National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic: Cultural Experience and Political Imagination [1st ed.] 9789811587399, 9789811587405

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Cultural Linguistics

Andreas Musolff

National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic Cultural Experience and Political Imagination

Cultural Linguistics Series Editor Farzad Sharifian, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Cultural Linguistics advances multidisciplinary inquiry into the relationship between language and cultural conceptualisations. It champions research that advances our understanding of how features of human languages encode culturally constructed conceptualisations of experience. Edited by world-renowned linguist Professor Farzad Sharifian, Cultural Linguistics publishes monographs and edited volumes from diverse but complementary disciplines as wide-ranging as cross-cultural pragmatics, anthropological linguistics and cognitive psychology to present new perspectives on the intersection between culture, cognition and language. Featured themes include: • • • • • • •

Cultural conceptualisations and the structure of language Language and cultural categorisation Language, culture, and embodiment Language and cultural conceptualisations of emotions Cultural conceptualisations and pragmatic meaning Cultural conceptualisations and (im)polite language use Applied Cultural Linguistics (e.g., Cultural Linguistics and English Language Teaching, Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes, Cultural Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, Cultural Linguistics and Political Discourse Analysis)

The series editor welcomes proposals that fit the description above. For more information about how you can submit a proposal, please contact the publishing editor, Alex Westcott Campbell: [email protected]

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14294

Andreas Musolff

National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic Cultural Experience and Political Imagination

Andreas Musolff School of Politics, Philosophy and Language and Communication Studies University of East Anglia Norwich, UK

ISSN 2520-145X ISSN 2520-1468 (electronic) Cultural Linguistics ISBN 978-981-15-8739-9 ISBN 978-981-15-8740-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

In Memory of Farzad Sharifian, Series Editor, Cultural Linguistics 2017–2020

For Saskia

Acknowledgements

This book would have been impossible to write without the support and direct help of many friends/colleagues who gave generously of their time and experience to discuss its plan, supplied survey data from universities across the world and provided ample feedback and corrections on drafts. They include: Muhammad Tanweer Abdullah, Kathleen Ahrens, Ludmilla Antypenko-A’Beckett, Liudmila Arcimaviciene, Angeliki Athanasiadou, Fabienne Baider, Melike Ba¸s, Sadia Belkhir, Judit Baranyiné Kóczy, Ruth Breeze, Kate Burridge, Piotr Cap, Theresa Catalano, Jonathan Charteris-Black, Nancy D. Campbell, Paul Chilton, Alan Cienki, Herbert Colston, David Cowling, Allison Creed, Eliecer Crespo-Fernández, Marta Degani, Alice Deignan, Massimilano Demata, Lettie Dorst, Tatjana Ðurovi´c, Anita Fetzer, Luna Filipovi´c, Alan Finlayson, Monika Fludernik, Roslyn Frank, Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, Sarali Gintsburg, Aleksander Gomola, Anna Gornostaeva, Qasim Hassan, Renate Henkel, Janet Ho, Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Denis Jamet, Zohar Kampf, Simon Kaner, Sonja Kleinke, Veronika Koller, Monika Kopytowska, Bernd Kortmann, Zoltán Kövecses, Britta Küst, Henrike Lähnemann, Tatiana Larina, Natalya Lemish, Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, David Lilley, Jeannette Littlemore, Zohar Livnat, Joseph Lo Bianco, Ke Ma, Zouhair A. Maalej, Fiona MacArthur, Stefan Manz, Ivanka Mavrodieva, María Muelas Gil, Susan Nacey, Mariana Neagu, Linh Nguyen, Alexander Onysko, Giulio Pagani, Frank Polzenhagen, Shana Poplack, Gabrina Pounds, Benedikt Perak, Julien Perrez, Orsolya Putz, Martin Pütz, Kiki Renardel de Lavalette, Svetlana Revutskaia, Ahmed Al Raheem, Felicity Rash, Henry Rowe, Ljiljana Šari´c, Klaus-Peter Schneider, Elena Semino, Farzad Sharfian, Takashi Shogimen, Maria Sidiropoulou, Nadežda Silaški, Augusto Soares da Silva, Dennis Tay, Richard Trim, Josephine Tudor, Dovil˙e Vengaliene, Sara Vilar-Lluch, Lorella Viola, Aaron Ward, Daniel Weiss, Alain Wolf, Hans-Georg Wolf, Sin Tsun Derek Wong, Onur Yildirim, Ning Yu, Li Yuyan, Ali Zenagui, Xinje Zhang and Taochen Zhou. I also thank the many (over 2000!) students in the respective universities who volunteered to participate in the survey. The universities involved in the survey are listed in Appendix 1. I gratefully acknowledge funding for this research from the University of East Anglia and from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European ix

x

Acknowledgements

Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under REA grant agreement № [609305] for a fellowship at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg, Germany, which enabled me to lay the groundwork for this project.

Contents

1

Figurative Conceptualisations of the Nation(-State) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction: Sketching the Nation as a Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Metaphor Theory and the Challenge of Culture-Specific Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Cultural Metaphor Variation and Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 7 9 10

2

Nation, Nationalism and Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Fable of the Belly Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Scenarios of the Body Ruled by the Head or the Heart . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The illness-cure Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15 15 17 21 26 29

3

The Nation as a Body or Person in Present-Day British Political Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Britain Vis-à-Vis the EU: Organ or Independent Body? . . . . . . . . 3.3 Britain Vis-à-Vis the EU: Personal Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35 35 37 42 47 48

Cultural Conceptualisations of the Nation as a Body or Person: Scenario Analysis of Metaphor Interpretations . . . . . . . . 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Corpus Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Scenario Distribution Across L1 Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Overview of the Following Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51 51 54 60 62 63

4

1 1

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5

The Nation as a Body or Person in the English L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 The Nation as body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 The Nation as part of body and part of ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 The National Territory as geobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67 67 68 71 73 75 76 77

6

The Nation as a Body or Person in the German L1 Sample and Other Germanic L1 Samples: Dutch, Norwegian . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 The German L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 The Nation as body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 The Nation as part of body and part of ego . . . . . 6.2.3 The Nation as geobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.4 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 The Dutch and Norwegian L1 Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

79 79 79 80 83 85 86 90 92

The Nation as a Body or Person in Romance L1 Language Samples: Italian, Romanian, Spanish, French and Portuguese . . . . . 7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 The Italian L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 The Nation as body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 The Nation as part of body and part of ego . . . . . 7.2.3 The Nation as geobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.4 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 The Spanish L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 The Romanian L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 The French L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6 The Portuguese L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93 93 93 94 96 97 99 100 103 106 108 110 110

7

8

The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian and Bulgarian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 The Russian L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.1 The Nation as body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.2 The Nation as part of body, geobody and part of ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.3 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 The Ukrainian L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.1 The Nation as body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

113 113 113 114 115 117 119 120

Contents

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8.3.2

The Nation as part of body, geobody and part of ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.3 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 The Serbian L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.1 The Nation as body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.2 The Nation as part of body, part of ego and geobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.3 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 The Polish, Croatian and Bulgarian L1 Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

The Nation as a Body or Person in Other European L1 Language Samples: Hungarian, Lithuanian and Greek . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 The Hungarian L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.1 The Nation as body and geobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.2 The Nation as body part, part of ego and person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 The Lithuanian-L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3.1 The Nation as body and geobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3.2 The Nation as part of body and part of ego . . . . . 9.3.3 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 The Greek L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4.1 The Nation as body, geobody and part of body . . . 9.4.2 The Nation as part of ego and person . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 The Nation as a Body or Person in L1 Language Samples from Middle Eastern Countries: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 The Arabic (and Kabyle) L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.1 The Nation as body, geobody and part of body . . . 10.2.2 The Nation as part of ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.3 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 The Turkish L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.1 The Nation as body, geobody, part of body and part of ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.2 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 The Modern Hebrew L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5 The Urdu and Pashto L1 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

121 122 122 123 125 126 126 129 131 131 131 132 134 135 136 137 137 138 139 140 142

143 143 143 144 147 148 150 151 153 155 157 158

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11 Understanding the Nation as Body/Person from Asian Perspectives: China and Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 The nation as body/person in the Mandarinand Cantonese-L1 Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.1 The Nation as body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.2 The Nation as part of body and as part of ego . . . 11.2.3 The Nation as a geobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.4 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 The nation as a body or person for Japanese L1 Speakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.1 The Nation as body, part of body and part of ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.2 The National Territory as geobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.3 The Nation as person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Cultural Variation in Figurative Scenarios of the Nation’s Body and/or Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2 Types of Metaphor Scenario Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.3 Scenario Preferences Across L1 Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.4 Further Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

159 159 159 161 163 164 166 170 170 172 173 173 175 175 176 179 183 184

Appendix 1: Overview of Completed Relevant Questionnaires and Survey Venues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Appendix 2: Spreadsheet: Scenario Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Appendix 3: L1 Languages, Gender and Age Group Distribution . . . . . . 191 Appendix 4: Scenario Distribution by L1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Index (a) Names, Idioms and Analytical Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Index (b) Metaphors Source Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Index (c) Metaphor Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Index (d) Metonymies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Chapter 1

Figurative Conceptualisations of the Nation(-State)

1.1 Introduction: Sketching the Nation as a Body In 2014, a British student at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich (UK) drew the following sketch of her nation as a stickman1 (Fig. 1.1):

Fig. 1.1 Britain as a body politic

1 Permission

for the anonymous publication here and a waiver of copyright were given by the student who self-identified as being of “British” nationality. Her study subject was a Modern Languages degree and the module in which the questionnaire was distributed was an Undergraduate Sociolinguistics seminar. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_1

1

2

1 Figurative Conceptualisations of the Nation(-State)

The sketch was produced as a response to a questionnaire that asked students to apply the “metaphor of the nation as a body” to their own nation. It shows a reflective, ironical attitude to “banal nationalism” (Billig 1995) by playing on some well-known stereotypes about ‘the’ British (or English) national character with reference to bodyparts, e.g. hand—tea-drinking, feet—queuing, shoulders—burdened with historical reminiscences, guts—courage as legacy of Britain’s empire.2 The sketch is part of a corpus of questionnaire responses collected over eight years from more than 2000 students in 29 countries. Its purpose was to investigate differences in the construction of body- and person-based metaphors for nations. My interest in such differences was first triggered by a surprise result of a vocabulary check on the term body politic in a class of international students in 2011 (for details see Chap. 4) and long-standing doubts about the account given of metaphor variation in Cognitive Linguistics, which today represents the ‘mainstream’ approach of linguistic metaphor research. In the following sections I will outline the doubts and the alternative approach that underlies this book.

1.2 Metaphor Theory and the Challenge of Culture-Specific Variation Returning briefly to example (1), we can identify several layers of metaphor variation. At the conceptual level, using figurative references to body-parts to signify mental states and/or behavioural characteristics is a fundamental technique of embodying human life-world experience and has been shown to be characterised by profound cultural diversity and variation. Body parts, fluids, as well as states of health and illness have long been conceived in all cultures as endowed with psychological, philosophical, even theological significance, but in highly different ways. In a comparative study of cultural conceptualisations of mouth, lips, tongue and teeth in Bulgarian and English, for instance, Bagasheva (2017: 216) has shown in detail that despite “the proximity of the two cultural groups”, the coincidences in metonymies and metaphors based on these body part concepts are “negligible”; instead, their diversity “is indicative of the inherent irreducibility of cultural cognition to human universals”.3 Furthermore, in terms of target-domain reference, the indicated bodily and personal features in example (1) are specifically associated with the British nation, which is metaphorically imagined as a human individual with a supposedly typical 2 Guts

as a lexicalised metaphor for courage, as in have the guts to…, see Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 1993, 1: 1164. 3 The literature on this topic is vast, drawing as it does from Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Cognitive Psychology and Comparative/Contrastive Linguistics. Exemplary empirical and theoretical analyses can be found in Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk (2014), Kövceses (2005), KraskaSzlenk (2019), Maalej and Yu (2011), Pasamonik (2012), Pauwels and Simon-Vandenbergen (1995), Rice (2012), Sharifian (2017a, b, c), Sharifian et al. (2008), Yu (2009a, b), Ziemke et al. (2007).

1.2 Metaphor Theory and the Challenge of Culture-Specific Variation

3

anatomy and personality (i.e. pessimism, orderliness, courage…). Such nationspecific characterisations vary on account of diverse historical experience and topical collective self-conceptualisation. Lastly, the pictorial presentation and the wording of the sketch, and especially meta-comments such as “habitual and supra-contextual”, “think Elizabeth I” or “queuing—orderly, rule-respecting”, indicate the individual informant’s (distanced) attitude to the task and its topic. Even without extensive comparison, we can identify it as a reflected and highly personal, almost idiosyncratic, response. The task of applying the nation as body metaphor to her own country posed no challenge to the student but it seems to have motivated her to invest some considerable interpretive and ludic energy into her answer. Clearly, this type of response cannot be expected to be the standard model; we thus have to allow for variation not just at cultural, national and social but also at individual level. But how can we capture this multi-layered and multi-faceted variation of metaphoric conceptualisation in an analytical framework? Within Cognitive (or “Conceptual”) Metaphor Theory, which since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors we live by in 1980 (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003) has grown into a sub-discipline of Cognitive Science, the issue of variation has by now become a central area of research in its own right. However, due in a large part to the universalist bias inherited from the early phase of Cognitive metaphor theory (see e.g. the chapters on “orientational” and “ontological” metaphors in Lakoff andJohnson 1980/2003: 14–21, 25–34), the problem of variation is far from resolved. Its parameters, i.e. synchronic and diachronic variation, stylistic and social variation, variation in usage and metarepresentation on the ‘production’ side, and in identification, recognition and interpretation on the ‘reception side, are often mixed, confused or differentially weighted, and their theoretical status is contested. Sometimes variation is still treated as a kind of surface phenomenon of ‘mere’ stylistic variation and aesthetic creativity that does not affect the universality of deep-seated primary, embodied metaphors (e.g. in Lakoff and Turner 1989; Gibbs 2005). Variation phenomena have also been given prominence at certain levels of systemic linguistic description, such as lexical semantics and spatial conceptualisations in sentence semantics (see Kristiansen and Dirven 2008; Kövecses 2005), mainly in relation to diverse ‘national languages’ and/or ‘national cultures’. These latter categories, however, have been fundamentally put in question over the past century. Even Ernest Renan’s ‘classic’ 1882 definition of nation as a “daily plebiscite” in the sense of a continually reaffirmed sense of a common history to be continued into the future (Renan 1990: 21) no longer relied an ‘objective’ basis (e.g. supposedly common/original territory, ethnic origin, language). More recently, the concept of “nation” has been demonstrated to be a socially imposed norm (Gellner 1983), an “imagined community” (Anderson 2006) and a narrative construct (Billig 1995; Hall 1996). In the wake of such a discourse-oriented deconstruction, its derived notions of ‘national identity’, ‘national culture’ and ‘national language’ can only

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be regarded as products of communal symbolic activities.4 Nor can “culture” be viewed as a static entity whose identity or ‘essence’ can unambiguously be delineated (Holliday 1999). Instead, it, too, has to be seen as a product of communicative actions in socio-historically embedded situations (Frank 2008) that changes with time and is influenced by the intentions of its agents. “Culture is a verb”, as Ronald and Suzanne Wong Scollon aptly put it (Scollon et al. 2012: 5). Like nations and national languages, cultures, too, are historical phenomena. This historicity and, attached to it historical change, i.e. diachronic variation is especially problematic for the approach to metaphor associated with Lakoff and his closest collaborators.5 They have prioritised the so-called ‘experiential’ (physical) basis and with it ‘automaticity’, ‘universality’ and “non-deliberateness” of metaphor use and understanding over variation- and history-sensitive explanations. Cognitive theory’s analytical categories—“domains” of knowledge experience, “schemas”, “cognitive models” or “frames” (both linguistic and non-linguistic), or “mental spaces” (for specialised concept versions or propositions)—have all been defined as universal mental structures (Taylor 1995). Whilst there has been some theoretical movement towards acknowledging culture-specific metaphor construals, especially in the works of Zoltán Kövecses who allows for both “cross-cultural” and “within-culture” variation (2005: 67–113) and also for a “multiple bodily basis” of source concepts that are varyingly privileged in different cultures (2015: 79), the fundamental problem remains. If mental structures (domain, frames, schemas) are supposed to be the basis/source of metaphor mappings in themselves, any “contextual” variation (which for Kövecses does include the cultural context; see Kövecses 2015: 71) can only ever be a secondary, derived and ultimately contingent aspect.6 Dirven and Polzenhagen (2007: 1217–1218) count four types of “tensions” within the concept of “cultural models”, i.e. (1) between proposition and conceptual metaphor types, (2) between their social and individualistic nature, (3) between universal and culture-specific types and (4) between two types of bodily experience, i.e. individualist and holistic experience as source for cultural metaphors and metonymies. These tensions, especially the third one, need to be taken seriously. Rather than trying to skirt around them, it may be useful to focus on an exemplary 4 In particular, the notion of a unified ‘national language’ has been shown in sociolinguistic research

to represent a popular-linguistic “myth” rather than an objective reality (Bauer and Trudgill 1998; Wardhaugh 1999). 5 See Fauconnier and Turner (2002) and Gibbs (1994, 2005, 2011a, b), Lakoff (1993, 1996, 2004, 2008), Lakoff and Johnson (1980/2003) and (1996), Lakoff and Turner (1989) , Lakoff and Wehling (2016). 6 Kövecses has engaged in detail with the specific challenge to his experientialist explanation of fluid-related emotion metaphors and idioms (e.g. as based on heat and blood pressure experience, see Kövecses 1990, 2000). He allocates the alternative evidence presented by Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995) and Gevaert (2005), namely that emotion metaphors in European cultures were linked to the “humoral” conceptualisation of emotions that dominated medical thought in Europe for 1500 years, a special time-window around 1400 when it was particularly frequently used. The cultural/historical motivation of emotion metaphors is thus accommodated as being an accidental effect of outside factors that has little to do with the alleged basic conceptual mapping, emotion as (heated) fluid in a container.

