings, and D. Smith-Howell. 2005. Political Keywords: Using Language that Uses Us. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kövecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor: a Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. 1996/2002. Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don’t. [2nd edn published as Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think.] Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Lim, E. 2002. ‘Five Trends in Presidential Rhetoric: Analysis of Rhetoric from George Washington to Bill Clinton’. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 328–66. Lim, E. 2008. The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: the Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

82 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Lu, L. and K. Ahrens. 2008. ‘Ideological Influences on BUILDING metaphors in Taiwanese Presidential Speeches’. Discourse and Society, 19(3): 383–408. Scott, A. J. and G. A. Seber. 1983. Difference of Proportions from the Same Survey’. The American Statistician, 37: 319–20. Semino, E. and M. Masci. 1996. ‘Politics is Football: Metaphor in the Discourse of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy’. Discourse & Society, 7(2). Steen, G. 1994. Understanding Metaphor in Literature. New York/London: Longman.

5 Non una donna in politica, ma una donna politica: Women’s Political Language in an Italian Context Gill Philip Bologna University

5.1

Background

Politics in Italy is a complicated business. There is a bewildering number of parties representing every possible hue of the political spectrum. New parties spring up almost yearly – some fielding only one candidate – and coalitions are formed and dissolved with remarkable ease. Stemming from this situation is a widespread interest in the politicians themselves, and the ways in which they negotiate, pontificate and manipulate through language. No Italian political figure is better documented in this respect than Silvio Berlusconi, who has exploited his background in the mass media to the full. His adoption of football metaphors (Semino and Masci 1996) was one of a number of successful rhetorical strategies which, by appealing to the wider populace, won him the first of his three premierships. Similar strategies were adopted the second time, attracting a greater number of in-depth linguistic studies (see, for example, Amadori 2002; see also Bolasco et al. 2006 for a quantitative analysis); however, his third successful election campaign in 2008 was characterised by a remarkable absence of such rhetoric and a shift towards the more sober political style of the elder statesman. While there can be no doubt that Berlusconi’s persuasive language has provided linguists with ample material for study, tracing the rhetoric of one politician alone overshadows the changes in politics and society which have taken place over the past decade and a half. Italy’s importance as a global economic power is now well established, and its politics are therefore of interest and relevance beyond its borders; and while many Italians hold to traditional roles and values, the once clearly delineated gender roles of man as breadwinner and woman as homemaker are 83

84 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

dissolving, at least in the public sphere. Women are postponing childbearing, and birth rates have been at ‘crescita zero’ [zero growth] for over a generation. These demographic signs reflect the increase in career opportunities for women, and their ever-increasing prominence in the country’s economy. The rising prominence of women in the Italian workforce is also reflected in parliament. Numbers of female ‘deputati’ [members of parliament] grow with every election called, and more of them are acceding to positions of power. Although it is still true that women are more likely to be assigned to ministries without portfolio than be entrusted to oversee the ‘hard politics’ of Defence or Home Affairs, the Prodi-led government, which was in power when this study was undertaken, saw women heading the ministries of Health, and International Trade and Commerce – often deemed to be male preserves – in addition to the more archetypically feminine concerns of Citizens’ Rights and Equal Opportunities, Family Policy, and Youth Policy. This increasing presence of women ministers has sparked an interesting sociocultural debate originating from and perpetuated by the mass media: the ‘femininity’ of many of these ministers is often questioned, and allegations regarding their ‘ambiguous’ sexuality are rife. The ambiguities appear to stem not so much from what the ministers say, but from how it is said. The language of women has long been held to display peculiar traits (see Jesperson 1922: 237–54). One of these is that women’s vocabulary is less extensive than men’s, ‘follows the main road of language’ (ibid.: 248) and that it tends to refer ‘to their immediate surroundings, to the finished product, to the ornamental, the individual, and the concrete; while the masculine preference is for the more remote, the constructive, the useful, the general, and the abstract’ (Havelock Ellis 1894, cited in Jesperson 1922: 48–9). This chapter focuses on the metaphorical content of Italian women politicians’ speech1 to investigate if such ‘feminine’ traits can indeed be identified, and if they cannot, whether an absence of such traits may lie at the basis of the media speculation mentioned above.

5.2

Hypothesis

If women in general are believed to use more ‘feminine’ language than men, this might also be revealed in the metaphors they use; and if women ministers are somehow perceived as ‘unfeminine’, this may be because their metaphors are not particularly ‘feminine’. For instance, the tired stereotype of the woman-as-negotiator might be turned on its

Gill Philip 85

head if women ministers appear to engage in ‘conflict talk’ in their discourse, as suggested by WAR metaphors2 (see Section 5.5). In this study, a wide range of metaphor themes3 are identified, and these will be labelled as ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’ or ‘gender neutral’. It should be stressed at this point that the division into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ consciously draws on stereotypical and often outmoded notions of gender roles and merely serves to aid the initial classification of the data (see Fondas 1997: 260–1 for a brief overview of masculine and feminine traits and their role in gender theorising). The ‘feminine’ label is assigned to metaphors which appear to be related to the woman’s traditional role as mother and homemaker, including childbirth and child rearing (Friedman 1987), nurture (feeding, and by extension, food preparation and cooking), care for the elderly, sick and injured, domestic chores including cleaning, and craftwork (Flannery 2001), the house and its material contents. Also included are metaphors related to weakness, subordination and surrender, all character traits which are stereotypically feminine (Fondas 1997). ‘Masculine’ metaphors draw mainly on the historical male roles as hunter and warrior and thus include war. This wideranging domain is broken down into a number of several subdomains in this study including violence and aggression, and (violent) crime, hunting (Flannery 2001: 630), and metaphors relating to work tools and machinery (see Murphy 2001). In addition to these role-related metaphors, character traits including competitiveness, dominance and strength, which also feature within war and sports metaphors, are also labelled as ‘masculine’ (Fondas 1997). Metaphors which cannot credibly be assigned to either gendered group are classed as ‘gender neutral’, though they may not be labelled at all in the course of the analysis (in Section 5.4). Once the metaphors have been identified and discussed for each of the ministers (Section 5.4), comparisons will be drawn between different ministers’ uses of recurring source domains (Section 5.5). Discussion of the data will consider ministerial remit, gender, and sociocultural issues in interpreting the metaphors found.

5.3 5.3.1

Data and methods Data selection and preparation

This study starts from the hypothesis that it is ministerial remit that conditions the use of a politician’s language more than any other single factor. This hypothesis will be tested in an Italian context by examining a corpus of speeches, press interviews and press releases covering the period June 2006 to May 2007 for five Italian women ministers over a single

86 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 5.1

Corpus size (running words) and composition Speeches4

Communiqués

Interviews5

/

Subcorpus*

Total

R. Bindi E. Bonino L. Lanzillotta G. Melandri B. Pollastrini

FamPol Trade&Com RegPol YouthPol&Sport EqualOpps

119,085 110,058 14,273 98,328 45,264

32,067 78,926 5,172 4,664 3,107

13,658 31,132 9,101 30,543 42,157

73,360 – – 63,121 –

387,008

123,936

126,591

136,481

* FamPol = Family Policy; Trade&Com = International Trade and Commerce; RegPol = Regional Policy; YouthPol&Sport = Youth Policy and Sport; EqualOpps = Citizens’ Rights and Equal Opportunities

year. Using the full year’s political activity allows for any seasonal factors to be ironed out, and helps to counteract the potential skewing of the data as a result of short-lived political or sociopolitical issues; limiting the data to a single year ensures the homogeneity of the data set, an essential consideration in an Italian context where governments rarely survive to see out their full term. The text data were downloaded from the ministerial homepages, located via the Italian government homepage (www.governo.it). Full details of the composition of the corpora are provided in Table 5.1. The corpus is made up of all the available speeches and communiqués (press releases) of five female ministers: Rosy Bindi, Giovanna Melandri, Emma Bonino, Linda Lanzillotta and Barbara Pollastrini:6 as Table 5.1 shows, interview data were only available for Bindi and Melandri. The corpus represents a cross-section of political departments of varying levels of prominence – reflected in the size of each minister’s output – and covers a reasonably representative sample of government interests at the time of compilation. Although genre-based analysis was not envisaged, the three distinct text types were stored as separate text files, which made it possible to identify some basic features which were of direct relevance to the identification and interpretation of metaphors, namely that the concise, information-rich communiqués contained negligible occurrences of metaphor, unlike the persuasive language of speeches and presentations where most of the identified metaphors occurred. In interviews, the ministers were often seen to be at the mercy of the interviewers, who seem set on putting words into their mouths (see Section 5.4.1). The raw text was minimally coded to facilitate retrieval with query software, but was not lemmatised or POS-tagged because tools for doing so are not generally

Gill Philip 87

available for Italian. Each document was assigned a ‘speaking header’ to allow full details to be located if necessary.7 5.3.2

Locating metaphors in corpora

While metaphor studies working with general language (see especially Pragglejaz group, 2007) have a very wide-ranging view of metaphor, this study, which works with a series of specific text domains, has adopted a less inclusive stance: within a specialised discourse, some metaphorically motivated words may be more usefully classed as items of terminology and therefore eliminated from the study of metaphor in that discourse. Justification for this approach to metaphor will be explained in this subsection, drawing on existing studies of metaphorical language in economics, one of the domains to be examined in Section 5.4. Previous studies of economics discourse (Henderson 1982, 1999, Mascull 1996) have identified a wide range of metaphors which are used consistently enough in the text domain to be considered recurrent metaphor themes. Some of these themes, however, particularly metaphors of GROWTH and ORIENTATION, such as THE ECONOMY IS A PLANT (Henderson 1982) and PROFITS AND LOSSES ARE UPS AND DOWNS (Partington 1998) respectively, seem more terminological than metaphorical. By terminological, the implication is that (i) there is limited variety in the forms used, typically only one lemma, (ii) the preferred form recurs frequently, and (iii) the preferred form is statistically significant (here, chi-square) within the domain in which it is used. Being terminological, its use is not governed by choice, but by necessity. The keyword list for the 110,000-token Trade&Com corpus (see Appendix 5.1) supports this view not to treat metaphorically motivated terms as metaphors proper. Here the metaphorically motivated terms ‘crescita’ [growth], ‘flussi’ [flows] and ‘sviluppo’ [development], can be found, but no other metaphorical items. Additionally, there are no synonyms for these three words in the corpus (see Philip 2008), and the metaphors do not occur in related semantic areas: only one metaphorical cluster (Cameron and Stelma 2004) in the entire corpus exploits a water metaphor which, however, has no bearing on MONEY IS WATER, which maps onto fresh water (streams and rivers), not the sea (Example 1). (1) Il mondo non è il posto dove rischiamo di naufragare, ma la nostra ancora di salvezza contro i rischi di impaludamento che corriamo se restiamo nei nostri piccoli mercati locali. (Trade&Com_speech/doc046)8

88 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

The world is not the place where we risk being shipwrecked, but our safety anchor against the risks we run of becoming stuck in our small local markets. The fact that no synonyms appear for the metaphorical terminology and, perhaps more importantly, no metaphorical use is registered for domains which are central to the discourse (determined by calculating the keywords, see below), seems to corroborate Hoey’s (2005: 82) claim that the senses of polysemous words tend to avoid each others’ textual environments. It would be very odd indeed if the central subject matter of the specialised corpus – the metaphorical target domain(s) – should simultaneously function as metaphorical source domains in the same data.9 This observation serves as the basis for extracting metaphor source domain candidates semi-automatically from corpus data. Other metaphors identified, however, exploiting source domains such as ROMANCE, WAR and HEALTH (Mascull 1996), are not central to the discourse of economics and do not feature amongst its terminology. These source domains are realised in text by a variety of semantically related forms, none of which occurs frequently or is statistically significant. Their use is a matter of choice, not necessity, so they may reveal aspects of the speaker’s stance which go beyond the subject matter in hand. Most scholars have sought to overcome the problems of locating metaphors in corpus data by analysing a sample of the data then using the findings of this preliminary analysis as the basis of queries carried out on the entire corpus (Partington 2003, Charteris-Black 2004, and Semino and Koller, this volume), an approach which combines traditional discourse-analytic techniques with corpus methodology. Although this approach provides a detailed picture of all metaphorical activity in the texts studied, there are some drawbacks to such a method, including the time taken in carrying out detailed preliminary analysis, and the constant risk of missing metaphors which were not identified during the manual analysis. The analysis carried out in the present study started off from the hypothesis that the ‘aboutness’ of the corpus would correspond to metaphor target domains, never metaphorical source domains, and that the lower frequency and statistically insignificant lexis should be divided into (i) congruent with the ‘aboutness’, and therefore nonmetaphorical and (ii) incongruent with the ‘aboutness’ and therefore potentially metaphorical. Words assigned to the latter category might

Gill Philip 89

form semantic or lexical sets which would then become potential metaphor source domains. WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1998) was used to carry out all of the corpus analysis described in this chapter. First of all a raw frequency list was generated for each of the six subcorpora, plus a ‘master list’ for the six corpora combined. The central content of each subcorpus was determined by using the ‘keywords’ function (see Scott 2001: 115–16), which extracted the ‘outstanding’ words in the subcorpus compared to the reference corpus (see Table 5.2). Using the combined political corpora rather than a general reference corpus as the reference ensured that the terms identified as key were central to each of the ministries, and not to politics in general.10 Once extracted, the keywords were grouped into semantically related categories, which sum up the ‘aboutness’ of the corpus and also represent likely metaphorical target domains. Tables containing these groupings are provided for each of the subcorpora in Section 5.4. In order to locate the potential source domain lexis, the focus of inquiry lies with the low-frequency content words (LFCWs), which were grouped into semantically related categories. ‘Low frequency’ is defined relative to the keyness counts and raw frequency: the cut-off point in the present study is signalled by the lowest-frequency keyword (for example, ‘affitto’ [rent] and ‘credito’ [credit] in YouthPol&Sport, both occurring 29 times). Thus LFCWs are defined as the bottom 15 per cent of tokens Table 5.2

Top 10 keywords in Trade&Com corpus Trade&Com

Keyword

%

Keyness

P-value

COMMERCIO*

328

0.36

375

0.09

287.82

0.0000000000

IMPRESE

388

0.43

539

0.14

268.39

0.0000000000

INTERNAZIONALE

282

0.31

386

0.1

198.86

0.0000000000

COMMERCIALE

210

0.23

230

0.06

192.9

0.0000000000

MERCATI

232

0.26

280

0.07

191.35

0.0000000000

PAESI

331

0.37

525

0.13

188.51

0.0000000000

INTERNAZIONALIZZAZIONE

175

0.19

188

0.05

164.01

0.0000000000

È

Frequency

%

Reference Frequency

1,001

1.11

2,703

0.68

160.18

0.0000000000

PIÙ

463

0.51

1,001

0.25

143.86

0.0000000000

PRODOTTI

159

0.18

181

0.05

124.29

0.0000000000

*Translations are (from top to bottom): commerce, businesses, international, commercial, markets, countries, internationalization, is, more, products.

90 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

(approximately 85 per cent of types, around half of which are hapax legomena, and in any case occur less than seven times). The groupings which were congruent with the target domain categories were merged with them, while incongruent groupings were separated out as ‘potential source domains’. Tables containing these LFCW groupings are provided for each of the subcorpora in Section 5.4. These ‘source domain’ LFCWs were then concordanced, initially to verify that they were indeed metaphorically used, and then to identify consistent mappings which would indicate the presence of metaphor themes. The method outlined above is an approach to metaphor identification which makes provision for the different degrees of metaphoricity present in specialised discourse. By separating terminology from other metaphorically motivated language, this method creates a distinction between metaphors which seem to be imposed by the discourse and those which are more likely to be a matter of free choice. Using these methods, the metaphors used by Italian women ministers are revealed in Sections 5.4 and 5.5.

5.4 5.4.1

Metaphors in the ministries Bindi: family policy

In Italy, the family is very much a political unit as well as a private one; the state is secular, but the Church exerts considerable influence, especially on matters related to relationships, procreation and the family. When this corpus was compiled, the civil partnership legislation (DICO)11 was being debated, and religious authorities reacted vociferously to the implication that homosexuals could ‘marry’. The FamPol keywords reflect this situation: ‘chiesa’ [church] and ‘laicità’ [secularity], ‘democratico’ [democratic] and ‘conciliazione’ [reconciliation] are all present. The other keywords found in Table 5.3(a) are more obviously related to the ministerial remit. Having established the thematic content of the subcorpus, the remaining, incongruous lower-frequency content words were grouped loosely into semantic or lexical sets based on their literal and most salient meanings (summarised in Table 5.3(b)). The categories were refined or conflated as new items were added, and single-item classes (one-off metaphor mappings) are not considered in this analysis. FamPol is the largest of the corpora, so the number of source domains identified is quite wide and varied. As the figures in Table 5.3(b) show,12 the most prevalent by far are the ‘masculine’ areas of WAR and VIOLENCE. These will be discussed in Section 5.5. Other recurrent source domains

Gill Philip 91 Table 5.3(a)

Keyword groupings in FamPol

Semantic field

Types

Examples

Family

9

‘natalità’ [birth rates], ‘maternità’ [maternity], ‘anziani’ [elderly]

Children

6

‘asili nido’ [crèches], ‘minori’ [minors], ‘bambini’ [children]

Welfare

7

‘povertà’ [poverty], ‘solidarietà’ [solidarity], ‘assegni’ [cheques]

Relationships

5

‘coppie’ [couples], ‘matrimonio’ [marriage]

Religion

4

‘chiesa’ [church], ‘laicità’ [secularity], ‘cattolici’ [Catholics]

Politics

4

‘politica’ [politics], ‘partito’ [party], ‘democratico’ [democratic]

Table 5.3(b)

LFCW groupings in FamPol

Semantic field

Types*

Examples

War

108

‘vincere’ [to win], ‘conquista’ [conquest], ‘scontro’ [clash]

Food preparation

48

‘cucinare’ [to cook], ‘pelare’ [to peel], ‘tritare’ [to mince], ‘alimentare’ [to feed]

Domesticity

23

‘tappeto’ [carpet], ‘polvere’ [dust], ‘finestra’ [window]

Body parts

21

‘piede’ [foot], ‘pugno’ [fist], ‘orecchio’ [ear]

Vision

18

‘miopia’ [short-sightedness], ‘sguardo’ [glance]

Health

17

‘ferito’ [wounded], ‘incurabile’ [incurable]

Sea

14

‘ancorati’ [anchoring], ‘approdo’ [berth], ‘sponde’ [shores]

Crime

10

‘delinquenza’ [delinquency], ‘criminale’ [criminal]

Natural disasters

8

‘scossone’ [tremor], ‘valanghe’ [avalanches], ‘terremoti’ [earthquakes]

Tools

8

‘strumenti’ [instruments], ‘perno’ [linchpin], ‘aratro’ [plough]

* Here and elsewhere the number of distinct word forms (types), not the overall number of instances (tokens), is indicated: all types are low frequency (<7 tokens).

92 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

relate to the SEA, NATURAL DISASTERS, FOOD PREPARATION, TOOLS, VISION, HEALTH, BODY PARTS and DOMESTICITY. Of the ‘feminine’ source domains identified, FOOD PREPARATION, in particular the lemma ‘alimentare’ [to feed], refers to conflict (see concordances in Figure 5.1). However, concordancing the other terms belonging to the potential source domain of food fails to pick up metaphorical activity: instead, magazine interviewers often inquire into the minister’s homemaking skills, with the result that many items of lexis which are not central to her remit crop up, in their literal sense, in the corpus data. The exception to this rule is a small group of FOOD PREPARATION terms which suggest the presence of a metaphor theme, RUNNING THE ECONOMY IS COOKING: as investments are ‘congelati’ [frozen] so they do not ‘fermentare’ [ferment]; and profits are ‘tritati’ [minced], that is, churned out. sociale e di sviluppo, senza alimentare il conflitto tra le generazioni. premier e il mondo cattolico, alimentare conflitti, separare Prodi e la più grande: aver governato alimentando la logica delle corte , corre un rischio grave. Di alimentare la reazione laicista che mira a la logica della paura che alimenta il fanatismo e costruire percorsi per trasformare la realtà e, alimentati dai valori in cui si crede, si e ha contemporaneamente alimentato paure e diffidenze nella stabilità, socialità che alimentano e rigenerano il legame sociale e Figure 5.1

Concordances for ‘alimentare’ [feed, fuel] in FamPol

As far as the DOMESTICITY domain is concerned, one clear metaphor theme was identified: THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY IS A FABRIC, which can be torn and darned (see Example 2). However, it should be mentioned that most items assigned to the group were used as part of conventional, idiomatic phrases (all single occurrences) including ‘cucirsi la bocca’ [to zip/button (lit: sew) one’s lips] and ‘mettere la polvere sotto i tappeti’ [brush sth (lit: the dust) under the carpet]. (2) Con creatività e generosità ha colmato i vuoti e ricucito le smagliature che via via si sono aperti nel nostro sistema di welfare. (FamPol_speech/doc57)

Gill Philip 93

it (the family) has creatively and generously filled the gaps and darned the runs that have begun to appear in our welfare system. A further, marginal theme is OPPORTUNITIES ARE (OPEN) DOORS AND (Example 3), which can be traced to the home-as-prison and its doors and windows as means of escape.

WINDOWS

(3) Non rientra dalla finestra dell’Europa quello che è uscito dalla porta dell’Italia. (FamPol_int/doc35) Whatever has gone out of Italy’s door cannot come back in through Europe’s window. The metaphors identified by concordancing the words assigned both to the SEA and the NATURAL DISASTERS groupings are primarily used with reference to differences of opinion, especially between Church and state over the civil partnership legislation. The principal theme identified is DIFFERING OPINIONS ARE DIFFERENT SHORES, emphasising the irreconcilable nature of the differing opinions, which also cause rifts, or ‘spartiacque’ [partings of the waves]. Firmly held views, which are conventionally expressed with the adjective ‘radicati’ [rooted] are here defined as ‘ancorati’ [anchored], thus maintaining the nautical theme. Finally, discussions on civil partnerships cause ‘tempeste’ [(political) storms]. All the VISION lexis in the subcorpus is used metaphorically and is found to relate to the same metaphorical mapping, namely PLANNING IS EYESIGHT. The metaphor target is family policy (matters of safeguarding the family unit), where ill-advised legislation is ‘miope’ [short-sighted], yet when well-planned, ‘lungimirante’ [far-reaching/sighted]. In contrast, the lexis in the BODY PARTS and the HEALTH AND ILLNESS categories, when viewed in context, are actually quite disparate, and fail to coalesce into metaphor themes. When figurative, the lexis is used in conventional metonymies (the arm representing strength, the heart representing emotion or sincerity) rather than metaphors proper. This last observation explains why LFCW groupings are potential source domains, as they remain merely potential until concordancing the individual words confirms their use as metaphorical or not. In FamPol (and elsewhere), several potential source domains proved to be red herrings, with the words being used literally. The interview data in FamPol played a major part in creating literal LFCW groupings, with the ‘feminine’ domains of cooking, food preparation and caring for the sick originating here: interviewers working for women’s magazines would draw the minister into conversations about her private life rather than

94 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

her political life, with the consequence that domestic activities momentarily become the main topic in the data. The final category, TOOLS, covered a range of implements, from the household ‘forbici’ [scissors] to the agricultural ‘aratro’ [plough], and the mechanical ‘cinghia’ [belt]. Yet while all TOOLS were metaphorical, the metaphor targets differed considerably and resisted formation into semantic groupings. This made it impossible to move beyond the individual linguistic metaphors and locate metaphor themes. 5.4.2 Bonino: international trade and commerce, and European policy Emma Bonino is a seasoned politician with experience at national and European levels. Unlike Rosy Bindi and Giovanna Melandri, who also hold high-ranking ministerial positions, she appears not to give magazine and newspaper interviews, or, when given, these texts are not posted on her ministerial home pages. She is not one who allows others to put words into her mouth. The Trade&Com corpus contains a substantial proportion of speeches given to industry leaders and politicians in Italy and elsewhere. These include the economy, business and industry, and global markets, and are shown in Table 5.4(a). As one would expect with persuasive discourse, there is considerable metaphorical content in these speeches, and although the figures in Table 5.4(b) may appear low, there was a much higher type-token ratio

Table 5.4(a)

Keyword groupings in Trade&Com

Semantic field

Types

Examples

Business and industry

17

‘imprese’ [firms], ‘settore’ [sector], ‘industriale’ [industrial]

Global markets

12

‘internazionalizzazione’ [internationalisation], ‘importazioni’ [imports], ‘esportazioni’ [exports]

The economy

11

‘investimenti’ [investments], ‘bilancia’ [balance], ‘economico’ [economic]

Geography

10

‘Cina’ [China], ‘India’ [India], ‘Mediterraneo’ [Mediterranean]

Marketing

5

‘promozione’ [promotion], ‘capacità’ [abilities], competitività [competitiveness]

Gill Philip 95 Table 5.4(b)

LFCW groupings in Trade&Com

Semantic field

Types

Examples

War

55

‘battaglia’ [battle], ‘conquista’ [conquest], ‘sconfiggere’ [to defeat]

Submission and suffering

15

‘sfruttato’ [exploited], ‘servitù’ [servitude], ‘sacrificio’ [sacrifice]

Feelings

13

‘emotivo’ [emotional], ‘sentimenti’ [feelings], ‘sensibilizzato’ [sensitised]

Health

12

‘sano’ [healthy], ‘ferito’ [injured], ‘convalescente’ [convalescent]

Hunting

10

‘preda’ [prey], ‘caccia’ [hunt]

Body parts

10

‘cervelli’ [brains], ‘ombelico’ [belly button], ‘labbra’ [lips]

Death

9

‘soffocamento’ [suffocation], ‘strozzature’ [strangulation], ‘sterminio’ [extermination]

Risk

8

‘rischio’ [risk], ‘sfida’ [challenge], ‘salvaguardare’ [to safeguard]

Birth

7

‘embrionale’ [embryonic], ‘gestazione’ [gestation], ‘nascita’ [birth]

in this corpus than the other four, where types rarely occurred more than once. The most frequently used class is WAR AND VIOLENCE (see Section 5.5); others were HUNTING, SUBMISSION, RISK, HEALTH, BIRTH, DEATH, EMOTION and BODY PARTS, and there were a further 56 ungrouped singlelemma classes.13 Metaphors of LIFE AND DEATH, as well as those of HEALTH, feed into THE ECONOMY IS A LIVING ORGANISM, a conventional metaphor theme in economics and business discourse (Mascull 1996), suggesting the more specific mapping THE ECONOMY IS A (LIVING) PERSON. This metaphor complements the metaphorically motivated terminology related to growth (‘crescita’ [growth] and ‘sviluppo [development], but its variety of lexical realisations keep the metaphor active, whereas the terminological use is dead (Example 4): (4) … hanno fotografato l’Italia economica come un paziente convalescente ma robusto, con una grande voglia di vivere, che è pronta ad adattarsi ad un mondo che cambia rapidamente. (Trade&Com_com/doc035)

96 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

…they have pictured economic Italy as a convalescent patient, though strong, with a great will to live, and ready to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Connected to this metaphor theme is ECONOMIC SUCCESS IS HEALTH: the economy doing acceptably well is ‘sano’ [healthy]; the economy which is slowly improving after a downturn is said to be ‘convalescente’ [convalescent], and factors which limit economic well-being are the causes of illness (Example 5): (5) Piccola dimensione, scarsa capacità di innovazione, bassa produttività, ridotta capacità di esportazione. Queste le malattie di cui soffre il paziente italiano. (Trade&Com_com/ doc017) Small-scale, limited innovative capabilities, low productivity, reduced export capabilities. These are the illnesses which the Italian patient is suffering from. The coverage of the ECONOMIC SUCCESS IS HEALTH mapping is well documented in this corpus, and appears to be a domain-specific metaphor: its overall frequency (43 tokens) is realised by only 15 distinct types (an average of nearly 3 tokens per type; elsewhere in the corpora this ratio is less than half that figure), and the lemma/type average is very high, at 7.1. ‘Salute’ [health] (7 tokens) appears on the cut-off point established for determining LFCWs (Section 5.3.2), making it a borderline case which, in a larger corpus, may well appear in the keyword listings. HEALTH also features terminology such as ‘risanamento’ [lit: bringing back to a healthy state], whose application is limited to contexts of finances and funding, not to the economy as a whole, and the metaphor is revitalised by other words, such as ‘paziente’ [patient], which are not terms and whose metaphorical mappings are less constrained. BIRTH AND DEATH are well-known metaphor themes referring to beginnings and endings respectively. The Italian ‘nascita’ [birth] has a wider range of reference than its English equivalent (Philip 2006), even in the everyday language referring conventionally to the starting up of businesses and the initiation of trade agreements. For this reason, BIRTH IS BEGINNING cannot reasonably be classed as a feminine metaphor, and its use in text does not reveal a ‘female perspective’ (see Friedman 1987). Example 6 illustrates conven-

Gill Philip 97

tional metaphorical uses of ‘nascita’ [birth] and ‘sviluppo’ [development]: (6) ‘Per l’Italia, favorire la nascita di nuove imprese ed il loro sviluppo rappresenta una priorità’ (Trade&Com_speech/doc023) For Italy, promoting the starting up (lit: birth) of new businesses and their development is a priority. As far as ENDING IS DEATH is concerned, it is interesting to note that the death is never a natural one, and is often linked to BREATHING (see Section 5.4.5): the dominant lemma is ‘soffocare’ [to suffocate], inflected forms of which account for five of the nine types assigned to this category, along with ‘strozzature’ [strangulation]. What is interesting to note is that ENDING IS DEATH is viewed from the point of view of the victim, not the killer: the strangulation is performed by abstract entities such as ‘caro energia’ [high energy costs], ‘protezionismo’ [protectionism] and ‘atteggiamenti politici di corto respiro’ [short-lived political behaviour], and the victim is always ‘la nostra economia’ [our (the Italian) economy]. As a result, DEATH is an extension of SUBMISSION AND SUFFERING and hence falls into the ‘feminine’ categories set up in Section 5.2. Of the other potential source domains identified, those of SUBMISSION AND SUFFERING, and FEELINGS remain as the only others through which the minister’s ‘feminine’ side might be revealed:14 yet both groups resist such pigeon-holing. None of the lemmas originally assigned to SUBMISSION AND SUFFERING were used in a way that can be described as gendered: Italy as a nation ‘suffers’ as a result of inefficiency, red tape and lack of infrastructure, but it does not suffer (endure) maltreatment. ‘Sfruttare’ [to exploit] is seen to have a positive semantic prosody (Louw, 1993) in these data. The trade opportunities which are opening up as a result of internationalisation are to be ‘sfruttati’ [made the most of] rather than ‘exploited’, and this shift towards the positive entails a shift in power from subordinate to power holder (and thus from ‘feminine’ to ‘masculine’). In a similar fashion, ‘sopruso’ [exploitation, abuse] is abuse of power, not physical abuse, again removing the element of physical suffering and powerlessness. As far as FEELINGS are concerned, the concordance data revealed a lack of metaphorical activity, with pragmatic functions of language being of greater importance. All tokens (12) of the verb ‘sentire’ [to feel] are in fact used to structure the discourse (for example, ‘mi sento di fare …’ [I wish to …] or in formulaic greetings (‘le mie più sentite

98 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

congratulazioni’ [my most sincere congratulations], not to express emotions as such. The lemma ‘senso’ [sense] too played a textual role, particularly in fixed collocations (‘ai sensi dell’art. …’ [according to the law …] and hedges (‘nel senso che …’ [in the sense that …]. The third principal lemma, ‘sensibile’ [sensitive] (24 tokens), while attracting stable collocational environments, did not appear to adhere to any metaphorical mapping. Although this section has discussed some categories which can be construed as being ‘feminine’, the actual use of each of the terms assigned to the categories, as viewed in the Trade&Com data, fails to support their status as female-oriented. HEALTH metaphors used do not conform to the stereotype of ‘caring for the sick’; SUBMISSION metaphors surprisingly express control rather than victimisation; and both BIRTH and EMOTION are used in conventionalised ways, making any kind of gender attribution meaningless. Bonino is often described as unfeminine, or indeed masculine in her professional behaviour; the gender-neutral language observed in this subsection supports this popular perception. 5.4.3

Lanzillotta: regional affairs

The Department for Regional Affairs and Self-governing Regions is one of the less prominent ministries; the RegPol subcorpus is correspondingly small, though homogeneous in content. Three of the four groupings identified (Table 5.5(a)) are seen to be closely related (bureaucracy, legislation and negotiation). In this small data set, the number of potential source domains identified is also low, including only WAR (Section 5.5), VISION, TOOLS and

Table 5.5(a)

Keyword groupings in RegPol

Semantic field

Types

Examples

Bureaucracy

13

‘istituzionale’ [institutional], ‘federalista’ [federalist], ‘enti’ [official bodies]

Legislation

12

‘normativi’ [legislative], ‘statuto’ [statute], ‘costituzionale’ [constitutional]

Geography

11

‘montagna’ [mountain], ‘territorio’ [territory], ‘Sardegna’ [Sardinia]

Negotiation

5

‘paritetico’ [joint], ‘commissione’ [committee], ‘autonomie’ [autonomy]

Gill Philip 99 Table 5.5(b)

LFCW groupings in RegPol

Semantic field

Types

Examples

Tools

18

‘leva’ [lever], ‘cardine’ [hinge], ‘strumenti’ [instruments]

Vision

12

‘strabismo’ [squint], ‘visione’ [vision], ‘speculare’ [mirror image]

Architecture

9

‘pilastro’ [pillar], ‘cornice’ [cornice], ‘gradino’ [step]

War

5

‘invasive’ [invasive], ‘lotta’ [fight], ‘reagire’ [react]

ARCHITECTURE.

Other linguistic metaphors also appear, but being onetoken classes they are not recorded in Table 5.5(b). In Section 5.4.1, VISION metaphors had legislation as their targets, but VISION and the related ‘quadro’ [picture] metaphor are used in RegPol to define regional identity and the political future of the self-governing regions.15 The ‘quadro’ metaphor, separated from its terminological function (translated as ‘framework’), often ‘paints a picture’ (Example 7). Thus REGIONAL IDENTITY IS A DETAILED DRAWING in which the distinctive characteristics of the regions are expressed visually, not emotively. (7) Il quadro del paese illustrato dal presidente Biggeri conferma le preoccupazioni che il centrosinistra esprimeva da mesi sullo stato dell’economia italiana. (RegPol_com/doc001) The picture of the country illustrated by President Biggeri confirms worries about the state of Italy’s economy which the Centre-Left has been expressing for months. As far as TOOLS are concerned, a subgroup relating to MECHANICAL MOVEMENT (‘manovre’ [manoeuvres], ‘motore’ [motor] represents PROGRESS IS FORWARD MOVEMENT, with ‘inerzia’ [inertia], in its literal sense, representing the opposite, LACK OF PROGRESS IS LACK OF MOVEMENT. Legislation, in particular its progress and implementation, is the metaphor target for all members of the MECHANICAL MOVEMENT subgroup. The ARCHITECTURE grouping turned out to be literal. Only two actual source domains were present in the RegPol subcorpus, neither of which can be construed as being ‘feminine’; on the contrary, TOOLS is an incontestably ‘masculine’ domain (Murphy 2001), as well as being conventionally used of bureaucratic procedures (mechanisms).

100 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

5.4.4

Pollastrini: citizens’ rights and equal opportunities

The EqualOpps subcorpus is also small and homogeneous, with four keyword groupings identified (shown in Table 5.6(a)). Only three potential source domains were identified in this subcorpus: WAR, FAMILY and FEEDING (Table 5.6(b)). On closer inspection, FAMILY was used only literally. The FEEDING metaphors were limited to two synonymous lemmas: ‘alimentare’ and ‘nutrire’ [to feed], and their use mirrors that observed in Section 5.4.1: dissent and conflict of opinion are fed/fuelled. There is a suggestion of a CONFLICT IS FIRE theme (that is, feeding flames), which, however, cannot be confirmed by only two lemmas. It is of interest to note that this subcorpus counts terms relating to fighting amongst the keywords, and WAR in the LFCWs (see Table 5.6(b)), thus revealing the juxtaposition of literal and metaphorical aspects. Linguistically speaking, this is highly unusual, but on close inspection it can be seen that the presence of negatives signals literal meaning (‘antiviolenza’ [anti-violence] and ‘contro’ [against]: rights are conventionally fought for (metaphorically and literally) and one of these rights is a woman’s right not to suffer violence. Absence of negative markers in these data corresponds to the metaphorical senses, while their presence is indicative of literal meanings. Table 5.6(a)

Keyword groupings in EqualOpps

Semantic field

Types

Examples

Rights

8

‘diritti umani’ [human rights], ‘doveri’ [duties], ‘parità’ [equality]

Men and women 5

‘donne’ [women], ‘femminile’ [female (attrib.)], ‘uomini’ [men]

Sexuality

3

‘omosessuali’ [gays], ‘orientamento’ [orientation]

Fighting

3

‘violenza’ [violence], ‘antiviolenza’ [anti-violence], ‘combattere’ [fight]

Table 5.6(b)

LFCW groupings in EqualOpps

Semantic field

Types

Examples

War

18

‘nemico’ [enemy], ‘battaglia’ [battle], ‘colpo’ [blow]

Family

10

‘adozione’ [adoption], ‘orfano’ [orphaned], ‘eredi’ [heirs]

Feeding/fire

6

‘alimentare’ [feed/fuel], ‘nutre’ [nurtures]

Gill Philip 101

5.4.5

Melandri: youth policy and sport

Giovanna Melandri’s ministry deals with the distinct areas of young people and sport,16 as can be seen in Table 5.7(a). Table 5.7(a)

Keyword groupings in YouthPol&Sport

Semantic field

Types

Examples

Sport

14

‘atleti’ [athletes], ‘calcio’ [football], sportivo [sport]

Youth

5

‘giovani’ [young people], ‘ragazzi’ [kids], ‘giovanile’ [youth]

Social matters

5

‘anoressia’ [anorexia], ‘affitti’ [rents], ‘società’ [society]

Politics

5

‘riforma’ [reform], ‘candidatura’ [candidacy]

Table 5.7(b)

LFCW groupings in YouthPol&Sport

Semantic field

Types Examples

Nautical

29

‘ancoraggio’ [anchoring], ‘affondare’ [sink], ‘inondo’ [inundate]

War

24

‘battaglia’ [battle], ‘bomba’ [bomb], ‘conflitto’ [conflict]

Food preparation 20

‘bolla’ [boils], ‘setaccio’ [sieve], ‘fetta’ [slice]

Health and illness 14

‘comatoso’ [comatose], ‘paralisi’ [paralysis], ‘ferita’ [wound]

Domesticity

13

‘polverone’ [dust] ‘spazzare’ [sweep], ‘cornice’ [frame]

Weather

13

‘nuvole’ [clouds], ‘pioggia’ [rain], ‘tuonano’ [thunder]

Tools

12

‘agganciare’ [hook onto], ‘perno’ [linchpin], ‘chiodo’ [nail]

Religion

12

‘demonizzare’ [demonise], ‘rito’ [rite], ‘tempio’ [temple]

Supernatural

11

‘spettro’ [spectre], ‘fantasma’ [ghost], ‘incubo’ [nightmare]

Imprisonment

7

‘gabbia’ [cage], ‘recinto’ [fenced area], ‘trappola’ [trap]

Breathing

6

‘affanno’ [breathlessness], ‘respiro’ [breath], ‘soffio’ [blow]

Hunting

5

‘caccia’ [hunt], ‘ferocia’ [ferocity], ‘lupo’ [wolf]

Fire

4

‘scintilla’ [spark], ‘accendere’ [to light], ‘spengere’ [extinguish]

Gardening

3

‘coltivare’ [cultivate], ‘giardino’ [garden], ‘pianta’ [plant]

102 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

The subcorpus is quite large and composed of interviews in addition to press releases and speeches; as was noted in Section 5.4.1, interview data increase the range of the incongruent LFCWs, with the result that this subcorpus features a very wide range of ‘potential source domains’ (Table 5.7(b)), including WAR, HUNTING and IMPRISONMENT (see Section 5.5), RELIGION and the SUPERNATURAL, THE NAUTICAL, TOOLS, DOMESTICITY and FOOD PREPARATION, GARDENING, HEALTH AND ILLNESS, BREATHING, FIRE and WEATHER. The NAUTICAL metaphor echoes DIFFERING OPINIONS ARE DIFFERENT SHORES (Section 5.4.1), but this time allegiances and beliefs are ‘anchored’ [ancorati] in the sea, with the ‘approdo’ [berth] of each group being fixed in a different location: the implication is that ‘clear blue water’ prevents compromises being reached. A subgroup of the NAUTICAL metaphor includes ‘affondere’ [sink] and ‘sommergere’ [submerge], both of which refer to the quashing of unpopular or unwanted policies and opinions: REPRESSION IS SINKING. Land-related alternatives such as ‘sepoltura’ [burying], which would share the ‘pushing and keeping down’ sense, do not appear in the data. One reason why suppression metaphors are only rendered with ‘watery’ vocabulary may be that earth-bound metaphors with the same target form a GARDENING group, and cultivation is the opposite of quashing. POLICIES – especially controversial ones – ARE PLANTS which require delicate treatment if they are to flourish (Example 8). ‘Radici’ [roots] are historical foundations connected to society and its values. (8) E’ una pianticella preziosa che va coltivata e non calpestata. (YouthPol&Sport_int/doc066) It is a precious little plant which needs to be cultivated, not stamped on. The presence of RELIGIOUS and SUPERNATURAL metaphorical lexis marks this corpus out from the others. Although there were many references to religion in the FamPol corpus (Section 5.4.1), these appeared amongst the keywords or were isolated linguistic metaphors of biblical origin, while YouthPol&Sport contains 27 tokens in these two categories, all of which are used metaphorically. However, only two thematic areas can be identified: one can ‘demonizzare’ [demonise] the undesirable (three tokens), and an undesirable individual can be called ‘Belzebù’ [Beelzebub]; but the negativity expressed by these and other religious terms is general and resists classification into themes. ‘Fantasma’ [ghost], ‘spettro’ [spectre] and ‘incubo’ [nightmare] all refer to unwanted people or things which are ‘resurrected’: TORMENT IS HAUNTING.

Gill Philip 103

A further seven metaphorical areas are present in the data. Of these, and DOMESTICITY are ‘feminine’ ones, TOOLS ‘masculine’ and the remainder gender neutral. The FOOD PREPARATION grouping revealed no sign of consistent metaphorical mappings connecting the linguistic metaphors, while the two most frequent forms in DOMESTICITY (‘cornici’ [picture frame] and ‘specchio’ [mirror] both expressed the mapping EXAMPLARS ARE FRAMED IMAGES, thus loosely corresponding to other VISION-related metaphors (Sections 5.4.1 and 5.4.4). The TOOL category was a disparate one, with no consistent mapping identifiable; and the same was true of HEALTH AND ILLNESS, which contained a mixture of literal and figurative meanings. The remaining three categories represented simple mappings, all conventional: FREEDOM IS BREATHING; HOPE IS A FLAME; and good or bad WEATHER (sunny or stormy) represents positive or disruptive states respectively. Once again, there is no evident sign of either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ preferences in the metaphors discussed in YouthPol&Sport, despite the variety of metaphors and metaphor themes present in the data. However, Melandri’s metaphors are both more varied and more plentiful than those of the other ministers, and this may contribute towards a popular perception of enhanced femininity on her part. By means of summary to end this section, Table 5.8 states which LFCW groupings (potential source domains) were indeed found to be metaphorically used in the five corpora. FOOD PREPARATION

5.5

Women and war metaphors

While none of the ostensibly ‘feminine’ domains was used by all five ministers, the ‘masculine’ domain par excellence, WAR, is. The Table 5.8

Source domains used metaphorically by the ministers

FamPol

Trade&Com

RegPol

EqualOpps

YouthPol&Sport

Body parts Domesticity Fire Food preparation Health Natural disasters Sea Tools Vision War

Birth Breathing Death Health Risk Submission War

Tools Vision War

Family Fire Feeding Nautical War

Breathing Domesticity Food preparation Gardening Health Religion Supernatural Tools War Weather

104 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

prevalence of media coverage of war over the past decade may explain why this metaphor is common to all five data sets, as familiarity with a domain is crucial to its successful use as a metaphor source. This would also explain the presence of some specific source domain vocabulary, such as ‘attentato’ [terrorist attack], which is only metaphorical in these data, but appears only to be literal in a general reference corpus. The WAR source domain has been subdivided into a number of more narrowly defined source domains to facilitate discussion of the data: Table 5.9 lists the subdomains and the ministries in which they are used. This section considers the three most prevalent war metaphors used in the Italian political corpora: INVASION, BATTLES and DEFENCE. As might be expected, the use of these metaphors is related to the interests of the ministries, with the result that more than one metaphor theme can emerge from a source domain. The different metaphors effectively separate the ‘man’s world’ of economics from the ‘women’s world’ of family, young people and minorities. The INVASION source domain can be found in three of the five subcorpora. In two of these – FamPol and YouthPol&Sport – the underlying metaphor is CURIOSITY IS INVASION, with the context of use unfailingly referring to violations of individuals’ right to privacy. Trade&Com’s INVASION metaphor eschews personal matters entirely to focus on the established theme, BUSINESS IS WAR (Mascull 1996). Forms of the lemma ‘invadere’ [invade] is used of China and India (the aggressors), which are attacking Italy (the victim): EXPANSION IS INVASION. However, if it is Italy expanding into new markets, war rhetoric comes to the fore, with an analogous situation being viewed from the aggressor’s standpoint: the term used in these contexts is ‘penetrare’ [penetrate, break into]. Fights, battles and skirmishes in Trade&Com are linked to the trade of goods rather than negotiation and other aspects of business. For Italy to maintain its position in world markets, it is a ‘battaglia’ [battle]; while eliminating or removing counterfeit goods – a threat to the Table 5.9

Summary of war metaphors by subcorpus (number of types)

FamPol

Trade&Com

RegPol

EqualOpps

YouthPol&Sport

Defeat (20) Defence (23) Fighting (38) Imprisonment (22) Terrorism (5)

Battle (10) Defence (18) Hunting (3) Invasion (20) Victory (4)

Battle (2) Defence (2) Invasion (1)

Attack (7) Battle(4) Defence (5) Gun warfare (3)

Battle (10) Gun warfare (4) Hunting (4) Imprisonment (6)

Gill Philip 105

luxury ‘Made in Italy’ brands – is a ‘lotta’ [fight, struggle]. The lexis, while apparently synonymous, is not transferable, and is suggestive of different strategies being adopted: MAINTAINING ECONOMIC SUPREMACY IS A BATTLE; PROTECTIONISM IS A FIGHT. In the remaining three ministries, BATTLES are tied to moral issues. In these subcorpora, the BATTLE and DEFENCE domains are seen to merge, as the fight is viewed from the perspective of the weaker side: fights for the right to work and equality are instigated by those who do not yet possess the right, while fights against undesirables such as crime and discrimination are conducted by the individuals suffering the consequences. OBTAINING RIGHTS IS A BATTLE can be found in FamPol, RegPol, EqualOpps and YouthPol&Sport. The rights being fought for, or attacked by others, include women’s equal treatment at work and in the law, the secularity of the state, the family unit, and the right to a living wage. BUSINESS IS WAR also operates through DEFENCE lexis which is only found in Trade&Com. Here business success and survival are the greatest concern, with the high quality and reputation of ‘Made in Italy’ products having to be defended in the national interest: PROTECTION IS DEFENCE is a companion metaphor to PROTECTIONISM IS A FIGHT. These different uses of the same source domain are closely related to the discourse of the individual ministries. It would be incongruous for sociopolitical rights to be more important than business concerns in Trade&Com, just as economic affairs are peripheral to the other four ministries. The ‘masculine’ metaphor is therefore a reflection of in-group talk, not individual choice.

