METAPHOR AND IDEOLOGY IN MEDIA DISCOURSE ON MIGRATION Mariana Neagu University of Galaţi University of Galaţi The XIII th International Conference Cognitive. - презентация

1 METAPHOR AND IDEOLOGY IN MEDIA DISCOURSE ON MIGRATION Mariana Neagu University of Galaţi University of Galaţi The XIII th International Conference Cognitive Modeling in Linguistics, Corfu, Greece, September 22-29, 2010

2 OUTLINE Introduction Introduction 1. Some preliminary considerations: CMT and CDA 2. Data and method 3. Findings Closing remarks Closing remarks

3 Introduction II Motivation - The choice of one metaphor rather than another is a sympton of ideology (Stockwell, 2000) - Although the importance of culture to metaphoric patterns has been underlined, the centrality of ideology to culture has not been enough discussed.

4 1. Some preliminary considerations: CMT and CDA Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT): Lakoff, 1991; Steen, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) Language is not powerful on its own – it gains power by the use people make of it and by the people who have access to language means and public fora. Van Dijk (1995): The aim of CDA is to investigate critically social inequality, as it is expressed, signalled, constituted, legitimized and so on by language use. (Wodak and Meyer, 2001)

5 2. Data and method - articles related to immigration in UK, published : The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail Romanian quality papers (Adevărul and Cotidianul) Searched key words: migration, (im)migrant, Romanian, Britain.

6 3. Findings The British corpus: - 5 source domains matching the target domain of migration: flood container threat invasion exploitation

7 Interim conclusions: The British Corpus Metaphoric Patterns Total 1. MIGRATION AS FLOOD UK AS CONTAINER EU AS CONTAINER MIGRATION AS THREAT MIGRATION AS EXPLOITATION MIGRATION AS WAR MIGRATION AS INVASION MIGRATION AS FIRE

8 The Romanian Corpus Articles on Romanian emigration to the UK MHNMHMHNMHMHNMHMH NMHMHNMH Adevărul Cotidianul Total no. of articles Metaphoric Headline = MH Non-metaphoric Headline = NMH

9 Year Metaphoric Patterns Total BPRPBPRPBPRPBPRPBPRPBPRP 1. MIGRATION AS FLOOD UK/LONDON AS CONTAINER EU AS CONTAINER MIGRATION AS THREAT MIGRATION AS EXPLOITATION CHILDREN AS GOODS MIGRATION AS WAR MIGRATION AS INVASION MIGRANTS AS HUNTERS MIGRANTS AS HUNTED ANIMALS MIGRATION AS FORCE MIGRATION AS FIRE ECONOMY AS LIVING ORGANISM EU INTEGRATION AS AN UNREALISTIC ISSUE Summing up: British and Romanian Press

10 Conclusions (I) - - the FLOOD metaphor has the highest frequency ->the imminence and force of migration; migrants viewed as an undifferentiated mass. - - the CONTAINER metaphor implies an INSIDE and an OUTSIDE, representing the US and THEM. can be looked at as a rhetorical legitimization strategy of the right

11 Conclusions (II) - - topics discussed in relation to migration: negative socio-economic consequences (unemployment, reduction of social benefits and wages, raise of taxes, human trafficking) - the attitudes that emerge from the body of English newspapers are mainly negative esp. n conservative tabloids (e.g. Daily Mail)

12 Conclusions(III) - - Romanian tabloids do not approach the topic of migration - - Romanian headlines are by far less metaphorical than British headlines. However, some metaphors migrate from British newspapers to Romanian newspapers (e.g. MIGRATION AS FLOOD, MIGRATION AS THREAT ) - - the only new metaphor in Romanian newspapers: MIGRATION AS HUNT (MIGRANTS ARE HUNTERS and MIGRANTS ARE HUNTED ANIMALS)

13 Conclusions (IV) - - ideological orientation goes hand in hand with the presence of metaphor - - combined metaphors (e.g.FLOOD + THREAT, FLOOD + THREAT + CONTAINER) reinforce ideological positions - - conventional metaphor in the jounalistic discourse may determine our way of thinking (and acting) in the social sphere

14 Selected References (I) Charteris-Black, J Britain as a container: immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign. Discourse and Society, vo. 17, no.5, pp Colipcă, G. I., I. Ivan-Mohor, M. Praisler, G. Dima, A. M. Dumitrascu, M. Neagu National Case Study – National Identity and the Media (WP4): Romania, available online at content/uploads/2010/07/ WP4-Report-Romania-final.pdf. content/uploads/2010/07/ WP4-Report-Romania-final.pdf Fairclough, N Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research. London and New York: Routledge. Lakoff, G Metaphor in politics. Available at

15 Selected References (II) Neagu, M The difference is that Romanians are now Europeans like us. Functions of intertextuality in hard news reports. In Melanges francophnes. Actes de la conference annuelle Formes textuelles de la communication. De la production a la reception. Galati: Galati University Press, pp Steen, G From linguistic to conceptual metaphor in five steps. In Gibbs R.W. and G. J. Steen. eds. Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp Van Dijk. T The Mass Media Today. Discourses of domination or diversity? Javnost/The Public (Ljubljana), 2(2), pp Wodak, R [2001] What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In Wodak, R. and M.Meyer. eds. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: SAGE Publications, pp

16 THANK YOU!