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case in detail and gain a basis for a better understanding of the consequences of such tensions for empirical analysis. One of the clearest formulations of the universalistexperientialist stance can be found in a passage from Lakoff and Turner’s (1989) book More than Cool Reason. A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. In it, they downgrade culture-specific historical evidence in favour of a universalist explanation with reference to the conceptual framework of the Great Chain of Being, which for many centuries served as the basis of assumptions about ‘ontological correspondences’ and metaphor mappings between diverse levels of beings in European/Western cultural traditions. The relevant passage from their book is quoted here in a longer excerpt, as it deserves close scrutiny: The Great Chain of Being is a cultural model that concerns kinds of beings and their properties and places them on a vertical scale with “higher” beings and properties above “lower” beings and properties. […] Commonly, the Great Chain of Being is taught as background to literature and the history of ideas as essential to an understanding of the worldviews of classical authors like Plato and Aristotle, medieval authors like Dante and Chaucer, Renaissance authors like Shakespeare, and even Augustan authors like Pope. But it is taught as if it somehow died out in the industrial age. On the contrary, a highly articulated version of it still exists as a contemporary unconscious cultural model indispensable to our understanding of ourselves, our world, and our language. We will distinguish between two versions of the Great Chain, one basic and one extended. The basic Great Chain concerns the relation of human beings to “lower” forms of existence. It is extremely widespread and occurs not only in Western culture but throughout a wide range of the world’s cultures. It is largely unconscious and so fundamental to our thinking that we barely notice it. The extended Great Chain concerns the relation of human beings to society, God and the universe. The extended Great Chain is central to the Western tradition […] (Lakoff and Turner 1989: 166–167)

The passage starts with the claim that the Great Chain of Being metaphor complex7 is a “cultural model”, but what is specifically ‘cultural’ about it remains unclear throughout because its historical dimension is effectively removed. Only the “Western tradition” is mentioned as the context for the use of its “extended version”, with a few hints at famous literary and philosophical sources, but no comparable traditions are identified. Lakoff and Turner then claim the existence of a “basic” version that is allegedly universal. They fail to provide any empirical or bibliographic evidence for it and also leave unclear what distinguishes this basic version from the extended one, except for the fact that the latter ‘extends’ to “society, God and the universe.” So, are other cultures supposed not to have such an “extension”? And why should the mere assumption of an ontological hierarchy be at all metaphorical?—what is supposed to be the target, what the source domain? Information on both is accessible from Lovejoy’s famous book The Great Chain of Being (1936), which is not quoted by Lakoff and Turner, perhaps because they regarded it as treating the concept only “as background” to philosophy and literature “up to the Augustan Age”. Apart from the fact that Lovejoy’s book did cover nineteenth century discussions of the Great Chain of Being and related its development to the politics of his day, i.e. the 1930s (see below), they ignore the fact that in Lovejoy’s 7 Lakoff and Turner call it also an “ensemble consisting of the commonsense theory about the Nature

of Things’ + the Great Chain + the generic is specific metaphor + the Maxim of Quantity” (Lakoff and Turner 1989: 172).

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account, the aspect of Hierarchy (which he called Gradation) was only one of three inherent principles, with the other two being Continuity and Plenitude (‘Completeness’). Lovejoy analysed the history of this conceptual complex as an immanent dialectic of these three principles, which ended as a failed “experiment in thought” (1936: 329), due to the destruction of the continuity and plenitude principles by the hierarchical dimension, especially at the level of national ideologies. Specifically, he highlighted the “collective vanity which is nationalism or racialism” (1936: 313) in early twentieth century political culture as a repercussion of this failure. Thus, far from presenting the Great Chain of Being as having “died out in the industrial age”, he linked it emphatically to the then topical rise of genocidal racism. By misrepresenting the Great Chain of Being concept tradition as merely of historical interest and declaring without any further evidence an ahistorical “basic” Great Chain as universal, Lakoff and Turner lose the chance to explain what the differences between the supposedly distinct (Western v. non-Western) “cultural models” are.8 They also trivialise the historical dimension of the Great Chain of Being by glossing over the vast distance that separates present-day metaphorical applications of a ‘higher-lower dimension’ (e.g. in the everyday practice of using ‘lower animal’ names as insults for humans) from the literally held belief-systems of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, in which such hierarchies were an integral part of a worldview that appeared to its holders as plausible as popular science models may nowadays seem to the general public in Western countries. To ancient and medieval scholars and writers using the Great Chain of Being system, and to those who revived this Neo-Platonic tradition in the early Renaissance, the notion of a Chain of all Beings was not a ‘metaphor’ but a literal description of a universe, with practical, e.g. legal, medical and political applications (Kodera 2010; Tillyard 1982; Marks 1998). It was only in the Renaissance that the Great Chain of Being started to be queried as a world-explanation on a large scale in the West. Since then it has become a literary and rhetorical motif that is perceived as a ‘metaphorical’ analogy. To pretend that a metaphor (or “metaphor ensemble”) in its “basic” version stays the same over a millennium or more is to make the same mistake as treating seemingly similar or identical conceptual mappings from different cultures as the ‘same’ metaphors. Nothing could be further from the truth, as evidence from cross-cultural comparison and from recent analyses of intercultural communication (and miscommunication), has shown. Farzad Sharifian, for instance, has shown in a number of studies that many basic misunderstandings between members of Australian ‘white’ and Aboriginal cultures arise from the fact that members of the former group view as (anthropologically interesting) ‘metaphors’ what the latter use as realistic, literal descriptions (Sharifian 2014a, b, 2017a: 19–21, 96–99).9 Australian and 8 In

the remainder of their book Lakoff and Turner confine their discussion to the “Western Extensions” of the Great Chain. Kövecses (2002: 124–127, 2017: 23) also claims universality for it but again relies mainly on Western examples. 9 Sharifian’s observation of widespread miscommunication in figurative language use between speakers of Aboriginal Australian English and (‘Western’) Australian English fits in with a growing body of research revealing ‘hidden’ miscommunication in ELF and ESL education contexts, see Chap. 4 and the literature cited there.

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many other ‘aboriginal’ cultures operate Chain of Being systems that are not just lacking some points of Western Christian metaphysics for the ‘upper’ parts of the Chain but are incompatible with Western traditions.10 Their reduction to a supposedly universal hierarchical ontology looks more like a belittlement rather than a “cognitive” analysis. Building on the work of Palmer (1996, 2006) and others, Sharifian (2015a, 2017a, b) has developed a “Cultural Linguistics” approach that explicitly includes the analytical level of “cultural metaphors”, i.e. as a sub-group of “cultural conceptualisations” (2015b: 478), which “have their roots in cultural traditions such as folk medicine, ancient religions/worldviews” (2017a: 18) but reach into the present. Given his empirical findings about the different epistemological status of metaphors in Australian Aboriginal and mainstream English, Sharifian reminds readers of the importance of determining the precise developmental stage of metaphors in cultural history. Present-day metaphorical expressions may contain “‘fossilised’ conceptualisations that represented “active insight at some stage in the history of the cultural cognition of a group” but they no longer function as active conceptual mappings for current speakers and have become mere “figures of speech” (2015b: 482). When applied to the Great Chain of Being, for instance, this approach would imply that present-day uses of it need to be differentiated into three types: (a) those that have become lexicalised phraseologisms; (b) those that still evoke live/awake conceptual mappings whose roots can be traced back to historical predecessors and reveal a specific cultural heritage; and (c) a residual rest that may still be believed in some subcultures. In the case of a specific metaphor token such as that in example (1), which already contains explicit hints at cultural content (references to national history and meta-pragmatic hints at usage and stereotypes), analysing its cultural specificity entails tracing the historical text- and discourse-traditions that it invokes and distinguishing them from other cultural traditions. To accomplish the latter task, a comparison of larger groups of tokens from various traditions is indispensible.

1.3 Cultural Metaphor Variation and Scenarios Within his overarching “Cultural Linguistics” framework, Sharifian relates “cultural metaphors” to “cultural schemas” and “cultural categories”, with “schemas” indicating comprehensive belief/value systems and “categories” referring to lexical sets, e.g. colour or kinship categories etc. (2017a: 18, 2017c: 5). He also posits a “cultural processing continuum” of metaphors with two poles. At one end he locates collective “worldview metaphors” that approximate whole “culture schemas” which have literal status for insiders (e.g. an Australian aboriginal believing that s/he is identical with the land, see Sharifian 2017a: 19, or the Great Chain of Being in 10 See research on “endangered metaphors” in aboriginal and in minority languages, e.g. Caballero and Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2009), Degani (2017), Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2012), Idström and Piirainen (2012), Piirainen and Sherris (2015).

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medieval thought and discourse). At the other end of the spectrum are individual creative mappings (e.g. a coining “foot Falcon”—‘to walk’, see 2017a: 21), which still belong to the specific culture (Australian Aborigines) in contrast to another culture (white Australians) but are not a core part of its worldview. Between these two poles are metaphors that are closely linked to the worldview-schemas but are also consciously known to be figurative by the speakers (e.g. the notion of medicine as healing power of the ancestor beings, see 2017a: 20–21). These distinctions are methodologically important, as they underline the need to critically reflect about the level at which a “cultural metaphor” is being analysed: As an instantiation of a collective cultural worldview? As a culturally conventionalised mapping? Or as a one-off coining that is culture-specific in the sense of being used exclusively by the members of a particular cultural context, but has little or no (folk-) theoretical background? Examples such as (1) afford analysis at all these “cultural” levels, due to their conceptual and pragmatic richness. They can be seen as instances of a centuries’ old English (and millennia-old Western) tradition of using the human body to conceptualise one’s own socio-political collective, i.e. the nation. But they are also evidence of specific categorical mappings (e.g. from the respective body parts to ‘national characteristics’) and of the creativity and pragmatic intentions on the part of the individual writer, which may be quite untypical or idiosyncratic when compared with larger sets of data. In addition, we need to bear in mind the danger of ‘essentialising’ reifications of cultures into homogeneous static entities, especially as regards socalled “sub-cultures” (Holliday 1999; Scollon et al. 2012). We cannot assume that any “cultural metaphor” tradition is ever homogeneous, i.e. that a cultural context is characterised by the exclusive occurrence (or absence) of a metaphor. Like other metaphor variation phenomena, cultural differences are most likely to be expressed distributionally, i.e. in terms of varying weightings of particular uses of the metaphors in question.11 For this purpose, an analytical tool is needed that can represent the distribution patterns found in the empirically observed linguistic data, without claiming to be derived from a pre-conceived philosophical or psychological theory. Building on the cognitively oriented view of conceptual “scenarios” as types of frames (Fillmore 1975; Lakoff 1987: 284–287; Taylor 1995: 87–90), the theatre/film-based notion of a scenario can be used to indicate a type of analysis that focuses on patterns of metaphor use in corpus data and links them to hypotheses about (a) their core conceptual material (participants, roles, event schemas) as well as implicit story-lines and evaluative bias(es), and (b) the culture-specific discoursetraditions they may belong to. Scenarios thus reflect not just the universal “schematic” ontology of a metaphor and its lexical and domain-specific “framing” but also include narrative, emotive and argumentative elements.12 Crucially, the scenarios 11 For genre-specific distributional metaphor variation see the contributions in Herrmann and Berber Sardinha (2015); for language-specific distributional metaphor variation see Belkhir (2014), Callies and Onysko (2017), Charteris-Black (2003, 2004), Charteris-Black and Musolff (2003), Deignan (2005), Musolff (2012). 12 Metaphor scenarios are defined by their semantic and pragmatic structure but not by length nor restricted to direct metaphors; they thus also include similes; see Musolff (2006, 2016: 28). For

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are collected from the data, not from pre-conceived mental architectures, collective worldviews or individual consciousness. The scenario category is only designed as an analytical tool to represent empirically observable usage patterns in a corpus of metaphor data. Its usefulness is relative to the representativeness of the respective corpus and to the accuracy of the semantic, pragmatic and historical analysis of distribution patterns in it. The resulting conclusions do not claim to reveal any direct causation between “cultural metaphors” and usage tokens but instead to elucidate the most plausible “indirect links” (Deignan 2003) between the observed discourse data and conceptualisation preferences in specific cultural contexts.

1.4 Outlook This “scenario”-analytical approach underlies all chapters of this book, with a thematic focus on metaphorical conceptualisations of the nation as a body. Chapters 2 and 3 have the function of ‘setting the scene’ for the discussion of the main material introduced here, i.e. data showing cross-cultural variation in the interpretation of the nation as body metaphor. In Chap. 2, I sketch an outline of the historical development of the main scenarios of the metaphor in Western/European cultural contexts. For a comprehensive cross-cultural comparison to be achieved, historiographic analyses of such traditions in other cultural contexts are needed, i.e. the histories of nation as body conceptualisation, for instance in Asian, Middle Eastern and other cultural contexts. Unfortunately it is not possible within the remit of this book to accomplish such a comprehensive overview: we can only flag up possible influences of such traditions on the interpretation patterns found in data from Asian (Japanese and Chinese) and Middle Eastern (Turkish, Arabic, Israeli, Pakistani) informants, where they appear, e.g. in references to specific religious and or social/political contexts (in Chaps. 6–11). Chapter 3 is devoted to the usage scenarios in present-day British English, with the current debates about Britain’s sovereignty in the context of its withdrawal from the European Union (“Brexit”) as a topical example.13 Chapter 4 then introduces methodological issues of applying the “scenario” approach to data from a metaphor interpretation survey. It covers corpus construction, methods of scenario identification in metaphor interpretation and comparison of scenario distributions across more than 20 linguistic and cultural contexts. The results of this comparison are presented in the following chapters, which are ordered by linguistic/cultural contexts based on informants’ first languages (L1s); i.e. English, further Western and Northern European L1s, Southern and Eastern European L1s, Middle Eastern L1s and two Asian further findings from empirical testing of metaphor scenarios see Deignan (2010: 360–362), Semino (2008: 219–222, 2016: 210), Semino et al. (2018). 13 Other topics could have been chosen, too, but the Brexit debate material is sufficiently rich to illustrate the main scenario usage patterns of the nation as body metaphor in current British public discourse.

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L1s (Chinese and Japanese). In Chap. 12, an overview is provided that makes the case for a culture-sensitive metaphor analysis that does not assume the analyst’s privileged ‘direct’ access to metaphorical meanings, but interprets the distribution patterns of metaphor scenarios as evidence of cultural preferences.

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Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980/2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books. Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason. A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G., & Wehling, E. (2016). Your brain’s politics. How the science of mind explains the political divide. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Lovejoy, A. O. (1936). The great chain of being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Maalej, Z. A., & Yu, N. (Eds.). (2011). Embodiment via body parts: Studies from various languages and cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Marks, J. (1998). Great chain of being. In J. H. Moore (Ed.), Encyclopedia of race and racism (pp. 68–73). New York: Gale/Macmillan. Musolff, A. (2006). Metaphor scenarios in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 21(1), 23–38. Musolff, A. (2012). Cultural differences in the understanding of the metaphor of the ‘Body Politic’. In S. Kleinke, Z. Kövecses, A. Musolff, & V. Szelid (Eds.), Cognition and culture. The role of metaphor and metonymy (pp. 145–153). Budapest: Eötvös University Press. Musolff, A. (2016). Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios. London: Bloomsbury. Palmer, G. B. (1996). Toward a theory of cultural linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. Palmer, G B. (2006). When does Cognitive Linguistics become Cultural? Case Studies in Tagalog voice and Shona noun classifiers. In J. Luchjenbroers (ed.). Cognitive Linguistics Investigations. Across languages, fields and philosophical boundaries. (pp. 13–46). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pasamonik, C. (2012). “My heart falls out”: Conceptualizations of body parts and emotion expressions in Beaver Athabaskan. In A. Idström & E. Piirainen (Eds.), Endangered Metaphors (pp. 77–101). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pauwels, P., & Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. (1995). Body parts in linguistic action: Underlying schemata and value judgements. In L. Goossens, P. Pauwels, B. Rudzka-Ostyn, A.-M. SimonVandenbergen, & J. Vanparys (Eds.), By word of mouth: Metaphor, metonymy and linguistic action in cognitive perspective (pp. 35–69). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Piirainen, E., & Sherris, A. (Eds.). (2015). Language endangerment: Disappearing metaphors and shifting conceptualizations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Renan, E. (1990). What is a nation? In H. K. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and narration (pp. 8–22). London: Routledge. Rice, S. (2012). “Our language is very literal”: Figurative expression in Dene S˛ułiné [Athapaskan]. In A. Idström & E. Piirainen (Eds.), Endangered metaphors (pp. 21–76). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Scollon, R., Scollon, S. W., & Jones, R. H. (2012). Intercultural communication: A discourse approach. Oxford: Blackwell. Semino, E. (2008). Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Semino, E. (2016). A corpus-based study of ‘mixed metaphor’ as a metalinguistic comment. In R. W. Gibbs (Ed.), Mixing metaphor (pp. 203–222). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Semino, E, Demjén, Z. & Demmen, J. (2018). An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse, and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer. Applied Linguistics, 39(5), 625–645. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amw028. Sharifian, F. (2014a). Cultural conceptualizations in intercultural communication: A study of aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(12), 3367–3376. Sharifian, F. (2014b). Conceptual metaphor in intercultural communication between speakers of aboriginal English and Australian English. In A. Musolff, F. MacArthur, & G. Pagani (Eds.), Metaphor and intercultural communication (pp. 117–129). London: Bloomsbury Linguistics. Sharifian, F. (2015a). Cultural linguistics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 473–492). London: Routledge.

