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Publication details [#3226]

Cameron, Lynne J., Robert Maslen and Zazie Todd. 2008. Metaphor in the perception and communication of the risk of terrorism: A study across socio-cultural groups.

Abstract

This paper reports findings from a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council into the perception and communication of terrorist risk. Metaphor analysis was a central tool in the project methodology, applied to spoken data collected across socio-cultural groups to reveal attitudes, values and conceptualisations about terrorism risk. This project investigated 'background risk' i.e. how awareness of terrorism affects people's feelings and decisions on a daily basis. Metaphor analysis begins from linguistic metaphors in the data and works 'upwards' to condense and summarise metaphorical language, using this to uncover attitudes, values and conceptualisations. Metaphors were then grouped according to the semantics of the vehicle terms to produce Vehicle Groupings, such as VIOLENT ACTION; BALANCE; CONNECT/SEPARATE. Metaphors were further coded for use in one of four 'discourse topics': TERRORIST ACTION; COMMUNICATION ABOUT TERRORISM; RESPONSES TO TERRORISM; SOCIAL GROUPS. Each linguistic metaphor then belonged to one of the 'systematic metaphors', i.e. a set of discourse-connected metaphors, such as COMMUNICATION ABOUT TERRORISM REQUIRES BALANCE. Comparisons were made of systematic metaphors and Vehicle Groupings across the 12 focus groups, both qualitatively and quantitatively (using chi-square tests). Metaphor clusters in the focus group discussions were also identified, following Cameron & Stelma (2004), on the basis that clusters of metaphors often signal talk on affectively or ideationally difficult topics. Clusters were compared qualitatively across groups for the topics and metaphors used. The results of the metaphor analysis show significant preferences for certain metaphors according to the four dimensions of gender, religion, socio-economic status and location. For example, professional men used more VIOLENT ACTION metaphors to talk about terrorism, and Muslim groups used LABELLING metaphors to describe how terrorism had impacted on their communities. in social science research and dealing with challenges posed by large amounts of spoken data and many thousands of linguistic metaphors. (Lynne Cameron, Robert Maslen and Zazie Todd)