5.6

Discussion

The metaphor themes discussed in this chapter have been identified through a methodology which has not previously been applied in metaphor studies. It makes no claims of exhaustiveness; metaphorical uses of words are defined phraseologically, so it is inevitable that not all metaphors in the corpora have been located, but this is true also of the other corpus-based approaches discussed in Section 5.3.1. However, the advantage of this methodology is that it allows for the identification of metaphor themes which are almost invisible at a textual level, and can only emerge by concordancing substantial quantities of data, and therefore makes a useful contribution to the semi-automatic identification of metaphors in corpora. By focusing on keywords and ignoring their textual function in the early stages of analysis, hypothetical source domain groupings can

106 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

be identified, and their metaphoricity is subsequently confirmed or refuted by concordancing. While not all low-frequency words are used metaphorically, it has been illuminating to find evidence that metaphorical source and target domains tend to shun one another: with the exception of the overlaps discussed in EqualOpps (Section 5.4.4), target domains (keyword groupings) and source domains (LFCW groupings) occupied distinct semantic fields. That this is seen to happen over discourses, not just texts, is an important extension to existing theories of metaphor use: within specialised domains, the keywords may indeed be metaphor targets, but they cannot be metaphor sources. The identification of metaphor themes requires recurrent lexis, whether consisting of a handful of lemmas used several times, or of a wider range of hapax legomena which can be grouped semantically. In this study, only recurrent metaphors have been considered, irrespective of their status in the language as a whole, as the use of a metaphor theme once or twice in a year’s worth of data cannot be considered as a preference; it is thus impossible to comment on the range of vocabulary used metaphorically, nor on aspects regarding innovative or creative uses which, as Jakobsen asserted (1922: 248), are aspects which are believed to differentiate men’s and women’s language. All of the women ministers make use of some ‘feminine’ vocabulary, but none can be said to use it frequently or consistently in comparison with gender-neutral or ‘masculine’ themes. When ‘feminine’ themes recur, they seem to be closely linked to the ministerial remit, on the one hand, and on interference from outside influences – journalists – on the other. This is most evident in the FamPol data (discussed in Section 5.4.1). The DOMESTIC and FOOD PREPARATION groupings were overwhelmingly found to occur in interview data, not speeches or press releases, as interviewers steered the topic of conversation away from Rosy Bindi’s professional views on the family and probed into her private family life, including her cooking and homemaking skills. While this occurred when the journalists were working for women’s magazines, those writing for Catholic publications were keen that minister professed her faith (again focusing on private life), the implication being that she would not support legislation that might undermine Christian family values. The effect of interviewer ‘interference’ on the political data does not spill over into other text types, however: neither Bindi nor her colleagues draw attention to their private lives through their metaphors in speeches and communiqués. Why then does the belief hold that women speak differently from men? Perhaps the answer is hidden by the data, rather than revealed by it. In order to hold a senior post, a female politician – like her male

Gill Philip 107

counterparts – must have the necessary political gravitas, and this can partly be judged by how successfully she has adapted her language to the norms dictated by the political genre. This same linguistic behaviour seems to mark her language as no longer belonging to that of women’s discourse, which results in her being ‘ostracized as unfeminine by both men and women’ (Lakoff 1975: 61). Throughout the period of the Prodi government, especially while the civil partnership legislation was being debated, all but one of the ministers discussed in this contribution were the subject of rumours that they were lesbian, their language use being held up as ‘evidence’ to support the allegations. Yet what emerges from the data is that, put simply, in order to get ahead in the political arena, women and men are expected to speak the same language: politics. As Emma Bonino’s quote in the title to this contribution makes plain, they are ‘not women in politics, but female politicians’.

Appendix 5.1 Keywords in International Trade and Commerce subcorpus (alphabetical listing). Content words only. AGROALIMENTARE [agroindustrial] AREA [area] AZIENDE [companies] BILANCIA [balance] BIOTECNOLOGIE [biotechnologies] CAPACITÀ [capacity; ability] CINA [China] COMMERCIALE [commercial] COMMERCIALI [commercial (pl.)] COMMERCIO [commerce] COMPETITIVITÀ [competitiveness] COOPERATIVE [cooperatives] CRESCITA [growth] DOHA [Doha] ECONOMIA [economy] ECONOMICA [economic (f.)] ECONOMICO [economic] EMERGENTI [developing] ESPORTAZIONI [exports] ESTERO [foreign; abroad]

108 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

FLUSSI [flows] GERMANIA [Germany] GLOBALE [global] GLOBALIZZAZIONE [globalisation] GOLFO [Gulf] IMPORTAZIONI [imports] IMPRENDITORIALE [entrepreneurial] IMPRESE [businesses] INDIA [India] INDUSTRIA [industry] INDUSTRIALE [industrial] INDUSTRIALI [industrial (pl.)] INTERNAZIONALE [international] INTERNAZIONALI [international (pl.)] INTERNAZIONALIZZAZIONE [internationalisation] INTERSCAMBIO [exchange] INVESTIMENTI [investments] ITALIA [Italy] ITALIANE [Italian (f. pl.)] MEDIE [medium-sized] MEDITERRANEO [Mediterranean] MERCATI [markets] MERCATO [market] MILIARDI [billions] MISSIONE [mission] MONDIALE [world (attrib.)] NEGOZIATO [negotiated] PAESI [countries] PARTNER [partner] PICCOLE [small (f. pl.)] PRESENZA [presence] PRODOTTI [produce/products] PRODUTTIVO [productive] PRODUZIONE [production] PROMOZIONE [promotion] QUALITÀ [quality/-ies] RIPRESA [upturn] RUSSIA [Russia] SALDO [steady] SETTORE [sector] SETTORI [sectors]

Gill Philip 109

SISTEMA [system] SVILUPPO [development] TRADIZIONALI [traditional (pl.)]

Notes 1 The data are not compared with male politicians’ metaphors. In order to do make a valid comparison, male/female from the same ministries would have to be represented; however, data from past Italian government ministries are unavailable. 2 For clarity, source domains, as well as conceptual metaphors/metaphor themes, will be indicated by small capitals in this chapter. 3 The theory-neutral term ‘metaphor theme’ (after Black 1993) is used throughout in preference to ‘conceptual metaphor’ (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980). 4 Speeches take the form of extended notes or scripted talks, not transcripts, as the latter are not publicly available. 5 Interviews are the published (edited) forms: unedited transcripts and audio files are not generally accessible. 6 Rosy Bindi was minister for family policy (Ministro delle Politiche della Famiglia); Giovanna Melandri was minister for youth policy and sport (Ministro per le Politiche Giovanili e le Attività Sportive); Emma Bonino was minister for international trade and commerce (Ministro del Commercio Internazionale); Linda Lanzillotta was minister (without portfolio) for regional affairs and the self-governing regions (Ministro per gli Affari Regionali e Autonomie Locali); and Barbara Pollastrini was minister (without portfolio) for citizens’ rights and equal opportunities (Ministro per i Diritti e le Pari Opportunità). Livia Turco, minister for health, was not included in the study as virtually all of the relevant data was available only as image files of scanned newspaper pages which were impossible to convert into text for inclusion in the corpus. 7 Text types are ‘communiqué’ (or press release), ‘speech’, and ‘interview’. Thus trade&com_com/doc030 is the thirtieth press release from the International Trade and Commerce corpus. 8 For details of the corpora used and the identification codes, see Section 5.3.1. 9 This is true of data drawn from a specialised domain, where the content or ‘aboutness’ can be clearly defined; data whose specialised nature are determined, for example, by genre may not display the same degree of homogeneity, making it more difficult to separate target domains from the rest of the text. 10 Different keywords would emerge with different ‘master lists’, but in determining keyness it is important to compare like with like if detailed and reliable results are to be obtained. As the WordSmith Tools help file suggests, ‘compare apples with pears, or, better still, Coxes with Granny Smiths … and avoid comparing apples with phone boxes!’ Comparing specialised data to a general corpus is also revealing, but would have highlighted words which are key to political language in general, or to the period of data collection, obscuring those which are relevant to this study. 11 ‘DIchiarazione di COnvivenza’ [cohabitation declaration].

110 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors 12 The number of tokens per distinct type is rarely more than one; unless otherwise stated, types have not been lemmatised. 13 Single-lemma classes in an inflected language can potentially contain more tokens than other, multi-lemma classes, but in the absence of alternative lexical renderings it is impossible to distinguish between collocational preference and metaphorical mapping. 14 The BODY PARTS lexis turned out to be used literally in two texts on womens’ rights in the developing world; HUNTING and RISK were defined as ‘masculine’ metaphors (Section 5.2) and this categorisation is supported by the data. 15 The self-governing regions [‘regioni autonome’] are the islands (Sicily and Sardinia), and the regions in the north which border with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. All are considered culturally distinct, both from one another and from the rest of Italy; the border regions are officially bilingual. 16 In Italy, ‘young people’ is not limited to ‘minors’, that is, under-18s, but to the under-30s; sport is prominent in the keyword listings as the period the data cover coincides with Italy’s 2006 World Cup victory, and ensuing media attention involving the minister.

References Amadori, A. 2002. Mi consenta. Metafore, messaggi e simboli. Come Silvio Berlusconi ha conquistato il consenso degli italiani. Bologna: Scheiwiller. Black, M. 1993. ‘More about Metaphor’, in A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19–41. Bolasco, S., L. Giuliano and N. Galli de’ Paratesi. 2006. Parole in libertà: Un’analisi statistica e linguistica. Rome: ManifestoLibri. Cameron, L. and J. Stelma. 2004. ‘Metaphor Clusters in Discourse’. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1 (2): 107–36. Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Havelock Ellis, H. 1894. Man and Woman: a Study of Secondary and Tertiary Sexual Characteristics. London: Walter Scott. Flannery, M.C. 2001. ‘Quilting: a Feminist Metaphor for Scientific Inquiry’. Qualitative Inquiry, 7: 628–45. Fondas, N. 1997. ‘Feminization Unveiled: Management Qualities in Contemporary Writings’. The Academy of Management Review, 22 (1): 257–82. Friedman, S. S. 1987. ‘Creativity and the Childbirth Metaphor: Gender Difference in Literary Discourse’. Feminist Studies, 13 (1): 49–82. Henderson, W. 1982. ‘Metaphor in Economics’. Economics, 18 (4): 147–57. Henderson, W. 1999. ‘Metaphor, Economics and ESP: Some Comments’. English for Specific Purposes, 19: 167–73. Hoey, M. 2005. Lexical Priming. London and New York: Routledge. Jesperson, O. 1922. Language. Its Nature Development and Origin. London: George Allen & Unwin. Lakoff, R. 1975. Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper & Row. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gill Philip 111 Louw, W. E. 1993. ‘Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer?: the Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies’, in M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds) Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 157–76. Mascull, B. 1996. Collins COBUILD Keywords in Business. London: HarperCollins. Murphy, P.F. 2001. Studs, Tools, and the Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Partington, A. 1998. Patterns and Meanings. Using Corpora for English Language Research and Teaching. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Partington, A. 2003. The Linguistics of Political Argument: the Spin-Doctor and the Wolf-Pack at the White House. London and New York: Routledge. Philip, G. 2006. ‘“Drugs, Traffic, and Many Other Dirty Interests”: Metaphor and the Language Learner’. The 6th Researching and Applying Metaphor Conference, Leeds, UK, April. Preprint available http://amsacta.cib.unibo.it/archive/ 00002125/ Philip, G. 2008. ‘Metaphorical Keyness in Specialised Corpora’. Keyness in Text, Certosa di Pontignano, Sienna, Italy. June 2007. http://amsacta.cib.unibo.it/ archive/00002427/ Pragglejaz group. 2007. ‘MIP: A Practical and Flexible Method for Identifying Metaphorically Used Words in Discourse’. Metaphor and Symbol, 22 (1): 1–39. Rayson, P. 2005. Wmatrix: a Web-based Corpus Processing Environment. Computing Department, Lancaster University. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/ucrel/wmatrix Scott, M. 1998. WordSmith Tools. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scott, M. 2001. ‘Mapping Keywords to Problem and Solution’, in M. Scott and G. Thompson (eds) Patterns of Text: In Honour of Michael Hoey. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 109–27. Semino, E. and M. Masci. 1996. ‘Politics is Football: Metaphor in the Discourse of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy.’ Discourse and Society, 7 (2): 243–69.

6 The Metaphorical Construction of Ireland Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio University of Granada

6.1

Introduction

This chapter is part of a project on the linguistic behaviour of Irish female politicians in the last two centuries. Researchers have argued for the existence of a distinctive female style as compared with a male style (for example Coates 1988, Holmes 1995) and have categorised the differences claimed to distinguish one from the other. The evolution from the ‘deficit’, ‘dominance’ and ‘difference’ approaches to the ‘discursive construction of gendered identities’ (Sunderland 2004, Litosseliti 2006) took more than three decades. A patently biased chapter by Jespersen (1922) pointed to some features addressed since then. Robin Lakoff (1975) suggested that the most significant characteristics of feminine language included hypercorrection, lexical constraints, less complex structures, limited topic selection, no interruption, no turn-taking control, preference for polite interaction, and a tendency towards conversation accommodation. These features indicate how people establish their relationship with interlocutors and the way they construct their (public) persona. One instrumental element in understanding this idea involves figurative language, particularly metaphor. Conceptual metaphors show how we comprehend, conceptualise and evaluate the world (Lakoff and Turner 1989, O’Halloran 2007). They interpret ‘a fragment of the society’s history [and bear] implications for the construction of the society’s future’ (Zinken 2003: 517). As Cameron (2007: 200) remarks, conceptual metaphors are ‘evidence of thinking and perspective’. In this chapter, I examine the conceptual metaphors structuring the discourse of Irish male and female political leaders; that is, expressions ‘whose [uses are] conventional, unconscious [and] typically unnoticed’ (Lakoff and Turner 1989: 80), with special attention to how these 112

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 113

expressions form the idea of Ireland. I do so by first examining the historical conceptualisations of the country, and then by contrasting these to differing modern conceptions as viewed through the metaphors of Mary McAleese (Ireland’s president from 11 November 1997 onwards) and Bertie Ahern (Irish prime minister from 26 June 1997 to 7 May 2008). Taking into account the conflicts this territory has experienced, including the struggle to become a state, I examine how notions like ‘Irishness’ and ‘nationhood’ are metaphorically represented. My interest is to see which patterns are typical in McAleese’s and Ahern’s speeches, the frames they invoke, the meanings they encapsulate and, subsequently, their differences. This may suggest whether, in a political context, there exists ‘women’s language’ as distinct from ‘men’s language’.

6.2

Diachronic conceptualisation of Ireland

In a 1909 speech, Constance Markiewicz commented on the role women played in changing Ireland. Their main goals were to fight for Irish independence and to gain female emancipation through a pro-suffrage constitution. From her statements, we can draw conclusions about her understanding of the metaphor COUNTRY AS A WOMAN IN NEED OF LIBERTY. The identification between the women she spoke to and the country they lived in was no coincidence. She claimed the two were enslaved. The new, free condition of the latter had much to do with Irish females getting rid of what prevented them from acquiring social and political visibility: (1) … a strong tide of liberty seems to be coming … carrying … all the outposts that hold women enslaved […]. Fix your mind on the ideal of Ireland free, … and no one will be able to side-track you […] arm your minds with the … memories of your country and her martyrs …1 By that point in history, Irish women were on the move. They would not be deviated from their road to freedom. A metaphorised liberty, portrayed as a flowing stream that was increasingly harder to control, became an agent of force driving them to action, removing the obstacles and symbols of their disempowerment, in this case represented by buildings typical of those found in a military camp. It is significant that Markiewicz employs the possessive ‘her’ when referring to Ireland. The country is portrayed as an animate entity,

114 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

human and female, one without the right to choose but, instead, at the mercy of a master. In her name and for her life, many sacrificed their own. Ireland, today referred to as the ‘Celtic Tiger’, was symbolised earlier by Cathleen Ni Houlihan, a mythical figure and emblem of Irish nationalism. She stands for a mysterious old woman who fears that there are strangers occupying her home. The strangers represent the English rule. Ni Houlihan wants to remove them and recover what she was robbed of. That is why she calls on her children to defend her four fields, at the advent of the 1798 French invasion in support of the oppressed Irish. This symbol returns in 1902, when W.B. Yeats wrote the homonymous play, a national(ist) exaltation for his beloved Maud Gonne in which her character proclaims blood sacrifice to liberate the nation. Miraculously, when followed by Irish lads, she is transformed into ‘a young girl … with the walk of a queen’ (Yeats 1989: 88). Gonne, who performed the role very successfully to the delight of both mesmerised playwright and audience, became as influential as Markiewicz in regard to Irish nationalism and feminism. On 25 October 1897, The New York Times reported that, when Gonne addressed the Irish National Alliance at the Grand Opera House, she depicted England as a critic, a robber and an enemy.2 This portrayal may have activated entailments such as: ‘Ireland, an object of criticism’; ‘Ireland, the victim, abused and in her oppressor’s hands’; and ‘Ireland, the passive antagonist of John Bull (a national personification of England)’. Through Gonne’s statements, the COUNTRY IS A WOMAN metaphor was invoked: either as the young woeful virgin (Dark Rosaleen) or Sean Bhean Vhocht (the Poor Old Woman). This reminds us of how the Irish constructed their perception of the nation. Women have been used repeatedly to represent Ireland. The cherished features of these icons were femaleness, motherhood, purity, beauty and submissiveness. The early writings of Éamon de Valera, the author of the Irish Constitution, show some depictions of Ireland in this vein, once again including the dramatic ingredient of slavery. For centuries, the master-England restricted the freedom of the motherIreland, which, under the threat of being hit with its whip, became its prisoner. De Valera, by then national leader, pleaded with his compatriots to participate in taking off the manacles depriving the nation of happiness: (2) Sons … of the Gael … it is … your highest duty … to help to break the chains that bind our sweet, sad mother.3 (3) … Ireland, ‘held in forced bondage by powerful imperial neighbours’.4

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 115

(4) … Ireland’s independence should be abandoned under the lash of an alien government.5 In one speech delivered before the Irish National Literary Society on 25 November 1892, Douglas Hyde, the Republic’s first president, offered another picture of Ireland.6 His critique was directed against Ireland’s propensity to imitate English traditions instead of promoting the original Irish ones. Hyde worried that his race was ‘diverging … from the right path’, that the Irish tongue was ‘a corpse on the dissecting table’, that ‘West-Britonism … [would] overwhelm us like a flood’, and that ‘the Gaelic people … remain[ed] tied to the apron-strings of another race’. This image is pessimistic. By looking in the British National Corpus (http:// www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/) at the collocates of the outstanding lexical items in the examples above (that is, ‘corpse’, ‘flood’, ‘diverging’, ‘tied to the apron-strings’), the obvious is confirmed: the implied meanings are death, loss, damage, chaos, wrong, helplessness and victimisation. ‘Excess of a negative force’ is a metaphorical expression that is commonly associated with weather conditions (Charteris-Black 2004: 211). Here the Irish are portrayed as being a dry area of land covered suddenly by the destructive power not of water but of the malpractice of aping English habits. The Irish are also like adult sons or daughters still controlled by a parent; they remain immature and dependent and, seemingly, lack in self-esteem because of their alleged inability to handle situations. Their stepmother (England) does not give them freedom; they are neither ready to make decisions nor dare to. Moreover, the attribute central to the condition of Irishness, their tongue, is dead, which is their fault. In these circumstances, Hyde understands that it is an obligation to ‘cultivate what they have rejected, and build up an Irish nation on Irish lines’. This idea is one contemporary Irish politics resorts to the most: the nation is a building, and those who inhabit it must build it. The constructors become farmers who prepare a metaphoric land where, with care and effort, the crops and plants of their customs should grow. De Valera’s political views were moulded by his Catholic faith and traditional values. On 17 March 1943, this father of seven depicted Ireland by means of a metaphor that is related to Hyde’s building metaphor – THE NATION IS A HOME: (5) … Ireland … would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as …7 The Irish nation his government was alleged to stand for resembled a pleasant place where one lived in contentment on a permanent basis

116 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

because of the ties of affection and loyalty. His ideal Ireland was a physical, mental and spiritual space where everybody was safe living in the same household and looked after by a surrogate family, de Valera being the head. In this framework, THE NATION AS A FAMILY metaphor (Lakoff 1996) is potentially recoverable. The feeling of emotional attachment plus the sense of dependability from, reliability on, and respect for, the parents are likely entailments of this representation of Ireland. These children (the Irish) are under the authority of their father (de Valera), who will direct, support and protect them. In response to his devotion, he expects their selfless commitment to the familynation. In the same speech, the unity of the national territory and the revitalisation of the Irish language were also at stake, and de Valera asked his country to act accordingly: (6) A vessel for three thousand years …, the language is for us precious […]. To part with it would be … to lose the key to our past, to cut away the roots from the tree … In this extract, de Valera employs several metaphors: THE LANGUAGE IS A and THE LANGUAGE IS A VEHICLE (BOAT). The boat–language correlation illustrates the essentials of a seafaring nation. For the Irish, this method of transport was indispensable for moving goods and people between the islands. Vessels also encourage the growth of enterprises and the wealth of countries by facilitating the exchange of raw materials, products, workers and experiences. From de Valera’s perspective, Gaelic was a boat that could not weigh anchor without the Irish people on board, a boat that would take them to their final destination: full nationhood. This is not the only time that Ireland’s history has been viewed in terms of a journey. This same image is repeated again and again. As for the other metaphors, I am especially interested in THE LANGUAGE IS THE ROOTS OF A TREE, one of the favourite mappings of present-day politicians when referring to Ireland, the state, society and so on. As shown later, these entities are depicted mostly as a living organism, mainly a plant. Roots get water and nutrients from the soil, enabling plants to grow. They also help plants to stand firm against wind and water currents. Likewise, roots facilitate vegetation to endure dry weather and cold climates. By invoking some basic knowledge of biology, one can infer the importance of the role of any language for the development and continued existence of the tree-country/nation. KEY TO A DOOR, THE LANGUAGE IS THE ROOTS OF A TREE

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 117

Before the 1990s, Ireland stood for some of the values entailed by these metaphors (that is, IRELAND IS A WOMAN, IRELAND IS A CHILD, IRELAND IS A FAMILY, IRELAND IS A FLOODED AREA and IRELAND IS A BUILDING). Ulterior changes after that time, however, required new conceptual configurations.

6.3

Synchronic data

The president of Ireland’s official website (http://www.president.ie/) has archived the speeches of Mary McAleese since she succeeded Mary Robinson as the elected head of state in 1997. We can find the speeches of Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister in office from 1997 to 2008, at the Department of the Taoiseach’s website (http://www.taoiseach. gov.ie/). In my research, more than 1000 speeches and official addresses have been analysed (see Table 6.1). This constitutes a non-lemmatised corpus of around 1.5 million tokens, consisting of two thematically comparable subcorpora of balanced size as far as representativeness is concerned. Data were processed using the concordance kit WordSmith Tools 3.0 (Scott 1999). The web-based environment Wmatrix and its wordsense tagger (Rayson 2007) have allowed me to process the key semantic fields in the corpus. This was a convenient step towards a comprehensive study of the potential conceptual metaphors in discourse. Table 6.1

Corpus metadata

Politician

Tokens

Date range

Speeches

Ahern McAleese Total

1,063,345 442,877 1,506,222

19 July 1997–26 July 2007 11 November 1997–12 July 2007

834 356 1,190

6.4

Theoretical background

Conceptual metaphor theory has evolved since Lakoff and Johnson (1980) (Reddy’s and Schön’s 1979 articles being its precursors). Its development (for example Lakoff 1987, Gibbs 1992, Kövecses 2002) has not always provided grounds for agreement (McGlone 2007). In this chapter, I rely on the original principles, although some limitations must be noted, including the identification and interpretation of metaphoric utterances as different from literal ones; see, for example, the notions of delexicalisation and semantic prosody in Louw (2000), and contextual abnormality and conceptual contrast in Romero and Soria (2005).

118 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

The goal of this chapter is to describe how the politicians in question use metaphors and verify whether their gender is an influential factor in the way concepts are embodied in the corpus. I have no prejudice regarding the relationship between language and gender. Previously, I observed (Hidalgo Tenorio 2002) that some views on the topic were inapplicable to my data. Other variables, such as period, age, status, religious background and ideology, should play a role as well. One can assume that the images depicted by them are dissimilar, although it is necessary to test this in the data. I hypothesise that, if throughout the corpus there is consistency in the exploitation of the same imagery, I will be in a position to name some of the values inherent to these people in power. The most often repeated conceptual metaphors found are the following: NATION AS A PERSON, NATION AS A BUILDING and NATION AS A PLANT. I will track the extent to which Ahern and McAleese are alike in using these metaphors and suggest how they construct gender discursively (and if stereotypes might still work in this field).

6.5

Method

Initially, it was difficult to decide on which procedure to follow, because I wanted to study all the metaphors in the corpus. Other researchers had listed the typical metaphors in the public arena (for example Chilton and Ilyin 1993, Lakoff 1996, Semino and Masci 1996, Mio 1997, Musolff 2004, Charteris-Black 2005). This method became a starting point for data collection to work with, such as: personification, depersonification and reification; the contrast between health and disease, life and death, and light and darkness; the body politic metaphor system; and war, family, sports, journey, finance, machine, natural catastrophe, master–servant, crime and punishment, and creation and construction metaphors. Investigations grow thanks to what one expects to find in texts and to what texts offer to readers. Nowadays, we know more about linguistic phenomena that cannot be explained by trusting intuition alone. Besides, human beings are incapable of manually analysing large collections of data in a limited time frame. Therefore, it is essential to rely on corpus-based studies (for example Charteris-Black 2004, Musolff 2004, Deignan 2005, Stefanowitsch 2006). This approach makes research exhaustive, and findings more pertinent and consistent. Replicability is crucial. As Peters and Wilks (2003: 172) state, this allows for the extension of researchers’ scope ‘beyond introspection and ad hoc construction of relevant examples’.

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 119

I first focused on linguistic metaphors present in McAleese’s and Ahern’s speeches in order to categorise the conceptual metaphors standing out in each politician’s discursive construction of Ireland. Cameron (1999: 130) specified conceptual metaphors’ description conditions as: domain incongruity, novelty or conventionality of topic–vehicle combination, attitudinal impact, explication, familiarity, cognitive demand, explicitness of metaphorical intention, connotative power, and systematicity. Steen (1999) also developed a method to identify propositions behind linguistic metaphorical expressions. Later, Language and Literature devoted one of its issues to this question and presented the conclusions of PALASIGMET, a team that elaborated on identifying propositions behind linguistic metaphorical expressions and worked on metaphor annotation in electronic corpora (see Crisp et al. 2002, Heywood et al. 2002). Eventually, I became convinced by Charteris-Black’s critical metaphor analysis and Stefanowitsch’s metaphorical pattern analysis. One of the reasons I find the former interesting is that this ‘is a method for understanding how political myths communicate ideology’ (CharterisBlack 2005: 24). Another is the author’s ability to analyse in detail the discourse practice of outstanding twentieth-century politicians. In addition, I find the latter interesting because of its straightforwardness and effectiveness. Furthermore, they each combine qualitative and quantitative methods cleverly. To begin, I first checked the five key domains in each subcorpus by using Wmatrix (http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/) (see Table 6.2). The only similar concept in both was ‘government’. My original goal was to track these leaders’ depictions of Ireland. I knew that I would find relevant data, since they alluded to the situation of the country, the government and so on in most of their public appearances. The differences between their concerns and styles were marked. McAleese’s speeches focused on closeness and personal attachment and for giving a positive

Table 6.2

Ahern’s and McAleese’s five key lexical domains Ahern

18,877 11,542 11,441 10,855 8,389

Location and direction Government Wanted Helping Important

McAleese 3,665 3,312 2,967 1,305 721

People Government Evaluation: good Alive Polite

120 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

assessment of states of affairs and participants, thereby placing great stress on the role of Irish citizens and the nation in her agenda. During his term of office, Ahern’s pragmatism and right-to-the-point attitude shaped and coloured speeches mainly produced to make public his strategies for achieving goals benefiting the institution of the Irish state. In addition, a list of keywords was generated using WordSmith Tools. Apart from an interesting number of Gaelic expressions used to reinforce her interest in community roots, content words such as ‘hope’, ‘lives’, ‘women’, ‘journey’, ‘human’, ‘culture’, ‘love’, ‘friends’, ‘family’, ‘hearts’, ‘home’, ‘Ireland’, ‘blossom’, ‘homeland’ and ‘warm’ occur more often in the McAleese corpus. The superficial profile of the female leader was already significantly distinguishable from the prime minister’s. Deeper analysis would confirm this. Next, I searched for the occurrences of the lexical items in the corpus that referred to the target domain of my interest (that is, Ireland, state, nation, country, republic, home, homeland, land, island, citizen, Irish people, emigrant, emigration, community, society and Europe) and extracted 1000 instances of each. See below an example of the concordance lines in which the search word was ‘Ireland’: N 60 61 62 63

Concordance vitally important link in settlement in Northern research community in very successful visit to

Ireland’s Ireland Ireland Ireland

road network to . Considerable pr . We are also co . An area in which

Then, I identified metaphorical expressions of which the search word is part; for example, in ‘to a ripened and mature Ireland, an island flying on two strong wings’, I recognised two conceptual metaphors: IRELAND IS A PLANT and AN ISLAND IS A BIRD. Concordance lines often provided enough information concerning the metaphorical nature of an utterance. If the context was insufficient to understand the meaning of the word string, I expanded the five-word window, the maximum being nine to the left. Later, I classified these into different groups according to the source domains (for example person, building, journey and so on). Following Stefanowitsch (2006), I expected to obtain a catalogue of all the metaphorical mappings underlying the construction of Ireland (see Table 6.3). The core feature of my examples is that the source and target domains coexist in the verbal instantiation of the metaphors; in ‘we are now a nation of newly opened doors’, the words ‘nation’ and

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 121 Table 6.3

Target domains and metaphorical expressions Ahern

Occurrences 5,317 1,422 1,296 1,261 1,027 722 624 428 300 194 120 105 83 16 2

McAleese Metaphorical expressions 109 69 99 86 169 42 48 17 5 55 8 5 8 2 0

Target domain Ireland Community Country Europe Society State Island Home Irish people Nation Land Citizen Republic Emigrants Homeland

Total 12,917 722 (1 metaphor every 1,473 words)

Occurrences

Metaphorical expressions

3,090 640 535 589 451 191 346 401 100 154 68 49 82 77 62

139 51 113 73 97 13 62 21 4 66 7 3 8 9 7

Total 6,835 (1 metaphor every 658 words)

673

‘doors’ co-occur in the same sentence but are not congruent. Therefore, I realised that I would use only a subset of all the possible types in my corpus. Lastly, I described and interpreted the slots, relations and properties in the source domain that were mapped onto the target domain and tried to explain to what extent there existed some differences in each politician’s usage of conceptual metaphors.

6.6 6.6.1

Analysis and discussion From

WOMAN

to

TIGER

One article in The Economist, dated 24 May 2001, lists the main factors of change in 1990s Ireland. EU membership, low corporate taxation, restraint in state spending, education improvement, the weakness of Europe’s currency, and the ICT sector expansion have influenced two decades of continuous buoyancy. The first sentence of the text states, ‘The Celtic tiger continues to roar, albeit at a more sustainable pitch.’8

122 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

After centuries of subordination, poverty and mass migration, which caused (political) unrest, Ireland’s new condition brought about a change in icons. The miracle of the country moving from being one of the poorest in Europe to the most rapidly growing economy could hardly go unnoticed. It was necessary to have a metaphor that referred to the phenomenon and the country itself. A UK economist saw the Republic as a tiger for the first time around 1994.9 Behind this term, Kevin Gardiner made obvious the similarities between Ireland and some Asian economies (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea).10 A mammal predator, the tiger is well known for its speed; the idiosyncratic feature of this new mapping of Éire embodied this attribute, which was applied to the country’s fast pace of economic development. From 1997 to 2007, Ahern and McAleese used the phrase ‘Celtic Tiger’ in their various official addresses. Despite its being a popular collocation,11 the number of times ‘(Celtic) Tiger’ occurs in the corpus is not spectacular. Furthermore, its metaphorical readings are even less common (2 out of 30, plus one problematic example, for Ahern; 2 out of 23, for McAleese). In ten years, it became natural to describe this phenomenon of Ireland’s rapidly growing economy as a Celtic Tiger, which transformed the originally creative metaphor into a dormant one. As some bloggers have commented, the Irish media have used cartoons of green-striped tigers as a symbol of this change.12 However, it seems that in the genre of political speeches, collocutors are so familiar with them that the image of this animal as representing the country’s biggest economic success does not seem to be triggered. In this case, the above-mentioned figures may not be significant. Nevertheless, the fact that this animal has become another emblem of present-day Ireland is enough reason to site examples of the Celtic Tiger before analysing the depiction of Ireland through the conventional metaphors these politicians systematically exploited. To begin with, McAleese does not like the Celtic Tiger label. Instead of focusing on the animal’s best quality, she focuses on those that, although as distinctive as its speed, are less positive. She cannot associate the notions ‘predator’ and ‘obligate carnivore’ with the Irish. The tiger is a nocturnal, solitary animal that first kills then devours its victim. She cannot conceive of her country, or the people of her country, fitting in this category. McAleese’s views of the Irish encapsulate a culture ‘working with those whose boats don’t always rise with the tide unless someone gives them a push’. Thus, in her usage of the

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 123

metaphor, she never refers to Ireland as the (Celtic) Tiger but instead to Ireland’s economic evolution: (7) For those who seem to have missed the boat named the Celtic Tiger, modern Ireland can be a very scary place, where all you can see in front of you are the far-off backs of those who are making rapid headway in this new time … (8) They are the unsung heroes who … work with … other groups who … are weaker than those the Tiger favours. They … remind us that the Tigress fiercely protects her vulnerable offspring, ensuring each is nurtured … until able to stand alone … The contextual information reinforces the impression that she is not in agreement with these changes because of the consequences affecting the disempowered. Ireland nourishes economic opportunity; this is metaphorically represented as a boat; its name is The Celtic Tiger. Curiously, here speed is not a property of the vehicle but of the people who did not miss it; they run a race filled with more obstacles for those who do not belong to the privileged segment of society. An interesting issue is the distinction she makes between the tiger and the tigress. From her perspective, the former does not take care of the weakest, whereas the latter does. Therefore, by tradition Ireland cannot be the male but the female animal. In contrast, for Ahern the expression is clearly positive. He feels that at the heart of this success is the effort and expertise of his cabinet and other social forces. The tiger stands for the rapid growth of the Irish economy. At the same time, the Irish people are ascribed one feature that is a characteristic of the animal: its deep and loud voice. In some way, the Irish are also the tiger: (9) The number of extra jobs created … exceeded all commentators’ estimates … the best result since 2000 when we were roaring along with the Celtic tiger … On the other hand, the fact that he uses inverted commas in Example 10 may weaken its metaphorical reading. I alluded earlier to this as a problematic case. Here it seems that the speaker is avoiding the phrase ‘the “Celtic Tiger”’ (that is, the phenomenon of miraculous development), which he very often made explicit in past speeches. To speculate why

124 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

he chose this alternative is risky; he may be aware of the stark contrast between the president’s and his own perception of the Celtic Tiger, and a metalinguistic usage may deprive the expression of its metaphorical weight. Nonetheless, this becomes more complex, because he reformulates the attributes of the referent of this phrase, which is ‘no orphan’: (10) … success has many parents and failure is an orphan. The ‘Celtic Tiger’ is no orphan, and the Irish Public Service can … claim its share of the credit … When a proverb gets involved, the metaphorical interpretation is transformed or diluted. What looks relevant is the usage of the family metaphor and the subversion of an allegedly negative old aphorism, such as ‘success has many parents …’. If things go well, many are willing to accept the credit for the success; if things go wrong, few will accept the responsibility of failure. In his opinion, the boom is not a failure and many are responsible for this. On the one hand, his peculiar choice of words reinforces the positive side of Ireland’s economic expansion; on the other hand, these words let him avoid mentioning what could become controversial in a Catholic country: multiple or dubious parenthood. In connection with the metaphorical parenthood of the Celtic Tiger, Ahern deals with a matter that, on the surface, seems to do with the tiger’s questionable nationality. This is something he would probably have liked to get away from, because this could imply that success was only partly due to Ireland’s endeavour, as shown in Example 11: (11) … the Celtic Tiger is in part an American tiger with a green face … From this, the creature may look monstrous to the reader. For centuries, this colour has symbolised the Emerald Isle. But, when this colour is now associated with an animal who is claimed to be American by birth (its body representing the US) and whose face reminds us of its Irishness, the Celtic Tiger metaphor is reformulated in new terms. As we can see, Ahern and McAleese use the X IS THE CELTIC TIGER metaphor differently. The sex of the animal is significant, especially because of its association with the traditional value of motherhood. This is not the only case in point, though. In the following sections, I will show the most frequent metaphorical patterns in both politicians’ discursive practices and discuss other contrasts.

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 125

6.6.2

The operator vs the people’s president

On 18 February 2006, Gerry Adams, the president of the IRA’s political wing, referred to his idea of Ireland in terms of the conventional metaphor THE NATION IS A BUILDING: (12) Another great challenge will be to build an Ireland of equals …13 Below is a systematic enumeration of the mappings characterising this metaphor (Kövecses 2002: 111): (a) foundation → basis that supports the entire system (b) framework → overall structure of the elements that make up the system (c) additional elements to support the framework → additional elements to support the structure of the system (d) design → logical structure of the system (e) architect → maker/builder of the system (f) process of building → process of constructing the system (g) strength → lastingness/stability of the system (h) collapse → failure of the system Despite numerous past displays of violence by Sinn Féin supporters, by means of this architectural metaphor the party’s actual policy encourages the ideas of a new beginning, of gradual construction, of putting things together in order to erect something new, and of a structure solid in its foundations. The participants (that is, the builders), whose identity is left inexplicit, must: know their job and which materials to use; learn to work as a team to accomplish their goal; and be aware of when to start and when their function has finished. Agreement on the design and reliance on specialists in civil construction are expected in order to direct and coordinate consultants, contractors and developers. A large investment in time and money plus hard work, determination, tolerance and little recognition are some of the items in a long list of requirements for eventual success. Therefore, after personification, X IS A BUILDING is the most common conceptual metaphor in my corpus (see Table 6.4). The prime minister and the president seem to construct Ireland, the nation, the country, the Republic, the community and society in a similar way. In addition, they also describe Europe as a building. Nonetheless, as we will see later, dissimilarities are noticeable. In the title of the news article by David McKittrick for The Independent on 30 September 2006, there is an indication of the profile of

126 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 6.4

List of the recurrent source domains for both politicians Ahern

McAleese

Metaphorical expressions

Percentage (out of 722)

229 142 106 74 36 25 18 6 3

31.7 19.7 14.7 10.2 5.0 3.5 2.5 0.8 0.4

Source domain Person Building Organism Journey Product Container Garden/farming land Business Tiger

Metaphorical expressions

Percentage (out of 673)

311 88 43 61 23 25 9 7 2

46.2 13.1 6.4 9.1 3.4 3.7 1.3 1.0 0.3

Bertie Ahern, who is said to be an ‘operator’. Some lines later, the journalist claims Ahern ‘has the antennae to sense looming crises, the expertise to manage the economy, and the savvy to remain Prime Minister for almost a decade’.14 Two other phrases describe him quite well: the architect and the cultivator. Conversely, Mary McAleese is not only known as another ‘uncrowned Queen of Ireland’,15 but also as ‘the people’s president’.16 I will show that, in fact, the metaphors both politicians select are consistent with these depictions. But first, I will make a brief comment on some of the categories of the taxonomy employed. The metaphor X IS A PERSON (where X stands for the target domains of my corpus) includes examples in which X is said to be involved in processes in which only a human being can be involved, or X is ascribed qualities only humans possess. The following are some in Ahern’s speeches: X IS A PERSON (BODY PARTS)

(13) … win the British Open, and a Nation’s heart is skipping a beat … X IS A PERSON (EXPERIENCER) (14) Ireland deeply regrets the loss of cohesion … X IS A PERSON (ATTRIBUTE: ILL) (15) … elements essential to healing a divided society … X IS A PERSON (WORKER) (16) Ireland is committed to working with Cyprus …

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 127 X IS A PERSON (HOSTESS)

(17) … hospitality for visiting dignitaries and guests of the nation … X IS A PERSON (PUPIL)

(18) Ireland as the ‘star pupil’ of Europe, having moved from bottom … X IS A PERSON (SOLDIER/LEADER/WARRIOR/SENTINEL)

(19) … it also signals Ireland’s intention to campaign on this issue … X IS A PERSON (OPPONENT) (20) The Government does not seek to … score political points … X IS A PERSON (IN CONTROL/MASTER)

(21) … making Ireland a country which [sic] harnesses cutting-edge knowledge … X IS A PERSON (UNDER CONTROL/SLAVE) (22) … emigration, which held this country in its grip … X IS A PERSON (MOTHER/CAREGIVER) (23) … intervention in areas like this as ‘nanny state’ … X IS A PERSON (ADULT)

(24) … its adoption marked Ireland’s coming of age as a State … The journey metaphor embraces several subcategories apart from the general one – X IS A JOURNEY: X IS A DESTINATION, X IS AN ENTITY IN MOTION and X IS A MEANS OF TRANSPORT (CAR/BOAT/AEROPLANE). The ideas of movement and progression are made explicit in most cases. Sometimes, X is responsible for this advance; other times, X is moved by different forces so that it can reach its goal – the traveller will be journeying or sent to abstractions or stages, rather than to physical places. To illustrate this, I will choose examples from McAleese: X IS A JOURNEY

(25) That notion of Europe … as a journey towards the very completion of ourselves …

128 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors X IS AN ENTITY IN MOTION (AGENT)

(26) Saudi Arabia and Ireland have travelled a long road … X IS AN ENTITY IN MOTION (AFFECTED) (27) … they have set their country on the most exhilarating journey of peace … X IS A MEANS OF TRANSPORT

(28) … join me in a toast to the man who is at the nation’s helm … X IS A DESTINATION

(29) … within our reach, the great destination of an egalitarian republic … As for the organism metaphor, the main ideas considered when categorising verbal instantiations in this fashion were birth, growth, change and adaptation to the environment of what we perceive as natural organic forms undergoing these processes (in particular, plants). Potential decline or death, one of a plant’s key properties, is rarely present. The garden/farming land metaphor should be mentioned in this section as well. Although I have made a distinction between the two for the sake of specificity, they can be integrated into the metaphor category of nature. Their interrelation is determined by the importance of soil for plants to grow. Here metaphorical plants are the people, the community, various sectors and companies, the economy, partnership, harmony, mutual respect and social fairness. Interestingly, McAleese tends to envision how abstract notions blossom, whereas Ahern is generally more pragmatic and speaks about thriving benefits and businesses: X IS AN ORGANISM (PLANT)

(30) They were determined that Ireland should not languish … (Ahern) (31) … transition is critical to the way in which we mature as a nation … (Ahern) (32) … contributed greatly to this ripening Ireland … (McAleese) (33) … ending these twin repetitive blights upon our society … (McAleese) X IS A GARDEN/FARMING LAND

(34) … the arts … can facilitate people to … flourish in an Ireland that … (Ahern)

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 129

(35) … the success of Comhaltas has been that it is firmly rooted in the community … (Ahern) (36) … shoots of hope and peace will blossom on this island … (McAleese) (37) … a homeland where a true social order flourishes … (McAleese) Now that I have clarified the labels chosen, I will focus on the most significant ones. The president of the Republic’s speeches abound in more metaphorical expressions in which the source domain is people (see Table 6.5). This is a strategic way to bring politics closer to the population. By making abstractions or inanimate objects human, agency is explored in a different light. Because of their proximity to human beings, countries, states or organisations may become less subject to criticism or attack. The ascription of human qualities transforms institutions into a member of the human race, a creature with thoughts, emotions and weaknesses; a creature who deserves equal legal rights, the same opportunities, affection, sympathy and so on. Table 6.5

Main subclasses of the metaphor X IS A PERSON Ahern

Metaphorical expressions 23 11 20 16 12 0

McAleese

Percentage (out of 722) 3.2 1.5 2.8 2.2 1.7 0

X IS A

…

friend/neighbour mother/caregiver soldier person under control person in control raped woman

Metaphorical expressions 55 31 21 18 1 1

Percentage (out of 673) 8.2 4.6 3.1 2.7 0.2 0.2

In the list of metaphors identified, X IS A MOTHER/CAREGIVER is still a recurrent pattern in Ahern and McAleese, although it occurs more often in the latter’s subcorpus (1.5 vs 4.6 per cent). Undoubtedly, she is the ‘people’s president’: (38) Ireland looks forward to … healing Europe, and watching its children grow healthy … (39) … ancient nation whose sons and daughters played a significant …

130 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

(40) … statehood during the last century. For Ireland it was a violent and painful birth … The mother first experiences the intense pressure and sharp pain of the delivery of the baby from her womb. Later, she feeds, nurtures and protects her offspring; she influences their behaviour and ideas, sacrifices herself for them, and suffers if illness or misadventure occurs. These mappings might also imply others, though one is particularly worrying. Since citizens are (immature) children, they have to be under constant vigilance. In my sample, I came across this possibly patronising tone on just one occasion. Ahern depicts the country in this vein: (41) … reflections of the men and women who nursed this country into existence … In my analysis, I have generally focused on a high degree of frequency. For instance, X IS A FRIEND/NEIGHBOUR is preferred by McAleese, who is concerned with constructing social and emotional relationships at home and abroad (3.2 vs 8.2 per cent): (42) … how true a friend Austria was to Ireland at her most difficult times … (43) … the neighbours who share the island of Ireland who need to … know each other … Interestingly, although Ahern prefers X IS A PERSON IN CONTROL (1.7 vs 0.2 per cent), in the whole corpus the number of occurrences of metaphorical expressions such as X IS A PERSON UNDER CONTROL and X IS A SOLDIER appears balanced (2.2 vs 2.7 per cent, and 2.8 vs 3.1 per cent, respectively). Here we see the contrast between an Ireland dominated by a coloniser like England or circumstances such as hunger and emigration, and a country capable of overcoming this situation by leading a (metaphorical) struggle for peace and change: (44) … ensure that Ireland remains to the forefront … (Ahern) (45) … have thrown off shackles of under-development to become a confident nation … (Ahern) (46) Ireland and Cyprus … are Europe’s sentinels, fighting with words … (McAleese)

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 131

(47) … every nation that had to wrench its freedom from the reluctant grip of empire … (McAleese) Nonetheless, it is also worthwhile to look at another example whose appearance is very rare – THE COUNTRY IS A RAPED WOMAN. In her attempt to describe Northern Ireland’s past, McAleese uses Czeslaw Milosz’s words taken from his poem ‘Sarajevo’: (48) While a country murdered and raped calls for help from the Europe which … The visual imagery this expression activates is harsh. First, there is the victim: attacked reiteratively; submitted to sex by force; under threat of harm; identity crisis; lack of self-respect; and temporary or permanent physical damage. Second, there is the rapist: a violent man with some psychological deficiency; inclined to show little sensitivity for others; belittles and bullies victim; negates the woman’s rejection or plea; and may kill the victim for pleasure. Finally, I will exemplify some of the ideas mentioned at the beginning of this section concerning the prime minister’s style. In the Ahern subcorpus, there is a high tendency for the target domains to be described by means of the plant and the architecture metaphors. Earlier, we saw their essential characteristics and some differences between both politicians with respect to the nature metaphor. As for the building metaphor, I have already listed its mappings and will thereby focus on the additional elements making up its framework. The Ireland the Ahern government is erecting in cooperation with the Irish grows vertically. It is an open place, ready to admit anyone, with its wood-burning fireplace supplying warmth. The bricks are their national feeling; the foundations, the principles of a democratic society; its basic pillar, Ireland’s buoyant economy. Its doors and windows, locked for too long, are opened, even though we cannot see them. Its most notable citizens, who have become the metaphorical structure covering the top of the building, provide protection from the elements. This Ireland is also the opening in the fence surrounding the fortified piece of land Europe has turned into; that is why a person’s entry into the continent is often said to be illegal: (49) Ireland … is a warm home for everybody … It must be a cold house for no one …

132 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

(50) … to build anew … the Gaelic nation, we find ourselves despoiled of the bricks of nationality … (51) … free speech is one of the foundations of a free open society … (52) For a society built on the principles of democracy … (53) Ireland is the ideal Gateway to Europe … (54) … put a roof over all of Ireland … (55) He inherited an economically depressed country and he … opened it up … McAleese’s Ireland, which is portrayed as a cloth and a tapestry within which multiple relationships of interdependence are interwoven, grows both vertically and horizontally: (56) … neighbourliness, which weaves together the caring fabric of our country … (57) … communities that make up the tapestry of this modern country … (58) … a new warp, a new weft, for a healthier new emerging society … (59) … we are now a nation of newly-opened doors … (60) … love of this vocation, which is the very hearth of our country … (61) It was no way to run a country, even without the glass ceiling for Catholics … (62) … our shared vision of a land where everyone sits around the best table of life … Remarkably, the house the country has become has visible doors, hearth and ceiling. The people involved in the process of its construction, as well as its founders, are given prominence. The president’s personal touch is evident in the metaphorical expression THE LAND IS A SITTING-ROOM. Comfort, familiarity and intimacy are some entailments of this metaphor.