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Sharifian, F. (2015b). Cultural linguistics: The development of a multidisciplinary paradigm. Language and Semiotic Studies, 1(1), 1–26. Sharifian, F. (2017a). Cultural linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sharifian, F. (Ed.). (2017b). Advances in cultural linguistics. Singapore: Springer. Sharifian, F. (ed.) (2017c). Cultural Linguistics: The State of the Art. In Advances in Cultural Linguistics. (pp. 1-28). Singapore: Springer. Sharifian, F., Dirven, Yu., & N & Niemeier, S. (Eds.). (2008). Culture, body, and language. Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Taylor, J. R. (1995). Linguistic categorization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tillyard, E. M. W. (1982). The Elizabethan world picture. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Wardhaugh, R. (1999). Proper English: Myths and misunderstandings about language. Oxford: Wiley. Yu, N. (2009a). From body to meaning in culture: Papers on cognitive semantic studies of Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Yu, N. (2009b). The Chinese HEART in a cognitive perspective: Culture, body, and language. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ziemke, T., Zlatev, J., & Frank, R. M. (Eds.). (2007). Body, language and mind. Vol. 1: Embodiment. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Chapter 2

Nation, Nationalism and Metaphor

2.1 Introduction In order to form a culture-sensitive view of figurative conceptualisations such as that of the nation as body metaphor, it is necessary to follow up their trace through history in specific cultural contexts rather than assuming a universal, ahistorical version, as Lakoff and Turner (1989) do in their treatment of the Great Chain of Being metaphor. For the history of nation as body conceptualisations in Western culture(s) this task may at first sight seem straightforward. The metaphor has a distinct lexical history in most European languages and has been extensively researched in intellectual history, resulting in a vast literature comprising anthologies and editions of primary sources as well as specialised secondary publications, which focus on specific authors, motifs and epochs as well as on the metaphor’s impact in artistic genres and in social and legal applications.1 However, before we can sketch the intellectual history of nation as body scenarios, we need to reflect on the kind of evidence we are gathering. A diachronic metaphor corpus relies on the presupposition that its data, i.e. source-target mappings in specific texts, form a series along the temporal axis in which both continuities and discontinuities can be observed.2 Such a continuous tradition is deemed to pertain even when it is clear that the semantic basis for the respective source concepts and knowledge about their target referents changes over time. This hypothesis can be illustrated by a few examples. In his Politics, for instance, Aristotle (384–322 BCC) 1 For

anthologies and editions see especially Charbonnel (2010), Christine de Pizan (1994), Fortescue (1997), John of Salisbury (1990), Marsilius of Padua (2005), Nederman (1992), Nederman and Forhan (1993), Nicholas of Cusa (1991); for historical overviews and comparisons see Coker (1910), Feher, Nadaff and Tazi (1989), Guldin (2000), Hale (1968, 1971a, b), Harvey (2007), Kantorowicz (1997), Koschorke et al. (2007), Maitland (2003), Mouton (2009a, b), Musolff (2010a, b, 2012), Nederman (2004), Patterson (1991), Schoenfeldt (1997), Shogimen (2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2016), Skinner (1978), Struve (1978). 2 For discussions of diachronic corpus building of figurative language data see Allan (2009), Geeraerts (2010a, b), Musolff (2011c), Tissari (2010), Trim (2011a, b). © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_2

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uses the analogy between the human body and the state (i.e. the Greek polis) to argue that in both cases the uncontrolled growth of a limb, e.g. the foot (‘the poor’) endangers all the other body parts (Aristotle 1995: 184), thus presupposing the notion of the political entity state as a whole body. Now let us consider a present-day depiction of a new underclass growing ‘out of proportion’ with the rest of society, as stated in a 2017 article in the British left-liberal newspaper The Guardian: [in ancient times] priests, philosophers and poets […] explained that, just as in the human body not all members are equal—the feet must obey the head—so also in human society […] [but nowadays] bioengineering coupled with the rise of AI may result in the separation of humankind into a small class of superhumans, and a massive underclass of ‘useless’ people’ (Harari 2017).

Both the source concepts (i.e. body in ancient and modern understanding) and the target referents in Aristotle’s and Harari’s texts, i.e. ‘state’, ‘society’, ‘poverty’, have changed hugely over the more than two millennia that separate them. But the bodilysocio-political analogy, and in particular the idea of a similar hierarchical ordering in bodies and societies or polities (poor underclass/‘lowest’ part of society—feet as lowest part of body) are preserved and can be deemed to be broadly the same analogy. To draw such a conclusion does not imply the proposition that Harari consciously remembered Aristotle’s passage in the Politics when writing his article; the Guardian author refers just vaguely to “ancient priests, philosophers and poets”. Even where the fundamental ideas about the target domain change, they can still ‘receive’, as it were, similar source conceptualisations. From the late eighteenth century onwards, the basic understanding of what a typical state was or should be changed radically, i.e. from an almost exclusive focus on the elites to comprising national ‘peoples’ (Anderson 2006; Hobsbawm 1992). Thus, states became “nation states”, instead of being dynastic inheritances, and this new concept served as a normative ideal to criticise (and even abolish) allegedly ‘defective’ political entities. Hence, the metaphor of the state as a body or person was now applied to nations as ethnic and/or cultural and/or linguistic communities. This change did also alter the source domain by implying a re-assignment of body parts as parts of the nation away from elite groups or institutions towards a broader whole that encompassed all or most of the population (and even demanded a high degree homogeneity). Of course, the structure and definition of the nation as body metaphor’s source concepts has undergone drastic changes in terms of medical and biological information. In pre-modern times, mythological, philosophical and religious concepts of the body inherited from Antiquity were prevalent in popular thinking about physiological and medical matters. This legacy has left terminological traces even in present-day language. For instance, the theory of the “four humours”, which goes back to Hippocrates of Kos’ (fifth century BC) and Galen’s (first century AD) writings, has survived to this day in talk about “temperaments” (phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, melancholic), even if the etymological links to Greek names for body parts may have today been forgotten by many speakers of English.3 It is true that, 3 See Jouanna

(2012), Temkin (1973); for “humour” —terminological continuity to the present day see Geeraerts (2010a: 251–252), Geeraerts and Grondelaers (1995).

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beginning with the Renaissance, a modern, ‘scientific’ understanding of physiological and medical matters started to influence popular knowledge about bodies and health, but it is doubtful even today whether popularised medical theories are more widely and accurately known than pre-modern ones. Knowledge of ‘natural kind’ entities is distributed unevenly and most discourse communities operate a ‘division of labour’ between lay people and experts (Putnam 1975), with only the latter group being expected to have precise knowledge of terminological definitions and scientific theories. This caveat applies a fortiori to metaphorical uses of scientific terminology. Today’s journalists may speak about an “immunodeficiency”, of the “DNA” and of “viruses” of a national body politic (for the respective examples see Chap. 3), but whether these terms mean more to them and their readers than the remnants of “humoral” medicine can only be proven by analysing the contexts of usage and understanding, not by looking up scientific textbooks. Obviously, compared with earlier periods such as the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, new terminological material has been added to the semantic field underlying the source domain for nation as body metaphors. But it is an open question how much conceptual change in the domain has been effected by these additions. Therefore, we must beware of anachronistically assuming a physiological or medical understanding of the source domain by the users of the nation (state) as body metaphor that may have been only available to a few experts in their time and became popular only later. In a period such as the Renaissance some scientific insights that we still accept today were already formulated by a few outstanding researchers. But this does not mean that nation as body metaphor users living in that period immediately and consistently applied such insights, just as it is unlikely that today’s cliché descriptions of a certain attitude or ideology being “written into the DNA” of a nation means that the authors can explain how DNA resembles a written code. The methodological solution to the double dilemma of source and target domain changes along the line of usage over time can only be to establish what the most likely source- and target-connotations of the analogy were in each case of use. In that way we can identify the discontinuities along the line of usage, i.e. the introduction of both new source- and target domain understandings. Our focus on metaphor scenarios helps in identifying such changes, because their narrative-argumentative framings highlight new target meanings as salient figure-ground effects by contrast with a familiar semantic source. Scenarios thus serve as the background against which the new concept or argumentative application can be analysed in relation to the historically situated (Frank 2008) communicative context.

2.2 The Fable of the Belly Scenario Following the history of a famous conceptual metaphor such as that of the nation as a body is like time travel. For Western cultures, we can trace metaphorical conceptualisations based on the analogy back to Ancient Greece in the writings

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of Aristotle (Politics) and Plato (Republic, Timaios, Nomoi, Crito) and further to pre-Socratic thinkers (Hale 1971a: 19–20; Guldin 2000: 39–48; Koschorke et al. 2007: 64–72). An even earlier and, from a scenario-perspective, centrally important tradition is that of the Aesopian fables, specifically the “Fable of the Belly”, 4 which tells of a revolt of all or some of the body members against the belly/stomach because the latter takes all the nourishment and lets the other parts do the work. Responding to their complaint, the belly convinces the other members that they will starve if “he” does not first receive and then redistribute the nourishment, and that they should therefore end the rebellion (Aesop 1998: 117, Fable 159; 2002: 35, Fable 66; NB: the gender assignation in the English translations). The Fable thus spells out a metaphor scenario in exemplary form, complete with a mini-narrative (the rebellion, its turning point in the belly’s answer and a ‘happy ending’) and a lesson to be learnt, i.e. not to rebel against a superior organ of a larger body without reflecting first on one’s own dependency on it. The Fable’s presuppositions are easy to identify: in a body all members are dependent upon each other for their survival, and there is a hierarchy of more and less important members, which has to be accepted by all in order for the body to function. Within the story, the belly seems to occupy a ruling position, which would also allow a reading that politicises the body (imagined as target domain). However, as a parable to be applied in the ‘real world’, the story serves primarily as the source scenario for deriving a political lesson about socio-political hierarchy and its legitimisation. It was as such an exemplary justification of political power that the “Fable of the Belly” became famous throughout Antiquity. Building on Greek text collections, historians adapted the fable to political disputes in the ancient Roman Republic. Livy and Plutarch, inter alia, employed the fable as an exemplary piece of political rhetoric and wisdom by reframing it as a speech given by a Roman senator of the early Republic, Menenius Agrippa, to quell a plebeian revolt by applying the story to the rebels (as the body members) and the senate (as the belly), to legitimise the latter’s continuing rule (Livy 1998: 322–325; Plutarch 2001: 294–295). In this version, the fable was known throughout Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. It also served in modified form (minus the belly figure) as a template in St. Paul’s letters to the Romans (12: 4–5), Corinthians (I Corinthians 12: 12–26) and Ephesians (4: 4, 14–16; 5: 23, 29–30), where the community of Christians is described as the body of Christ, in which no single member could exist independently and the stronger ones had a special duty to look after the weaker ones.5 This conceptual tradition informed both christological and ecclesiastical thinking throughout the Middle Ages and was to play a central role in the emergence of the notion of the “mystical” or “political body” in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (Kantorowicz 1997; Maitland 2003: 9–51). 4 For

the literary and philosophical history of the fable see Dobski and Gish (2013: 10–13), Guldin (2000: 101–103), Hale (1968, 1971a: 26–28), Koschorke et al. (2007: 15–26), Musolff (2011a, c), Nestle (1927), Patterson (1991: 111–137), Peil (1985), Peltonen (2009), Schoenfeldt (1997). 5 Bible (1989, NT: 143, 155, 174–176); for the biblical application of the Fable and other aspects of the church as body metaphor see Bass (1997: 201–202), Kim (2019: 30–39).

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The Fable of the Belly arguably reached the height of its fame during the Renaissance. Partly on the basis of new translations of the ancient Greek and Latin sources, it was retold many times, perhaps most famously in English in William Shakespeare’s drama Coriolanus, written between 1606 and 1609 and based on Thomas North’s 1595 translation of Plutarch’s Lives of Famous Romans (Carr 1906).6 Shakespeare’s version of Menenius’ argument with the plebeians is set at the beginning of the drama (Shakespeare 1976, Act I, Scene 1, 101–169) and follows the template of the senator at first taking up the members’ complaints against the belly, intimating that he empathises with the rebels’ grievances, though not sympathising with their rebellion. However, he is quickly interrupted by the leader of the rebellious plebeians (“First Citizen”) who questions the belly’s status: What! The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye, The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier, Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter. With other muniments and petty helps In this our fabric, if that they—[…] Should by the cormorant belly be restrain’d, Who is the sink o’ the body,—[…] ? (Coriolanus, I, 1, 121–130)

The rebel leader here introduces a counter-scenario to that proposed by Menenius through putting “the kingly crowned head” at the top of the body-hierarchy instead of the belly and ridiculing the latter as the sink of the body. Resuming his speech, Menenius tries to revalidate the belly’s central function as “the store-house and the shop/Of the whole body” (I, 1, 139) and later on pays the rebel-leader back by demoting him to the status of “the great toe of this assembly” (I, 1, 160–163), with the sarcastic reasoning that “being one o’ the lowest, basest, poorest, Of this most wise rebellion” he dares to “go foremost” (I, 1, 163–164). Curiously, the conceptual historian David Hale has cited this dialogical use of the Fable as evidence of its “death” in literary and intellectual history. Coriolanus, he concludes, “clearly show[ed] the failure of the metaphor of the body politic” (1971b: 202); its later applications “were brief, unoriginal, and void of any implications rising from the analogy” (1971a: 131). Hale reads the dispute between Menenius and the First Citizen as proof that the medieval belief in stable hierarchical orders across spiritual, political, earthly-natural, cosmological spheres of life was being questioned or had already broken down irretrievably in Shakespeare’s time. These spheres of life were precisely the domains whose “correspondences” had formed the Great Chain of Being (Lovejoy 1936; Tillyard 1982), which Lakoff and Turner ascribed to the “Western” version of the more universal Chain of Being (see last 6 Other

English Renaissance authors who recycled the fable were, for instance, William Averell (A Mervailous Combat of Contrarieties, 1588), William Camden (Remaines of a Greater Worke, concerning Britain, 1605), Edward Forset (Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Naturall and Politique, 1606), Sir John Hayward (History of Henry IV, 1599), John Milton (Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England, 1641), Sir Philip Sidney (The Defence of Poesy, 1581/1595).

