Metaphors and Rhetoric
Family = Nation
Metaphors and Binary Thought
• Some Anthropologists think that the human brain is wired to think
in binary, relational terms.
• In other words, we know what hot means because it is
contrasted to cold, we know maleness because it is contrasted to
femaleness, night because it is not day, and so on.
• These binary differences can then become linked to form
metaphoric pairs, e.g. male is to female as cold is to hot, etc.
• E.g. of Levi-Strauss on South American origin myths:
nature/culture as raw food/cooked food.
Dominant Metaphors
• A dominant symbol in a culture is one that is associated with a
range of important meanings, e.g. the cross in North America.
• Example: the milk tree in Ndumbu society: it stands for the
matrilineage, for kinship, for mother’s milk, for the knowledge
gained in initiation rites.
• When a symbol has multiple meanings, we say it is multivocal.
• Lakoff refers to central metaphors that have multiple meanings in
a culture as radial metaphors.
• Allows for a range of meanings and associations to be evoked
with the use of a certain symbol.
Metaphors of Nationhood: The family
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Many researchers have found that nationalist movements have very often equated the nation with
a family, e.g. the fatherland, the motherland, etc. Implies shared descent for all who belong to a
‘national community’.
Use of the terms motherland or fatherland show its frequency.
• E.g. Indian nationalist movement against colonialism imagined the nation in terms of a
‘motherland’. National anthem is Bande mataram, i.e. Hail to the Mother.
• Mother goddesses became frequently associated with different nationalist movements, e.g.
Kali, the destructive goddess was associated with more militant movements that advocated
the use of force; Sita, the ideal, patient and submissive wife and mother was used by Gandhi
as a symbol for his politics of non-violent non-cooperation.
• Also, motherhood and the home were envisaged as the space where distinctive Indian
values were maintained, as opposed to the outside world of commerce, politics and industry.
• Similarly, Lakoff argues in a later work that American ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ frequently
use familial metaphors in their political rhetoric, often without being aware of it.
• He also argues that relating political policies to familial metaphors is quite powerful because
it links issues of morality and emotional attachment to differing political philosophies.
• He also states that conservatives have been much more effective in connecting political
values, policies and metaphors.
• Also that the use of these metaphors frames issues in ways that predisposes the hearer to
agree amoetionally with the arguments give.
Conservative rhetoric and moral
politics
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Example: “The government of DC is reeling from a newly discovered budget
shortfall of 722 million and there is growing talk of a congressional takeover of
the city. What is about to do us in …is the poor but compassionate mother
with a credit card. A good chunk of the underlying problem is the
compassionate mom attitude that says: If it’s good for the kid to have, then I
ought to buy it – and worry later about where the money will come from. Well,
Mom has not only reached her credit limit: she’s in so much trouble that
scrimping and saving now won’t solve the problem. She’ll need a bailout from
Congress. “
Here, the equation is being made with overspending and a compassionate, but
misguided and ‘soft’ mother figure.
Government should be more concerned with fiscal prudence, responsibility
and balancing the books, rather than helping the poor.
Good governance = the strict father model.
The two family metaphors
• 1. Conservative: The Strict Father Model
• Social safety nets are immoral because they work
against self-discipline.
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World is a competitive, dangerous place.
Children learn from punishments and rewards.
Traditional nuclear family, with father as authority figure.
Rewards are given to those who are competitive, morally
upright, hard-working, responsible and obedient.
• Hence, liberals are discredited as being weak, irresponsible
spendthrifts.
The nurturant parent model
• Two parents should share responsibility and authority.
• Sees children as learning through emulating parents’
behaviour, not through rewards and punishments.
• Stresses empathy and cooperation.
• World should be as nurturant as possible, enabling
children (and the nation’s children) to fulfill their
potential.
• Equity and achievement are not incompatible; equity
provides the opportunities for more people to realise
their potential.
Some examples of political rhetoric
• ‘war on terror’: why and how was the response to 9/11 framed in
this way?
• Factually, ‘terror’ is a state internal to a person, not the people we are
fighting.
• Also, war is a nation-state phenomenon, not between a state and
criminals in another country, who were minorities in their own countries of
origin.
• However, it works rhetorically because it adheres to and supports the
strict father model. Bush becomes a ‘war president’ with ‘war powers’.
• It also produces a reaction of fear, and to alleviate fear, you need a strong
father figure, thus reinforcing conservative values.
• It also implies a ‘war without end’ as there is no peace treaty with terror.
• It is a *frame* that channelizes people’s reactions. Frames trump facts,
because they organize people’s reactions in an emotionally coherent way.
‘Tax Relief’
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The first proposal of the Bush presidency.
Evokes images of taxes being an affliction, a burden from which people need
relief.
Relief is the taking away of harm.
Also part of a rescue frame: there is a victim who needs to be rescued from a
villain (big government) by the hero.
‘Tax relief creates jobs’, assumption that. wealthy people will spend the
untaxed income on creating jobs.
• Fact:: Tax changesef in the US has statistically gone mostly to the wealthy;
wealth differentials in the past 20 years have increased substantially.
• But merely contradicting the frame only reinforces it. According to Lakoff, you
have to reframe the issue, e.g. by talking about investments in the future.