6.6

Conclusion

Linguistic choice (both conscious and unconscious) is meaningful at all levels (Fowler 1986). Charteris-Black (2004: 253) claims that ‘metaphor both reflects and determines how we think and feel about the world’. A recurrent pattern in discourse is an index of the verbal performance

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 133

of identity, one of the building blocks in the construction of social representations. It is in these terms that we can explain the subtle differences found in my corpus. Although the McAleese subcorpus is smaller by comparison, she uses metaphorical expressions more than twice as often as Ahern. This should already be taken as indicative. Furthermore, despite the politicians’ resorting to the same metaphors, McAleese elaborates on some further aspects by sometimes embracing a more humane, intimate perspective, which results in what some might call a ‘feminine’ approach. The five key domains in each politician’s discourse practice are also different. Whereas Ahern’s focus on location and direction appears information-oriented, McAleese’s main concerns are Ireland, its government and the Irish; her approach can be considered more peopleoriented. The way she expresses her views is characteristic of the style known as ‘cooperative’ (Maltz and Borker 1982), in which politeness features and positive evaluation stand out. Furthermore, it is worth noticing that not only do the prime minister and the president use metaphors differently, but also the imagery persistent before their political era is (as shown in the diachronic data) different from those images employed by the two politicians. The desperate woman/mother who needed help to fight for the freedom of her people while suffering humiliation and oppression has become a nurturing person/parent who is self-sufficient. Other contemporary metaphors are the house open to all, the tree growing healthily, a beautifully complex fabric, and an animal of great size and power native to Asia. The reasons for these dissimilarities may have to do with their gender or with how their experiences shape their language usage. Background, party loyalties and their own political functions should also not be ignored.17 Likewise, the similarities between McAleese and Ahern can be explained on the grounds of their community of practice. Despite their different roles in Irish politics, the public arena requires the same general strategies: to produce optimistic portrayals of the country’s current state in contrast to the past, for which they are not to blame; to rely on traditional values that may encourage a new direction taken by society; to consolidate a feeling of unity for the future ahead; to stimulate the sense of belonging and self-identification; and to promote ideals, such as national pride, communal commitment and genuine enthusiasm, in order to generate a higher degree of confidence. All of this explains why both are fond of the basic mappings of the NATION AS A BUILDING and the NATION AS A PLANT metaphors. However it may be, what is manifestly clear is that Ahern and McAleese opt for a variety of formulae to describe the new Ireland they

134 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

have been constructing discursively and through their offices during the last ten years.

Acknowledgements My thanks go to Carmen Aguilera, Andrew Blake, N. Gómez Pascual, J.M. Martín-Morillas, J.C. Pascual-Arribas, Gill Philip, Graeme Porte, and the anonymous readers of this chapter.

Notes 1 ‘Speech to Women’, http://www.from–ireland.net/history/countessspeech. htm, date accessed 25 January 2007. 2 ‘England Hotly Arraigned’ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html? res=9905E1D71F39E433A25756C2A9 669D94669ED7CF, date accessed 1 March 2007. 3 ‘A Race that has never Ceased to Strive’, 17 March 1920 (Moynihan 1980: 35). 4 ‘Ireland’s Request’, 27 October 1920 (Moynihan 1980: 40). 5 ‘Civil War’, 28 June 1922 (Moynihan 1980: 107). 6 ‘The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland’, http://www.gaeilge.org/deanglicising.html, date accessed 30 January 2007. 7 ‘Speech to the Nation’, 17 March 1943, http://www.searcs-web.com/dev.html, date accessed 20 December 2006. 8 http://www.economist.com/markets/indicators/displaystory.cfm?story_ id=E1_GPGQNV, date accessed 15 January 2007. 9 http://www.finfacts.ie/irecon.htm, date accessed 15 January 2007. 10 http://www.austrade.gov.au/The-Celtic-Tiger-keeps-earning-its-stripes/ default.aspx, date accessed 15 January 2007. 11 The 608,000 occurrences found in Google indicate the 1990s boom is relevant socially and politically. In the British National Corpus there are none, though. 12 http://01wolfar.blogspot.com/2007/03/jaywalking-chapter-1.html, date accessed 15 January 2007. 13 http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/sf/ga180206.htm, date accessed 15 March 2007. 14 ‘Bertie Ahern: the Operator’, http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/ article1772288.ece, date accessed 21 July 2007. 15 The Southern Star, http://www.southernstar.ie/article.php?id=214, date accessed 21 July 2007. 16 Forbes.com, http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/11/UO45.html, date accessed 21 July 2007. 17 On paper, the president’s function is ceremonial. Since the president has no executive position, he or she does not maintain a working relationship with the cabinet. Nonetheless, the Constitution states that the prime minister must keep the president informed of home and international policy. In some respects, the Irish presidency resembles a monarchy, except it is not hereditary. Although he or she may be above party politics generally, the president can still make life difficult for the government. That was the case of Mary Robinson, who started reconsidering what the president could say, how and where (Horgan 1997: 164–87).

Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio 135

References Cameron, L. 1999. ‘Identifying and Describing Metaphor in Spoken Discourse Data’, in L. Cameron and G. Low (eds) Researching and Applying Metaphor. Cambridge: CUP, 105–32. Cameron, L. 2007. ‘Patterns of Metaphor Use in Reconciliation Talk’. Discourse and Society, 18(2): 197–222. Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chilton, P. and M. Ilyin. 1993. ‘Metaphor in Political Discourse: the Case of the “Common European House”’. Discourse and Society, 4(1): 7–31. Coates, J. 1988. Women, Men and Language. New York: Longman. Crisp, P., J. Heywood and G. Steen. 2002. ‘Metaphor Identification and Analysis, Classification and Quantification’. Language and Literature, 11(1): 55–69. Deignan, A. 2005. Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Fowler, R. 1986. Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: OUP. Gibbs, R.W. 1992. ‘When is a Metaphor? The Idea of Understanding in Theories of Metaphor’. Poetics Today, 13(4): 574–606. Heywood, J., E. Semino and M. Short. 2002. ‘Linguistic Metaphor Identification in Two Extracts from Novels’. Language and Literature, 11(1): 35–69. Hidalgo Tenorio, E. 2002. ‘“I Want to be a Prime Minister”, or What Linguistic Choice Can Do for Campaigning Politicians’. Language and Literature, 11(3): 243–61. Holmes, J. 1995. Women, Men and Politeness. London and New York: Longman. Horgan, J. 1997. Mary Robinson: an Independent Voice. Dublin: O’Brien Press. Jespersen, O. 1922. ‘The Woman’, in Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin. New York: Holt, 237–54. Kövecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor: a Practical Introduction. Oxford: OUP. Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. 1996. Moral Politics. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason. A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, R.T. 1975. Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper and Row. Litosseliti, L. 2006. Gender and Language: Theory and Practice. London: Hodder Arnold. Louw, B. 2000. ‘Some Implications of Progressive Delexicalisation and Semantic Prosodies for Hallidayan Metaphorical Modes of Expression and Lakoffian Metaphors We Live By’. Unpublished. McGlone, M.S. 2007. ‘What is the Explanatory Value of a Conceptual Metaphor?’ Language and Communication, 27(2): 109–26. Maltz, D. and R. A. Borker. 1982. ‘A Cultural Approach to Male–Female Miscommunication’, in J. J. Gumperz (ed.) Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: CUP, 196–216.

136 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Mio, J. S. 1997. ‘Metaphor and Politics’. Metaphor and Symbol, 12(2): 113–33. Moynihan, M. (ed.) 1980. Speeches and Statements by Éamon de Valera, 1917–73. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. Musolff, A. 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. O’Halloran, K. 2007. ‘Critical Discourse Analysis and the Corpus-Informed Interpretation of Metaphor at the Register Level’. Applied Linguistics, 28(1): 1–24. Peters, W. and Y. Wilks. 2003. ‘Data-driven Detection of Figurative Language Use in Electronic Language Resources’. Metaphor and Symbol, 18(3): 161–73. Rayson, P. 2007. ‘Wmatrix: a Web–based Corpus Processing Environment’. Computing Department, Lancaster University. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/ ucrel/wmatrix/, date accessed 30 July 2007. Reddy, M. J. 1979. ‘The Conduit Metaphor – a Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language’, in A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: CUP, 284–324. Romero, E. and B. Soria. 2005. ‘Cognitive Metaphor Theory Revisited’. Journal of Literary Semantics, 34, 1–20. Schön, D.A. 1979. ‘Generative Metaphor: a Perspective on Problem-Setting in Social Policy’, in A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: CUP, 254–83. Scott, M. 1999. Wordsmith Tools 3.0. Oxford: OUP. Semino, E. and M. Masci. 1996. ‘Politics in Football: Metaphor in the Discourse of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy’. Discourse and Society, 7(2): 243–69. Steen, G. 1999. ‘Metaphor and Discourse. Towards a Linguistic Checklist for Metaphor Analysis’, in L. Cameron and G. Low (eds) Researching and Applying Metaphor. Cambridge: CUP, 81–104. Stefanowitsch, A. 2006. ‘Words and Their Metaphors: a Corpus–based Approach’, http:// www-user.uni-bremen.de/~anatol/docs/ms_wordsmetaphor.pdf, date accessed 30 July 2007. Sunderland, J. 2004. Gendered Discourses. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Yeats, W. B. 1989. The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats. London: Macmillan. Zinken, J. 2003. ‘Ideological Imagination: Intertextual and Correlational Metaphors in Political Discourse’. Discourse and Society, 14(4): 507–23.

Part II Gender and Conceptual Metaphors in Political Debates

This page intentionally left blank

7 Metaphor and Gender in British Parliamentary Debates Jonathan Charteris-Black University of the West of England

7.1

Introduction

One of the major changes in the composition of the House of Commons during the current period of New Labour dominance in the British Parliament has been a rapid increase in the number of women Members of Parliament (MPs) with over 100 women becoming MPs in 1997; this has arisen out of the Labour Party policy of requiring equal numbers of male and female candidates for elected positions within the party. One question this raises is whether the expansion of the number of women in British politics has had any impact on rhetorical style, particularly, as far as this chapter is concerned, on the nature and purpose of the metaphors used in Commons debates. When Tony Blair and John Prescott resigned from their roles as prime minister and deputy prime minister on 10 May 2007, the new prime minister, Gordon Brown, required a deputy leader. There were six candidates, two women and four men, who were voted for by the Labour Party; this chapter examines metaphor use in parliamentary debates by four of these candidates over the previous five years, comparing them also with two more experienced female politicians, to address the following research questions: 1. Do female and male MPs employ metaphors with similar frequency? 2. Are there similarities or differences in the metaphors used by female and male MPs? 3. Are the rhetorical purposes for which metaphors are used by female MPs similar to, or different from, those of male MPs? This chapter will illustrate how metaphors are employed in British parliamentary debates by male and female MPs. In addition, their rhetorical 139

140 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

purposes will be analysed according to a model that incorporates an Aristotelian view of rhetoric.

7.2

Theory of metaphor in political communication

Metaphor is a persuasive aspect of discourse because it mediates between conscious and unconscious persuasion – between cognition and emotion; it is therefore a central strategy for political legitimisation. Earlier research was primarily interested in the role of particular types of metaphor such as sports metaphors, security metaphors, family metaphors and health metaphors in the discussion of political issues (for example Chilton and Ilyin 1993, Jansen and Sabo 1994, Musolff, 2001, 2003, Semino and Masci 1996, Thornborrow 1993), although Howe (1988) considered broader issues concerning the role of metaphor in politics generally and this line of research has continued (Beer and De Landtsheer 2004, Charteris-Black 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, Chilton 2004). In addition, Lakoff (1996) showed how conceptual metaphor theory could be extended to a broad understanding of the differences between the political left and political right in framing political issues. The principal purpose of the research described here is to identify the extent to which an interaction between gender and the use of metaphor in political rhetoric contributes to a particular style of political communication. Central to Aristotle’s views on rhetoric were the notions of ethos, logos and pathos. Aristotle argued that in addition to taking a stance that was morally worthy (ethos) and providing proofs in support of argument (logos), the successful rhetorician should also be able to arouse the feelings (pathos). This was a significant shift from Plato’s largely negative view of the feelings as interfering with clear thinking; for Aristotle, although arguments could influence feelings they could equally be influenced by the feelings, so emotional arousal could further rhetorical persuasion and pathos could enhance logos. My approach to political communication is summarised in Figure 7.1. Metaphors can establish a politician’s ethical self-representation as a politician who has the right intentions. Intentionality is central in measuring an individual’s ethical value but when expressed directly it risks communicating a self-righteous persona; when expressed indirectly through metaphor it communicates good intentions in a more pragmatically acceptable style. Covert, deontic self-representation permits political supporters to be represented as insiders who share an ethical outlook, while political opponents can be represented as morally deficient outsiders. This view of metaphor fits well with a recent theory of political

Jonathan Charteris-Black 141 ETHOS ESTABLISHING ETHICAL INTEGRITY:

HAVING RIGHT INTENTIONS

PATHOS

LOGOS COMMUNICATING POLITICAL ARGUMENTS:

THINKING RIGHT

CREATING LEGITIMACY:

BEING RIGHT

HEIGHTENING EMOTIONAL IMPACT:

SOUNDING RIGHT

COMMUNICATING IDEOLOGY:

REPRESENTING A TRUTH AS THE TRUTH

Figure 7.1

A contemporary model for political communication

communication developed by Chilton (2004) that proposes that the basis for evaluation is spatial proximity to the Self: ‘the general idea is that Self is not only here and now, but also the origin of the epistemic true and the deontic right’ (Chilton 2004: 59). Deontic metaphor permits a range of rhetorical possibilities including self-evaluation by the speaker, evaluation of policies, of political opponents or of groups in society. Positive self-representation of the speaker arises from the implied virtue of their concern for particular groups in society as in the following example (here and elsewhere, metaphors are indicated by italics): May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Mr. Williams) on securing this debate? … He has carried the torch of justice for miners and is now shining a bright light on what we both believe is an indefensible irregularity. (Peter Hain, 13 March 2001) The use of two evocative evaluating metaphors to compliment another member of the House – combined with the use of the inclusive ‘we’ – serves to ally the speaker to what is represented as a good cause thereby establishing his right intentions. Increasing the emotional impact is a vital role for metaphor in a range of political situations and is what I refer to as sounding right. Pathos can often be expressed by a personification that provides an emotive and cognitively accessible conceptual framework because it relies on pre-existent

142 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

culturally rooted stereotypes to communicate emotionally potent evaluations. Here we can see the use of personification in a negative evaluation: The cold shadow of poverty had been cast across the generations. (Alan Johnson, 13 October 2004) Another means for heightening pathos is through the use of hyperbolic metaphor: If the Hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) represented a slightly different area, he would know that older people, in particular, have been plagued by the misuse of air weapons. (Hazel Blears, 14 November 2005) Health metaphors evoke powerful emotions that are associated with illness and fear of illness. Heightening the pathos is not necessarily a separate and distinct purpose from establishing ethos since political rhetoric typically evokes strong emotions by addressing ethical issues; however, it is the use of hyperbole that particularly characterises this rhetorical purpose. Arguments are central to persuasive political communication because they show that the leader has the ability to think right. Metaphors are effective when they provide cognitively accessible ways of communicating policy by proofs or warrants that support arguments and have specific entailments. They may be exploited, manipulated or even reversed, in order to communicate a particular political argument. Metaphors can be used to frame political arguments and, like myths, they create scenarios that suggest particular conclusions. In the following discussion of power-sharing in Northern Ireland, Peter Hain combines a series of ‘journey’ (or source–path–goal) metaphors to refer to a sequence of events leading to devolution in Northern Ireland by analogy with the same process that had already occurred in Wales: I believe that the proposals in the White Paper provide a practical, common-sense road map to sensible, staged improvement of the existing arrangements. One of the key reasons why the transition to devolved government in Wales has been smooth is that we have moved at a pace determined by the people of Wales. (Peter Hain, 15 June 2005) If one accepts the premise that devolution can be described in terms of a journey, then one also accepts the entailments of this metaphor

Jonathan Charteris-Black 143

frame which include purpose and outcome as indicated in the conceptual metaphor PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS. The logic of the metaphor is that there is a planned process leading to inevitable arrival at the predetermined ‘destination’ of power-sharing. My approach to contemporary political communication modifies the Aristotelian view of rhetoric by integrating ideology with the rhetorical components of the classical model. An ideology is a set of meanings through which a particular group is able to form and sustain itself; it therefore serves to create group identity by establishing and reinforcing shared meanings within the group and by communicating this group identity to others as an act of self-legitimisation. An ideology claims that what is in the interests of the group is in the interests of all; it is a representation of what is truthful for some as being truthful for all. These sets of meanings can relate either to politics or to religion, or to any form of social activity. I propose that metaphor is one of a number of linguistic, cognitive and symbolic resources employed by political leaders for communicating ideology (Charteris-Black 2007). By establishing a shared view about what is right and wrong, good and bad, a group engages in a process of self-legitimisation through which it aspires to power. It is difficult to analyse this role of metaphor as separate from other rhetorical purposes because it is the reiteration of ‘thinking’ and ‘sounding’ ‘right’ over time, according to shared values, that creates an ideology that is often resistant to analysis. However, I have illustrated one way that it can be analysed is by considering Tony Blair’s ideological use of the ‘rogue state’ metaphor which was employed to justify the invasion of a country that at the time presented little threat to the United Kingdom (CharterisBlack 2009). Metaphor also makes an ideological appeal in the following: Having met the First and Deputy First Ministers together, I have been struck since by … their cordial and warm personal interaction. Above all, they have shown that age-old enmities can be overcome. That is truly inspirational, as we saw yesterday when they preached together at Stormont a common gospel of healing. (Peter Hain, 9 May 2007) Here the use of a ‘healing’ metaphor is intended to overcome ideologically based sectarian difference with reference to the ideology of Christianity through the use of ‘gospel’. It was probably rhetorically effective to use a metaphor from the domain of religion when making appeals in the setting of the power-sharing assembly to two groups

144 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

whose social identity – though labelled by religious affiliation – is politically constituted.

7.3

Gender and metaphor

Current research into gender and metaphor is primarily concerned with the role of metaphor in the social representation of gender and typically explores its contribution to social constructions in which one gender is conceptualised as having power over the other. Research from such critical perspectives describes and explains how metaphors reinforce gender stereotypes. For example, Koller (2004) demonstrates how typical ‘masculine’ metaphors of war, sports and evolutionary struggle are used to represent businesswomen so as to conceptualise business as an essentially masculine social domain. Hines (1999) illustrated how WOMEN ARE DESSERT and Velasco-Sacristan and Fuertes-Olivera (2005) identified gender representations in Cosmopolitan advertisements such as A WOMAN IS A SEXUAL OBJECT. Men and, more typically women, are conceptualised as entities to be ‘consumed’, thereby creating an equivalence of women with food, so that the sexual act is represented metaphorically as ‘eating’. Such metaphors perpetuate hegemonic representations that conceptualise gender in terms of power relations because they imply that men are entitled to sex in the same way that they are entitled to food. The research described here takes a different approach towards metaphor and gender. Rather than examining how language contributes covertly to the formation of social constructions of gender in non-political texts, this chapter compares the use of metaphor by male and female MPs in an overtly political setting. Characterising both the ‘dominance’ and the ‘difference’ paradigms in sociolinguistic accounts of gender has been the belief that there are binary differences in gender styles. Within these paradigms, which have themselves been implicated in the support and promotion of language ideologies, the female style is described as one of rapport, sympathy, intimacy and cooperation while the male style is one of reporting, problemsolving, independence and competition (Talbot 2003: 475). Women are perceived to dominate the private sphere of the home where selfdisclosure is less face threatening. The distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ was also made by Tannen (1992): women feel they are ‘backstage’ when there are no men around and become ‘onstage’ when men are present. From this perspective women would become silenced in the adversarial style of public discourse that characterises British parliamentary debates.

Jonathan Charteris-Black 145

Cameron (2003) observes that the view that men and women are everywhere the same is an important component of popular language ideology, arguing that in late modernity the stereotype of masculine emotional reticence is part of a wider male deficit model. This model is also implicated in a concomitant and equally stereotyping female sufficiency model, in which the language associated with women’s style is perceived to be desirable as we move into a primarily service economy where interpersonal functions of communication are at a premium: … the conditions obtaining in late modern societies have given rise to a new linguistic ideal: the skilled interpersonal communicatory who excels in such verbal activities as cooperative problem-solving, rapport-building, emotional self-reflexivity and self-disclosure … (Cameron 2003: 459) She proposes a late-modern trend towards an informal and conversational style in Western public discourse so that the public increasingly takes on the characteristics previously found in the private (ibid. 460), illustrating this with reference to the public ‘new man’ styles of leaders such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Cameron (2007) rejects reductive points of view that men and women are essentially different in how they use language by seeing gender as simply one component contributing towards identity. She proposes that speakers have a range of repertoires depending on how far they wish gender to form part of the identity they project to others and that men and women create gendered differences in their speech styles according to specific purposes and contexts. In the case of this study, it is unclear how far the stereotypically ‘feminine’ cooperative and problem-solving styles would be acceptable in the stereotypically ‘masculine’ gladiatorial style of House of Commons debates. There are specific rules governing debates in the House of Commons – in particular that remarks are addressed to the Speaker and other addressees are only referred to using indirect third-person terms such as ‘the honourable member for’ and that only a speaker who is allocated a turn by the Speaker has the right to speak and must do so from a standing position. However, these rules are regularly infringed by heckling, jokes, insults and non-verbal sounds that contribute a powerful negative evaluation of what is being said. Shaw (2005) explored whether the arrival of over 100 women MPs in 1997 (mainly representing the Labour Party) would cause a shift to a more consensual debating style. However, she discovered to the contrary that women participated in competing for

146 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

speaking turns but with an important difference: they made fewer interruptions and interjections that infringed the debating rules of the House. Just as in the classroom more boys than girls call out of turn – and attract inverted status from so doing – the same gender dynamics persist in the highest debating chamber of the land. Moreover, it seems that women speakers were more likely than men to be censured for rule-breaking, so there were ‘objective’ reasons for keeping to the rules. Cameron (2007: 129) suggests that such breaking of rules by men displays confidence and their reckless courage attracts inverted status; conversely, rule-obeying by women – while intending to show belonging – in fact demonstrates insecurity. However, none of this research addresses the issue of whether there are similarities or differences in the way that ‘men’ and ‘women’ politicians employ metaphor in their rhetoric and how this might contribute to their style of political communication.

7.4

Method

This study utilises the Commons Hansard debates which is the record of actual spoken contributions by all MPs in British parliamentary debates; records of these debates are easily accessible via the online version of Hansard (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/pahansard.htm). Debates since November 1988 until the present may be searched by date for either spoken questions and debates or their written questions and statements of an MP; it is also possible to search contributions for all individual members for the current session of Parliament. The advance search facility allows the researcher to search for particular words and for the use of these words by any politician over various time periods and in various sections of Hansard. Initially it was decided to compare four of the six candidates for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, these were Harriet Harman, Hazel Blears, Alan Johnson and Peter Hain; the two men were chosen as those most likely to win based on the number of supporters they had among Labour Party MPs; however, because of the low incidence of metaphor especially on the part of one of the female candidates I decided also to compare them with two more experienced Labour politicians – Margaret Beckett and Clare Short – since it seemed that age and political experience were other variables that could influence metaphor use. Profiles of these MPs are given in Appendix 7.1. The first stage was to identify a set of potential metaphors; a set of keywords were identified – these are words that previous research has shown to be commonly used as metaphors in politics using a range of published sources including Charteris-Black (2004), Deignan (1995) and Kövecses

Jonathan Charteris-Black 147

(2002). Each of the contexts in which a keyword occurred was examined to establish its meaning in context. This involved establishing whether the keyword had a more basic sense – that is, it referred to something more concrete, or occurred historically earlier – than its sense in the debate. Where there was a clear contrast between the basic sense and the sense in the debate, the keyword was classified as a metaphor. This method is effective in identifying a ‘conventional metaphor’ – which is one ‘that it is automatic, effortless, and generally established as a mode of thought among members of a linguistic community’ (Lakoff and Turner 1989: 55). Four source domains of metaphor were selected for analysis – ‘journeys’; ‘light/dark’; ‘plants/gardening’ and ‘health’ since previous research had shown that these source domains are commonly employed in political discourse (Charteris-Black 2004). Keywords are shown in Table 7.1. The singular form of each keyword was searched in the Commons Hansard debates section over the last two years for ‘journeys’ and for the last five years for the other domains. A shorter time period was used for the ‘journey’ metaphors because it is exceptionally common in political discourse. A record was kept of the number of metaphors used by each politician in each source domain. Of a total of 567 metaphor tokens identified, a random sample of 121 were later analysed in terms of their rhetorical purpose in order to establish whether there are gender differences in how politicians establish legitimacy.

7.5

Findings and discussion

Table 7.2 summarises the findings for metaphors by source domain. A comparison between all the literal and metaphoric uses for keywords is shown in Appendix 7.2. Table 7.1

Keywords

Journeys

Light and dark

Health

Plants

avenue journey move obstacles path road route step trail

bright dark gloom light shade shadow

cure disease diagnose heal healthy plague remedy therapy

blight fruit/fruition/fruitful grow nurture plant reap seed root

148 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 7.2

Summary of metaphors used in Commons debates

Metaphor

Male MPs and years of experience

Female MPs and years of experience Less experienced

Hain Johnson (16 yrs) (10 yrs) Journeys Light and dark Plants Health Total % of total Group total

Blears (10 yrs)

Harman (10 yrs)

More experienced Beckett (24 yrs)

Short (30 yrs)

95 9 40 18

87 12 26 14

38 6 18 6

2 1 4 0

112 3 35 3

7 3 19 9

162 29

139 25

68 12

7 1

153 27

38 6

301

75

191

(53%)

(13%)

(34%)

In answering the first research question it is noteworthy how many more metaphors were used by the two male MPs; they employed four times more than the two less experienced female MPs over the same time period and over half of all the metaphors identified; the less experienced female MPs used only 13 per cent of these metaphors. There is considerable variation in metaphor use between individual MPs; for example Peter Hain used 29 per cent whereas the eventual winner – Harriet Harman – employed only 1 per cent of the metaphors identified. However, when we consider the more experienced female MPs, who have on average 27 years of House of Commons experience, as compared with 13 years for the two male MPs and 10 years for the less experienced female MPs, we find evidence of a more equal distribution of metaphors between genders; for example, Margaret Beckett employed a similar number of metaphors to each of the two male deputy leader candidates. Therefore, one possibility is that the observed difference may be partly accounted for by debating experience as well as by gender. However, since former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also employed significantly fewer metaphors than the five male politicians analysed in Charteris-Black (2005) there is growing evidence of an influence of gender. On this small sample, the findings imply considerable stylistic variation in rhetorical reliance on metaphor in parliamentary debates and suggest a tendency for greater use by male politicians. In addressing the second research question, the difference between the genders was most noticeable in the use of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ metaphors which the male MPs strongly preferred. There are some metaphors in this domain that are apparently only used by male MPs; for example,

Jonathan Charteris-Black 149

a more general search of Hansard shows that metaphoric use of ‘shade’ is restricted to male MPs: As such, it is good to see that it is not contentious and has the agreement of all shades of the political spectrum. (Shailesh Vara, 17 July 2007) I am reminded of former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan’s comments about the Franks report on the Falklands conflict: ‘for 338 paragraphs, the Franks Report painted a splendid picture, delineating the light and shade. …’ (Ingram, 11 June 2007) While there may be shades of meaning of the word, depending on the context, reference to standard dictionaries brings out its basic meaning. (Chope, 15 December 2005) The only instance of ‘shade’ by a woman is literal: I also heard a lovely anecdote about a beautiful, fluffy white cat: if it went out on a windy day with the dust settling on the town, it would come back a mucky shade of dark grey. … (Shona McIsaac, 24 May 2007) ‘Shade’ is employed metaphorically by male MPs with the sense of ‘degrees of opinion’ and is used in contrast to the extreme ends of a ‘spectrum’ of opinion. It may be a sign of insecurity among female MPs that they are reluctant to communicate the middle of the road stance implied by the phrase ‘shades’ of opinion. ‘Shadow’ is also used more by male MPs: … but looking to a future where there are no victims any more, where every child has the best start and every citizen can walk out from under the shadow of fear, intimidation and … (Peter Hain, 23 November 2005) One of only two metaphoric uses by experienced female MPs was: That was true back in the 1980s when countries such as Spain and Greece emerged from dictatorship, and it was true in 2003 when the 10 new member states stepped out from the shadow of communist totalitarianism. … (Margaret Beckett, 14 June 2006) The restriction of ‘shadow’ to experienced female MPs suggests that a rhetorical preference for metaphor in Commons debates is one that

150 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

is acquired over time by female MPs. The findings were even more striking for metaphoric uses of ‘dark’ and its variant ‘darkness’ – of the first 100 uses, only 5 per cent were by female MPs. A further example of male preference for metaphor is that of the 45 uses of ‘root-and-branch’ in the last two years only six are by women. Although these are rather conventional metaphors, the findings are potentially significant since if metaphor is an effective rhetorical device, then female MPs may need greater awareness of how it is used for rhetorical effect – unless for some reason female MPs are strategically avoiding use of metaphor. The findings for the third research question are presented in Table 7.3. Table 7.3

Rhetorical purposes of metaphor More experienced male

ETHOS – to establish the speaker as ethical PATHOS – to heighten the emotional impact LOGOS – to explain a particular policy

Less experienced female

Hain

Johnson

Blears

10

6

6

13%

8

10

Beckett

Short

(n = 121)

3

16

17

58 (48%)

3

26 (21%)

0

37 (31%)

4

27%

0

1

3%

12 20%

Total

Harman 8%

15%

12

More experienced female

4

3%

0 3%

9 8%

Nearly half of all the metaphors identified had the primary rhetorical purpose of establishing the speaker as ethical; around one-third were to communicate particular arguments and around one-fifth were to heighten the emotional impact of an utterance. There was not an equal distribution between genders, as experienced female MPs showed a strong preference for establishing the speaker as ethical while male MPs used more metaphors to explain policy – with the other two purposes being used with equivalent frequency. The fact that experienced female MPs employ metaphor more than less experienced female MPs – though not as much as experienced male MPs – indicates that metaphor seems to be a rhetorical skill that develops over time as female

Jonathan Charteris-Black 151

MPs familiarise themselves with the discourse norms of the House of Commons. In terms of developing a political identity, the deontic strategy of establishing ethical integrity is especially important to female MPs. However, an alternative ‘feminine’ strategy for establishing the speaker as ethical is to avoid metaphor altogether. This may explain why Harriet Harman – whose background in law may encourage her to establish a reputation for plain speaking – rarely employs metaphor; it may be ethically tainted by association with traditional ‘masculine’ rhetoric which is to be avoided by a politician who positions herself as strong proponent of women’s rights and develops a unique political style around this position. I will structure the remaining discussion of findings with a section on each of the rhetorical purposes of metaphor that I presented in Figure 7.1. 7.5.1

Function 1: Establishing ethical integrity (ethos)

Hazel Blears uses source–path–goal metaphors, as they are very commonly used in politics, to establish an ethical political identity based on concepts such as it is ‘wrong’ to get lost, and that political journeys are towards valued destinations; an example is given in the following: Several hon. Members have spoken about collaboration and federation. I am not convinced that collaboration would take us anywhere on the journey that we need to take. (Hazel Blears, 19 December 2005) The use of source–path–goal metaphors is highly conventional in politics and is based on the conceptual metaphors SUCCESS IS MOVEMENT FORWARDS and ETHICAL PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS. In a study of six politicians I found that ‘journeys’ was one of the most common source domains (Charteris-Black 2005: 200). They are also very common in New Labour discourse in metaphoric uses of words such as ‘move forward’; ‘stride’; ‘mapped out’; ‘destination’; harness’ and of course ‘journey’ itself. A further linguistic characteristic of ethical appeal of New Labour discourse is the use of nominal phrases in which a ‘journey’-related term is post-modified, as in expressions such as ‘journey of change’ and ‘journey of modernisation’ (ibid: 152ff.). Hazel Blears’ rhetoric reflects such uses in her speeches: If we can start the journey of civic engagement when young, we may have identified and encouraged tomorrow’s active citizens. (Hazel Blears, 26 October 2006)

152 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

A related concept is DIFFICULTY IS BLOCKAGE and this is quite common in journey metaphors with the use of words such as ‘barriers’, ‘obstacles’ or ‘burdens’ as in the following: This is a Labour government, committed to the belief that every individual deserves to live out their full potential, to be the best they can be, to overcome whatever barriers may block their path. (Hazel Blears, 26 October 2006) Blockage metaphors are persuasive because once the speaker has established positive evaluations of forward movements, then it is easy to represent anything that impedes movement as negative. Typically political opponents are therefore negatively represented as inhibiting the attainment of socially valued goals. Hazel Blears therefore shows herself to be establishing a political identity that is both close to New Labour and to Tony Blair since the journey nominal phrases are associated with his persuasive use of metaphors such as a ‘Road Map’ for the Middle East; however, this may detract from her developing a more unique style of political communication. She also shows affiliation with the New Labour vision in the persuasive use of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ metaphors: I can tell him that there will be 18,000 more CSOs1 over the next couple of years, in addition to the present 6,000 officers, and the community call for action will be a practical power to make sure that a light is shone on problems that may have persisted for months if not years, so that we can get things done. (Hazel Blears, 6 March 2006) There is a similar ethical appeal in her use of plant metaphors: The Respect Action Plan is central to the Government’s drive to go broader, deeper and further on antisocial behaviour by tackling its root causes; preventing it occurring in the first place for example by ensuring better parenting provision, while not letting up on stopping antisocial behaviour that blights many communities. (Hazel Blears, 3 May 2006) The use of such metaphors is ideological because they permit the speaker to represent their own policies as ‘good’ and those of opponents as ‘bad’. Metaphors of ‘blights’ and ‘uprooting’ seem therefore to be part of a wider discourse of positive action in which there is ethical

Jonathan Charteris-Black 153

obligation to remove the causes of society’s ills (Schon 1993: 144). In a similar way, health metaphors also provide ‘remedies’ to social ills: Almost one of the first things that we did in government was to institute the Acheson inquiry into the extent of health inequalities and to gather evidence about their causes and the effectiveness of possible solutions and remedies in trying to close the enormous health inequalities gap. (Hazel Blears, 12 February 2003) Hazel Blears therefore displays rhetorical accommodation to the discourse norms of New Labour – though perhaps without creating a sufficiently unique political identity to differentiate her ethical discourse from that of male MPs, and in particular that of her mentor Tony Blair. It may be this lack of distinctiveness from other MPs that contributed to her losing to Harriet Harman in the election for Deputy Leader. Peter Hain employed metaphors from each of the four source domains to establish his ethical credentials with a preference for ‘light’ and ‘dark’ and ‘plant’ metaphors. Ethical purpose is essential to Peter Hain’s political identity; he originally became involved in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement and has always sought to present himself as a politician with a strong and forceful social conscience. It was probably for this reason that he was appointed secretary of state for Northern Ireland and Wales, to continue devolution by creating a power-sharing Assembly in Northern Ireland. This has proved to be one of the great (if not the greatest) political achievements of New Labour under Tony Blair. It is therefore relevant to note the use of metaphor by Peter Hain in relation to the topic of conflict negotiation and establishing a sense of common identity among parties that were until recently in a state of semi-armed opposition towards each other. A favoured metaphor is that of darkness as in the following: The IMC report says that, although it is also significant that the leaderships of both the UDA and the UVF are seeking to move their organisations away from that dark and violence-strewn past. (Peter Hain, 25 April 2007) Those are, of course, five deaths too many, but nevertheless the situation has changed dramatically from the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s. (Peter Hain, 31 October 2005) These metaphors polarise a negatively evaluated past with a positively evaluated future by comparing ‘light’ and therefore goodness based on

154 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors GOODNESS IS LIGHT with darkness based on EVIL IS DARKNESS; both of these underlying, or conceptual, metaphors have a strong cultural resonance because of their origin in the Bible (Charteris-Black 2004: 185ff.). This of course makes them particularly relevant in the discourse of Northern Ireland which has a highly biblical style – especially in the prophetlike pontificating of the Reverend Ian Paisley. They also activate concepts such as HOPE IS LIGHT and IGNORANCE IS DARKNESS that are politically effective in so far as they establish equivalence between the policy of power-sharing and positively valued entities such as intelligence and hope.

7.5.2

Function 2: To heighten the emotional impact (pathos)

There is extensive evidence of this rhetorical purpose in the language of both the male candidates examined. They draw on a range of source domains including ‘journeys’: I can tell him that the idea that we are all going to hell in a handcart in respect of behaviour in schools is not just an insult to teachers, head teachers and today’s youngsters; it is simply not true. (Alan Johnson, 26 April 2007) ‘Plants’: We have introduced tougher antisocial behaviour measures than any previous Administration, which are designed to stamp out this blight on our communities. (Peter Hain, 2 May 2007) And especially ‘health and illness’ as metaphoric uses of ‘plague’, ‘health’ and ‘remedy’ all occurred more in the contributions of the male MPs examined: It was too great a risk to leave the Bill as it was, and the amendments would have resulted in a cure that was worse than the disease. (Alan Johnson, 8 July 2002) The Government are determined to clamp down on antisocial behaviour. It is a real plague in many of our communities in Wales: on estates and elsewhere in many of our valley communities and throughout the nation. (Peter Hain, 30 April 2003) The rhetorical style of such emotive metaphors is hyperbole, and it may be that male MPs are contending with a deficit model for male emotionality that implies that men are deficient in communicating

Jonathan Charteris-Black 155

their feelings. In these cases the rhetorical purpose may be to communicate the strength of their feelings about political issues – to show that they are passionate caring politicians who can wear their heart on their sleeve – even though they are men. Some female MPs, such as Clare Short, also show a rhetorical preference for hyperbole: I share the view that we are facing a disaster. I am afraid that the shadow of Mugabe is preventing Governments from responding to the humanitarian appeal, so the people are being punished twice. … (Clare Short, 11 December 2002) However, it seems that other female MPs such as Harriet Harman and Margaret Beckett avoid the use of hyperbole in their debating style; this may be because they wish to avoid sounding ‘over-emotional’ and reject a discourse style characterised by high emotional expressivity. In this respect they may be self-consciously doing the opposite of the two male MPs – but for the same reason: a conscious rejection of gender stereotyping in discourse. In this respect we can interpret the adoption of high expressivity by male MPs and low expressivity by female MPs as a type of gender crossing at the rhetorical level in which there is the option for each gender of seeking to perform an individual political identity that contrasts with a stereotyped gender identity. 7.5.3 Function 3: To communicate particular arguments (logos/heuristic) There was again more variation among the female MPs examined in the use of metaphor to explain policy, with evidence for its use by Margaret Beckett and Hazel Blears, but not by Harriet Harman or Clare Short. Both the male MPs made extensive use of metaphor for this purpose; however, Margaret Beckett also affirms strong approval of policies through the use of metaphors from the domain of ‘plants’: The gentleman is right to say that there is growing awareness of the value and potential of biomass and of biofuels. There is growing recognition of their potential and a growing will to develop the industries in the European Union. (Margaret Beckett, 9 March 2006) And Hazel Blears employs the same domain for a similar purpose: All of the 351 Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRP) in England and 22 Community Safety Partnerships (CSP) in Wales

156 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

have responded positively to our seed funding for Anti-social Behaviour Co-ordinators in each CDRP area. (Hazel Blears, 18 April 2006) The use of such plant metaphors contain the argument – based on the knowledge that growth is inherently positive – that certain policies require government support through funding. The role of metaphor in policy communication seems to be a valuable strategy that politicians might consider employing more systematically as a heuristic for policy development. 7.5.4

Rhetorical interaction

While for the sake of analysis the rhetorical purposes of metaphor have been identified separately, in practice the effectiveness of metaphor in political communication is because it combines a range of interacting rhetorical appeals. Consider the following by Peter Hain, secretary of state for Northern Ireland: The Government have a responsibility to make sure that devolution can take place quickly when the Assembly request it … has been a long and difficult road to reach that point, but all sides have shown determination and commitment to take Northern Ireland forward, and I commend them on doing so. I have no doubt that any remaining obstacles can be negotiated before journey’s end at Parliament Buildings on 26 March next year. (Peter Hain, 13 December 2006) Here the cohesion of Hain’s account of the staged political process towards the policy of an autonomous Assembly in Northern Ireland relies on a source–path–goal metaphor frame; however, the effort required to achieve a political objective implied by ‘determination’ and ‘obstacles’ evokes pathos because of empathy with travellers on arduous journeys. The ‘destination’ is the ethically justified one of peace and the choice of first-person pronouns in evaluating the political process contributes to his ethical appeal. The ‘journey’ metaphor for conceptualising historical change in Northern Ireland evokes both pathos and ethos in the development of an argument. It is therefore not always possible to separate out the differing rhetorical purposes of metaphors as they may integrate diverse appeals simultaneously. The model for metaphor in political communication presented in Figure 7.1 is not therefore intended to imply that metaphors necessarily perform appeals separately, though they may do so, since a single metaphor may appeal to reason, emotion and morality while simultaneously establishing legitimacy and communicating an ideology.

