Tocqueville's Passionate "Beast"

A Linguistic Analysis of The Concept of American Democracy

Dados Bibliográficos

ID19429169
AutoresZoltán Kövecses (0000-0002-9642-4662, autor correspondente)
Ano1994
Volume9
Fascículo2
Páginas113-133
Data de publicação1994-06-01
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMetaphor and Symbolic Activity (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0885-7253 • E-ISSN: 2379-0288
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1207/s15327868ms0902_2
OpenAlexW2053050297
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas9

In this article I argue that Tocqueville's view of democracy in Democracy in America (1835/1987) is in large measure given content and structure by the metaphor theme "DEMOCRACY IS A (PASSIONATE) PERSON." The analysis of Tocqueville's metaphors reveals that he saw American democracy as a highly defective system in which a dangerous social force needs to be controlled by other social forces. This result goes against the commonly held view that Tocqueville had a very positive opinion of American democracy. issues that the "PERSON" metaphor allows us to examine include: What is the relation between the body politic and the "PERSON" metaphor? Was Tocqueville an essentialist or an environmentalist in his position regarding American democracy? To what degree did the "PERSON" metaphor enable Tocqueville to come up with an adequate conceptualization of American democracy? I suggest that the "PERSON" metaphor is a much more complex idea than that of the body politic, that Tocqueville is both an essentialist and an environmentalist, and that the "PERSON" metaphor, although an improvement on the body politic, does not work for democracy

Body politic · Conceptualization · Democracy · Epistemology · Essentialism · Linguistics · Metaphor · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence

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