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chapter). The “exemplary” lesson of the Fable of the Belly and the plausibility of the state-body analogy had, according to Hale, became collateral damage of the breakdown of the Great Chain of Being belief-system. Such a stance seems anachronistic: it would obviously have been absurd for Shakespeare or other Renaissance writers to simply reiterate medieval analogies. But this fact does not imply that the analogy had become ‘dead’ or dysfunctional. In this respect, Lakoff and Turner’s (1989: 106) critical verdict is, I think, applicable, i.e. that from a intellectual history standpoint the Great Chain of Being metaphor was treated as only important for pre-modern thought. Such a view implies the assumption that at some point in history the philosophical and/or artistic development of a concept, narrative or argument reached its zenith and then went into decline. It is prejudiced in favour of one specific historical context and constructs its preceding instances as ‘preparations’ for the conceptual ‘climax’ and the succeeding ones as less important and/or derivative. From the viewpoint of culturally mediated cognition, however, this biased treatment makes little sense. Of course, the popular conceptions of political hierarchy changed during and after the Renaissance, but these changes did not make the bodybased metaphor scenario obsolete. Instead, they kept it alive! Shakespeare’s juxtaposition of belly- and head-centred scenario versions in the dispute between Menenius and First Citizen only underlines the argumentative power of the body-state analogy. Both these versions imply a legitimation of political hierarchy: one by reference to the belly’s functional dominance, the other by reference to a hereditary, monarchical authority (i.e. the “kingly-crowned head”). Not only did the Fable of the Belly fail to ‘die out’ after the Renaissance (not least because the continuing popularity of Shakespeare’s plays in the arts, media and education guaranteed its continual revival), it also lost none of its power to generate debate and argument. Writing more than two centuries later, Karl Marx was still so annoyed by the belly’s smug self-justification that he reinterpreted the Fable to denounce the contemporary division of industrial labour as turning humans into “fragments of their own bodies” (Marx 2017: 381–382). For Marx, the scenario of the body parts arguing among each other exposed the exploitation and destruction of the worker’s bodily wholeness in the nineteenth century industrial environment. Irrespective of whether one finds his adaptation convincing or not, its polemical inversion in Das Kapital shows the scenario’s enduring potential for political polemic. Of course neither Marx, nor Menenius or even Aesop thought that physical body parts had ‘conversations’ with each other. The whole point of fables is to put words in the mouths of natural entities (plants, animals, organs) to elucidate issues at the target level of human society. They are self-consciously anthropomorphic and at least implicitly personalising. Arguably, their argumentative force derives more from this personalisation than from the biological source domain knowledge. Conceptually, one could speak of a double metonymy here: belly stands for leading part of the human body and this, in turn stands for a leading person in the state (together with implied analogies of the part-body relationship). This metonymic basis in a body-asperson conceptualisation is characteristic for all body-based metaphor scenarios in

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political discourse, including those discussed below, i.e. head, heart and illnesscure. The head and heart scenarios, like the belly-based scenario assume a hierarchical relationship among body parts, which is applied to the target domain of political influence and power.7 The illness-cure scenario provides a narrative frame in which at least one participant, i.e. the healing agent, is usually personalised as a medical expert, with other participants (patient, disease agents) also often amenable to personalisation.8

2.3 Scenarios of the Body Ruled by the Head or the Heart As mentioned above, the Pauline texts in the Bible already incorporated aspects of the ancient Greek body-related thought about human society and community, including the Fable of the Belly. As a result, the “Church Fathers” and medieval theologians interpreted Christianity’s presence as the manifestation of Christ’s body. This theological application allowed them to explain relationships among the Christian community in terms of the body-members’ interdependence and hierarchical order (Kim 2019; Schroer and Staubli 2005; Walther 2001). Thanks to the cumulative work of intellectual historians such as Ernst Kantorowicz, Cary Nederman, Kate Langdon Forhan and Takashi Shogimen among others, the influence of this theological application of medical and biological knowledge on the beginnings of political thought in the Middle Ages, partly via Arabic translations (Campbell 2001; Haskins 1967) has been well documented and analysed. body-based analogies were applied to target topics as diverse as dynastic polities, the Church hierarchy, its relationship with the community of believers, and the social relationships among the ‘estates’ of feudal societies. All such political and socio-economic relationships fell under the Pauline exhortation to exercise mutual solidarity among the members of Christ’s “mystical body” (corpus mysticum), but due to their diverse target-status they required differential conceptualisations. Two main body-based metaphorical perspectives can be discerned among the various proposals for a harmonious ordering of the medieval Christian polity and society9 : a head-dominated hierarchical perspective ‘from the top down to the feet’ and a heart-dominated perspective that emphasised the functional unity of the mystical body of Christendom. From a scientific viewpoint, an equal treatment of head and heart makes little sense (even if the head were to be understood as standing 7 For the metonymic basis of anthropomorphic head- and heart-conceptualisation see Foolen (2008), Nacey (2004), Niemeier (2000), Kraska-Szlenk (2019), Yu (2007, 2009a, b). 8 For nation/state-personalisation in health- illness- cure-narratives see Engström (2018), Eriksen (1997), Musolff (2010a: 28–35), Sontag (1978). 9 The Fable of the Belly appears in some of the medieval writings (e.g. John of Salisbury 1990: 135– 136; Christine de Pizan 1994: 4, 90–91) as an ‘exemplary’ story but does not constitute a major argumentative strand that would coherently conceptualise political bodies from a belly-centered perspective.

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metonymically for the brain). In medieval medical thought, however, informed as it was by Galenic and re-discovered Aristotelian medical philosophy (Jouanna 2012; Reynolds 2007), both these body-parts could be seen as the seat of the “soul” which was inspired by God and guided the whole body. The head-centred perspective had St. Paul’s authority. In addition to using the general body-based analogy, he also referred to Christ as the head of the body of Christianity (Ephesians, 4: 15–16, 5; 23, 29–30). The supreme authority in medieval Christian communities, as exercised by Popes, Emperors and Kings, could thus be conceptualised as representing Christ’s head-rulership over the rest of the community’s body. Little wonder, then, that conflicts between these rival authorities were often expressed as disputes over who was the true or supreme head. One argumentative strand maintained that even if a worldly monarch was the obvious head of a Christian state, it was still to be directed by God as the soul—and hence, by the representatives of God on earth, i.e. the Church. Important texts that maintained papal authority and would be quoted and recycled many times in the following centuries were John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (c. 1159)10 and Thomas Aquinas’ On Kingship and Summary of Theology (c. 1266–1273).11 In 1302 Pope Boniface VIII took this argument to its extreme conclusion by asserting his supremacy over all Christian rulers worldwide in an official bull (Unam sanctam) (Boniface 1959: 1245–1246)— on the grounds that, as successor of St. Peter and sole representative of Christ, he also represented the head of the whole of Christendom. Against this, supporters of royal or imperial head-pretenders, e.g. John of Paris (On Royal and Papal Power, 1302/3) and Marsilius of Padua (Defender of the Peace, 1324) argued that even a Pope-head could fall ill and in that case had to be replaced, or that in the worldly realm a partner-head (i.e. king or emperor) that could defend Christianity but did not owe his power to the Pope but was established directly by God.12 By the fifteenth century, with schisms and scandals having weakened the Church’s power, the popevs-monarchy conflict subsided and left feudal princes to become the main target focus for the head of the mystical/political body, as exercising an overall responsibility to command and look after the rest of the body, down to its lowest members, the feet. This responsibility of the head for the feet had already been highlighted by John of Salisbury (1990: 67, 103, 125–126) but was repeatedly invoked to hold feudal rulers to account for their impact on the ‘lower’ strata of medieval society, e.g. in Christine de Pizan’s Book of the Body Politic of 1406 and in John Fortescue’s Praise of the Laws of England, written 1468–1471 (Christine de Pizan (1994: 4; Fortescue 1997: 20–21). 10 See

John of Salisbury (1990: 66–67). The background to his conceptualisation of the prince as head ruled by the Church as soul was the dispute between King and Church in England, which in 1170 led to the ‘murder in the Cathedral’ of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, to whom the Policraticus was dedicated; see Bass (1997), Grellard and Lachaud (2015), Nederman (1990). 11 Thomas Aquinas (1993a, b: 135–136); see also Kantorowicz (1997: 306–311) and Kempshall (1997: 76–129). 12 See John of Paris (1993) and Marsilius of Padua (2005). For analyses see Kempshall (1997: 265–266), Musolff (2010a: 93–95), Nederman and Forhan (1993), Shogimen (2016).

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By contrast with the head-related focus on power-relationships, the heart-centred perspective emphasised ethical competence and pre-eminence.13 It was applied to supreme authorities (Pope, Emperor, King) but also to councils. John of Salisbury ascribed heart-function to the “senate, from which proceeds the beginning of good and bad works” (1990: 67). In On Kingship, Thomas Aquinas justified the monarch as both heart and head and viewed this ‘rule of one’ superior to the ‘rule of the many’ (1993a: 103). By contrast, Marsilius of Padua emphasised the government-as-heart’s role as the ethical centre of the community, because it spread the law (and through it, virtue) in the community just as the heart as an organ spread life-giving heat in the physical body, according to Aristotelian physiology (2005: 93–94). The English Church reformer John Wyclif, in On the Duty of the King (c. 1379), again took up the double-assignation of body-parts to the monarch by comparing the king’s power to both the heart, as giving life, and the head, as guiding the body’s movements (1993: 225). In the early fifteenth century, the Counciliarist and later Cardinal, Nicholas of Cusa, in The Catholic Concordance of 1433, invoked Galenic medicine to justify once more the Pope’s authority by assigning him the arterial function of spreading the heart’s (= the soul’s) blood (= spirit), whereas the councils and further institutions of the of the Church and the Imperial power acted as the venous and nervous systems, respectively (Nicholas of Cusa 1991: 318–319). It is thus impossible to speak of a unified or complementary application of headand heart-based analogies for conceptualising state, society or church in the Middle Ages. Both perspectives, however, allowed imagining the Christian community as a “mystical body”, inspired by God, as an ideal, virtual perfection of any Christian authority, characterised by legitimate hierarchy and well-ordered interdependence. By the late fifteenth/early sixteenth century, this corpus mysticum started to be called corpus politicum and to be translated into the European vernacular languages, e.g. in English as body politic, in French, corps de policie or corps politique; in German, (christlicher) corper or Cörper; in Italian, corpo politico, etc. (Charbonnel 2010, pp. 91–110; Koschorke et al. 2007: 93–102, 106–108; Musolff 2010a: 101–106, 122–123). Its target referent could still be the Christian Church, e.g. in the Reformation’s call for a reform of its “head and members” (German: Haupt und Glieder, see Frech 1992). But increasingly the most powerful princes, such as the French and English Kings and the German King/Emperor, assumed political body-status for themselves, as the spiritual/mystical complement to their ‘natural’ body, thus acquiring, in E. Kantorowicz’s famous phrase, “two bodies” (Kantorowicz 1997). These princes related themselves to their state-bodies (which now also included the emergent ‘national’ churches) symbolically as Christ to the body of Christianity. They represented the whole body of their polity but also the head of that body on account of their power of command/control and their responsibility for the whole of it. Their claims to such mystical body-and-head status were formulated explicitly in

13 See

Schroer and Staubli (2005: 33). The authors ascribe the juxtaposition of head- and heartsymbolism in the Bible to competing body-models that derived from the divergent Greek-Roman and the Hebrew traditions (2005: 41, 69).

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royal self-descriptions, e.g. in England by Henry VIII and James I, and the accompanying propagandistic literature (Hale 1971a: 48–50, 111–117; Hughes 1988: 86; Kantorowicz 1997: 225–231; Maitland 2003: 34–35). They were also implicit in the ritual statements that the ‘political’ King continued to live on when the ‘natural’ King had died (Bertelli 2001; Kantorowicz 1997: 317–336, 409–443) and in public enactments of mystical royal healing powers (Bloch 1961; Brogan 2015). It is therefore no surprise that head- and body-related scenarios featured prominently in English literature and philosophy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some conceptual historians (Buchan 2011; Hale 1971a, b; Harris 1998) have viewed them as being in decline since the Renaissance, due to changes in both the target and source domain inputs for their mappings—notably, the loss of a stable medieval worldview, early ‘scientific’ intrusions into pre-modern medical philosophy, and shifts in the target applications to monarchs-as-heads of state, which culminated in the beheading of King Charles I in 1649. However, even after the decapitation of the King body natural, the body politic could still be imagined as having a crowned head, as the famous frontispiece of Hobbes’s Leviathan (first published in 1651) demonstrates (Brandt 1987; Malcolm 2002). The torso of the body politic now consisted of a multitude of little heads symbolising the citizens. But that did not mean that the state-body analogy had “died with the King at Whitehall” (Hale 1971a: 108); rather, it had been adapted to changed target conditions. The body politic was no longer an attachment to the monarch, but the state. For Hobbes, it was an “Artificial Man” that included numerous corporeal analogies,14 on the understanding that they were of a mechanical nature and thus amenable to scientific analysis.15 On account of his mechanical state-as-body concept, Hobbes has been deemed to have “weakened” the original metaphor (Hale 1971a: 128–130; Harris 1998: 143– 144; Harvey 2007: 35). But this is an anachronism as well. Instead of simply replicating previous versions of the metaphor, Hobbes introduced new source definitions to suit his new, topical target-application, i.e. the multitude of citizens embodying the state. By no means did Hobbes’s avoidance of heart- and head-scenarios in the text of Leviathan make such organ-ascriptions to political target concepts unavailable to later thinkers. On the contrary, just slightly more than a century after the publication 14 See

Hobbes (1996: 9–10): “Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; The Magistrates, and other Officers of Judicature and Execution, artificial Joynts; Reward and Punishment (by which fastned to the seate of the Soveraignty, every joynt and member is moved to perform his duty) are the Nerves, that do the same in the Body Naturall; The Wealth and Riches of all the particular members, are the Strength; Salus Populi (the peoples safety) its Businesse; Counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the Memory; Equity and Lawes, an artificial Reason and Will; Concord, Health; Sedition, Sicknesse; and Civil war, Death. Lastly, the Pacts and Covenants, by which the parts of this Body Politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that Fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.” Altogether there are 42 body- and health/illness-related sub-concepts in the Leviathan. 15 For Hobbes’ state- body analogies in Leviathan as an application of political “science” see Johnston (1986), McNeilly (1968), Martinich (1992), Musolff (2010a: 109–114, 2011b), Prokhovnik (2005), Sˇalˇavˇastru (2014), Skinner (1996, 1999, 2002).

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of Leviathan, the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Du Contrat Social (1762), reallocated heart and brain functions in his body-state framework to two of the three main constitutional powers: “The legislative power is the heart of the state, the executive power is the mind. The mind may be unable to function yet the individual can still be alive. A man can be mindless and live, but as soon as the heart ceases to work the animal is dead” (Rousseau 1994b: 121). Thus, in a vastly different political target context and relying on an similarly distinct source concept of organ-functions compared with those of the preceding century, Rousseau still used the heart-head dichotomy to argue the point that the legislative power alone was the essential, ‘life-giving’ force of the state.16 A decade and a half after Rousseau’s Contrat, in 1777, the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder referred critically to the head-scenario, to develop the concept of the nation as a body: “All our medieval history is pathology—mostly pathology of the head, i.e. the Emperor and a few Imperial Estates. What a different thing it would be to have a physiology of the national body!” (Herder 1893, vol. 9: 523). Rousseau’s and Herder’s uses of the state-body analogy are notable not just because of the fame of these philosophers but because they extended and redefined its conceptual trajectory. Taking their formulations as our vantage point we can sketch retrospectively five stages in the (Western) history of body-hierarchical scenarios’ applications to socio-political communities, beginning in the Middle Ages and reaching into Modernity: i. ii. iii. iv. v.

The Christian Church as a body headed by Christ (who is represented on earth by the successor of St. Peter, i.e. the Pope; The feudal state/society as a body, with Christ’s representative (Pope, Emperor, King) as its head or heart; The King as having a mystical/sacred body politic in addition to the body natural (whilst being also the head of the state-body); The state (with or without King) as a body politic; The nation (i.e. the whole people, with or without King) as a body politic.

During the first four stages in this historical development the political body scenarios allowed for relatively straightforward conceptualisations of the health, illness and cures of the body politic, in each case depending on contemporary medical-biological theory frameworks—as far as these were popularly known. The fifth and last stage sketched above, however, posed a particular problem: if the whole nation was the body politic, who was the healer in case of illness? Up until stage iv, whoever was the head—God, Pope, Emperor, King, even a king-less government— could be imagined as looking after and healing the body politic. Of course the head in the state- body analogy was also part of the body, but as a privileged member that could, if necessary, ‘repair’ the organism or machine of the body politic. However, 16 For

different political organ-allocations (in a different argument) by Rousseau see his earlier article on ‘Political Economy’, in vol. 5 of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encylopédie of 1755 (Rousseau 1994a: 6–7).

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if according to Herder only the nation was a living body, the scenarios of its health, illness and cure had to be reconfigured, to allow for the idea of a self -healing body.

2.4 The ILLNESS-CURE Scenario In Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag distinguishes between pre-modern “disease imagery […] used to express concern for the social order” in an unspecific way, and “the modern idea of a specific master illness, in which what is at issue is health itself”, in particular, tuberculosis and cancer which “suggest a profound disequilibrium between individual and society” (Sontag 1978: 71–72). For Sontag, master illness metaphors “came into their own [with] the French Revolution” (1978: 78). From there she recounts the history of TB- and cancer-metaphors used to underpin ever more radical conceptualisations of political illnesses of nations and their “cures”, up to the point in twentieth century totalitarianism where “cancer metaphors [became] in themselves implicitly genocidal” (1978: 81). Sontag’s hypothesis—that beginning with the French Revolution and the counterrevolutionary backlash against it, the vividness and ferocity of political illness- and cure-focused metaphors intensified during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—is amply corroborated by evidence from intellectual and discourse history. Allegedly infected, diseased or parasitic “estates”, or “races”, or “classes” were depicted as ‘alien bodies’ that threatened the existence of one or all nation-bodies and therefore had to be exterminated in toto.17 But perhaps it is not just the conceptualisation of master illnesses but also the conceptualisation of master bodies of peoples (or, in Nazi ideology, master races) that has to be taken into account to understand the postEnlightenment discourses of nationalism. If the body politic is viewed, post-Herder, as consisting only of ‘the people’, the scenario implications of its health and illness have to be reconceptualised so as to explain how the people can cure itself in case of illness by generating a healer out of its midst (rather than relying on an hereditary or institutional head). Pace Sontag, catastrophic master illnesses and radical cures have been considered by political thinkers in the European/Western tradition not just in modernity but for much longer. Even John of Salisbury, writing in the mid-twelfth century, did not shrink from arguing in favour of amputation of every infected member of the statebody, including the head/King (1990: 63, 140–141, 193–194), with explicit reference to Matthew 18:9: “And If your eye causes your downfall, cut it off and fling it away” (Bible 1989, NT: 17). Up until the Renaissance, illness concepts were anatomically or humorally oriented, depending on the (varying) influence of the Aristotelian and 17 For

the impact of body-based metaphors in the French Revolution see de Baecque (1997), Hamerton-Kelly (1994), Hunt (1991); for the impact on Soviet ideology see Beerman (1964), Figes (1996: 603–627), Fitzpatrick (2006); for the impact on racism and, in particular Nazi ideology: Baumann (2000), Bein (1965), Bosmaijan (1983), Musolff (2010a), Rash (2006).

