Creative Metaphors in Political Discourse. Theoretical considerations on the basis of Swiss Speeches

This article develops a basic tool for stylistic metaphor analysis to assess the role of creative metaphors in a corpus of political speeches. Starting with a general discussion of creativity in political discourse it provides a definition and six basic strategies of creative metaphor uses. This definition and the strategies allow the identification of creative and conventional metaphors in speeches by two Swiss Federal Councillors, Christoph Blocher and Moritz Leuenberger. The data suggest that there are indeed not only differences between the speakers but also between speeches. Finally this article will discuss the contribution of stylistics to a critical assessment of speeches. Dieser Artikel entwickelt ein grundlegendes Instrumentarium, um Metaphern stilistisch zu analysieren, und beurteilt auf dieser Basis die Rolle kreativer Metaphern in einem Korpus politischer Reden. Ausgangspunkt ist eine allgemeine Diskussion der Forschung zur Kreativität im politischen Diskurs. Auf dieser Grundlage werden kreative Metaphern definiert und sechs Strategien kreativen Metapherngebrauchs entwickelt, um kreative und konventionelle Metaphern in den Reden der zwei schweizerischen Bundesräte Christoph Blocher und Moritz Leuenberger zu untersuchen. Die Resultate weisen darauf hin, dass es nicht nur Unterschiede zwischen den Rednern, sondern auch zwischen den Reden gibt. Abschließend wird der mögliche Beitrag einer stilistischen Analyse zur kritischen Bewertung politischer Reden diskutiert. It is not as common to talk about “creative politics” as it is to talk about “creative writing” or “creative science”. One explanation may be that the domain of politics (like many important domains in life) is too loosely organised (cf. Csikszentmihalyi 1996:29) to allow an easy distinction of creative and non-creative ways of ‘doing’ politics. It is, nevertheless, possible for politicians to be creative in some domains (e.g. Churchill’s Nobel Prize in literature). This stylistic analysis of creative metaphors will argue that political speeches are another domain of creativity within politics. Even if speeches are essentially a spoken genre and, therefore, do not conform to prototypical examples of artistic language (cf. Carter 2004:53), they may share several features with literary or creative texts. However, a stylistic study of political speeches needs some justification to counter the objection that political speeches are persuasive or rhetorical, but not creative. Others might even share George Orwell’s verdict that “political writing is bad writing” (Orwell 1968:135). metaphorik.de 09/2005 – Müller, Creative Metaphors in Political Discourse 54 1. The effect of creative metaphors Looking more closely at Orwell’s negative evaluation of political speeches it becomes apparent that political writing is not necessarily bad writing, but that Orwell criticises bad habits in political writing, such as the use of stale metaphors: By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. (Orwell 1968:134). Orwell’s comment shows a few interesting differences to Lakoff’s and Johnson’s (1980; 1999) widely accepted cognitive theory of metaphor (cf. Steen 2002b:20). Lakoff and Johnson criticise the traditional view of metaphor for merely focussing on metaphors as stylistic ornaments and ignoring their underlying conceptual patterns. Orwell, however, puts an emphasis on the stylistic selection of metaphors. Interestingly enough, he motivates his focus on style with the relation between “mental effort” and “vague” language. His comment, in fact, asserts an interdependence of cognition and style. This is a relationship, which has often been neglected by research in the vein of Lakoff and Johnson (cf. Goatly 2002). Furthermore, Orwell introduces an ethical aspect to the issue of style and metaphor, since vague language not only corrupts the thoughts of the author, but also beguiles the audience (Orwell 1968:137). Orwell’s critique is supported and extended by Erhard Eppler, a German politician (and philologist). Eppler (1992) asserts that political language has become an accumulation of meaningless ready-made phrases, in particular because of the careless usage of metaphors. Moreover, he even fears that democracy may run empty as its language and that this process could endanger democracy in the long term, since it may leave a space in which populists can operate. These fears do raise the question of the extent to which style influences a message’s effectiveness. However, the issue of a metaphor’s effectiveness in persuading an audience has not been uncontested. On the one hand, there are scholars who recommend unrestrained use of stale metaphors, since they would have the strongest persuasive impact. There are even 1 “Die Gefahr, daß die Demokratie leer läuft wie die Sprache. Daß die imposanten Leerformeln, mit denen die Menschen traktiert werden, immer mehr Langeweile, Überdruß und schließlich Abneigung und Abwehr hervorrufen. [...] Dies könnte schließlich dazu führen, daß, wer auch immer aus dem Gefängnis des politischen Jargons geschickt und gekonnt ausbräche, politisch die Erde erbeben ließe [...]. Dabei ist es offenbar gar nicht so wichtig, was ein solcher Populist politisch zu bieten hat, wichtig wird, daß er einen neuen Ton findet. ” (Eppler 1992: 249). 2 Cf. Mio 1997: 118f. for further references. metaphorik.de 09/2005 – Müller, Creative Metaphors in Political Discourse 55 empirical findings that question the effectiveness of metaphor. For instance, Bosman and Hagendoorn (1991:280f.) find that non-metaphorical speech is more persuasive and they point out that the alleged effectiveness of metaphors may depend much more on accidental factors, such as gender or political orientation of the audience. On the other hand, there are a number of psychological studies that support the hypothesis of the advantage of metaphor over literal language, such as Sopory’s and Dillard’s (2002) meta-analysis of 24 empirical studies shows. Moreover, novel metaphors seem to have a more persuasive effect than conventional ones (Sopory and Dillard 2002:407). Contradictory opinions about the effectiveness of metaphors (cf. Mio 1997:130f.) are not surprising as the process of understanding and appreciating metaphors is very complex. As a result, there is no conclusive corroboration of the persuasive effect of metaphors. Nevertheless, from a perspective of literary stylistics one is also tempted to ask why any metaphor should be more effective than literal language. More investigation into novel and creative usage of metaphor could shed further light on this issue.