Expressing the Evaluation of Socially Contested Issues through Metaphor: Higher Education Reform

Abstract

Metaphor may express a positive or negative evaluation (Charteris-Black, 2014; Musolff, 2016). The paper aims to study how the predicative function of metaphor is manifested in the discourse of contemporary social concerns. The study was carried out within the framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis (cma), which was employed in order to determine how metaphors reflect attitudes towards higher education reform in Lithuania. The results show that the concept quality is understood as an object and evaluated through bipolar oppositions where the first element of the opposition is positively connoted while the second acquires a negative connotation. The evaluation of the concept reform is carried out through the source domains of movement, living being, object and conflict and is based on whether metaphors are used by the proponents of the reform or by the opposition.