Jonathan Charteris-Black 157

7.6

Conclusion

This study of metaphor and gender in British parliamentary debates has found a tendency for greater use of metaphor by male MPs – especially certain types of metaphor such as ‘light’ and ‘dark’ and health and illness-related metaphors. This has been explained with reference to two considerations: female MPs require experience of House of Commons rhetoric over a longer period of time before they accommodate to its rhetorical norms – as suggested by the greater use of metaphor by more experienced female MPs. Conversely, other female MPs – such as Harriet Harman – may deliberately avoid metaphor because of its associations with a normative masculine rhetorical style emulating which may be seen as a sign of insecurity. However, other female MPs – such as Hazel Blears – have sought to accommodate their style to New Labour rhetoric by employing metaphor for deontic purposes, perhaps as a form of symbolic belonging in an institution in which they may be seen as ‘interlopers’. While the two male MPs use metaphor for all three types of rhetorical purposes, experienced female MPs show a preference for its role in making ethical appeals. There is some evidence of gender crossing whereby male MPs employ metaphor to emphasise an emotional appeal, while female MPs avoid this use. This may be because male MPs do not want to appear too masculine in their rhetorical style, while female MPs do not want to appear too feminine. The fact that Harriet Harman – who as we have seen made very little use of metaphor – won the deputy leader election seems to conflict with the idea that metaphors are central to communicating ideology. It is possible that the conventional metaphors identified in this study do not necessarily contribute to rhetorical appeal. In some cases – such as when the speaker is a woman with a feminist political identity – part of ‘sounding right’ is to avoid language that is in any way gendered and that this includes avoiding uses of metaphor that are styled as masculine because they are associated with male politicians. Further research is needed across a wider range of politicians and a wider range of discourse types to establish the extent to which rhetorical style is gendered in the various genres of political discourse.

Appendix 7.1

Profiles of politicians

Hazel Blears was educated at Wardley Grammar School in Swinton and Eccles Sixth Form College. She studied law at Nottingham Trent University and Chester College of Law. She had a dual career as a senior

158 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

solicitor and a north-west councillor and was chair of the Salford Community Health Council from 1992 to 1996. She was elected in 1997 as MP for Salford, the city where she was born and grew up. She was appointed as public health minister in May 2002. In June 2003 she moved to the Home Office, and was promoted to minister of state with responsibility for crime reduction, policing, community safety and counter-terrorism. In May 2006, she was appointed chair of the Labour Party and minister without portfolio; since June 2007 she has served as secretary of state for communities and local government. Harriet Harman, the eventual winner and current holder of the post of deputy leader of the Labour Party, obtained a degree in politics from York University, qualified as a solicitor and her first job as a solicitor was at Brent Law Centre in 1974. She has a political identity as a campaigner for equality of opportunity for women and other aspects of equality, human rights and social justice – she formulated the legal framework for the Low Pay Commission and the National Minimum Wage; she introduced the minimum income guarantee and £200 Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners. As Cabinet minister for women she established the National Childcare Strategy and she has initiated policies in tackling domestic violence. Peter Hain was educated at Queen Mary College, University of London, where in 1973 he obtained a first-class degree in economics and political science. He also holds a Master of Philosophy from the University of Sussex. He is the author or editor of 15 books and has written widely in pamphlets and articles on Labour policy and socialist ideology. He has been MP for Neath since 1991, and a member of the Cabinet since 2002. He was a founder member of the Anti-Nazi League in 1977 and, after a childhood in South Africa where his parents were jailed and banned, he became a leading anti-apartheid campaigner during the 1970s. He served for two years as leader of the House of Commons. As minister for Wales he led the campaign to deliver Welsh devolution and served as energy minister, where he reformed the scheme for sick miners. He is currently secretary of state for Northern Ireland and Wales. In January 2008 he resigned his post as work and pensions secretary as a result of not reporting £100,000 in contributions towards his campaign for deputy leadership. Alan Johnson has a traditional Labour Party identity associated with the trade union movement. He was born into a working-class family and was educated at Sloane Grammar School, Chelsea; he left school at 15 with no qualifications. He has introduced legislation on trade union

Jonathan Charteris-Black 159

rights, flexible working and women’s pensions. He became secretary of state for education and skills in May 2006 with a concern for issues relating to the social class divide.2 He was very narrowly defeated by Harriet Harman in the election for deputy leader, eventually finishing with 49.56 per cent of the vote. He became secretary of state for health in June 2007. Margaret Beckett was educated at the Notre Dame High School for Girls (a state school in Norwich), the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where she qualified as a metallurgist. She was deputy leader of the Labour Party from 1992 to 1994 and was briefly its leader in 1994 following the premature death of John Smith. In Tony Blair’s government, she held a series of Cabinet offices, including secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs and foreign secretary. She was foreign secretary in the period 2006–7 and was the first woman to hold the post, and only the second woman to hold one of the great offices of state (after Margaret Thatcher). She is currently a backbencher. Clare Short obtained a degree in political science from the University of Leeds; she is currently the Independent MP for Birmingham Ladywood, having been elected as a Labour Party MP in 1983, and was secretary of state for international development from May 1997 until her resignation in May 2003. She intends to stand down as an MP at the next general election. Table 7A.1 summarises this information and also includes profiles of the two more experienced female MPs – although they were not candidates for the deputy leadership.

160 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 7A.1

Profile of candidates for deputy leadership of Labour Party Years in House of Commons

MPs3 CLPs4

Name

Age

Posts held

Hazel Blears

51

Parliamentary private secretary Public health minister Minister of state at the Home Office Chair of the Labour Party Member of the Privy Council

10

49

36

Harriet Harman

57

Shadow employment secretary Secretary of state for social security Solicitor General Minister of state for justice Minister for constitutional affairs

10

65

60

Peter Hain

57

Leader of the House of Commons Minister for Wales Minister for Africa Minister for Europe Secretary of state for Northern Ireland and Wales

16

51

23

Alan Johnson

57

Parliamentary private secretary Work and pensions secretary Minister for higher education Secretary of state for productivity, energy and industry Secretary of state for education and skills

10

73

45

Jonathan Charteris-Black 161 Table 7A.1 – continued

Profile of candidates for deputy leadership of Labour Party

Years in House of Commons

MPs3 CLPs4

Name

Age

Posts held

Margaret Beckett

64

Parliamentary private secretary Member of shadow cabinet Deputy leader of Labour Party Member of Privy Council Leader of the Labour Party President of the Board of Trade Leader of the House of Commons Secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs Foreign secretary

30

na

na

Clare Short

61

Shadow minister for women Shadow transport secretary Secretary of state for international development (member of the Cabinet)

24

na

na

162 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Appendix 7.2

Table 7A.2

Source domain ‘journeys’ – literal and metaphoric uses Male Hain

Johnson

Total Meta avenue journey move obstacle path road route step trail Total

Female (1)

1 2 41 12 10 13 9 23 1

1 1 41 12 10 7 9 23 1

102

95

Metaphor total

Blears

Total Meta Total Meta 0 2 47 2 8 14 25 31 0

0 2 43 2 3 4 17 16 0

0 1 24 0 2 0 2 12 1

0 1 20 0 2 0 2 12 1

129

87

41

38

182

Table 7A.3

Short

Total Meta

Total Meta

Total Meta

0 0 6

0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0

1 0 35 2 11 10 3 57 0

1 0 31 2 11 9 1 57 0

0 0 1 1 0 8

2

119

112

0 0 6 0 0 2 4 0 0

0 0 2 0 0 1 4 0 0

12

7

119

Female (1)

Johnson

Total Meta

Metaphor total

Beckett

40

Male

Total

Harman

Source domain ‘light and dark’ – literal and metaphoric uses

Hain

bright dark gloom light shade shadow

Female (2)

1 2 1 9 1 9

1 2 1 2 1 1

23

8

Blears

Total Meta Total Meta

20

2 2 1 35 1 14

2 2 1 3 1 3

0 1 0 11 1 7

0 1 0 4 1 0

55

12

20

6

Female (2)

Harman

Beckett

Short

Total Meta

Total Meta

Total Meta

7

0 0 0 2 0 1

0 0 0 1 0 0

2 0 0 13 0 1

1 0 0 1 0 0

3

1

16

2 5

0 0 0 2 1 3

0 0 0 1 1 1

6

3

Jonathan Charteris-Black 163 Table 7A.4

Source domain ‘plants’ – literal and metaphoric uses Male Hain

Female (1)

Johnson

Total Meta

Blears

Total Meta Total Meta

Female (2)

Harman

Beckett

Short

Total Meta

Total Meta

Total Meta

blight fruit/ fruitful/ fruition reap grow nurture root plant seed

5 3

5 3

1 10

1 7

4 6

4 1

1 0

1 0

3 6

3 5

1 0

1 0

3 16 0 10 14 1

3 16 0 10 4 0

1 10 1 6 10 1

1 9 1 6 0 1

1 10 0 3 0 2

1 9 0 2 0 1

0 5 0 0 1 0

0 2 0 0 1 0

1 35 1 2 11 4

1 22 1 2 0 1

0 21 0 1 4 0

0 17 0 1 0 0

Total

51

40

40

26

26

18

7

4

63

35

27

19

Metaphor total

66

Table 7A.5

22

Source domain ‘health’ – literal and metaphoric uses Male Hain

Total Metaphor total

Female (1)

Johnson

Total Meta cure remedy heal diagnose healthy disease therapy plague

54

1 7 3 1 4 7 2 5

1 7 3 0 2 0 0 5

30

18

Blears

Total Meta Total Meta

32

1 6 0 1 7 1 0 0

1 6 0 0 6 1 0 0

0 7 0 4 0 8 4 1

0 5 0 0 0 0 0 1

16

14

24

6

Female (2)

Harman

Beckett

Total Meta

Total Meta

6

Short

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 3 0 0 5 59 0 0

0 2 0 0 1 0 0 0

0

0

67

3

Total Meta 2 1 5 1 3 2 0 0

0 1 5 1 2 0 0 0

14

9

12

164 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Notes 1 CSO = community service officer. 2 The other candidates for the post were Hilary Benn and Jon Cruddas. Hilary Benn was raised into political career as son of the well-known Labour Party politician Tony Benn. He has been in the Cabinet since 2004 as secretary of state for international development. Jon Cruddas has a political identity as a trade union member and activist fighting for protection for people at work. 3 This column shows the number of Labour MPs who supported the candidate. 4 This column shows the number of constituency Labour parties who supported the candidate.

References Beer, F.A. and C. De Landtsheer (eds). 2004. Metaphorical World Politics. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Cameron, D. 2003. ‘Gender and Language Ideologies’, in J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell, 447–67. Cameron, D. 2007. The Myth of Venus and Mars: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: the Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, J. 2006. Britain as a Container: Immigration Metaphors in the 2005 Election Campaign’. Discourse and Society, 17 (6): 563–82. Charteris-Black, J. 2007. The Communication of Leadership: the Design of Leadership Style. London and New York: Routledge. Charteris-Black, J. 2009. ‘Metaphor and Political Communication’, in A. Musolff and J. Zinken (eds) Metaphor in Discourse. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 97–115. Chilton, P. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge. Chilton, P. and M. Ilyin. 1993. ‘Metaphor in Political Discourse: the Case of the “Common European House”’. Discourse and Society, 4 (1): 7–31. Deignan, A. 1995. Collins Cobuild English Guides, Vol. 7 Metaphor. London: HarperCollins. Hines, C. 1999. ‘Rebaking the Pie: the WOMEN AS DESSERT metaphor’, in M. Bucholtz, A. C. Liang and L. A. Sutton (eds) Reinventing Identities: the Gendered Self in Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 145–63. Howe, N. 1988. ‘Metaphor in Contemporary American Political Discourse’. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 3 (2): 87–104. Jansen, S. C. and D. Sabo. 1994. ‘The Sport/War Metaphor: Hegemonic Masculinity, the Persian Gulf War, and the New World Order’. Sociology of Sport Journal, 11: 1–17. Koller, V. 2004. Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse: a Critical Cognitive Study. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jonathan Charteris-Black 165 Kövecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture and Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. 1996. Moral Politics. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason: a Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Musolff, A. 2001. ‘Cross-Language Metaphor: Parents and Children, Love, Marriage and Divorce in the European Family’, in J. Cotterill and A. Ife (eds) Language across Boundaries. London and New York: Continuum, 119–34. Musolff, A. 2003. ‘Metaphor Scenarios in Political Discourse in Britain and Germany’, in S. Geideck and L. W. Liebert (eds) Sinnformeln. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 259–82. Schon, D.A. 1993. ‘Generative Metaphor: a Perspective on Problem-Setting in Social Policy’, in A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 137–63. Semino, E. and M. Masci. 1996. ‘Politics If Football: Metaphor in the Discourse of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy’. Discourse and Society, 7: 243–69. Shaw, S. 2005. ‘Governed by the Rules?’ The Female Voice in Parliamentary Debates’, in J. Baxter (ed.) Speaking Out: the Female Voice in Public Contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Talbot, M. M. 2003. ‘Gender Stereotypes: Reproduction and Challenge’, in J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell, 468–86. Tannen, D. 1992. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. London: Virago Press. Thornborrow, J. 1993. ‘Metaphors of Security: a Comparison of Representation in Defence Discourse in Post-Cod-War France and Britain’. Discourse and Society, 4 (1): 99–119. Velasco-Sacristan, M. and P.A. Fuertes-Olivera. 2005. ‘Towards a Critical Cognitive– Pragmatic Approach to Gender Metaphors in Advertising English’. Journal of Pragmatics, 38: 1982–2002.

8 Sex Differences in the Usage of Spatial Metaphors: a Case Study of Political Language Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler University of Bremen

8.1

Introduction

In this chapter, we will address the issue as to whether there are differences in metaphor usage between men and women and between members of different political parties, and if so, whether these differences can be related to general differences in cognitive preferences. The chapter takes as its starting point the conceptual theory of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff and Turner 1987, Lakoff 1993), whose central claim is that metaphor is primarily a conceptual phenomenon – more specifically, a mental projection of a concrete domain of experience onto some more abstract domain such that the more abstract domain can be understood and reasoned about in terms of the more concrete. In this view, metaphorical language patterns are simply manifestations of such general mental projections (referred to as metaphorical mappings). There is, by now, encouraging evidence for a relationship between metaphorical language and the conceptual system, both psycholinguistic (Gibbs 2008) and corpus-linguistic (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2006). There is also some initial evidence that culture-specific differences in conceptualisation may correlate with differences in the use of linguistic metaphor (for example Boroditsky 2000, 2001, Chung et al. 2003, Stefanowitsch 2004, Casasanto 2005; but see Chen 2007 for a critical review of Boroditsky’s work). This evidence raises the possibility that cognitive differences between two groups of speakers in general may lead to differences in the usage of metaphorical language. This is an intriguing possibility, especially in the case of fundamental dimensions of personality, such as biological sex, which will be one focus of this study. 166

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 167

For the purpose of the investigation presented below, we will focus on a source domain for which there are well-documented sex differences: space. There is a substantial body of research that suggests that, on average, men perform better at such spatial cognitive tasks as mental rotation and the tracking of moving objects (see, for example, Linn and Petersen 1985, Geary 1998, Silverman and Eals 1992, Law et al. 1993, Masters and Sanders 1993). These differences seem to be stable across the lifespan and across cultures, so they are arguably language-independent. There is less agreement over the cause of these differences – broadly speaking, the differences could be genetic or they could be the result of differences in socialisation, although the fact that they remain stable over time seems to argue either for a genetic explanation or for an extremely general and deep-rooted social explanation. If, as the conceptual theory of metaphor claims, metaphorical language is mainly a reflection of phenomena at the conceptual level, then we should expect sex differences in cognitive preferences to be reflected in differences in the use of metaphorical language by men and women. Specifically, the following hypothesis seems to follow relatively directly: men use spatial metaphors more frequently than women do, that is, the token frequency of such metaphors will be higher in the speech of men than that of women. Of course, this is not the only hypothesis derivable from the psychological literature, but it is the simplest and most straightforward one. The reasoning behind it is as follows. As mentioned above, the conceptual theory of metaphor assumes that the function of metaphor is to make things that cannot be experienced directly understandable by relating them to things that can be experienced directly. If men have a better understanding of spatial aspects of experience than women, then it would make more sense for them to relate abstract domains to the spatial domain than it would for women. Consequently, they should make more frequent use of spatial metaphors, while women would make more frequent use of metaphors from domains in which they have a deeper understanding than men.1 Undoubtedly, the idea that cognitive preferences should be reflected in metaphorical language use requires a number of additional assumptions that warrant closer investigation. For example, it assumes that the difference in cognitive abilities between the sexes is substantial enough to affect metaphorical reasoning (which may not be the case), and it assumes that there are alternative metaphorical conceptualisations for all aspects of experience that are typically talked about in spatial terms (if there are no alternatives, then women would have to use spatial metaphors even if their understanding of spatial

168 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

experience differs substantially from that of men). This latter point is non-trivial, but a serious investigation of it is beyond the scope of this chapter. This chapter will test this idea on a selection of unscripted debates from the German Bundestag (the federal parliament). Quite apart from any interest in political language as such, the language of parliamentary debates is an ideal testing ground for sex differences in metaphorical language as it provides natural controls for demographic factors other than sex: male and female parliamentarians tend to have similar social and educational backgrounds, they have the same social and professional status, they are paid the same salaries, and so on. This does not mean that there are no differences between individual parliamentarians – their experiences will differ depending on their regional background as there are considerable cultural differences between individual German states, between the north and the south, between the former GDR (German Democratic Republic – ‘East Germany’) and the old Federal Republic of Germany (‘West Germany’), and so on. But these differences should be distributed more or less equally between the parties2 and sexes, so that they are not systematic confounding factors for the differences focused on in this chapter. This means that any linguistic differences between parliamentarians are likely to be due to stable differences in cognitive preferences (whether those are genetic, social or a mix of both). In a volume on metaphor, gender and politics, however, it seems fitting to treat political language not just as a way of levelling the metaphorical playing field. In addition to the points just mentioned, it seems worthwhile to investigate the relationship between spatial metaphors and political ideology in its own right. Political language has, of course, long been a focus of metaphor research in a range of linguistic frameworks (cf. the contributions in this volume, but also book-length treatments like Partington (2002), Musolff (2004), Charteris-Black (2005), among others). However, these studies have tended to focus on specific metaphors and imagery rather than general metaphorical mappings such as those underlying spatial metaphors. Of course, specific spatial metaphors have been studied extensively, for example the left–right distinction (Hinich and Munger 1997: 9ff.), metaphors of hierarchical relationships (Rasmussen and Brown 2005) and metaphors of imprisonment, displacement and liberation (Price-Chalita 1994). However, in the metaphorical conceptual systems studied by these authors (and others), space simply provides a frame for specific, culturally charged conceptions of reality (related to, for example, the human body, maps, freedom and so on).

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 169

Thus, it is difficult to formulate predictions about relationships between particular political ideologies and the use of spatial metaphors in general. There are, however, some general expectations that one can formulate. We can plausibly assume that parties differ substantially in their attitude towards dimensions such as liberty (personal freedom vs governmental control) and stability (progress and change vs strong conservative values and a stable order). The notion ‘liberty’ can be viewed as a continuum from complete freedom to complete control (by the government), and the notion ‘stability’ can be seen as a continuum from undergoing no change at all to undergoing complete change. Both liberty and stability are regularly talked about by means of spatial metaphors, thus we might expect differences in the use of such metaphors between parties which are located at opposing ends of these two dimensions. The German political landscape (as represented in the Bundestag) can be described in categories that are relatively familiar in a Western European parliamentary context. There are five parties: the conservative CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union [Christian Democratic Union]), the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands [Social Democratic Party of Germany]), the liberal FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei – Die Liberalen [Free Democratic Party – The Liberals]), the leftof-centre environmentalist party B90/Grüne (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen [Alliance 90/The Greens]) and the former state party of the German Democratic Republic, the socialist PDS (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus [Party of Democratic Socialism]). On the liberty dimension the FDP and the Green Party occupy the liberal end, while the SPD and the PDS occupy the opposing end (both are in favour of a strong welfare state). The CDU occupies the middle (it has a strong ethic of individual responsibility but not necessarily of individual liberties, as it aims for a broad adherence to a rather narrow range of lifestyles informed by its Christian heritage).3 On the conservative–progressive dimension (where conservatives prefer no change, and progressives prefer to see change effected), the CDU and the FDP occupy the conservative end, the Greens and the PDS occupy the progressive end, and the SPD could be placed in the middle (they were traditionally a progressive workers’ party, but their political programme is now rather similar to Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ or the Democratic Party of the USA). With regard to metaphor use we could plausibly formulate two expectations: on the one hand, since members of liberal parties (that is, FDP and Greens) are more concerned with personal freedom, they should use

170 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

more spatial metaphors than politicians who value strong state control (that is, SPD and PDS), because freedom is often metaphorically described as the ability to move. On the other hand, people who favour change over stability, thus, members of progressive parties (that is, Greens or PDS), should use more (dynamic) spatial metaphors than conservatives (that is, CDU and FDP) on the basis that change is often described as motion. However, these expectations should be seen more as a guideline for an exploratory analysis than as predictions in the strict sense. Before the specific corpus-linguistic procedures used in this chapter are described in detail, a few general remarks about corpus-based investigations of metaphor may be in order. The study of metaphor on the basis of quantitative corpus-based methods is a relatively recent phenomenon (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2006). One of the main reasons for this is the fact that metaphor, in the cognitive linguistics tradition that dominates metaphor research today, is seen as a conceptual phenomenon that is manifested in language, but is not tied to language, let alone particular lexical items. However, corpora, especially once they reach a certain size, can only feasibly be accessed via word forms, and this makes it difficult to study phenomena that are not tied to lexical items. Two general approaches have been taken (cf. Stefanowitsch (2006a) for a more detailed discussion): first, one can concordance vocabulary from the source domain of the metaphor under investigation (a technique first suggested by Deignan (1999) and Partington (1998), see also Stefanowitsch (2005)), or one can concordance vocabulary from the target domain (as proposed by Stefanowitsch (2004) and (2006b)). Both approaches face two problems: first, how to determine which words to select for concordancing (obviously, one can rarely include all items from a given source or target domain), and, second, how to separate the metaphorical uses from the literal ones. In this study, the distinction between literal and metaphorical language is relatively straightforward. We concordanced sets of spatial nouns, verbs and prepositions (see further Section 8.2.1 below) and coded the hits as literal if the truth conditions required reference to an actual location or change of location of a concrete object. If this was not the case, hits were coded as metaphorical. Take the following examples from the corpus: (1) Natürlich werden auch die Schiffe der Meyer-Werft weiterhin über die Ems das Meer erreichen können. Of course, the Meyer shipyard’s ships, too, will continue to be able to reach the open sea via the River Ems.

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 171

(2) Er hat vorgeschlagen, so etwas auf marktwirtschaftlicher Basis, nämlich über Konzessionen, zu erreichen. He has suggested to reach this goal on the basis of economic principles, namely via quotas. Both examples use the motion verb ‘erreichen’ [reach] in the same construction, ‘X über Y erreichen’ [reach X via Y]. The difference is that (1) is a description of an actual motion along an actual path, in this case a river on which ships travel. In order for this sentence to be true it must be the case that ships can move from one location (the shipyard) to another (the open sea) along a series of points in space (the River Ems). In contrast, (2) is a description of a change of states from one situation to another by a particular instrument of economic policy. In order for this sentence to be true, none of the participants have to change their location in space. Therefore, (1) was coded as literal and (2) was coded as metaphorical. As this example shows, the distinction between literal and metaphorical language is relatively clear-cut in the case of a basic experiential domain like space, but in more abstract domains it can become quite a complex task involving many difficult decisions and unclear cases (Steen 2007, Goschler 2007). But even in the spatial domain the identification of metaphors in the corpus can only be achieved by manual inspection of hundreds, if not thousands, of concordance lines and is hence a very time-consuming process, which in turn places additional constraints on the first problem mentioned above: not only is it difficult to find all words that would have to be included in a sample of source or target domain vocabulary, but the sample also has to have a manageable size. In this chapter, we kept the sample size sufficiently small by limiting the size of the corpus and by limiting our research to spatial nouns and verbs that occurred at least five times in the corpus (the precise sets of words investigated are given below). In the case of prepositions, which, as function words, are extremely frequent, we settled on a set of basic spatial prepositions with a low-to-medium frequency as discussed further in Section 8.2.1 below. Clearly, the fact that we investigated limited sets of spatial expressions rather than exhaustively analysing all spatial language in the corpus may limit the scope of our results, a point that must be kept in mind when interpreting the results.

172 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

8.2 8.2.1

Corpus Analysis 1: metaphor usage by party Aims and method

This section investigates the expectations about the relationship between political ideology and the use of spatial metaphors. Given the expectations formulated above, we might see a distinction between the Liberal Democrats (FDP) and the relatively liberal Greens (B90) on the one hand, and the Social Democrats and the Socialists, who favour a strong state, on the other, with the Christian Democrats somewhere in the middle – due to their different ideals of liberty there could be an increased use of spatial metaphors for the more liberal parties because liberty is often metaphorically described as the ability to move without constraints. Alternatively (or additionally), we also might see a conservative/progressive distinction, where the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and Free Democrats (FDP) would use comparatively fewer spatial metaphors than the progressive Greens (B90) and Socialists (PDS), with the Social Democrats (SPD) somewhere in the middle, because members of the progressive parties should in general be more concerned about change; and since change is also often conceptualised as motion, it seems plausible to assume that this could be reflected in a more frequent use of spatial metaphors. The corpus used for this study consists of three transcripts (with a total of 75,000 words) drawn from the official transcripts of the debates in the German Bundestag.4 Arguably, 75,000 words is not much, but spatial metaphors are extremely frequent and an increase in corpus size would quickly increase the number of data points beyond that which can be reasonably coded manually (also, as Ahrens 2006 shows, even small corpora can yield solid results given an appropriately formulated research question). The transcripts provided on the webpage of the German Bundestag indicate for each speaker their full name and either their party affiliation or their political function (which allows their party affiliation to be recovered). Three transcripts were selected arbitrarily and coded for spatial metaphors. As it is unrealistic to extract spatial metaphors exhaustively, we decided to focus on a constrained set of spatial nouns, verbs and prepositions. First, we selected all nouns that referred to some aspect of space, including locations, motion, distances and spatial configurations, and that occurred at least five times in the corpus. These were (in descending order of their frequency in our corpus): ‘Bereich’ [region/ area], ‘Weg’ [way], ‘Ziel’ [goal/target], ‘Lage’ [position], ‘Seite’

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 173

[side], ‘Schritt’ [step], ‘Raum’ [space/room], ‘Stelle’ [place], ‘Höhe’ [height], ‘Reihe’ [row], ‘Position’ [position], ‘Grenze’ [border/ boundary], ‘Ebene’ [level], ‘Lücke’ [gap], ‘Richtung’ [direction], ‘Linie’ [line], ‘Stand’ [stand], ‘Stellung’ [position/configuration] and ‘Mitte’ [middle]. The frequency of these nouns in the corpus ranged from 5 to 123. Next, we selected all spatial verbs (motion verbs and position verbs) that occurred at least five times. These were (in descending order of frequency): ‘gehen’ [go], ‘kommen’ [come], ‘liegen’ [lie], ‘legen’ [lay], ‘erreichen’ [reach (arrive at)], ‘stellen’ [stand (put)], ‘laufen’ [walk/run] and ‘stehen’ [stand]. The frequency of these verbs in the corpus ranged from 8 to 198. Finally, we selected six spatial prepositions (or rather, five prepositions and one preposition pair) of low-to-medium frequency, namely ‘unter’ [under, beneath, below], ‘über’ [over, above], ‘vor’ [in front of], ‘von–bis’ [from–to], ‘neben’ [next to] and ‘hinter’ [behind]. The frequency of these prepositions in the corpus ranged from 7 to 65. Other obvious candidates, such as ‘in’ [in], ‘aus’ [out of], ‘bei’ [at] and so on, were not selected, because their extremely high frequency would have made the annotation too time-consuming for a single researcher. All occurrences of the words on these three lists (including all inflectional forms) were identified in the corpus and coded for whether they were used literally or metaphorically. Due to the relatively abstract nature of the subject matter of parliamentary debates, the overwhelming majority of all occurrences was metaphorical (only 7.6 per cent of the nouns, 5.8 per cent of the verbs and 3.6 per cent of the prepositions were literal usages). Finally, the frequency of all metaphorical uses was summed up by word class and by party. Selecting metaphorical expressions from three different word classes was primarily intended to ensure, to a certain extent, representative results, but, in a cognitive linguistic framework, it allows us to make some additional predictions. In cognitive grammar, word classes are assumed to be meaningful categories, with nouns referring to things (defined as ‘regions in some domain of conceptual space’, Langacker 1987: 494), verbs referring to processes, and prepositions (among other word classes) referring to atemporal relations (Langacker 1987: 183ff.), prototypically spatial ones. Thus, spatial prepositions are the word class that encodes spatial relations most directly, while spatial nouns reify such relations and spatial verbs refer to processes unfolding in space (and, of course, time). Additionally, note that spatial nouns and

174 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

verbs typically encode non-spatial meanings in addition to the spatial one. Verbs (at least in Germanic languages, cf. Talmy 1985) normally encode a particular manner of motion or position (for example, ‘laufen’ [walk] means something like MOVE ON FOOT and ‘stehen’ [stand] means something like REST ON FOOT). Nouns are very diverse in the additional meanings they might encode: if they are derived from a verb, such as ‘Schritt’ [step/pace] from ‘schreiten’ [pace], then they include the manner component of that verb, but even if they refer to aspects of space directly, they carry additional semantic information: for example, ‘Ziel’ [goal] refers not only to the end point of some trajectory (the spatial component), but also to the fact that someone is intentionally trying to reach this end point (otherwise it would not be a goal, but simply an end point); similarly, ‘Grenze’ [border] refers not only to the contact point between two regions of space (the spatial component), but also carries the connotation that the two regions are qualitatively different, that the border may be difficult to pass, and so on. From these considerations, it follows that the predicted effects should emerge most strongly with the prepositions for both gender and political ideology, since these are most clearly and unambiguously associated with spatial concepts. 8.2.2

Results

The results for the metaphorical uses of the nouns are shown in Table 8.1 with the observed frequencies in the first line and the expected frequencies in parentheses in the line below. The Greens (B90) and the Christian Democrats (CDU) use fewer spatial metaphorical nouns than expected5 and the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Liberals (FDP) use more; there is no difference for the Socialists (PDS). The differences between the parties are highly significant (χ2 = 21.48 (df = 4), p < 0.001; the overall effect is due to all chi-square components except that of the PDS).

Table 8.1

Metaphorical uses of nouns

Metaphors No. of words

PDS

Greens

SPD

FDP

CDU

Total

24 (24.57)

42 (58.67)

237 (200.81)

46 (34.22)

123 (153.73)

472

3,893

9,298

31,822

5,422

24,362

74,797

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 175

As Table 8.2 shows, the pattern is different for the verbs. The Socialists (PDS), the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats (CDU) use fewer metaphors, while the Greens (B90) and the Liberals (FDP) use more. The differences between the parties are highly significant (χ2 = 19.91 (df = 4), p < 0.001), but the only two components that contribute significantly to the overall effect are those of the Greens and the Liberals. Table 8.2

Metaphorical uses of verbs

Metaphors No. of words

PDS

B90

SPD

FDP

CDU

Total

19 (27.01)

84 (64.52)

210 (220.81)

56 (37.62)

150 (169.04)

519

3,893

9,298

31,822

5,422

24,362

74,797

As Table 8.3 shows, there are only very small differences between the parties for the prepositions, and these differences are not significant (χ2 = 5.35 (df = 4), p = 0.25). Table 8.3

Metaphorical uses of prepositions PDS

B90

SPD

FDP

CDU

Metaphors

10 (9.68)

23 (23.12)

78 (79.13)

6 (13.48)

69 (60.58)

186

No. of words

3,893

9,298

31,822

5,422

24,362

74,797

8.2.3

Total

Discussion

It seems that there is very little in terms of general patterns that can be said about the relationship between spatial metaphors and political affiliation. Although the Liberals (FDP) used consistently more nominal and verbal spatial metaphors, for the other parties the patterns are reversed for nouns as compared to verbs. In the case of prepositions, where the strongest effect was expected, none of the parties differ significantly from chance. At best, then, one could tentatively conclude that the use of spatial metaphors is linked to the ideology of liberalness and that the progressive–conservative distinction does not play an important role, but overall it seems that there are no strong associations at all between political affiliation and the use of spatial metaphors.

176 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

8.3 8.3.1

Corpus Analysis 2: metaphor usage by gender Aims and method

This section investigates the prediction about the relationship between sex and the use of spatial metaphors. The corpus and the data were the same as in Corpus Analysis 1. Unlike the party affiliation, the sex of the speakers is not given in the official transcripts, so it was determined on the basis of speaker’s first names. Where a first name had an unclear or ambiguous sex reference, the website of the German Bundestag was checked to determine the sex of the speaker on the basis of pictures given on the individual web pages of the members of parliament. Finally, the frequency of all metaphorical uses was determined by word class and by speaker sex on the basis of the same word lists used in Corpus Analysis 1. 8.3.2

Results

The results for the metaphorical uses of the nouns are shown in Table 8.4. Contrary to the prediction, men use fewer spatial metaphorical nouns than expected and women use more; however, the differences are small and statistically not significant (χ2 = 1.16 (df = 1), p = 0.28, n.s.). Table 8.4

Metaphorical uses of nouns

Metaphors No. of words

Female

Male

Total

230 (218.32)

242 (253.68)

472

34,596

40,201

74,797

As Table 8.5 shows, the pattern seen with spatial nouns is reversed for spatial verbs, with men using more metaphorical spatial verbs than expected and the women using fewer, exactly as predicted; however, again, the differences are small and not significant (χ2 = 1.13 (df = 1), p = 0.29, n.s). Table 8.5

Metaphorical uses of verbs

Metaphors No. of words

Female

Male

Total

228 (240.05)

291 (278.95)

519

34,596

40,201

74,797

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 177

As Table 8.6 shows, the pattern is also as predicted for the prepositions, and here, the sex differences are actually significant (χ2 = 5.56 (df = 1), p < 0.05). 8.3.3

Discussion

The results of this analysis can only be very cautiously interpreted as providing some initial support for the hypothesis investigated in this section. Table 8.6

Metaphorical uses of prepositions Female

Male

Total

Metaphors

70 (86.03)

116 (99.97)

186

No. of words

34,596

40,201

74,797

Strictly speaking, we have to conclude that the results are not clear enough to allow us to reject the null hypothesis. However, under a more generous interpretation of our results we could point to the fact that men use more spatial metaphors than women for two out of the three word classes (even though in one case this difference is not significant), and that men use more metaphors than women in the only part of the analysis that yielded statistically significant results. In addition, this statistically significant difference was found with prepositions, the word class that was predicted to show any putative differences most clearly.

8.4

General discussion

The two case studies presented here have yielded a mixed picture. While it would certainly be premature to discard the idea that political ideologies and/or gender could shape usage preferences for basic spatial metaphors, the evidence for such an influence is, at present, rather weak. In the case of political ideology, although there were significant results for two of the three word classes, those results varied across word classes for all parties except for the Liberals. Even though the Liberal Party showed an above-chance usage of basic spatial metaphors in accordance with the expectations formulated in the introduction, this can be seen as relatively weak evidence, if any. First, it is offset by the fact that, for all other parties, results deviated from the expected direction

178 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

in at least one of the three word classes and second, by the fact that there was no effect for prepositions, the word class where an effect should be most clearly visible. Furthermore, there was no consistent significant association between the Green Party and the use of spatial metaphors, even though the party is linked to liberalness as well as progressiveness and the effect should have been particularly strong according to the expectations we formulated. Thus, for the time being it seems most plausible to regard the significant result for the Liberals as a fluke and to assume that there is no relationship between political ideology and the use of general spatial metaphors. This null result may be due to the fact that spatial metaphors are too basic to the structure of language and/or cognition to be affected significantly by relatively superficial aspects of identity such as political world view. It may also be due to the fact that the political ideologies of the parties and their members are too complex to be meaningfully reduced to the dimensions we have suggested in this study. Finally, the absence of a clear result may be due to the sampling technique used to extract the metaphors: it is possible that a more exhaustive sample of spatial terms might lead to different results. It should be kept in mind, however, that a range of relatively frequent words was sampled here in the case of nouns and verbs, which nevertheless yielded conflicting results. In the case of prepositions, a larger set of words might allow more insight into usage patterns. Finally, it is possible that a more fine-grained categorisation of spatial metaphors, for example into dynamic and static ones, might uncover more systematic differences. The results for the influence of sex on usage preferences concerning spatial metaphors are just as weak as in the case of political ideology, but they are slightly clearer in terms of their direction. In two out of the three word classes, there was an effect in the predicted direction; however, this effect was significant only for prepositions. Although prepositions are the word class for which the effect was expected to be strongest, the fact that it is the only word class to yield any significant results in this study should make us wary of taking the results of this study as more than a first hint that they may, in fact, be representative of a larger pattern of usage differences. Thus, as with political ideology, the relatively weak effect of sex on the usage patterns could be due to the sampling technique used in this study and that a more exhaustive sample, or one coded in a way that would differentiate between different kinds of spatial metaphors, would yield clearer differences between men and women. Alternatively, one reason for the relatively weak effect might be found in the difference between biological sex and cultural gender. This chapter

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 179

was concerned with the biological difference between men and women rather than any cultural differences between masculine and feminine identities. However, we believe that there are good reasons to focus on sex rather than gender for studies such as this one: first, the prediction was based on studies showing cognitive differences between biological sexes, not between cultural genders, and second, biological sex does not need to be operationalised in any indirect way but can be determined easily and reliably for all subjects in the corpus. Still, focusing on sex rather than gender may have predetermined the result to a certain extent: it may well be the case that the superior spatial cognition that has been observed in men as opposed to women is due largely to social factors – none of the studies cited above controls for the difference between sex and gender and thus gender may have been a confounding variable (for example, subjects may simply have been brought up according to relatively traditional social gender roles). In this case, such differences might be expected to disappear in a relatively homogeneous group such as members of parliament. This possibility could be explored further by splitting up subjects in some less specialised corpus according to their degree of identification with particular gender roles, or by looking at texts from cultures or periods where gender roles and sex correlate more closely than in modern Western societies. Of course, the possibility must be considered that usage patterns of general metaphorical mappings, such as the spatial metaphors investigated here, are simply not affected by differences in cognitive preferences such as the ones observed for spatial cognition. The differences between the sexes might simply be too small to affect basic aspects of language usage or even basic behavioural traits in general. The differences in spatial cognition on which the predictions were based here emerge only under laboratory conditions and even there, they are relatively small compared to the variation within sexes. Thus, one could assume that even if men perform better in spatial tasks, women’s abilities might still be well above the level required for structuring abstract concepts via spatial concepts, especially since most of the spatial metaphors we found in the corpus are based on rather simple spatial relations like vertical and horizontal orientation, distance, location and motion. In this case, an investigation of more specific metaphorical patterns that tie in with differences in socialisation rather than cognitive preferences might yield interesting results. Take the preposition ‘unter’ [under], the preposition for which the differences between men and women emerged most clearly in our study. There are four major metaphors in

180 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

which unter participates: (i) quantity metaphors (MORE IS UP), for example ‘über fünfzig Prozent’ [over fifty per cent], (ii) categorisation metaphors (A CATEGORY IS ABOVE ITS MEMBERS), for example ‘unter dem Namen’ [under the name]; (iii) control metaphors (CONTROL IS UP), for example ‘unter der derzeitigen Regierung’ [under the current government], (iv) situation metaphors (A SITUATION IS ABOVE THE PEOPLE AFFECTED BY IT), for example ‘unter dem Schutz’ [under the protection] or ‘unter Druck’ [under pressure]. It is plausible that men and women might differ, due to differences in their stereotypical gender roles, with respect to the importance they attribute to control or the way they view situations and their effects on people. In our corpus, the proportions of these metaphors in the usage of men and women do not differ, although it approaches significance for the situation metaphors, which are used slightly more frequently by men than by women. This suggests that if the differences that we observed in the usage frequency of spatial prepositions by men and women can be substantiated in a larger study, they would, for the most part, not be due to differences in the usage of specific metaphors but to a general preference for spatial metaphors by men. The absence of clear results could also be due to the fact that, although cognitive differences between men and women would be large and stable enough to affect usage patterns in principle, these effects remain invisible because alternative metaphorical systems are simply not available in many cases. Take the metaphor TIME IS SPACE: speakers could not avoid using this metaphor even if they wanted to, as most aspects of time simply cannot be talked about without resorting to this metaphor. Finally, metaphorical language may be too conventionalised to be shaped by cognitive preferences: spatial metaphors are among the most general metaphorical systems in language and they are instantiated by highly frequent linguistic expressions that may, for the most part, not be transparent enough to respond to differences in cognitive preferences. Certainly, one set of negative (or at least extremely tenuous) results should not lead us to accept this possibility prematurely, but if one contrasts the weak statistical effects found here with the relatively strong effects found, for example, across cultures with the same language (cf. Wulff et al. 2007) or different languages (cf. Stefanowitsch 2004), it is an option that must be taken seriously.

Notes 1 For example, it has been argued that women have a cognitive advantage over men in the domain of social relationships – they have more intimate social relationships and are generally more concerned about them, they are better

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 181

2

3

4 5

at reading facial expressions and body language and should thus be able to analyse social relations better than men. This advantage might lead women to use more metaphors based on social relations, although it should be kept in mind that differences between men and women in social cognition, while significant, are much smaller than differences in the ability to manipulate three-dimensional objects (Pinker 2002: 345; Blum 1997; Geary 1998; Halpern 2000; Kimura 1999), so any effect on metaphorical language use should also be smaller. A caveat may be in order with respect to the PDS (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus – ‘Party of Democratic Socialism’), the former state party of the GDR (see below), whose members are currently still primarily from the former GDR. We have focused on two ideological dimensions that we consider to be particularly relevant in the context of this study as their effects should be observable in the domain of spatial language. A more detailed discussion of the German political landscape (in German) can be found in Blank and Schubert (2007). The transcripts of all Bundestag debates since 1996 are available online as plain text files at www.bundestag.de/bic/plenarprotokolle. By ‘expected’ frequencies we mean the chance frequencies computed by the standard statistical procedure. What is relevant for the discussion, then, is the difference between the chance frequencies and the actually observed frequencies.

References Ahrens, K. 2006. ‘Using a Small Corpus to Test Linguistic Hypotheses: Evaluating “People” in the State of the Union Addresses’. International Journal of Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing, 11: 377–92. Blank, F. and K. Schubert (eds). 2007. Parteien. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Blum, D. 1997. Sex on the Brain: the Biological Differences between Men and Women. New York: Viking. Boroditsky, L. 2000. ‘Metaphoric Structuring: Understanding Time through Spatial Metaphors’. Cognition, 75: 1–28. Boroditsky, L. 2001. ‘Does Language Shape Thought? Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conceptions of Time’. Cognitive Psychology, 43: 1–22. Casasanto, D. 2005. ‘Perceptual Foundations of Abstract Thought’. Doctoral thesis, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT. Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: the Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chen, J.-Y. 2007. ‘Do Chinese and English Speakers’ Think about Time Differently? Failure of Replicating of Boroditsky (2001)’. Cognition, 104: 427–36. Chung, S.F., K. Ahrens and C.-R. Huang. 2003. ‘ECONOMY IS A PERSON: a Chinese–English Corpora and Ontological-Based Comparison Using the Conceptual Mapping Model’. Proceedings of the ROC Computational Linguistics Conference, XV, National Tsing-Hwa University, Taiwan, 87–110. Deignan, A. 1999. ‘Corpus-Based Research into Metaphor’, in L. Cameron and G.D. Low (eds) Researching and Applying Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 177–99.

182 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Geary, D.C. 1998. Male, Female. The Evolution of Human Sex Differences. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Gibbs, Raymond W. 2008. The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goschler, J. 2007. ‘Is this a Metaphor? On the Difficult Task of Identifying Metaphor in Scientific Discourse’. Culture, Language and Representation, 5: 27–41. Halpern, D. 2000. Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, 3rd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hinich, M.J. and M.C. Munger. 1997. Analytical Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kimura, D. 1999. Sex and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Lakoff, G. 1993. ‘The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor’, in A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Turner. 1989. More than Cool Reason. A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Law, D.J., J.W. Pellegrino and E.B. Hunt. 1993. ‘Comparing the Tortoise and the Hare: Gender Differences and Experience in Dynamic Spatial Reasoning Tasks’. Psychological Science, 4: 35–40. Linn, M.C. and A.C. Petersen. 1985. ‘Emergence and Characterization of Sex Differences in Spatial Ability: a Meta-Analysis’. Child Development, 56: 1479–98. Masters, M.S. and B. Sanders. 1993. ‘Is the Gender Difference in Mental Rotation Disappearing?’ Behavior Genetics, 23: 337–41. Musolff, A. 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Partington, A. 1998. Patterns and Meanings: Using Corpora for English Language Research and Teaching. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. Partington, A. 2002. The Linguistics of Political Argument: the Spin-Doctor and the Wolf-Pack at the White House. London: Routledge. Pinker, S. 2002. The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking. Price-Chalita, P. 1994. ‘Spatial Metaphor and the Politics of Empowerment: Mapping a Place for Feminism and Postmodernism in Geography?’ Antipode, 26: 236–54. Rasmussen, C. and M. Brown. 2005. ‘The Body Politic as Spatial Metaphor’. Citizenship Studies, 9: 469–84. Silverman, I. and M. Eals. 1992. ‘Sex Differences in Spatial Abilities: Evolutionary Theory and Data’, in J. Barkow, L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (eds) The Adapted Mind. Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steen, G. 2007. ‘Finding Metaphor in Discourse: Pragglejaz and Beyond’. Language, Culture and Representation, 5: 9–25. Stefanowitsch, A. 2004. ‘HAPPINESS in English and German: a MetaphoricalPattern Analysis’, in M. Achard and S. Kemmer (eds) Language, Culture, and Mind. Stanford: CSLI.

Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler 183 Stefanowitsch, A. 2005. ‘The Function of Metaphor: Developing a Corpus-based Perspective’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 10: 161–98. Stefanowitsch, A. 2006a. ‘Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy’, in A. Stefanowitsch and S.T. Gries (eds) Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Stefanowitsch, A. 2006b. ‘Words and their Metaphors: a Corpus-Based Approach’, in A. Stefanowitsch and S.T. Gries (eds) Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Stefanowitsch, A. and S.T. Gries (eds) 2006. Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Talmy, L. 1985. ‘Lexicalization Patterns. Semantic Structure in Lexical Form’, in T. Shopen (ed.) Language Typology and Syntactic Description, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wulff, S., A. Stefanowitsch and S.T. Gries. 2007. ‘Brutal Brits and Persuasive Americans. Variety-Specific Meaning Construction in the into-Causative’, in G. Radden, K.-M. Köpcke, T. Berg and P. Siemund (eds) Aspects of Meaning Construction. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

9 Conceptual Metaphors of Family in Political Debates in the USA Karen L. Adams Arizona State University

9.1

Introduction

‘Family’ is an important part of any campaign for office in the United States, and candidates for office can expect discourse surrounding the campaign and their term in office to include mention of their own family. In addition, policies affecting the family and views on the nature of family are also central to political ideology. See, for example, Lakoff (2002) and Cienki (2005). In the campaign process, debate-type events are part of the canonical campaign landscape in the United States, forming an important part of what the voting public uses for evaluating candidates. Candidates participating in these debates make numerous references to their own families and to families in general. This study will compare conceptual metaphors associated with reference to the candidates’ own family members and consider possible differences in usage related to office, political party and gender. Previous studies of candidates’ family representations in political rhetoric in the USA and elsewhere have addressed the presence of family in advertising images, general reference to family members, and testimonials by them (Fox 1997, Jamieson 1992, Kaid and Johnston 2001, Zoonen 2000). Adams (2008) analysed the type and frequency of references to candidates’ family members as part of the rhetorical strategies of candidates. Among the large number of terms available to refer to family members from different generations and distinguished by blood or marriage, the candidates’ strategies were found to be typically restricted to mentions of nuclear family. This study focuses on three conceptual metaphors attached to these nuclear family references. Charteris-Black (2004) argues that it is important to interpret linguistic and conceptual metaphors within the context of use. By focusing on televised debates, 184

Karen L. Adams 185

this project will provide a better understanding of the range of possible metaphors for persuasive and ideological ends in the context of faceto-face disputes with large audiences.

9.2

Methodology

The database for this study consists of a corpus of 104 debate forums among candidates running for all levels of political offices in the USA. Most debates were broadcast on national, statewide and local TV stations. A small number appeared on cable networks. All were intended to reach a broad audience.1 This corpus was collected to create a more balanced view of candidates for political office and of the genre as a whole because many, if not most, studies of political debates in the USA focus only on national-level offices, in particular those for presidential and vice presidential races (for example Dailey et al. 2008). This emphasis on national levels is problematic if the goal is to understand the various constructions of debates by candidates of different backgrounds. Fewer women run for and are elected to the highest levels of office, and in nationwide debates, fewer inexperienced candidates or candidates from third parties are likely to get the opportunity to debate with the major party candidates. The debates in this corpus include races for local and statewide offices in addition to presidential and vice presidential races and United States House of Representatives and Senate races. Moreover, debates that included one, two or more women candidates were collected along with those with only male candidates to balance gendered perspectives. Debates with third-party candidates were also included to provide alternatives to the Democrat and Republican perspectives. The debates represent the major regions of the United States and cover 21 of the 50 states. They include 20 presidential and vice presidential races; one of these debates is among third-party vice presidential candidates, five others also have independent and third-party candidates. One is a Republican primary and four are Democrat primaries, three of which have a female candidate, and two vice presidential races have female candidates. The 37 US Senate and House races are drawn from 18 different states. Twenty-two of the 37 debates are for races for the House of Representatives and the rest are for the Senate. Six of the races are primaries for the major parties. There are 29 races for statewide offices including treasurer, attorney general, governor, and state house and senate from 12 different states. At the local level, there are 18 debates for city councils, mayoral offices, county legislative

186 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 9.1

Female and male candidates per debate in different types of races President, vice president

US Senate, US House

Statewide offices

Local offices

Total

Female

7% (5/71)

40% (39/98)

42% (38/91)

21% (10/47)

30% (92/307)

Male

93% (66/71)

60% (59/98)

58% (53/91)

79% (37/47)

70% 215/307)

districts, county sheriffs, county tax collectors, community college trustee boards and school boards drawn from races in major metropolitan areas in Arizona, Connecticut, New York and Texas. Table 9.1 provides a breakdown for the number of female and male candidates in each debate for the different level of races.2 Since the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, tracks women elected for public office and appointed to cabinet and cabinetlevel positions in the US executive branch, it is possible to see how balanced the representation of male and female candidates is in these debates. Of the candidates for the local offices, 79 per cent are men and 21 per cent women. While the numbers seem low for women candidates, the local races took place in major metropolitan areas such as Buffalo, El Paso, Hartford and Phoenix where according to CAWP (2008) only 15.7 per cent of the mayors are women. Thus, the number closely parallels elected office holders in these areas. In the statewide races, 42 per cent of the candidates are women, slightly less than double the elected representatives for state legislatures before the 2008 elections (CAWP 2008). At the US Congressional level, 40 per cent of the candidates are women, well over double the current number of actual office holders which CAWP reports before the 2008 races as 16 per cent of the US Senate and 16.5 per cent of the House of Representatives. CAWP (2008) notes that only 12 women have ever run for the presidency of the USA with 4 of these being third-party candidates, and only 5 have run for the vice presidency, with 2 being third-party candidates.3 The percentage of third-party, independent and non-partisan candidates in the debates for the presidency and vice presidency is 11 per cent (8/71) and all are male candidates. For the US Congressional races it is 17 per cent (17/98), 17 per cent of the male candidates and 18 per cent of the female candidates. At the statewide level, they are 17.5 per cent (16/91) of the total number of candidates, 8 per cent of the females and 24.5 per cent of the males. The debate participants in the local level

Karen L. Adams 187

of races are reversed in their affiliations as overall only 21.2 per cent (10/47) of the candidates are identified as Democrats or Republicans; all the rest but one (78.8 per cent) are part of non-partisan races or have no party specified. Of these debates, a few local and state ones are 10–15 minutes long; however, the majority run 30 minutes to 2 hours. The debates cover a 28-year period starting in 1980 (for one presidential debate); the majority have occurred within the last 18 years. There can be no truly random representative sample of debates as thousands occur during each campaign cycle, but this corpus is much more broadly representative than most and can provide us with suggestive usages. As Table 9.2 shows, the word count of the debate corpus is over 1 million words. Table 9.2

Word count for types of debates (rounded to the nearest 10)

Word count

President, vice president

US Senate, US House

Statewide offices

Local offices

Total

324,220

357,640

269,580

98,880

1,050,320

The list of terms searched in the corpus were a standard set of kinship terms including informal and formal ones, as well as terms for marital status, the names of well-known partners of candidates, and terms for children referred to by grade level and age. ‘MonoConc’ software (Barlow 1998) was used for rapid and consistent searches of example morphemes, words and phrases. For each item, the examples that referred to the candidates’ families were separated from those with general reference to family roles.4 Each reference to a family member in a particular debate turn was examined including preceding and following turns in order to understand the context of its use. Multiple readings were involved as well as comparisons to family references elsewhere in the debate and among debates. More than one family member or more than one type of marital status could be related to the same conceptual metaphor or to different ones. Sometimes a candidate provided the lexical item characterising the metaphor, and other times the metaphor was inferred from consideration of preceding and following text. For example, in the case of the conceptual metaphor A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY, an utterance will be found usually in an introduction or opening statement referring to either a candidate’s marital state or to a husband, wife or child. This can be seen in Example (1) in a moderator’s introduction to a

188 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

1996 Colorado US House of Representatives debate between Diana DeGette (Democrat) and Joe Rogers (Republican): (1) Moderator: … Joe Rogers is also an attorney. He is the father of two children … (1996, 1st District, US House of Representatives, Colorado) In cases like this, what matters is that this utterance was preceded by other factors considered to be general experience for running for office. It is rarer in the debates that a candidate or moderator will specifically use a term related to mastery with reference to the nuclear family as is found in Example (2): (2) Mr. Sisolak: Thank you. I don’t think being a telemarketer qualifies me, if that’s what you’re asking, to be a state senator. Uh, I have been in the forefront in advocating reform in telemarketing … Uh, I think what qualifies me to be a state senator is the fact that I’m a parent, I’m a husband, and the son of 2 senior citizens that live in Las Vegas … (Steve Sisolak, 1996, Democrat, 5th District, State Senate, Nevada) Not surprisingly, certain sections of the debates encourage expressions of specific conceptual metaphors related to family. Opening and closing statements where candidates focus on their qualifications may often lead to the metaphor A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY as part of a series of qualifications. However, that does not mean that metaphors are limited to certain positions within the debate, or that each metaphor is expressed alone. Indeed more than one metaphor may be seen in a single utterance about family or several utterances in a row about family may contain two or three. So for example, A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY may also be joined with A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS A BOON as when in an opening statement a Republican male candidate says the following (3) among a list of items qualifying him to run for and hold office: (3) … I have been fortunate to have been part of a loving family … (Edward Pease, 1996, Republican, 7th District, US House of Representatives, Indiana)5

9.3

Results

The three conceptual metaphors discussed here in depth account for a prominent number of the mention of candidates’ families in the

Karen L. Adams 189

debates, ranging from 40 to 67 per cent of the total mentions of family made by participants. The campaigns are themselves characterised by the metaphor of an athletic contest. The campaign is referred to as a ‘race’ and the candidates ‘run’ for office with a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’ at the end. A candidate may also talk about ‘championing’ a cause. In the debates themselves, the moderators may use phrases such as the ‘opponents will face off’ or ‘square off’. So the notions of training and skill necessary to ‘enter’, ‘run’ and ‘win a race’ are to be expected. The metaphors to be discussed in depth in this chapter are listed in Table 9.3. Table 9.3

Conceptual metaphors

A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY A NATIVE BIRTH IS MASTERY A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS A BOON NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CO-CANDIDATES NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CANDIDATES

NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CO-CAMPAIGNERS NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CO-PUBLIC SERVANTS NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CO-STRATEGISTS

9.3.1

A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY

The conceptual metaphors, A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY and A NATIVE BIRTH IS MASTERY, can be considered as core ones as they may be the only mention of a candidate’s specific family. The nature of the mastery characterised here is that the candidate conforms to the preferred societal norms of heterosexual unions, which are perceived also as signs of stability and responsibility. It also allows the candidate, as discussed below, to treat accomplishments and characteristics of family members as those of the candidate her/himself. Being married and having children is cited as a qualification for running for office not only by the candidates themselves, but also in prepared statements that moderators read or that the stations show at the beginning of the debates. This conceptual metaphor is most likely to appear in the opening statements and introductions of candidates and occasionally in the closings or elsewhere such as when candidates are asked a question about the reasons why voters should vote for them. These openings and introductions may be either put together by a candidate’s campaign staff for an introduction by a moderator or as a film clip, or the candidate may introduce her/himself with the information. Either way the candidates’ campaigns would be expected to approve the material.

190 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

This metaphor is not a required element, but it is common as can be seen from this introduction in a 1996 debate: (4) Female Announcer: …Mr. Anderson is employed by the Arizona Public Services company. He served 6 years in the United States Navy, is currently Libertarian treasurer and was a candidate for the Phoenix city council. Mr. Anderson attended the Navy nuclear power school in Orlando, FL, and is single. J.D. Hayworth is the Republican Party candidate. His main issue is to reduce taxes and the size of federal government. Mr. Hayworth is completing his first term representing the 6th Congressional District. Before his move to Capitol Hill, Mr. Hayworth was a local television sports anchor, public relations consultant and an insurance agent. He attended North Carolina State University and is married with three children. Steve Owens is the Democratic Party candidate. His main issue is to create help for working families. Mr. Owens is an attorney. He has also worked as a state director for thenSenator Al Gore and, prior to that, worked as Gore’s chief counsel for US House subcommittee. Mr. Owens also served as state chairman for Arizona’s Democratic Party. He attended Brown University and Vanderbilt Law School. Mr. Owens is married with 2 children. (1996, 6th Congressional District, US House of Representatives, Arizona) The placement of marital status in a list providing candidates’ qualifications clearly speaks to marital status as perceived relevant training for the campaign and the office. The lists vary in length, but the following encompass most of what the audience hears and the candidates provide: age, party affiliation, place of birth, years of residence in a town/state, place of residence, experience in political offices, community involvement, issues that candidates champion, education, professional training/occupation and family status. This conceptual metaphor can be expressed by the noting of marital status or number of children or mentioning a spouse or children or grandchildren by name or a family role. Some variations in its use described below are related to the ideological status of the metaphor and/or to the status of a candidate. Mentioning only children or grandchildren means a candidate can avoid referring to an unstable relationship or a divorce or separation, but a children-only mention does not necessarily imply that. It is also rare that a candidate chooses to be characterised as not having a nuclear

Karen L. Adams 191

family or as having a broken nuclear family. Some of the situations where a candidate is identified as single or divorced parallel Example (4) above when all the candidates had their marital status given as part of a list of qualifications. Three other examples occurred when the information about single or divorced status was volunteered during the debate. The candidates offering the information were running as independents. This supports the notion of the strength of the ‘nuclear’ family as qualification in dominant political ideology. It would also appear to explain the case noted above in Example (3) where the unmarried Republican male candidate rather than saying he is single asserts nuclear family mastery even though he has not created his own. It also explains a city council debate (5) where a male candidate notes his ‘ringless finger’ and his mother asking about grandchildren and implies that he will have a nuclear family at a later date when running for office is over: (5) After this is over, I’m going to get on to the other things. (Corey Woods, 2008, Non-partisan, Tempe City Council, Arizona) In a small number of other cases, a candidate’s divorce may come into play. In one case, it does so as part of an attack by another candidate over his opponent’s paying child support. Clearly, such an attack is also an attempt to move the other candidate out of the acceptable nuclear family ideological place. The dominant expectation is of heterosexual marriage. Open discrimination against alternative sexual identities persists even though there are openly gay and lesbian politicians running for and holding major offices such as governorships, and US House and Senate seats. However, the number of candidates doing so is not large (Martin 2001). Promises of marriage, identification with nuclear family and avowals of continued parental responsibility protect against reading candidates as having alternative identities or as not being ‘settled’, ‘stable’ people. Occasionally some candidates opt out of giving information on marital status even when it fits the ideological norm and other candidates in the same debate are offering it. Examples come from both male and female candidates, but in several cases, Democrat and Libertarian female candidates omitted the information. In one debate, four of the preceding candidates including two other women had mentioned nuclear families, and so the Democrat woman’s decision to omit the conceptual metaphor is a sharp contrast along with her shift to focus on issues (6): (6) … there’s a bio about me on cards that are out there on a dolly in the hall. I’m going to take this time to tell you why I am

192 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

running … (Carolyn Maxin, 1984, Democrat, District 27 State House and Senate, Arizona) A US House candidate in the same debate with Mr Pease in Example (3) above, a female Libertarian (Barbara Bourland), gives this same sharply different style of introduction focusing only on the agenda of the Libertarian Party and not on her own qualifications as her two male Democrat and Republican opponents do. When other Democrat females also focus on issues not family, the question arises as to whether this is a desire to avoid stereotypic views of women as well as to get as much time as possible to introduce their party and ideas. When the conceptual metaphor of NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY is used, the reference often comes later or last in the list of characteristics qualifying one for office as Example (4) above shows. However, Example (7) shows a change in order: (7) I am Carol Lamirande. Wife. Mother. Teacher. And businesswoman. From these four perspectives, and in that order of priority, I am running for a seat in Congress in District Two. New Hampshire is a state that demonstrates independence. Independence in our government. In our faith. In our lives. And in our motto … (Carol Lamirande, 1996, Independent, 2nd District, US House of Representatives, New Hampshire) The reorientation shows that not all types of qualifications given in opening statements are equal. Lamirande is an Independent and female and her opening statement does not state how her family roles impact on her agenda or mastery other than reinforcing her own ‘independence’ from the usual political parties. In fact, the Republican male candidate in this race who opens next mentions his children but politically contextualises them as future debtors unless responsible politicians are elected. In another debate, a female Democrat candidate also foregrounds her nuclear family mastery (8): (8) I am a wife, a mother, a farmer. I am not a lawyer and I’m not a politician. (Judy Olsen, 1996, Democrat, 5th District, US House of Representatives, Washington) The Republican male candidate in the same debate does not mention his family. Olsen’s use distances her from her male opponent whom she characterises as too strongly associated with a Washington DC iden-

Karen L. Adams 193

tity rather than a State of Washington identity. Using NUCLEAR FAMILY IS can function to create a contrasting identity from an opponent, an identity that the candidate may see as more electable or more focused on the issues than that of the opponent (Adams 2008). Male candidates can also foreground the use of family as mastery as did the office seeker in Example (2). He focuses on his family role rather than on his profession. His own type of business was about to be regulated for abuses by the state legislature, and, more importantly, he was able to challenge his female Republican opponent on her lack of caring about family, a bold stance for a Democrat male. Interestingly, when opposing candidates are asked to say something good about their opponent, they will fall back on A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY indicating that this is a core qualification, and one that all can agree on and perhaps use to avoid more competitive and potentially negative political topics. In the following example, the male candidate in a heated campaign directly challenges the image behind this kind-hearted characterisation by his female opponent and adds a characterisation of her ‘toughness’ challenging gendered stereotypes and demonstrating his continuing challenges to her framing of answers: MASTERY

(9) Mr. Koontz (panelist): Gov. Orr, in the handshake that we had a moment ago I would like to ask in reference to that, what is it that you admire or respect about your opponent? . . . Gov. Orr: … what I do know about my opponent, which is limited, we only know each other really politically, but what I do know about him, he has a lovely wife and lovely children and a fine family. Mr. Kramer (moderator): Mr. Nelson, please. Mr. Nelson: You don’t think I’m going to be outdone, do ya? I know she has a very, very wonderful husband, Bill. And I’ve met at least one of her children. I believe that she, likewise, has a fine family. I think also she’s a tenacious adversary and a strong competitor and I admire that in her spirit. (1990, Governor, Nebraska) Further evidence of the ideological dominance of the NUCLEAR FAMILY IS conceptual metaphor can be seen in a series of double-voiced

MASTERY

194 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

introductions of candidates debating for three separate offices (6th District US House of Representatives, state governor, state attorney general), on the same evening in 1998 on Arizona PBS-KAET. All candidates were introduced by a moderator’s voice. In addition, a list of qualifications printed in white on a blue background appeared on the left-hand side of the screen at the same time as the moderator spoke. In the written list marital status of married or single was given. However, the verbal introduction by the moderator only mentioned the marital status if the candidate was married. One candidate who was perhaps divorced but had children was introduced as having children but without her current single status. The single marital status was literally verbally silenced for all such candidates. We have already seen that unmarried family status is normally only volunteered by candidates who are not members of the two major parties and that its foregrounding by a candidate can indicate an ‘outsider’ status. At the presidential and vice presidential level of debate, the use of NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY is less common, occurring often in different contexts in the debate. Part of the explanation for this is that by the time candidates are competing for the highest elected office, their families are fairly well known to the electorate. They have been introduced or reintroduced on national television at the party conventions and have been the subject of much media scrutiny. In only one of the 20 debates in question (Firing Line 1988) were there introductory film clips of the candidates and their families, and this debate would have predated the extensive media coverage for the final winners of the primaries. The other cases at the presidential level with this conceptual metaphor were like Example (9) when candidates were asked to comment on each other’s character or on qualities that did or did not separate them as candidates. Interestingly, none of the Democrat presidential or vice presidential women candidates used the metaphor while the 2008 Republican woman vice presidential candidate did. This fits generally with the nature of the office and with differences in gendered occurrences described below. The use of the NUCLEAR FAMILY AS MASTERY at the presidential/ vice presidential level was 28.5 per cent (16/56) of the three metaphors discussed here. This is less than the local level of debates, where this conceptual metaphor makes up 39 per cent (11/28) of the total number of the same conceptual metaphors. While the numbers are small, at the local level male candidates are close in

Karen L. Adams 195

usage to female candidates, 41 to 33 per cent. In the statewide debates, it accounts for 58 per cent of the three metaphors, and the overall usage for male candidates, 56 per cent (19/34), and female candidates, 58 per cent (19/33), is close. At the US Congressional level its use makes up 48 per cent (27/56) of the three conceptual metaphors, with males using it less (44 per cent (12/27)) than female candidates (52 per cent (15/29)). At the statewide and US Congressional levels of debates, one finds parallels in ranked order of usage among major party candidates. Democrat males are most frequently associated with the metaphor, then Republican females, then Democrat females and lastly Republican males. The occurrences of this conceptual metaphor are small in number as are the differences in use among the major party candidates according to gender. Also candidates may have more or fewer references to a particular metaphor for many reasons, so any implications about these ranked differences are only suggestive. In Example (6) we saw Democrat and Independent women debaters skipping this information on NUCLEAR FAMILY AS MASTERY, including the Democrat female candidates for president and vice president, perhaps to avoid stereotypes about women. On the other hand, Democrat males, in Example (2) and in the 2008 vice presidential debate (Transcript of Palin, Biden Debate 2008) laid claim to this characteristic more traditionally allied with the feminine. 9.3.2

A NATIVE BIRTH IS MASTERY

The metaphor, A NATIVE BIRTH IS MASTERY, frequently occurs in the same turns as A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY in introductions, openings and closings. While living in a place in no way guarantees knowledge of issues impacting on the area, the ability to claim local or native birth of the candidate and/or of nuclear family members including one’s own children’s births is important. This metaphor is one used by both male and female candidates. An example of the consideration some candidates give to it, especially in a region where many citizens might be recent arrivals to the area, can be seen with a candidate who uses his, his wife’s and his wife’s family’s native birth (10): (10) I am a native Arizonan. I was born in Prescott … enrolled in Arizona State College … and have been in Tempe ever since … I found a wife in Tempe who was a native Tempean, whose parents were native Tempeans, and I believe that kind of establishes some roots here in Tempe … (Doug

196 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Todd, 1984, Republican, District 27, State Representative, Arizona) A non-native born candidate in the same race tries to address this mastery claim through a joking manner as well by claiming his children’s birthright (11): (11) I have lived in Arizona for eight years now … Since then we have had the good fortune to have two daughters born to us here … So I believe that although I did not have the foresight to be born here in Tempe, I believe that I have some interest in the community … (Richard Daggert, 1984, Democrat, District 27, State Representative, Arizona) At most levels of office, ROOTEDNESS over several generations, increases the MASTERY; that is, a nuclear family seed ‘planted’ and ‘raised’ or ‘growing up’ in the community as it grows has roots which supposedly intensify knowledge and hold the candidate in place. For some candidates, it can serve not only to mark mastery, but also to indicate a commitment to community that their opponent may no longer have if the opponent’s focus has shifted to a wider constituency. These candidates with shifting allegiances may even be considered ‘uprooted’ and, for example, residents of the Washington DC Beltway, that is, ‘Washington insiders’, rather than members of their state of birth. Because candidates appropriate the birthplace of nuclear family members for the use of this conceptual metaphor, the two mastery metaphors of A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY and A NATIVE BIRTH IS MASTERY are conceptually related to each other. Not unexpectedly the importance of this NATIVE BIRTH metaphor varies for different levels of office, but it is used freely by male and female candidates from all parties including independent and third parties. Of the three conceptual metaphors discussed in depth here, A NATIVE BIRTH IS MASTERY is most frequently used at the local levels, that is, 54 per cent (15/28). At the statewide level it averages 22 per cent among the candidates of the major parties. For the US Congressional races, it averages 26 per cent. In both these latter cases, it is a little less than half of its use at the local level. At the presidential and vice presidential level, the metaphor takes on a limited role as these offices represent the nation as a whole. To run for these offices, it is required that a candidate be a US citizen, in other words, to have native birth.

Karen L. Adams 197

Only one candidate mentions where he was born at the presidential and vice presidential level of debate. The purpose of the mention, however, was to indicate mastery of information about issues in that region just as with usages by candidates for other levels of office. 9.3.3

NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CANDIDATES

Candidates claim the NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY, and they also appropriate their nuclear family’s birthright. It is not surprising then that this same family may also be characterised metaphorically as CANDIDATES (or CO-CANDIDATES). In newspapers, candidates’ family members may be referred to as ‘surrogates’, that is, one substituted for another, or they may be characterised as ‘playing a role’ in the campaign. In that sense, they share the ‘stage’ and the activities and ideologies of the real candidate, the race and the office. This metaphor might be considered a conceptual key (Charteris-Black 2004) as it explains a series of conceptual metaphors related to each other. These include CO-CANDIDATE, CO-STRATEGIST, CO-CAMPAIGNER AND SUPPORTER and CO-PUBLIC SERVANT.6 In the offices of the US president and vice president, but in other offices too, it is common for spouses to have activities related to the office holder’s agenda. These positions are so important that polls are conducted evaluating voters’ positive and negative perceptions of the candidates’ spouses just as they are conducted for the actual candidates. An example of a CO-PUBLIC SERVANT metaphor can be seen when a candidate is discussing policies related to his ‘1,000 points of light’ effort and its implementation (12): (12) … but do not erode out of the system ‘the thousand points of light’; the people that are out there trying to help these kids; the programs like ‘Cities and Schools’; the work that Barbara Bush is doing so people can learn to read in this country and then go on and get-, break this cycle of poverty … (George Bush, 1988, Republican, US President, 1st Debate, New York Times, 26 September, A11) When talking about the campaign, family members’ CO-CAMPAIGNER activities are mentioned often in closings and combined with other metaphors such as the CO-PUBLIC SERVANT one (13): (13) … Kitty and I are very grateful to all of you for the warmth and the hospitality that you’ve given us in your homes

198 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

and communities all across this country … and we hope that we’ll be serving you in the White House … (Michael Dukakis, 1988, Democrat, US President, 2nd Debate, New York Times, 15 October, A13) This CO-PUBLIC SERVANT and CO-CANDIDATE metaphor is carried by some Republican males to the point of declaring their wives as electable candidates in their own right when asked challenging questions or criticised in the press about gender and race equity in elected and appointed offices. In one case, a gubernatorial candidate considered a conservative Mormon elder addresses concerns about sexism saying in his closing that his wife could be as viable an office holder as he (Evan Mecham, 1986, Republican, Governor, Arizona). In another such case, presidential candidates were asked to come up with time frames for ‘… when [do] you estimate your party will both nominate and elect an Afro-American and female ticket to the Presidency of the United States?’ (New York Times, 1992, 16 October, A14). Candidate, George Bush, clearly states that his wife is electable (14): (14) If Barbara Bush were running this year, she’d be elected … (George Bush, 1992, Republican, US President, 2nd Debate, New York Times, 16 October, A14) This lack of female perspective and diversity in general at the highest levels of office is noted in these debates in other ways. For example, in a 2004 presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry, they were asked as a final question what was the most important thing they had learned from their wives and daughters, all ‘strong women’ (The Third Bush–Kerry Presidential Debate, 2004). The need to have this female perspective represented in the debate is also related to uses of the CO-STRATEGIST conceptual metaphor. When asked about issues related to women, male candidates may cite their female family members’ perspectives as part of an answer as in (15): (15) … And, you know, according to my mother and my wife and my daughter, this world would be a lot better place if women were running it most of the time. I do think there are special experiences and judgments and backgrounds and understandings that women bring to this process … (William

Karen L. Adams 199

Clinton, 1992, Democrat, President, 2nd Debate, New York Times, 16 October, A14) And in response to a question about inner circle influence by minorities and females in politics and business, an independent male candidate awkwardly ends his answer with female family members as CO-STRATEGISTS by relying on a negative stereotype of women as nagging and controlling: (16) … But in terms of being influenced by women and being a minority, there they are right out there, my wife and my four beautiful daughters, and I just have one son. So he and I are surrounded by women giving-, telling us what to do all the time. (Ross Perot, 1992, Reform Party, President, 3rd Debate, New York Times, 20 October, A22) In other contexts, the use of the CO-STRATEGIST can be positive when a family member is seen as a mentor, that is, providing material to learn from (17): (17) …You know, my wife, Hillary, gave me a book about a year ago … (William Clinton, 1992, Democrat, President, 1st Debate, New York Times, 12 October, A14) The CO-CANDIDATE metaphor appears in numerous contexts and may be negatively implicated when one candidate is attacked on the basis of their spouses’ finances or another family member’s potential wrongdoing. In such a case, a spouse’s fiscal responsibility can be the candidate’s fiscal responsibility. Positively, a candidate can make family members’ qualifications their own. This is especially common in arenas such as education and business. One candidate in citing her commitment to a district uses her husband’s service as her own (18): (18) … So not only do I love this state, my husband has served as a chairman of the school board … He’s been on the planning board. I served in the New Hampshire legislature for 8 years. If anyone is committed to New Hampshire, it is me. (Debra Arnie-Arnesen, 1996, Democrat, 2nd District, US House, New Hampshire) This does not mean that all candidates for office agree with this role of nuclear family members,

CO-CAMPAIGNER, CO-PUBLIC SERVANT

200 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

especially a female politician who states the following in response to a question about conducting a feminist campaign (19): (19) … I don’t think that the spouses of politicians should play a role in campaigns. (Nikki van Hightower, 1990, Democrat, State Treasurer, Texas) Hillary Clinton argues the same in (20): (20) … I believe that this campaign is not about our spouses. It is about us. It is about each of us individually … (Hillary Clinton, 2008, Democrat Presidential Primary Debate, South Carolina, CNN transcript, Part 3, 6) In fact the Democrat female presidential and vice presidential candidates in these debates did not bring up their spouses. These COCANDIDATE spouses were introduced into the discussions by moderators and opponents and mostly in negative ways. The female candidates then responded to these comments. Clearly in 2007–8, it was dangerous for the leading liberal female candidate, Hillary Clinton, to claim CO-CANDIDACY with her husband. Former President Clinton had high visibility fuelling the importance of what he said, but the importance of gender as an issue in the CO-CANDIDACY metaphor was obvious in the frequent reference to him by other candidates and moderators to criticise Hillary Clinton and challenge her individual voice as in (21): (21) Clinton: … You talked about Ronald Reagan being a transformative political leader. I did not mention his name. Obama: Your husband did. Clinton: Well, I’m here. He’s not. Obama: OK. Well, I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes. Clinton: Well, you know I think we both have very passionate and committed spouses who stand up for us … (2008, Democrat Presidential Primary Debate, South Carolina, CNN transcript, Part 1, 6) Some newspapers did not report her final response to the CO-CANDIDACY conceptual metaphor and her attempt to focus on parallel experiences, instead noting only Obama’s criticism (for example, Balz and Murray 2008, A4). Six months later, newspapers reported on an interview with

Karen L. Adams 201

Obama in Glamour magazine (22) showing again the gendered nature of this usage: (22) …Obama said attacks on his wife are ‘infuriating.’ The likely Democratic presidential nominee blamed the conservative press for going after his wife as if she were the candidate. ‘If they have a difference with me on policy, they should debate me. Not her,’ Obama told the magazine … Obama’s campaign denounced the ad for its ‘shameful attacks on the wife of a candidate’. (The Arizona Republic, 2008, 18 July, A10) A state Republican Party’s claim that these criticisms were justified as Obama’s wife was a surrogate campaigning on his behalf with other supporters was evidently not justification for Obama when it was his wife’s positions which were criticised. As with the other conceptual metaphors, the use of NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CANDIDATES differs in the frequency of use among the different levels of races. At the local level, it only averaged 8 per cent of the mentions. At the statewide level, the use ranged from 12.5 to 30.7 per cent among the major party candidates, with the lowest use of this metaphor among Republican women and the highest among Republican men. At the US Congressional level, the range of usages was from 9 per cent for Republican women at the lowest levels of associated usage to 35.7 per cent for Republican men at the highest level. Among the Democratic candidates, the usage was close to that of the Republican men. It is interesting that the Republican women, as discussed in Section 9.3.1, are more likely to be associated with the use of A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY while the Republican males are more likely to be associated with NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CANDIDATES. Again the number of examples is small and only suggests that further research on these differences could prove interesting. At the presidential level, this conceptual metaphor accounted for 66 per cent overall, well over double that in other races and eight times that in the local ones.

9.4

Conclusion

This study has looked at the mentions of candidates’ family members in 100 plus political debates. It has identified three conceptual metaphors that use ‘real’ family as the target domain and that account for a large percentage of these mentions. In doing so, it has also aimed to evaluate these metaphors as resources for gendered ideologies and

202 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

for political ideologies for candidates not only from Democrat and Republican parties but also independent or third parties. These conceptual metaphors have also been evaluated in terms of the types of offices for which candidates are running. As debates are designed for broad audiences and appeal to the committed and uncommitted, it is not surprising that major conceptual metaphors are shared across the two major parties in the USA and between male and female candidates including those with independent ideologies. For example, prioritising A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY when noting a candidate’s qualifications is a strategy used by some women and independents, but it is not in any way exclusively gendered in these data. Two Democrat male candidates in this set of debates running against Republican women candidates also prioritise this metaphor in their answers. These conceptual metaphors have different degrees of importance in the debates depending on the type of office the candidate is running for. The conceptual metaphor NATIVE BIRTH IS MASTERY is most important to candidates at local levels and remains important in statewide and US Congressional races but not to the same degree. The conceptual metaphor NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY is less important to those running for president and vice president and is more important in the other races. NUCLEAR FAMILY ARE CANDIDATES is rare as a conceptual metaphor at the local level and around 24 per cent of the usages statewide and 21 per cent in US Congressional races, but in races at highest levels of office it is a major 66 per cent of the total usages of the metaphors. The ideological dominance of A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS MASTERY in these data is treated differently by third-party and independent candidates who are more likely to openly acknowledge their lack of this mastery. Additional discussions of the data would also show that some candidates are just much more likely to discuss their families than other candidates. Previous research such as Fox (1997) claimed that in the 1992 and 1994 US Congressional races in California men discussed family in stereotypically traditional ways while women used personal terms. Unfortunately, he offered no specific criteria to demonstrate his point. The data here do not show such sharply differentiated usages. DeRosa and Bystrom (1996) argue that in convention speeches to nominate candidates it was common for men to refer to themselves as a parent or a child as well as for women to do this. This study supports the view of balanced gendered usage in campaign genres, but the debate data here suggest some differences in the way the conceptual metaphors are used

Karen L. Adams 203

for different levels of office. There were also some suggestive differences in the frequency of metaphors associated with Republican and Democrat male and female candidates perhaps related to Democrat women being less likely to use family as a qualification and Republican women more likely to do this. On the other hand, Republican men at the statewide and US Congressional races were more likely to characterise their family relationships as CO-CANDIDATE in nature. At the national level, the few Democrat female candidates in presidential and vice presidential debates resist mention of nuclear family and discuss them in response to moderators’ and other candidates’ topic initiation criticising them with the CO-CANDIDATE conceptual metaphor. Distancing and maintaining a separate voice is made difficult for them in the examples here. Male candidates at this level, on the other hand, may choose to appropriate voices of their female family members in discussions related to issues of gender. These examples of variation in use related to gender, third party and ideology must only be indicative of the 104 debates here, and many factors in a particular race can impact the use of conceptual metaphors. Moreover, the competitive nature of the campaign race means that use of these metaphors can aid in the construction of opposition. As the data above show, references to specific family members have shared conceptual metaphors across parties and genders, and above all the references are used to support arguments and create an ethos of reliability and qualification in order to win.

Appendix 9.1 Software Barlow, M. 1998. MonoConc 95, version 1.5a. Houston, Tex.: Athelstan.

Debate citations Arizona Tempe City Council and Mayoral Forum, Clark Park Neighborhood Association. 26 January 2008. 6th District US House of Representatives, Arizona PBS-KAET Channel Eight, 1998. State Governor, Arizona PBS-KAET Channel Eight, 1998. State Attorney General, Arizona PBS-KAET Channel Eight, 1998. 6th Congressional District, US House of Representatives, PBS-KAET Channel Eight, Public Television, 1996. Governor, KPNX, Channel 12- NBC affiliate, 1986. District 27, State House and State Senate, Arizona State University and American Cable, Channel 35, October 1984.

204 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Colorado 1st District, US House of Representatives, 1996.

Indiana 7th Congressional District. US House of Representatives. WTIU-Public Television, 1996.

Nebraska Governor. Nebraska Press Association and Nebraskans for Public Television, KETV, 1990.

Nevada 5th District, State Senate. The Review Journal. Channel 10, 1996.

New Hampshire 2nd Congressional District. US House of Representatives. New Hampshire Public Television, The Union Leader, and New England Cable News, 1996.

Texas State Treasurer. Houston Business Forum and League of Women Voters, 1990.

Washington 5th Congressional District. US House of Representatives. KSPS, Public Television; The Spokesman Review, KPBX: Spokane Public Radio, 1996.

Presidential and vice-presidential debates Firing Line, Democrat Presidential Hopefuls, South Carolina Educational TV & KUHT TV, Houston, 1988. Transcript of 2008 Democrat Presidential Primary Debate, South Carolina, CNN transcript, Parts 1– 3. 21 January 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/ 0121/debate.transcript/index.html Transcript of Palin, Biden, Vice Presidential Debate, 2008, Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). 2 October 2008, http://www/debates.org/pages/trans2008b_p.html Transcript of the Third Bush–Kerry Presidential Debate, 13 October 2004 (CPD), http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004d.html Transcript of First TV Debate among Bush, Clinton, Perot. The New York Times, 12 October 1992, A14–17. Transcript of 2nd TV Debate between Bush, Clinton, Perot. The New York Times, 16 October 1992, A11–14. Transcript of 3rd TV Debate between Bush, Clinton, Perot. The New York Times, 20 October 1992, A20–23. Transcript of the First TV Debate between Bush and Dukakis. The New York Times, 26 September 1988, A10–13. Transcript of the Second Debate between Bush and Dukakis. The New York Times, 15 October 1988, A10–13.

Karen L. Adams 205

Notes 1 The debates were acquired in a variety of ways. Some local, statewide and national debates were tape recorded from the TV, and colleagues in other states sent some. For others, I scanned newspapers for interesting races and then contacted the relevant television stations for recordings of the debates. The national headquarters of the League of Women Voters was also a helpful source in the late 1980s and early 1990s, making available several tapes from their own library. I also contacted all state Leagues of Women Voters for information. I arranged for the transcription of most of these debates. A few transcriptions are from the New York Times and online sources such as CNNTV and the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) and are noted as such. Funds for support of the project have come from the Women and Gender Studies Program and from an FGIA grant, an ASH grant and a Humanities Release Time Award from Arizona State University. I am grateful to them all. I would also like to thank Kathleen Ahrens for her patience and Thomas J. Hudak for suggestions on structure of the chapter and checks on reliability of categories. 2 The numbers are based on the sex of candidates in each debate. It should be noted that the same candidate may be a participant in more than one debate. First, some incumbents in debates have been in office several years and have had several different challengers at the end of each term. Second, there are also candidates who have left one office to run for another. Third, in a few cases, a couple of debates for the same race were analysed. 3 Since 1789 only 2 per cent of the US Congress has been women. At the state level, pre-election 2008, 21.6 per cent of the state senators are women and 24.5 per cent of the state house members are. However, even at the statewide and citywide level, in the most prominent offices, the percentage of women office holders are more like those of the US Senate and House, around 16 per cent. The executive level CAWP tally does not include the two women at the head of the Green Party ticket in 2008. Overall representation remains low (CAWP 2008). 4 See Adams (2008) for a complete list of the terms. Determining whether an item referred to a candidate’s family was not always straightforward. ‘My’ indexes the candidate’s family, but ‘our’ may be inclusive or exclusive. Moreover, in campaigns ‘our’ can refer to citizens in a state, a region or a country, so even candidates without children may talk about ‘our children’ meaning those of the community they are campaigning to represent. When in doubt, examples with ‘our’ were put in the general group. The same issues are found with ‘your’ since the candidate speaking may be referring to their opponents’ families, their own family or to families in general. Again when not clear, the reference was excluded. 5 This particular candidate did not indicate he was single, but this type of information for office holders of major offices in the 50 states is available from The Almanac[s] of American Politics edited by Barone and Ujifusa (Barone and Ujifusa, 1997: 545). The almanacs are published every two years. This example also includes the conceptual metaphor A NUCLEAR FAMILY IS A BOON. Due to the small number of usages, this metaphor is not discussed further in the results.

206 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors 6

The metaphor of SUPPORTER is added to CO-CAMPAIGNER. In these cases, candidates mention that family members will vote for them and describe family as sitting in the audience. This metaphor is an extension of the COCAMPAIGNER as the candidate will surely vote for him/herself and is in attendance at the debate. The limited mention of ‘voting for the candidate’ occurred only at state and local levels.

References Adams, K. L. 2008. ‘Talking about Families to Create Winning Identities’, in L. Dam, L-L. Holmgreen and J. Strunck (eds) Rhetorical Aspects of Discourses in Present-Day Society. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 10–30. Balz, D. and S. Murray. 2008. ‘Dems Clash Bitterly at S.C. Debate’. The Arizona Republic, 22 January 2008. Washington Post, A4. Barone, M. and G. Ujifusa. 1997. The Almanac of American Politics 1998. Washington, DC: National Journal, Inc. Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP). 2008. Fast Facts. http:// www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/index.php, Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, date accessed 8 August 2008. Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cienki, A. 2005. ‘Metaphor in the “Strict Father” and “Nurturant Parent” Cognitive Models: Theoretical Issues Raised in an Empirical Study’. Cognitive Linguistics, 16 (2): 279–312. Dailey, W. O., E. A. Hinck and S. S. Hinck. 2008. Politeness in Presidential Debates. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. DeRosa, K. L. and D. G. Bystrom. 1996. ‘The Voice of and for Women in the 1996 Presidential Campaign: Style and Substance of Convention Speeches’, in L. L. Kaid and D. G. Bystrom (eds) The Electronic Election: Perspectives on the 1996 Campaign Communication. Mahwah, NJ; London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 97–111. Fox, R. L. 1997. Gender Dynamics in Congressional Elections. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications Inc. Jamieson, K. H. 1992. Packaging the Presidency, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford UP. Kaid, L. L. and A. Johnston. 2001. Videostyle in Presidential Campaigns. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Lakoff, G. 2002. Moral Politics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press. Martin, M. 2001. The Almanac of Women and Minorities in American Politics 2002. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. ‘Obama Calls Criticism of Wife “Infuriating”’. 2008. The Arizona Republic, 18 July, A10. Zoonen, L. van. 2000. ‘Broken Hearts, Broken Dreams? Politicians and Their Families in Popular Culture’, in A. Sreberny and L. van Zoonen (eds) Gender, Politics and Communication. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 101–20.

Part III Women in Gendered Conceptual Metaphors

This page intentionally left blank

10 Gender, War and Body Politics: a Critical Multimodal Analysis of Metaphor in Advertising Michelle M. Lazar National University of Singapore

10.1

Introduction

From a conceptual metaphorical point of view, it would appear that in today’s world, more wars are fought in target domains than in the source domain. There is a proliferation in the conceptualisation of a variety of civilian social practices and experiences as militarised spaces. Metaphor scholars have systematically documented this of argument (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003); of illnesses (Sontag 1991); of biomedical practice (Montgomery 1991) and of business (Koller 2004). Casual observations, too, provide ample examples of mappings of warfare onto a range of domains. Controlling national/transnational spread of diseases has been conceptualised as such: at the height of the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) pandemic in 2003, the Singapore government organised (and won) a massive battle plan to fight the disease (on 24 April 2003, the deputy prime minister explained in parliament ‘the overall action plan’, viz. ‘there are three battlefronts: public health, the economy, and society’); and more recently, on a smaller scale, the government have mobilised citizens to fight dengue (campaign posters warn: ‘Continue to ignore this threat and you may face the pain and suffering it inflicts … Stay vigilant.’ And ‘It’s your life. It’s your fight.’). Efforts by nations to curb drug misuse framed in terms of warfare are now commonplace; for instance, a news report announced that ‘Singapore has joined the worldwide battle against drugs in sport’ (The Straits Times, 24 November 2007). Even the marketing of an insecticide is conceptualised as combat: Baygon ran large advertisements on public buses featuring a battlefield littered with the bodies of larger-than-life dead cockroaches, with a caption announcing ‘the war is on’. Internationally, perhaps the most memorable 209

210 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

mapping in quite recent times is within the political field itself, where President G.W. Bush’s declaration of ‘the war on terror’ framed the experience and subsequent US response to the type of political violence of 9/11 in those terms. The appropriation of warfare by a wide range of domains in our societies suggests that this has become a dominant mode of rationality and conduct in our world, the pervasiveness of which signals the entry of war mentality into the realm of the general ‘commonsense’. In this chapter, my focus is on the appropriation of the domain of warfare in the conceptualisation of beauty practices in advertising.1 Of central interest is the gendered nature and operation of this metaphor, specifically, how the domain of militarisation, associated with hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1987, Enloe 2000, Koller 2004) is mapped by advertisers on to the domain of self-aestheticisation, which is normatively associated with women as a site of ‘doing’ femininity. The appropriation of warfare thus infuses institutionalised military ways of thinking and acting into the banal personal beauty practices of women, so that the former becomes an everyday commonsensical way of ‘doing’ femininity. In terms of advertising practice, the appropriation of warfare to address consumers fits well with the problem– solution schema that underlies much of advertising (Vestergaard and Schroder 1985), and especially beauty advertising. According to this rationalisation, women’s bodies are inherently problematic and inadequate, and in need of intervention by marketed brands to solve their problems and/or manage their insecurities. ‘Body politic(s)’ is a relevant concept underlying this study, which is used here in two related ways. First, ‘body politic’, which in the conventional metaphorical sense refers to any governmentally managed territory, is re-metaphorised to refer specifically to women’s bodies as territories that are subject to governance by patriarchal advertising corporations. Second, ‘body politics’ (in the plural) refers quite literally to the power relations involved in women’s achievement of the body beautiful, where women at the same time are objects and subjects of power. The word ‘politics’ signals also the critical, political stance of the study with regard to issues of power and ‘empowerment’ in the formation of gender identities in contemporary societies. The chapter is organised in three sections. First, information about the data and the approach to analysis is set out. Second, a detailed analysis of the conceptual metaphor of war in the advertisements is provided. Finally, I discuss the critical implications involved in the conceptualisation of women’s beauty practices as war.

