CONCEPTUAL BLENDING IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Political discourse and poetry do have something in common. But only one thing: the metaphor. They both make extensive use of this "figure of speech" in order to access "conceptual spaces" in our imagination. Of course, for entirely different reasons: while poetry attempts to trigger the concept of beauty in our minds through an act of creation, political discourse aims at a perfect act of persuasion through a very elaborated type of discourse. And how can ideologies be spread successfully if not by the use of rhetorical devices? That is why, nowadays political discourse, abounds in metaphors such as "damage control", "a whole new ball game", "collateral damage", "to be back at first base" and so on. The interesting part comes when thinking how can one grasp, almost effortless, the real meaning of such utterances and how such a process can be explained from the linguistic point of view. In this regard, the Cognitivist Approach of Conceptual Blending can provide a reasonable explanation.