Based on critical approaches to discourse and metaphor, as well as on cognitive models of metaphorical creativity and recontextualization, this article analyses the origin and evolution of the marea ('tide') metaphor as a tool for social action within recent Spanish protest movements (2011-2016). From an initial image metaphor representing different protest groups, to the use of the expression to identify a number of grassroots political parties, among other new meanings, the metaphor has proved to be an important tool in the legitimation of recent social action and change in Spanish society since the eruption of the 15M movement in 2011. By tracking its development, the study explains not only how the source domain marea activates highly positive meanings and emotions within the targets social protest, political parties, change and so on, but also how this ideological, socio-culturally conditioned, cognitively situated metaphor is becoming entrenched in the community within a very specific socio-historical and cultural context.
This paper presents a Critical and Socio-Cognitive analysis of protest discourse as created in slogans for feminist rallies taking place in Spain (2017–2020). The study focuses on the discursive evolution of the term manada (‘wolfpack’), from its origins as a metonymy to refer to a gang rape taking place in the San Fermín bullfighting celebration of July 2016, to its reappropriation by feminists to bring attention to gender violence and, most importantly, to create a positive in-group identity of cohesion and empowerment, while delegitimizing and dispossessing the out-group, rapists, of their power. The analysis shows how reappropriation, together with recontextualization and multimodal creativity, helps to understand the impact of a single term, manada, in the transformation of the traditional discourse of fear and threat into one of solidarity and hope when addressing gender violence, as well as its effects on the constructions of new cognitive and social frames within the community.
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