Metaphors in political communication

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the use of (deliberate) metaphors in political discourse produced by French-speaking Belgian regional parliamentarians during non-institutional political interviews. The article first investigates if the use of deliberate metaphor limits itself to a particular type of political discourse (i.e. public and institutional political discourse) or if metaphor use is also found in other types of settings (i.e. non-institutional political discourse). Second, the article analyses the variation of deliberate metaphor use between political actors depending on gender, seniority and political affiliation. To this end, the article applies Steen’s ( 2008 ) three-dimensional model of metaphor analysis on biographical interviews conducted with French-speaking Belgian regional parliamentarians (RMPs). Our results indicate that RMPs, when using non-deliberate metaphors, mostly rely on source domains such as construction , battle and relationships . This is in contrast with the use of deliberate metaphors, where source domains like sports , nature and container take the upper hand.