DMT and its theoretical framework: A bottom-up approach to the analysis of deliberate metaphor in political discourse

Since its introduction in 2008, Deliberate Metaphor Theory has given rise to a lot of debate: do deliberate metaphors really exist? If so, what characterizes this type of metaphor? Previous research on the identification of deliberate metaphors has often been done in a top-down fashion. However, in order to fully understand deliberate metaphors and what characterizes them, a bottom-up analysis is necessary. This research seeks to further contribute to the investigation on the communicative dimension of metaphor within DMT by analyzing the criteria that potentially characterize deliberate metaphors. To do so, deliberate metaphors are identified by using DMIP in a large political corpus. Based on these quantitative results, this research aims at performing a qualitative analysis which will allow for the identification of characteristics of deliberate metaphor. During the presentation, our quantitative results will be presented as well as an overview of the next steps of the qualitative analysis.