Andreas Musolff - University of East Ang

Papers by Andreas Musolff

Research paper thumbnail of An Unlikely ‘Traitor’ in the ‘War’ against Covid-19: Dr Anthony Fauci

LCM Lingue Culture Mediazioni/Languages Cultures Mediation, 2024

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, the Director of the US National Institute of Alle... more During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, the Director of the US
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, received much public
praise but he was also vilified by right-wing conspiracy theorists as a traitor.
This accusation has been ‘trending’ on the Internet and in print publications
and political statements for over two years. This article offers an explanation
for its longevity by investigating the hypothesis that Fauci’s public persona fills a slot in the war metaphor scenario of the pandemic. On the basis of a US-UK media corpus, I chart the emergence and escalation of conspiracist accusations against Fauci in 2020-2022 and analyse their semantic-conceptual structure, using methods of cognitive scenario theory. The article concludes that the traitor-accusation was not just a polemical addition to the conspiracist war scenarios of the pandemic but was used to ‘prove’ their ‘truth’, and that Fauci’s vilification case is therefore of general significance for the analysis of conspiracy theories and war metaphors.

Journal of Pragmatics, Oct 1, 2021

One of the key-metaphor complexes in conceptualizing national identity is that of the nation as a... more One of the key-metaphor complexes in conceptualizing national identity is that of the nation as a body or a person. It has had a long intellectual history and still figures in present-day international political discourses. But is it therefore also universally and/or uniformly understood? Evidence from an international metaphor interpretation survey conducted in 30 countries suggests that the elicited interpretations share basic common features but also vary in relation to culture-and/or nation-specific discourse traditions. To capture these aspects, we introduce the analytical tool of "scenario analysis" and compare four L1-based samples of survey data that show characteristic differences between interpretation trends. As a result, we argue in favour of a stronger recognition of culture-specific and pragmatic aspects in metaphor understanding.

Journal of Language and Politics, Apr 12, 2017

Политическая «Терапия» посредством геноцида: антисемитские концептуальные образы в книге Гитлера «Майн кампф»

The study applies methods of cognitive metaphor analysis to Hitler's anti-Semitic imagery in ... more The study applies methods of cognitive metaphor analysis to Hitler's anti-Semitic imagery in Mein Kampf, especially to the conceptualization of the German nation as a (human) body that had to be cured from a deadly disease, which was caused by Jewish parasites. The relevant expressions from the conceptual domains of biological and medical categories form a partly narrative, partly inferential-argumentative source scenario, which centered on a notion of blood poisoning that was understood in three ways: a) as a supposedly real act of blood defilement, i.e. rape, b) as a part of the source scenario of illness-cure, and c) as an allegorical element of an apocalyptic narrative of a devilish conspiracy against the 'grand design of the creator'. The conceptual differences of source and target levels were thus short-circuited to form a belief-system that was no longer open to criticism. The results cast new light on central topics of Holocaust research, such as the debates betw...

Family language policies, reported language use and proficiency in Russian – Hebrew bilingual children in Israel

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2013

The relationship between family language policy (FLP) and language choice, language use, proficie... more The relationship between family language policy (FLP) and language choice, language use, proficiency in Russian and Hebrew, codeswitching (CS) and linguistic performance was studied in Russian-speaking immigrant parents and their Russian–Hebrew bilingual preschool children. By means of Glaser's Grounded Theory, the content of sociolinguistic interviews with 65 parents was classified to form families with strict-Russian, mild-Russian and pro-bilingual language policies. Preschool children (M = 6; 0) from these families were asked to respond to questions about language use, language choice, proficiency in Russian and Hebrew and CS on 10-point graphic rating scales as well as perform three linguistic tasks: noun–verb picture naming, non-word repetition and complex syntax in sentence repetition. Findings for language use and self-rated proficiency showed the varying degrees of reported Russian language maintenance depending on the FLP applied in the home. Yet, performance on complex syntax showed better performance in Hebrew than Russian, and children reported more CS into L2/Hebrew than into their home language. These latter findings in the three FLP groups are interpreted as evidence for language shift and may be attributed to greater influence of peers and siblings rather than parents.

