Article published In:
Journal of Language and PoliticsVol. 17:6 (2018) ► pp.831–857
Sensitive economic personae and functional human beings
A critical metaphor analysis of EU policy documents between 1985 and 2014
This study is aimed at unveiling the implicit assumptions underlying the language of EU policy-making, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s critique of modernity. It conducts a critical metaphor analysis of strategic EU policy documents from 1985 to 2014 to reveal the extent to which EU policy-making, by relentlessly focusing on the ‘competitiveness, growth, and jobs’ narrative, relies on modern conceptual frameworks. These are characterized by the prominence of rationality and causality, at the expense of sense of purpose, reality and meaning, which is revealed through the validation of four metaphorical keys. These are (i) sensitive inversion, i.e. economic agents are sensitive and humans are functional; (ii) size matters, i.e. big is better than small and one is better than many; (iii) deficit framing, i.e. potential is locked and present is broken/future is bright; and (iv) speed is of the essence, i.e. the world moves fast and we must hurry up.
Keywords: metaphor, critical discourse analysis, European Union, policy, Lisbon strategy, Hannah Arendt
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Critical metaphor analysis: Articulating concepts and metaphors
- 1.2Relevant work on EU discourses
- 2.Methodology
- 2.1Selection of data sources
- 2.2From conceptual keys to conceptual metaphors
- 3.Research results
- 3.1
sensitive inversion
- economic agents are sensitive
- economic agents are functional
- humans are functional
- humans are sensitive
- 3.2
size matters
- big is better than small
- one is better than many
- diversity is appreciated
- 3.3
deficit framing
- potential is locked
- present is broken / future is bright
- we have enough / building on strength
- 3.4
speed is of the essence
- the world moves fast
- we must hurry up
- taking the time
- 3.1
sensitive inversion
- 4.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References (30)
Arendt, Hannah, and Margaret Canovan. 1998. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
Arrese, Ángel, and Alfonso Vara-Miguel. 2016. “A comparative study of metaphors in press reporting of the Euro crisis.” Discourse and Society 27(2): 133–155.
Bickes, Hans, Tina Otten, and Laura Chelsea Weymann. 2014. “The financial crisis in the German and English press: Metaphorical structures in the media coverage on Greece, Spain and Italy.” Discourse and Society 25(4): 424–445.
Barbé, Esther, Anna Herranz-Surrallés and Michał Natorski. 2015. “Contending metaphors of the European Union as a global actor: Norms and power in the European discourse on multilateralism.” Journal of Language and Politics 14(1): 18–40.
Carta, Caterina, and Ruth Wodak. 2015. “Discourse analysis, policy analysis, and the borders of EU identity.” Journal of Language and Politics 14(1): 1–17.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor. Palgrave Macmillan.
. 2006. “Britain as a container: immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign.” Discourse and Society 17(5): 563–581.
. 2012. “Forensic deliberations on ‘purposeful metaphor’.” Metaphor and the Social World 2(1): 1–21.
. 2017. “Competition Metaphors and Ideology: Life as a Race.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics, ed. by R. Wodak and B. Forchtner. London and New York: Routledge.
Chilton, Paul. 1996. Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common House. New York: Peter Lang.
Dewandre, Nicole. 2018. “Political Agents as Relational Selves: Rethinking EU Politics and Policy-Making with Hannah Arendt.” Philosophy Today 62(2).
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. Longman.
Gibbs, Raymond W. 2011. “Are ‘deliberate’ metaphors really deliberate?: A question of human consciousness and action.” Metaphor and the Social World 1(1): 26–52.
Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Holborow, Marnie. 2015. Language and Neoliberalism. Routledge.
Krzyżanowski, Michal, and Ruth Wodak. 2011. “Political strategies and language policies: the European Union Lisbon strategy and its implications for the EU’s language and multilingualism policy.” Language Policy 10(2): 115–136.
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2015. “International leadership re-/constructed? Ambivalence and heterogeneity of identity discourses in EU policy on climate change.” Journal of Language and Politics 14(1): 110–133.
. 2016. “Recontextualisation of neoliberalism and the increasingly conceptual nature of discourse: Challenges for critical discourse studies.” Discourse and Society 27(3): 308–321.
. 2018. “Social media in/and the politics of the European Union Politico-organizational communication, institutional cultures and self-inflicted elitism.” Journal of Language and Politics 17(2): 281–304.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. 2003 ed. University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George. 1992. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.” In Metaphor and Thought (second edition), ed. by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge University Press.
Mirowski, Philip, and Dieter Plehwe (eds). 2009. The Road from Mont Pelerin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Musolff, Andreas. 2000. “Political Imagery of Europe: a house without exit doors?” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 21(3): 216–229.
Steen, Gerard J. 2008. “The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor.” Metaphor and Symbol 23(4): 213–241.
Straehle, Carolyn et al. 1999. “Struggle as Metaphor in European Union Discourses on Unemployment.” Discourse and Society 10(1): 67–99.
Van Dijk, Teun A. 1993. “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Discourse and Society 4(2): 249–283.
1995. “Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Japanese Discourse 11: 17–27.
2006. “Ideology and discourse analysis.” Journal of Political Ideologies, 11(2): 115–140.
Wodak, Ruth. 2002. “Aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Zeitschrift für Angewandte Lingustik 361: 5–31.
. 2009. The Discourse of Politics in Action. Politics as Usual. Palgrave Macmillan.
Cited by (7)
Cited by seven other publications
Gulyás, Orsolya
2024. Digital Sovereignty, Competitiveness, and the Illusion of Freedom. Politique européenne N° 81:3 ► pp. 28 ff. 
Kirsten, Johanita & Jacques McDermid Heyns
2024. “Living with HIV” – Changes in HIV and AIDS Metaphors in South African Educational Policy. Metaphor and Symbol 39:3 ► pp. 183 ff.
Kirsten, Johanita
2023. Pictures of Language: Language Metaphors in a Recent Language Policy Framework. Language Matters 54:2 ► pp. 86 ff.
Yuan, Guorong & Yi Sun
2023. A bibliometric study of metaphor research and its implications (2010–2020). Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 41:3 ► pp. 227 ff.
Dewandre, Nicole & Edoardo Ongaro
2022. L’administration européenne au défi de la philosophie (et inversement). Revue française d'administration publique N° 180:4 ► pp. 901 ff.
Wyatt, Sally
2021. Metaphors in critical Internet and digital media studies. New Media & Society 23:2 ► pp. 406 ff.
Dewandre, Nicole
2020. Big Data: From modern fears to enlightened and vigilant embrace of new beginnings. Big Data & Society 7:2
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.