Title Multimodal metaphor in public discourse on legal issues: the case of ted talks /
Translation of Title Multimodalinė metafora viešajame teisės diskurse: TED kalbų atvejis.
Authors Gedminaitė, Aušrinė
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Pages 57
Keywords [eng] Conceptual metaphor, multimodal metaphor, verbo-gestural metaphor, legal discourse, cognitive linguistics, gestures, konceptualios metaforos, multimodalinės metaforos, teisės diskursas, kognityvinė lingvistika, gestai
Abstract [eng] This paper examines multimodal metaphors in the public discourse of legal issues. It relies on Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory as well as Cienki and Müller’s (2008) theoretical framework of studying verbo-gestural metaphor. The study is carried out on multiple levels as it focuses not only on transcripts of spoken text, but also on the speakers’ co-speech gestures. In order to study both modalities of metaphor expression, TED talk conference speeches on various legal issues were chosen as the material for metaphor identification and analysis. The study reveals that TED speakers are prone to use metaphoric speech without gestures or metaphoric speech with non-metaphorical gestures. The results of the analysis reveal that in most cases, speakers choose to personify, objectify legal issues, or conceptualise them as machines or buildings. The occurrence of metaphoric speech with metaphoric gestures, where the target domain is different in each modality also appeared to be common. The least common type of verbo-gestural metaphor to occur in the corpus was non-metaphoric speech occurring in synchrony with metaphoric gestures. The research describes the procedure, proposed by Pragglejaz (2007) and Cienki (2018), that was applied to study legal metaphors in verbal and gestural modes, as well as the findings and discussion, following the categorisation of verbo-gestural metaphors, proposed by Cienki (2018). Despite having some limitations, this study adds to the scarce research of verbo-gestural metaphors in relation to legal issues.
Dissertation Institution Vilniaus universitetas.
Type Master thesis
Language English
Publication date 2023