The metaphors of social-political bloggers: a shared cognitive schema?

Abstract

This paper makes a comparative, data-based study of the conceptual metaphors in the English and Malay bloggers' discourse on social-political issues in Malaysia, utilizing a Lakoffian approach to metaphors. In analyzing the linguistic expressions in the bloggers discourse, the cognitive schema and conceptualizations of social-political bloggers are extracted. A comparison is then made between the metaphors in English and in Malay, thus addressing the question to what extent social-political bloggers in Malay and English share similar cognitive schema to the socio-political issues of the day. Finally, the insights into bloggers perspective, aspiration and cognition of the socio-political process are discussed.