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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:3 (2025) ► pp.483–504

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France’s “drôle de guerre”

Sociopolitical polarisation and resistance to metaphor

ORCiD logo with link | UCLouvain
Published online: 2 April 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22047.aug
Abstract
This paper sheds light on the sociopolitical polarisation reflected in the responses to a political metaphor, in French public discourse about covid-19. The aim is to uncover how polarisation may influence metaphorical representation of a political issue. The study focuses on the French President’s metaphor “we are at war”, in his announcement of the national lockdown. Responses to this “war” metaphor in public discourse are analysed following a combination of metaphor theories and argumentation theories. Results show that such responses transformed the ”war” metaphor into the “phoney war” metaphor for covid-19. This yielded four main arguments which 1.established causals links between covid-19 and policies, 2.partially endorsed the metaphor, 3.focused on the President’s discursive pattern, and 4.focused on the President’s status. It is argued that more research is needed into public reception to political discourse, in view of the arguments derived from resistance to metaphor.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
    • 2.1Sociopolitical polarisation
    • 2.2Metaphor in politics
    • 2.3Metaphors of covid-19
    • 2.4Resistance to metaphor
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data selection
    • 3.2Critical Metaphor Analysis
    • 3.3Identification of arguments
  • 4.Resistance to Macron’s “war” metaphor
    • 4.1Causal links between pandemic and policies
    • 4.2Partial endorsement
    • 4.3Focus on the discursive pattern
    • 4.4Focus on the discourse producer
  • 5.Discussion and concluding remarks
    • 5.1Summary
    • 5.2Polarisation, resistance, and legitimisation
    • 5.3Further perspectives
  • Conflict of interest statement
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Heinemann, Sabine
2025. On metaphor in political cartoons between mono- and multimodality – France in the corona crisis. Multimodal Communication DOI logo
Augé, Anaïs
2024. Situationally-triggered metaphor as political argument. Journal of Argumentation in Context 13:1 ► pp. 106 ff. DOI logo

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