2.4 The illness-cure Scenario

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Hippocratic-Galenic theory frameworks. The origin of illnesses was sought in faults or malfunctions located in the head, its sensory organs (eyes, ears, mouth, tongue), the main extremities (arms, hands, legs, feet) and organs (heart, liver, stomach, intestines) or in imbalances of the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile) and their distribution in the body, all of which could serve as source concepts for metaphorical applications to state, society or nation. European medieval body politic philosophers recommended drastic cures for such political illnesses i.e. surgery or amputation of the diseased body part (with capital punishment and/or excommunication as target concepts) or radical rebalancing of the humours, due to a focus on “the eradication of the causes of diseases” (Shogimen 2008: 103).18 During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, perhaps motivated by the experience of mass epidemics such as syphilis and pestilence but also by a revival of neo-platonic notions of the Great Chain of Being, alchemistic and pharmaceutical therapies were developed, which informed innovative applications of the state-body analogy. The danger of exogenous disease-agency through infection or poisoning and the ambivalence of ‘medicinal poisons’ were, for instance, applied in polemics against contagious foreign influences from immigration and invasion or against malicious state-body healers who were suspected of poisoning the patient (Harris 1998; Mitchell 2012). Whilst new physiological and medical concepts were added to the source domain of the state-body analogy, the problem of dealing with a diseased head of the body politic remained. If it suffered from an incurable illness, amputation was seen as inevitable; but this radical therapy only made sense if it was assumed that an alternative, ‘true’ head could be substituted for it. The metaphorical application thus had to leave behind the common-sense source-logic (i.e. that natural bodies die if the head is amputated) and instead had to switch to arguments pertaining to the target genre (i.e. theological, political or judicial discourses), e.g. by construing proofs of God’s approval or revelation of the true head, such as by trial in combat or by relying on inspiration from the Holy Ghost. However, in the early modern period (between the stages iii and iv sketched above) such argumentative remedies lost much of their persuasiveness in conjunction with the loss of “mystical” connotations in the notion of the King’s body politic. If the King was no longer the representative of God as head, the theocratic construct of his body politic as a body mystical became difficult to maintain. Either it became a matter of a ruler’s individual ability to spot illnesses early enough and apply the appropriate medicine, as envisaged by Machiavelli;19 or the King could be reduced to a mere body natural, and the (nation) state could in principle survive as a body politic without it, as suggested by Thomas Hobbes. 18 By

contrast, Japanese applications of the body politic metaphor focused on “controlling physical conditions”, and their political applications created “the image of government as an art of daily healthcare and preventive medicine” (Shogimen 2008: 103). 19 See his advice to the Prince: “And what physicians say about consumptive illnesses is applicable [in the political sphere]: […]; by recognizing evils in advance (a gift granted only to the prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized and are left to grow to such an extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any remedy” (Machiavelli 2005: 88–89).

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Indeed, his Leviathan included a whole chapter devoted only to illnesses of the body politic as “things that Weaken, or tend to the Dissolution of a Commonwealth” (= Chap. 29, see Hobbes 1996: 221–230). About half of Hobbes’s 42 bodyrelated analogies are specifications of diseases, which range from humoral faults and imbalances (conflux of evill humours, hot bloods) to specific diseases (Ague, Epilepsy, Pleurisy) to poisons (Venime, contagion). 20 As mentioned earlier, the head played no role in this political anatomy and was replaced as commanding organ by the soul (i.e. any kind of “civil power” that had sovereign authority). Accordingly, specific head-diseases were only mentioned sparingly by Hobbes, but he still counted them among diseases “of the greatest, and most present danger” (1996: 228), i.e. epilepsy (an “unnaturall spirit, or wind in the head” and divided sovereignty as a three-headed monster (1996: 227–228). By the end of the seventeenth century, the nation state was no longer the mystical attachment of the King; instead, the King derived his political incorporation from the state. Finally, in the Enlightenment, and manifested in the French Revolution (stage v above), the last vestiges of an inner connection of the King’s bodies natural and politic disappeared. Now it was the people or the nation as a whole (replacing the separate ‘estates’ of the Ancien Régime) that were conceptualised as the ‘master’ body politic that, if need be, could look after and even heal itself. In the “Age of Revolution” (Hobsbawm 1993), the emergent nation-bodies did indeed claim and provide such healing competence in newly developed ideologies of “nationalism”, which could be tagged onto “thick” ideologies such as liberalism, socialism etc. (Hobsbawm 1992: 14–45; Freeden 1998) and/or manifested in ‘banal’ symbolism and its routine ‘flagging’, e.g. in the clichés of specific national ‘characters’ and invocations of national ‘health’ (Billig 1995: 96–103). Political leaders could now emerge from the mass of the common people as healing saviours instead of inheriting that task and competence through a mystical body (of religious, dynastic or institutional origin). In present-day politics, body politic healing may thus be of a more or less dramatic kind. Under ‘normal’ circumstances it may be performed by the eponymous ‘safe pair of hands’ type of politician who takes care of the nation’s body without resorting to drastic cures. His or her actions may appear to be a routine and even ‘banal’ activity that seems to manifest itself mainly in a quasi-ritualistic symbolic participation in memory-culture, flag-waving and a continuous stream of discourses reassuring the public that socio-economic ills can and will be managed and kept under control.21 In times of crisis, however, the more drastic implications of national political healership come to the fore and are performed emphatically and in earnest, e.g. in purging or cleansing the people’s body of all minorities, immigrants and other ‘outsiders’ that are perceived as parasitic and/or toxic alien bodies.22 The 20 For

analysis see Harris (1998: 142–144), Musolff (2010a: 112–116, 2011b). Billig (1995: 6) has highlighted, the very ‘banality’ of banal nationalism is both highly ideologically loaded and culturally entrenched in “the established nations of the West” and it is by no means “synonymous with harmlessness” (1995: 7, with reference to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “Banality of Evil”). 22 See e.g. Catalano and Musolff (2019), George (2002), Musolff (2015a). 21 As

2.4 The illness-cure Scenario

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following chapter will show that this illness-cure scenario in both its manifestations (banal and emphatic) is still with us, as are the hierarchical belly-, head- or heart-oriented models of the body politic and narratives that defend (or dispute) the authority of elites that supposedly know best what is good for the rest of the body.

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Herder, J. G. (1893). Deutsches Museum. Von Ähnlichkeit der mittleren englischen und deutschen Dichtkunst, nebst Verschiednem, das daraus folget. In: Herder, Sämmtliche Werke (B. Suphan, Ed.). Berlin: Weidmann. Hobbes, T. (1996). Leviathan (R. Tuck, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1992). Nations and nationalism since 1780. Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1993). The age of revolution: Europe 1789-1848. London: Abacus. Hughes, G. (1988). Words in time. A social history of the English vocabulary. Oxford: Blackwell. Hunt, L. (1991). The many bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political pornography and the problem of the feminine in the French revolution. In L. Hunt (Ed.), Eroticism and the body politic (pp. 108–130). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. John of Salisbury. (1990). Policraticus. Of the frivolities of courtiers and the footprints of philosophers (C. J. Nederman, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. John of Paris. (1993) On royal and papal power. In C. J. Nederman & K. Langdon Forhan (Eds.), Readings in Medieval Political Theory 1100-1400 (pp. 157–167). Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing. Johnston, D. (1986). The rhetoric of leviathan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Jouanna, J. (2012). Greek medicine from Hippocrates to Galen. Selected Papers (N. Allies, Trans. & P. van der Eijk, Ed.). Leiden: Brill. Kantorowicz, E. H. (1997). The king’s two bodies: A study in mediaeval political theology. With a new Preface by W. C. Jordan. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press. Kempshall, M. S. (1997). The common good in late medieval political thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kim, Y. S. (2019). Reimagining the body of christ in Paul’s Letters: In view of Paul’s Gospel. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. Koschorke, A., Lüdemann, S., Frank, T., & Matala de Mazza, E. (2007). Der fiktive Staat. Konstruktionen des politischen Körpers in der Geschichte Europas. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (Ed.). (2019). Embodiment in cross-linguistic studies: The ‘Head’. Leiden: Brill. Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason. A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Livy. (1998). The early history of Rome, Books I-II (B. O. Foster, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lovejoy, A. O. (1936). The great chain of being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Machiavelli, N. (2005). The prince (Ed. P. Bondanella, With an Introduction by M. Viroli). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maitland, F. W. (2003). State, trust and corporation (D. Runciman & M. Ryan, Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malcolm, N. (2002). The title page of Leviathan, seen in a curious perspective. Aspects of Hobbes (pp. 200–233). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marsilius of Padua. (2005). The defender of the peace (A. S. Brett, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martinich, A. P. (1992). The two gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on religion and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marx, K. (2017). Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Erster Band. Berlin: Karl Dietz. McNeilly, F. S. (1968). The anatomy of Leviathan. London: Macmillan. Mitchell, P. (2012). Contagious metaphor. London: Bloomsbury. Mouton, N. T. O. (2009a). On the evolution of social scientific metaphors. A cognitive-historical inquiry into the divergent trajectories of the idea that collective entities – states and societies, cities and corporations – are biological organisms. Unpublished PhD. thesis, Copenhagen: Department of International Culture and Communication Studies at Copenhagen Business School. Mouton, N. T. O. (2009b). Do Metaphors Evolve? The Case of the Social Organism. Cognitive Semiotics, 5(1–2), 312–348. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem.2013.5.12.312. Musolff, A. (2010a). Metaphor, nation and the holocaust. The concept of the body politic. London/New York: Routledge. Musolff, A. (2010b). Political metaphor and bodies politic’. In U. Okulska & P. Cap (Eds.), Perspectives in politics and discourse (pp. 23–41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Musolff, A. (2011a). Metaphor in political dialogue. Language and Dialogue, 1(2), 191–206.

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Musolff, A. (2011b). Health and illness of the Leviathan. Hobbes’s use of the commonplace metaphor of the body politic. In: K. Banks & P. G. Bossier (Eds.), Commonplace culture in western Europe in the early modern period, vol. 2: Consolidation of God-given power (pp. 175–191). Leuven: Peeters. Musolff, A. (2011c). Metaphor in discourse history. In M. E. Winters, H. Tissari & K. Allan (Eds.), Historical cognitive linguistics (pp. 70–90). Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Musolff, A. (2012). Cultural differences in the understanding of the metaphor of the ‘Body Politic’. In S. Kleinke, Z. Kövecses, A. Musolff & V. Szelid (Eds.), Cognition and culture. The role of metaphor and metonymy (pp. 145–153). Budapest: Eötvös University Press. Musolff, A. (2015). Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 3(1), 41–56. Nacey, S. (2004). Head and heart; Metaphors and metonymies in a cross-linguistic perspective. Published under then married name (Susan Mol). In K. Aijmer & H. Hasselgård (Eds.), Translation and Corpora: Selected papers from the Göteborg-Oslo symposium, 18–19 October 2003 (pp. 125). Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Nederman, C. J. (1990). Editor’s introduction. In: John of Salisbury. Policraticus. Of the Frivolities of courtiers and the footprints of philosophers (C. J. Nederman, Ed. & Trans.) (pp. XV–XXVIII). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nedermann, C. J. (Ed.). (1992). Medieval political thought—A reader: The quest for the body politic. London: Routledge. Nederman, C. J. (2004). Body politics: The diversification of organic metaphors in the later middle ages. Pensiero politico medievale, 2, 59–87. Nederman, C. J., & Langdon Forhan, K. (Eds.). (1993). Readings in medieval political theory 1100-1400. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing. Nestle, W. (1927). Die Fabel des Menenius Agrippa. Klio. Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte, 21, 350–360. Nicholas of Cusa. (1991). The catholic concordance. (Paul Sigmund, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Niemeier, S. (2000). Straight from the heart—Metonymic and metaphorical explorations. In A. Barcelona (Ed.), Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads. A cognitive perspective (pp. 195– 213). Berlin: De Gruyter. Patterson, A. M. (1991). Fables of power: Aesopian Writing and Political History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Peil, D. (1985). Der Streit der Glieder mit dem Magen. Studien zur Überlieferung und Deutungsgeschichte der Fabel des Menenius Agrippa von der Antike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main etc.: P. Lang. Peltonen, M. (2009). Political rhetoric and citizenship in Coriolanus. In D. Armitage, C. Condren, & A. Fitzmaurice (Eds.), Shakespeare and early modern political thought (pp. 234–252). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plutarch. (2001). Plutarch’s lives (Vol. 1, The Dryden Edition, A. H. Clough, Ed.). New York: Random House. Prokhovnik, R. (2005). Hobbes’s artifice as social construction. Hobbes Studies, 28, 74–95. Putnam, H. (1975). The meaning of meaning. In H. Putnam. Mind, language and reality. Philosophical papers (Vol. II, pp. 215–271). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rash, F. (2006). The language of violence. Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf . New York: Peter Lang. Reynolds, S. W. A. (2007). Organ wars. The Battle for supremacy. The historic struggle for dominance between the heart, liver, and brain. In M. Stapleton (Ed.), Proceedings of the 16th Annual History of Medicine Days (pp. 377–382). Calgary: The University of Calgary. Rousseau, J.-J. (1994a). Political economy (‘Discourse on Political Economy’). In J.-J. Rousseau, The social contract (C. Betts, Trans.) (pp. 1–41). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rousseau, J.-J. (1994b). The social contract or the principles of political right. In J.-J. Rousseau, The social contract (C. Betts, Trans.) (pp. 43–175). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sˇalˇavˇastru, A. (2014). The Discourse of Body Politic in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, Les cahiers psychologie politique [En ligne], numéro 24, Janvier 2014. http://lodel.irevues.inist.fr/cahiersps ychologiepolitique/index.php?id=2613.

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Schoenfeldt, M. (1997). Fables of the belly in early modern Europe. In D. Hillmann & C. Mazzio (Eds.), The body in parts: Fantasies of corporeality in early modern Europe (pp. 243–262). London/New York: Routledge. Schroer, S., & Staubli, T. (2005). Die Körpersymbolik der Bibel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Shakespeare, W. (1976). Coriolanus (P. Brockbank, Ed.). London: Methuen. Shogimen, T. (2007). ‘Head or heart?’ revisited: Physiology and political thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. History of Political Thought, 28(2), 208–229. Shogimen, T. (2008). Treating the body politic: The medical metaphor of political rule in late medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan. The Review of Politics, 70(1), 77–104. Shogimen, T. (2009). Imagining the body politic: Metaphor and political language in late medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan. In T. Shogimen & C. J. Nederman (Eds.), Western political thought in dialogue with Asia (pp. 279–300). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Shogimen, T. (2012). Medicine and the body politic in Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis. In G. Moreno-Riaño & C. J. Nederman (Eds.), A companion to Marsilius of Padua (pp. 71–115). Leiden: Brill. Shogimen, T. (2016). The pressure of coherence and the diachronic reconfigurations of metaphorical discourse: The case of the body politic metaphor in medieval political texts. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 3(1), 50–69. Skinner, Q. (1978). The foundations of modern political thought (2 vols.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (1996). Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of hobbes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (1999). Hobbes and the purely artificial person of the state. Journal of Political Philosophy, 7, 1–29. Skinner, Q. (2002). Hobbes’s changing conception of civil science. In Q. Skinner. Vision of politics. Vol. 3: Hobbes and Civil Science (pp. 66–86). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as metaphor. New York: Vintage Books. Struve, T. (1978). Die Entwicklung der organologischen Staatsauffassung im Mittelalter. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. Temkin, O. (1973). Galenism: Rise and decline of a medical philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Tillyard, E. M. W. (1982). The Elizabethan world picture. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Tissari, H. (2010). Love, metaphor and responsibility: Some examples from early modern and present-day English corpora. In G. Low, Z. Todd, A. Deignan, & L. Cameron (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor in the real world (pp. 125–143). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Trim, R. (2011a). Metaphor and the historical evolution of historical mapping. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Trim, R. (2011b). Conceptual networking theory in metaphor evolution: Diachronic variation in models of love. In M. E. Winters, H. Tissari, & K. Allan (Eds.), Historical cognitive linguistics (pp. 223–260). Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Walther, M. (2001). Gemeinde als Leib Christi. Untersuchungen zum Corpum Paulinum und zu den „Apostolischen Vätern”. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Wycliff, J. (1993). On the duty of the king. In C. J. Nederman, & K. Langdon Forhan, (Eds.), Readings in medieval political theory 1100-1400 (pp. 221–119) Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing. Yu, N. (2007). Heart and cognition in ancient Chinese philosophy. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 7(1/2), 27–47. Yu, N. (2009a). From Body to Meaning in Culture: Papers on Cognitive Semantic Studies of Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Yu, N. (2009b). The Chinese HEART in a Cognitive Perspective: Culture, Body, and Language. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Chapter 3

The Nation as a Body or Person in Present-Day British Political Discourse

3.1 Introduction The expressions body politic, head of state and head of government, the designation of political institutions as bodies (body of parliament, body of law) and even a specific limb-based idiom, the long arm of the law, have long ‘sedimented’ in the English vocabulary since in the Renaissance.1 This is not to say that present-day users of these expressions remember the origins of the body politic tradition in detail, unless they are cultural historians. And the fact that such phrases are still in use does not provide in itself evidence that a conceptual metaphor of the nation state as a body is still alive today. The figurative value of terminologies such as the body politic, the Great Chain of Being or the Four Humours as theory-laden analogies has largely disappeared in the process of their becoming part of the ‘normal’ lexical system of a language (Bowdle and Gentner 2005; Croft and Cruse 2004: 204–206). In order to see if a metaphor still has a productive figurative meaning, we need to find evidence of its use and integration in narrative-argumentative scenarios in which the main conceptual mapping from the physical and physiological domain to the political domain makes sense, i.e. leads to analogical conclusions or evaluations, e.g. by elucidating and/or justifying political hierarchies, responsibilities or (inter-)dependencies. The three main scenarios that we outlined in Chap. 2 as typical for Western cultural traditions were narratives that highlighted (a) the need for solidarity and mutual help among all body members, (b) its hierarchical structure, with one chief organ, e.g. the head or the heart being in control of the rest of the body (as applied to rulers or ruling institutions) and (c) the illness- cure scenario, with a tendency to favour drastic medical interventions including surgery and amputation, or in more recent versions, elimination of alien bodies. These 1 See

Ayto (2010: 10), Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1999: 149, 713), Deignan (1995: 2), Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993: I: 114, 253).

