Metaphors we discriminate by: Naturalized themes in Austrian newspaper articles about asylum seekers

Abstract

With speci®c reference to the use of metaphor in Austrian newspaper reports on the arrival of Kurdish asylum seekers in Italy in January 1998, this study suggests ways in which cognitive metaphor theory can be given a stronger socio-political dimension. The dominant metaphors portray the asylum seekers as water, as criminals, or as an invading army. The repeated use of these themes in relatively ®xed lexical and syntactic forms and across all the newspapers seems to indicate that they have become accepted as the`natural' way of describing the situation. It will be argued that the`naturalization' of particular metaphors can contribute to a blurring of the boundaries between the literal and the non-literal.

Detention of asylum seekers in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Italy

“…As the culture of control tightens the grip on those marginalized by economic conditions, it perpetuates fear across the social spectrum, enabling the criminology of the other to divert attention from progressive criminologies. The popular notion of criminals-and asylum seekers-transcends both reality and humanity, becoming imaginary figures that political conservatives manipulate and exploit (Kaye, 1998;Oxfam, 2001;Refaie, 2001). As a result, harsh criminal justice tactics are viewed as practical and rational since they are aimed at taking so-called dangerous persons 'out of circulation' (Douglas, 1992;Joly et al, 1997;Wacquant, 1999).…”

Multi-Functionality of Metaphor in Newspaper Discourse

“…Therefore, metaphor enables people to make sense of a complex and unfamiliar aspect of reality, like natural catastrophes, in terms of a more concrete, clear and familiar phenomenon, such as animate beings, monsters and war (cf. Thornborrow 1993;El Refaie 2001;Hiraga 2005). More specifically, the metaphor theme of ANIMA-TION involves personification, which allows us to comprehend a wide variety of experiences with nonhuman entities in terms of human motivations, characteristics, and activities which we come in terms with every day (Lakoff and Johnson 1980).…”

“…According to cognitive theorists, metaphor plays a key role in our conceptualization of abstract, unfamiliar and poorly delineated areas of experience (Thornborrow 1993;Kövecses 2000;Hiraga 2005;Goalty 2007;Semino 2008). Recently, the focus has shifted to the investigation of ideological effects of metaphor, including studies on political discourse (Chilton 1996;Musolff 2004;Charteris-Black 2005), immigrants (Santa Ana 1999;El Refaie 2001), the Iraq war (Lule 2004) and business discourse (Koller 2004).…”

Immigration metaphors in a corpus of legal English: an exploratory study of EAL learners’ metaphorical production and awareness

“…Research has also provided evidence that subhuman metaphors such as immigrants are animals (Santa Ana, 1999;Deignan, 2005), objects or commodities (El Refaie, 2001;O'Brien 2003) have coexisted, at least since the 1990's, with metaphors that bestowed nations with human qualities and led to conceptualize them as a body or organism whose wellbeing is endangered by immigrants, seen now as either a burden (Santa Ana, 2002;Cisneros, 2008;Crespo-Fernández, 2013), indigestible food, infectious organisms, (O'Brien 2003) or parasites (Musolff, 2015). These metaphors seem to have been partially displaced now by those that depict immigrants as invaders, criminals or illegal aliens (Flores, 2003;Binotto, 2015) against whom a heroic fighter, the government, must act to protect the country's integrity (Santa Anna, 2002;O'Brien 2003;Musolff, 2011;Binotto, 2015).…”