Metaphor and ideology: Conceptual structure and conceptual content in Spanish political discourse

Method of analysis

Koller (2002: 192) affirms that, in contrast to quantitative analysis that is used to describe a text, qualitative analysis must be used to describe discourse. For this reason, we have undertaken an analysis of the latter type which, in the first instance, focused on extracting the discourse units that could be considered the lexical expression of an underlying mapping between domains (Steen, 1999, 2009); these are what Steen et al. (2010: 14) and Steen (2011a: 50, 2011b: 94) refer to as ‘metaphor-related words’.

In the next step, the objectives of our analysis were, first, to demonstrate that these discourse units were used with a metaphorical meaning; second, to establish the different types of grammatical structure in which they appeared and to verify that, in fact, they did indicate the existence of a metaphorical thought process; and third, to decide what type of evaluation was implied by the choice of certain lexical units by the author and what advantage they provided in qualifying or discrediting political actions, social groups and even individuals (Musolff, 2012). Therefore, the aim of this final step, in the words of van Dijk (1999:24), was to study ‘the ideological semantics underlying lexical choice’.

Charteris-Black (2004: 32) points out that qualitative analysis is complex because distinguishing between the literal meaning and the metaphorical meaning of a source word – that is, of the lexical unit that serves as a reference point for the representation and that consequently becomes the sign for the viewpoint of the author – requires us to pay attention, as we have said above, to both the linguistic and the non-linguistic context in which the word is intentionally placed in the foreground by the sender (Langacker, 1999: 208). We therefore understand that the data that we need to analyse are the lexical units that establish syntagmatic relationships in the different sentences that make up the texts and whose use may be motivated by metaphors that exist in thought (Steen et al., 2010: 776). For this reason, we have used the Metaphor Identification Procedure methodology (Pragglejaz Group, 2007: 3; Steen, 2007: 88–89; Steen et al., 2010: 5–6) as the starting point for the analysis of our corpus. It aims is to specify the conceptual mapping starting from the linguistic metaphors using a bottom-up analysis (Cameron, 2007; Krennmayr, 2011, 2013; Steen, 1999) which is shown in the different steps applied to our corpus:

Results

We believe that all the metaphors we present below are organised in a series of scenarios: franco’s dictatorship, state catholicism, the roman catholic church. These scenarios provide their own reference point for the conceptualisation of the target domain – the conservative people’s party government – and also carry the ideology and, in this case, delegitimising, judgement of the authors (Musolff, 2006: 23), since the figurative language that arises from these mininarratives or scenarios contributes to establishing an analogy between the PP government and a negative period in Spanish history which brought about rejection from the international community and which was thought to be definitively ended.

With reference to the linguistics metaphor linked to the scenario franco’s dictatorship, the semantic and syntactic resources chosen by various authors lead us to infer the same underlying conceptual metaphor, negative progress is backward movement, because they all lead readers to construct the same interpretation of the implicit meaning: the governing People’s party, its actions, decisions and the new legislation it introduces, make up a negative or backward movement for Spanish society, a regression to a clearly defined historical time of fascist dictatorship.

The conceptual metaphor negative progress is backward movement – or, as formulated by Lakoff (1993: 216), undoing progress is backward movement – is a generic-level metaphor which appears in Lakoff et al.’s (1991) review as part of the event structure metaphoric system (Lakoff, 1993: 220).

We know that the ideologies that support the attitudes of social groups consist of schematically organised general opinions about relevant social topics (van Dijk, 1999: 19). For this reason, the ideological content of our texts is, on occasion, embodied in a metaphor belonging to a system whose structures are used to make generalisations, and they conceptualise notions such as states, changes, processes, actions, causes, purpose and means in terms of physical space, movement and force (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff and Turner, 1989). Given the negative judgement implied by the lexicogrammatical structure of the metaphor itself, negative progress is backward movement, it can be understood that the analysis of this metaphor found in some of our texts demonstrates the intention of their authors as political actors in the construction of a discourse supported by their ideology. It has a clear delegitimising intention whose ultimate objective is to move readers to take action to end the social and political status quo that exists at the time of writing the texts.

