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Article published In:
Metaphor in Religion and Spirituality
Edited by Stephen Pihlaja
[Metaphor and the Social World 7:1] 2017
► pp. 47–65

An investigation of the blocking and development of empathy in discussions between Muslim and Christian believers

| Hokkaido University, Japan

This article investigates examples of the blocking or development of empathy in videoed discussions between three pairs of conservative Muslim and Christian believers. The analysis focusses on the use of figurative language in the discussions with the aim of identifying examples of metaphor appropriation, and reveals three types of shared metaphor usage. The first is shared language based on the overlapping semantic fields that Christians and Muslims draw on in order to describe their experience. The second consists of appropriation that appears to contribute to the blocking of empathy through the imposition of narratives with specific assumptions. The third involves discourse convergence and empathy development, demonstrating the potential of this type of discourse format to promote bridge building between particular individuals at specific moments in a discourse.

Keywords: Discourse, metaphor, Muslim, Christian, empathy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Interacting, perspective taking, and metaphor usage
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Examples of shared language
    • 4.2Appropriating metaphors and imposing personal stories in order to challenge perspectives
    • 4.3Empathy in statements that adopt the perspective of the Other
    • 4.4Moments of perspective alignment
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 20 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.7.1.04ric
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