Metaphoricalparasitesand “parasitic” metaphors

Semantic exchanges between political and scientific vocabularies

Bibliographic Data

ID6085014
AuthorsAndreas Musolff (0000-0001-5635-7517)
Year2014
Volume13
Issue2
Pages218-233
Publication date2014-08-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Language and Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1569-2159 • E-ISSN: 1569-9862
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/jlp.13.2.02mus
OpenAlexW1989963310
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited34

The metaphorical categorization of social and political adversaries as “parasites” has an infamous history in public discourse: For two centuries it has been routinely used for the purpose of racial and socio-political stigmatization. In cognitive accounts, theparasite-metaphorhas usually been treated as an example of semantic transfer from the biological to the social domain. Historically, however, the scientific uses cannot be deemed original or primary, as their emergence in the 17th and 18th centuries was preceded by a much older tradition of religious and social meanings. The paper charts the main traditions of diachronic variation in the discourse history of the parasite-metaphor anddiscusses the implications of its findings regarding the assumption of “uni-directionality” of metaphorization processes, which has been a central tenet of cognitive analyses. In conclusion, we ask whether metaphors in political discourse might fruitfully be viewed as a “parasitic” form of communication

Categorization · Cognition · Epistemology · Linguistics · Metaphor · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Variation (astronomy · Humor Studies and Applications · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Psychology · Law · Philosophy

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