This article analyzes the epoch-making trial against the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1954-56 - a process with unmistakable political, ideological, and political-theoretical aspects. Both the government and the party's representatives used metaphorical arguments to publicly state their case for or against the eventual party ban. Citing classics of Marxism-Leninism for evidence, the government blamed the KPD for planning a violent revolution and described its activities metaphorically in military terms. The party retorted by ridiculing the government for reading metaphors literally (...) and, more methodologically, rejected the government's non-contextual approach as ‘Talmudism' and ‘hodgepodge', while simultaneously promoting the Leninist doctrine of tactical ‘elasticity' to secure their own argumentative leeway. The government depicted communism as an infection to be removed by amputation - a metaphor the KPD reappropriated and used to present itself as integral to West-German democracy and the guarantor of German unification. Rather than being superficial rhetoric, these interlinked metaphorical arguments captured the gist of the ideological disagreement. The metaphors can be understood properly only by reading them together and considering the underlying argumentative functions that are identifiable by analyzing the explicit proposition each side put forth. The metaphors transcended mere legal argumentation and exemplify the trial’s inherent political nature. (shrink)

Introduction: The paper investigates the impact of the use of metaphors in reasoning tasks concerning vaccination, especially for defeasible reasoning cases. We assumed that both metaphor and defeasible reasoning can be relevant to let people understand vaccination as an important collective health phenomenon, by anticipating possible defeating conditions. -/- Methods: We hypothesized that extended metaphor could improve both the argumentative and the communicative effects of the message. We designed an empirical study to test our main hypotheses: participants (N = 196, (...) 78% females; Meanage = 27.97 years, SDage = 10.40) were presented with a text about vaccination, described in either literal or metaphorical terms, based on uncertain vs. safe reasoning scenarios. -/- Results: The results of the study confirmed that defeasible reasoning is relevant for the communicative impact of a text and that an extended metaphor enhances the overall communicative effects of the message, in terms of understandability, persuasion, perceived safety, and feeling of control over the health situation, collective trust in expertise and uptake of experts' advice. However, the results show that this effect is significantly nuanced by the type of defeasible reasoning, especially in the case of participants' trust in expertise and commitment to experts' advice. -/- Conclusion: Both communicative and defeasible reasoning competences are needed to enhance trust in immunization, with possible different outcomes at an individual and collective level. (shrink)

Metaphors can provide a conceptual framework for understanding complex topics and as such, they have frequently been used in COVID-19 discourse. As previous research indicates that conceptual metaphors can influence how people reason about complex topics, the metaphors used to communicate about the pandemic can influence how it is understood and how people respond. This paper investigates the influence of metaphorical framing on emotions and reasoning. An experimental study compares BATTLE and JOURNEY metaphor frames in a hypothetical text (adapted from (...) previous studies) about the pandemic. Our aim is to examine the influence of these frames on readers’ affective state, inferences about the attitudes of others and suggestions to stop the virus from spreading. The results suggest that compared to JOURNEY metaphors, BATTLE metaphors can negatively influence affective state and may influence people to suggest more restrictive solutions to reduce the spread of the virus. Yet, metaphors were not found to influence reasoning about the attitudes of others. We interpret these results in relation to previous studies, suggesting that metaphors may influence emotions and reasoning in some ways only. The results have implications for public communication surrounding the pandemic. Limitations and avenues for future research are discussed. (shrink)