Cover not available
Part of
Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies
Edited by Monika Reif and Frank Polzenhagen
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 103] 2023
► pp. 15–35

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

 | University of East Anglia
One of the key-metaphor complexes in conceptualizing national identity is that of the nation as a body or a person. Nation -embodiment and -personalization have had a long conceptual history and still figure prominently in present-day political discourse. However, the socio-psychological impact of these metaphors is still in question: does the occurrence of embodied and personalized nation-depictions in public discourse mean that recipients understand and interpret international relations in terms of inter-body or inter-personal relationships?
New empirical evidence from a metaphor interpretation survey conducted in 30 countries suggest that such conceptualizations do indeed occur and lead to creative elaboration and inter-metaphor blendings. Moreover, it can be shown that the elicited metaphor interpretations relate to culture-specific discourse traditions. The chapter compares data from the English and German L1 survey samples and discusses their implications for the analysis of metaphor understanding.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, culture, pragmatics, variation, universal vs. relative
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The ubiquity of metaphor variation
  • 3.Variation in metaphor corpora
    • 3.1The English L1 sample
    • 3.2The German L1 sample
  • 4.Comparison
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.103.01mus
References (59)
References
Ahrens, Kathleen (2009). Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brugman, Britta C. & Christian Burgers (2018). Political framing across disciplines: Evidence from 21st century experiments. Research & Politics 5(2), pp. 1–7. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burgers, Christian, Elly A. Konijn & Gerard J. Steen (2016). Figurative framing: Shaping public discourse through metaphor, hyperbole, and irony. Communication Theory 26, pp. 410–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carston, Robyn & Catherine Wearing (2011). Metaphor, hyperbole and simile: A pragmatic approach. Language and Cognition 3(2), pp. 283–312. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004). Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014). Analyzing Political Speeches. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2019). Metaphors of Brexit. Cham: Palgrave-Macmillan/Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul & George Lakoff (1995). Foreign policy by metaphor. In: Christina Schäffner & Anita Wenden (Eds.), Language and Peace (pp. 37–59). Aldershot: Dartmouth.Google Scholar
Deignan, Alice (2005). Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010). The evaluative properties of metaphors. In: Graham Low, Zazie Todd, Alice Deignan & Lynne Cameron (Eds.), Researching and Applying Metaphor in the Real World (pp. 357–374). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Flusberg, Stephen J., Teenie Matlock & Paul H. Thibodeau (2018). War metaphors in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 33(1): 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W. (1994). The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2005). Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W. & Markus Tendahl (2011). Coupling of metaphoric cognition and communication: A reply to Deirdre Wilson. Intercultural Pragmatics 8(4), pp. 601–609. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harvey, A. D. (2007). Body Politic. Political Metaphor and Political Violence. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Heyvaert, Pauline (2019). Fairies, Christmas miracles and sham marriages: a diachronic analysis of deliberate metaphors in Belgian political discourse. In: Julien Perrez, Min Reuchamps & Paul H. Thibodeau (Eds.), Variations in Political Metaphor (pp. 35–59). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Idström, Anna & Elisabeth Piirainen (Eds., in cooperation with T. F.M. Falzett) (2012). Endangered Metaphors. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán (2002). Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015). Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In: A. Ortony (ed.). Metaphor and Thought (pp. 202–251). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1996). Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t. Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980/2003). Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Turner (1989). More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George & Elisabeth Wehling (2016). Your Brain’s Politics. How the Science of Mind Explains the Political Divide. Exeter: Imprint Academic.Google Scholar