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famous/notorious scenarios, especially the Fable of the Belly, are still discussed in present-day learned discourses, both in historical literature and in approaches to ‘revive’ older theory-models of political governance, international relations etc.2 But such theory-driven debates are not data we can use for evidence of presentday uses of the nation as body conceptualisation. Instead we need to look at public discourse data about topics that centrally involve target concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘national identity’. Present-day public discourse in Britain has at least one such area that can serve us for data of the continuing socio-political importance of nation as body scenarios, i.e. the 2014/15–2020 debates about Britain’s membership in the European Union (EU), which led to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU in January 2020, nick-named “Brexit”.3 Following Wodak (2015: 37), one may interpret this referendum result as an effect of elements of “banal nationalism” and the development of “Euroscepticism” and analyse in detail the role that various metaphors played in it (Buckledee 2018; Charteris-Black 2019; Dallison 2017; Ðurovi´c and Silaški 2018; Musolff 2019). Here, however, we focus on the use of the nation as body/person metaphor in the Brexit debate as a test-case for the continuing importance of this metaphor complex and its key-scenarios in present-day discourses. As we will see, it would be wrong to assume that its scenarios can only be used in one particular ideological perspective (e.g. pro or anti-nationalist) or by one political camp (e.g. EU-friendly or -sceptic/hostile politicians and media). Rather, they provide the templates for debates about national identity that are exploited by all sides.4

2 For attempts to revive body politic concepts, e.g. in theories of Citizenship, International Relations,

and in gendered models of nations/nation states see, e.g., Auestadt (2014), Berry (1995), Marks (2008), Meyer (2014), Rasmussen and Brown (2005), Waldby (1996). 3 The database for Britain’s “Brexit” debate is part of the research corpus EUROMETA (Musolff 2004, 2016) that includes media texts with figurative passages from the early 1990s until 2020 and includes over 0.6 M. word tokens, of which the Brexit-related debates from 2014 onwards account for more than 100,000 tokens. The term “Brexit” first appears in it in 2014 with reference to the Conservative Party’s preparations for the national elections of 2015 in which they promised a withdrawal referendum, which then took place in June 2016 (The Guardian, 04/11/2014). 4 As an extremely polemical public communication event, the Brexit debate did of course not just consist of metaphors and the argumentative exploitation of their scenarios but provided an opportunity for political and media rhetoricians to use the full gamut of their techniques, including instrumentalisation for euphemistic, dysphemistic and hyperbolic functions of figurative communication (see Burgers et al. 2018; Burridge 1998; Crespo-Fernández 2018; with reference to the Brexit discussion cf. Charteris-Black 2019: 128, 269–270, 283, and contributions in Koller et al. 2019). These primarily persuasive aspects of metaphor use are, however, not highlighted here in detail as the Brexit debate serves us mainly as an illustration of the continued importance of the nation as body metaphor.

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3.2 Britain Vis-à-Vis the EU: Organ or Independent Body? Three days after the 2016 “Brexit” referendum, which had resulted in a 51.9% majority in favour of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, the Observer’s political commentator,5 A. Rawnsley, used the nation as body metaphor to give his interpretation of the result: (1) This referendum was an x-ray of the body politic of the nation and it revealed multiple fractures in this disunited kingdom. Two of its constituent parts voted one way, two the other. (The Guardian, 26/06/2016) Rawnsley’s diagnosis employs the nation as- body metaphor in the form of a modernised version of the illness- cure scenario: the nation-as-patient has fractures, which have been revealed by the X-ray snapshot of the referendum. The use of x- ray as a source concept for the referent, ‘Brexit referendum’, is only conceivable on the basis of popularised knowledge about radiography, which would not have been available to a wider public before the discovery and ‘name-giving’ of “X-rays” in the 1890s. This is one of the—relatively few—cases of modern medical terminology being employed in the British public debate about “Brexit” and relationships with the EU.6 In the EUROMETA corpus of metaphorical media texts dealing with EU politics, which goes back to the early 1990s,7 altogether sixty lexical body- and healthrelated entries are documented: ailments, allergy, amputation/amputate, anaesthetic, arteries, baby, birth, body/body politic), boil (sense of ‘swelling’), boot (metonymy for ‘leg/lower part of leg’), breathe, bypass, clone, coma, corpse, cure, cirrhosis, dead/death, decrepit, doctor, drug, fever, fit, gall bladder, grow, head, health/healthy, heart, ill, immune/immunize, immunosuppressant, kill, limb, liver, muscles, neurosis, operation, organ, pain, paralysis, parasite, pill, poison, pustule, rotten, sclerosis, sick (incl. sick man, sick list), smell, spasm, sterile, steroids, strength, suicide, surgery, toe, toenails, vitality, weakness, x-ray. Most of these would have been publicly known a couple of centuries ago, with the core vocabulary still being largely identical with popular anatomical and medical knowledge available in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The definitely new or, arguably, newly understood terms in addition to

5 The Observer is a British centre-left Sunday newspaper that has as its ‘sister paper’ The Guardian, which is published daily but not on Sundays. 6 For analyses of contemporary uses of body politic-related metaphors in other nations, see e.g. Boisnard (2005), Engström (2018), Musolff (2012), Putz (2016, 2019), and the contributions in Šari´c and Stanojevi´c (2019). 7 For details of the corpus construction see Musolff (2004, 2016: 14–15). EUROMETA is sourced from BBC Online-News, Channel 4-Online-News, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Financial Times, New Statesman (formerly: New Statesman & Society), Reuters, Scotsman, The Economist, The Daily Telegraph/The Sunday Telegraph, The European, The Guardian/Observer, The Independent, The London Evening Standard, The New European, The Scotsman, The Spectator, The Sun, The Times/The Sunday Times.

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x-ray in example (1) are: bypass,8 clone,9 immunosuppressants (see below, example 2), neurosis,10 steroids,11 transplant (see also Example 2 below). These results corroborate a finding from a larger body-based metaphor corpus, BODYPOL, which listed nearly eighty body/health- sub-concepts for Englishlanguage political debates (Musolff 2016: 145–147), but only had a few more contemporary ones in addition to the EUROMETA items: DNA, genes, pandemic, syndrome, virus, root canal treatment. Our first finding is therefore that body- and healthbased metaphors in present-day British debates about Britain’s relationship with the EU invoke mainly traditional concepts and only marginally scientific innovations. What about the scenarios in which these concepts are embedded? In the previous chapter, we identified three narrative-argumentative perspectives in European political discourses, interdependence and solidarity among body members, hierarchical order of body members and illness- cure. For these scenarios, the target referent was always the state leadership, its administrative apparatus and/or the society/people of a nation. In the Brexit-debate, the very nature of the body politic was contested, because a central topic of this debate was the United Kingdom’s sovereignty, i.e. its independence as a separate body from that of the EU. Alternatively, the EU could be viewed as a (composite) body politic, of which Britain was a member, limb or organ. One of the Brexiters’ most notorious campaign slogans to justify the UK’s withdrawal, “Let’s take back control”, gave voice to their wish for complete command over the own nation-body (Baldini et al. 2020; Ringeisen-Biardeaud 2017). The opposite perspective had seen its heyday two decades earlier at the start of the 1990s, when the (by Brexit standards EU-friendly) Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, had announced that Britain “would work at the very heart of Europe […] in forging an integrated European community” (The Guardian, 12/03/1991). In that statement, Major used the term heart as part of an idiomatic phrase at the heart of , in the only weakly figurative meaning of ‘centre’. But by referring to a heart of Europe, he inadvertently gave the then still relatively small Eurosceptic faction in the Conservative Party and in the British public an opportunity to revive its organicist source meaning and thus to vilify the EU, by depicting it as rotten, cold, infarcted, diseased, dead, decomposing, or having a hole, blocked arteries and blood clots, or as attached to low- value body parts, e.g. backside (Musolff 2013, 2016: 39–53).

8 The

Guardian, 05/09/2017: “[Theresa May] wants us to let her […]” whisk the body of British law into an operating theatre, out of sight, where she, […] will carve, stitch, bypass and amputate whatever [she] deem[s] “appropriate”. 9 The Guardian, 30/05/1997: “[…] the German government is reconciled to the euro being a “softer” currency than the D-Mark clone that the Bundesbank demands”. 10 The Economist, 09/05/1998: “Euro neurosis. Although London towers over its European rivals, Frankfurt and Paris are both in better shape to compete with London for the new single-currency business”. 11 The Economist, 18/06/2016: “Britain after Brexit [is seen by liberal Brexiters as] Singapore on steroids”.

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Some euro-friendly voices continued to employ it up to the Brexit period as an acknowledgement of Britain’s part- whole-relationship with the EU. As late as 2017, the anti-Brexit-, centre-left-leaning newspaper The Guardian interpreted the Chancellor of the Exchequer, P. Hammond’s, promise to align Britain’s economy with the EU as an expression of his “ardent wish to remain at the heart of Europe” (The Guardian, 27/06/2017).12 But much more widespread were Eurosceptic denunciations of the “deep contempt at the heart of the European project for the collective will and concerns of the people” in the Euro-hostile, conservative Daily Telegraph (23/08/2016), or fatalistic assessments that the referendum had “plunged a dagger into the heart of Europe (in the liberal The Independent, 26/06/2016), thus effecting or precipitating the Union’s death.13 Overall, the British public’s perspective on the heart of Europe had steadily worsened to the point that its essential life-supporting function was fundamentally put in question. Apart from the heart, no other specific part of the EU’s body politic seems to have been thematised in the British debate.14 The perspective on the whole of Europe as a single body is implicit in assessments of Brexit as an amputation carried out either it by the Prime Minister responsible for the referendum, D. Cameron (The Guardian, 16/07/2017) or by the nation-body itself (The Observer, 03/04/2016: “if Britain amputates itself from the EU”). From the EU’s body’s viewpoint, it might even be a “relief”, i.e. “the amputation of an infected limb, permitting less inhibited forward movement” (The Guardian, 21/12/2017). For Eurosceptics, the only body politic that mattered was that of Britain: they alleged the nation could only survive by “untangling [itself] from a bureaucratic beast [i.e. the EU]” (The Sun, 26/12/2019). This act of liberation required, in the rhetoric of B. Johnson who championed Brexit since 2016 and oversaw the actual withdrawal from the EU in January 2020 as Prime Minister, the strength of fantasy bodies from popular comic and/or film culture, such as Hulk or superman (Reuters, 03/01/2020, Daily Express, 15/09/2019). From this perspective, Britain’s nation-body appears as threatened by a diffuse alien- ‘Other’ and it can only rescue itself by cutting loose from it. This conceptualisation aligns with right wing populist fear-focused imaginings (Wodak 2015) of the nation’s own body politic as being under attack, e.g. by immigrants, un-assimilated minorities and international conspiracies.15 12 Other

pro-EU politicians who dared to endorse the heart of Europe during the time of the Brexit debate were Scottish nationalist politicians who promised that an independent Scotland would stay close to the heart of Europe (see e.g. Daily Express, 15/10/2016). 13 See The Observer, 26/02/2017: “Brexit is a Whitehall farce that threatens the heart of Europe” ; The Independent, 09/12/2017: “Joining the ERM [European Exchange Rate Mechanism for currency alignment in preparation for the common currency “euro”] was part of the aim, to use John Major’s words, to ‘place Britain at the heart of Europe’. [But] we did not join the euro […]. And now we are heading a little further away”. 14 The only reference to another national body part is the stereotypical identification of Italy as “Europe’s leaden-toed boot” (The Economist, 23/03/2017), based on the resemblance of Italy’s geographical contours to a lady’s boot and the polemically loaded extension “leaden-toed” on account of its Southern part’s alleged economic weakness. 15 For analyses of populist constructions of immigration and ethnic minorities as threats to the British body politic see Bennett (2018), Floyd (2017), KhosravinNik et al. (2012), Kopytowska and

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During the Brexit debate as documented in the EUROMETA corpus, the phrase body politic was exclusively applied to Britain, as in example (1) cited above. This usage was shared by British media across the whole range of Brexit-political sympathies. For instance, the liberal Economist (24/11/2018) viewed Britain’s body politic as “convulsing” because the nation only had “the imperfect [Brexit] deal that it was always going to get”; even when Brexit had been ‘delivered’, the Daily Telegraph (31/02/2020) retrospectively rued “the Brexit battles […] in the British body politic itself”. Examples from EU-friendly media highlighted the British body politic’s selfinflicted fractures (see quotation (1) above) or warned of a Brexit-related power-grab by the government (The Guardian, 05/09/2017: “There are no safeguards in the withdrawal bill. We get only the impatient muttering of bogus doctors as the trolley rolls into surgery: “Nothing to worry about, breathe in the gas, go to sleep, you won’t feel a thing …”; The Observer, 01/09/2019: “It is only unwritten, uncodified understandings that protect the [British] body politic from regressing to government with minimal checks”). This usage of body politic was not Brexit-specific either, as a few examples show that predated the Brexit-discussion16 : (2) Britain has still not joined Europe. The transplantof a European organ into the British body politic still requires constant reinforcement by immunosuppressant drugs. (Financial Times, 17/01/2013) (3) […] the pathology of the [British] body politic […] has produced a dismal campaign [for European parliament elections] (The Guardian, 10/06/1999) (4) The moment is arriving when Europe could cease to be the cyanide in the British body politic. (The Guardian, 18/01/1996) Even in these not yet Brexit-inspired texts, it was the British nation-state, not the composite, multi-state “Union” that was accorded full body-status. The EU, by contrast, was seen as an external bodily influence, an organ transplant or poison that revealed the faults within it. This negatively framed scenario was well entrenched in the Brexit-debate even before Britain was cast as a victim-body that suffered EU-caused interventions causing convulsions, exposing fractures and a pathological state of ill health.17 Most of the above-cited examples of problematic body- part relationships also fit into the illness- cure scenario. In particular, they seem to follow the Western Chilton (2018), Musolff (2015), Pijpers (2006). For debates about ‘alien conspiracies’ in the Brexit debate, see Hopkin (2017), Zappettini (2019). 16 A special sub-strand of usage predating the Brexit era are puns on body politic, which treat it as an allusion to the ‘body natural’ (in traditional parlance, see Chap. 2) of portly political leaders, e.g. The Observer, 01/112009: “Sorry, Gordon [Brown, then British Labour Prime Minister], but your body politic doesn’t match Putin’s”; The Independent, 14/08/2007: “Body politic: [...] a longlens snap of [Tony] Blair Labour Prime Minister], resplendent in his Caribbean holiday podge”; Boris Johnson managed to apply it to himself and at the same time engage in anti-EU polemic by facetiouly proclaiming to be on a “Greek austerity diet”, which unlike the post-2009 austerity policy in Greece was voluntary: “I voted for it. My own body politic took the decision” (The Daily Telegraph, 14/11/2011). 17 In one extreme case, the EU was even denounced as the chief parasite on the world economy (The Daily Telegraph, 19/06/2019).