Michelle M. Lazar 211

10.2

Data and analytical approach

The advertisements in the study belong to the domain of feminine beautification, achieved through the consumption of cosmetics, skin and hair care products, and slimming and body management services. A total of 114 print advertisements (see Appendix 10.1), in which beauty was understood as war, were selected mainly from Singapore’s English daily newspaper, The Straits Times, and its supplements; a small number were selected also from the Today newspaper (a tabloid), and locally available beauty pamphlets. Spanning a period of three years from 2004 to 2007, the selection of advertisements was randomly undertaken, excluding repeat copies of advertisements.2 A simple referencing system of numbering the adverts from 1 to 114 was then applied. The data set represented a combination of local, regional and international brands, which makes the use of the war metaphor to conceptualise feminine beauty practices a global discursive phenomenon. As mentioned, the chapter adopts a critical orientation towards discourse studies, and is informed particularly by a critical feminist discourse perspective (see Lazar 2005). Within the critical perspective, the study draws upon conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) for the analysis of war metaphors in the advertisements. Evident from the data set is the operation of the conceptual metaphor BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR. This was arrived at from observing and categorising quite straightforward metaphoric expressions such as ‘fight’, ‘shield’, ‘target’ and ‘enemy’, as well as construals of activity that fit the war frame but not named as such. An example of the latter is the construal of a ‘defence strategy’ in the adverts, but for which this term is not explicitly used. The analysis of metaphor in the study is multimodal, which is congruent with the views of conceptual metaphor scholars who posit that metaphors are cognitive processes of domain mapping and not linguistic entities, although the processes may be expressed verbally, as well as through a variety of other semiotic modalities (Kövecses 2002; Forceville, forthcoming). The study will show through qualitative analysis of representative examples how BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR is expressed through language, colour and visual images (that include represented actions, postures, gaze and props), and through the intersemiosis of these modalities. The analysis of BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR is organized in three parts consonant with three key participants involved in the problem–solution schema underlying advertisements (see Table 10.1). Each of these constitutes ‘meso’ or subsidiary metaphors within the ‘macro’ conceptual

212 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Table 10.1

Conceptual metaphor: BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR

Problems

Consumers

Solutions

PHENOMENA THAT ADVERSELY AFFECT THE ‘BODY BEAUTIFUL’ ARE ENEMIES

WOMEN’S BODIES ARE WOMEN ARE BATTLEGROUNDS FIGHTERS (Women as objects) (Women as subjects) (i) THE BODY IS A (i) WOMEN ARE GEOPOLITICAL WARRIORS ENTITY WITH A AND DEFENCE SYSTEM PUGILISTS (ii) THE BODY IS THE (ii) FIGHTING SITE OF STRUGGLE FOR BEAUTY IS A FEMINIST STRUGGLE FOR RIGHTS (iii) THE BODY IS ITS (iii) THE WARRIOR OWN ENEMY / IS THE SABOTEUR TARGET

BRANDS ARE POWERFUL ALLIES

(i) PRODUCTS ARE WEAPONS

(ii) BRANDS ARE MASTER STRATEGISTS

(iii) BRANDS/ PRODUCTS ARE RESCUERS (iv) BRANDS ARE IDEOLOGUES

metaphor BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR: (a) problems (PHENOMENA THAT ADVERSELY AFFECT THE BODY BEAUTIFUL ARE ENEMIES); (b) consumers (WOMEN’S BODIES ARE BATTLEGROUNDS AND WOMEN ARE FIGHTERS); and (c) solutions (BRANDS ARE POWERFUL ALLIES). Some of the subsidiary metaphors, in turn, comprise further ‘micro’ conceptual metaphors. In sum, the approach adopted is a multi-tiered analysis of conceptual metaphors, where the higher tiers entail the conceptualisations at the lower levels and the lower-tiered metaphors presuppose those ranked higher.

10.3

BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR:

a critical multimodal analysis

In this section, the multi-tiered metaphor analysis is explicated, following the problem–solution schema in the order of problems, consumers and solutions. 10.3.1

‘Problems’

In the domain of beautification, ‘problems’ are anything that adversely affect the achievement of the beauty ideal, which are conceptualised as ‘enemies’ in a war. 10.3.1.1

PHENOMENA THAT ADVERSELY AFFECT THE ‘BODY BEAUTIFUL’ ARE ENEMIES

Enemies against the achievement of the ‘body beautiful’ are linguistically expressed, ranging from intangible to concrete natural phenom-

Michelle M. Lazar 213

ena. On the one hand, natural forces and processes on large, abstract or general scales are identified as adversaries: ‘time’ (‘Beauty is a luxury, Time its enemy’, Renue MediCentre 15); the ‘environment’ (‘shields skin from environmental aggression’, Bella 34); ‘ageing’ (‘in the fight against ageing’, L’Oréal 23); and ‘nature’ (‘nature has a way of sabotaging us’, Clinique 76), including the ‘sun’ (‘the sun is our skin’s number one enemy’, Olay 81). On the other hand, in some adverts qualification and particularisation make these natural threats more manageable and less formidable. This is done, for instance, by specifying the scope of the threat in terms of its ‘effects’ and ‘signs’ (‘fight the effects of time’, Renue MediCentre 62; ‘against the effects of ageing’, Bella 63; ‘the encroaching signs of age’, Renue MediCentre 62; ‘fight the signs of time’, Clinique 76).3 Some adverts also list the manifest effects and signs involved, which allows threats to be categorised, particularised and concretised. For example, the effects of sun damage are ‘brown spots and UV-induced pigmentation’ (L’Oréal 57); consumers are told ‘fight the aging process […]. Say goodbye to acne, scars, blemishes and pigmentation’ (Bionn 10); and ‘combat the effects of time […] treating dullness, roughness, dryness, conspicuous pores, visible fine lines and wrinkles’ (Shiseido 11). Even finer distinctions within a class of manifest threats, for instance wrinkles, are provided: ‘Anti-Wrinkle Treatment to treat her crow’s feet, laugh lines, frown lines and fine lines on her face’ (Estetica 78). Apart from the above, another class of natural bodily processes that are ‘enemised’ is fats and cellulite: ‘battling post-natal weight gain’ (BodyPerfect 12); ‘battling my weight problems since adolescence’, Marie France 26; ‘targets spare tyres’ (The Health Club 44); and ‘women’s No. 1 enemy: stubborn and recurring cellulite’ (Clarins 98). In sum, nature and natural processes of various kinds constitute enemies of feminine beauty. ‘Enemisation’ through identification, naming, categorisation and listing of the particular natural phenomenon and process as threats unequivocally defines all that is vilified in women’s bodies. At the same time, through enemisation, all that is idealised and idolised, by contrast, are normatively established:4 the definition of the ‘body beautiful’ that emerges in this process, therefore, is bodies that are slender, youthful and well toned, and skins that are clear, smooth (wrinkle-free and poreless), supple and fair/light.5 The metaphoric entailment of enemisation is to take appropriate (military) action against anything that threatens the achievement of the body beautiful. Accordingly, the recommended actions expressed in the adverts are drawn from the semantic field of warfare: ‘fight’, ‘combat’, ‘battle’,

214 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

‘eliminate’, ‘protect against/from’, ‘blast away’, ‘tackle’, ‘shield’, ‘defeat’, ‘defy’, ‘attack’, ‘kill’, ‘defend against’ and ‘challenge’. 10.3.2

‘Consumers’

In dealing with female consumers, there are two types of subsidiary conceptual metaphors, one which construes women as objects: WOMEN’S BODIES ARE BATTLEGROUNDS, and the other as subjects: WOMEN ARE WARRIORS. 10.3.2.1

WOMEN’S BODIES ARE BATTLEGROUNDS

The embodied battleground in turn is conceptualised in three specific ways: (i) THE BODY IS A GEOPOLITICAL ENTITY WITH A DEFENCE SYSTEM; (ii) THE BODY IS THE SITE OF STRUGGLE AND (III) THE BODY IS ITS OWN ENEMY. (i) THE BODY IS A GEOPOLITICAL ENTITY WITH A DEFENCE SYSTEM The body (mostly the skin, but also eyes) is conceptualised as possessing a defence mechanism, indicated by the terms ‘defences’ (‘Your skin’s natural defenses’, Biotherm 43; ‘Give your eyes its natural defense, Proclear 113), and ‘barriers’ (‘Enhances skin’s barrier system’, Shu uemera 40; ‘strengthening skin’s moisture barrier’, Olay 81; ‘enhancing skin’s protective barrier to lock moisture and keep out external irritants’, Shiseido 107). A related metaphor that is used in this context is of construction: ‘strengthen skin’s inner support structure’, Shiseido 80; ‘helps keep [skin] strong’, Clinique 20; ‘help rebuild and restructure skin’, Imedeen 75). Although it has natural defences in place, the body is not impenetrable. On the contrary, a body dependent on its own resources gets worn down in time and becomes vulnerable to the constancy of threat: When your skin is low on energy, it cannot activate the resources needed to maintain its defenses. (Biotherm 3) When skin gets damaged, it runs out of energy and becomes more vulnerable to external aggressors. (Shiseido 25) Over time, your skin’s natural defenses and repair processes are no longer at their optimum, resulting in the first signs of aging. (L’Oréal 25) As you age, skin loses cellular tissues like collagen and elastin fibres. This leaves it less able to resist forces like the sun, a harsh environ-

Michelle M. Lazar 215

ment, and stress that accelerate the appearance of ageing signs. (Olay 79) In the examples above, skin that is damaged, ageing and low on energy becomes a weak defence against the onslaught by aggressors. (ii) THE BODY IS THE SITE OF STRUGGLE Women’s bodies are sites upon which the enemies are confronted and fought. As in war, designated areas of the body are targeted by particular adverts for action. Linguistically, the idea of targeted regions is construed through prepositions of location (for example, ‘To fight the signs of time from appearing on her face’, Estetica 78), and lexical expressions of location (‘Targeting on localized fat and cellulite areas’, Expressions 35; ‘to specifically target problem areas for more even-toned skin’, Clinique 33). Visually, targeting is expressed through the representation of crosshairs superimposed on parts of women’s bodies. The circular outlines of cross-hairs are metonymic both for the weapon directed at the particular sites, and for the invisible sniper shooter, whose gaze is fixed upon the target. Depending on the adverts, the number of targets may be single or multiple, each of which thus becomes a militarised zone. The visual zoning of the body is sometimes ‘annotated’ by texts that identify the particular problems for targeted strikes; in others, the challenges are explicated in the text copy. For example, in an advert addressed to post-natal women are four cross-hairs on the model’s upper arm, waist, thigh and calf, with accompanying descriptors that specify ‘loose skin’, ‘stretch marks’, ‘unwanted cellulite’ and ‘water retention’, respectively (Expressions 28). In adverts addressed more generally to women, the targets (specified in the copy) are pectoral and waist fats (Marie France Bodyline 41, 91). In these visual images of surveillance, the models are featured in ‘after’ shots, that is, not as they were fat, but after having undergone the targeted action. In most images, the models also are pictured relaxed or smiling, which seem to suggest women’s acquiescence to the subjection of the militarised gaze and action, for the sake of achieving the body beautiful. (iii) THE BODY IS ITS OWN ENEMY/ SABOTEUR Threats are not only fought on the body; sometimes they emerge from within its own territorial borders as saboteurs. The saboteurs take advantage of a variety of happenings in the body, such as limitations of the body’s own defence operatives, the body’s weakening from constant onslaught of threats

216 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

from a variety of angles, and internal changes. This is shown in the following examples: This is an auto-immune problem where your body’s defensive cells attack its own tissues. This could be instigated by stress, insect bites or dysfunction of the body’s chemical reactivity. […] Post-Natal Hair Loss. Caused by the readjustment of hormones after childbirth which triggers the conversion to Telofen cycle (shedding cycle), this condition normally starts 2–3 months after childbirth, and may be prolonged with breastfeeding. (Svenson 58) Free radicals are constantly being produced in your body by the normal process of metabolism and due to environmental stress on your skin. (Nivea 61) UVA damage and every day facial expressions of smiling, frowning and squinting cause a breakdown in collagen fibres. As a result, the skin’s support network weakens, the skin begins to sink in and wrinkles start to appear. (Clinique 105) UV rays, pollution, allergens, dehydration. Skin’s only defense against daily environmental irritants is to produce more melanin. The result? Dark spots. (Clinique 112) In the case of these examples, the body becomes its own enemy by attacking its cell tissues or by producing free radicals, wrinkles and dark spots. In this way, women’s bodies present challenges to the ideals of an unblemished and youthful beauty. 10.3.2.2

WOMEN ARE FIGHTERS

At the same time that women are objects, they are also active subjects. The conceptualisation of ‘fighters’ involves a spectrum that covers (and blends) warriors, pugilists and activists – all of whom are engaged in kinds of struggle. In this section, three microconceptual metaphors subsumed by WOMEN ARE FIGHTERS are discussed: (i) WOMEN ARE WARRIORS AND PUGILISTS; (ii) FIGHTING FOR BEAUTY IS A FEMINIST STRUGGLE FOR RIGHTS and (iii) THE WARRIOR IS THE TARGET. The agency of women as fighters in these conceptualisations index a popular post-feminist discourse that ‘takes feminism into account’ (McRobbie 2004) either by invoking it as a thing of the past or treating ‘empowered femininity’ as a contemporary ‘given’ (Lazar 2006).

Michelle M. Lazar 217

(i) WOMEN ARE WARRIORS AND PUGILISTS Where fighting is construed linguistically, women are generally presented as warriors. Women are seen as involved in ongoing struggle (‘Whether you’ve been battling post-natal weight gain’ […], BodyPerfect 12; ‘I’ve been battling my weight problems since adolescence’, Marie France Bodyline 22), or as combatants taking orders (‘Target your wrinkles’, L’Oréal 66; ‘Secure your skin’s future now!’, Chanel 70; ‘Challenge gravity and regain youthful-looking contours’, Shiseido 80). The metaphoric entailments of death and self-sacrifice of being a warrior on active duty is also creatively expressed through pun: ‘Brows to dye for’ (My Beauty Bar 114). Visually, women are represented specifically in pugilistic combative poses. In three out of four images (Beyond Beauty 30, Bella 63, Philip Wain 64), the models in medium-range shots are represented frontally, looking directly into the camera, with arms raised and fists clenched (one model with boxing gloves), ready to punch an invisible assailant. The fourth image is a full-length long shot of a model looking sideways, with raised clenched fists in defensive position and one leg extended and kicking outwards (Amore 56). Two of the adverts are for beauty-cum-fitness centres (Amore and Philip Wain),6 within whose context the poses resemble a kind of fitness training called ‘Body Combat’ described as ‘combining kicks, punches and simple defensive movements from various martial arts disciplines’ (NUS Health and Wellness Centre newsletter). In the Philip Wain advert, in fact, the model in boxing gloves is captioned ‘Fighting Fit!’, which explicitly blends fitness with the domain of pugilistic activity. Although visually the conceptualisation of fighters is mostly metonymically expressed through body posture, in an advert by Givenchy it is expressed by a single eye in extreme close-up. An advert for a mascara named ‘Captiv’Eyes’, which when said sounds ‘captivise’ (perhaps a neologism for ‘captivate’), presents the direct gaze of the eye with agency. The linguistic copy supports this reading of the image: ‘Amplify every lash and capture every heart’. Further, the captor image blends with the domain of animal predatory, through the presence of feathers that frame the eye. The iris of the eye and part of the feathers are semiotically linked through a common emerald green hue. The image of the feathered green eye is at once arrestingly sharp and mysterious, which seems to index an element of calculated subterfuge by the potential captor, not unlike a watching predator. The strong, active images of women as fighters need to be viewed in relation to the linguistic copy, in order to understand the source of women’s power and agency. Take the example of the Beyond Beauty

218 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

advert, where the image, by itself, shows the woman as a fearless, able fighter; however, the copy reveals that the real fighting is done by the product: ‘Triple-Action Fat Buster. ElectroSlim uses patented electrodes to combat cellulite, reduce fats and improve lymph flow. VibraTrim shakes off […]. Finally, Spot-Slimming Massage […] firming up specific areas of your body’. Women’s power to fight, in other words, is a reflection of (and derived from) the product that enables them to act in a powerful manner (a point that will be elaborated in subsequent sections). (ii) FIGHTING FOR BEAUTY IS A FEMINIST STRUGGLE FOR RIGHTS A subcategory of women fighters is equated with feminist activism and struggle. The semiotic economy between language and image is such that the images depict fighting more generally, and the linguistic text provides the feminist significance. The images are of models in similar pugilistic fighting stances as discussed above. In fact, a Philip Wain (68) advert uses the same picture of the model in boxing gloves (cf. Philip Wain 64), but reworked with a different caption: ‘Exercise Your Right to Health and Beauty’. As Philip Wain is a fitness centre, the meaning of ‘exercise’ is deliberately polysemous. Combined in the caption are the senses of physical training and exercising women’s civil liberties, both of which, in turn, are infused with the visuality of boxing. Whereas in the above case, the fighting stance blends with the domain of exercise, in an advert for Slimming Sanctuary (69) (which evinces the conceptualisation of feminist struggle most explicitly), fighting is associated with the action movie genre. Here the model’s costume (close-fitting black leather top and trousers, plus stilettoheeled boots) and posture (a ‘kick ass’ pose resembling Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker’s in posters for the movie Rush Hour 3) metonymically index action movie heroes. Next to the model is the headline in big, bold letters ‘FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO OWN THE PERFECT BODY’. As earlier discussed, the source of women’s fighting power comes from the consumption of the advertised product. In this case, however, power and agency are conceptualised overtly and particularly in terms of feminist struggles for empowerment and emancipation. The copy reads: ‘Women around the world unite. The struggle against the flab is coming to an end. You can now slim down and shape up effectively with our new Women’s Empowerment Package.[…] we tackle the stubborn fats, breaking them down […]. So take a step towards liberation.’ Interestingly, the rallying cry of the language takes feminism into account by rendering it as a thing of the past, which makes it politically unthreat-

Michelle M. Lazar 219

ening for mainstream consumption. Yet, at the same time, the idea of feminist struggle is ‘updated’ for a modern popular audience by the visual image of the (fictional) tough female action hero. (iii) THE WARRIOR IS THE TARGET The relationship of the twin positioning of women both as object and subject in warfare is exemplified in the conceptualisation THE WARRIOR IS THE TARGET. On the one hand, as seen above, women’s bodies are sites of surveillance and attack. On the other hand, women themselves are the warriors striking at those trouble spots. The metaphor THE WARRIOR IS THE TARGET is realised through the interplay of various modalities of language, image and colour. In the adverts, the linguistic texts present women as warriors, while the visual images show women as targeted zones of combat. In the Marie France Bodyline (41) advert, for instance, the headline reads ‘AIM for Perfection. ZOOM IN on Stubborn Spots’, with an accompanying image of the model, upon whose body are superimposed two cross-hair outlines. Through intersemiosis, it becomes evident that the gaze of the sniper shooter in this case belongs to the woman herself. The link between THE WARRIOR and THE TARGET, further, is established through the coordination of colour. ‘Aim’ and ‘Zoom In’ are both in blue, which correspond in hue to the two cross-hair images on the body. Similarly, in another advert, Expressions (28), the grey of the sub-headline ‘You too can target the vision of perfection!’ matches the grey in the inner circles of four cross-hairs distributed throughout the model’s body. In sum, through THE WARRIOR IS THE TARGET conceptualisation, women themselves become complicit beholders of the militarised gaze, subjecting their own bodies to perpetual self-surveillance and targeted action in the pursuit of ‘perfection’. 10.3.3

‘Solutions’

Solutions are provided by beauty brands that occupy the role of powerful allies to prospective consumers. 10.3.3.1

BRANDS ARE POWERFUL ALLIES

From the earlier discussion, we know that women/warriors are empowered by brands to fight. Brands are thought of as allies that support and aid women’s efforts to achieve the body beautiful. For example, ‘Combat thinning hair effectively with Svenson’s hair loss solutions’ (Svenson 14); ‘LPG has the fastest and easiest way to help fight fats and cellulite’ (De Beaute 29); ‘Supporting women’s pursuit of fitness and wellness for 22 years’ (Amore 56); ‘ “My new ally against ageing” […] REVITALIFT

220 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

WHITE’ (L’Oréal 57). The alliance is apparently forged on the grounds that the brand and women/warriors share common causes and enemies; note the inclusive pronouns: ‘Pure Retinol, the most effective ingredient in our constant battle with wrinkles’ (Shiseido 50); ‘Together with 200 X Thicker Vitamin C, we are committed to give you your flawless and radiant skin. We all want clear skin, but nature has a way of sabotaging us with frustrating imperfections’ (Bionn 71). Together with the brand’s committed and superior assistance, therefore, women/warriors are not only empowered to fight, but they fight to win: ‘I won the fight against flab. Thanks to Marie France Bodyline’ (Marie France Bodyline 22); ‘CAPTURE. Triumph over time’ (Dior 108); ‘Powered by a 3-pronged system, this procedure attacks stubborn fat and cellulite […]. So you gain the contours you’ve always desired’ (Marie France Bodyline 59). The goal of the fight, as this last example from Marie France Bodyline shows, is construed as something that women themselves seemingly desire (and not something externally imposed), and can achieve through the consumption of products and services. There are four ways BRANDS ARE POWERFUL ALLIES is construed in the adverts: (i) PRODUCTS ARE WEAPONS; (ii) BRANDS ARE MASTER STRATEGISTS; (iii) BRANDS/PRODUCTS ARE RESCUERS and (iv) BRANDS ARE IDEOLOGUES. (i) PRODUCTS ARE WEAPONS Particular products by brands, put up on the market, are presented as state-of-the-art weaponry, required in the battle to secure the body beautiful. For example, ‘Let Dior show you the secret to an infinitely pouty smile with our latest weapon, the Dior Lip Maximizer’ (Dior 7); ‘Introducing Marie France Bodyline’s latest weapon against excess fat, the Laser Pulse System’ (Marie France Bodyline 59); ‘The latest addition to La Prairie’s famous arsenal of eye treatment products’ (La Prairie 99). In these examples, although the products are classified as ‘weapons’, the product names themselves do not overtly index the military domain. In one advert, instead of linguistic classification, the advert does this through visual means:7 infused with the non-military sounding product name ‘Dynamic Sculpt Programme’ is the outline of a single cross-hair, metonymic for artillery. However, a more common practice is to give names to products that directly reference the domain of military activity. ‘Defense’ (and its creative variants) is a popular term incorporated in product names, although there are other terms also: ‘Hydra-Detox Bio-Defensis’ (Biotherm 3); ‘Scalp Defense Shampoo’ (Biolyn 4); ‘Lancome Primordiale Cell Defense’ (Lancôme 19); ‘Capture Totale’ (Dior 27); ‘Advanced Propolis Defense’ (Bella 67); ‘Precision Age-Delay Time-Fighting Rejuvenation

Michelle M. Lazar 221

Cream SPF 15’ (Chanel 70); ‘Lift Defense 2’ (Sothys Paris 84); ‘UV Expert DNA Shield’ (Lancôme 86); ‘Bio-Enhancing Shield’ (Shiseido 106); ‘Clinique Superdefense Triple Action Moisturizer’ (Clinique 109). These names not only appear as lexemes in the advert copy, in many cases the names are printed onto the product bottle or container. I argue that this is significant in moving the PRODUCTS ARE WEAPONS concept beyond an idea to transforming the physical object (represented by the image of the bottle) into a weapon, waiting to be unleashed in the possession of the consumer. Apart from the physical images of the products, PRODUCTS ARE WEAPONS is also occasionally signalled through bubbles visually signifying defence shields. For example, in a L’Oréal (90) advert, the outline of a huge bubble envelopes the model (in medium shot), her headlined endorsement ‘My Ultimate Daily Shield against UVA and UVB attack’ and next to her the image of the product on which is printed ‘L’Oréal UV Perfect. Advanced Fluid Protector SPF 50/PA+++ Antidullness’. Or, in another advert for Proclear lenses (113), a swirl of water encircles the model holding a large firearm resembling a bazooka. The gun plus a shield index a battery of weaponry that offers women/warriors reinforced protection against eye dryness. ‘Weaponisation’ of products is evident also from product descriptions in terms of the kinds of activity that result from their use. Personification of weapons as active agents in their own right predominate in these descriptions. Two striking examples from the data are from Shiseido (107): ‘A cream that knows why you wrinkle, so we can help combat it’, which adds another dimension to the meaning of ‘smart weapons’ in military parlance; and from Dior (108): ‘The secret? Bi-skin, the <<double agent>> of your beauty…’, which belongs to the domain of covert military practices. The majority of examples, however, are less remarkable in the sense that they belong quite predictably to the domain of overt military operations. Examples include ‘New SK-II Signs Treatment Totality […] penetrates the skin’s surface to tackle multiple signs of ageing’ (SK-II 21); ‘Revitalift White is now empowered […] to attack brown spots and UV-induced pigmentation’ (L’Oréal 23); ‘Caviar Day Cream SPF 15 […] helps to combat formation of fine lines and shields skin from environmental aggression’ (Bella 34); and ‘This program targets on firming sagging skin, mobilizing fat […]’ (The Health Club 44). In sum, PRODUCTS ARE WEAPONS is expressed linguistically and visually through a variety of ways such as classification, product naming and product descriptions. (ii) BRANDS ARE MASTER STRATEGISTS The brand, as a powerful ally, takes charge of strategising the overall battle plan; the latter conceived, for

222 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

instance, as a ‘multi-action approach’ (Biotherm 5); an ‘integrative skincare programme’ (Origins 39); or ‘a bottom-up strategy to work from the base of your toughest wrinkles, right up to its surface’ (Clinique 105). More specifically, the battle stratagem reflects readiness (for example, ‘BeWeil Prepared. Introducing the perfect preparation […]’ (Origins 39), where ‘BeWeil’ is a pun on the expert’s name, Dr Andrew Weil, who developed the product range for Origins); and carefully coordinated stages of action, together with the skilful deployment of specialised artillery and their effects. In some adverts, the stages of action are only partly represented. For example, ‘The Skincare is your first step towards keeping your skin perfectly hydrated and supple. […] enables your skin to create its own moisture to defend against early ageing in three ways. Helps skin create moisture. Helps skin lock in moisture. Strengthens skin’ (Shiseido 45). Or, ‘Bio-Performance Super Lifting Formula. Used as the last step in your skincare, this formula works in three ways to fight the effects of time […]’ (Shiseido 80). In other advertisements, the stages are fully elaborated. For example, the L’Oréal advert (73) in Figure 10.1 for a product range called ‘Visible Results Skin Perfecting Essence’ lists entirely its four-step approach and, in a manual fashion, spells out successive military action (‘eliminates’, followed by ‘immediate and intensive action’, followed by ‘protection’):

STEP 1 Cleanse Visible Results Cleansing Foam […] STEP 2 Tone Visible Results Gelified Toner • Eliminates dead skin cells […] STEP 3 Treat Visible Results Skin Perfecting Active Essence • Immediate and intensive action for soft, radiant skin […] STEP 4 Moisturise Visible Results Skin Perfecting Moisturiser […] • Provides SPF 15 protection Figure 10.1

L’Oréal advert

Michelle M. Lazar 223

Articulation of battle plans in the advertisements encompass a wide range of offensive and defensive strategies, which include countering and eliminating threats; damage control and repair; and strengthening one’s defence system and taking precautionary measures: Together with our unique Detox Complex to neutralize and eliminate epidermal pollutants, and PETP to stimulate skin cell regeneration, Hydra-Detox Bio-DEFENSIS wraps your skin in a protective bubble […] (Biotherm 3) Cleansing is everything. The secret to attaining perpetually younglooking skin lies in a hardworking cleanser that contains age-defying ingredients and, more importantly, one that doesn’t strip the moisture barriers. And with the sun as our number one enemy, damage control is a must. (Olay 81) Go beyond fighting the signs of ageing with breakthrough Activa-Cell. […] to enhance and stimulate the skin’s natural defense and repair processes to counteract the many aggressions that lead to skin ageing. (L’Oréal 73) Build a better moisture barrier now […]. A constant moisture supply helps repair barrier strength, prevents further loss of moisture. (Clinique 76). Market competition among brands to be the chosen allies of women/ warriors leads to brands offering different and better strategies than their rivals. Clinique (9), for instance, distances itself from other brands by offering a purportedly alternative strategy to deal with blemishes: ‘There’s no need to blast away at blemishes.’ Using a coordinated three-step system, visually represented by three bottles of cleanser, clarifying lotion, and moisturiser, Clinique claims that its product range is both ‘gentle enough to use twice a day, every day’ and is ‘fast: Within days, skin starts to clear and resist future breakouts.’ The supposedly unique gentle and quick relief strategy means that the treatment of blemishes need not be unnecessarily harsh. Instead, Clinique’s approach to eliminating the enemy (that is, blemishes) is purportedly more humane and enlightened, as indicated in the headline ‘Kill them with kindness’, and the tagline ‘We come in peace’ (reminiscent of sci-fi non-hostile alien encounter discourse). The equation of killing with peace, although an interesting oxymoron, is not uncommon in war rhetoric. President George W. Bush used a similar WAR IS PEACE rationalisation in legitimating the military

224 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

campaigns against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 (see Lazar and Lazar 2007 for details of this rhetorical strategy). (iii) BRANDS/PRODUCTS ARE RESCUERS BRANDS ARE POWERFUL ALLIES is conceptualised specifically also as RESCUERS. The brand and its products (which are metonyms of the brand) come to the aid of (1) the bodyas-territory/nation, and of (2) women-as-warriors. The body, depleted of its own resources, is personified as languishing – ‘moisture-starved’ (Shiseido 50) and ‘undernourished skins’ (Clinique 20); and in desperate need of external aid. As a result, the brand sends rescue missions in the form of products-as-aids: frees skin of epidermal impurities and delivers intense moisturization all at once (Biotherm 43) rescue moisture-starved, mature skin with a cream that knows exactly how wrinkles are formed. […] Shiseido Benefiance Intensive Nourishing and Recovery Cream (Shiseido 107) save your skin [with] new Continuous Rescue Antioxidant Moisturizer (Clinique 20) Shiseido Benefiance brings you three new products to […] protect your skin from further distress (Shiseido 50). War-wearied warriors also need rescuing. In an example from Marie France Bodyline (26), this is presented in a narrative format, in which the woman is both warrior and damsel-in-distress, and the brand is hero: I’ve been battling my weight problems since adolescence, and it was a challenge for my modeling career and self-confidence […]. Then Marie France Bodyline came along. Thanks to their timely intervention, I finally have the figure I’ve always wanted in just three months. Now, my dreams […] are no longer pipe dreams. Thank you, Marie France Bodyline! [Featured beside the narrative copy is a representation of a contented and confident-looking model, the outcome of the successful rescue.] (Marie France Bodyline 26) The rescue narrative in this advert echoes Lakoff’s (1992) analysis of the conceptualisation of US involvement in the Gulf War of 1990–91 as a fairy tale, thus supporting more generally the close conceptual links between fairy-tale rescue narratives and war.

Michelle M. Lazar 225

(iv) BRANDS ARE IDEOLOGUES Finally, in some adverts it emerges quite conspicuously that BRANDS ARE IDEOLOGUES. Origins (54) is an excellent case in point, whose range of skincare products are intriguingly named: ‘A Perfect World (White tea skin guardian 30 ml, $67)’; ‘A Perfect World (Antioxidant Moisturizer with white tea 50 ml, $73)’; ‘Make a Difference (Skin rejuvenating treatment 50 ml, $67)’; ‘Make a Difference (Skin rejuvenating treatment lotion 150 ml, $43)’; ‘Youthtopia (Skin firming cream with Rhodiola 50 ml, $91)’; and ‘Peace of Mind (On-the-spot relief 15 ml, $22)’. The idyllic names of the products seem to promise a ‘new world order’, a state in which beauty struggles cease to exist. As it has been documented that a ‘new world order’ in the realm of current international politics is an ideological construct (Lazar and Lazar 2007), so too it is in the realm of beautification (with aspirations for ‘a perfect world’, and a ‘youthtopia’). The promise of bringing about a ‘new world order’, therefore, presents one way of understanding the micro metaphor BRANDS ARE IDEOLOGUES. Yet at the same time, what is proposed in the Origins’ advertisement is not a ‘new’ or alternative world order removed from the existing conceptual world of BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR. Rather, manifested in this advert are supreme beauty ideologies that tacitly underlie the rationalisation of most other beauty adverts, which also obsess about bodily perfection and youthfulness. Viewed in the context of the advertisement’s marketing of beauty creams and lotions, ‘A Perfect World’ refers specifically to the pursuit of perfection in beauty, which is echoed also in other advertisements; recall, for example, ‘AIM for Perfection’ (Marie France Bodyline 41) and ‘You too can target the vision of perfection!’ (Expressions 28). Similarly, ‘Peace of Mind’ suggests on-the-spot relief from skin imperfections. As skin rejuvenation treatments, ‘Make a Difference’ carries the specific sense of the youthful difference the lotion makes to one’s skin, and the neologism, ‘Youthtopia’, by fusing youthfulness with the sense of ‘utopia’ makes the beauty ideology of youthfulness patently clear. Therefore, the appearance of a ‘new world order’, within the reach of individual consumers, is not a different way of being, but forms the ideological bedrock of the BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR conceptualisation where conventional feminine beauty ideals prevail. The blurring between something different-yet-the-same is central to the BRANDS ARE IDEOLOGUES conceptualization.

10.4

Conclusion

This chapter undertook to show, through the analysis of language, images and colour, how the domain of warfare fits in with the problem–solution advertising schema to systematically conceptualise the domain of

226 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

feminine beautification. The appropriation of war to structure the domain of beauty practices presents the achievement of the body beautiful as a deadly serious matter. It involves identifying enemies and effectively eliminating them with the help of knowledgeable and trustworthy allies, skilfully planned strategies and powerful state-of-the-art weapons. Embarking on the warpath spells zero tolerance for bodily imperfections, and requires perseverance and (self-) discipline. The critical feminist analysis of BEAUTIFICATION IS WAR reveals interesting contradictory elements in the construction of ‘modern’ feminine identity. On the one hand, the blended image of the action-hero, warrior and feminist activist to produce an ‘empowered’ feminine identity for consumers as active take-charge subjects. Charteris-Black (2004: 14) notes, too, that conflict and war generally confer positive associations that appeal to such emotions as strength, courage and determination. On the other hand, however, militarisation associated with hegemonic masculine practices (Enloe 2000) frames women’s exercise of agency within a form of dominant patriarchal masculinity. It would seem that for women to ‘do’ power seriously is to do it like men, more specifically, to draw upon a masculinised context of institutionalised violence. More disturbingly, the site of struggle in the context of beauty advertising is shifted specifically on to women’s bodies, that is, the terrain of battle and control is women’s own bodies. This is a radical shift from conceptualising the enemy-as-other to the enemy-as-self, leading to a fractured feminine identity and alienation of women’s relationship with their own bodies as constantly problematic. Women’s bodies in the present day, therefore, continue to be subjected to the patriarchal gaze, albeit in resignified post-feminist terms of critical self-scrutiny and what women themselves want and can accomplish.

Michelle M. Lazar 227

Appendix 10.1 S/No

List of advertisements

Brand

Source

Product category

Local/regional/ international

1.

Shiseido

20/7/07, ST

Skincare

International (Japan, US, Europe)

2.

Lancôme

20/7/07, ST

Skincare

International (France, US, and so on)

3.

Biotherm

20/7/07, ST

Skincare

International (Europe, North America, Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore)

4.

Biolyn

18/7/07, ST

Hair care

Local (Singapore)

5.

Biotherm

13/7/07, ST

Skincare

International

6.

Imedeen

31/5/07, ST

Skincare

International (including Singapore)

7.

Dior

17/8/07, ST

Cosmetics (lipstick)

International (Europe, America, Asia-Pacific including Singapore)

8.

Biotherm

17/8/07, ST

Skincare

International

9.

Clinique

17/8/07, ST

Skincare

International (US, UK, Europe, China, India, Japan, and so on)

Skincare

Local (Singapore)

10.

Bionn 6/8/07, ST International

11.

Shiseido

21/10/06, ST Skincare

International

12.

BodyPerfect

5/6/07, ST

International (US)

13.

Reneu MediCentre

10/12/07, ST Body and skincare

Local (Singapore)

14.

Svenson

10/12/07, ST Hair care

Regional (Asia – Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Singapore, and so on)

15.

Reneu MediCentre

3/10/07, ST

Body and skincare

Local (Singapore)

16.

California Fitness

28/5/07, ST

Beauty fitness

Regional (Asia – China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan)

17.

Lancôme

14/1/07, ST

Skincare

International

18.

Elizabeth Arden

31/3/06, ST

Skincare

International (US, Switzerland, Canada, Spain, China, Singapore, and so on)

Body care

228 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Appendix 10.1

List of advertisements – continued

S/No

Brand

Source

Product category

Local/regional/ international

19.

Lancôme

5/10/07, ST

Skincare

International

20.

Clinique

5/10/07, ST

Skincare

International

21.

SK-II

5/10/07, ST

Skincare

International (US, UK, Australia, China, Japan, Singapore, and so on)

22.

Marie France 17/9/07, ST Bodyline

Weight loss

International (Hong Kong, Macau, Switzerland, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Thailand, South Korea, China, Singapore)

23.

L’Oréal

12/11/07, Today

Skincare

International (France,US, UK, Norway, Brazil, South Korea, Singapore, and so on)

24.

Elizabeth Arden

28/9/07, ST

Skincare

International

25.

Shiseido

27/9/07, ST

Skincare

International

26.

Marie France 12/9/07, ST Bodyline

Weight loss

International

27.

Dior

Skincare

International

28.

Expressions 12/7/06, ST (International)

Weight loss

Local (Singapore)

29.

De Beaute

12/7/06, ST

Slimming

Local (Singapore) with a branch in Malaysia

30.

Beyond 24/5/06, ST Beauty (International)

Slimming

Local (Singapore) with outlets in Malaysia

31.

Biotherm

11/5/06, ST

Skincare

International

32.

Shiseido

14/4/06, ST

Hair care

International

33.

Origins

29/3/07, ST

Skincare

International (US, Canada, France, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, UK)

34.

Bella

23/4/07, ST

Skincare

Local/regional (Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, and so on)

5/1/06, ST

Michelle M. Lazar 229 Appendix 10.1

List of advertisements – continued

S/No

Brand

Source

Product category

35.

Expressions

13/11/07, ST Slimming

Local (Singapore)

36.

Givenchy

15/11/07, ST Cosmetics (mascara)

International (France)

37.

FIL

1/11/07, ST

Local (Singapore)

38.

Clinique

26/10/07, ST Skincare

International

39.

Origins

21/10/07, ST Skincare

International

40.

Shu uemera

25/10/07, ST Urban

Skincare

International (US)

41.

Marie France 29/5/06, ST Bodyline

Body care/ slimming

International

42.

Reneu MediCentre

15/10/07, ST Skincare

Local (Singapore)

43.

Biotherm

6/7/07, ST

Skincare

International

44.

The Health Club

3/10/07, ST

Slimming

Local (Singapore)

45.

Shiseido

18/5/07, ST

Skincare

International

46.

Biotherm

28/4/06, ST

Skincare

International

47.

ReSTogen™ Hair Essence

13/9/07, ST

Hair care

Local (Singapore)

48.

BodyPerfect

24/4/07, ST

Slimming

Local (Singapore)

49.

Estée Lauder

20/5/07, ST

Skincare

International (US, Canada, China, France, Germany, Russia, South Korea, Spain, UK)

50.

Shiseido

21/1/06, ST

Skincare

International

51.

Philip Wain 12/7/06, ST (International)

Slimming

Regional (Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand)

52.

L’Oréal

7/4/07, ST

Skincare

International

53.

Beyond Beauty

21/6/07, ST Urban

Slimming and Local (Singapore) bust enhancement

54.

Origins

25/8/07, ST

Skincare

55.

Bella

12/11/07, ST Skincare

Local (Singapore) Regional

56.

Amore

6/11/07, ST

Fitness

Local (Singapore)

57.

L’Oréal

8/11/07, ST

Skincare

International

58.

Svenson

21/11/07, ST Hair care

59.

Marie France 12/11/07, ST Slimming Bodyline

Skincare

Local/regional/ international

International

Regional International

230 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Appendix 10.1

List of advertisements – continued

S/No

Brand

Source

Product category

Local/regional/ international

60.

Ettusais

13/4/07, ST

Skincare

International (Japan, Singapore, and so on)

61.

Nivea

11/11/07, ST Skincare

International (Germany, UK, China, South America, Middle East, and so on)

62.

Reneu MediCentre

16/11/07, ST Body and skincare

Local (Singapore)

63.

Bella

5/7/04, ST

Skincare

Local (Singapore) Regional

10/2/04, ST

64.

Philip Wain

Fitness

Regional

65.

Fancl 24/3/06, ST (International)

Skincare

International (US, Japan, Singapore)

66.

L’Oréal

4/5/07, ST

Skincare

International

67.

Bella

18/7/05, ST

Skincare

Local (Singapore) Regional

68.

Philip Wain

6/4/04, ST

Slimming

Regional

69.

Slimming Sanctuary

24/3/04, ST

Slimming

Local (Singapore) with a site in Malaysia

70.

Chanel

14/5/04, ST

Skincare

International (France, Germany, Italy Spain, UK, Canada, US, Latin America, Asia)

71.

Bionn 8/11/04, ST International

Skincare

Local (Singapore)

72.

Beijing 101

23/6/03, ST

Hair care

Regional (China, Singapore)

73.

L’Oréal

7/5/04, ST

Skincare

International

74.

Estée Lauder

4/8/05, ST

Skincare

International

75.

Imedeen

21/11/04, ST Skincare

International

76.

Clinique

3/9/04, ST

Skincare

International

77.

Olay

leaflet (n.d.)

Skincare

International (US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, India, China, Australia, Turkey, Singapore)

Michelle M. Lazar 231 Appendix 10.1

List of advertisements – continued

S/No

Brand

Source

Product category

Local/regional/ international

78.

Estetica

21/12/04, ST Skincare

International (France, Singapore)

79.

Olay

18/11/04, ST Urban

Skincare

International

80.

Shiseido

24/9/04, ST

Skincare

International

81.

Olay

20/10/05, ST Urban

Skincare

International

82.

L’Oréal

pamphlet (n.d.)

Skincare

International

83.

Life Pharm (Intenz)

2/6/04, ST

Skincare

Local/regional (Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand)

84.

Sothys Paris

5/3/07, ST

Skincare

International (France, Australia)

85.

Neutrogena

4/3/07, Skincare Sunday Times

International (US)

86.

Lancôme

6/4/07, ST

Skincare

International

87.

Shiseido

9/2/07, ST

Skincare

International

88.

De Beaute

31/1/07, ST

Slimming

Local (Singapore)

89.

Lancôme

leaflet (n.d.)

Skincare

International

90.

L’Oréal

4/2/07, Skincare Sunday Times

International

91.

Marie France 17/10/05, ST Slimming Bodyline

International

92.

Lancôme

6/5/04, ST

Skincare

International

93.

Bella

21/3/05, ST

Skincare

Local (Singapore) Regional

94.

Origins

4/8/05, ST

Skincare

International

95.

Marie France 5/10/05, ST Bodyline

Slimming

International

96.

Lancôme

28/10/05, ST Skincare

International

97.

Sisley Paris

9/11/04, ST Skincare Life! Weekend

International (France)

98.

Clarins Paris

leaflet (n.d.)

Slimming

International (France, US)

99.

La Prairie

1/10/04, ST

Skincare

International (Switzerland, Australia, Europe, Asia)

232 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Appendix 10.1

List of advertisements – continued

S/No

Brand

Source

Product category

Local/regional/ international

100.

Clinique

2/4/04, ST

Skincare

International

101.

Estée Lauder

16/1/05, Sunday Times

Skincare

International

102.

Shiseido

12/11/04, ST Skincare

International

103.

Clarins

27/2/04, ST

Skincare

International (France, Singapore, UK, US, Spain, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China)

104.

Dior

27/2/04, ST

Skincare

International

105.

Clinique

30/12/05, ST Skincare

International

106.

Shiseido

23/9/05, ST

Skincare

International

107.

Shiseido

21/1/05, ST

Skincare

International

108.

Dior

21/1/05, ST

Skincare

International

109.

Clinique

5/11/04, ST

Skincare

International

110.

Origins

18/9/07, ST

Skincare

International

111.

Dior

20/1/06, ST

Skincare

International

112.

Clinique

9/5/07, ST

Skincare

International

113.

Proclear

13/12/07, ST Eye care

International (US, Singapore, and so on)

114.

My Beauty Bar

3/1/08, ST Urban

Local (Singapore)

Eyebrows

ST: Straits Times

Notes 1 This research was developed from funding received from the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Academic Research Fund (Project No. R-103-000-012112). I am grateful to the editor, Kathleen Ahrens, for her meticulous comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter. 2 In order to ascertain the prevalence of war metaphors in beauty adverts, a couple of students in my ‘Textual Construction of Knowledge’ class (a postgraduate module which I teach at NUS) recently analysed a random issue (September 2008) of a local women’s magazine (Singapore Women’s Weekly). They found that 80 per cent of the beauty adverts featured in the single issue used war metaphors.

Michelle M. Lazar 233 3 Ageing and time are also further qualified in terms of stage (the first signs of ageing, Lancôme 19, or defy further aging, Shiseido 106); visibility (fight the visible signs of time, Elizabeth Arden 24); quantity (fight the seven signs of aging, Olay 81); specificity (fight signs of skin aging, Elizabeth Arden 18; visible signs of photo-aging, Clinique 112); and comprehensiveness (defeat every sign of aging, L’Oréal 23). 4 See Lazar and Lazar (2007) for the coining of the term ‘enemisation’ and for its processes and functions in political discourse. 5 Obsession with light skin is a predominant feature in the definition of Asian feminine beauty. 6 The other two adverts are for slimming and spa services (Beyond Beauty), and for facial skincare products (Bella). 7 Since completing the writing of this chapter, I have seen two other adverts (on the Internet) that visually represent the PRODUCTS ARE WEAPONS concept. One is an advert for Cover Girl, in which the model (actress Keri Russell) wields a lip gloss as a state-of-the-art weapon against assailants. The second advert is by Olay, in which several bottles of moisturisers are pictured closeup, with their black nozzles all pointing at an angle resembling a row of canons. The tagline read ‘Fight 7 signs of aging’.

References Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Politicians and Rhetoric. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Connell, R. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Enloe, C. 2000. Maneuvers: the International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives Berkeley: University of California Press. Forceville, C. Forthcoming. ‘Non-verbal and Multimodal Metaphor in a Cognitivist Framework: Agendas for Research’, in G. Kristiansen et al. (eds) Applications of Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations and Fields of Application. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Koller, V. 2004. ‘Businesswomen and War Metaphors: ‘Possessive, Jealous and Pugnacious’? Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(1): 3–22. Kövecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor: a Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. 1992. ‘Metaphor and War: the Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf’. Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980/2003. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lazar, M. M. (ed.) 2005. Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lazar, M. M. 2006. ‘‘‘Discover the Power of Femininity!” Analysing Global Power Femininity in Local Advertising’. Feminist Media Studies, 6(4): 505–17. Lazar, A. and M. M. Lazar. 2007. ‘Enforcing Justice, Justifying Force: America’s Justification of Violence in the New World Order’, in A. Hodges and C. Nilep (eds) Discourse, War and Terrorism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

234 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors McRobbie, A. 2004. ‘Post-feminism and Popular Culture’. Feminist Media Studies, 4(3): 255–64. Montgomery, S. L. 1991. ‘Codes and Combat in Biomedical Discourse’. Science as Culture, 2(3): 341–91. Sontag, S. 1991. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors. London: Penguin. Vestergaard, T. and K. Schroder. 1985. The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Blackwell.

11 Power as a Conceptual Metaphor of Gender Inequality? Comparing Dutch and Spanish Politics Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo University of Antwerp and Madrid Complutense University

11.1

Introduction

This chapter explores the question of whether and how power is used as a conceptual metaphor in gender inequality in politics. We analyse to what extent a selection of Dutch and Spanish policy texts on the issue of ‘gender inequality in politics’ refer to power, and if they do so, what metaphors they employ for describing it. The central hypothesis is that these policy texts on gender equality in politics contain conceptualisations on power that might constitute important gendered barriers in the access to power. We further postulate that studying these conceptualisations will reveal important discursive and normative potential barriers to a gender equal distribution of power. In a previous study on gender inequality in politics (Meier et al. 2005), for example, we found that policy texts on the issue often contain a ‘benchmarking fallacy’. This fallacy suggests that gender inequality can be dealt with in terms of numbers, without tackling underlying structural problems. In this chapter, we turn to the issue of whether the concept of ‘power’ is present with respect to gender inequality in policy texts, and further explore the extent to which these texts go beyond the ‘benchmarking fallacy’ of women in politics. In order to analyse the policy documents on gender inequality in politics in search for power, we employ a critical frame analysis methodology. Critical frame analysis (Verloo 2007) is based on written or recorded spoken discourse or language, not on non-verbal communication. As in theories of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), in critical frame analysis a language is examined to reveal a person’s thoughts (Deignan no date). It reveals how sociopolitical actors frame a policy problem (of gender inequality in politics, in our 235

236 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

case) and the solutions they put forward in order to solve it. This analysis enables us to detect the way political actors think of power and how they present it. We analyse 14 Dutch and 12 Spanish policy texts on gender inequality in politics in the decade from 1995 until 2004. The year 1995 was selected because it was the year the United Nations World Conference on Women was held in Beijing. This conference represents a milestone in world governments’ formal commitment towards gender equality. The cases we select, the Netherlands and Spain, allow for an interesting comparison due to the fact that the former used to be a forerunner in equality policies while Spain was considered a latecomer. The difference in the two cases leads us to expect a different representation of power in the policy documents. The argument is developed in three sections. First, we sketch the context of the two cases studied, the Netherlands and Spain, over the last decade within our theoretical framework. Second, we discuss how we study theoretical conceptualisations of power with the help of critical frame analysis methodology and how we approach metaphors. Third, we study the conceptualisation of power by political actors in the policy texts of the two countries selected. Finally, we come to a deeper reflection on the extent to which political actors consider power from a gendered perspective in policy documents on gender inequality in politics.

11.2 Gender inequality in politics: the Spanish and Dutch contexts The Netherlands is often cited as an example of a country with a stable high number of women in politics. Having obtained the right to vote and to stand for elections in 1919, the number of women in parliament remained under 10 per cent until the 1970s. By the middle of the 1980s it had risen to 20 per cent. Since the 1990s women have made up slightly more than one-third of members of parliament (MPs). During the 1990s this was exceptional among the European Union (EU) member states, especially when leaving the Scandinavian countries out. Except for the 1987 elections, the share of female senators has generally been slightly lower than that of their female colleagues in parliament. Women’s positions in political decision-making have not really been an issue since the middle of the 1990s. At the 1972 elections, the main actor of the Dutch women’s movement (Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij) first campaigned for more women (Oldersma 2005). This encouraged

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 237

parties for the next 20 years, particularly the larger ones, to pay attention to the issue. In this they were also pushed by electoral considerations and by their own women’s groups (Leyenaar 1998). Since the beginning of the 1990s most parties have measures to promote gender equality, such as setting a quota or target figures for positions within the parties or for electoral lists. In 1992, the government published a position paper (a measure repeated in 1996) and initiated a project to ‘promote women in politics and in public governance’. But on the whole the topic of gender relations in political decision-making was not such a hot issue in the 1990s, with the exception of the annual progress reports on ‘women in politics and public governance’ published by the Ministry of Domestic Affairs (which were formally closed in 1999 and included in broader plans for equal opportunities policies). In addition, advisory positions focusing on gender were abolished, because the government considered that a gender perspective would be picked up within the advisory bodies. The abolition of these positions did not provoke much debate. In fact, since the 1995 Beijing Conference, only two issues related to women’s position in political decision-making have been debated in the Dutch parliament. They are highly interesting in that they go beyond the traditional discussion of how to deal with women in politics. The first debate concerned the replacement of MPs on maternity leave. After a first bill was rejected in 1994, a new act was adopted in 2004, which opened the door for an amendment of the Dutch Constitution in order to put the replacement of MPs on maternity leave into practice. In this act, the grounds for replacement were extended from solely having to do with maternity to illness and medical treatment for all MPs up to a maximum period of 16 weeks (which is the legal time period of maternity leave). The second debate was on the legitimacy of the conservative Christian party Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP) to exclude women from regular membership, and, hence, from the access to power. The issue was extensively debated in 1990 on the occasion of the act meant to adopt the UN Women’s Treaty (CEDAW). Renewed attention was paid to the issue in 1993 when the equal treatment act was under debate. This debate flared up again in 2000 through CEDAW’s subsequent critique of the Dutch government for not complying with the UN Women’s Treaty by sanctioning the SGP, and the Clara Wichmann Institute, a women’s juridical NGO, then started a procedure to prosecute the SGP. At the end of 2007 the court ruled that the SGP discriminates against women by not allowing them access to political functions (the party has accepted women as members since 2006).1

238 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Spain offers a different context from the Netherlands concerning the issue of gender inequality in politics. It has been an EU member state with a rather low number of women in political decision-making until the end of the 1990s. From the end of the Franco regime in 1977 to the end of the 1980s women made up about 6 per cent of the MPs in the national parliament (Astelarra 1990). During the 1990s their number rose to 15 per cent, and then reached 36 per cent in 2004 and 35.7 per cent in 2008. Hence, over the last few years Spain has joined countries with a high number of women in elected political positions, such as the Netherlands. However, the number of women remains lower in the Senate, making up 29 per cent in the 2008 general election. The position of women in political decision-making became an issue at the end of the 1980s. From then onwards, debates, fed by left-wing parties, mainly focused on quotas. In 1988 the Socialists (PSOE) launched a debate on quotas and approved a 25 per cent minimum quota for women for party functions and for electoral lists. In reaction to this measure, the Leftist Party (IU) set a quota of 35 per cent and although the number of women elected did not rise to the quota set, it started its way upwards (Lombardo 2008). In 1996 the Conservatives (PP) came to power and rejected quotas. Nonetheless, the third National Plan for Equal Opportunities (1997–2000) contained a section on ‘power and decision-making’, indicating that the issue had reached their agenda as well. In 2000, the Socialists, Leftists and a mixed group of parliamentarians submitted bill proposals on an egalitarian access to electoral positions, but none of them passed. In 2002, regions such as the Baleares and Castilla-La Mancha approved bills on the introduction of quotas in electoral lists. These were taken to the Constitutional Court by the conservative government (Bustelo et al. 2004, Bustelo and Lombardo 2007). This led to a suspension on the part of the Spanish Constitutional Court of both quota laws, which also happened to other regional bills introducing quotas in candidate lists, the Andalusia electoral parity law and the Basque equality law. In March 2004 the Socialist Party won the general election and created the first parity government in Spain with the appointment of an equal number of female and male ministers (eight of each sex) and of a female vice president of government.2 This account of the different development of the issue of gender inequality in politics in the two selected cases helps us to set the context in which the analysed policy documents emerge. We would expect to find representations of the concept of power in the policy texts that would reflect this different development, with more elaborate concept-

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 239

ualisations of power in the more experienced Dutch context with regard to gender policies. We will study conceptualisations of power underlying Dutch and Spanish policy texts in the subsequent sections.

11.3 Critical frame analysis and the study of power through conceptual metaphors If power manifests itself in policy discourses, it should appear in some form in written policy texts on gender inequality in politics. To carry out our analysis of the representations of power reflected in the Dutch and Spanish policy documents on gender inequality in politics, we employ the methodology of critical frame analysis. Critical frame analysis originated in social movements theory (Snow and Benford 1988, 1992) and was further developed within the Mainstreaming Gender Equality in Europe (MAGEEQ) research project (www.mageeq.net) in that insights from public policy (Bacchi 1999, Giddens 1984) and gender theory (Walby 1997, Verloo and Roggeband 1996, Connell 1987) were incorporated. Critical frame analysis aims at mapping how policy actors interpret a policy problem, either in implicit or explicit ways, and the solutions to the latter. The key concept of a frame is of an unintentional conceptual schema that filters our understanding of reality by driving our attention towards certain aspects of reality (often related to where our sociocultural bias mostly leads us), while at the same time they can make us neglect others (Goffmann 1974). When applied to policy discourse, a ‘policy frame’ is defined as an ‘organizing principle that transforms fragmentary or incidental information into a structured and meaningful problem, in which a solution is implicitly or explicitly included’ (Verloo 2007: 33, 2005: 20). Policy frames that can make us problematise certain policy issues and leave others untouched are made of different dimensions. Critical frame analysis is particularly suited to the study of power in policy discourses on gender inequality in politics because it detects both visible and invisible dimensions of power thanks to a detailed and in-depth analysis of the different dimensions of a policy frame. In particular, it helps us to identify the representation of the problem or its diagnosis, the solution to the problem or its prognosis, and the balance existing between the two (for instance, by observing whether a policy document leaves a particular problem representation with no solution). It further reveals what roles are attributed to the groups considered (Who is considered to be the norm group and who the problematic group? Who is supposed to act to solve the problem? And who are the target

240 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

groups of the proposed measures?). It also helps us identify the causes or roots of a problem, the means to solve it, and the mechanisms that reproduce and solve the problem. Other dimensions of a policy frame that enable us to analyse the less visible aspects of power concerning the legitimisation of non-problems (is there something in the text that is considered as a non-problem?) and the legitimisation of non-action (how is non-action legitimised in the texts?), and the normativity that is expressed in a text (what is seen as ideal/preferred and what is seen as bad/detrimental?). The dimension of voice, that is, who is given a voice to speak in the document or is referred to in a text, is important to assess which actors have the power to set and control the agenda and which actors are excluded from the possibility of framing policy issues (see Verloo 2007 for a list of these dimensions). In critical frame analysis, conceptual metaphors are one of the signs that reveal a person’s thought (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999). However, we do not develop a detailed analysis of all of the metaphors that we encounter in the chosen policy texts, but rather select metaphors that express the representations of power. In this sense, our analysis differs from the tradition of discourse analysis, which focuses more on the close analysis of language using a social psychological focus on patterns of speech and linguistic and rhetorical devices that are used in a text that is often an interview (see Bacchi 2005). By contrast, our analysis is closer to an analysis of discourse, which is more interested in the meanings and interpretations of specific issues that emerge in written policy documents within particular political and social contexts and that produce particular understandings of such issues (see Bacchi 2005, Verloo 2007). Being aware of the dangers in discourse analysis of overgeneralising on limited linguistic evidence (Deignan 2005), we wish to clarify from the beginning that we treat metaphors not as our only linguistic evidence, but rather as one of the ways that help us identify the representations of power that appear in the written discourse of policy actors. Through the use of keywords that refer to power without necessarily naming it, we have selected the metaphors that more explicitly refer to power in the context of the policy texts on gender inequality in politics, but do not necessarily cover all implicit and explicit metaphors of power in the texts. The aforementioned dimensions of a policy frame, such as among others, diagnosis and prognosis of a policy problem, are the main tools that enable us to grasp the meaning of power that appears in the texts and its relation to gender equality. We will analyse the referred dimensions of a policy frame in the selection of Dutch and Spanish policy texts on gender inequality in

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 241

politics, searching for ways in which power is represented through metaphors. The selection of texts includes primarily official documents declaring policies on gender equality elaborated by the main political and administrative institutions,3 such as legislative texts, political plans and programmes, parliamentary debates, and political speeches and declarations.4 Selected policy documents undergo an in-depth analysis, the results of which are included in a systematic and detailed summary that has been called a supertext, on the basis of which the different dimensions of a policy frame are mapped.5

11.4 Power and conceptual metaphors in Dutch and Spanish policy texts on gender inequality in politics In this chapter, our analysis explores whether, how and through which metaphors, power is represented in the Spanish and Dutch texts on gender inequality in politics (see Bustelo et al. 2004, van Lamoen et al. 2004). Notwithstanding the fact that we postulated differences between the Dutch and Spanish texts, we did not find any fundamental ones. Spanish texts do not explicitly define power and only mention it through occasional, abstract and vague references. Of the 14 Dutch texts studied, only 4 contain an explicit reference to power in connection with issues of gender equality.6 In general, in both countries, the concept of power is employed as a synonym of the ‘realm of power’, a concept that indicates elective and decision-making political positions. For instance, in most Dutch and Spanish government equality plans, the section of the text that refers to elective and decision-making political positions is named ‘power and decision-making’.7 Power appears to be mainly understood as the presence in higher functions of (political) decision-making, referring to women’s participation in these institutions. The note on behalf of the Dutch women’s policy machinery from May 1999, underlines, for instance, that power concerns the ‘presence of women in the formal political institutions and societal organizations’ (N5: 3). This is the so-called ‘quantitative’ dimension of power. The document also mentions the ‘qualitative’ presence of women, referring to the structural attention for women’s interests and needs, but in the rest of the document the author deliberately leaves this issue aside. Furthermore, the concept of power tends to be closely interconnected with that of equality, the latter being defined in a traditional liberal way of an equal access to all spheres of society (for instance N9). The inequality of women resides in the fact that they do not hold enough powerful

242 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

positions as compared to men. Power, in this perspective, is reduced to a quantitative entity; it becomes a synonym for the number of women in political decision-making. Dutch policy documents underline for instance that the problem is the ‘distribution of power’ (for instance N1), meaning that positions of political decision-making are not equally distributed among men and women. The problem is to be understood as an underrepresentation of women in positions of political decision-making. Given this numerical focus, power is also conceived as a zero-sum game: whatever power women will manage to achieve is power they have taken from men. This notion of a zero-sum game can be found in a Dutch text underlining that ‘a characteristic of the possession of power is that it is not easily nor voluntarily given away’ (N5). Most policy discourses further seem to assume that, to be equal, women simply need to be integrated in power structures, the same structures that may actually be reproducing women’s subordination. Achieving equality is not necessarily presented as a question of changing existing power structures but of offering women the possibility to enter them. Dutch and Spanish texts frequently refer to the need to ‘promote equal access and participation of women in power and decision-making structures in all spheres’ (S2).8 Some of the keywords searched in Spanish texts were ‘acceso al poder’ [access to power], ‘comparto del poder’ [sharing power], ‘participación en el poder’ [participation in power], ‘representación política’ [political representation], ‘igualdad en el poder’ [equality in power], ‘igualdad en la toma de decisiones’ [equality in decision-making], ‘presencia’ [presence], ‘paridad’ [parity]. Some of the keywords found in Dutch texts were ‘verdeling van macht en invloed’ [distribution of power and influence], ‘verdeling van (politieke) hulpbronnen’ [distribution of (political) resources], ‘deel uitmaken’ [participate in], ‘aanwezigheid van vrouwen’ [presence of women], ‘doorbraak van vrouwen in hogere functies’ [breakthrough of women in higher positions]. One of the metaphors most commonly used is that of ‘access’ to positions of political power (that is, representative and decision-making positions). This gives us the idea that power is something that is behind a closed door that needs to be opened for women to enter this sphere. The barrier to women’s access is often described as ‘glass ceiling’,9 where the image of the glass shows the gap between the formal and the substantive opportunities to access political positions. While formally nothing hinders women from accessing positions of political decision-making, there still are invisible barriers. In Spain, demands for sharing power and achieving a more balanced share of power come in particular from actors belonging to the PSOE

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 243

and IU. Quotas for women in political institutions are part of the solutions proposed to overcome the obstacles that hinder women’s access to power structures on (numerically) equal terms with men. Whatever the obstacles may be, quotas are meant to bypass them.10 The type of quotas that is proposed by the Socialist Party, the main supporter of this measure, requires that ‘candidatures of electoral lists will have a balanced presence of men and women so that their composition does not exceed 60 per cent and is not inferior to 40 per cent of either sex’.11 What is interesting as well is that the main metaphors used in these texts refer to weight and numbers, and they appear in all Spanish texts with keywords such as ‘balanced presence’, ‘balanced participation’, ‘balanced representation’, ‘share’.12 For example, the rationale behind the introduction of quotas in politics is often described through the metaphor of a ‘balanced presence’, that suggests the image of a scale where women and men have the same weight on the plates. The language of mathematics often returns in the mentioning of a numerical ‘proportion’ of 60/40 for each sex’s possibility to be elected or appointed in political positions (S8). Using the language of mathematics can be a strategic device that female politicians employ, deliberately or not, to legitimate the issue of gender inequality in politics vis-à-vis their male colleagues. And it is a language that can more easily be understood by men. In the Dutch policy documents, the focus is rather on the extent to which the target figures for women in positions of political decisionmaking are met. The language used is that of an economic trend, describing the evolution in the numbers of women in decision-making in terms of ‘growth’, ‘substantive growth’, ‘stagnation’ and ‘decline’ (N10, N11). A couple of Dutch policy texts focus more extensively on the obstacles themselves, distinguishing for instance between individual, structural and cultural factors. The individual factors refer to the level of education, professional experience, time available, personal ambition and motivation, but they are recognised to have become less important. Institutional factors are defined as those involving the distribution of power and refer to the gender bias contained in electoral systems or the selection criteria for candidates in politics. Cultural factors refer to gender rules and regimes, mainly unwritten rules, values, norms and social practices, all of which are institutions influencing how much power women ‘manage to gather’. Notwithstanding the more extensive focus on obstacles to a balanced distribution of power positions in the Dutch case, solutions are similar to those presented in Spanish documents. A redistribution of

244 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

power is thought not to come by itself but rather needs steering through stimulating measures such as quotas or target figures, as can be found in a gender impact assessment of the electoral system. But the obstacles themselves are not tackled, the existing structures and institutions producing and perpetuating power relations are left untouched – if any solution is suggested at all. A couple of texts refer to power in a different way. A linguistic example used in one Spanish text presents ‘power’ as a ‘cake’ to ‘share’. Power is perceived as the capacity to make things happen that would otherwise not happen. The metaphor of the ‘cake’ enables female politicians, who were the authors of the speech, to suggest to their male colleagues an image that they can easily perceive, as it speaks in the traditional language of power as a tempting capacity to possess, but that at the same time fits the purpose of proposing a redistribution of ‘the cake’ between the sexes. The underlying suggestion of the text, however, goes in the opposite direction to the traditional idea of power in order to dominate someone else, since it states that, by sharing the ‘cake of power’, women might be able to construct a new world order. In the words of a Socialist female MP: ‘we women want to share the cake of power, not because we are crazy about it […] because we want to participate in the construction of a new world order’.13 In this sense, the concept of power that emerges is one of ‘power over’ in order to come to ‘power to’, and female policymakers are presented as actors who will transform the world. The aforementioned Dutch paper on the position of women in decision-making, produced by a feminist scholar on behalf of the women’s policy machinery, underlines not only the deficient distribution of power but also that of influence. Here, power is defined as the ability to decide on the organisation of society (see N5: 1). The argument goes that there is both too little quantitative and qualitative presence of women in decision-making, the latter referring to a lack of structural consideration of women’s issues or gendered interests and needs. But no further explanation is provided for how the quantitative and the qualitative aspects of women’s representation relate to each other, and how more women in the realm of power would involve both different decisions from those generally taken and a reorganisation of society. But the fact that power can be the capacity to transform something, as it is understood by Arendt (1969), is clearly underlined, even though it is not stated as such let alone developed any further. An alternative conceptualisation of power in a more (normative) transformative sense emerges in the Basque Plan on gender equality

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 245

(S3). The key concepts developed in this document are ‘empowerment’ and ‘power to’. Measures are oriented to achieving women’s empowerment in its double aspect: of acknowledging their capacities to exercise influence, power and leadership, and of promoting the effective exercise of influence, power and leadership. It is a matter of strengthening women’s social, economic and political position on the basis of the conception of ‘power to’ rather than ‘power over’, which would imply the elimination of existing gender power relations. The expression ‘power to’ includes a metaphorical movement towards potential capacity, change and future action. Power, in the Basque Plan, is conceived as capacity (‘power to’) rather than as control (‘power over’), opening the way to the transformative potential of an alternative conceptualisation of power. Moreover, unlike the other analysed texts for Spain on gender inequality in politics, gender relations in the Basque Plan are explicitly defined as power relations, although there is no mentioning of the patriarchal structures in which power relations are situated. Women’s empowerment and increased autonomy are represented as possible solutions to the problem of gender inequalities in politics. Empowerment is explicitly connected to the importance of strengthening the women’s movement, giving feminist actors voice in the political debate.14 In this normative discourse, women’s empowerment should take its point of departure in the concept of ‘power to’. The plan argues about the need to strengthen women’s capacities, both at the individual and collective levels, in view of a ‘new model of leadership’ that would supposedly be more transformative. The text recognises the presence of obstacles to women’s exercise of ‘power to’, as existing political structures are excessively hierarchical for allowing women – and men – to exercise ‘power to’. Neither the concept of women’s ‘power to’ nor the way in which such a radical change of structures should occur is extensively developed in the Basque Plan. Besides, in spite of its progressive aspects, this discourse is not immune to the influence of the implicit male norm: while women’s roles and contributions in the transformation of society are underlined in a way that creates the idea of women’s responsibility, references to men’s roles in this transformation are absent. A concept of power as something related to setting and controlling the agenda by taking non-decisions that would not benefit dominant groups (Lukes 2005) is reflected in most Dutch policy documents as well as in the discourse of the Spanish Popular Party (PP). The latter shows a liberal emphasis on the individual, together with a denial of the problem of unequal power between the sexes. In this discourse, women’s under-representation is considered not a problem in itself, because equal

246 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

opportunities supposedly enable capable individuals (men and women) to compete for power, and let the best individuals achieve power positions. Not only is unequal gender power (interpreted as women’s underrepresentation) legitimised as a ‘non-problem’, but also ‘non-action’ is the solution proposed in the discourse of the PP: ‘(…) the debate you [MPs proposing quotas] bring here today is an old debate (…). We defend a feminism of opportunities, not of imposition. (…) Against your quotas, we want responsibilities that respond to our efforts, capacity and value. We do not want to be a number imposed on a list.’15 Different rhetorical resources are employed in this Spanish policy document. The Socialist Party’s demand for quotas is discredited by the Popular Party with the label of ‘old feminism’. The label ‘old-fashioned’ attached to quota promoters would supposedly consist in the ‘imposition’ that quotas would exercise on parties, while the progress is rather conceived in terms of minimal state intervention. Furthermore, by defining women who oppose quotas as capable, competent and worthy, the PP speaker implicitly suggests a negative association of women who are in favour of quotas and who would be elected due to quotas as incompetent, incapable and unworthy. The argument is that there is no need for legal ‘intervention’ (that is, quotas), the boundaries set to action being the voluntary will of individuals. Change, in this view, will simply come ‘naturally’ since men and women are equal in dignity and capacities: ‘In my view such a strong interventionism of having to make parity by law must not exist, since this [equality] should be natural, given that we, men and women, are equal in dignity (…) and capacity, under equal conditions, to compete with men.’16 Most Dutch documents, even those analysing gendered obstacles when it comes to having or getting power, contain subtle legitimisations of non-action by not formulating any concrete suggestions to solve the problem depicted and by postponing concrete action. All in all, we detected very few explicit definitions of the concept of power in the analysed texts on gender inequality in politics. Moreover, explicit references to male domination in politics are extremely rare in the diagnosis of the problem. Neither Spanish nor Dutch texts explicitly mention men as part of the problem of women’s underrepresentation. The Dutch text closest to such a statement mentions that institutional advantages for men have to be erased, thus recognising a gender-differentiated access to power, and the Spanish Basque Plan (S3) refers to incentives for men to take paternity and parental leave. But the focus is on the design and impact of institutions, not on men. Policy documents underline the unequal distribution of power

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 247

between the sexes, but focus on how women lag behind or need to catch up. Issues of causality and responsibility never address men. Women have the problem of not having much power and they should move so as to attain it. This appears in the tendency in the Spanish and Dutch texts to frame the problem of gender inequality in politics as ‘women’s under-representation’ rather than ‘men’s over-representation’. The issue is a larger participation of women: increasing women’s inflow, increasing their mobility and preventing their exit.

11.5 Conclusions: gender and the implicit dimensions of power In this chapter, we studied a particular potential barrier for women in political decision-making, more precisely the framing of power in policy documents on gender inequality in politics and the conceptual metaphors employed to describe power. Contrary to our expectations, Dutch and Spanish policy documents on gender inequality in politics do not differ profoundly with respect to the conceptualisation of power, notwithstanding the historical differences between these countries when it comes to the position of women in politics. Dutch texts do not contain qualitatively more references to power. Gender equality policies might have introduced target figures way before the Spanish requests on gender quotas and focus on subtle barriers such as the lack of maternity leave for women politicians, but with respect to power, the discourses are similar in both countries. When considering the representations of power and the related metaphors that are reflected in the analysed policy documents on gender inequality in politics, we have to conclude that definitions of power are rare, vague and limited. Only a small minority of policy documents speak of power, and if they do, they tend to be brief on the issue. The concept of power is closely interconnected with a liberal understanding of equality, limiting the concept of power to a quantitative entity that reflects the number of women in politics. Power is the observable and measurable ‘access’ of women to positions of political decisionmaking that is hindered by obstacles metaphorically summarised in the conventionalised expression of a ‘glass ceiling’. Power, in this respect, is mainly considered to be a form of control over, in this case, positions of decision-making. Power is also seen as a zero-sum game: whatever certain actors have, others do not have it. But it is not seen as a relational concept. Of the current relational definition of power only B (women) is addressed, not A (men). This finding suggests that it is

248 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

precisely the absence of the mentioning of the male subject in the power relation that reveals the presence of implicit dimensions of power even in policy documents that are supposedly written to promote gender equality in politics. In his recently revised theory of power, Lukes (2005) argues that one of the levels at which power operates is a situation in which an issue is unquestioned to the extent that it is not even formulated in the actors’ minds nor is it openly discussed in political debates. In this case, the taboo seems to be male power over women. The problem of men’s power is not explicitly formulated in the documents precisely because it is so dominant that it exercises hegemony over all discourses and, consequently, the situation simply does not appear as problematic to the political actors involved, including female policymakers who advocate gender equality. Male political power is revealed and confirmed by its invisibility as a problem, by its being normalised by the majority of the texts, even those of feminist actors. Still, men’s presence as the invisible unstated norm suggests the unquestioned (even ‘obvious’) perpetuation of their power over the subordinated female subjects. In this sense, the maintenance in power of the male group is protected against possible changes by continuous processes of normalisation of hegemonic discourses (Foucault 1980, 1995). In sum, the Dutch and Spanish policy documents on the issue of gender inequality in politics might not explicitly mention power, but they speak for themselves with respect to the existing power relations. They subscribe to and reproduce the existing imbalanced gender relations in political decision-making as the norm, which might produce an important barrier for women to such positions. However, findings also indicate that, though isolated, texts on gender inequality in politics develop some alternative conceptualisations of power as ‘power to’ that embed a transformative potential for politics through a metaphorical movement from ‘power over’ to ‘power to’. One of them is the concept of individual and collective empowerment that was found in the Basque Plan, that has some relation to Arendt’s notion of power as capacity to ‘act in concert’ (Arendt 1972: 151) for a political purpose. Power in the Basque text is conceived as capacity that stems from both women’s individual empowerment through training programmes for improving their political skills and the strengthening of the women’s associative movement through training, promotion of exchanges, funds and coordination programmes. These measures go in the direction of promoting women’s capacity to act together with the common political purpose of achieving a more gender equal society. Other alternative conceptualisations of power use the classical and familiar

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 249

metaphor of the ‘cake of power’, but to promote a different idea from that of ‘power over’, which is the one that women would use power for transforming the world. This suggests new models of female leadership, where the concept of power as capacity replaces that of power as domination. But again, in none of these alternative cases is the relational dimension of power addressed as the focus is on women only. Still, the difficulties for female politicians to carve out a space in male-dominated political institutions for expressing their voices in favour of greater gender equality in politics transpire in the rhetorical devices they adopt to legitimate their demands. One example that we mentioned is the female politicians’ use of the language of mathematics (quotas, percentages, targets) as a legitimating and easy-to-grasp rhetoric for their male colleagues. Another is the recurrent use of the term ‘balance’, a concept that, by suggesting the picture of a scale, evokes ancestral images of justice. This is to say that although we criticise the lack of a relational dimension of power in policy texts on gender inequality in politics, we must be aware of the sometimes patriarchal environment of female politicians and policymakers. The alternative conceptualisations of power suggest that there are attempts in policy texts on gender inequality in politics to propose different models of transformative political leadership and there is evidence that gender advocates in the analysed texts employ a variety of rhetorical strategies for promoting gender equality, win supporters and ward off opponents. At the same time, though, the male power in the political sphere appears so strong that it seems to silence any direct challenges to it even in those documents where one would expect to find them.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank Mieke Verloo and the members of the MAGEEQ Project, where research for this chapter was carried out, the European Commission (5FP) for funding the study, and Kathleen Ahrens and her editorial team for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Emanuela Lombardo would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and the European Social Fund for funding her research through the 2006 Ramón y Cajal Programme.

Appendix 11.1 N1

List of analysed texts

Emancipation under Execution, Short Term Policy Plan Emancipation in Execution, 22 November 1995

250 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

N2 N3

N4

N5

N6 N7 N8

N9

N10

N11 N12

N13 N14

S1

Gender Impact Assessment on the Proposition for a Mixed Electoral System, July 1996 Cabinet Standpoint on Women in Politics and Public Governance 1996/Letter from the Minister of the Interior (22777, no. 8), 13 November 1996 Women in Politics and Public Governance (KS 22777-11), Minutes of general meeting of the Parliamentarian Committee for Social Affairs and Employment debating the position of women in politics and public administration, 20 January 1999 Power and Decision-Making: on Emancipation and Participation. Exploration of the Field on Behalf of the Dutch Women’s Policy Machinery, May 1999 Mid Term Policy Plan on Emancipation 2000, 15 November 2000 A World to Gain. TECENA’S Final Report on the Advisory System with Conclusions and Recommendations, December 2000 Letter from the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations informing the Second Chamber of Parliament about the cabinet’s resolutions concerning possible arrangements for pregnancy and delivery leave for politicians, 6 April 2001 Minutes of the General Meeting of the Parliamentarian Committee for Social Affairs and Employment consulting the Secretary of State on Social Affairs and Employment A. Verstand on the cabinet’s reaction (letter 01-10-2001) to the CEDAW’s reaction to the 2nd and 3rd national report (28009-7), 28 November 2001 Minutes of Plenary Parliamentary Debate on an arrangement proposal for the replacement of political representatives during sickness and pregnancy, 7 February 2002 Answers to parliamentary questions on women elected in municipal councils, 28 March 2002 Questions members of second chamber to Minister of the Interior on the number of women in the new cabinet and answers provided by the Minister, 13 September 2002 Policy Article 12, Annual Presentation of Emancipation Policy Resolutions, September 2003 Bill amendment Constitution on amendment regulations regarding the election of the Lower and Upper House, the provincial and the local councils on a temporary replacement of their members due to pregnancy, delivery or illness. Report of the permanent Committee of the Interior, 25 March 2003 III Plan for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men 1997– 2000

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 251

S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12

IV Plan for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men 2003–06 III Equality Plan Basque Country 1999–2000 IV Governmental Action by the Catalonia Generalitat in Equal Opportunities for Women (2001–03) IV Equal Opportunities Plan for Women and Men in the Region of Madrid 2002–05 The Socialist Party’s (PSOE) Equality Plan, 26 April 2002 Parliamentary debate on women’s rights, 22 April 1997 Law proposal 16 November 2001 on a reform of the electoral law 5/1985, 19 June Law 11/2002 June 27 for modifying the Castilla-La Mancha electoral law 5/1986 23 December Debate on three law proposals on guaranteeing equality among men and women in their access to electoral positions, 8 April 2003 Electoral programme of the Socialist Party PSOE 2004 Electoral programme of the Leftist Party IU 2004

Notes 1 These last events have not been included in the analysis because it deals with documents prior to 2006. 2 In March 2007 an Equality law between women and men was approved (Law 3/2007) that obliges political parties in their electoral lists to respect a share of no more than 60 per cent and no less than 40 per cent of either sex in each group of five candidates. 3 For the list of analysed texts see Appendix 11.1. The selection of documents was based on the construction of a timeline that identified key moments of debate among different sociopolitical actors throughout the period of study. Starting from these key moments, texts were added until they did not include new information. We also analysed secondary sources (texts produced by the written press, the feminist movement and gender experts), but here we focus on official policy documents. 4 More precisely, the texts include policy plans (3 Dutch and 5 Spanish texts), positions of the cabinet on particular issues (1 Dutch text), 1 letter from a minister to Parliament (1 Dutch text), minutes of meetings of parliamentary committees (3 Dutch texts), minutes of plenary parliamentary debates (1 Dutch and 2 Spanish texts), questions by MPs and ministerial answers (2 Dutch texts), legislation (2 Spanish texts), political party’s electoral programmes (2 Spanish texts) and policy programme (1 Spanish text). Dutch texts are between 1 and 55 pages long, the total corpus size is 170 pages. Spanish texts are between 3 and 52 pages long, the total corpus size is 134 pages. 5 A ‘supertext’ enables the hidden significance of a text to be made explicit through a list of ‘sensitizing questions’ (Verloo 2007). 6 Keywords searched in Spanish related to ‘igualdad en el poder’ [equal power] and ‘comparto del poder en la toma de decisiones’ [sharing decision-making

252 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

7 8 9

10

11 12

13

14

15

16

power]; in Dutch to ‘macht en besluitvorming’ [power and decision-making], ‘verdeling van macht en invloed’ [distribution of power and influence], ‘macht en besluitvorming over emancipatie en participatie’ [power and decisionmaking on emancipation and participation]. See N1 or S1 Equality plans in Appendix 11.1, but this is common also to other Dutch and Spanish documents. Similar quotations can be found in all Spanish texts analysed. The quotation of the ‘glass ceiling’ is from S2 Equality plan but can also be found in N4 Parliamentarian Committee meeting, N5 Note for women’s policy machinery, N6 Emancipation plan; N11 Parliamentary questions and answers and N13 Equality policies’ resolutions speak of the need for women to break through without mentioning the glass ceiling itself. Quotas as a means to promote women’s access to power structures can be found in the following Spanish policy texts: S2 Equality plan; S7 Parliamentary debate; S8 Law proposal; S9 Law; S10 Parliamentary debate; S11 and S12, Electoral programmes. The quotation is from S8 (Law proposal), but it is similarly phrased in policy documents from the PSOE and IU. The frequency of this type of metaphor varies in Spanish texts, but for instance the reference to a ‘balanced’ representation, participation or presence of women in politics can be found at least three times in a text, and sometimes five, seven or more times. While the concept of sharing power can be found in several texts analysed from the parties of the left, the quotation of the ‘cake of power’ comes from a Socialist female MP in S10 (Parliamentary debate). ‘Measures proposed aim at raising society awareness of the importance of a more balanced participation of women and men in the different spheres and levels of decision-making, at better preparing women for their participation in the public sphere and at the strengthening of women’s associative movement’ (S3, Basque Equality Plan). The PP MP continues by presenting the PP as a role model that has already solved the problem within the party by putting more women in decisionmaking positions (S10, Parliamentary debate). PP speaker, S10 (Parliamentary debate).

References Arendt, H. 1969. On Violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Arendt, H. 1972. Crises of the Republic. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Astelarra, J. (ed.) 1990. Participación política de las mujeres. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Bacchi, C. 1999. Women Politics and Policies. The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage. Bacchi, C. 2005. ‘Discourse, Discourse Everywhere: Subject “Agency” in Feminist Discourse Methodology’. Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies, 13(3): 198–209. Bustelo, M. and E. Lombardo (eds). 2007. Políticas de igualdad en España y en Europa. Madrid: Catedra. Bustelo, M., E. Lombardo, E. Peterson and R. Platero. 2004. Country Study Spain. Political Participation. Vienna: IWM.

Petra Meier and Emanuela Lombardo 253 Connell, R. W. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Deignan, A. 2005. Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Deignan, A. (no date). ‘Conceptual Metaphor Theory’, http://creet.open.ac.uk/ projects/metaphor-analysis/theories.cfm?paper=cmt, date accessed 7 December 2007. Foucault, M. 1995. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage. Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity. Goffmann, E. 1974. Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organisation of Experience. Harmondsworth: Peregrine Books. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Leyenaar, M. 1998. ‘Vom demokratischen Feigenblatt zur Parität. Politische Partizipation von Frauen in den Niederlanden’, in B. Hoecker (ed.) Handbuch politische Partizipation von Frauen in Europa. Opladen: Leske und Budrich. Lombardo, E. 2008. ‘Gender Inequality in Politics: Policy Frames in Spain and the European Union’. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 10(1): 78–96. Lukes, S. 2005. Power. A Radical View, 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Meier, P., E. Lombardo, M. Bustelo and M. Pantelidou Maloutas. 2005. ‘Gender Mainstreaming and the Bench Marking Fallacy of Women in Political DecisionMaking’. The Greek Review of Social Research, B1(117): 35–62. Oldersma, J. 2005. ‘High Tides in a Low Country: Gendering Political Representation in the Netherlands’, in J. Lovenduski et al. (eds) State Feminism and Political Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snow, D. and R. Benford. 1992. ‘Master Frames and Cycles of Protest’, in A. D. Morris and C. McClurg-Mueller (eds) Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press. Snow, D. and R. Benford. 1988. ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance and Participant Mobilization’. International Social Movement Research, 1: 197–217. van Lamoen, I., P. Meier and Y. Jeuken. 2004. Update Preliminary Country Study. The Netherlands. Political Participation and Representation. Vienna: IWM. Verloo, M. 2005. ‘Mainstreaming Gender Equality in Europe. A Critical Frame Analysis. The Greek Review of Social Research, B1 (117): 11–32. Verloo, M. (ed.). 2007. Multiple Meanings of Gender Equality in Europe. A Critical Frame Analysis of Gender Policies in Europe. Budapest: CPS Books. Verloo, M. and C. Roggeband. 1996. ‘Gender Impact Assessment: the Development of a New Instrument in the Netherlands’. Impact Assessment, 14(1): 3–20. Walby, S. 1997. Gender Transformations. London: Routledge.

12 Gendered Metaphors of Women in Power: the Case of Hillary Clinton as Madonna, Unruly Woman, Bitch and Witch Elvin T. Lim Wesleyan University

12.1

Introduction

Hillary Rodham Clinton was the first First Lady to move into the White House with a full-time professional career of her own, the first First Lady to win elected office in the US Senate, and the first woman to seriously contend for a major party’s nomination for the US presidency. As Hillary Clinton stood at the frontier of women’s struggle to break into the public sphere in their own right, she became the target for a number of highly stylised and gendered metaphors used to conceptualise her role in public life. Defenders and critics of Hillary Clinton have characterised her as a Madonna, an Unruly Woman and variants thereof: a Bitch, and a Witch.1 In this chapter, I critically examine the usage of these metaphors in books and newspaper articles about the senator by neutral observers, her supporters and detractors to unpack the layers of resistance that still exist against women in American public life. My thesis is that gendered conceptual metaphors, in variously imposing and/or retracting ‘masculine’ and/or ‘feminine’ traits, empower and disempower woman leaders.2 Indeed, while some gendered conceptual metaphors of women in power (Madonna and Unruly Woman) give only by taking, others (Bitch and Witch) mostly only take. When deployed by neutral observers and even supporters of Hillary Clinton in 2008, the gendered metaphor of the Unruly Woman typically assigned strength to Hillary Clinton, only at the cost of her likeability. When the Bitch and Witch metaphors were used to put Hillary Clinton in the worst possible light, her detractors, many of whom are women, inadvertently took from her gender generally just as they took from Clinton specifically. The 254

Elvin T. Lim 255

safest bet, I conclude, is to use gendered metaphors as sparingly as possible.

12.2

Women (still) in the double bind

In recent years, a post-feminist narrative has emerged among some political observers. Women no longer face obstacles in entering the workplace or the public sphere; they have, for all intents and purposes, achieved equality with men. In one declarative swoop, Bay Buchanan dismissed the historical oddity that no woman has ever lived in the White House other than as a political consort. ‘According to at least one national poll’, Buchanan (2007: 192) confidently asserted, ‘America has caught up with the rest of the world. It is ready to elect a woman president.’ Hillary Clinton came close, but the pertinent fact is that she did not make it. Indeed I aim to show that our language usage in the 2008 election cycle indicates that we are some way off a post-feminist era. Not only do traditional role expectations preclude women’s departure from the ‘private’ sphere of the family into the ‘public’ sphere, when women do enter into politics, they often have to negotiate the disjunction between social definitions of femininity and leadership in what Anderson and Sheeler (2005: 6) have termed a ‘double bind’. To be taken seriously in the public sphere hitherto dominated by men, women have had to shed their ‘feminine’ traits to become Unruly Women, the modal type of metaphor used to describe tough woman political leaders. However, in doing so these woman leaders were often perceived as domineering, arrogant and cold. Elizabeth I (The Virgin Queen), Dowager Empress Cixi (The Old Buddha), and Margaret Thatcher (The Iron Lady) are all remembered to be strong leaders, but they were thought so at the expense of their ‘femininity’ and likeability. In return for respect accorded to them as Unruly Women, woman leaders who adopted the metaphor paid their dues in likeability. If, on the other end of the double bind, a woman entering politics makes no serious effort to negotiate a ‘masculine’ demeanour and even embraces her ‘femininity’ as a Madonna or Beauty Queen, she is likely to be perceived as vulnerable, weak and out of her league. But, because she is only covertly or partially overturning traditional role expectations, she would also appear less threatening and more appealing. What she loses in respectability, she gains in likeability. Governor Sarah Palin, John McCain’s vice presidential nominee in 2008, well exemplifies this other side of the double bind. A former Miss Wasilla and Miss Congeniality, Palin could not have been a more perfect antithesis to Hillary

256 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Clinton. There may be objective reasons for thinking Clinton to be unlikeable and competent and Palin to be likeable but incompetent, but it is surely more than coincidence that the two most prominent women in American politics in 2008 so perfectly occupied the two sides of the double bind. In other words, traditional expectations of how a woman should behave are mutually exclusive the moment she steps out of the private into the public sphere. The double bind squeezes woman leaders into a practically non-existent bandwidth of what is acceptable behaviour for them. When it comes to embracing ‘masculinity’ as a survival tactic in the public sphere, women are damned if they do, doomed if they do not. By this analysis, Hillary Clinton’s ‘likeability’ problem is likely more than an idiosyncratic problem of her character or personality, but merely a restatement of the double bind dilemma that woman leaders face. She was the Unruly Woman, par excellence; unlikeable, polarizing, but by God, in charge. ‘No one doubts Mrs. Clinton’s ability to make war’, as Peggy Noonan (2007) put it. Instead, Noonan continued, ‘one worries about what has always seemed her characterological bellicosity’. The gendered dimension of the ‘unlikeability’ charge was manifest when Podhoretz (2006: 69) observed, ‘when the nicest thing that’s said about someone by her colleagues is that she’s “hardworking”, you’re not going to win any Miss Congeniality awards’. The implication here was that the best thing Hillary Clinton could (should) have hoped for from her colleagues in the Senate was a consolation prize in a beauty pageant. And she could not even manage that, presumably because she was hunting for bigger game. On the campaign trail in 2008, Hillary Clinton confronted the double bind head on. In a debate on January 5 after her defeat to Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses, moderator Scott Spradling, citing a CNN/WMUR poll, suggested point blank to Clinton that voters simply liked Barack Obama more than they liked her. Clinton famously responded, ‘that hurts my feelings’. Was she playing the ‘gender card’? No more than the debate moderator and her fellow candidates who were ungraciously squeezing her into a double bind that none of them had to confront. Even after Clinton conceded that ‘he’s (Obama is) very likeable’, Obama dug his heels in without a flinch, saying, ‘You’re likable enough, Hillary’ (The New York Times 2008). This was perhaps Obama at his ugliest in his nomination battle with Clinton, but the comment was not always perceived as such probably because the media and the public had accepted the double bind as a given premise for aspiring woman politicians.

