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Conceptual Metaphors Essay

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The examples 1 and 2 are brought forward to demonstrate the conceptual metaphor Labour as a Resource and that the metaphor reveals the human as a standing-reserve. The reason why there are two examples within this topic is because the first example is a very good example of how labour is dehumanised and the second example ads to it by showing that we accept and aim for cheap labour. 1. “In March, employers added 192,000 jobs, just below February’s gain of 192,000 jobs. Going forward, some economists believe the stronger economy will lift average monthly job gains to around 225,000. That will mean more income earners and more consumer spending.” (Econ02) In example 1 our focus is income earners. The denotation of income earner is looked up …show more content…

1. Income earners is uttered in context with the words added, lift, gain and more. The use of the conceptual metaphors More Is Up/Less is Down and Up is good/Down is bad with the use of these words. In more depth, these words are orientational metaphors. Lakoff and Johnson (2003) explain that orientational metaphors are the categorisation of single words as having a literal and an abstract meaning (p. 174). The phrase income earner is described through the words that have an upward directionality; therefore, there are both increases in quantity to give a positive attitude towards the increase of income earners since that will increase the spending. This shows a biased discourse within economy that supports the societal benefit of the individual. Which also might cause us to unconsciously link the benefit of the society higher than the benefit of the individual. This is either caused by or might cause a shift in the conceptual system to dehumanise the human, since the human is seen as a benefit for the society. The phrase income earner is therefore, through this metaphor additionally helping to dehumanise the human because then the human becomes easier to accept as resource and

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