Publications

Publication details [#14372]

Renardel de Lavalette, Kiki Y., Corina Andone and Gerard J. Steen. 2019. 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. 21 pp.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Amsterdam: John Benjamins
ISBN
15692159

Abstract

This research project explores the way politicians use metaphors in order to initiate discourse in British parliamentary debates. Political opponents, on the contrary, can resist these metaphors by advancing argumentative criticisms given that such metaphors are understood as conceptual tools which might contain presuppositions and entailments which are not in line with the other parties’ values and ideas. The purpose of this research project is to examine the way in which different classes of metaphor are used in order to express initiating points in discourse, as well as exploring how certain responses become instruments for different outcomes during the discussion stage at which initiating points are more frequently established. To do so, we focus on several case studies of resistance to starting points expressed metaphorically in British Public Bill Committee debates. According to our results, the use of metaphors becomes a fundamental strategy in these parliamentary debates in those cases in which starting points are decided between parties, being a pertinent skill for the opponents to resist them.