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"A shotgun wedding": co-occurrence of war and marriage metaphors in mergers and acquisitions discourse.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>07/2002
<mark>Journal</mark>Metaphor and Symbol
Issue number3
Volume17
Number of pages25
Pages (from-to)179-203
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Starting from the notion of a structural relation between war and rape in patriarchal systems, this article aims at pointing out how this relation is reflected in the co-occurrence of war and marriage metaphors in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) discourse. Critical Discourse Analysis is combined with cognitive metaphor theory to show how metaphors of marriage and romance (“MERGERS ARE MARRIAGES”) tend to co-occur with war and various derived metaphors (“M&As ARE BATTLES FOR TERRITORY”). The significance of these co-occurrences is illustrated through corpus data from genres such as newspaper reports and journal articles. Results of additional qualitative analysis are drawn upon to investigate whether the well-established marriage metaphor functions as an ideologically invested euphemism for rape metaphors. Because the latter are more often than not conspicuously absent, the notion of metaphor gaps is introduced and discussed briefly.

Bibliographic note

reprinted in: Patrick Hanks and Rachel Giora (eds) (2011) Metaphor and Figurative Language. London: Routledge. reprinted in: Ruth Wodak (ed.) (2012) Critical Discourse Analysis.New Dehli: Sage.