Metaphors, Communication and Effectiveness in Indian Politics

摘要

The aim of this article is to give insights on the role and usage of metaphors in political communication. The article studies the use of conceptual metaphors by politicians in two different scenarios, namely election campaign and addresses of a prime minister to a global audience. Both these settings are important from political image building perspective. For studying political communication during election campaigns, we have examined the text of newspaper articles and social media handles of politicians. For analysing metaphors used while addressing an international audience, select speeches delivered abroad by Indian Prime Minister Modi have been studied. The analysis is carried out on the basis of Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. For this, important metaphors are culled out and analysed, including POLITICS IS WAR, A POLITICIAN IS A WATCHMAN, WORLD IS COMMUNITY, WORLD IS FAMILY AND NATION IS PERSON.