The Metaphorical Construction of Ireland

Abstract

This chapter is part of a project on the linguistic behaviour of Irish female politicians in the last two centuries. Researchers have argued for the existence of a distinctive female style as compared with a male style (for example Coates 1988, Holmes 1995) and have categorised the differences claimed to distinguish one from the other. The evolution from the `deficit', `dominance' and `difference' approaches to the `discursive construction of gendered identities' (Sunderland 2004, Litosseliti 2006) took more than three decades. A patently biased chapter by Jespersen (1922) pointed to some features addressed since then. Robin Lakoff (1975) suggested that the most significant characteristics of feminine language included hypercorrection, lexical constraints, less complex structures, limited topic selection, no interruption, no turn-taking control, preference for polite interaction, and a tendency towards conversation accommodation. These features indicate how people establish their relationship with interlocutors and the way they construct their (public) persona. One instrumental element in understanding this idea involves figurative language, particularly metaphor. Conceptual metaphors show how we comprehend, conceptualise and evaluate the world (Lakoff and Turner 1989, O'Halloran 2007). They interpret `a fragment of the society's history [and bear] implications for the construction of the society's future' (Zinken 2003: 517). As Cameron (2007: 200) remarks, conceptual metaphors are `evidence of thinking and perspective'.