While reviewing relevant recent research, it becomes apparent that cognitive approaches have been rejected and excluded from Critical Discourse Analysis by many scholars out of often unjustified reasons. This article argues, in contrast, that studies in CDA would gain significantly through integrating insights from socio-cognitive theories into their framework. Examples from my own research into the comprehension and comprehensibility of news broadcasts, Internet discussion boards as well as into discourse and discrimination illustrate this position. However, I also argue that there (...) are salient limits to cognitive theories which have to be taken into account, specifically when proposing social change via rational/cognitive insights. Examples from recent political debates on immigration and from the election campaign in the US in 2004 serve to emphasize these arguments. (shrink)

This article investigates structural aspects of source domains in metaphorical mappings with regard to their manifestation in public discourse data. Specifically, it analyses the organization of source concepts into mininarratives or "scenarios" that dominate the discourse manifestations of source domains. The material consists of examples from a bilingual corpus of British and German public debates about the &European Union.& The data show that while the two national samples share some basic mappings between the source and target domains, they each are (...) characterised further by specific scenarios that provide focal points for conceptualizing the target topic. The scenarios can also be shown to carry evaluative and attitudinal biases that are related to particular political dispositions and preferences of the respective national discourse communities. In conclusion, it will be argued that the analysis of scenarios is a necessary complement to the study of source domains and of domain-mappings in metaphorical language use. (shrink)

This article applies some ofthe insights from framing studies in policyresearch, metaphor analysis, and the history ofmedicine to a cultural understanding ofagriculture, using the 2001 outbreak of footand mouth disease in the UK as a case study.The article will show how metaphors of war wereused as a “rhetorical frame” by the media andas an implicit “action frame” by policy makers.It will be argued that although the war framemight initially have been useful in rallyingsupport for the slaughter policy, the metaphorlater backfired, (...) when a metaphorical war turnedinto a literal holocaust. This might haveencouraged the public to perceive the policy asmedieval, brutal, and misguided, thuspotentially undermining the willingness ofsections of the public to support the slaughterpolicy in future outbreaks. If, on the otherhand, a vaccination policy were adopted in thefuture, care would need to be taken to avoidmetaphorical linkages with other controversiesover vaccination in other domains. (shrink)