Research paper thumbnail of Metaphor, irony and sarcasm in public discourse

Journal of Pragmatics, Feb 1, 2017

In public political discourse, figurative expressions used by one participant are often followed ... more In public political discourse, figurative expressions used by one participant are often followed up and 'countered' by other participants through ironical and/or sarcastic allusions or quotations, which are aimed at denouncing the preceding version and/or deriving a new, contrarian conclusion from it. What is the relationship between the figurative template expression and its ironical or sarcastic variants? Using data from a corpus documenting 25 years of debate in Britain about the nation's place at the heart of Europe, this paper investigates the interplay of metaphor, irony and sarcasm in public discourse. We show that the 'discourse career' of this metaphorical slogan bifurcates into two strands, i.e. an affirmative, optimistic use vs deriding and ridiculing uses that depict the heart of Europe as diseased, dead, non-existent or rotten. It is argued that discourse participants need to retain the optimistic template version as a reference point in discourse memory to achieve the intended ironical and/or sarcastic effects, and that the latter are essential to keep the metaphoricity of the slogan 'alive'.

Research paper thumbnail of Permacrisis, Conspiracy Stories and Metaphors

Półrocznik Językoznawczy Tertium, Nov 21, 2023

Conspiracy stories (also known as 'conspiracy theories') pretend to provide truthful and unambigu... more Conspiracy stories (also known as 'conspiracy theories') pretend to provide truthful and unambiguous responses to crisis experiences and thrive in conjunction with the latter: the more crises, the more conspiracies! Hence, it is no surprise that the recent, extended and multi-level crises have been accompanied by a cacophony of 'trending' stories that see conspiracies behind, e.g. COVID-19, climate change, migration, economic stagnation and military conflicts. These conspiracy stories link up with global master-conspiracies (e.g. Great Reset, QAnon) as well as with localised violent protests based on conspiracy stories at national or regional levels. Despite their oft-lamented factual and logical deficiencies, conspiracy stories have two important assets. One asset is their narrative structure that presents a 'solution' to the narrative 'problem', which is identified with the topical crisis. They tell a supposedly secret back-story that 'explains' the current crisis and, based on it, provide a glimpse of an innovative solution. Their second asset is their figurative, non-literal formulation in terms of metaphor scenarios and metonymies, which enables users to mentally cancel part of their stories when they are exposed as untrue, and thus to maintain the story as a whole. The article provides a corpus-based analysis of metaphor use in conspiracy stories about COVID-19 in the UK, America and Germany. It explains their function and sketches perspectives for further research. It also discusses the chances of "reframing" metaphorenhanced conspiracy stories during (perma-)crises and argues that such an endeavour must not restrict itself to fact-checks and-corrections. Instead, the narrative appeal of conspiracy stories, based on their figurative structure, needs to be taken into account, in order to expose their potentially disastrous political and social consequences.