It is precisely this use as an instrument at the service of a schematically organised ideology that explains why some texts, in the same way as in other authors’ analyses of discourse (Deignan, 2005; Steen, 2007; Sullivan, 2009), show the use of the same conceptual metaphor instantiated in different linguistic expressions.

As we have said, the content of the lexical units chosen by a speaker is embedded in a conceptual structure which is articulated through the construction of a grammatical relationship. Dancygier and Sweetser (2014: 127) state that some grammatical structures often act as a signal that allows the speaker to infer a certain metaphorical meaning. The way in which conceptual content and conceptual structure combine to embody the metaphor negative progress is backward movement can be observed in the following sample (1):

(1) […] este Gobierno de miseria – para los demás – ha conseguido arrastrarnos a la década de los sesenta y a ser, de nuevo, la vergüenza de Europa. (El País, 27 December 2013)

[…] this Government of misery – for others – has managed to drag us back to the sixties and to make us, once again, the shame of Europe. (El País, 27 December 2013)

In fragment (1), we find that the People’s party government and Spanish society – represented by the pronoun nos (us) – act as arguments of a transitive verb arrastrar (drag). The first definitions ¹ found in the Real Academia Española [DLE] (2017) confirm the metaphorical meaning acquired, in a context based on the world of ideas, by a lexical item whose basic meaning denotes physical activity that generates the energy or force capable of acting on someone or something: ‘Move someone or something by pulling along the ground.

As we have seen above (1), the government and contemporary Spanish society (nos) carry out certain roles derived from the semantics of the event that is conceptualised: the first nominal group designates the agent, the direct actor and the voluntary cause of the action mentioned by the verb. The second nominal group designates the object affected because the verb which selects it signals a process which results in a change in its location in time (Demonte, 1990: 121–122). It seems, therefore, that the verb arrastrar (drag) behaves according to the pattern described by Talmy (2000: 415), as ‘[…] those to be classed as “causative” in particular involving the extended causation of motion’, and that the noun Gobierno (government) in this context presents some of the semantic content typical of causativity: force and intention or purpose.

Also, the presence of the structure with a time value a la década de los sesenta (to the 60s) reinforces the ideological interpretation of this transitive structure, an instantiation on the surface of the text of the conceptual metaphor negative progress is backward movement.

Therefore, the syntactic structure found in the text constitutes an example of what Langacker (1991: 302) calls a prototypical transitive clause, since it describes an event brought about by the transfer of energy from a subject, who intervenes voluntarily in the action, to an object, the involuntary recipient of this energy, which is significantly affected by the action. It would therefore seem evident that the metaphoric value acquired by both the noun and the transitive verb is used to signify psychosocial pressure (Talmy, 2000: 413) and, with it, to discredit the political actions (Musolff, 2012: 303) of the ruling party.

This linguistic metaphor arises from a force-dynamics pattern (Talmy, 1988, 2000) which has been shown to be common in political discourse (e.g. Hart, 2011), with the aim of conceptualising the notion of causation (Talmy, 1988: 50, 2000: 409) in terms of movement, with a clear distribution of roles. In our sample, Spanish society is presented to the reader as an Agonist whose resistance to the movement is broken by a powerful external force, the Antagonist; in other words, the People’s party and its policies which, in this extract, carry out the semantic role (Lakoff, 2014: 4) of causality.

