Social protests as ‘laboratories’ of metaphoric creativity

Abstract

This paper analyses how metaphor, one of the most productive strategies of linguistic change, works in the creation of slogans in recent social protests in Spain (2011-2014). Specifically, the study analyses: (i) How the slogans are created from specific, salient experiences common to a community; (ii) how the metaphorical expressions are triggered by the discourse topic (the economic crisis, corruption, cuts), the immediate social and physical situation, as well as by the more general and historical context of the community, and (iii) how these socio-cultural factors interact with the material means at hand creating highly complex, multimodal metaphors. Finally, the study shows how the most salient, active metaphors are recontextualized or (re)adapted to new contextual conditions and modes by modifying their meaning, form and function. To this aim, the latest socio-cognitive approaches to metaphor are applied, namely, the analysis of metaphor in real discourse (Linell 1998, 2002; Cameron & Deignan 2006; Kövecses 2009, 2010, Semino 2008; Steen 2011; Semino, Deignan & Littlemore 2013) and multimodal metaphor (Forceville & Urios-Aparisi 2009).