Tertium

Foundations of pragmatics in functional linguistics

De Gruyter eBooks, 2011

This chapter focuses on important “prefigurations” of parts of linguistic pragmatics from the lat... more This chapter focuses on important “prefigurations” of parts of linguistic pragmatics from the late nineteenth century to around 1970 which were informed by a “functional” view of language. We view “functional linguistics” as the study of language that starts its research with a focus on the functions of language in social life: the effects of language use, differentiated as to types of communicators, types of contexts and types of language uses. This includes the analysis of the primarily intended goals of the speech participants in their speaking and reacting as well as the study of the long-time effects of language use in the life of the individual and in the history of the language. We will confine ourselves to results of functional linguistics that have actually been transmitted to linguistic pragmatics and may be counted among its foundations. Such results are found foremost in the works of four theorists: the German psychologist Karl Bühler (1879–1963), the Czech scholar of English Vilém Mathesius (1882–1945), the Russian general linguist and scholar of Slavonic languages Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) and the British general linguist Michael Halliday. Of these, we will discuss the relevant theories of the first three. Bühler proposed an influential model of three fundamental “language functions”, which Jakobson came to extend to the model with six such functions that has had a strong impact on pragmatics, the ethnography of communication and social semiotics. Furthermore, both Bühler and Jakobson analysed the functioning of the deictic elements of language, emphasising their role in the “situated” nature of language use. Mathesius, who was more specifically concerned with the comparison of living languages as to their possibilities of expression, provided the foundations of the functional analysis of utterances in terms of the notions “theme” and “rheme” (“topic”–“comment”), which has become one of the stock items of pragmatic analysis. For their ideas in this domain, both Bühler and Mathesius were indebted to the work of the older and less well-known psychologically oriented German linguist Philipp Wegener (1848–1916), who held views that also show a strong affinity to those of modern linguistic pragmatics. In our view, these insights still provide valid reasons to integrate the description of elements of the situational context into linguistic analysis itself and thus to question the wisdom of completely separating research into the system of language from pragmatics, the study of its use.

8. Foundations of pragmatics in functional linguistics

De Gruyter eBooks, Jun 15, 2011

Page 244. 8. Foundations of pragmatics in functional linguistics Saskia Daalder and Andreas Musol... more Page 244. 8. Foundations of pragmatics in functional linguistics Saskia Daalder and Andreas Musolff 1. Introduction The relatively young discipline of linguistic pragmatics has had forbears in several older branches of linguistics. ...

Research paper thumbnail of Introduction. Contested Cultural Identities in Public Discourse

Contesting Europe's Eastern Rim, 2010

Europe's eastern rim has been in constant flux ever since the watershed year of 1989. Autocratic ... more Europe's eastern rim has been in constant flux ever since the watershed year of 1989. Autocratic regimes have been replaced with stable democracies, and planned economies have given way to a free-market system comprising most of the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Whereas most of these nations swiftly embarked on a course toward EU accession, the countries of the former Yugoslavia plunged into ethnic and religious infighting that left the region paralyzed for years and has left a problematic legacy until today. Further east, Turkey's longheld ambitions to join the EU received yet another setback when it was sidelined during the 2004/2007 round of enlargement. These political and economic transformations have triggered fundamental redefinitions of cultural identity. Nations and social groups have had to reposition themselves and their relationship to others within newly emerging political landscapes. Although the enlarged EU has created a new closeness between neighbors that were formerly separated by impenetrable physical and ideological barriers, at the same time it has excluded others that feel like outsiders being left behind. The break-up of the former Yugoslavia has necessitated reformulations of statehood and international relations in the Balkans. We chose to call the area for this endeavor 'Europe's eastern rim'. With this metaphorical expression, we tried to avoid the widely used terms Mitteleuropa, Central Europe and Eastern Europe because each of these seems to imply different political and ideological conceptions for the countries from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean. Mitteleuropa is a historically loaded term that focuses on the eastern part of Europe from an Austrian and German perspective, with explicit or implicit hegemonic intentions. The term Central Europe, invented in the revolutions of 1848, designates a Central European federation without Prussian or Russian domination. It reemerged in the 1980s as a kind of spiritual home for many intellectuals. However, as Maria Todorova and other Balkan experts have shown, this term is also divisive. It does not include the regions of the Balkans, but pushes them further east toward present-day Russia. Eastern Europe, in turn, clearly suggests Russian and Soviet hegemony. Furthermore, in a purely geographical sense, Eastern xi xii Contesting Europe's Eastern Rim Europe extends to the Ural Mountains and includes countries outside our scope. We, on the other hand, explicitly wanted to include the area of the former Yugoslavia, most of which, as of 2009, does not have European Union membership. In this macro-region with its overwhelming diversity of ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, one can study, as though under a magnifying glass, how the still virulent backward movement of ethnocentric xenophobia has led to internecine conflicts and ethnic cleansing. Nonetheless, in each of these newly established countries, one can also observe that media and literature are making key contributions in the interchange of ideas toward a modern and tolerant form of civil society. Public discourse has been the main platform for negotiating transformations of cultural identity, both self-referentially and in relation to others. The aim of this book is to analyze some central themes of cultural identity construction and its transformation in public discourse. It develops the ideas of an international group of researchers on discourse analysis, initially discussed at various symposia and research projects organized by the editors (Manz et al., 2004). Our main concern in this book is discursive modes of identity construction (deconstruction, reconstruction, reformulation and invention) in the light of recent political changes in Europe, European Union enlargement and EU policy regarding southeast Europe. We focus on national and cross-national rhetorical strategies related to issues of transition within Europe. Our book examines issues surrounding the discursive creation of cultural identity and combines theory-oriented and empirical approaches. The analyses of specific national discourses also address general methodological questions concerning rhetorical strategies and national and crossnational characteristics that play a role in the discursive presentation of identity construction. The contributions to this volume provide a multinational and multilingual perspective on discourse analysis and discursive identity formation, focusing on how issues of identity formation arise in several European languages, particularly among less-studied languages such as Slovenian, Lithuanian, Polish and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. Three closely connected issues surrounding the linguistic means of identity construction and reconstruction constitute the chief topics of this volume: (1) the relationships between 'insiders' and 'outsiders' in the ongoing process of EU enlargement, (2) the perception of southeast Europe and its various nationalities as 'good guys' and 'bad guys' and (3) European insiderness and outsiderness in literary representations. These topics naturally arise from the larger historical and political framework. Since the early 1990s, actual and potential enlargement has been a key issue in debates surrounding the EU. The former East Germany made an entry through the 'back door' during the German unification process in 1990. Five years later, Austria, Sweden and Finland followed. Except

Hermann der Cherusker und das Internet – ein Fall für die Sprachkritik?

Aptum, Zeitschrift für Sprachkritik und Sprachkultur, 2010

The paper analyses a corpus of German internet fora discussing the 2009 anniversary of the Battle... more The paper analyses a corpus of German internet fora discussing the 2009 anniversary of the Battle of the Teutoburg forest as regards construction of contributors' internet identities, naming of historical events and popular myths about the origins of the German language. It shows a high degree of popular critical language reflection that provides rich material for sociolinguistic and meta-pragmatic research.

Research paper thumbnail of Metaphor production and metaphor interpretation

Figurative Thought and Language, 2020

Metaphor production and interpretation are intricately connected: the former activity has the lat... more Metaphor production and interpretation are intricately connected: the former activity has the latter as its ostensive target; however, the interpretation process can trigger new metaphor formulations which were unforeseen by the original speaker and which may transcend the conventional metaphor version and even put it in question. This paper looks at corpus- and survey-based evidence of innovative interpretative metaphor use that changes the default meaning of well-established figurative constructions. Specifically, we look at interpretation-induced changes in the meaning of corporeal metaphors, on the basis of a corpus of British political discourse and a questionnaire survey of more than 1000 respondents from 31 linguistic backgrounds in 10 countries.
The corpus-based evidence presented in the first part consists of metaphor-production data that show how situational variation in metaphor use can over time create a semantic-pragmatic drift that changes the dominant meaning of a conventional metaphor expression, thus illustrating diachronic variation. The questionnaire survey, which forms the material for the second part reveals four distinct models for BODY-focused readings (i.e. NATION AS GEOBODY, AS HIERARCHICAL FUNCTIONAL WHOLE, AS PART OF SPEAKER’S BODY, AS PART OF LARGER BODY), plus further PERSON-focused readings. These data show synchronic variation.
By highlighting significant variation, both data sets put in question the standard theory model of ‘automatic’ metaphor processing and extension. Instead, they indicate a strong production element in metaphor interpretation – and of interpretive aspects in metaphor production.