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tradition of a severe illness requiring drastic surgical intervention as outlined in the preceding chapter. Salient concepts are amputation and infection (see above), surgery (The Daily Telegraph, 09/03/2016: “Many in the Remain camp agree that the eurozone requires drastic surgery”), paralysis (The Guardian, 04/09/2016: “political paralysis at home [due to Brexit referendum]”) and decrepitude (The Daily Telegraph, 22/07/2019: “decrepit Europe”). Less specifically, being doomed (to die) has been declared to be the EU’s condition during the whole course of the Brexit years, mainly by Eurosceptics.18 This pessimistic perspective on the EU’s chances of survival also has a long tradition in the British public debate. At each major crisis point in the UK-EU relationship over the past three decades, predictions of the union’s imminent doom, death or at least coma (in addition to lethal heart conditions, as mentioned above) have been prominent: • the Maastricht Treaty of 1991, which introduced the notion of the EU becoming “an ever closer union” and which was condemned by the previous prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, as being equal to a “national suicide note” for Britain (Financial Times, 28/07/1991); • the resignation of the EU commission after the nepotism scandal of 1999, viewed as “the collapse of the […] executive body of the European Union” (The Economist, 18/03/1999) or as a “hole [that] opened up at the heart of the European Union” (The Independent, 21/03/1999); • the rejection of the EU-constitution Treaty in a French referendum in 2005, which for the British press, rendered it “dead and buried” or at least in a “constitutional coma” (The Guardian, 02/06/2005), and even hammered “the last nail in the coffin of this unloved treaty” (The Times, 30/05/2005); • Brexit prospect and increased EU-wide immigration post-2015, which were predicted to be the “death of the EU” (W. Hague, quoted in The Independent, 22/06/2016) or Europe’s “suicide” (Daily Mail, 20/05/2017, with reference to Murray 2017). The cumulative effect of this decades-long drip-feed of EU-obituaries has been that of entrenching in the British public debate a coherent prediction of the EU’s incurable disease and/or the diagnosis of an imminent demise. As long as Britain was part of that doomed body or connected with it, it too was threatened—unless it managed to extricate itself from it in time, i.e. as soon as possible. The dominance of this illness-cure scenario reinforced the appeal of the ‘own-body’ option: it was clearly better to be a separate, live nation-body than a part of a dead or dying multination-body.

18 See

e.g. Daily Express, 22/07/2019, quoting Nigel Farage, the UKIP, later Brexit Party, leader; The Economist, 18/06/2016), The Daily Telegraph, 14/07/2015 and 09/03/2016. The ‘matching’ Brexit-supporting book publication is Murray (2017).

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In terms of scenario coherence, the pro-Brexit argument thus had a double advantage: firstly, because it was based on the traditional one nation—one body correlation as regards Britain and secondly, because it depicted, via the successful self-amputation version of the illness-cure scenario, the EU’s multi-body catastrophe as Britain’s national salvation.

3.3 Britain Vis-à-Vis the EU: Personal Conflicts The body politic metaphor has been endowed with personal characteristics for centuries, not least due to its early history as an ‘attachment’ to a ruler’s personality in addition to his body natural. Whilst the representation of the nation as body is evidently metaphorical, the representation of the nation by its ruler-name is metonymic: the person who rules the state can bear its name as his or hers. Thus, Shakespeare’s Henry V is also referred to as “England” by his French counterpart (Shakespeare 1995, 2: 4). This ruler- person for (nation- ) state metonymy is still echoed in the present-day referencing of nations by their chief politicians, e.g. presidents and prime ministers. But the body politic as the whole nation/people can also be personalised: “As persons, states enter into social relationships with other states, which are seen typically as either friends, enemies, neighbours, neutral parties, clients, or even pariahs” and have “national characteristics” (Chilton and Lakoff 1995: 38–39). There are two aspects of nation-person status that can be exploited argumentatively: (a) the ‘individual identity’ issue that translates into the powerful concept of “sovereignty”, which was and still is of extreme importance in modern nationalism (Agamben 1998; Hobsbawm 1992: 141–144; Schmitt 2004) and (b) the issue of “national character” stereotypes, which have a long and fraught tradition but have nonetheless endured, despite having been fundamentally challenged in present-day social psychology (McCrae and Terraciano 2006). Evidence of such stereotypes has been found in the interpretations of the nation as person metaphor scenario in our survey and will be discussed in detail in Chaps. 5–11. In the remainder of this section we will focus on the personconceptualisation of British national independence and sovereignty in the Brexit debate. In terms of the personalised body politic metaphor, the above-mentioned Brexiterdetermination to “take back control” over the nation-body implied a change in the UK’s person-status, i.e. the liberation from a perceived dependence upon the EU as the ‘other’ political person. Such dependence is often represented in public discourse by way of a marriage-relationship (Musolff 2009), due to its living-world familiarity. Indeed, the scenario of Britain and the EU as a (‘awkward’) couple has been established for some time (Ðurovi´c and Silaški 2018; George 1994; Musolff 2009). Thus, Brexit was viewed as a divorce of the United Kingdom from the European Union:

3.3 Britain Vis-à-Vis the EU: Personal Conflicts

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(5) What if Britain left the EU? […] It would certainly be a messy divorce after 44 years (The Guardian, 04/11/2014) Two assumptions are implicit in this scenario that strongly indicate an in-built Eurosceptic bias: the conceptualisation of the EU as a unitary, state-like unit (which has figured prominently in Eurosceptic parlance as the dreaded “federal European super-state” since the 1990s)19 and the self-perception of the UK as being the EU’s partner or adversary at equal level in terms of political clout (Gibbins 2014; Spiering 2015: 54; Wenzl 2019: 39–44; Wodak 2016). Its Eurosceptic provenance can also be gleaned from the fact that prior to 2014/15 Britain’s divorce from the EU was a salient topic only for UKIP and its sympathisers (e.g. UKIP leader Nigel Farage favoured an “amicable divorce” as early as 2012; The Daily Telegraph, 05/07/2012 and 15/11/2013). Instead, the main referent for the divorce scenario in British debates about EU politics had been the imagined break-up of the so-called “eurocouple” , i.e. France and Germany, on account of British governments’ attempts to establish a ménage a trois, in which the UK could be the ‘third’ partner.20 A UK-EU separation only became a realistic option once the outcome of the Brexit referendum had put negotiations about the withdrawal, including the financial aspects, on the agenda. Over the course of Theresa May’s negotiations 2016–2018, the size of the “divorce bill” or “divorce settlement” was hotly debated, as well as the issue of whether Britain would have to pay it at all if it left the Union without a treaty, the so-called “no-deal Brexit”. By the time of Britain’s withdrawal, the “divorce bill” was estimated to be just below £30 billion (BBC 24/01/2020: “Brexit divorce bill: How much does the UK owe the EU?”). However, the divorce scenario did not just include the financial arrangements, it also gave rise to predictions about the future of the ex-partners after Brexit had been ‘achieved’.21 From the viewpoint of Brexit supporters the scenario was one of Britain liberating itself as quickly as possible from an unhappy marriage, but possibly facing a vengeful ex-partner: (6)

Michael Gove [Chair of the Leave campaign in 2016 and Conservative minister] raises question of ‘quickie divorce’ for UK from EU.[…] “I am prepared to take the economic hit […]. I simply want the divorce on the quickest possible terms.” (The Guardian, 16/11/2016)

19 See e.g. Brown (2008), Lawson (2016); for analyses of this polemical topos see Morgan (2009), Teubert (2001). 20 See e.g. The Guardian, 16/02/2004: “Blair believes, being in a […] ménage a trois will enable Britain to become a permanent agenda-setter in the EU”; The Economist, 07/12/1998: “every time, over the past decade, that a new president or prime minister has taken over in France, he briefly—and in the end unsatisfactorily—flirts with the Eurosceptical British, only to fall back in relief on the old liaison with Germany”). 21 Interestingly, the gender-roles of the marriage/divorce partners (UK-EU) were left open in almost all cases. The exception is a German politician’s use cited in example (10) below, which implicitly likened the UK to the (irresponsible) husband/father.

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(7)

Forget hard Brexit, it’s DIRTY Brexit as EU vows to make UK divorce as nasty as possible (Daily Express, 22/10/2016)22 Opponents of Brexit predictably avoided blaming the EU for the divorce; instead, they highlighted the risk of unforeseen negative consequences and future responsibilities: (8) […] imagine a divorce demanded unilaterally by one partner, the terms of which are fixed unilaterally by the other. It is a process that is likely to be neither harmonious nor quick—nor to yield a result that is favourable to Britain. (The Economist, 22/02/2016) (9) Perhaps the UK will transition to taking the divorce well. But on the basis of the past eight months, it will instead transition to a lengthy period of driving round to its ex’s house at night, sitting in the car outside with a bottle of vodka, and texting a cocktail of pure venom and pleas to get back together, until the police are called (The Guardian, 08/12/2017) (10) […] the German MEP Elmar Brok, who was involved in drafting the EU’s opening negotiating guidelines said, “[…] if you have a divorce you have to pay up on your obligations. It is like a husband running away from the family and their children.” (The Guardian, 01/05/2017) From these examples and from Farage’s above-cited recommendation of an “amicable divorce” (see above) it is evident that the divorce scenario is more than just a shorthand reference to an act of marital separation. It implies the prospect of life after the divorce, which is open to morally and emotionally loaded associations. They all involve an evaluation of what kind of divorce is good or bad and who is to blame if things go wrong. This evaluation was based on an assumption—shared by the Eurosceptic and Euro-friendly voices—that the spouses had to take ‘personal’ responsibility for their EU-political decisions and actions. The other recurrent Brexit-related personalisation was that of Britain as the victim of an aggressive and arrogant EU-oppressor desperately trying to re-establish its independence. This scenario presented an explicitly Euro-hostile narrative and was characteristic for the pro-Brexit side of the debate, with no input but occasional, defensive criticism from Brexit-opponents. The most vociferous and consistent voice propagating this scenario was that of Boris Johnson in a stream of Daily Telegraph comments from 2016 onwards, which led up to his invoking the comic book hero “Hulk” breaking his chains at the autumn of 2019, as noted earlier. By then, Johnson was Prime Minister and could adopt a jokey, quasi self-ironical stance. Back in 2016, at a time when he was not yet member of the Cabinet, his use of the UK-liberation scenario was more strident, accusing the EU of “colonising” and “infiltrat[ing] […] every area of public policy” (The Daily Telegraph, 21/02/2016). However, it was during 2017/18, when the Brexit Treaty was 22 Occasional

facetious adoptions of the angry divorce scenario version by non-British EU politicians were seized upon as evidence for the futility of any British cooperation: “In a sign of the hostilities to come European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker warned Britain not to expect an ‘amicable divorce,’ adding: ‘It was not exactly a tight love affair anyway’” (Daily Mail, 25/06/2019).

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negotiated by Theresa May’s government, that his anti- “colonialist” rhetoric really came into its own and even began shifting towards a politics- as- war scenario, with both the EU and the Prime Minister herself as enemies: (11) Boris Johnson: Brexit mustn’t leave us a ‘vassal state’ (The Sunday Times, 17/12/2017) (12) Victory for Brussels is inevitable.[…] we have gone into battle waving the white flag. The Daily Telegraph, 03/09/2018, author: B. Johnson) (13) The EU are treating us with naked contempt—we must abandon this surrender of our country. (The Daily Telegraph, 15/10/2018, author: B. Johnson) (14) The EU will turn us into captives if we sign up to this appalling sell-out of a deal. We are preparing to take colonial rule by foreign powers and courts. (The Daily Telegraph, 18/11/2018; author: B. Johnson) (15) Theresa May’s plan to enslave us in the customs union […] will never work. (The Daily Telegraph, 07/04/2019; author: B. Johnson) Johnson’s anti-EU- “slavery” campaign was accompanied by a chorus of proBrexit politicians and journalists who voiced variations on the liberation narrative. These included, predictably, his ‘home’ newspaper, the Daily Telegraph (“To survive the new global Dark Age, Britain must leave the tyrannical EU”, 22/07/2019; “Brussels commands leaders from its rebellious colonies to fly over in the small hours. They obey, and appear bleary-eyed in the imperial court to act the part allotted to them in the play”, 08/12/2017). The right wing tabloids carried similar calls to arms, Daily Express, 01/12/2017: “Brexit betrayal: EU says UK will pay BILLIONS as May buckles to divorce bill pressure”; Daily Mail, 13/11/2015: “crusade to quit the EU”.23 Even the Euro-friendly Guardian could not completely avoid vilifying the EU along with the May government, thus following the narrative of Johnson’s scenario, when it predicted that Britain under May would lose “‘crown jewels’ of banking and medicine agencies” to the EU (15/04/2017) and “capitulate to key European demands” (20/06/2017). There were a few attempts by anti-Brexit-voices to counter the liberation scenario, e.g. by denouncing it as a “nationalist spasm” (The Guardian, 23/12/2017; author: Lord A. Adonis (Labour Party)) or as “cultivating a dangerous sense of victimhood” (The Guardian, 21/07/2018), and by ridiculing Johnson’s self-aggrandisement as “Hulk” (The Guardian, 16/09/2019). These comments were, however, reactive; the Brexit-opposing politicians and media never managed to establish in public discourse a counter-scenario to the liberation narrative that would present a policy of the UK remaining in the EU in a positive or attractive light.

23 For proud Brexiter politicians taking up the freedom fight

motif see e.g. Brexit Party member Ann Widdecombe: “There is a pattern consistent throughout history of oppressed people turning on their oppressors, slaves against their owners, the peasantry against the feudal barons, colonies against empires, and that is why Britain is leaving” (quoted in The Guardian 04/07/2019) and Conservative MP Ian Duncan Smith: “The EU acts like a playground bully—it’s time we stood up to it” (The Daily Telegraph, 20/12/2015).

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Both nation as person scenario versions discussed above, i.e. divorce and liberation from colonial rule/slavery, are evidently presupposing a state of conflict between the Britain and the EU. The framing is heavily biased in favour of the national ‘Self’ as the victim of unfair treatment or, worse, oppression by the ‘Other’ side, who is pictured either as a vengeful ex-partner or as a bully and in more fanciful versions, as an imperial despot/slave owner.24 This personalisation of the nation, especially in the self- liberation scenario, is not a mere metonymic reference,25 which may be routine in ‘banal-nationalistic’ discourse but rather an emphatic, polemically and ideologically loaded invocation of a populist understanding of national sovereignty. In particular, B. Johnson’s skill in using this personalisation in political debates is remarkable not just for its polemical ferocity in ‘othering’ opposing sides as in the UK v. EU-antagonism but also for its wide stylistic range. It would be misleading to assume that his and fellow-Brexiters’ conceptualisations of Brexit as an ‘interpersonal’ British-European conflict were only restricted to liberation or war scenarios. In a seemingly more humorous variant, he depicted the British side as a ‘winner-takes-all’ by insisting it “could have its cake and eat it” through Brexit. This logically implausible, asserted version of the usually negated proverb formulation (You cannot have your cake and eat it, with have in the archaic meaning ‘keep’) was supposed to signal an optimistic outlook on the chances for Britain to keep the benefits of access to the EU market and at the same time avoid EU-membership obligations—such as freedom of movement and participation in EU-wide regulation and law-enforcement. In the initial formulation,26 he made this claim on behalf of the freshly installed post-referendum government under Theresa May, in which he was then Foreign Secretary: “Our policy is having our cake and eating it” (The Sun, 30/09/2016). But it was quickly adopted by the media as expressing the British nation-person’s ambition (or ‘wishful thinking’): (16) Britain can’t have its cake and eat it’—Brussels will gang up on UK over Brexit talks (The Spectator, 05/10/2016) (17) The UK was already having its cake and eating it in the EU (New Statesman, 14/09/2017) (18) Britain CAN have its cake and eat it - Professor’s brilliant point over post-Brexit trade (Daily Express, 04/01/2018) (19) It was always ridiculous to imagine that the UK could have its cake and eat it over Brexit. (Daily Mirror, 19/05/2018)

24 Johnson

and some other ardent Brexiters did not shy away from comparing the alleged EUtyranny to that of Hitler or Napoleon (The Daily Telegraph, 14/05/2016; The Guardian, 15/05/2016 and 04/02/2019). 25 For a ‘de-politicising’ interpretation of nation-personalisation that views state-as-agent constructions as devoid of ideological implications see Twardzisz (2013); for critical discussion of his evidence see Musolff (2016: 101–104). 26 For analyses of Johnson’s pre-Brexit use of the proverb and its complete discourse career 2015– 2019 see Musolff (2019), Charteris-Black (2019: 1–30).

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In (16)–(19), the United Kingdom is grammatically and semantically the agent of the predicate having and eating cake. Of course, a politically informed media audience understood that in reality it was the government and, more specifically, its pro-Brexit faction that pursued this maximalist approach in the Brexit negotiations whereas Euro-friendly parts of the public opposed it. When the Conservative government under May, and subsequently under Johnson, realised that their objectives were not feasible, they stopped using the metaphor in its asserted form, whilst critics kept using it to highlight the futility of the government’s plans (example 19). However, both proponents and critics shared the underlying scenario of the nation-person (i.e. Britain) that was conceptualised as the one who tried to outwit the EU and who would have to deal with the ensuing fall-out.