In the following extracts (2) and (3), the lexical choices made by the author also leave no doubt about the delegitimising intent once again manifested in the metaphor negative progress is backward movement. Here, we can observe the presence of a series of intransitive structures that also prove the decisive pragmatic and ideological function that Flowerdew and Leong (2007: 275) attribute to metaphor: ‘Metaphors are widely used in political discourse as effective pragmatic devices to perform ideological articulation and sensationalisation, as well as emotional arousal’:

(2) […]; si [el ministro de Justicia] hubiera seguido dándole a la moviola, hubiera llegado adonde quieren los que apoyan el punto muerto: la España de Franco, que ya sabemos qué color tenía. (El País, 29 December 2013)

[…]; if [the Minister for Justice] had continued to turn the Moviola, he would have come to the point desired by the supporters of a standstill: Franco’s Spain, and we all know what colour that was. (El País, 29 December 2013)

(3) Gallardón, me temo, se ha dado demasiada prisa para regresar al punto muerto. (El País, 29 December 2013)

I’m afraid Gallardón has been in too much of a hurry to return to a standstill. (El País, 29 December 2013)

In extract (2), we find the predicate structures darle a la moviola (turn the Moviola) and llegar al punto muerto (come to a standstill). In Spanish, one of the basic meanings of the verb dar with an intransitive use is ‘To put into action any mechanism or object’ (Real Academia Española [DLE], 2017). In this context, it therefore acts as an intransitive verb of action or event (Campos, 1999: 1564; Mendikoetxea, 1999: 1578) whose metaphorical meaning arises from its appearance in discourse where, again, the cognitive activity of the People’s party government, in this instance, that of one of its ministers, is evaluated.

In this extract, dar is presented as a unergative verb which, in denoting a process that depends on the will of an agent, carries the implicit notion of causativity (Mendikoetxea, 1999: 1579–1609). It is accompanied by a nominal group whose nucleus, moviola, has a basic meaning that produces the association of incongruent domains due to the fact that the author uses it to generate an analogical mapping onto the policies of the People’s party government. This basic meaning is ‘Device for movie editing that allows the film to be rewound, cut, or scenes to be inserted, as well as the synchronisation of the sound track’ (Real Academia Española [DLE], 2017). The noun moviola therefore carries out the role of recipient of transfer in the semantics of the event conceptualised (Langacker, 1991: 325; Campos, 1999: 1547).

On the other hand, the conceptual structure made up by the intransitive verb dar, together with the argument, in this case functioning as a voluntary agent, el ministro de Justicia (the Minister for Justice), marks the existence of a linguistic metaphor based on the force-dynamics pattern and corresponds on Sullivan’s (2009: 15) description for intransitive structures: the conceptually autonomous subject evokes the target domain, and the conceptually dependent verb, the source domain.

In extract (2), a causative conceptual structure is also generated by the relationship the author creates between the verb llegar (arrive)’Reach the end of a trajectory’ (Real Academia Española [DLE], 2017) and the nominal group el punto muerto (a standstill), a locative argument (Mendikoetxea, 1999: 1608) which, in this text, presents a metaphorical meaning suggested by the contrast with a basic meaning related to mechanics: ‘In steam-run machines, internal combustion engines, etc., position in which the piston changes its direction of movement’ (Real Academia Española [DLE], 2017).

It is therefore evident that once again the metaphor negative progress is backward movement is manifested on the surface of the text through the use of an unaccusative ergative verb which expresses directional movement (Real Academia Española [RAE], 2009: 523) and whose only argument and source domain of the metaphoric mapping, el ministro de Justicia (the Minister for Justice), act as a non-agentive subject which marks the entity, showing the eventuality denoted by the verb.

In the political life of Spain’s recent past, the Falange was a tremendously powerful fascist political party. The author makes a metonymical mention of it in the above extract through the reference to the colour of the blue uniform shirts worn by its members. Today, this is the corporative colour of the People’s party. Consequently, the nominal group la España de Franco, que ya sabemos qué color tenía (Franco’s Spain, and we all know what colour that was) contributes to the process of inference that induces in the reader the delegitimising metaphor. The policies carried out by the party that governed Spain with an overall majority after the 2011 general election is, in reality, a mechanism that will make Spanish society regress, until it finds itself back in the era of the Franco dictatorship, a 40-year period of isolation during which the lack of progress was synonymous with lost time, dead time.

