“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. Metaphors of inclusion and exclusion in the British and Italian Fascist discourse of the 1930s


Abstract


Abstract - The rationale behind this work lies in the current economic, political, and social turmoil and the crisis of modern democracies. Adopting a Cognitive Linguistics standpoint combined with Functional Grammar, the paper looks at metaphorical instantiations of nationalistic issues in the British Union Fascist press. The paper aims to ascertain what metaphorical frames are used to convey the totalitarian perspective typical of Fascist discourse. Being part of a wider project, a further aim is to look at similar metaphorical expressions in a less known magazine of the Italian Fascism called Legioni e Falangi. Findings show the presence of universal conceptual framings across cultures but through different lexicalizations as far as some metaphors are concerned.


DOI Code: 10.1285/i22390359v19p287

Keywords: fascism; ideology; metaphor; frame; identity

References


Aalberg T. and De Vreese C.H. 2017, Introduction: Comprehending Populist Political Communication, in Aalberg T., Esser F., Reinemann C., Stromback J. and De Vreese C. (eds.), Populist Political Communication in Europe, Routledge, London, pp. 3-11.

Baider F. and Gesuato S. 2005, Masculinist metaphors, feminist research, http://www.metaphorik.de/05/baidergesuato.html (12.10.2016).

Bell A. 1991, Language of News Media, Blackwell, Oxford.

Ben-Ghiat R. 2001, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945, University of California Press, Berkeley CA.

Charteris-Black J. 2004, Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke, Palgrave-Macmillan, London.

Dor D. 2003, On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers, in “Journal of Pragmatics” 35 [5], pp. 695-721.

Evangelisti Allori P. 2005, Metaphors they Report by: The Construction of National Identity through Sports Commentaries in Different Cultural Communities, in Cortese G. and Duszak A. (eds), Identity, Community, Discourse. English in Intercultural Settings, Peter Lang, Bern.

Fairclough N. 1989, Language and Power, Longman, London.

Fairclough N. 1995, Critical Discourse Analysis: the critical study of language, Longman, London.

Garau S. and Tilles D. (eds.) 2011, Fascism and the Jews: Italy and Britain, Vallentine Mitchell, London.

Goatly A. 1997, Washing the Brain. Metaphor and Hidden Ideology, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Gottlieb J.V. and Linehan T. 2004, The culture of Fascism. Visions of the far right in Britain, I.B. Tauris, London/New York.

Hofstede G. 2001, Culture’s consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviours; Institutions; and Organizations across Nations (2nd ed.), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Halliday M.A.K. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic, Edward Arnold, London.

Halliday M.A.K. and Matthiessen C. 2004, An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd ed.), Oxford University Press. Inc., New York.

Hart C. 2010, Critical Discourse and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse, Palgrave, Basingstoke.

Hart C. 2016, Metaphor and Intertextuality in Media Framings of the (1984-1985) British Miner’s Strike: A Multimodal Analysis, in “Discourse and Communication”, Sage, London.

Johnson M. 1987, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of meaning, Imagination, and Reason, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Klemperer V. 2000, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii, A Philologist's Notebook, Athlone Press, London and New Brunswick.

Lakoff G. and Johnson M. 1980, Metaphors we live by, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Linehan T. 2004, The British union of fascists as a Totalitarian Movement and political religion, in “Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions” 5 [3], pp. 397-418.

López-Rodríguez I. 2009, Of women, bitches, chickens and vixens: animal metaphors for women in English and Spanish, in “Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación/Culture, Language and Representation” 7 [7], pp. 77-100.

Musolff A. 2004, Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Musolff A. 2008, The embodiment of Europe. How do metaphors evolve?, in Fran R., Dirven R. Ziemke T. and Bernardez E. (eds), Body, Language and Mind. Volume 2: Sociocultural Situatedness, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 201-226.

Musolff A. 2010, Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust: The Concept of the Body Politic, Routledge, London/New York.

Musolff A. 2012, The study of metaphor as part of critical discourse analysis, in “Critical Discourse Analysis”, 9 [3], pp. 301-310.

Musolff A. 2016, What can Metaphor Theory contribute to the study of political discourse? in Degani M., Frassi P. and Lorenzetti M.I. (eds.), The Language of Politics, Vol. 1, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, pp. 9-28.

Oișteanu A. 2009, Inventing the Jew: anti-Semitic stereotypes in Romanian and other Central-East European cultures, University of Nebraska, Nebraska.

Richardson J.E.J.E. and Wodak R. (eds.), 2009, Recontextualising fascist ideologies of the past: right-wing discourses on employment and nativism in Austria and the United Kingdom, in “Critical Discourse Studies” 6 [4], pp. 251-267.

Selley D., Camazine S. and Sneyd J. 1991, Collective decision-marking in honey bees: How colonies choose nectar sources, in “Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology” 28, pp. 277-290.

Semino E. 2008, Metaphor in Discourse, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Simpson J. and Roud S. 2000, A Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Sinatra C. (ed.) 2015, Stampa e Regimi. Studi su Legioni e Falangi/Legiones y Falanges una rivista d’Italia e di Spagna, Peter Lang, Bern.

Spinzi C. 2015, L’egemonia anglosassone nella rivista Legioni e Falangi. Costruzioni ideologiche e identitarie, in Sinatra C. (ed.), Stampa e Regimi. Studi su Legioni e Falangi/Legiones y Falanges una rivista d’Italia e di Spagna, Peter Lang, Bern, pp. 201-224.

Spinzi C. 2016, The Fascist men vs. the Blunders of Politicians. Rappresentazione ideologiche e identitarie nella stampa britannica fascista degli anni trenta, in Prestigiacomo C. (a cura di), Identità, totalitarismi e stampa. Ricodifica linguistico-culturale dei media di regime, UnipaPress, Palermo, pp. 71-89.

Spinzi C. and Manca E. forthcoming, Reading figurative images in the political discourse of the British press, in “Textus”.

Susmel D. and Susmel E. (eds.) 1957, Opera Omnia, Edoardo and Duilio Susmel, vol. XXII, Dall’attentato Zaniboni al discorso dell’Ascensione (5 novembre 1925 – 26 maggio 1927), La Fenice, Firenze.

Tilles D. 2011 British Fascist Antisemitism and Jewish Responses, 1932-40, Bloomsbury, London.

Van Dijk T.A. 1998, Ideology, Sage Publications Ltd., London.

Wodak R. and Richardson J.E.J.E. (eds.) 2013, Analysing Fascist Discourse, Routledge, London.

Wodak R. 2015, The politics of fear: what right-wing populist discourses mean, Sage Publication, London.


Full Text: pdf

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.
کاغذ a4

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia License.