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Article published In:
Cognitive Perspectives on Political Discourse
Edited by Pascal Fischer and Christoph Schubert
[Journal of Language and Politics 13:2] 2014
► pp. 336–363

Denotational boundary disputes in political discourse

‘Defining the definition of marriage’

| University of Flensburg |

The cognitive semantic analysis of denotational incongruencies by means of comparative investigations of structural field patterns (cf. Jäkel 2001, 2003, 2010) can also be put to use in the investigation of certain kinds of contested concepts (Lakoff 1993), namely cases in which the field patterns themselves are under dispute. The case to be analysed is that of marriage, a cultural concept that has recently come under dispute in the socio-political discourse of Western countries. Competing cultural models (cf. Lakoff 1987) to be compared in this context include the traditional/conservative model as well as different versions of a more tolerant model and a liberal/progressive model. The analysis will focus on authentic language data from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Germany, supplemented by a diachronic comparison of dictionary definitions as well as the results of a survey done with young German informants.

Keywords: denotational incongruency, contested concepts, denotational boundaries, lexical field patterns, marriage, same-sex marriage, cultural cognitive models, competing construals, alternative classifications, structural field semantics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The contested concept of marriage
  • 2.Discourse on marriage: Some recent English evidence
  • 3.Defining marriage: Some diachronic evidence
  • 4.Competing construals of marriage
  • 5.Defining marriage/Ehe: Results from a survey
  • 6.More discourse on marriage: Sir Elton John’s wedding and its media coverage in English and German
    • 6.1Discourse from the television coverage
    • 6.2Discourse from the press coverage
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 August 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.13.2.07jak
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2018. Discourses of marriage in same-sex marriage debates in the UK press 2011–2014. Journal of Language and Sexuality 7:2 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

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