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Article published In:
Metaphor and the Social World
Vol. 13:2 (2023) ► pp.197–220

Scepticism voiced through extended metaphors

Assessment of higher education reform in the media

 | Vilnius University
When metaphors appear in a text in clusters within the same source domain, they are usually referred to as an extended metaphor (Gibbs, 2015; Naciscione, 2016; Semino, 2008; Shutova, 2015; Thibodeau, 2016; Werth, 1994). This creates a coherent narrative or a scenario (Musolff, 2016) encoding the evaluation of a particular socially-contested issue. The present study analyses how the evaluation of higher education reform in Lithuanian media is manifested through extended metaphor and whether negative evaluations prevail. For this investigation, a corpus of Lithuanian media texts on higher education reform was examined within the frameworks of Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2014) and scenarios (Musolff, 2016). The findings show that, when extended metaphors are ascribed positive, negative or mixed values and categorised into mini-narratives, leitmotif narratives and long narratives, they usually (24 out of 28) follow negatively and often death-related and ironically encoded narratives with differently twisted scenarios. This study, therefore, shows a persistent attempt by the media to evaluate the ongoing reform negatively.
Keywords: extended metaphor, narrative, framing, evaluation, higher education reform
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Evaluation and extended metaphor
  • 3.Data and methods
    • Metaphor identification
    • Metaphor interpretation
    • Metaphor explanation
  • 4.Extended metaphors framing the reform of higher education
    • 4.1Death-related metaphorical narratives
    • 4.2Other metaphorical narratives
  • 5.Ideological implications of extended metaphor
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Note
  • Cited sources
  • References
Published online: 30 May 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.22022.cib
References (47)
Cited sources
15min_1 Dideli premjero užmojai: aukštojo mokslo ir esminė mokesčių reformos – jau kitąmet (20–12–2017) [URL]
15 min_2 Aukštasis mokslas, arba Kieno ausys ilgiausios? (05–01–2017) [URL]
15min_3 Artėjant mūšiui Seime dėl aukštojo mokslo Lietuvoje (19–06–2017) [URL]
15min_4 „Fake law“ invazija universitetuose (09–03–2018) [URL]
TV3_1 Ministrė apie universitetų pertvarką: siūlėme vykti greitkeliu, pasirinktas plentas (24–06–2017) [URL]
TV3_2 Stabdo masinio stojimo į universitetus madą: net mokant pinigus, bus sunkiau gauti diplomą (14–05–2017) [URL]
LR_1 Lietuvos aukštojo mokslo laidotuvės – mokslininkai uždirba kaip vairuotojai (11–12–2017) [URL]
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