In:Metaphor in Specialist Discourse:
Edited by J. Berenike Herrmann and Tony Berber Sardinha
[Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication 4] 2015
► pp. 79–100
Payback and punishment
Metaphors in Scottish penal policy
Published online: 16 December 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.4.04dei
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.4.04dei
This paper presents an analysis of metaphors for punishment in policy discourse
in Scotland, which has embarked on an ambitious programme of penal reform.
We analysed a corpus consisting of the four key policy documents of the penal
reform programme. Our objectives were firstly, to identify the most frequently
used lexical metaphors and metonyms in the corpus, and then to analyse the
entailments that these metaphors have, and how they frame the topics of the
texts. We found widespread use of metaphors from the domain of management,
providing support for the thesis that the discourse of management frames
public services in the UK. We then specifically investigated the use of payback
because of its salience in current penal philosophy, with the objective of finding
out how frequently it is used, and whether the theme of reparation frames the
texts more widely. Our findings suggest that as a metaphor from the source
domain of reparation, it appears to be a ‘one-shot’ metaphor. However, in terms
of semantic groupings, it could perhaps be viewed as a metaphor of business
and management.
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Cited by (3)
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2019. Conceptual metaphors and performativity in the Sunshine Policy. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 17:1 ► pp. 275 ff.
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