Article published in:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 20:2 (2021) ► pp. 226–253

Animals vs. armies

Resistance to extreme metaphors in anti-immigration discourse

| Lancaster University

Within the emerging paradigm of experimental Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper investigates the framing effects of dehumanising vs militarising metaphors in anti-immigration discourses. These metaphors are characterised as ‘extreme metaphors’ in so far as they are manifestly metaphorical and obviously inflammatory. Attested examples of these metaphors in political and media discourses are identified and critically analysed before their potential framing effects are investigated experimentally.

Contrary to predictions, alternative metaphors did not increase support for actions and evaluations consistent with the unique framings that they present. In fact, extreme metaphors decreased support for anti-immigration sentiments and hostile immigration policies compared to literal framings. It seems that extreme metaphors alert readers to the metaphorical framing being presented so that, among certain groups of people, the framing is more readily scrutinised and rejected, prompting readers adopt more sympathetic attitudes toward immigration. The implications of these findings for Critical Discourse Analysis are discussed.

Keywords: metaphor, extreme metaphor, metaphor resistance, immigration discourse, experimental methods
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction/background
  • 2.Critical metaphor analysis and the metaphor framing effect
  • 3.Experiment
    • 3.1Methods
      • 3.1.1Participants and design
      • 3.1.2Materials and procedure
      • 3.1.3Measures
    • 3.2Results
    • 3.3Discussion
      • Issues and limitations
  • 4.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20032.har
References
Behrend, Tara S., David J. Sharek, Adam W. Meade, and Eric N. Weibe
2011 “The Viability of Crowdsourcing for Survey Research.” Behaviour Research Methods 431: 800–13. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Boeynaems, Amber, Christian Burgers, Elly A. Konijn, and Gerard J. Steen
2017 “The Effects of Metaphorical Framing on Political Persuasion: A Systematic Literature Review”. Metaphor and Symbol 32 (2): 118–134. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Buhrmester, Michael, Tracy Kwang, and Samuel D. Gosling
2011 “Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A New Source of Inexpensive, yet High-Quality, Data? Perspectives on Psychological Science 6 (1): 3–5. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Catalano, Theresa and Andreas Musolff
2019 “ ‘Taking the Shackles off’: Metaphor and Metonymy of Migrant Children and Border Officials in the U.S”. Metaphorik.de 291.Google Scholar
Chandler, Jesse, Pam Mueller, and Gabriele Paolacci
2014 Nonnaïveté among Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers: Consequences and Solutions for Behavioral Researchers. Behavior Research Methods 46(1): 112–30. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2004 Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2006 “Britain as a Container: Immigration Metaphors in the 2005 Election Campaign. Discourse & Society 17(5): 563–581. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul
2005 “Manipulation, Memes and Metaphors: The Case of Mein Kampf.” In Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century: Discourse, Language, Mind, edited by Louis de Saussure and Peter Schulz, 15–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crump, Matthew J. C., John V. McDonnel, and Todd M. Gureckis
2013 “Evaluating Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioural Research.” PLoS ONE 8 e57410. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
DeVellis, Robert F.
2012 Scale Development: Theory and Applications. 3rd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
de Lavalette, Kiki Y. R., Conia Andone, and Gerard J. Steen
2019a “Figurative Analogies and How They are Resisted in British Public Bill Committee Debates.” Metaphor and the Social World 9(1): 107–130. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019b “ ‘I Did Not Say that the Government Should Be Plundering Anybody’s Savings’: Resistance to Metaphors Expressing Starting Points in Parliamentary Debates.” Journal of Language and Politics 18(5): 718–738. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
El Refaie, Elizabeth
2001 “Metaphors We Discriminate by: Naturalized Themes in Austrian Newspaper Articles about Asylum Seekers.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 5 (3): 352–71. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2003 “Understanding Visual Metaphor: The Example of Newspaper Cartoons.” Visual Communication 2 (1): 75–96. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Entman, Robert M.
1993 “Framing: Toward a Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43(4): 51–58. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2004 Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ethical Journalism Network
2015 Moving Stories. International Review of How Media Cover Migration. London: Ethical Journalism Network.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
1989 Language and Power. London: Longman.Google Scholar
1995 Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark Turner
2002 The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles
1982 “Frame Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, edited by Linguistics Society of Korea, 111–37. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Co.Google Scholar
1985 “Frames and the Semantics of Understanding.” Quaderni di Semantica VI (2): 222–254.Google Scholar
Fuoli, Matteo and Christopher Hart
2018 “Trust-Building Strategies in Corporate Discourse: An Experimental Study. Discourse & Society 29(5): 514–552. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Flusberg, Stephen J., Mark Lauria, and Paul H. Thibodeau
2018 “Metaphor Framing in Multiple Communication Modalities. In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 374–79. Madison, WI.Google Scholar
Giese, Stephanie and Christian Baden
2014 “Putting the Image back into the Frame: Modelling the Linkage between Visual Communication and Frame-Processing Theory.” Communication Theory 25(1): 46–69. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Graber, Doris A.
1990 “Seeing is Remembering: How Visuals Contribute to Learning from Television News. Journal of Communication 40 (3): 134–155. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hart, Christopher
