Metaphor Analysis in Political Discourse Based on Discourse Dynamics Framework for Metaphor: A Case Study

Contrary to the pre-existing mapping and top-down instantiation from thought to language, Discourse Dynamics Framework for Metaphor(DDFM)argues that metaphor works mainly inductively upwards from the linguistic metaphor data, offering a tool for understanding people, revealing something of speaker’s ideas, affective aspects and values. This study is designed to apply DDFM to a political speech about fighting COVID-19 made by Xi Jinping, the president of the People’s Republic of China. Assisted by computer software, such as tables of Microsoft Office, to sort metaphors of each segment of this speech, this article investigates metaphors in the speech by progressive process of metaphor analysis of DDFM. It is found that: (1)The most frequently occurring metaphors are related to bodily action and body experience, which implies actions Chinese government will take.(2)The dynamically emergent systematic metaphors evolve as the discourse proceeds, conveying the political ideas and attitudes of Chinese government in fighting COVID-19.(3) Most of metaphors are conventionalized, which indicates the framing role of conventional metaphors in discourse. Thus, DDFM offers a new approach regarding metaphors in political discourse.

Blockchain as Res Publica: Towards a Political Genealogy of a Distributed Ledger

This paper focuses on the political genealogy of one of the most promising and influential IT technologies of our time: the blockchain (or distributed registry). We point at important commonalities between the principles of blockchain projects and models of republican governance. In contrast to techno-anarchist and democratic ideas, the republican genealogy of blockchain has so far failed to attract the attention of researchers. After examining the basic technical properties and ideological images of blockchain, we explore how the four main principles of classical republicanism (personal freedom and autonomy of the individual; civic virtues; common good; recognition of great causes) are realized in influential blockchain projects — Bitcoin (developed by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto) and Ethereum (developed by Vitalik Buterin). The functioning of blockchain nodes is supported by a community of miners, who are free, but at the same time agree to act for the development of a common thing. What the republic and the blockchain have in common is that it is impossible to have a community without cooperative action. At the same time, blockchain is a vivid illustration of Bruno Latour's argument on the role of non-humans in social relations: his code seeks to replace untrustworthy humans with rule-acting nodes, and to create a cryptographic society where untrustworthy human relations are replaced by computers' relations. This article is an invitation to begin a discussion of the political ideas that are embedded in new technologies and the models of governance that are mobilized through them, often without proper reflection on the nature of such ideas by their creators.

Arendt’s Break with the Liberal Imaginary of Society

The first part of the article analyses the imaginary of the characteristics and form of (civil) society as developed in early modern liberal political philosophy, especially by John Locke and Thomas Paine. It uses different contemporary receptions of the key authors of this tradition, namely the liberal reception of John Keane, which emphasizes the theoretical distinction between civil society and the state, the materialist reception of Ellen Meiksins Wood, which contextualizes political ideas in the political struggles and class interests of the time, and the reception of Foucault, which focuses on the development of biopolitical governmentality. The article finds that the liberal tradition imagined (civil) society as a given and self-regulating sphere that does not require interference from the state. A socio-historical presupposition of this imaginary was the economic sovereignty of individuals, and it overlooked the relations of domination and exploitation. In its second part, the article presents Hannah Arendt’s critical concept of society. She did not conceptualize society as a given totality and in a spatial way, but used it as a qualifier of a specific, impoverished mode of being, in particular to analyse the situation and perspective of minorities.

Diplomatic Materials of the sixteenth century as a Source of Political Thought in the Successor States of the Golden Horde (To the Formulation of a Research Problem)

Objective: To study the monuments of diplomatic correspondence from the sixteenth century as a source of political thought in the successor states of the Golden Horde. Research materials: The messages of Crimean khans, sultans, representatives of ruling groups, Nogai beks and mirzas preserved in translated copies in the ambassadorial books of the Muscovite state. Novelty of the research: For the first time ever, the diplomatic documents of the Crimean khanate and the Nogai Horde are involved in the reconstruction of their period’s corpus of political ideas. Considering the question of the authorship of messages, we proceed with the concept of S.M. Kashtanov about “technical authorship”, in which the authorship is understood as the collective work of rulers, courtiers, bureaucrats, and technical workers on the creation of a letter. Research results: The application of the concept of “corporate authorship” has made it possible to show that diplomatic messages were always a product of some convention possible within the elite that were involved in the development of foreign policy. Translators played an important role in shaping the political language. The messages of the khans, sultans, beks, and mirzas of the successor states of the Golden Horde contain some ideas that can help us to outline the political ideology. Central to it is the thesis of the exclusive right to power of the Chinggisids who could get power only with the general consent of the “political people”. “Evil” and “good” were the most important concepts of thought in the successor states. “Evil” was understood as any change in the established order, and “good” as its preservation. Thus, conservatism and the desire to fix the rituals of power and management practices that had developed earlier in the era of the Golden Horde were the most important concepts for political life in the successor states. This attitude led to the preservation of earlier concepts and terminological language, something which was reflected in the practice of diplomacy when the elusive reality of former power influenced ambassadorial ceremony and the form of messages.

Natural Law Republicanism

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.

Review of Richard W. Sterling, Ethics in a World of Power: The Political Ideas of Friedrich Meinecke (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1958; London, Oxford University Press, 1959)

Meinecke’s student and friend, Richard Sterling, composed this intellectual biography concerning Meinecke’s political ideas. Born in 1862, Meinecke was raised to venerate Hegel, Ranke, and Bismarck as pillars of the German State and conservative nationalism. Wight summed up Meinecke’s political evolution as follows: ‘In the first World War he justified the ultimatum to Serbia and the invasion of Belgium, he approved of unrestricted submarine warfare, and he explained to the minority peoples of the Central Powers that though the nation-state had been the proper goal for the Germans, it was their duty to remain content with the multi-national state. The shock of defeat started him on an assiduous criticism of his old beliefs. The moral autonomy of the State, the primacy of foreign policy, international relations as the fruitful competition of vigorously egotistic Powers, all gradually dissolved. He moved nearer to Goethe, and as an old man came to find the ultimate truth of politics not in the ideal, super-individual corporate personality of the nation-state, but in the martyrdom of the individual rebel against Hitler’s Reich.’

Nationalism, Patriotism and Political Ideas of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: an Analysis

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (Founder of Aligarh Muslim University) was born into a noble Muslim family in 1817; he was a distinguished scholar while working as a lawyer at the British East India Company. After realizing the worthless condition of Muslims, his approach to western education for the benefit of the Muslim community became a priority. This study contemplates that Sir Syed was religiously oriented and very politically aware of nationalism and patriotism. The author uses primary data and also secondary data. The author also explores his main books and articles; the author aims to examine Sir Syed's nationalist and political ideas concerning political significance for Muslims in India. The writer would like to know the result that, what is the reason, Sir Syed was against the Indian National Congress. At the same time, the whole Indian society was afraid of the British, but Sir Syed maintained his good relations with the British, and he also showed the loyalty of the Muslims towards them. This study found the conclusion about Sir Syed that he became a symbol of communal harmony.

The Evolution of Tyrant Tropes in Greek Tragedy

<p>Tyranny (tyrannis) is a name given to a type of Greek monarchy that came into being in the seventh century B.C.E. The democratisation of Greece and the transference of aristocratic ideas of equality and liberty to the whole citizen population led the vilification of tyranny as the opposite of democracy and its extensive use as a foil for democracy in Athenian politics. This political idea made its way into literature, including tragedy where it was one of several important anachronistic political ideas. The demonization of the tyrant also led to the development of tropes to create the stereotype of the tyrant. These tropes are catalogued in Plato and Aristotle and widely recognised in Herodotus, but as Lanza (1977) and Seaford (2003) have pointed out, they also occur in tragedy, to the same extent as they do in prose. The tropes can roughly be split into two groups – those that are based on real power-conserving strategies and those that were created to characterise the tyrant as a moral monster.</p>

The Evolution of Tyrant Tropes in Greek Tragedy

<p>Tyranny (tyrannis) is a name given to a type of Greek monarchy that came into being in the seventh century B.C.E. The democratisation of Greece and the transference of aristocratic ideas of equality and liberty to the whole citizen population led the vilification of tyranny as the opposite of democracy and its extensive use as a foil for democracy in Athenian politics. This political idea made its way into literature, including tragedy where it was one of several important anachronistic political ideas. The demonization of the tyrant also led to the development of tropes to create the stereotype of the tyrant. These tropes are catalogued in Plato and Aristotle and widely recognised in Herodotus, but as Lanza (1977) and Seaford (2003) have pointed out, they also occur in tragedy, to the same extent as they do in prose. The tropes can roughly be split into two groups – those that are based on real power-conserving strategies and those that were created to characterise the tyrant as a moral monster.</p>

From Semi-Colony to Sub-Empire

This study analyses the historiographical application of two concepts (colony, and empire), the contemporary interpretations of which fundamentally determined judgements about the status of Hungary within the Habsburg Monarchy. Despite the fact that the concept of ‘colony’ as used in the eighteenth century was widely known, the category of the ‘semi-colony’ eventually proved to be unable to describe the conditions of the Austrian–Hungarian world in the second half of the nineteenth century. The term ‘Hungarian Empire’ clearly arose from the language of the nineteenth century. Various meanings of this were formulated: as a term for the one-time territory of Hungarian Kingdom (the Holy Crown of St. Stephen, meaning Hungary proper, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia) on the one hand; and another one that included expansion beyond the Carpathian basin (mainly toward southeastern Europe). A third meaning also existed: a Hungarian-centered version that included all Habsburg provinces, which from time to time was hard to distinguish from the first and second meanings mentioned above. Reviewing the asymmetrical but parallel developments of the concepts of ‘colony’ and ‘empire,’ we must establish that in the long term the case for the usage of both terms has been undermined. Even more does this opinion seem to be valid in the case of derivative, retrospectively constructed concepts (such as semi-colony, and sub-empire) that are not rooted in the dictionary of the historical sources and conceptual history of political ideas.