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The Marketplace of Ideas

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The Marketplace of Ideas HELSINGINYLIOPISTO TheMarketplaceofIdeas CorpusStudyofBuyandSellMetaphorsin AmericanPoliticalDiscourse Sanna Franssila Master English Philology Department of Modern Languages University of Helsinki October 2011 Contents 1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................1 2 Studying metaphor in discourse ................................................................................................8 2.1 Metaphor in political discourse ........................................................................................12 2.1.1 Political language and metaphor studies .......................................................................12 2.1.2 The Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the political metaphor .....................................15 2.2 Metaphorical Vehicles in genres ......................................................................................17 2.3 Quantitative metaphor analysis ........................................................................................18 2.4 The metaphorization level: the proportion of literal and metaphorical expressions ........20 2.5 A summary: the research design ......................................................................................21 3 Negative metaphors in news discourse ...................................................................................23 3.1 Negativity and metaphorical expressions.........................................................................23 3.2 Partisan news discourse, political polarization and negativity in news in the United States ......................................................................................................................................25 4 The data and the method .........................................................................................................29 4.1 The election corpus ..........................................................................................................29 4.2 The comparison corpora: news magazines, Fox News, MSNBC, Limbaugh and National Public Radio ...........................................................................................................................31 4.3 The identification of metaphorical expressions based on buy and sell ............................33 4.3.1 The identification of the most usual types of buy or sell metaphors .............................35 4.3.2 Borderline cases in identification ..................................................................................37 4.3.3 Similes and proverbs .....................................................................................................38 4.3.4 Discourse metaphors and comparisons .........................................................................40 4.4 The target of evaluation in the election news corpus .......................................................45 4.5 Negativity in the election news corpus ............................................................................47 5 Buy and sell metaphors in the corpora: the quantities and the proportional distribution ........51 6 The genre-specificity of the metaphorical buy and sell ..........................................................53 6.1 Buy it -type .......................................................................................................................56 6.2 Buy into and buy + [OBJECT] -type ................................................................................58 6.3 Sell + [OBJECT] -type .....................................................................................................61 6.4 Tough sell and does not sell -type ....................................................................................62 6.5 Sell out -type ....................................................................................................................64 6.6 A concluding note: buy and sell metaphors, genre and partisanship ..............................65 2 7 The metaphorization level of BUY and SELL ...........................................................................67 7.1 Buy it -type .......................................................................................................................68 7.2 Buy into and buy + [OBJECT] -type ...............................................................................69 7.3 Sell + [OBJECT] -type .....................................................................................................71 7.4 Tough sell and does not sell -type ....................................................................................72 7.5 Sell out -type ....................................................................................................................73 7.6 A concluding note: the proportion of the metaphorical occurrences ..............................74 8 Buy and sell metaphors in the election news ...........................................................................77 8.1 Diachronic developments in the buy and sell distribution ...............................................77 8.2 Negative buy and sell metaphors in the election news .....................................................79 8.3 Non-negative buy and sell metaphors in the election news .............................................84 9 The targets of negative evaluation with buy or sell metaphors in the election news ..............86 9.1 The opponent party or the own party as a target ..............................................................86 9.2 The main targets of negative evaluation: the nominated Democratic candidates ............89 9.3 The targets of negative buy metaphors: Kerry, Clinton and Obama ................................90 9.4 Targets of negative sell metaphors: Gore and Kerry .......................................................91 10 Discussion .............................................................................................................................94 11 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................104 References ................................................................................................................................108 Sources .................................................................................................................................108 Books and articles ................................................................................................................108 APPENDIX A. A list of abbreviations. APPENDIX B. A list of buy and sell metaphors (751 occurrences). APPENDIX C. Detailed information on corpora. ͷIntroduction "Words are not actions," she said. "And as beautifully presented and passionately felt as they are, They a Presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton in a debate in New Hampshire 5th Jan, 2008 s, actually, words do inspire, words do help people get involved, words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health-care Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama in a debate in New Hampshire 5th Jan, 2008 The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) dates the advent of buy Older figurative expressions with the stem word buy to be bought and (to bribe, 13th to buy a pig in a poke closer inspection, 15th century). Sell metaphors seem to be older and more productive: there are various phrasal expressions. The oldest occurrence is in the Lindisfarne Gospels ca. 950: Cuæð uutedlice iudam ðes forðon uæs sellend hine (John vi:71)1 (Oxford English Dictionary 1989). is from the 16th century, sell someone down the river, sell short and sell out are from the 19th century and they are defined as American. Sell or sell on in the sense of promoting an idea, to be sold on in the sense becoming convinced, and sell oneself as promoting someone are all from the first half of the 20th century. The Oxford English Dictionary marks all these newer expressions as American and colloquial, sell out . In this thesis, I will study the occurrence of buy and sell metaphors in authentic political news discourse. Naturally-occurring language is represented in this study by four text corpora, which all are based on American news media. First, there is an election news corpus (1.6 million words) of news texts in print and online media covering the presidential election campaigns in the United States in 2000, 2004 and 2008. These texts represent either a conservative or liberal political affiliation, and there is one set of texts covering the primaries and another the general election phase in each election period. A 1In modern English (International Standard Version): For this man, even though he was one of the twelve, was going to betray him. The original text in Vulgata, the expression underlined: dicebat autem Iudam Simonis Scariotis hic enim erat traditurus eum cum esset unus ex duodecim set unus ex duodecim 2 news article or an opinion article was included in the corpus if the theme was a presidential candidate. Thus, the focus is on the person-centered stories. To limit the data, I selected news coverage addressing only three or four candidates in each election, the nominated candidate of the Republican or Democratic party in each election and his main opponent in primaries: George W. Bush (Rep), John McCain (Rep), Al Gore (Dem) and Bill Bradley (Dem) in 2000, George W. Bush (Rep), John Kerry (Dem), Howard Dean (Dem) in 2004,
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