Presidential New Year Greetings: What is Implied by Metaphors

Abstract

In the last ten years, Critical Metaphor Analysis has been specifically applied to different varieties of political discourse. Its efficacy has also been determined by the ideological potential of metaphor, especially in the language of politics. In this article, Critical Metaphors Analysis is applied to the New Year greetings of the presidents of the Baltic States with the purpose of discerning the ideological value of the established metaphors. The qualitative data analysis has been carried out in the analytical framework of Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Metaphor Analysis, and the Pragglejaz Group’s MIP has been applied for detecting metaphorical linguistic expressions and subsequently restoring conceptual metaphors. In this article, it is proposed that the evoked metaphorical frames in the New Year Greetings of the presidents of the Baltic States are not gender-specific but rather conventional metaphors evoking the political worldview of conservative morality. This might imply that, by using conventional metaphors related to the male-dominated conservative worldview, a female president of Lithuania wants to sound right thus more convincing and authoritative.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.24.6246