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Variation in Political Metaphor
Edited by Julien Perrez, Min Reuchamps and Paul H. Thibodeau
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 85] 2019
► pp. 35–60

Chapter 2
Fairies, Christmas miracles and sham marriages

A diachronic analysis of deliberate metaphors in Belgian political discourse

This research analyzes the use of potentially deliberate metaphors in Belgian governmental policy statements over a time span of ten years. The analysis of this type of metaphor allows for further investigation into metaphor variation. Our results suggest that one variable that plays a role in the variation of political metaphors is the political situation of a country: the more hectic the political landscape, the more metaphor variation might occur. Throughout this chapter, some of the most striking potentially deliberate metaphors and tendencies are discussed, with the aim of establishing a possible explanation for what drives metaphorical variation in political discourse.
Keywords: Belgian politics, deliberate metaphors, variation in political metaphors, political discourse, annual governmental declarations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework: CDA, CMT and DMT as starting points for political metaphor analysis
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Description of the corpus and political context
    • 3.2Methodology: The identification of potentially deliberate metaphors
  • 4.Findings: Diachronic perspective on the variation of potentially deliberate metaphors in Belgian politics
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.85.02hey
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Musolff, Andreas
2023. Culture-specific variation in interpretations of nations as bodies metaphors by English and German L1 speakers. In Cultural Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 103], ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
Steen, Gerard J.
2023. Thinking by metaphor, fast and slow: Deliberate Metaphor Theory offers a new model for metaphor and its comprehension. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. Slowing Metaphor Down [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 26], DOI logo

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