The processes of animation and de-animation in conceptualizing socio-political events

Bibliographic Data

ID15711699
AuthorsJurga Cibulskienė (0000-0003-3498-8363, Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume5
Issue2
Pages302-322
Publication date2018-06-28
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Language and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2214-3157 • E-ISSN: 2214-3165
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/ijolc.00011.cib
OpenAlexW2810098583
LanguageEN
References cited19

The philosophical idea of anthropocentrism viewing human beings as the most significant entities has been put forward in various metaphor studies within cognitive linguistics. As Talmy (2002) claims, people choose to animate a very large part of their reality and this happens due to embodiment, as Lakoff (1987) , and Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue. Anthropocentricity can also be explained by Croft’s Extended Animacy Hierarchy system ( 2002 ) in terms of human beings outranking animate and inanimate entities, strongly implying that inanimate entities tend to be perceived as inferior. However, this paper argues that anthropocentrism is bidirectional, since not only do we ascribe human or animate qualities to inanimate objects or phenomena, but we also tend to “de-animate” human beings by attributing inanimate qualities to them. This paper further explores the idea of anthropocentricity by focusing on the metaphorical conceptualization of issues concerning the euro adoption in 2015 and the refugee crisis in 2015–2016, two real-life phenomena that have significantly affected social life in Lithuania. The paper thus aims to investigate how animation of the euro and de-animation of refugees is metaphorically conceptualized in the Lithuanian media and what rhetorical implications arise from this. The research is conducted within the framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis ( Charteris-Black, 2005/2011 , 2014 ; Musolff, 2004 ; Hart 2010 , etc.), which suggests that metaphors are used as an argumentative tool seeking to manipulate the audience. The paper therefore argues that the animation of the euro and “de-animation” of refugees carry serious rhetorical implications and reveal the attitudes of society towards the phenomena analyzed

Aesthetics · Animation · Anthropocentrism · Art · Cognition · Cognitive linguistics · Conceptual metaphor · Conceptualization · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Political science · Refugee · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · linguistics and terminology studies · Philosophy · Psychology

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