Metaphors in Bulgarian Political Discourse Since 1989

Abstract

The study of the metaphors used by Bulgarian politicians in speeches, debates, presentations, video clips, posters posted on the Internet clearly shows that they are represented well enough in the media environments. The first hypothesis is that the metaphors used by Bulgarian political orators have changed since 1989 during the transition from socialism to democracy and they have been gradually replaced by new metaphors. The second hypothesis is that metaphors have considerably increased their public influence and they have become a feature of contemporary Bulgarian political discourse. We can also point out two new spheres of manifestations of metaphors at verbal and visual levels of political speech. The figurative language of civil messages and appeals includes metaphors which are more expressive.

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“…Metaphors are used deliberately in speech—“speakers use metaphor to persuade by combining the cognitive and linguistic resources at their disposal” (Charteris-Black, 2004 , p. 11), and beyond the fact that they are a means of persuasion, they are inaccurate and misleading as “a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980/2003 , p. 10). In our contribution, we also take into consideration some theoretical observations made by scholars in the field of Rhetoric and Manipulation (Maillat and Oswald, 2009 ) and in the analysis of political discourse (Ilie, 2016 ; Mavrodieva, 2020 ).…”