Situated-‘instant’ metaphors

Abstract

This paper studies the metaphorical expressions created as slogans by the Spanish protesters who gathered spontaneously in Madrid's Puerta del Sol Square on May 15th 2011 to demand economic equality and democracy. The metaphors analysed are situated and context-induced, as well as 'instant' , as they were produced in a very short, concrete period of time; in a specific physical location -the Puerta del Sol Square, Madrid; and within an equally specific socio-cultural situation -a political and economic crisis. In addition, the metaphors were created within a more general Spanish socio-cultural context, clearly shown in the slogans. The analysis reveals a variety of linguistic and multimodal mechanisms that interact with contextual factors resulting in a series of creative multimodal metaphors. This creativity actually fulfils a number of significant discourse-pragmatic functions, from attracting attention to etching in memory, but most of all, they are conceived as powerful rhetorical tools that help others to perceive reality in a new perspective and try to persuade people to join the movement and influence politicians and decision makers.

The potential of creative uses of metonymy for climate protest

“…The language of protest banners and slogans is frequently highly creative, since it demonstrates a form of resistance to a specific power. Since creativity is key to transcending (socio-political) boundaries and is typical of discourses of resistance generally (Carter, 2004; Hidalgo-Downing, 2020; Romano, 2013, 2021, 2022), a framework for metonymy which incorporates creativity is needed. Littlemore’s (2022) taxonomy for creative uses of metonymy (developed from Littlemore and Tagg (2018)) is useful for analysing metonymy from functional and cognitive perspectives for several reasons.…”

“… 6. Previous studies highlight the prevalence of irony and metaphor in protest discourse (Romano, 2013, 2021; Vivero, 2011) and Littlemore’s (2022) creative uses of metonymy framework includes cases which intentionally (and somewhat ironically) exploit for communicative effect ambiguity between metaphorical and metonymic readings. Therefore, the analysis also considers the socio-cognitive importance of metaphor and irony. …”