Discourses of the Arab Revolutions in Media and Politics

Stefanie Ullmann is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Humanities and Social Change. She has done extensive research on the use of language in discourse on the Arab revolutions. Her other research interests and current work include the social and ethical impacts of harmful language on social media, as well as information and algorithmic biases.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsAbbreviations1. Introduction: A Watershed Moment1.1. Why metaphor?1.2. The language of the Arab Spring as a research area 1.3. Structure of the book2. Unhinging the Old Order: The ‘Arab Spring’ Protests and Revolutions2.1. Tunisia and Egypt2.2. Libya and Syria2.3. A movement affecting an entire region3. Performing Critical Metaphor Analysis in a Conceptual Integration Framework3.1. Critical approaches to metaphor3.1.1. Critical discourse studies3.1.2. Defining ‘critical’ and ‘discourse’3.1.3. Ideology3.1.4. Critical metaphor analysis3.2. Cognitive approaches to metaphor3.2.1. Conceptual metaphor theory3.2.2. Conceptual integration theory3.3. Framing, construal and constructivism3.4. Framing via conceptual integration4. Corpus Approaches to Critical Cognitive Metaphor Analysis4.1. Corpus-based metaphor analysis – common challenges4.2. Automating metaphor research4.3. Corpus linguistics and CDS5. The ‘Arab Spring’ Corpus: Set-up and Design5.1. On distinguishing political and media discourse5.2. Regional distinctions5.3. Media corpus5.4. Political corpus5.5. Strategies for corpus compilation5.6. From rhetorical figure to conceptualisation: the label ‘Arab Spring’6. Using Contextual Information in a Large-Scale Study of Metaphor6.1. Quantitative steps: metaphorical pattern analysis, conceptual categorisation and frequencies6.2. Qualitative steps: critical metaphor and prosody analysis6.3. Collocation and semantic prosody: how corpus linguistics can improve critical metaphor analysis6.3.1. Defining ‘collocation’ and ‘semantic prosody’6.3.2. Developing an analytical framework for prosody evaluation of metaphors7. The Metaphors of the Arab Revolutions7.1. Seasons, plants and fruit7.1.1. The revolution is seasonal spring7.1.2. From summer to winter: the revolution throughout the seasons7.1.3. The revolution is a plant7.2. Birth, pregnancy and family7.2.1. The revolution is a newborn child or a mother giving birth7.2.2. The revolution is a stillborn or aborted child7.2.3. The family metaphor7.3. Natural forces and disasters7.3.1. The revolution is fire7.3.2. The revolution is a wave7.3.3. The revolution is a volcanic eruption or an earthquake7.3.4. The revolution is wind7.4. Contagious diseases, healthy and unhealthy bodies7.4.1. The revolution is a contagious disease7.4.2. The case of ‘spread’ and its different prosodies7.4.3. The revolution is a wounded or healing body7.5. Buildings and foundations7.5.1. The revolution is a building7.5.2. The revolution is a foundation7.6. Journeys7.6.1. From autocracy to democracy: the revolution as journey7.6.2. Different countries, different journeys7.7. Possessions, products and goods7.7.1. The revolution is a possession or a product7.7.2. The case of ‘deliver’7.8. Bounded spaces and (hot) substances in containers7.8.1. The nation is a bounded space or Syria as impenetrable fortress7.8.2. Spill, pour, and simmer: on deciding between water and substance in container metaphors7.8.3. The revolution is a (hot) liquid or a bursting container7.9. Concepts of morality and immorality7.9.1. The Arab revolutions and reverse morality7.9.2. The revolution is moral, violence and oppression are immoral7.9.3. The revolution is bright and pure, dictatorship is dark and rotten7.9.4. A global moral order8. Of Journeys and Natural Forces: The Arab Revolutions in Media Discourse8.1. Most common metaphors with positive and negative prosodies8.2. US liberal media8.3. US conservative media8.4. UK liberal media8.5. UK conservative media8.6. MENA independent media8.7. MENA state-owned media9. Of Journeys and Diseases: The Arab Revolutions in Political Discourse9.1. US political discourse9.2. UK political discourse9.3. MENA political discourse9.3.1. Tunisia9.3.2. Egypt9.3.3. Libya9.3.4. Syria10. Conclusion