The gulf of mexico oil spill a corpus based study of metaphors in british and american media discourse 6 3

6.4 Summary Semino & Masci 1996, p.263-264 make an astute claim that “quantitative data do not bear a straightforward relationship to the impact that particular metaphors may have on pub

6.4 Summary

Semino & Masci (1996, p.263-264) make an astute claim that

“quantitative data do not bear a straightforward relationship to the impact that particular metaphors may have on public opinion” This is due to the fact that metaphors may appear in more or less salient positions within the broadsheet

or be unevenly publicized across a range of mainstream media or social media, thus affecting the reach of the metaphor Semino & Masci also rightly point out the unavoidable bias where the level of media interest accorded to key actors and public personalities results in a situation where a particular statement (and its relevant metaphorical implications) may be highlighted by the press and quoted widely across the entire spectrum of traditional news media (headlines and texts) as well as across a range of social media Hence, the salience of a metaphor is not merely quantified empirically, but has to be taken in tandem with a range of factors such as attribution to key public figures and editorial ideological concord Thus, while the detailed analysis done thus far in this thesis is based on empirical principles, it is not able to predict and take into account the cumulative power of these myriad factors of influence

Furthermore, it must not be forgotten that impartiality in the news is never a legal requirement and often comes in a distant second to market forces Bell’s (1991, p.105) principle of “audience design” clearly states that a newspaper will construct a world-view or an evaluative stance that is in accord with the editorial political and philosophical affiliations and with the majority

with a generic system of shared values and metaphorical evaluations It is these particular sets of metaphorical evaluations and group ideologies that result in the potential socio-economic manipulation of the readers’ perceptions

of “us” vs “them” Thus, this thesis highlights the dangers inherent in the use

of metaphors as a deliberate strategy for the influencing aggregate perceptions and behaviour, advocating a critical approach to the study of metaphors in discourse

Finally, it is also important to note that modern consumers of news texts are assailed by a gamut of alternative discourses outside traditional news media This is especially so with the increased proliferation of social media (political blogs, interest-group chat-rooms, social media websites that facilitate interaction with a range of viewpoints, online broadsheets with an interactive comments function) This clearly goes to show how our values and what we actually perceive are fashioned by the discourses that we are socialized into Hence, it is important to temper the strengths of the claims in this thesis pertaining to the influence of metaphor in discourse, as media consumers cannot be merely seen as passive recipients of editorial ideological input Furthermore, it has also been established that the pattern of evaluative stances identified in this thesis generalisable only to the scope of these corpora In conclusion, it is hoped that the discussions put forth in this thesis show that the critical study of metaphors in media discourse is one that addresses the complexities inherent in real data These complexities include editorial ideological concord, attribution to key figures, positional salience on the actual broadsheet/ webpage and the aggregate effect of multiple discourses on the

reader’s final stance All these are factors worthy of further, more systematic

investigation