Exploring the scope and power of the MARRIAGE metaphor in media discourse

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УНИВЕРЗИТЕТ У НОВОМ САДУ
ФИЛОЗОФСКИ ФАКУЛТЕТ
ЈЕЗИЦИ И КУЛТУРЕ
У ВРЕМЕНУ И ПРОСТОРУ
IX/1
Тематски зборник
Нови Сад, 2020

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

EXPLORING THE SCOPE AND POWER OF THE MARRIAGE
METAPHOR IN MEDIA DISCOURSE1


 









1. INTRODUCTION




      







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        


Nadežda Silaški – Tatjana Đurović
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



2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
   




       



    





      









       


     


EXPLORING THE SCOPE AND POWER OF THE MARRIAGE METAPHOR IN MEDIA DISCOURSE
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





          
   







          


3. METHODOLOGY
     



     














 razvod     




 




Nadežda Silaški – Tatjana Đurović




    


4. ANALYSIS





4.1. Marriage between nation states







[
]












4.2. Marriage between political parties





EXPLORING THE SCOPE AND POWER OF THE MARRIAGE METAPHOR IN MEDIA DISCOURSE













4.3. Marriage between companies

   



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




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









    
riage

Nadežda Silaški – Tatjana Đurović

5. DISCUSSION

      

 











however, as our examples also show, marriage as the source domain used with the aim of making
complex social and political events more comprehensible is filled with various additional aspects which
not only significantly broaden the conceptualisation of the selected target domain – RELATIONSHIP
(between states/political parties/companies), but also serve to influence our thought and perception of
the target domain.
Therefore, we regard the MARRIAGE metaphor as being made up of the three overlapping fields,
those consisting of: 1. core aspects; 2. peripheral aspects; and 3. culture-specific aspects (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Interrelated aspects of the MARRIAGE metaphor
These three types of aspects are reminiscent of some other theoretical and methodological concepts
used in critical approaches to metaphor analysis, such as ‘scenarios’ and ‘story lines’ (Musolff 2006,
2016) or ‘frames’ and ‘scripts’ (Charteris-Black 2004, 2019). Thus, metaphor scenarios “enable the
speakers to not only apply source to target concepts but to draw on them to build narrative frames for
the conceptualization and assessment of sociopolitical issues and to ‘spin out’ these narratives into
emergent discourse traditions that are characteristic of their respective community” (Musolff 2006: 36),
whereas the process of framing refers to “drawing attention to, or raising awareness of, selective aspects
of a particular entity or situation thereby introducing some form of cognitive bias” (Charteris Black
2019: 16). Combined with a script as “a predetermined stereotypical sequence of actions” in a particular
context, the marriage and divorce frame, according to Charteris-Black, exhibits familiar sequence of
events of the marriage relationship – “meeting, getting engaged, encountering difficulties and separating
or divorcing” (Charteris-Black 2019: 22).
In terms of the importance that they have for the structuring of the marriage metaphor, we define
core aspects as those aspects of the MARRIAGE metaphor that are indispensable to the structuring of an
issue. Our experiential knowledge as well as our “folk-theoretical domain knowledge” (Musolff 2016:
32) about the concept of marriage allow us to set out the following core mappings that constitute the
MARRIAGE metaphor:
CORE ASPECTS
CULTURE-SPECIFIC
ASPECTS
PERIPHERAL
ASPECTS
Figure 1. 

    





     

EXPLORING THE SCOPE AND POWER OF THE MARRIAGE METAPHOR IN MEDIA DISCOURSE






core aspects




       

 
 
        





        


Peripheral aspects




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
      

     







Nadežda Silaški – Tatjana Đurović
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


        








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

culture-specic aspects

 
 
 






      




    

   








  
  


EXPLORING THE SCOPE AND POWER OF THE MARRIAGE METAPHOR IN MEDIA DISCOURSE







6. CONCLUSION
 





             



       




and





and



 













Nadežda Silaški – Tatjana Đurović
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        
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         
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







  

 

       


EXPLORING THE SCOPE AND POWER OF THE MARRIAGE METAPHOR IN MEDIA DISCOURSE
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




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