Finally, this description of the causative conceptual structure that the author uses as a framework to support the conceptual content of the text is repeated for the intransitive predicate found in the second extract mentioned above (3):

Gallardón, me temo, se ha dado demasiada prisa para regresar al punto muerto. (El País, 29 December 2013)

I’m afraid Gallardón has been in too much of a hurry to return to a standstill. (El País, 29 December 2013)

In it, the verb regresar (return) is an unaccusative verb that expresses directional movement or movement that is associated with a term, here, the locative argument el punto muerto (a standstill). This denotes a non-agentive event since it codifies as part of its meaning a change of place that affects its only argument, the subject Gallardón, whose semantic role in the event conceptualised is that of a notional object that experiences the change of place predicated by the verb (Mendikoetxea, 1999: 1579–1609).

The scenario franco’s dictatorship includes the source domain of the following metaphor (4): la política del pp es una cruzada (the popular party’s policy is a crusade). In evaluating the new abortion law written at the behest of the Spanish Minister for Justice, Gallardón, the author employs the term cruzada (crusade) which induces the same ideological effect in the reader:

(4) (1) […] las consecuencias lamentables de […] obligar a una mujer a traer a un hijo al mundo con graves malformaciones estarán presentes tanto en la información como en la opinión. Muchas oportunidades tendrá el señor ministro de percibir cómo va a afectar su cruzada a la vida de las mujeres. (El País, 29 November 2013)

[…] the regrettable consequences of […] forcing women to bring a child into the world with severe malformations will continue to be present in the media both as information and as opinion. The Honourable Minister will have multiple opportunities to see how his crusade will affect the life of women. […]. This will not stop here. (El País, 29 November 2013)

The lexical item cruzada (crusade) acquires a metaphorical significance in a text based on ideology, and in the political, ethical and intellectual responsibility for a legal document (eventually withdrawn by Rajoy) whose application would, in the author’s opinion, have caused Spanish society to regress. This metaphorical meaning is constructed through the comparison with the basic meaning of cruzada (crusade) found in the Real Academia Española [DLE] (2017): ‘Military expedition against the infidel, especially in order to win back Holy Places, ordered by the Pope who would concede indulgences to those who participated in it’.

Here, we can see the indirect conceptualisation (Lakoff, 1993; Krennmayr, 2011; Steen et al., 2010) of the conservative Popular party’s policies; the basic meaning of the term cruzada (crusade) introduces a conceptual domain to the text that generates a referential discontinuity that the receiver must decodes by interpreting the existence of an analogy created by the author through the association of two incongruous domains (Cameron, 2003: 74): on one hand, the mapping from the external source domain onto the dominant target domain in the discourse, the conservative government of the people’s party.

This referential discontinuity also leads the reader, who shares the authors’ frame of perception, towards the next interpretation of meaning intended: the policies of the People’s party government reproduce the times of the dictatorship of Franco who, shortly after the military coup of July 1936, began to use the expression ‘national crusade’ to declare his aim of combatting the barbarity of socialism and defending Western Christian civilisation (Tusell, 1990).

The fact that the noun cruzada (crusade) acts as the agent in a transitive construction, with the verb afectar (affect) whose meaning is defined as ‘to produce an alteration or change in something’ (Real Academia Española [DLE], 2017) reinforces the idea that this linguistic metaphor is the result, and marks the existence, of metaphorical thought in which the government and its policies are metaphorically represented as an archetypal agent who volitionally initiates physical activity resulting in the transfer of energy to an external object (Langacker, 1991: 28), the Spanish woman, whose life will be changed. Once again, the transitive verb is used to signify psychosocial pressure (Talmy, 2000: 413) and, with it, to negatively evaluate the political actions of the ruling party.

The subject and the object of this transitive structure are therefore different entities involved in an asymmetric relationship of forces (Talmy, 1988, 2000) whose interaction has a clearly defined end; in this case, to show how Spanish society is made to relive situations from the past that it believed to have definitively overcome: on one hand, the fascist right and its desire to legitimise its actions through religion, and, on the other hand, the absence of legal rights which Spanish women experienced during the dark years of the dictatorship.

The scenario state catholicism, that is, the set of assumptions made by competent members of the discursive community about the source situation (Musolff, 2006: 28), provokes the appearance of other lexemes and structures that produce a metaphorical idea on the surface of the text that the majority government of the People’s party reproduces, in the present, certain behaviour characteristic of the government of the military dictatorship and of one of its ideological trademarks.

As we have shown, some grammatical structures often act in a way that allows the speaker to infer a certain metaphorical meaning (Dancygier and Sweetser, 2014: 127). In this way, the meaning of structures formed by an adjective–noun modification construction can be understood in terms of an interaction between domains or frames (Dancygier and Sweetser, 2014: 152). When the existence of a metaphorical relationship can be inferred from the link established between a head noun and its modifying adjective, one of the components of the noun group provides the source frame and the other, the target frame.

This interaction between domains or frames can be seen in the following extract (5). In this case, the author uses a series of modifying lexical items – chupacirios (churchy), tragasantos (devout) and meapilas (sanctimonious) – for the noun Gobierno (government):

(5) Este es el Gobierno más reaccionario, rancio, chupacirios, tragasantos y meapilas de la democracia. (El País, 27 December 2013)

This is the most reactionary, rancid, churchy, devout and sanctimonious, government of Spain’s democracy. (El País, 27 December 2013)

Undoubtedly, these lexical items, used with an evident delegitimising intention, acquire a metaphorical meaning in the context which, together with the personification of the government, becomes evident when we taken into account the basic meanings found in the Real Academia Española [DLE] (2017). It is important to remember that in Spain, since the 1978 democratic Constitution, the government of the country is neutral as far as religion is concerned. Chupacirios (churchy) means ‘A holy person; one who often frequents places of worship’; tragasantos (devout) is ‘A holy person who has a great devotion for religious imagery and saints’; and finally, meapilas (sanctimonious) is defined as ‘Exaggerated in acts of devotion. Holier-than-thou; hypocrite who creates an appearance of holiness’. It is therefore evident that the metaphorical nature of these lexical units stems from the incongruity revealed by the comparison between their basic meanings and the meanings they acquire in the text through the creation of a conceptual structure linking them to the noun Gobierno (government).

It is these lexical items that provide a metaphorical expression, as defined by Croft (2003: 192), since they combine a conceptually autonomous element with another, dependent, element to evoke different conceptual domains, forcing the metaphorical interpretation of at least one of the items. In this context, the head noun elaborates (Langacker, 1999) the units used with an adjectival function by the author, whose meaning depends on the conceptualisation of the Spanish government as an entity with an attributed state (Barcelona, 2012: 133). This can be described as a ‘predicating modifier construction’ (Sullivan, 2007, 2014), a noun phrase in which the noun, the conceptually independent nucleus of the syntactic structure, evokes the target domain, while the conceptually dependent modifier supplies the source domain.

Chupacirios (churchy), tragasantos (devout) and meapilas (sanctimonious) conjure in the mind of the reader the scenario state catholicism, which was so decisive during the Spanish dictatorship. ² This scenario generates useful inferences when the source domains (churchy, devout, sanctimonious) mapped onto the target domain evoked by the modified noun (Sullivan, 2007: 93, 2014: 352): the conservative government of the people’s party. Because of the Catholic Church’s situation under the Franco regime, the interaction between domains potentially allows the reader to access certain elements that configure them both; here, we are referring to the time in recent Spanish history when public organisations and institutions formed part of a religious context and when it was extremely common for government ministers, who were practising Catholics and often belonged to organisations that could be considered ultra-Catholic (Gómez, 1976: 227), to be seen taking part in religious acts. So, the author’s choice of adjectival modifiers allows the reader to infer the reference point adopted in order to judge the Spanish PP majority government: Spain’s pre-democratic era.

