Cover not available
Article published In:
From Culture to Language and Back: The Animacy Hierarchy in language and discourse
Edited by Laure Gardelle and Sandrine Sorlin
[International Journal of Language and Culture 5:2] 2018
► pp. 302–322

The processes of animation and de-animation in conceptualizing socio-political events

| Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences
The philosophical idea of anthropocentrism viewing human beings as the most significant entities has been put forward in various metaphor studies within cognitive linguistics. As Talmy (2002) claims, people choose to animate a very large part of their reality and this happens due to embodiment, as Lakoff (1987), and Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue. Anthropocentricity can also be explained by Croft’s Extended Animacy Hierarchy system (2002) in terms of human beings outranking animate and inanimate entities, strongly implying that inanimate entities tend to be perceived as inferior. However, this paper argues that anthropocentrism is bidirectional, since not only do we ascribe human or animate qualities to inanimate objects or phenomena, but we also tend to “de-animate” human beings by attributing inanimate qualities to them. This paper further explores the idea of anthropocentricity by focusing on the metaphorical conceptualization of issues concerning the euro adoption in 2015 and the refugee crisis in 2015–2016, two real-life phenomena that have significantly affected social life in Lithuania. The paper thus aims to investigate how animation of the euro and de-animation of refugees is metaphorically conceptualized in the Lithuanian media and what rhetorical implications arise from this. The research is conducted within the framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2005/2011, 2014; Musolff, 2004; Hart 2010, etc.), which suggests that metaphors are used as an argumentative tool seeking to manipulate the audience. The paper therefore argues that the animation of the euro and “de-animation” of refugees carry serious rhetorical implications and reveal the attitudes of society towards the phenomena analyzed.
Keywords: metaphor, the embodiment hypothesis, Extended Animacy Hierarchy, animation of the euro, de-animation of refugees
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methods
  • 3.Metaphor in the discourses of euro adoption and the refugee crisis: Identification and interpretation
  • 4.Critical rhetorical implications of animation and de-animation
    • 4.1Animation of euro adoption in the Lithuanian media
    • 4.2De-animation metaphors for the refugee crisis in the Lithuanian media
  • 5.Concluding remarks: Creating a political myth via the euro is a human being and a refugee is an inanimate entity
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 June 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00011.cib
References (27)
References
Cameron, L. (1999). Operationalising ‘metaphor’ for applied linguistic research. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (pp. 3–28). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, J. (2005/2011). Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014). Analysing political speeches: Rhetoric, discourse and metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, W. (2002). Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W., Jr. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. (2014). Embodied metaphor. In J. Littlemore & J. Taylor (Eds.), The Bloomsbury companion to cognitive linguistics (pp. 167–184). London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Hart, C. (2010). Critical discourse analysis and cognitive science. New perspectives on immigration discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016). Discourse, grammar and ideology. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016, 23 July). Understanding Trump. Retrieved from [URL]
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980/2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
(1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason. A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1990). Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leyens, J. P., Cortes, B., Demoulin, S., Dovidio, J. F., Fiske, S. T., Gaunt, R., & Vaes, J. (2003). Emotional prejudice, essentialism, and nationalism: The 2002 Tajfel lecture. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33(6), 703–717. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, A. (2004). Metaphor in political discourse: Analogical reasoning in debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016). Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Narayanan, S. (1997). KARMA: Knowledge-based active representations for metaphor and aspect. MS thesis, University of California at Berkeley.Google Scholar
Nerlich, B., & Koteyko, N. (2009). MRSA – portrait of a superbug: A media drama in three acts. In A. Musolff & J. Zinken (Eds.), Metaphor and discourse (pp. 153–168). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paulauskas, J. (2015). Sisteminis lietuvių kalbos žodynas [Systemic Dictionary of Lithuanian]. Vilnius: Mokslas. Electronic version lkiis.lki.lt.Google Scholar
Semino, E. (2008). Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Steen, G., Dorst, A., Herrmann, B., Kaal, A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T., (2010). A Method for linguistic metaphor identification. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talmy, L. (2000). Towards a cognitive semantics. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zlatev, J. (2007). Spatial Semantics. In D. Geeraerts & H. Cuyckens (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 318–350). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar