Conceptual Metaphors in Political Discourse: State is Woman – Woman is Construction

Abstract

This project aims to analyze the conceptual metaphors through political discourse during the period of 2018 presidential elections in Montenegrin society, as a means of understanding how human action and (un)consciousness both shape and are being shaped by surrounding cultural and social structures. The study focuses on revealing cultural constructs through the examination of the conceptual metaphors STATE IS A WOMAN; A WOMAN IS A CONSTRUCTION. It examines conceptual metaphors that can be characterized as a female in nature, being found in a corpus of metaphors during the presidential election campaigns in Montenegro. Such (conceptual) metaphors, which in this paper relate to women, do not serve for stylistic beautification of the text but are precisely the basis for the creation and our understanding of political identities and realities. The analysis strives for the identification of cultural practices and the detection of how traditional cultural values are transformed under the influence of emerging ideologies, and it has been carried out in excerpts from political discourse during the last presidential election (2018) in Montenegro. Conceptualizing STATE as A WOMAN and A WOMAN as A CONSTRUCTION in Montenegrin political discourse has shown that gender metaphors in political speech represent the mental and emotional maps of a sociocultural environment. Besides that, the analysis has shown that the cognitive base that conceptualizes women and women's activities through metaphors are still largely under the control of the dominant gender ideology in Montenegrin society. The paper, therefore, draws attention to language, which plays an important role in discrimination, and suggests that language can offer invaluable insight into intentions and, moreover, construct a psychological portrait of the speaker.



Author Information
Sonja Tomović-Šundić University of Montenegro, Montenegro
Kristina Gvozdenović University of Montenegro, Montenegro

Paper Information
Conference: ACL2020
Stream: Language and Culture

This paper is part of the ACL2020 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Montenegro S., & Montenegro K. (2020) Conceptual Metaphors in Political Discourse: State is Woman – Woman is Construction ISSN: 2435-7030 – The Asian Conference on Language 2020: Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-7030.2020.5
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-7030.2020.5


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Posted by James Alexander Gordon