Metaphor, Politics and Gender: a Case Study from Italy

Abstract

In this chapter we apply the theoretical and analytical framework introduced in Chapter 2 to a corpus containing a selection of speeches and interviews by two contemporary Italian politicians, Silvio Berlusconi and Emma Bonino. As in the previous chapter, we combine the main tenets of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Kövecses 2002) with a social constructivist view of gender (Sunderland 2004) in order to consider the rhetorical functions and ideological implications of metaphor use (see also Koller 2004, Semino 2008). More specifically, we attempt to explain the differences and similarities in the metaphoric choices made by a male and female politician in terms of a range of sources of variation, including political orientation, topics, concerns, goals and audiences (see also Kövecses 2005). These factors help us to interpret the particular ways in which each individual politician performs femininity and masculinity in their public discourse.