Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > 'Riots engulfed the city'

Electronic data

  • Riots Engulfed the City

    Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Discourse & Society, 29 (3), 2018, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Discourse & Society page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/das on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/

    Accepted author manuscript, 579 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

'Riots engulfed the city': an experimental study investigating the legitimating effects of fire metaphors in discourses of disorder

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/05/2018
<mark>Journal</mark>Discourse and Society
Issue number3
Volume29
Number of pages20
Pages (from-to)279-298
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date9/11/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

In Cognitive Linguistic Critical Discourse Studies (CL-CDS), metaphor is identified as a key index of ideology and an important device in the legitimation of social action. From this perspective, metaphor is a cognitive-semiotic operation, invoked by metaphorical expressions in discourse, in which a source frame is mobilised to provide a template for sense-making inside a target frame, leading to particular framing effects. However, the extent to which metaphors in discourse genuinely activate an alternative frame and thereby achieve framing effects has recently been subject to question. Amid calls for more empirical forms of analysis in Critical Discourse Studies, the paper reports two experiments testing the legitimating framing effects of fire metaphors in discourses of disorder. Results show that images of fire and fire metaphors in the absence of competing images facilitate support for police use of water cannon in response to social unrest. The study not only justifies attention to metaphor in CL-CDS but similar effects across semiotic modalities are interpreted as evidence in support of simulation-based theories of metaphor.

Bibliographic note

The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Discourse & Society, 29 (3), 2018, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Discourse & Society page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/das on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/