Elvin T. Lim 257

Even though Hillary Clinton was able to purchase an image of toughness at the cost of her likeability, there were still other ‘masculine’ prerequisites for the office she sought that she did not meet (Kann 1998, Gordon and Miller 2001). Podhoretz (2006: 60–1) minced no words in communicating as much: ‘A president is, first and foremost, a leader. And the very image of the word leader invokes a masculine image, a father image … those indefinable “leadership” qualities are the reason many Republicans quietly doubt Hillary’s chances in 2008.’ In particular, the often repeated charge that Hillary Clinton is ‘polarizing’ (Troy 2006) showed that she faced a peculiar double bind as an aspirant to the Oval Office. The founders of the US Constitution placed a premium on great or heroic leadership and ‘patriot kingship’, not on petty, divisive and factious leadership when designing, and then filling, the Oval Office. The patriot king, the model of leadership envisioned by the founders, stood above faction and party, unifying the diverse components of the body politic by standing as an imposing and inspiring model of virtue (Ketcham 1987, Cohen 2003, Roper 2004). Against these mythic expectations, the ‘polarizing’ narrative of Hillary Clinton stood as a coded counterpoise to the ‘masculine’ metaphor of patriot kingship – a metaphor that Hillary Clinton could not possibly deliver by virtue of her biological sex. Clinton’s botched efforts to manage the ‘polarizing’ critique on the 2008 campaign trail highlighted the difficulty of traversing the gendered landscape of politics without tripping on the landmines laid for women. Her attack on Barack Obama as idealistic not only made her appear mean (unlikeable), it appeared to endorse the premises of the ‘polarizing’ critique used against her. In characterising herself as a realist and someone who took charge, she effectively conceded that he was above politics and more equipped to unify the nation with his inspirational rhetoric and post-partisan politics than she was. Her use of the ‘experience’ versus ‘change’ slogans also subtly reinforced a gendered reading of men as adventurous and women as more risk-averse. Whereas Obama championed the ‘audacity of hope’, Hillary Clinton represented her gradual evolution from First Lady to presidential candidate as ‘living history’ rather than overtly making history (Clinton 2003, Obama 2006). In all of this, Hillary Clinton’s successes on the campaign trail can be attributed in part to her ability to mine the rhetorical and metaphorical tools that were available and consonant with what was culturally familiar, just as some of her failures must be attributed to her failure to transcend them.

258 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

12.3 Gendered conceptual metaphors of Hillary Clinton in politics For better or, as I believe, for worse, gendered metaphors of power are not merely stylistic devices but foundational to the making and our understanding of political identities and realities. Hillary Clinton’s meteoric rise to political prominence accelerated a collision between extant understandings of power and women’s role in the public sphere. Indeed, her transition from First Lady to junior senator of New York was unique in American history and a particular catalyst for metaphorical inventiveness because for 17 days in 2001, she was, discordantly, both a Madonna as First Lady and also an Unruly Woman Senator trying to break out of her role as political consort. Her metaphorical ascriptions switched as quickly as her political fortunes did, becoming more invidious as her ambitions grew. The manner in which Hillary Clinton’s competition for power has been metaphorically conceived reveals the opportunities and constraints under which she acted. That is why the analysis of conceptual metaphors is necessarily a critical enterprise, because their usage is often driven or accompanied by implicit or unconscious habits of the mind. As Robert Ivie (1990: 73–4) observed, ‘all motives (are) entangled in metaphor’s linguistic web’. Metaphors are, as Richards (1936: 94) argued, a ‘borrowing between the intercourse of thoughts, a transaction between contexts’. They facilitate comprehension of a relatively more abstract or foreign concept (a target domain) by comparison to that which is known or experienced (a source domain).3 The target domain, for our purposes, is the relatively unknown phenomenon of women in power, and the source domain is our understanding and lived experienced of the role of women in society. It should be immediately evident why gendered metaphors of power – indeed all metaphors – are backward looking in so far as and when they describe the new and foreign in terms of the old and experienced. We are far more likely to have experienced and therefore understand women as mothers and beauty queens than as senators or presidents. In the case of Hillary Clinton, she has been metaphorically compared to a Madonna mostly when she was First Lady, and, especially on the campaign trail from 2006 to 2008, an Unruly Woman, and variants thereof: a Bitch and a Witch. I attempt here to pierce the linguistic surface of these metaphors to offer a statement on the resistance to the idea of women in power encapsulated in our metaphorical usage, as well as to trouble the ontologies embedded in them.

Elvin T. Lim 259

12.3.1

Madonna

The Madonna metaphor is the metaphorical expression of the ideology of ‘maternal feminism’ (Ruddick 1980, Dow 1996). Proponents of maternal feminism, also known as the ideology of ‘true womanhood’, do not dismiss, but instead affirm the psychological traits and moral virtues traditionally associated with women and advocate the introduction of maternal sensibilities into the public sphere (Johnston 1992). Maternal feminists do not think it is inappropriate for women to wield power, only that they should and would do so productively only by accepting the legitimate premises of traditional gender roles. In her first two years as First Lady, Hillary Clinton’s perceived highhandedness and intransigence turned off those who expected her to deploy a ‘maternal’ rather than a ‘rational-contractor’ approach to the healthcare reform agenda of 1993–94 (Held 1987). By 1995, she learnt her lesson and toned down her ‘unruliness’ when she devoted her energies to championing more traditionally feminine causes: children and women’s rights. One of the high points of her first ladyship was when she spoke at the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women. In her first book, It Takes a Village, she portrayed herself as mother and protector of the nation’s children (Clinton 1996). Not surprisingly, her approval ratings as First Lady revised upwards as she embraced her expected gender role (Cohen 2000). By blurring the boundaries between femininity and feminism, the Madonna advances the latter cause with the former method. As Madonna, Hillary Clinton won some and lost some. The double bind she faced in this stage of her life was that she was free to champion traditionally ‘feminine’ causes, but in focusing as such she upheld and reinscribed society’s expectations about women’s role in politics and the legitimate boundaries of their ‘care’. 12.3.2

The Unruly Woman

Unlike the Madonna, the Unruly Woman fundamentally rejects traditional gender roles. That is why the Unruly Woman offends those who believe in the ideology of maternal feminism. According to Edward Klein (2005: 13): ‘She (Hillary Clinton) was a mother, but she wasn’t maternal. She was a wife, but she had no wifely instincts.’ For Peggy Noonan (2007), Hillary Clinton ‘doesn’t have to prove she is a man, she has to prove she is a woman. Her problem is not her sex, as she and her campaign pretend. That she is a woman is a boon to her, a source of latent power. But to make it work, she has to seem like a woman.’

260 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

Although Noonan did not distinguish sex and gender, it fair to say that she was opposed not to Hillary Clinton’s sex, but her misgendering. Clinton’s problem was that she failed to act the appropriate part of ‘true womanhood’. Far from being an object of reverence or sexual fantasy, the Unruly Woman is a threat to men precisely because she aspires to be more than a Madonna or a Beauty Queen. Bay Buchanan attributed Hillary Clinton’s ‘unruliness’ to the charge that she was never comfortable with her ‘femininity’. For Buchanan (2007: 18), her frequent changes in hairstyle betrayed ‘a deep sense of insecurity’. For John Podhoretz (2006: 62), Clinton could not pass for a Beauty Queen because she ‘never quite figured out what to do with her hair or her clothes, the fact that she’s not a raving beauty, and the fact that she has a manner that is almost pathologically unsexy’. In one fell swoop, Podhoretz reinscribed the double bind by trivialising the Beauty Queen and stigmatising Hillary Clinton as a failed woman. Yet it was precisely because Hillary Clinton was an ‘unwomanly’ woman that Hillary Clinton would be a formidable candidate for the presidency. Thus in taking, Podhoretz also gave (though not necessarily in equal measure), for he was giving notice that this was no ordinary woman that would rest content with male flattery and bribed with a tiara. The Unruly Woman metaphor has also been adopted by supporters of Hillary Clinton, because it is a familiar metaphor that could be used to highlight Clinton’s ‘toughness’. Thus Carville and Penn (2006) have argued that while previous Democratic candidates have lacked a ‘backbone’, Hillary Clinton was a viable candidate because she was ‘tough enough to handle the viciousness of a national campaign’. But the potential pitfalls of the metaphor reveal that it does not escape the clutches of the double bind. It merely highlighted the perception, according to Gerth and Van Natta (2007), that Clinton’s ‘forced, artificial demeanor’ did not endear her to voters. As we saw in the Iowa caucuses in 2008, Hillary Clinton was by no means the obvious choice of Democratic women, who appeared to have been persuaded by the ‘softer’, less transactional and more ‘inspirational’ appeal of Barack Obama. The irony of Clinton’s defeat in Iowa was that after spending years toning down her liberalism and her feminist radicalism, she learnt that she had to tone up her ‘femininity’ in order to win in New Hampshire. Carville and Penn were supporters of Hillary Clinton trying to shore up her eligibility to the Oval Office, but they did not realise that in offering her gender-weighted, as opposed to gender-neutral symbolic capital, they were giving as well as taking away from her.

Elvin T. Lim 261

A more recent example of when seemingly innocent or even wellmeaning usages of gender metaphors can have negative feedback effects is Hillary Clinton’s comparison of the public sphere to the kitchen, and correspondingly her campaign’s use of the ‘kitchen sink’ metaphor to describe their tactics. In a speech in November 2007, Clinton (2007) said ‘as Harry Truman said, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I’ll tell you what, I feel really comfortable in the kitchen.’ Three months later after the Super Tuesday primaries when Obama opened up his lead against Clinton, Clinton aides and the media began to speak of a ‘kitchen sink’ strategy against Obama in the days leading up to the Ohio and Texas primaries. No one knows for sure how the term first caught on, but according to Healy and Bosman (2008), it was a ‘Clinton aide’ who had announced that the campaign would be launching a ‘kitchen-sink’ strategy against Obama. The term evolved from the English phrase ‘everything but the kitchen sink’, to denote something like ‘everything imaginable/possible’. To throw even the kitchen sink then, is to launch even the impossible. Intended or not, the ‘kitchen sink’ metaphor for Clinton’s tactics sustained the narrative that while Obama played by the rules, Clinton, the Unruly Woman, would stop at nothing. According to The Economist (2007), Mrs Clinton’s problems have forced her to abandon the high horse of inevitability for the boxing ring. Yet so far she has proved to be no great shakes as a pugilist. She excused her poor performance in a debate in Philadelphia by accusing her fellow (male) candidates of ‘piling on’ … She is certainly one of America’s most accomplished practitioners of the politics of personal destruction. But the skills that she perfected behind the scenes seem to be far less effective when they are practised in the limelight. The political sphere is characterised in this article as a dignified, aboveboard, noble space in which virtuous and talented men competed, not a place in which systematic exclusions and scheming have taken place to ensure the outcome of political contests. The Unruly Woman does not only break the rules of gender and politics, but she is further characterised as someone who breaks the rules of gentlemanly engagement in order to break the rules of gender and politics. The ‘kitchen’ and ‘kitchen sink’ metaphors were a bold attempt to respace and therefore to regender politics as a domestic space in which women are in charge, but in overreaching what was metaphorically possible with the ‘kitchen’ and ‘kitchen sink’, the Clinton campaign

262 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

ended up reinforcing the very stereotypes that their candidate’s metaphorical inventiveness was intended to destroy. The ‘kitchen sink’ metaphor reminded people of the traditional role of women (in the kitchen or home) and Clinton’s rebellion at it. The metaphor insinuated that whereas Barack Obama used the conventional weapons of war, Clinton would launch an improbable deus ex machina accessible only to her – a kitchen sink. In doing so, the metaphor said something about both Hillary Clinton’s ambition and her gender: here was a fanatically powerhungry woman who would launch a wildly unconventional (even unmanly) weapon of destruction at a gentleman competitor because she could not handle a bare-knuckle fight with him. The phrase caught on, and was used frequently, without quotation marks, to describe Hillary Clinton’s allegedly ruthless tactics. Thus Maureen Dowd (2008) observed as a matter of fact, ‘by threatening to throw the kitchen sink at Obama, the Clinton campaign simply confirmed the fact that they might be going down the drain’. To adopt and exaggerate role reversals disrupts gender hierarchies by focusing our attention on the social construction (and deconstruction) of gender. But the perceived incongruities evinced by role reversals also help, in some cases, to reinforce gender stereotypes. In generating discomfort among those unused to such role reversals, Unruly Women reinforce the ‘unnaturalness’ of their political agency because they fail (and often refuse) to address the illegitimate reaction of those disoriented by their actions. The Unruly Woman attempts to redefine boundaries, but because the metaphor also calls attention to the fact that the woman who attempts to do so blurs sexual and gender dichotomies, she succeeds only if she is able to calibrate her transgressions according to what her audience can stomach. When she is perceived to have gone too far, as some believe Hillary Clinton has, she graduates from Unruly Woman to Bitch, and then to Witch. 12.3.3

Bitch

For some of her critics, Hillary Clinton was a particularly offensive breed of Unruly Woman to be denigrated outright as a Bitch. Hillary Clinton was ‘no Pat Nixon or Mamie Eisenhower – a quiet political wife. Nor was she Barbara Bush, the hard-as-nails First Lady who was, nonetheless, still a lady’ (Podhoretz 2006: 35). In this observation, Podhoretz implied that a strong First Lady was still a lady if she was feline, but Hillary Clinton was not even that. To his credit, Podhoretz (2006: 67) went on to say exactly what he meant to say: ‘Just for vulgarity’s sake, let me put it this way: She’s got to be a bitch. And Hillary

Elvin T. Lim 263

is a bitch.’ Even when Hillary Clinton deigns to act her sex, she is accused of ‘whining’. Buchanan (2007: 192) subtitles a section of her book, ‘I Am Woman, Hear Me Whine’. Whereas the Madonna and Unruly Woman metaphors may be considered as backhanded compliments (for, respectively, motherliness and strength) when deployed, Bitch is squarely offensive. The Bitch is not only misgendered, as the Unruly Woman is, but dehumanised and animalised. As such, the Bitch is liberated from the double bind, at least in the sense that the metaphor takes without giving anything in return. (Bitch should not be mistaken for Son of a Bitch, which is, predictably and revealingly, a gendered metaphor of men in positions of power, and therefore occasionally construed as an accolade. In contrast, there are no redeeming qualities to a Bitch.) Unlike the graceful Madonna and the classy Beauty Queen, the Unruly Woman qua Bitch can be picked out by her temper and bursts of profanity, a metaphorical entailment of her threatening disruption of traditional gender roles. Thus Carl Limbacher (2003: 89–90) devoted an entire chapter of his book detailing Hillary Clinton’s ‘scorching tirades’. Gail Sheehy (1999: 11) observed that ‘She is angry. Not all of the time. But most of the time.’ 12.3.4

Witch

Although the Witch may have become a more socially acceptable metaphor than the Bitch (‘rhymes with witch’, Barbara Bush once referred to Hillary Clinton), she is in fact the most resented breed of Unruly Woman. That is because while the Unruly Woman is just a bad mother or a disobedient wife, the Witch is in open rebellion with society and God (the guardian of social norms). She is not just dehumanised and animalised like the Bitch is, but demonised. Witches are frequently identified by the shrillness of their voice and the deviousness of their laughter. Thus Rick Klein and Mike Chesney (2007) characterised Hillary Clinton as ‘shrill on the stump and evasive in debates and interviews. Her laughter makes her sound like the Wicked Witch of the West.’ The shrillness of the Witch’s voice is observed not merely as an inadvertent mannerism of an Unruly Woman, it becomes, in a Witch, an expression of deviousness. For Sheldon Filger (2006: 36), there is method in the Witch’s madness: ‘Her voice became hysterical, jumping several octaves, while her cheekbones protruded with excitement, simultaneously with her eyes glaring with hypnotic intensity.’ Maureen Dowd (2008) observed that Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the nomination can be summarised as ‘a primal scream against the golden

264 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

child of Chicago, a clanging and sometimes churlish warning that “all that glitters is not gold”’. Why this demonisation? In Hillary Clinton’s case, it was because she forged ‘a new kind of marriage’ in which she defended her husband’s infidelity in return for his political coat-tails (Podhoretz 2006: 36). The Clinton marriage was perceived to be ‘unnatural’, and therefore unholy because it was not merely (if at all) about the conventional and natural reasons of love and sexual intimacy but also about the unusual and unnatural reasons of ambition and expediency. Their marriage was perceived to be so ‘unorthodox’ that it ‘verged on partner swapping’, according to Carl Limbacher (2003: 162). To highlight its unnaturalness, Klein questioned the sex life of the former first couple: ‘Was it true they slept in separate beds? Were there any telltale signs on the presidential sheets that they ever had sex with each other? For that matter, did the Big Girl have any interest in sex with a man?’ As if the insinuation was not clear enough, Klein (2005: 12) continued, ‘or, as was widely circulated, was she a lesbian?’ Hillary Clinton was perceived to be an especially dangerous species of Unruly Woman just as a lesbian is especially threatening to men because, unlike other women, she is in direct competition with men for something that men want, be it female attention or political power. Thus according to Bay Buchanan (2007: 80), ‘In a Faustian bargain, Hillary bartered it (her idealism) all away – sold the very contents of her heart – for a pint of power.’ Like a Witch, she is a cold, heartless entity. Crucially, the bargain Buchanan described was not between Hillary and Bill, but between Hillary and the devil. Bill could offer no incentive alluring enough for the avaricious Witch. Her compact for power was such a transgression of the natural order that it could only be guaranteed by the devil himself. This metaphorical invention allowed Buchanan to say both that Hillary Clinton’s power was derivative and illegitimate, but also formidable. It explains the apparent inconsistency when Hillary Clinton’s critics accuse her of riding on Bill’s coat-tails while also portraying her as partner-in-crime with Bill, calling the couple ‘the firm of Clinton and Clinton’ (Buchanan 2007: 186). The potential elaboration of the Witch metaphor also explains why it would be politically suicidal for Hillary Clinton to divorce Bill – she would then become an old widow, and even more easily compared to a sexually spurned and depraved Witch trading sexual favours with the devil. The central metaphorical entailment of the Witch is the idea that she deceives. Just like the evil queen transformed herself into an old hag to trick Snow White into eating her poisoned apple, the Witch

Elvin T. Lim 265

must be made over in order that she may deceive her victims and achieve her ends. In the case of Hillary Clinton, she has been accused of attempting to bewitch the electorate with her ‘extreme makeover’. ‘For six years Hillary has been under the knife … as the experts attempted to transform her from that spirited and divisive left-wing media darling who made such good right-wing copy into a more serious national figure’ (Buchanan 2007: 186). After her makeover, the Wicked Witch of the Left became, according to Bay Buchanan (2007: 185), ‘The Stepford Candidate’. And thus John Podhoretz (2006: 8) articulated the conservative fear that Hillary Clinton would be ‘liberalism(‘s) … Trojan Horse’. Barbara Olson (1999: 4) has conceded that Hillary Clinton was not alone in the virtuosity of her image reconstruction compared to other politicians, but it is revealing that she would compare Hillary Clinton to Richard Nixon and judge in favour of him by the criteria of ‘conscience’. ‘The supreme irony’, Olson observed, ‘is that this 1960s liberal … has become even more darkly Nixonian in her outlook and methods – though without Nixon’s knowledge, statesmanlike substance, and redemptive Quaker conscience’. Hillary Clinton, by Olson’s reading, used methods even darker than the ones used by the only US president to resign in disgrace. And however corrupt Nixon was, Olson believed that he at least had a soul. In reaching, at least rhetorically, for supernatural explanations, many of the criticisms made against Hillary Clinton are attempts to rationalise the putatively irrational. As Podhoretz put it quite straightforwardly, ‘if a case is made that Hillary’s elevation will profoundly alter the balance between the sexes … every man might see Hillary as his antithesis, and every parent might see her elevation as a thwarting of his or her son’s ambitions’ (Podhoretz 2006: 59). The convenient way to make sense of the social, political and cognitive chaos that Clinton’s intrusion into politics would make was simply to characterise her as a Witch and to hunt her down. Consider the fact that the entire basis of Bay Buchanan’s book places an incredibly high bar for Clinton’s eligibility for the presidency that no observer of politics will expect of any politician: ‘has an honest transformation taken place, a heartfelt conversion?’ (Buchanan 2007: 11) But in what world has the path of power not been driven by ambition, marked by moral compromise and abetted by political U-turns? Certainly not in the case of Rudy Giuliani, who told CNN in 1999 that ‘I’m proabortion. I’m pro gay rights’, or Mitt Romney, who declared when he was running for the Massachusetts governorship that ‘abortion should be safe and legal in this country’ and promised that ‘you will not see me wavering’ on Roe v. Wade.4 Only Hillary Clinton’s makeover has spawned a

266 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors

cottage industry exposing the ‘real’ Hillary Clinton. Consider another charge: ‘Hillary Clinton is traveling the country on a heavily orchestrated “listening tour”, carrying on insipid “conversations” and “chats” with audiences that are predominantly women. It’s enough to set the cause of women back a generation’ (Buchanan 2007: 194). Buchanan does not explain how Clinton’s ‘listening tour’ is any different from John McCain’s ‘Straight Talk Express’ or the ‘swings round the circle’ that practically every president or presidential candidate since at least Theodore Roosevelt has embarked on. Yet only Hillary Clinton has been characterised as a scheming, deceptive Witch. Here is what is suspect about the ‘Trojan Horse’ argument. If Clinton were so ambitious as to do whatever it takes to get to power, why would she come out of her centrist closet and risk getting booted out of power for her second term were she to be elected? Consider Bay Buchanan’s musing: ‘One wonders whatever happened to the Hillary who fought so long to keep her own name after she married … But Hillary lost her way, giving in to her insecurity by conforming’ (Buchanan 2007: 38). Yet the first sentence of Buchanan’s book contradicts her own conclusion that Hillary had lost her way and conformed: ‘Hillary Rodham Clinton has been many things throughout her life, but one thing she has always been is a dedicated, unapologetic liberal’ (Buchanan 2007: 1). Either Hillary Clinton is a sell-out or she is an unapologetic liberal. The Trojan Horse argument insists, inconsistently, that she is both. Damned if she does, doomed if she does not.

12.4

Gendered metaphors of women in power: beware

Metaphorical politics is an art, and one that women politicians and people describing them must engage with delicately because they are working with entrenched popular and cultural stereotypes embedded in the structure of language itself. Gendered metaphors of women in power, in particular, are dangerous because they force their users into placing women in a double bind the moment they are deployed. Ultimately, gendered metaphors of women in power cannot avoid perpetuating gender-sexual systems that privilege masculinity and males (Haste 1994). As these metaphors are rooted, at least in part, on extant and therefore retrogressive understandings of women’s roles, they should be deployed as sparingly as is possible. Instead of unreflectively using these metaphors as convenient figures of speech, even when they give to women leaders more than they take, we should question the ontologies embedded in their usage. We should not feel obliged to

Elvin T. Lim 267

conceptualise the unthinkable with unsatisfactory linguistic tools. The day we can disagree or even hate Hillary Clinton in a language which is not gender-biased is the day where we have transcended the real glass ceiling of equal respect among women and men.

Notes 1 I adopt the categories of Madonna and Unruly Woman from Anderson and Sheeler (2005). 2 I use ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ as categories that are reified in popular usage and cultural understandings, not to endorse their ontological reality. 3 I adopt the helpful language of ‘source’ and ‘target’ domains from Lakoff (1987). On ‘entailments’, see Lakoff and Johnson (1981: 287). 4 Giuliani cited in Podhoretz (2006: 232); Romney cited in Ruth Marcus, ‘Mitt Romney’s Extreme Makeover’, The Washington Post, 21 February 2007, A15, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/ AR2007022001266.html (accessed 9 January 2008).

References Anderson, Karrin V. and Kristina H. Sheeler. 2005. Governing Codes: Gender, Metaphor, and Political Identity. Oxford, UK: Lexington Books. Buchanan, Bay. 2007. The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. Carville, James and Mark Penn. 2006. ‘The Power of Hillary’. Washington Post, 2 July 2006, B7, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2006/06/30/AR2006063001478.html (accessed 18 December 2007). Clinton, Hillary R. 1996. It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us. New York: Simon & Schuster. Clinton, Hillary R. 2003. Living History. New York: Scribner. Clinton, Hillary R. 2007. ‘Remarks at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner’. 10 November 2007, http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=4156 (accessed 17 June 2008). Cohen, Jeffrey. 2000. ‘The Polls: Public Attitudes toward the First Lady’. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 30: 375–81. Cohen, Jeffrey. 2003. ‘Presidential Greatness as Seen in the Mass Public: an Extension and Application of the Simonton Model’. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 33: 913–24. Dow, Bonnie. 1996. Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement since 1970. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dowd, Maureen. 2008. ‘Begrudging his Bedazzling’. The New York Times, 27 February 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/opinion/27dowd.html (accessed 16 June 2008). The Economist. 2007. ‘The Cracks Begin to Show: Hillary Clinton Inevitable No More’. 13 December, http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm? story_id=10286068 (accessed 16 June 2008).

268 Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors Filger, Sheldon. 2006. Hillary Clinton Nude: Naked Ambition, Hillary Clinton and America’s Demise. Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse. Gerth, Jeff and Don Van Natta Jr. 2007. Her Way: the Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. New York: Little, Brown. Gordon, Ann and Jerry Miller. 2001. ‘Does the Oval Office Have a Glass Ceiling? Gender Stereotypes and Perceptions of Candidate Viability’. White House Studies, 1: 325–33. Haste, Helen. 1994. The Sexual Metaphor: Men, Women, and the Thinking that Makes the Difference. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Healy, Patrick and Julie Bosman. 2008. ‘Clinton Campaign Starts 5-Point Attack on Obama’. The New York Times, 26 February 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/02/26/us/politics/26clinton.html (accessed 16 June 2008). Held, Virginia. 1987. ‘Feminism and Moral Theory’, in Eva F. Kittay and Diana T. Meyers (eds) Women and Moral Theory. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 111–28. Ivie, Robert L. 1990. ‘Cold War Motives and the Rhetorical Metaphor: a Framework of Criticism’, in Martin J. Medhurst, Robert L. Ivie, Phillip Wander and Robert L. Scott (eds) Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology. New York: Greenwood Press, 73–4. Johnston, Caroline. 1992. Sexual Power: Feminism and the Family in America. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press. Kann, Mark E. 1998. A Republic of Men: the American Founders, Gendered Languages, and Patriarchal Politics. New York: New York University Press. Ketcham, Ralph. 1987. Presidents above Party: the First American Presidency, 1789–1829. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Klein, Edward. 2005. The Truth about Hillary. New York: Sentinel. Klein, Rick and Mike Chesney. 2007. ‘The Note: Hillary Inevitable No More?’ ABC News.com, 20 November 2007, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/Story? id=3891128&page=1, (accessed 17 December 2007). Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1981. ‘Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language’, in Mark Johnson (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Limbacher, Carl. 2003. Hillary’s Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton’s Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House. New York: Three Rivers Press. Noonan, Peggy. 2007. ‘Sex and the Presidency: Being a Woman is Mrs. Clinton’s Biggest Asset – and She’s Trying to Seem Like One. The Wall Street Journal, 19 October 2007, http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010751 (accessed 14 December 2007). Obama, Barack. 2006 The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. New York: Crown. Olson, Barbara. 1999. Hell to Pay: the Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. Podhoretz, John. 2006. Can She be Stopped? Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless … New York: Crown Forum. Richards, I. A. 1936. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. London: Oxford University Press. Roper, Jon. 2004. ‘George W. Bush and the Myth of Heroic Presidential Leadership’. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34: 132–42.

Elvin T. Lim 269 Ruddick, Sarah. 1980. ‘Maternal Thinking’. Feminist Studies, 6: 342–67. Sheehy, Gail. 1999. Hillary’s Choice. New York: Random House. The New York Times. 2008. ‘The Democratic Debate in New Hampshire’. 5 January, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/us/politics/05text-ddebate.html?_r=2& pagewanted=15&oref=slogin (accessed 7 January 2008). Troy, Gil. 2006. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Polarizing First Lady. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas.

Index Adams, Gerry 125 advertisements 4, 210–11, 222–3, 225, 227–32 affiliations, political 175 ageing 213, 215, 221, 223, 233 Aggression 44, 54, 56, 85, 213, 221, 223 aggressors 104, 214–15 Ahern, Bertie vii, 3–4, 117–19, 122–4, 126, 128–30, 133 Alexander, Lamar 67 Amsterdam 33–4, 61, 81, 111, 135, 164, 182–3, 233, 253 Asia 133, 227, 230–1 Australia 228, 230–1 AUTHORITY 38, 63–5, 78, 116 authority, moral 63 BATTLE

95, 100–1, 104–5, 213, 220,

226 211–12, 225–6 beauty 4, 114, 210–13, 216–18, 221, 225–6, 228, 232–3 practices 210–11, 226 Beauty Queen 255, 258, 260 Beckett, Margaret 146, 148–9, 155, 159, 161 benchmarking fallacy 253 Berlusconi, Silvio 36–47, 49–58, 83 bind, double 29, 255–7, 259–60, 263, 266 Bindi, Rosy 86, 90, 94, 106, 109 BIRTH 95–8, 103 BITCH 4, 254, 258, 262–3 Blair, Tony 139, 143, 145, 152–3, 159, 169 Blears, Hazel 5, 142, 146, 151–3, 155–7, 160 BNC (British National Corpus) 68–9, 74–5, 80, 115, 134 bodies, women’s 210, 213, 215–16, 219, 226 BEAUTIFICATION

body 4, 14, 32, 44, 79, 91–3, 95, 103, 110, 124, 209–10, 212–16, 218–20, 226 BODY 44, 212, 214–15 BODY PARTS 91–3, 95, 104, 110, 126 BODY BEAUTIFUL 212–13 body politics vi, 4, 182, 209–10, 257 Bonino, Emma 2, 36–44, 47–50, 52–7 BOON 188, 205, 259 Boxer, Barbara 67 BRANDS 212, 219–21, 225 British 126, 139 House of Commons 3 parliamentary debates 3, 139, 144, 146, 157 political discourse 26 British National Corpus see BNC Brown, Gordon 139 BUILDING 117–18, 125, 133 Bush, George 66, 81, 197–8, 204 BUSINESS 44, 104–5, 126 Cameron, David 29 candidates viii, 64, 76, 80, 83, 139, 146, 159–61, 164, 173, 184–91, 193–203, 205–6, 243, 251, 260–1 extracting metaphor source domain 88 party 185, 195, 201 third-party 185–6 CANDIDATES 197, 201–2 care child 79 health 71–2, 76, 79 Celtic Tiger 114, 122–4 children 37–8, 91, 114, 116, 129–30, 165, 187–90, 192–4, 205, 259 Chilton, Paul 20, 32, 62, 81, 118, 135, 140–1, 164 China 20, 94, 104, 107, 227–30, 232 Cienki, Alan 64, 77, 80–1, 184, 206 270

Index 271 Clinton, Bill 64, 66, 75, 145, 199, 204 Clinton, Hillary vi, vii, 4, 5, 67, 70, 73–5, 200, 254–69 CO-CAMPAIGNER 197, 199, 206 CO-CANDIDATE 197, 199, 203 197–8 CO-PUBLIC SERVANT CO-STRATEGIST 197–9 coalition 18, 37, 41, 53, 83 centre-left 37–8 cognition 140, 178–9 cognitive preferences 166–8, 179–80 collocational patterns 70–3, 77, 79–80 colour 124, 211, 219, 225 conceptual metaphor models 62, 75 conceptual metaphor theory 12, 14, 29, 34, 36, 63, 117, 140, 211, 253 conceptual models 62, 64–5, 68, 75–8 conceptualisations 14, 166, 209–10, 212, 216–19, 224, 235–6, 247 concordancing 92–3, 105–6, 170 CONSTRUCTION 48, 118 consumers 212–14, 221, 225–6 CONTAINER 16, 126 Contemporary Theory of Metaphor 34, 182 corpora 64, 66–7, 77, 86–7, 89–90, 96, 103, 105, 109, 170 corpus 15, 17, 28–32, 39–40, 58–60, 66, 69–70, 80, 86–90, 95–6, 109, 117–18, 120–2, 170–3, 179–80, 185 analysis 89, 172, 176 approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis 5, 33, 81, 110, 135, 164, 206 linguistics x, xii, 135, 183, 253 of speeches 65, 85 critical discourse analysis x–xi, 33–4, 136 critical frame analysis 235, 239–40, 253 Critical Metaphor Analysis x, 119 cultures 13, 32, 120, 122, 167, 179–80

DARK 148–50, 152–3, 157, 162 De Valera, Éamon 114–16, 136 DEATH 95–7 decision-making 241–4, 247, 252 DEFENCE 104–5, 214, 220 Democrats 63–4, 66, 68–9, 71–2, 77, 79, 187–8, 192–3, 196, 198–200, 202–3 DESTINATIONS 19–20, 23, 127–8, 143, 151, 156 discourse xi–1, 9–10, 12–13, 32, 34–5, 44, 61, 67, 87–8, 105–6, 110–12, 154–5, 164, 240, 245–8, 252 Dole, Elizabeth 67 domains 54–5, 87–8, 104, 143, 147–8, 155, 167, 173, 180–1, 209–12, 217–18, 220–1, 225–6 abstract 166–7, 171 metaphorical source 3, 88 potential source 90, 92–3, 97–8, 100, 102–3 source 12, 16–19, 21, 23–4, 27, 44–57, 63, 65, 77, 79, 85, 88–90, 92–3, 97–106, 109, 121, 126, 129, 147, 151, 153–4, 162–3, 167, 170, 209, 258 target 12, 44–7, 63, 106, 109, 120–1, 126, 131, 170, 201, 209, 258, 267 DOMESTICITY 91–2, 101, 103 DREAM 44 Dutch 236, 243–4, 251–2

87, 92, 95–6, 128 elections 25, 27, 38, 53, 55, 64, 66, 73, 76, 84, 153, 159, 186, 236, 250 EMOTIONS 95, 98 empathy 28, 63–6, 78, 156 EMPATHY 63 empowerment 182, 210, 218, 245, 248 women’s 245 enemies 55, 100, 114, 211–16, 220, 223 ENEMIES 212, 214–15 enemisation 213, 233 ECONOMY

272 Index energy ENTITY

160, 214–15 127–8, 212

family 4, 100, 104, 117–18, 120, 124, 140, 188 FAMILY 100, 117–18, 120 FARMING LAND 126, 128 FEEDING 100, 103 FEELINGS 66, 79, 95, 97, 140, 155 female viii, 3, 9, 29, 42, 49, 66, 68–71, 79, 84, 100, 112, 114, 139, 162–3, 186 candidates 4, 139, 146, 185–6, 191, 195–6, 200, 202–3 Democrats 69–70 family members 198–9, 203 politicians 5, 19, 36, 39, 106–7, 139, 200, 243–4, 249 Republicans 69–70 female MPs 3–4, 139, 144, 149–51, 155, 157 experienced 148–50, 157, 159 less experienced 148, 150 feminine 1, 9–10, 13, 28–30, 38, 84–5, 97–9, 103, 145, 157, 195, 259, 267 traits 28, 84–5, 254–5 femininity 2, 5, 13–14, 28–9, 36, 55–7, 84, 255, 259–60 empowered 218, 226 feminism 114, 183, 216, 218, 234, 246, 253, 259, 267–8 fight 4, 24–5, 99–100, 104–5, 211, 213, 215, 218, 220 FIGHTERS 212, 216–18 fighting 25–7, 100, 104, 212, 216–18 FIGHTING 212, 216, 218 First Lady 4, 254, 257–9, 267 see also Clinton, Hillary floor, senate 2, 67, 75–7 floor speeches 66, 68, 70 FIRE 100–3 food ix, 92, 144, 159, 161 FOOD PREPARATION 85, 91–3, 101–3, 106 FOOTBALL 49, 53, 57 force 55, 71–2, 74, 76, 78–80, 127, 131, 266 France 18, 110, 228–32

frequency 17, 65, 68–9, 75–7, 80, 89, 96, 130, 139, 150, 172–3, 176, 184, 201, 203, 252 101–3, 147 GDR (German Democratic Republic) 11, 168–9, 181 gender v, x–xi, 2–3, 9–10, 13–15, 27–30, 33–6, 61–3, 118, 144–5, 148, 164–5, 179, 203, 260–2 cultural 178–9 equality xi, 235–7, 240–1, 244, 248–9, 253 identities 9, 13–14, 17, 210 inequality vi, 4, 235–6, 238–41, 243, 245–9 metaphors 261 roles 85, 179 Generative Metaphor 136, 165 German 18, 20, 30–1, 40, 181–2 politicians 16, 30 German Democratic Republic see GDR Germany x, xii–2, 9, 20, 35, 108, 168, 228–30, 232 glass ceiling 132, 242, 247, 252, 267 Gonne, Maud 114 Graham, Lindsey 67, 72 GROWTH 87, 128, 156, 243 GARDENING

Hain, Peter 141–3, 146, 148–9, 153–4, 156, 158, 160 Harman, Harriet 146, 148, 151, 153, 155, 157–60 HEALTH viii, 44, 88, 91–3, 95–6, 101–3, 147–8, 154, 157, 163 HOME 115, 121 HOMELAND 120–1, 129 Hong Kong iii, 122, 227–9 House of Representatives 79, 185–6, 188, 190, 192, 194, 203–4 husband 11, 187–8, 193, 199–200 Hutchison, Kay Bailey 67 Hyde, Douglas 115 hypernym 65–6, 77 ideational metafunction 12, 14 ideology xi, 12, 45, 68, 118–19, 141, 143, 156–7, 175, 203, 259

Index 273 ILLNESS

101–3

101–2, 104 India 94, 104, 108, 227, 230 intensification 19, 21, 28–9, 32 intensity 65, 78, 80 interviews 2, 9–10, 15–17, 19, 22, 24–9, 31–2, 36, 39, 56, 58, 60, 86, 109, 200, 263 INVASION 104 Iraq 41, 66, 224 Ireland 1, 113–17, 120–33 Irish 114–16, 122–3, 131, 133 politics 115, 133 Italian corpus 39–40, 57 politicians 16, 36 politics 37, 41, 43, 53, 57 senate 58 women ministers 3, 85, 90 women politicians 84 Italy v, xi, 1–3, 20, 30, 36–8, 41, 44, 46–7, 49, 51, 56–7, 83, 90, 93–4, 97, 104, 108, 110 IMPRISONMENT

Jenninger, Philipp 33 Johnson, Alan 142, 146, 154, 158, 160 JOURNEY 12, 17, 19, 21, 32, 40, 44, 116, 118, 120, 126–7, 142, 147–8, 154, 162 Kennedy, Edward Moore 66, 67 Kerry, John 66, 67, 198, 204 keywords vii, 17–19, 22, 27–8, 32, 40, 42, 70–1, 77, 88–90, 100, 102, 105–6, 109, 120, 146–7, 240, 242–3, 251 kitchen sink 261–2 Lakoff, George 20, 62–4, 73, 75, 107, 116–18, 140, 166, 184, 224, 267 Lakoff and Johnson 12, 19, 23, 36, 79, 109, 117, 166, 209, 211, 235, 240, 267 Lakoff and Turner 48, 112, 147, 166 LAND 120, 121, 132

language metaphorical 1, 87, 166–8, 170–1, 180 scripted 23, 27, 28, 109 LANGUAGE 116 Lanzillotta, Linda 86, 98, 109 legitimisation 140, 143, 240, 246 lemmas 16, 25, 87, 92, 97–8, 100, 104, 106 lexemes 2, 16–17, 22, 24, 62, 64–6, 70, 75–8, 80, 221 lexical frequency patterns 75–7, 81 lesbian 107, 191, 264 liberalisms 38, 260, 265 liberty 113, 169, 172 likeability 254–5, 257 LIGHT vii, 3, 118, 147–8, 152–4, 157, 162 Madonna 4, 254–5, 258–9, 260 male 69–70, 79, 185 candidates viii, 4, 154, 158, 186, 188, 191–5, 198, 202–3 Democrats 67–70, 192 MPs 3, 139, 148–50, 153–5, 157 politicians 3, 5, 9, 30, 36, 148, 157 Republicans 67–70, 75 Senators 2, 68–70, 74, 77 mappings, metaphorical 52, 93, 96, 98, 110, 120, 166, 168, 179 Markiewicz, Constance 113–14 masculine 1, 9, 10, 13, 29–30, 39, 56, 85, 97–9, 103, 144–5, 151, 157, 179, 254–5, 267 masculinity 2, 5, 13–14, 36, 55–7, 256 hegemonic 12, 33,164, 210 mastery 187–9, 192–7, 201–2 McAleese, Mary vii, 3–5, 113, 117–22, 124, 126–33 McCain, John vii, 66–7, 70, 73–5, 255, 266 Melandri, Giovanna 86, 94, 101, 103, 109 Members of Parliament see MPs Merkel, Angela 2, 9–11, 15–16, 18–19, 21–2, 24, 26–9, 31–3, 36, 39, 54

274 Index metaphor analysis 2–3, 29, 62, 211 density 2, 17, 21, 24, 50 identification 90, 171 linguistics 94, 99, 103, 119, 166 sources 104, 106 targets 93, 94, 99, 106 themes 3, 85, 90, 92–6, 103–6, 109 metaphoric type-token ratio (mTTR) 2, 17, 21, 24, 27, 50 metaphoricity 40, 90, 106 metaphors conventional 49, 122, 125, 147, 150, 157 feminine 5, 96 gendered 4, 10, 13, 254–5 masculine 1, 85, 105, 110, 144, 257 primary 14, 16, 63 role of 140, 143–4, 156 spatial v, 3, 167–80 militarisation 210, 226 minister, prime 36–7, 53, 55, 62, 120, 125–6, 133–4, 139, 209 MONOCONC 187, 203 MORALITY 63–4 mother 85, 114, 130, 191–2, 198, 258–9 MOTION 20, 127, 170–2, 174, 179 MOVEMENT 44, 99, 127, 151 MPs (Members of Parliament) 3, 62, 84, 139, 146, 148, 153, 176, 179, 236–8, 246, 251 Murkowski, Lisa 67 115–16, 118, 121, 125, 133 189, 195–6, 202 NATURAL DISASTERS 91–3, 103 NATURE 40, 44, 45 NAUTICAL 102 Netherlands 2, 236, 238 New Labour 10, 23, 139, 151–3, 157, 169 New York Times 114, 197–9, 204, 205, 256 NP (Nurturant Parent) vii, 63–5, 69, 71, 73–6, 78 lexemes 68–76 NATION

NATIVE BIRTH

NUCLEAR FAMILY 184, 187–97, 201–5 Nurturant Parent see NP

Obama, Barack 70, 73–5, 256–7, 260, 262 office, political 1, 10, 185, 190 ORGANISM 95, 116, 126, 128–9 orientation, political 2, 36, 55 parents 48–9, 115–16, 124, 188, 202, 265 parliamentary debates 139, 148, 168, 173, 241, 251–2 parties left-wing 45–6, 238 right-wing 37 pathos 140–2, 150, 154, 156 PERSON vii, 95, 118, 120, 126–7, 129–30 PLANTS viii, 48, 101–2, 116, 128, 131, 148, 154–5, 163 policy documents 235–6, 239–40, 246–8, 252 frame 239–41 texts 235–6, 238–41, 243, 249, 252 political communication viii, 140–1, 146, 152, 156 debates vi, 2, 4, 137, 185, 201, 245, 248 discourse x, xi, 10, 12, 20, 27, 29, 42–3, 46, 49, 54, 147, 157, 233 ideology 168–9, 172, 174, 177–8, 184, 202 language v, x, 1–3, 81, 109, 168 parties 2, 37–8, 53, 62–3, 66, 71–2, 75, 166, 184, 192, 251 speeches v, x, 7, 62, 122, 241 Pollastrini, Barbara 86, 100, 109 power conceptualisation of 236, 245, 247–9 distribution of 242–3, 252 gendered metaphors of 258 representation of 247 POWERFUL ALLIES 212, 219–21, 224 press releases 3, 85–6, 102, 106, 109 problem–solution schema 210–12

Index 275 212, 220, 221, 233 prognosis 239–40 pugilists 216–17, 261

PRODUCTS

qualitative analysis 9, 19, 29, 50, 211 quantitative analysis 29, 83

SPORTS

63–5, 78–9, 93, 125, 226, 263 Strict Father see SF SUBMISSION 95, 97 synonyms 87–8, 241–2 STRENGTH

Radical movement 38, 42, 55, 59 40, 91, 101–2, 145 Republican Party 63–4, 190 Republicans 63–79, 185, 187–8, 192, 196–8, 201, 203, 257 RESCUERS 212, 220, 224 rhetoric, political 140, 142, 184 rights 71–80, 100, 212, 216, 218 civil 38, 55, 71–2, 79 women’s 2, 151, 251, 259 Robinson, Mary 117, 134 ROMANCE 88 ROOTS 47–9, 102, 116, 163, 196

TARGET

saboteur 212, 215 Schröder, Gerhard 2, 9–10, 15, 30–1, 36 self-aestheticisation 210 self-legitimisation 143 senate 62, 66–8, 73, 75–6, 79–80, 185–6, 192, 205, 238, 254, 256 senators 4, 62–80, 254, 258 sex differences 167–8, 177 SF (Strict Father) 63–5, 75, 78 lexemes vii, 68–76 Short, Clare 146, 148, 150, 155, 159, 161–3 Singapore 2, 122, 209 SLEEP 44 Social Democrats see SPD Socialist Party 238, 243, 246, 251 Socialists 172, 174–5, 238 Spain x, xi, 2, 149, 236, 238, 242, 245 Spanish texts 241–4, 251–2 SPD (Social Democrats) 10–12, 19, 169–75

VEHICLE

RELIGION

vii, 28, 49–51, 53, 55–7, 85,

140

216, 219 target domains see domains, target TIGER 121–4, 126 Thatcher, Margaret 148, 159, 255 TOOLS 92, 94, 98–9, 102–3 transcripts 172, 181, 204 TREE 116 under-representation 242, 245–7 United States v, x, xi, 2, 4, 44, 64, 66, 169, 184–6, 198, 202 unruly women vi, 4, 254–6, 258, 260–4 116 90, 95, 100 VISION 40, 44, 47, 92, 98–9 visual images 131, 211, 215, 219 VIOLENCE

Wales

142, 154, 158, 160 x, 17, 19, 24, 26–7, 40, 44, 88, 90, 95, 98, 100, 102–5, 211–12, 223, 225–6 WARFARE 209–20, 213, 219, 225 WARRIORS 85, 212, 214, 216–17, 219, 223–6 WEAPONS 220–1, 262 WEATHER 101–3 WINDOWS 93, 131 WITCH vi, 4, 254, 258, 262–5 Wmatrix 117, 119 WordNet 65, 77 WordSmith Tools 16, 40, 89, 109, 117, 120 WAR

Yeats, W. B.

114