Political Leadership and Gender During the Covid-19 Pandemic: On the Populist Features of Metaphor Use
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Published:
Dec 25, 2022
Keywords:
political discourse, metaphor, populism, lockdown speeches, COVID-19 pandemic, gender
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Abstract
This study aims to show how different political leaders combine metaphor use with the populist sentiment in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To analyse the populist nature of the recurrent metaphor use, 17 leaders’ national lockdown speeches from different countries were collected and analysed within the theoretical framework of critical metaphor studies and frame semantics. Procedurally, metaphors in the collected speeches were identified by applying Pragglejaz Group’s MIP (2007) and coded into thematic categories via NVivo 12.0. Overall, four thematic codes (470 metaphorical expressions) were established, and their content analysis has demonstrated specific differences in the leadership style with regard to populism. It has been clarified that the male political leaders tend to prioritise the arousal of negative emotions discursively expressed through the antagonism between the collective Self and the collective Other (the virus), and a heightened sense of unpredictable (economic) future. By contrast, the female political leaders overwhelmingly focused on their affinity with the collective Self in the context of social accountability and mutual trust.
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Arcimavičienè, Liudmila. 2022. “Political Leadership and Gender During the Covid-19 Pandemic: On the Populist Features of Metaphor Use”. Journal of Contemporary Philology 5 (2), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.37834/JCP2252023a.
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Copyright © 2019 Blaže Koneski Faculty of Philology, Skopje
Journal of Contemporary Philology (JCP)
Современа филологија
References
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Frank, M. C. (2017). The cultural imaginary of terrorism in public discourse, literature, and film: Narrating terror. New York: Routledge.
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Musolff, A. (2022). “World-beating” Pandemic Responses: Ironical, Sarcastic, and Satirical Use of War and Competition Metaphors in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic. Metaphor and Symbol, 37(2), 76-87.
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Pető, A. (2017). Revisionist histories, ‘future memories’: far-right memorialization practices in Hungary. European Politics and Society 18(1). 41–51. doi:10.1080/23745118.2016.1269442.
Rico, G., Guinjoan, M., and Anduiza, E. (2017). The emotional underpinnings of populism: How anger and fear affect populist attitudes. Swiss Political Science Review 23(4). 444-461. doi:10.1111/spsr.12261.
Seixas, E. C. (2020). War metaphors in political communication on COVID-19. Frontiers in sociology 5. doi:10.3389/fsoc.2020.583680.
Semino, E. (2021). Not soldiers but fire-fighters”–metaphors and COVID-19. Health Communication 36(1). 50-58. doi:10.1080/10410236.2020.1844989.
Stefanowitsch, A. (2006). Words and their metaphors: A corpus-based approach. Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs, 171, 63.
Stefanowitsch, A. (2020). Corpus linguistics: A guide to the methodology. Language Science Press.
Tyler, T. R. (2006). Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation. Annual Review of Psychology 57, 375-400.
Wicke, Ph., and Bolognesi, M. M. (2020). Framing COVID-19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter. PloS One, 15(9). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0240010.
Wilson, J. (2015). Political discourse. The handbook of discourse analysis, 775-794.
Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear: What right-wing populist discourses mean. Sage.
Wodak, R. (2021). The Politics of Fear and Hope: Europe at the Crossroads. In E. Klerides and S. Carney (eds.) Identities and Education: Comparative Perspectives in Times of Crisis, 117-138. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Roccato, M., Colloca, P., Cavazza, N., and Russo, S. (2021). Coping with the COVID-19 pandemic through institutional trust: Rally effects, compensatory control, and emotions. Social Science Quarterly, 1–8.
Umar, L., and Rasul, S. (2017). Critical metaphor analysis: Nawaz Sharif and the myth of a golden time. NUML Journal of Critical Inquiry 15(2), 78-102.
Dash, S. B. S., and Kakkar, K. (2020). Moral philosophy, pragmatism, and the larger cause: why “war” metaphors are needed during pandemics. Indian Journal of Medicine Ethics V(3), 219-221. doi: 10.20529/IJME.2020.067.
Breeze, R. (2020). “Approaching metaphor in political discourse: introduction.” In R. Breeze (ed.) Metaphor in political conflict: populism and discourse, 11-25. Ediciones Universidad de Navarra: EUNSA.
Brewer, M. B. (2001). “Ingroup identification and intergroup conflict.” In R. D. Ashmore, L. Jussim, and D. Wilder (eds.) Social identity, intergroup conflict, and conflict reduction, 17-41. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Cameron, L. (2013). Metaphor in spoken discourse. In J. P. Gee and M. Handford (eds.) The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis, 368-381. Routledge: London.
Charteris-Black, J. (2011). Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Palgrave Macmillan: London and New York.
Charteris-Black, J. (2017). Competition metaphors and ideology. In e R. Wodak and Bernard F. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politic, 202-218. Routledge: London.
Charteris-Black, J. (2021). Metaphors of Coronavirus: Invisible Enemy or Zombie Apocalypse?” Palgrave Macmillan: Cham.
Chong, D., and Druckman, J. (2007). Framing theory. Journal of Annual Review of Political Science (10), 103-126.
Craig, D. (2020). Pandemic and its metaphors: Sontag revisited in the COVID-19 era. European Journal of Cultural Studies 23(6), 1025-1032. doi:10.1177/1367549420938403.
De Cleen, B., and Stavrakakis, Y. (2017). Distinctions and articulations: A discourse theoretical framework for the study of populism and nationalism. Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture 24(4). 301-319. doi:10.1080/13183222.2017.1330083.