2010 Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 “Metaphor and Intertextuality in Media Framings of the (1984–85) British Miners’ Strike: A Multimodal Analysis.” Discourse & Communication 11(1): 3–30. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018a “ ‘Riots Engulfed the City’: An Experimental Study Investigating the Legitimating Effects of Fire Metaphors in Discourses of Disorder.” Discourse & Society 29(3): 279–298. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018b “Event-Frames Affect Blame Assignment and Perception of Aggression: An Experimental Case Study in CDA.” Applied Linguistics 39(3): 400–421.Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher and Matteo Fuoli
2020 “Objectification Strategies Outperform Subjectification Strategies in Military Interventionist Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 1621: 17–28. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, Todd K.
2012 “Toll Booths on the Information Superhighway? Policy Metaphors in the Case of Net Neutrality.” Political Communication 29(3): 278–298. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hauser, David J., Pheobe C. Ellsworth, and Richard Gonzalez
2018 “Are Manipulation Checks Necessary?” Frontiers in Psychology 91: 998. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jeffries, Stuart
2014 “ ‘Swamped’ and ‘Riddled’: The Toxic Words that Wreck Public Discourse.” Guardian, Octoboer 27 2014 https://​www​.theguardian​.com​/uk​-news​/2014​/oct​/27​/swamped​-and​-riddled​-toxic​-phrases​-wreck​-politics​-immigration​-michael​-fallon
Kampf, Zohar and Yossi David
2019 “Too Good to Be True: The Effect of Conciliatory Message Design on Compromising Attitudes in Intractable Conflicts.” Discourse & Society 30(3): 264–286. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Richard A., Kate A. Ratliff, Michelangelo Vianello, Reginald B. Adams Jr., Štěpán Bahnik, Michael J. Bernstein, Konrad Bocian et al.
2014 “Investigating Variation in Replicability.” Social Psychology 451: 142–152. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koller, Veronika
2004 Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse: A Critical Cognitive Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michal
2018 “Discursive Shifts in Ethno-Nationalist Politics: On Politicization and Mediatization of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Poland.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16(1–2): 76–96. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2020 “Discursive Shifts and the Normalisation of Racism: Imaginaries of Immigration, Moral Panics and the Discourse of Contemporary Right-Wing Populism.” Social Semiotics 30 (4): 503–527. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Landau, Mark J., Daniel Sullivan, and Jeff Greenberg
2009 “Evidence that Self-Relevant Motives and Metaphoric Framing Interact to Influence Political and Social Attitudes.” Psychological Science 20 (11): 1421–1426. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Luke, Allan
2002 “Beyond Science and Ideology Critique: Developments in Critical Discourse Analysis.” Annual review of Applied Linguistics 22(1): 96–110. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Winter and Siddharth Suri
2012 “Conducting Behavioural Research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.” Behavioural Research Methods 441: 1–23. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas
2004 Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2016 Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Paolacci, Gabriele, Jesse Chandler, and Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis
2010 “Running Experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk.” Judgement and Decision Making 51: 411–419.Google Scholar
Peer, Eyal, Laura Brandimarte, Sonam Samat, and Alessandro Acquisti
2017 “Beyond the Turk: Alternative Platforms for Crowdsourcing Behavioral Research.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 701: 153–163. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reijnierse, W. Gudrun, Christian Burgers, Tina Krennmayr, and Gerard J. Steen
2015 “How Viruses and Beasts Affect our Opinions (or Not): The Role of Extendedness in Metaphorical Framing.” Metaphor and the Social World 5(2): 245–263. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Robins, Shani and Richard E. Mayer
2000 “The Metaphor Framing Effect: Metaphorical Reasoning about Text-Based Dilemmas.” Discourse Processes 30 (1): 57–86. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto
1999 “ ‘Like an Animal I was Treated’: Anti-Immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse.” Discourse & Society 10(2): 191–224. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2002 Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Semino, Elena
2008 Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shariatmadari, David
2015 “Swarms, Floods and Marauders: The Toxic Metaphors of the Migration Debate.” Guardian, August 10 2015 https://​www​.theguardian​.com​/commentisfree​/2015​/aug​/10​/migration​-debate​-metaphors​-swarms​-floods​-marauders​-migrants
Steen, Gerard J.
2008 “The Paradox of Metaphor: Why We Need a Three-Dimensional Model of Metaphor.” Metaphor and Symbol 231: 213–241. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2010 “When is Metaphor Deliberate?” In Selected Papers from the Stockholm 2008 Metaphor Festival, edited by Nils-Lennart Johannesson, Christina Alm-Arvius, and David C. Minugh, 43–63. Stockholm: University of Stockholm.Google Scholar
Steen, Gerard J., W. Gudrun Reijnierse, and Christian Burgers
2014 “When Do Natural Language Metaphors Influence Reasoning? A Follow-up Study to Thibodeau and Boroditsky (2013).” PLoS ONE 9(12): e113536. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Subtirelu, Nicholas C. and Shakthidhar R. Gopavaram
2016 “Crowdsourcing Critical Discourse Analysis: Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to Explore Readers’ Uptake of Comments about Language on RateMyProfessors.com.” CADAAD 8 (1): 38–57.Google Scholar
Thibodeau, Paul H.
2016 “Extended Metaphors are the Home Runs of Persuasion: Don’t Fumble the Phrase.” Metaphor and Symbol 31 (2): 53–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thibodeau, Paul H. and Lera Boroditsky
2011 “Metaphors We Think with: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning.” PLoS ONE 6(2): e16782. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013 “Natural Language Metaphors Covertly Influence Reasoning.” PLoS ONE 8(1): e52961. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thibodeau, Paul H. and Lera Borodistky
2015 “Measuring Effects of Metaphor in a Dynamic Opinion Landscape.” PLoS ONE 10(7): e0133939. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Utych, Stephen M.
2018 “How Dehumanization Influences Attitudes toward Immigrants.” Political Research Quarterly 7(2): 440–452. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A.
1998 Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Widdowson, Henry G.
2004 Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Woods, Andy T., Carlos Velasco, Carmel A. Levitan, Xiaoang Wan, and Charles Spence
2015 “Conducting Perception Research over the Internet: A Tutorial Review.” Peer J 3 e1058. CrossrefGoogle Scholar