Training, Language and Culture (Jun 2021)
The role of the cognitive metaphor in the hybridisation of marketing and political discourses: An analysis of English-language political advertising
Abstract
The present article is devoted to the metaphorical hybridisation of marketing and political discourses. The aim of the paper is to reveal the discursive characteristics shared by marketing and politics through an analysis of the cognitive metaphor as a factor and instrument of their hybridisation. The material of the research is represented by texts of political spots (political TV and Internet commercials) of five different varieties of English published on the official YouTube channels of political figures and organisations between 2007 and 2021, with a total video length of about 7 hours. The texts were transcribed by the author of the paper. The study lies within the scope of cognitive linguistics, linguopragmatics and sociocultural linguistics. The research methods include those of linguocultural analysis, conceptual analysis, cognitive modelling and quantitative analysis. Hybridisation is viewed in the article as a complex mechanism of knowledge expansion via the resources of marketing and politics which ensures language vitality through a synergistic effect. The most obvious product of the hybridisation of marketing and politics is political advertising discourse. It is argued that political advertising discourse is largely based on the ‘Politics as a Commodity’ cognitive metaphor which makes explicit the value of choice in most Western European democracies. Having analysed the empirical material, the author determines the discursive characteristics that serve as points of intersection of marketing and politics and facilitate their hybridisation. The main discursive characteristics bringing together marketing and politics are agonality (aptness of competition), theatricality, commodification and personifiedness. Each of them is illustrated with examples of cognitive metaphors pertaining to both marketing and politics. The discursive characteristics revealed manifest the modern tendencies towards marketisation and conversationalisation of media discourse.
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