Dirven, R. (1990). Metaphor and ideology. Journal of Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 68(3), 565-575.
Elçi, E. (2022). Politics of nostalgia and populism: Evidence from Turkey. British Journal of Political Science, 52(2), 697-714.
Ellemers, N. (2012). The group self. Science, 336 (6083), 848-852.
Engesser, S., Ernst, N., Esser, F., & Büchel, F. (2017). Populism and social media: How politicians spread a fragmented ideology. Information, communication & society, 20(8), 1109-1126.
Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power. Harlow: Pearson Professional Education.
Fairclough, N. (2013). “Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language.” London: Routledge.
Fillmore, Ch. J. (1982). Frame semantics. Cognitive linguistics: Basic readings, 373-400. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Frank, M. C. (2017). The cultural imaginary of terrorism in public discourse, literature, and film: Narrating terror. New York: Routledge.
Gibbs, R. W. (1992). Categorization and metaphor understanding. Psychological Review 99(3), 572-577.
Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the brain: Metaphor and hidden ideology (Vol. 23). John Benjamins Publishing.
Gongaware, T. B. (2010). Collective memory anchors: collective identity and continuity in social movements. Sociological Focus 43 (3), 214-239.
Group, Pragglejaz. (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and symbol 22 (1), 1-39. doi:10.1080/10926480709336752.
Inglehart, R. F., and Pippa, N. (2016). Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism: Economic have-nots and cultural backlash. (July 29, 2016). HKS Working Paper No. RWP16-026. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2818659.
Kövecses, Z. (2017). “Levels of metaphor.” Cognitive linguistics, 28(2). 321-347.
Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason. Verso.
Lakoff, G. (2012). Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the gulf. Cognitive Semiotics 4(2), 5-19.
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1980a). Conceptual metaphor in everyday language. The Journal of Philosophy 77(8), 453-486.
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1980b). The metaphorical structure of the human conceptual system. Cognitive science 4(2), 195-208.
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic books.
Larios, L., and Paterson, S. (2021). Fear of the other: vulnerabilization, social empathy, and the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Critical Policy Studies 15(2). 137-145. doi:10.1080/19460171.2021.1927777.
Macaulay, M. (2019). Populist discourse. Springer International Publishing.
Mio, J. S. (1997). Metaphor and politics. Metaphor and symbol, 12(2), 113-133.
Mudde, C. (2016). Can We Stop the Politics of Nostalgia That Have Dominated 2016?. Newsweek, 15th of December. http://www.newsweek.com/1950s-1930s-racism-us-europe-nostalgia-cas-mudde-531546.
Mudde, C., & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2018). Studying populism in comparative perspective: Reflections on the contemporary and future research agenda. Comparative political studies, 51(13), 1667-1693.
Musolff, A. (2016). Metaphor and persuasion in politics. London: Taylor and Francis.
Musolff, A. (2016). Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
Musolff, A. (2021). National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic. Cultural Experience and Political Imagination. Singapore: Springer.
Musolff, A. (2022). “World-beating” Pandemic Responses: Ironical, Sarcastic, and Satirical Use of War and Competition Metaphors in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic. Metaphor and Symbol, 37(2), 76-87.
Palaver, W. (2019). Populism and religion: On the politics of fear. Dialog, 58(1). 22-29. doi:10.1111/dial.12450.
Panzeri, F., Di Paola, S., and Domaneschi, F. (2021). Does the COVID-19 war metaphor influence reasoning?. Plos one 16(4). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0250651.
Pető, A. (2017). Revisionist histories, ‘future memories’: far-right memorialization practices in Hungary. European Politics and Society 18(1). 41–51. doi:10.1080/23745118.2016.1269442.
Rico, G., Guinjoan, M., and Anduiza, E. (2017). The emotional underpinnings of populism: How anger and fear affect populist attitudes. Swiss Political Science Review 23(4). 444-461. doi:10.1111/spsr.12261.
Seixas, E. C. (2020). War metaphors in political communication on COVID-19. Frontiers in sociology 5. doi:10.3389/fsoc.2020.583680.
Semino, E. (2021). Not soldiers but fire-fighters”–metaphors and COVID-19. Health Communication 36(1). 50-58. doi:10.1080/10410236.2020.1844989.
Stefanowitsch, A. (2006). Words and their metaphors: A corpus-based approach. Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs, 171, 63.
Stefanowitsch, A. (2020). Corpus linguistics: A guide to the methodology. Language Science Press.
Tyler, T. R. (2006). Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation. Annual Review of Psychology 57, 375-400.
Wicke, Ph., and Bolognesi, M. M. (2020). Framing COVID-19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter. PloS One, 15(9). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0240010.
Wilson, J. (2015). Political discourse. The handbook of discourse analysis, 775-794.
Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear: What right-wing populist discourses mean. Sage.
Wodak, R. (2021). The Politics of Fear and Hope: Europe at the Crossroads. In E. Klerides and S. Carney (eds.) Identities and Education: Comparative Perspectives in Times of Crisis, 117-138. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Roccato, M., Colloca, P., Cavazza, N., and Russo, S. (2021). Coping with the COVID-19 pandemic through institutional trust: Rally effects, compensatory control, and emotions. Social Science Quarterly, 1–8.
Umar, L., and Rasul, S. (2017). Critical metaphor analysis: Nawaz Sharif and the myth of a golden time. NUML Journal of Critical Inquiry 15(2), 78-102.