Postcolonial discourse analysis: The linguistic fall-out from Imperial Germany’s colonialist past in China

Metaphor and Cultural Cognition

Advances in Cultural Linguistics, 2017

Cultural cognition is a multidisciplinary concept that links anthropology, linguistics, psycholog... more Cultural cognition is a multidisciplinary concept that links anthropology, linguistics, psychology and sociology. This study focuses on the culture-specific interpretation of collective, specifically national, identities, constructed through conceptual metaphor. Its data consist of a questionnaire survey, administered in 10 countries to students from 31 linguistic backgrounds who were given the task of applying the metaphor of the nation as a body to their home nation. The results show systematic variation of four main interpretations, i.e. nation as geobody, as functional whole, as part of self and as part of global structure, plus of a non-primed interpretation nation as person. The two dominant interpretation patterns, i.e. nation as geobody and nation as functional whole, were represented across all cohorts but showed opposite frequency patterns for Chinese versus Western cohorts; in addition, the Chinese nation as person interpretations showed a marked preference for mother-personifications. These findings can be linked to culture-specific conceptualisations and discourse traditions and contribute to a constructivist, non-essentialising definition of cultural cognition as a central issue of Cultural Linguistics.

Discourse History in a Metaphor Corpus

Metaphor and Political Discourse, 2004

In the last chapter, we noted that some metaphorical formulations have a history of their own; e.... more In the last chapter, we noted that some metaphorical formulations have a history of their own; e.g. the sick man of Europe phrase, which dates back to the seventeenth century, Eurosclerosis, which has been around for some 25 years, or the more short-lived depictions of the euro introduction as a premature birth and of British EU policies as attempts to lodge Britain at the heart of Europe. When we relate these specific formulations to the conceptual mapping INSTITUTIONS ARE ORGANISMS and its sub-mappings, their micro-histories in the 1990s turn out to be parts of long-standing traditions of thinking and speaking about politics and society within Western culture. Some of these can be traced back to antiquity, such as the notion of the GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, which, in the words of Alexander Pope, “from God began” and encompasses “Natures aethereal, human, angel, man, beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, no glass can reach; from Infinite to thee, from thee to nothing” (Pope 1994: 51). In this universal chain, ‘higher-order’ entities or structures (e.g. HUMAN SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS) can be metaphorically ‘replaced’ by ‘lower-order’ ones (e.g. ORGANISMS), because all are part of an overarching whole, in which not the tiniest link must be broken. The BODY POLITIC theories mentioned in the last chapter form part of this GREAT CHAIN concept.

Corpora and the Semantics of Metaphor

Metaphor and Political Discourse, 2004

(1) Europe’s much delayed recovery is already faltering under the time-lagged effects of the Asia... more (1) Europe’s much delayed recovery is already faltering under the time-lagged effects of the Asian virus […]. (G, 15 January 1999) (2) After a long period of cautious equivocation, the prime minister had […] “shifted up a gear” in his ambition to lodge Britain at its rightful place in the heart of Europe. And then, abruptly, the heart of Europe got sick. (E, 20 March 1999) (3) Twenty-five years ago, Britain was branded the sick man of Europe. Germany was the model economy we should copy. Today, the influential Economist magazine says Germany is the sick man of the euro. (The SUN, 5 June 1999) (4) […] by the mid 1980s Eurosclerosis — chronically slow growth — was the chief headache for continental governments. (G, 24 May 1999) The database from which the above-quoted examples are drawn is the COBUILD “Bank of English” (BoE), which was built up at the University of Birmingham and comprises over 450 million word forms, covering texts from print media, books, radio and spoken language since the beginning of the 1990s.1

Metaphor scenarios in political discourse in Britain and Germany

Linguistische und soziologische Analysen von Leitbildern, Metaphern und anderen kollektiven Orientierungsmustern, 2003

Dinosaurs, Metaphors and Political Argument

Langue and Parole in Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective, 1999

Andreas Musolff - University of East Anglia

Papers by Andreas Musolff