Introduction
Political language (political discourse) has a crucial position, influencing substantially both the formation of public awareness about political problems and the process of the leaders’ reputation. The extensive application of metaphorical language and symbolism denotes politics in the Philippines. Accordingly, the complexity of conceptualizing symbolic blending in political discourse is critical. This study intends to investigate the function of symbolic blending in Philippine political discourse and analyze its effect on people’s thinking patterns and attitudes toward social issues.
Problem
Political discourse is among the most influential in forming public positions on issues. However, more needs to be done on metaphorical mixing in Philippine politics. Much metaphoric language is used in politics, but the research shows no attention has been paid to the metaphorical blending. However, the blend of metaphors should be investigated more, as politicians use it to convey complex ideas or ideologies. The resulting absenteeism is significant because it reveals the inadequacies of the metaphorical blending’s mode of operation and how this influences social perception and cognition. Therefore, the study objective also aims to expand our knowledge of how politics and communication interact in the Philippines.
Framework
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)
This study will be based on Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) described in their book “Metaphors We Live By.” Correspondingly, based on CMT, abstract concepts are experienced and known to people by connecting concrete domains through metaphors. The conceptual metaphors and ideologies in the communication process will be obtained by examining metaphorical blends in the political rhetoric of the Philippines as the driving force behind this study.
The Critical Discourse Analysis
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) will also investigate the power relations and the social impact of metaphorical blend in political discourse. By incorporating this set of theoretical models, the research aims to explain how metaphorical blending contributes to constructing social views of political affairs and public perception of leaders in the country.
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For this purpose, the data used for analysis will include the corpus of political speech and debate and the interviews of prominent and vibrant Filipino politicians. The corpus will be created by pooling resources from various sources such as televised debates, speeches to the nation, and digital media platforms. By studying multiple political speeches, the research will try to find cases of the metaphoric mixture and describe its essential linguistic and conceptual elements. The corpus-based analysis of this research aims to show the prevalence of cognitive metaphors, concepts, and mapping and how they impact people’s cognition and social perception.
Conclusion
To sum up,the study will grasp the deficiency in knowledge about applying the metaphorical blending technique in the Philippine’s political language and its impact on social perception and thought process. This study adopts Conceptual Metaphor Theory and CTA as the conceptual frameworks to analyze political diversity and ideological underpinnings attached to political speeches. By way of a corpus study of political discourse, this research presents valuable information about metaphorical blending in shaping public opinion and perceiving political problems and critical figures in the Philippines.
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