Current Conceptualization of Terrorism - explicated by metaphor use in public discourse after the 11. September 2001

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Monika Schwarz-Friesel
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2009 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 146454016

As a multifaceted, politically important and inexplicable phenomenon, Islamic terrorism is bound to be illustrated metaphorically. Metaphors, obviously, are used particularly to refer to abstract and enigmatic conditions and processes. The work carried out so far in the project "Metaphors on terror" is able to demonstrate that within public German discourse, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, metaphors played a prominent role in describing and characterizing the events, their consequences and Islamic terrorism in general. A large corpus of German media coverage of terrorist attacks collected throughout the project offers a base for the analysis. The texts deal primarily with the attacks of September 11th, 2001. However, relevant attacks prior to 2001 are also taken into consideration to be able to compare and control the results on a corpus-base.Alongside the time-consuming construction of a representative corpus (of over 100,000 texts), the work carried out hitherto focused on the approximate classification of dominant types of metaphor from a linguistic perspective. In addition, analysis of the conceptualizations conveyed via metaphors was initiated. We were able to show that metaphors are often used persuasively to exhibit the potential dangers of terrorism. Thereby, they contribute immensely to the emotional potential of the texts. Descriptions coded metaphorically can be employed to relativize or to intensify the text according to information structure and perspective. Within the requested time-period, further and more detailed analysis of specific metaphors and metaphor constellations shall be executed to expand the previously examined research questions and describe and explain the constitution of the reference as well as the persuasive potential of these linguistic constructions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants