“Imagine this kebab is the Greek national economy”: Metaphor scenarios in mediatized explanations of economic news

Spilioti, Tereza ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2768-3043 2018. “Imagine this kebab is the Greek national economy”: Metaphor scenarios in mediatized explanations of economic news. Language@Internet 16 , 2.

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Abstract

This article investigates a series of explainer videos that offer explanations of financial institutions, policies, and terms used in news coverage of the European financial crisis, particularly as reported in relation to the 2015 Greek bailout negotiations. By approaching digital news explainers as multimodal meta-commentaries, the study focuses on the prevailing metaphorical scenarios (Mussolf, 2012) and their strategic use as key stylistic resources for explaining complex financial issues. In addition to the dystopic metaphors of DISASTER or WAR found in mainstream financial reporting, financial matters are explained in my data primarily through metaphors that liken national economies and currencies to FOOD and economic policies to COOKING. The article discusses how verbal and visual modes work together in projecting metaphorical scenarios from the domain of home economics that embed specific evaluations and stances toward national economic policies. The study concludes with a critical discussion of the implications of such metaphorical scenarios for discourses of agency and accountability in the European financial crisis, and situates the digital genre of explainers in the context of wider sociocultural shifts related to the process of mediatization.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics P Language and Literature > PE English
Publisher:	Ministry of Science and Research of North Rhine-Westphalia
ISSN:	1860-2029
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	8 February 2019
Date of Acceptance:	12 December 2018
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 09:02
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/119335

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