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Framing elections over time: The road to universal suffrage
Author(s)
Date Issued
2021
Citation
Zeng, H. (2021 Jun 4). Framing elections over time: The road to universal suffrage. 29th Joint Workshop on Linguistics and Language Processing.
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
This study investigates how politicians’ choice of metaphors in the framing of specific societal issues
changes in public discourse over time. The analysis focuses on the diachronic changes in ELECTION
metaphors in a corpus of public discourse by the government officials in post-colonial Hong Kong
over the past two decades (1997-2017). We analyzed the fundamental changes and incremental
changes (Burgers, 2016) in the metaphors used to frame various election issues.
The findings show no significant fundamental changes (decreases or increases) in the use of ELECTION metaphors and relevant source domains over time; Hong Kong government officials predominantly adopted JOURNEY metaphors when addressing the ELECTION ISSUES. Furthermore, we found incremental meaning changes in ELECTION IS A JOURNEY metaphors between the first decade (1997-2007) and the second decade (2008-2017), as evidenced in patterns of the frequent metaphorical keywords under the ELECTION IS A JOURNEY metaphors. We further identified specific source-target Mapping Principles (Ahrens, 2010) and source scenarios (Musolff, 2006) under the ELECTION IS A JOURNEY metaphors, which shed light on the framing patterns of JOURNEY metaphors in different phases of the democratic development in post-colonial Hong Kong. For instance, the speakers emphasized the ‘path to attain universal sufferage’ in the first decade while they changed to emphasize the concept of ‘gradual and orderly progress toward universal suffrage’ in the second decade. Variations in the JOURNEY metaphorical frames may indicate shifting political agendas by the government of Hong Kong on the road to universal suffrage.
The findings show no significant fundamental changes (decreases or increases) in the use of ELECTION metaphors and relevant source domains over time; Hong Kong government officials predominantly adopted JOURNEY metaphors when addressing the ELECTION ISSUES. Furthermore, we found incremental meaning changes in ELECTION IS A JOURNEY metaphors between the first decade (1997-2007) and the second decade (2008-2017), as evidenced in patterns of the frequent metaphorical keywords under the ELECTION IS A JOURNEY metaphors. We further identified specific source-target Mapping Principles (Ahrens, 2010) and source scenarios (Musolff, 2006) under the ELECTION IS A JOURNEY metaphors, which shed light on the framing patterns of JOURNEY metaphors in different phases of the democratic development in post-colonial Hong Kong. For instance, the speakers emphasized the ‘path to attain universal sufferage’ in the first decade while they changed to emphasize the concept of ‘gradual and orderly progress toward universal suffrage’ in the second decade. Variations in the JOURNEY metaphorical frames may indicate shifting political agendas by the government of Hong Kong on the road to universal suffrage.
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