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Persuasion and Manipulation Through Conceptual Metaphors in George Ridpath’s Political Writings (1707–1709)



Author(s)

Raquel Sánchez Ruiz, Isabel López Cirugeda

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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.06.001

University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain

The role of the press in politics has always been relevant and noted as it constitutes a way to spread ideologies, to shape and manipulate the readers’ opinions, as well as to move and make people join a specific leader or beliefs. Therefore, we could claim that the press is a key persuasive weapon at politicians’ disposal. From this standpoint, we have analyzed figurative language in George Ridpath’s political writings for The Observator with the aim of examining how this author used conceptual metaphors and metaphtonymies as a weapon to shape and manipulate Great Britain’s public opinion during the Stuart period. For this, we have employed the cognitive semantic approach of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory originated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Charteris-Black’s pragmatic Critical Metaphor Analysis (2004), since both of them help us interpret and explain the associations that underlie metaphor and how writers conceptualize abstract concepts from bodily experiences to create political myths. Our findings aim at revealing which persuasive metaphorical devices Ridpath used to manipulate public opinion and have permitted us to value his contribution as a very influential, yet controversial, pamphleteer who wrote about the War of the Spanish Succession from Great Britain’s viewpoint.

conceptual metaphor, metaphtonymy, Ridpath, War of the Spanish Succession