The same interpretation is possible for the following extracts, since they also imply that the author’s purpose is none other than that of affirming that, as Ortega y Gassett (1960: 21) claimed of the Catholic Church of his time, the Spanish government ‘has abandoned the present’. This is the reason why references to the representation of social events from the past appear with a marked function of negative attitude which is shared by both those who write about the government and their potential readers:

(6) Pero insiste Mariano Rajoy, sin duda el jefe espiritual de la alegre muchachada, en hacer una política de cercenamiento de derechos de los ciudadanos, […]. (El País, 27 December 2013)

But Mariano Rajoy, without a doubt, the spiritual leader of the happy young commune, persists in implementing policies that curtail citizens’ rights, […]. (El País, 27 December 2013)

Here in extract (6), we can see the use of two nominal groups – jefe espiritual (spiritual leader) and alegre muchachada (happy young commune) – that form a grammatical structure which forces readers to infer the existence of implicit lexemes that will allow them to uncover the complete analogical meaning. In this case, the metaphor could be reconstructed as: Rajoy and his ministers are to today’s Spanish society what the spiritual leaders and Catholic youth movements were to Spain under dictatorship.

The grammar structure ‘noun phrase + preposition + noun phrase’ reveals the existence of the XYZ metaphor described by Turner (1998: 44–87), in which the nouns X and Z represent the target domain, while Y instantiates the source domain.

The basic meanings of the lexical units present in the conceptual structure confer the idea of a conceptual metaphor. So, when the author refers to President Rajoy as jefe (leader), modified by the adjective espiritual (spiritual), whose basic meaning is ‘Pertaining or relative to the spirit’, it is precisely this adjective that indicates to the reader that the noun it modifies is not to be understood with its basic meaning. It is, in effect, a domain adjective, which, as a conceptually independent element, instantiates the metaphorical expression of the target domain. It seems possible here to postulate that, once again, the syntactic subordination of the adjective, while not conceptual, generates a frame to frame mapping (Lakoff, 2014: 30) which leads to the characterisation of Rajoy as one of the spiritual leaders (‘Priest who advises someone on matters of the conscience’) who guided the common practice of spiritual exercises in post-civil war Spain (Gómez, 1976: 227). These exercises were also frequently observed during the school day since the Spanish state actively encouraged Catholic indoctrination in schools, adapting education legislation to the doctrine of the Catholic Church and imbuing the school day with religious activities. Specialised youth movements also actively participated in this evangelical mission (Montero, 1990: 202).

Applied in a political context, the noun muchachada (young commune) acquires an evident metaphorical meaning if we take into account the first two definitions provided by the Real Academia Española [DLE] (2017): ‘Action typical of a young person. Group of young people’. The presence of the noun in the metaphoric construction, at the same time as demonstrating the author’s negative evaluation of the abilities of the government ministers, continues with idea that there is a clear similarity between the current government policies and those from a time in the past which acts as the reference point for the narrative: the Franco dictatorship, the indoctrination encouraged by the Spanish state and the Roman Catholic Church, and the active collaboration of Catholic youth groups.

In the following extract (7), the same scenario, state catholicism, generates a new metaphor also used to evaluate the politics of the Spanish government:

(7) En esta crisis el Gobierno está aplicando la receta de los ejercicios espirituales de Ignacio de Loyola, […]. A la angustia del rescate, al dolor de los recortes, el abismo de la pobreza, de pronto, le sigue el sonido de alegres campanas. (El País, 27 October 2013)

In this crisis, the Spanish government is applying the prescription for Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, […]. The anguish of bailout, the pain of cutbacks, the abyss of poverty, are suddenly followed by the sound of happy bells. (El País, 27 October 2013)

In the above fragment (7), it can be observed that the author uses two linguistic metaphors that reproduce the ‘noun phrase + preposition + noun phrase’ structure; that is, the XYZ structure.