Littlemore, Jeannette (2001). The effect of cultural background on metaphor interpretation. Metaphor and Symbol 18, pp. 273–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Littlemore, Jeannette & Graham Low (2006). Figurative Thinking and Figurative Language Learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacArthur, Fiona, José Luis Oncins-Martínez, Manuel Sánchez-García & Ana María Piquer-Píriz (Eds.) (2012). Metaphor in Use: Context, culture, and communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacArthur, Fiona, Tina Krennmayr & Jeannette Littlemore (2015). How basic is “understanding is seeing” when reasoning about knowledge? Asymmetric uses of sight metaphors in office hours consultations in English as Academic Lingua Franca. Metaphor and Symbol 30(3), pp. 184–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas (2004). Metaphor and Political Discourse. Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006). Metaphor Scenarios in Public Discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 21(1), pp. 23–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010). Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust. The Concept of the Body Politic. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016). Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
(2020). Political metaphor in world Englishes. World Englishes 39, pp. 667–680. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2021). National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic. Singapore: SpringerNature. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas, Fiona MacArthur & Giulio Pagani (Eds.) (2014). Metaphor and Intercultural Communication. London: Bloomsbury Linguistics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas & Sing Tsun Derek Wong (2020). ‘England is an appendix; Corrupt officials are like hairs on a nation’s arm: Sarcasm, irony and self-irony in figurative political discourse. In:Angeliki Athanasiadou & Herbert L. Colston (Eds.), The Diversity of Irony (pp. 162–182). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nederman, Cary J. (2004). Body Politics: The diversification of organic metaphors in the later Middle Ages. Pensiero politico medievale 2, pp. 59–87.Google Scholar
Niemeier, Susanne and René Dirven (Eds.) (2000). Evidence for Linguistic Relativity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perrez, Julien, Min Reuchamps & Paul Thibodeau (Eds.) (2019). Variations in Political Metaphor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semino, Elena (2008). Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2016). A corpus-based study of ‘mixed metaphor’ as a metalinguistic comment. In: Raymond W. Gibbs (Ed.), Mixing Metaphor (pp. 203–222). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Semino, Elena, Zsófia Demjén & Jane Demmen (2018). An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse, and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer. Applied Linguistics 39(5), pp. 625–645.Google Scholar
Sharifian, Farzad (2010). Cultural conceptualizations in intercultural communication: A study of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Journal of Pragmatics 42(12), pp. 3367–3376. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014). Conceptual metaphor in intercultural communication between speakers of Aboriginal English and Australian English. In: Andreas Musolff, Fiona MacArthur & Giulio Pagani (Eds.), Metaphor and Intercultural Communication (pp. 117–129). London: Bloomsbury Linguistics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2002). Ed. by William R. Trumble & Angus Stevenson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson (1995). Relevance. Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Steen, Gerard, Aletta G. Dorst, Berenike Herrmann, Anna Kaal, Tina Krennmayr & Trijntje Pasma (2010). A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tendahl, Markus (2009). A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor: Relevance Theory and Cognitive Linguistics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tendahl, Markus & Raymond W. Gibbs (2008). Complementary perspectives on metaphor: Cognitive linguistic and relevance theory. Journal of Pragmatics 40, pp. 1823–1864. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thibodeau, Paul. H. & Lera Boroditsky (2011). Metaphors we think with: The role of metaphor in reasoning. PLoS ONE 6(2): e16782. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013). Natural language metaphors covertly influence reasoning. PLoS ONE 8(1): e52961. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thibodeau, Paul H., James Fleming & Maya Lannen (2019). Variation in methods for studying political metaphor: Comparing experiments and discourse analysis. In: Julien Perrez, Min Reuchamps & Paul Thibodeau (Eds.), Variations in Political Metaphor (pp. 177–194). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Townson, Michael (1992). Mother-Tongue and Fatherland. Language and Politics in German. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Yu, Ning (2008). The relationship between metaphor, body and culture. In: Roslyn M. Frank, René Dirven, Tom Ziemke & Enrique Bernárdez (Eds.), Body, Language and Mind. Vol. 2. Sociocultural Situatedness (pp. 387–407). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015). Embodiment, culture, and language. In: Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture (pp. 227–239). London: Routledge.Google Scholar