What is it about?
Musolff is one of the first scholars to marry Conceptual Metaphor Theory, first developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Critical Discourse analysis. Musolff insists that the use of structural metaphors in politics deserves serious attention, because once a metaphor (such as the Nazis' "Jewish people are vermin") has been adopted and accepted, it leads to "self-evident" actions ("vermin need to be exterminated").
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Why is it important?
In an era in which politics around the world witness a rise in populist discourse, it is important for metaphor scholars to make clear why understanding how metaphors function in society helps reveal disturbing ideologies.
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This page is a summary of: Andreas Musolff (2016), Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios, Cognitive Linguistic Studies, July 2019, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/cogls.00037.for.
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