We can also observe, here, the metaphorical meaning acquired by the highlighted words in a context that evaluates the political performance of the Spanish government and its beneficiaries. These metaphorical meanings are even more apparent, given the incongruence that is revealed by their comparison with their respective basic meanings drawn from the Real Academia Española [DLE] (2017). Ejercicios espirituales (spiritual exercises) means ‘Exercises practised for several days, in retreat from daily occupations and with dedication to prayer and penitence, and also those Exercises which individuals belonging to a congregation may practice on certain days’. One of the basic meanings of receta (prescription) is ‘Text which details the components of something and the way of doing it’. Finally, the word campana (bell) in the Real Academia Española [DLE] (2017) is defined as ‘Metal instrument, generally in the form of an inverted cup, that sounds when struck by a clapper or an external hammer’. The choice of these words by the author highlights how ‘metaphoring can be seen as the act of applying to one scene a frame which is known to be more basically associated with a different scene’ (Fillmore, 1985: 129).

As we have seen in fragment (6), it is again necessary to infer the presence of implicit terms that allow a full understanding of both linguistic metaphors: on one hand, the economic policy of the People’s party is to today’s Spanish society what the spiritual exercises were to Spanish society during the dictatorship; on the other hand, the benefits of the economic policy of the People’s party are to today’s Spanish society what the benefits of the spiritual exercises were to Spanish society during the dictatorship. The solace of these benefits, preceded by the sound of happy bells that announce the end of the exercises, is for the person who offers the spiritual exercises with a happy and positive attitude to another (Rambla, 2008: 317), who is overwhelmed by the sacrifices and renunciation required by their religion and whose only consolation is the offer of a better life in another world.

The last example (8) we present corresponds to a linguistic metaphor whose source domain finds its delegitimising function in the scenario the roman catholic church. The verb used here by the author also responds to a causative model (Campos, 1999: 1532):

(8) Por fin los gobernantes españoles han conseguido captar en el exterior una atención informativa similar a la […] que obtuvo en su día el lanzamiento de cabra desde el campanario de Manganeses de la Polvorosa. […], ha puesto a la mujer al borde del abismo, desposeída de su libertad, en lo alto del campanario, […]. (El País, 28 December 2013)

Finally, the Spanish government has managed to draw a similar amount of attention from the foreign press as the tossing of a goat from the bell tower of the village of Manganeses de la Polvorosa obtained in its day […]. has placed women on the edge of an abyss, dispossessed of their freedom, at the top of the bell tower, […]. (El País, 28 December 2013)

The verb poner (to place), denotes physical action that generates an apparent incoherence in a context where the evaluation is of a cognitive activity carried out by the Spanish government. Once again we find a force-dynamics pattern, ‘a generalization over the traditional notion of causative’ (Talmy, 2000: 428) and an Agonist, Spanish women, who, in the transitive clause, are converted into the object affected by a voluntary action carried out by a powerful external force, the People’s party government and its policies.

In this case, the frame activated by the noun campanario (bell tower; ‘High tower, separate from, attached to or integrated into a building, where bells are placed’) is not the same as state catholicism to which we have been referring previously. Even so, it still conjures in the mind of the Spanish reader a negative conceptualisation of the government’s actions as a reflection of a not-so-distant past in which the Catholic Church was a constant, determining presence. This occurs because the noun evokes in the reader, on one hand, a church building, and on the other, the celebration of a Catholic saint’s day that was banned in the recent past, because it converted animal cruelty into a religious spectacle, causing stupefaction and extreme distaste among the international community.

It is well known that metaphors are especially persuasive if the source domain contains a strong emotional charge for the speaker (Deignan, 2005: 131). In our extract, the action exercised voluntarily by the government on women degrades them to a lower level in the Great Chain of Being (Lovejoy, 1936). With this negative metaphor, the author employs an extremely effective delegitimising ideological tool whose aim is to transmit to the reader the way in which the Popular party’s policies affect the social status quo gained by Spanish women after 1978.