War metaphors in public discourse

ABSTRACT

War metaphors are ubiquitous in discussions of everything from political campaigns to battles with cancer to wars against crime, drugs, poverty, and even salad. Why are warfare metaphors so common, and what are the potential benefits and costs to using them to frame important social and political issues? We address these questions in a detailed case study by reviewing the empirical literature on the subject and by advancing our own theoretical account of the structure and function of war metaphors in public discourse. We argue that war metaphors are omnipresent because (a) they draw on basic and widely shared schematic knowledge that efficiently structures our ability to reason and communicate about many different types of situations, and (b) they reliably express an urgent, negatively valenced emotional tone that captures attention and motivates action. Nevertheless, we find that the meaning (and consequences) of war metaphors is intimately tied to the context in which they are used, which may result in either positive or negative outcomes, depending on the situation. Thus, blanket statements about whether or not a war frame is useful are misguided or overly constraining. Here we situate our case study results in relation to popular theories of metaphoric representation and processing and offer some guidelines for using a war framing effectively. This work helps illuminate the complex, dynamic, and nuanced functions of metaphor in cognition in general, and in public discourse in particular.

Acknowledgements

We thank the Editor, Raymond Gibbs,and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an early draft of this manuscript. We are also grateful for discussions about war metaphors with Oana David, Chelsea Coe, Jeffrey Yoshimi, Rose Hendricks, and other colleagues.

Notes

¹ Notably, at least two books by conservative authors sounding the alarm on this issue have been published in recent years: The war on Christmas: How the liberal plot to ban the sacred Christian holiday is worse than you thought, by John Gibson (2006)––which may have kicked off this conservative talking point––And “War on Christmas: Battles in Faith, Tradition, and Religious Expression,” by Bodie Hodge (2013). A third book with a similar title, “War on Christmas: The Complete Series,” by Edward Lorn (2016), is unrelated to this issue and does not appear to be a figurative use of the word “war”: it is a collection of fictional stories about Santa Claus violently battling evil.

² Less well known––and somewhat more surprising––than the contemporary Liberal War on Christmas, is the Puritan War on Christmas of the 17th century (Durston, 1985).