Figurative Frames in Political Communication

Political discourse is rich in figurative language that serves to frame political topics. Consider politicians describing immigration as a “flood”, Brexit as a “divorce” or political institutions as a “swamp”. Such figurative frames can have important implications for political communication.

The talk will consider how figurative frames structure and colour political communication. Following an overview of current theory and research on figurative framing, it will present  theories of framing from the field of political communication and discuss how figurative frames are used in political discourse, how they affect voters’ political attitudes, and how they change over time.

About the speaker

Christian Burgers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands). In his research, he studies the use and effects of metaphor, hyperbole and irony across domains of discourse. He is a member of the management team of the Metaphor Lab Amsterdam.

Participation is free and open to the public. Visit our Eventbrite page to book your tickets

The event is organised and hosted by Creative Multilingualism, a research programme led by the University of Oxford and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Open World Research Initiative, in collaboration with TORCH.

Find out more about Creative Multilingualism's research into The Creative Power of Metaphor

Image: James Gillray [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons