Metaphors in press reports of elections: Obama walked on water, but Musharraf was beaten by a knockout

This article presents a comparison of metaphor usage in British and French newspaper reports of the February 2008 parliamentary elections in Pakistan and of Barack Obama's election in November 2008. The focus is the role of metaphor in conveying the writer's evaluation – conscious or unconscious – of an event, principally by means of pragmatic effects like entailments. It was found that the Pakistan elections were predominantly portrayed as conflict, featuring negative evaluations of Mr Musharraf in superficially objective reports. However, the US elections were described using a far wider range of metaphorical source domains, which combined to convey an evaluation of Mr Obama as following a predestined trajectory as part of ‘the American story’, from slavery to an unspecified but better future America. Yet even in these optimistic portrayals, metaphors of conflict still prevailed, providing evidence that both a positive ethos attached to conflict and a conceptualisation of politics primarily in terms of conflict are embedded in Western culture. The paper concludes that some metaphor usage could have consequences for society, such as perpetuating the under-representation of women in politics, and raises questions regarding the appropriateness of some metaphor usage in a climate of global change and challenge.

Research highlights
► Metaphor conveys the journalist's evaluation, conscious or unconscious.
► Evaluations are conveyed by means of pragmatic effects like entailments.
► Political elections are metaphorically conceptualised predominantly as conflict.
► Metaphor usage provides evidence of a positive ethos attached to conflict.
► Conceptualising politics as conflict has consequences for society.