Book review

Politics, Gender, and Conceptual Metaphors

Ahrens, Kathleen (Ed.) 2009. Politics, Gender, and Conceptual Metaphors. Houndmills: Palgrave.

Reviewed by: Andreea S. Calude, FRST Research Fellow, University of Reading, UK

It is now over 117 years since women received the right to vote (1893, New Zealand), and 104 years since they became eligible to run for office (1906, Finland). Yet the social impact of these changes is still in the process of being investigated. Changes in rhetoric style and linguistic repertoire among men and women in politics represent one aspect of this ongoing inquiry.

The book Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors is an edited volume by Kathleen Ahrens. The contributions investigate to what extent women politicians differ from males in their use of conceptual metaphors, both in overall usage, but also in various particular types of conceptual metaphors and their individual functions in discourse. The book is divided into three parts; the first two concern the use of metaphor by women and men, the third part focuses on the ways in which women are represented in the media and by politicians.

Organisation of the Book

Part I contains articles that compare the use of metaphor by women and men in political discourse in Germany (Veronika Koller and Elena Semino), Italy (Elena Semino and Veronika Koller, Gill Philip), the USA (Kathleen Ahrens and Sophia Yat Mei Lee), and Ireland (Encarnaci?n Hidalgo Tenorio). In these articles, gender differences are scrutinized by examining political speeches.

Part II zooms in on the differences between men and women by analysing political debates in which speakers of different genders engage in face-to-face interaction. This section contains three articles, one reporting on the British Parliament (Jonathan Charteris-Black), a second analysing German political debates (Anatol Stefanowitsch and Juliana Goschler), and a third focusing on the US context (Karen L. Adams).

Finally, Part III provides three contributions outlining how women are construed by politicians and the media. First, there is an analysis of how women are portrayed in beauty products advertising by analysing English press (Michelle M. Lazar). Secondly, Peter Meier and Emanuela Lombardo investigate if (and potentially how) power is used as a conceptual metaphor in gender inequality in Dutch and Spanish politics. Finally, the book concludes with a chapter by Elvin T. Lim, who examines how Hilary Clinton has been represented in the media following her move from a First Lady position towards her role in the Senate.

In sum, Part III argues that women are stereotyped via conceptual metaphors in the media and political discourse in a wider cross-cultural context (Netherlands, Spain, USA and England). Parts I and II suggest that both men and women use metaphors in a similar manner and to a similar extent in political discourse (unlike for example, in studies of the workplace which show that men and women use different types of metaphorical strategies, see Holmes 2005, and Holmes and Stubbe 2003). There are two exceptions to this trend, namely, the research articles by Encarnaci?n Hidalgo Tenorio and Jonathan Charteris-Black. Given that the two pieces both analyse political discourse from Great Britain, this begs the question whether the gender difference observed is only present in this region and nowhere else in the world, and if so, why that should be the case. The remainder of this review will concentrate on the study by Jonathan Charteris-Black.

Discussion of the article "Metaphor and Gender in British Parliamentary Debates" by Jonathan Charteris-Black (p. 139-165)

The paper by Charteris-Black included in the volume compares the metaphors used by British females and males taking part in the House of Commons parliamentary debates both quantitatively (through frequency of occurrence) and qualitatively (with regard to rhetorical functions).

The study sets out to investigate metaphors based on source domains identified by previous studies as being likely to come up in political discourse, specifically, journeys, light and dark, health, and plants (p. 147). These four source domains are scrutinised in terms of a number of associated keywords, such as bright, dark, gloom, light, shade and shadow for light and dark, and each use of such a keyword is coded as either metaphorical or not by analysing transcripts of Parliamentary debates over the past two years, from the online version of Hansard.

The results are as follows. First, we find differences in metaphor use in terms of both gender but also years of experience in parliamentary debate (p. 148). The least experienced females produced the smallest number of metaphors, followed by more experienced females and less experienced males (these two producing roughly equal counts); more experienced males produced the highest number of metaphors. The nature of the interaction between gender and experience is not entirely clear in this study. However, previous work by Charteris-Black found that Margaret Thatcher ? a very experienced debater ? used fewer metaphors than even the less experienced male MPs of her time (Charteris-Black 2005). This, together with the current findings seems to suggest that we are looking at a gender difference in metaphor usage. The trouble is that, as the author himself notes, the sample also shows considerable variation between individual speakers. For instance, one of the experienced female MPs uses 6% of the total metaphors, while the other experienced female MP uses 27%, whereas the two less experienced female MPs produce 12% and 1%. Given such variation, we cannot rule out ideolectal variation (Barlow 2010) as being the main cause of the differences observed, instead of gender-related distinctions.

Secondly, it appears that the most notable difference (though there are no statistical tests of significance reported here) across the genders with regard to metaphor source domains comes from metaphors to do with light and dark (p. 148-150). Male MPs strongly prefer light and dark metaphors to women MPs. There is no stipulated explanation for why this might be the case.

Finally, Charteris-Black investigates the rhetorical purposes for which the various metaphors are used within each of the three Aristotelian rhetorical functions, ETHOS (to establish the speaker as ethical), PATHOS (to heighten the emotional impact), and LOGOS (to explain a particular policy). Women's metaphors fall mostly under ETHOS, whereas those produced by the males are more evenly spread throughout the three categories. As before, these conclusions are drawn on the basis of raw percentages and not tested for statistical significance.

In his summary of results, Charteris-Black observes that the patterns identified are complex and not always easy to interpret. The more limited use of metaphors by female MPs may be attributed to the association of metaphors with a masculine rhetorical style, and hence one which females may wish to avoid in order to distance themselves from male politicians. In other words, females may adopt a certain style in response to an already established norm (before the days when females were allowed in Parliamentary debates), rather than as a marker of their own identity or style. Secondly, Charteris-Black also cautions that it is not entirely clear that conventional metaphors do in fact have rhetorical appeal. Hence, there would be no need to expect women to necessarily want to match the male use of such metaphors.

Evaluation

Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors is a successful compilation of articles investigating the use of conceptual metaphors across genders in political discourse. It provides a good range of cross-cultural contexts, including American, British, Irish, Italian, Dutch, German, and Spanish, though it would have also been interesting to include some data from outside the Western politics arena (in its defence, this is no trivial task). Significantly, the authors included here have wide-raging interests and approach the topic from various theoretical and methodological standpoints, such as semantics, cognitive linguistics, rhetoric and composition, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, political science, and gender equality. The articles are accessible to both students and more experienced researchers, but also potentially to anyone taking an interest in the research questions addressed. To my mind, the contributions in this book will stimulate interest in the use of conceptual metaphors in connection with political discourse, but also potentially draw in new researchers to this area of inquiry. 

References

Barlow, M. 2010. MS. How to distinguish individual speakers: a corpus-based investigation of idiolects.
Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: the Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Holmes, Janet. 2005. Power and discourse at work: is gender relevant? In Michelle Lazar (ed) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Palgrave. 31-60.
Holmes, Janet & Maria Stubbe. 2003. Power and Politeness in the Workplace: a Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work. London: Pearson.

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