3.4 Summary The six body- and person-scenarios that we have highlighted in this section as relevant for the conceptualisation of the British nation in the Brexit debate, i.e. (a) uk as independent, fully self- controlled body, (b) uk as part of greater body and closeness to its central organ, (c) eu as external disease, poison or infection that has to be kept away from the self’s body, (d) divorce from oppressive partner, (e) forceful liberation from colonial oppressor, and (f) chance of uk outwitting eu, are all compatible, if not congruent with the basic scenarios of the body politic tradition developed in Western political thought since the Middle Ages, which we reviewed in the previous chapter. Of course twenty-first century political commentaries do not re-tell the Fable of the Belly nor reproduce in detail theories from the early modern period about the functions of head or heart or about illnesses and their cures. But the narratives and conclusions formulated in present-day scenarios answer the same basic questions about the body politic as their predecessors: the issues of hierarchy and control within the body, the interdependence of all body parts in health and illness and the feasibility and rigour of a cure, as well as the ‘personal’ responsibility for the nation-Self’s decisions and policies. It is important to stress that these scenarios are by no means exclusive to the Eurosceptic side of the Brexit-argument but are shared across the political spectrum in Britain. Specific conceptual or argumentative elements of the scenarios were of course differently evaluated, according to the speaker’s Euro-political stance, but the scenarios provided the narrative-argumentative platforms to argue the issues of national sovereignty and welfare either way. We can therefore conclude that the body politic metaphor, as a figurative model of argumentation about the nation, has survived as a discursive tradition in Britain, in addition to the terminological traces of its original formulation in the English language in the Renaissance. In the following chapters we will investigate how this tradition has also survived as a model of metaphor interpretation in international English-as-language- of-instruction contexts.

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Šari´c, L. & Stanojevi´c, M.-M. (eds.) (2019). Metaphor, Nation and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schmitt, C. (2004). Politische Theologie, Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Shorter Oxford Dictionary on Historic Principles. (1993). Fourth edition. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spiering, M. (2015). A Cultural History of British Euroscepticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Teubert, W. (2001). A Province of a Federal Superstate, Ruled by an Unelected Bureaucracy— Keywords of the Euro-sceptic Discourse in Britain. In A. Musolff, C. Good, P. Points, & R. Wittlinger (Eds.), Attitudes towards Europe—Language in the Unification Process (pp. 23–43). Aldershot: Ashgate. Twardzisz, P. (2013). The Language of Interstate Relations. In Search of Personification. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Waldby, C. (1996). Aids and the Body Politic. Biomedicine and sexual difference. London: Routlege. Wenzl, N. (2019). ‘This is about the kind of Britain we are’: National identities as constructed in parliamentary debates about EU membership. In V. Koller, S. Kopf, & M. Miglbauer (Eds.), Discourses of Brexit (pp. 32–47). London and New York: Routledge. Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear. What right-wing populist discourses mean. London: Sage. Wodak, R. (2016). We have the character of an island nation. A discourse-historical analysis of David Cameron’s “Bloomberg Speech” on the European Union. (EUI Working Papers, RSCAS 2016/36). San Domenico di Fiesole: European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. Zappettini, F. (2019). The Official Vision for ‘Global Britain’. Brexit as rupture and continuity between free trade, liberal internationalism and ‘values’. In V. Koller, S. Kopf & M. Miglbauer (eds.). Discourses of Brexit. (pp. 140–154) London: Routledge.

Chapter 4

Cultural Conceptualisations of the Nation as a Body or Person: Scenario Analysis of Metaphor Interpretations

4.1 Introduction In this and the following chapters, we will introduce results from a survey of interpretations of the nation as body metaphor by university students from different national and linguistic cultures. The background to this survey was the unexpected outcome of a vocabulary test conducted in 2011 in a class of international postgraduate students at the University of East Anglia (UK), which included the phrase body politic. When the responses came in, they fell into two distinct groups. One set of answers described national polities in terms of a body’s anatomy and physiology, its organs, their functioning and health. The most prominent body parts were identified with nation state institutions, e.g. the head with the British Queen or the President of a republic; the brain with the government or its leader, e.g. Prime Minister, or other high-ranking or influential parts of the national leadership; arms and legs with executive and administrative branches of the state, e.g. police, justice; and hands and feet with ‘working’ or ‘lower’ parts of society, e.g. workers, farmers, poor people. In addition to this hierarchical perspective on relationships among different parts of the nation-body, their interdependence was highlighted, e.g. in statements that an illness or injury in one organ would affect the others and that all organs had to work together to function properly. These responses, in which we recognise main motifs from the Western traditions of nation as body/person metaphors that we encountered in the preceding chapters, were supplied not only by British and US students in the class who had English as their First Language but also by Spanish, Ukrainian, Kurdish and Arabic L1 speaking students. The other set of responses, all of which were given by Chinese students, identified geographical places (cities, regions), linked them to parts of the human anatomy and then added explanatory comments which constructed analogies between the respective body parts and the political institutions or typical activities in the respective cities and provinces. For example, the capital of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing, was said to be the heart or head of the nation (on account of its being the © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_4

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seat of government), Hong Kong and China were conceptualised as the face or arms (opening up to and embracing the world); the politically separated island Taiwan and other political ‘problem regions’ such as Tibet were depicted as diseased, injured or otherwise troublesome organs. Borrowing a term from political geography,1 we can characterise these constructs as being grounded in the concept of a nation’s geobody, in the sense that its geographical features are understood as a metonymic basis for references to political institutions/ functions, which are then metaphorised as parts of the human body that have analogous positions or functions. Both these metaphor versions, i.e. nation as (anatomical/organic) body and nation as geobody, fulfil the conditions of “metaphor scenarios”: they are based on the same source domain but are pragmatically different from each other. They are more than just the sums of ‘participants’ and ‘event structures’ but add up to argumentative and narrative wholes that suggest specific evaluations and conclusions, e.g. loss of territory as loss of a limb may be deemed necessary in one scenario (cure of illness) but may be viewed as an unacceptable loss in the other (geobody). In contrast to the scenarios analysed in the preceding chapters which were drawn from usage in political theories and discourse, the scenarios in responses to the body politic task have a different status: they are elicited interpretations, triggered by an explicit formulation that defined a specific goal for the exercise. This newly discovered variation in these test responses opened up a range of questions regarding the role of scenarios in metaphor interpretation: • Were the Chinese responses influenced by their writers’ (lack of) competence in English as L2? • Did the two scenarios that were in evidence, i.e. body v. geobody, cover the whole range of variation? • Was this variation characteristic of culture-specific traditions? • Could the students’ interpretations count as actively, creatively produced conceptualisations or did they only recycle conceptual input material suggested by the task formulation (i.e. by the researcher)? There could be no question of the metaphor task being ‘misunderstood’ by either of the two student groups, e.g. by not realising the source concepts’ figurative application or by formulating that application in a ‘defective’ way (compared with standard English usage).2 Given that all the international students showed a good general command of academic English (based on First Degrees in English and on IELTS 1 In

political geography, “geobody” analyses have focused on borders and boundaries defining the size and shapes of nation states and establishing their independence from other states nation states, see Ataka (2016), Callahan (2009, 2010), Winichakul (1994). In our data, such border concepts are rarely mentioned, except in cases of perceived loss of territories as loss of limbs. We will discuss these cases in detail in the relevant chapters presenting data from the respective cohorts. 2 For the discussion of such cases of metaphor misunderstanding or reinterpretations in educational ESL/EFL contexts see Chávez (2010), Littlemore (2003), Littlemore and Low (2006), Littlemore et al. (2011), MacArthur and Littlemore (2011), MacArthur et al. (2015), Nacey (2013), Philip (2010), Piquer-Píriz (2010).

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tests as entry qualifications for their MA programme), a fundamental L2-weakness on the part of one group could be ruled out as the main reason for the difference in responses. Of course, we can assume that the English-L1 students who were familiar with the lexical item body politic from experience of its usage in media and education were most likely to reproduce the established nation as body version, but they were not the only ones to prefer it in their interpretation: others did so, too. On the other hand, the territory-based interpretation, i.e. nation as geobody, which the Chinese students preferred, was also a valid reading that just did not happen to privilege the associations more easily accessible to English L1-speakers. All responses included the mapping of parts of the source domain concept body onto a political target concept (i.e., a nation state as an institutional or territorial whole), so in terms of the task, they were all successful. From a didactic viewpoint, the emergent contrast in conceptualising one’s own nation was an eye-opener. Once the difference in the responses had been made explicit, the participants in the seminar were keen to discuss and explain it in detail and to learn more about the history of the body politic phrase in the British context, without any communication problems. The initial group of fourteen students was of course far too small to furnish any far-reaching conclusions. To gain more reliable data, a standardised task and a much larger sample of responses were needed that would establish the range of variation in conceptualisations of the nation as body metaphor. Together with the initial seminar group and further groups of students I developed a simple standardised questionnaire that avoided the term body politic with its morphologically archaic (adjective-second) structure. Instead, we asked informants to apply the “metaphor or simile that presents [a nation] in terms of a human body/person” to their home nations and provide some information on sociolinguistic variables such as first language, nationality, age and sex.3 Subsequently, the wording was changed to reduce the conceptual input to the notion of body, with the final formulation being: The concept of ‘nation’ can be described by way of a metaphor or simile that presents it in terms of a human body. Please apply this metaphor to your home nation in 5–6 sentences.

For students who might be uncertain what a metaphor or simile was, a minimal “Guidance note” was added, which deliberately used an example that had nothing to do with the source or target domains included in the task: “metaphor/simile = way of speaking/thinking of something in terms of something else (e.g. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving (Albert Einstein))”. In this form, the questionnaire was distributed from 2012 onwards in both undergraduate and postgraduate taught modules at UEA and later also at the University of Birmingham and Aston University (UK). The enthusiastic support from staff and students 3 As

with the responses, all personal information was collected on a voluntary basis and anonymously. In cases where respondents had nevertheless identified themselves by name, data were subsequently anonymised. At the start of every questionnaire delivery, informants received an information sheet and a consent form, which they had to sign and which was securely stored, according to the ethical conduct regulations of UEA and in compliance with ESRC guidelines.

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at these universities motivated me to cast the net wider. The results were prodigious for a project that relied almost exclusively on voluntary help. With the support of colleagues and students in language-/communication-related disciplines at fifty universities in thirty countries, we assembled a preliminary database of over 2000 completed questionnaires from twenty-four different L1 language backgrounds. The survey delivery protocol distributed to all collaborators was ‘to present the questionnaire as a lexical exercise and to administer it in class within 5–10 min’, if possible in an early semester session, i.e. before metaphor examples or theories were discussed. The aim was to reduce inadvertent priming effects for specific interpretations to a minimum. However, given the diversity of delivery settings across institutions in many countries, full control of the many diverse delivery situations was impossible. In some contexts, lecturers may have given more explanations and allowed more time for task completion than recommended. This means that extra input from teachers’ explanations and the educational context influenced the responses. Nevertheless, there are strong indications that this diversity did not distort the results unduly: In the first place, none of the informant cohorts delivered a uniform or near-uniform set of answers; on the contrary, each was characterised by wide-ranging variation, as we will see in the following chapters. Furthermore, the diversity in survey settings led to an increase of variation in the length of responses: some answers contained just one sentence, most of them had five-six, as instructed, but others included up to ten. Some 200 completed questionnaires, i.e. about 10%, failed to answer the question. Once they were discarded from the database, a total of 1850 relevant completed questionnaires were recorded (see Appendix 1). In the rest of this chapter we will present the steps taken to analyse this database. First we give an account of the basic corpus construction, then of its division into language-based samples and finally we explain the order in which the samples are presented and discussed in the following chapters.

4.2 Corpus Construction First, all handwritten questionnaires had to be commuted into electronically searchable documents. This was done by four student research assistants and me. After a short initial training phase, we coded all lexical material referring to political entities and functions in the answers that belonged to the domains body (e.g. anatomy, physiology, health conditions, medical treatment) or person (e.g. gender, family and professional role, character traits).4 In addition, we assigned each answer to at least one “scenario”. The scenario assignation turned out to be the most time-consuming task and involved further training and discussions within the coding team, as all

4 This procedure followed the “Metaphor Identification Procedure” (“MIP”, later “MIP-VU”) devel-

oped by Steen et al. (2010), which is based on a five-step process of eliminating all (‘basic‘) non-metaphorical meanings and other irrelevant uses.

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scenario-assignations had to be consensual. We arrived at a compilation of transcripts that showed all relevant lexical items and the scenarios in italics, as in the following examples, which are taken from the initial 14-strong cohort (italicisation of the relevant metaphorical terms in these and further examples was added by the author): (1) body: The head of the [British nation’s] body represents the Queen of England, as she is in charge of the whole country and she is royalty. The features of the head (eyes, nose, mouth and ears) represent the different official people, such as politicians, the Prime Minister, the Government. (2) body: If one organ or part of the national body suffers, the whole body would suffer from fever. In other words, having a healthy body requires healthy parts. As a nation, a problem in one area of a country should attract the attention of the whole people in that country. (3) geobody: Beijing: Heart and Brain, Shanghai: Face (economic center); Hong Kong and Taiwan: Feet; Tianjin: Hands (= army close to Beijing); Shenzhen: Eyes (= the first place open to the world) (4) geobody: Beijing is the heart of China. The railway is the throat of China. Shanghai is the economic backbone of China. Shenzhen is the liver of China; Szechuan is the hair of China; Xiangyang is the heel of China. As these examples show, the number of source domain-related lexical items within a scenario, their formulation (as ‘direct’ metaphors or similes) and the added explanations can vary. Some responses are enumerative, itemising body parts/functions and the respective socio-political target referents, others include explicit motivations of the intended analogies. Thus, the length of a specific response gave no clue as to the number of concepts included in it. Some answers were almost laconic; others were more verbose. Whilst some responses included many sentences that all focused on one scenario, others contained more than one. Hence, the number of scenario instantiations per L1 sample was always higher than that of submitted responses, and it was always considerably lower than that of the source concepts of relevant lexical units. To illustrate the procedure, we note the following coding for the examples cited above: (1*) (2*) (3*) (4*)

body: head, body, eyes, nose, mouth, ears. body: organ, whole body, fever, healthy. geobody: heart, brain, face, feet; hands, eyes. geobody: heart, throat, backbone, liver, hair, heel.

Significantly, the target meaning of the relevant lexical items (and with it the underlying analogy/comparison) changes with the scenario in which they are embedded. The eyes of the institutional body of the nation in (1) and (1*), which have as their target referents government functionaries and which prioritise a functional analogy of information-processing, are a different kind of eyes than those of the geobody (3*), which refer to a region “open to the world”, e.g. in terms of economic contact (see example 3). The relationship between scenarios and source meanings of individual

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lexical items can thus be defined as a whole-part relationship: all lexical items represent sub-concepts of at least one scenario. The instances/ tokens of all scenarios and sub-concepts such as those in (1*)–(4*) were then recorded on Excel spread sheets, which were ordered according to the informants’ first language and nationality and then later combined to L1 samples. While the earliest result had suggested a seemingly clear-cut 50–50% split between Chinese students choosing geobody conceptualisations of the nation and non-Chinese students opting for body-based interpretations, later results showed that there was no exclusive set of interpretations in relation to linguistic and/or cultural groups, either for these two scenarios or for any of the other three. Some responses by English L1-informants, for instance, did include geography-based readings that were comparable to examples (3) and (4): (5) London can be considered as the ‘head’, directing operations as the brain does for the body. Birmingham, right in the centre of the country, could be said to act as the ‘heart’, controlling the flow of the ‘blood’ through the main arteries. (6) Britain, a vast, churning body of 48 million people, sucking in resources, processing them, and spewing out fumes and ideas. The mouth and nose are Dover and Portsmouth, sucking in the oxygen of European food and produce. It travels down the oesophagus of the motorways, arriving in the guts of the suburbs. On the other hand, some Chinese students constructed body-institution mappings that might be considered typical of the Western body politic tradition, as well as adding humorous innovative applications of their own, e.g. in (8): (7) The communist party of China is the head of the body. It leads the functions of the whole body system […]. The government is the nervous system of the body, which is controlled by the head of the body. (8) Corrupt officials are like fine hairs [sic] on China’s arm. They grow there, thus humiliate the beauty of a lady by showing the world how they feed on people. […] Corrupt officials are hard to be got rid of just like the hairs, being shaved off but later appearing to your eyes again. If, as demonstrated by these examples, there was no absolute contrast in the use of scenarios and sub-concepts in either cohort of informants, the implication for the hypothesised culture-specific variation was that it could only be expressed as a relative preference for scenarios and concepts per L1-sample, i.e. as frequency (percentage) of occurrences in relation to all other scenarios and concepts recorded in that sample. So instead of only calculating the frequencies of lexical units and their collocations (e.g. in relation to number of texts, or to corpora of text types, registers, genres etc., as in many other corpus-based and corpus-driven analyses),5 we focused on frequencies of instances of scenarios as well as of lexical item tokens (representing sub-concepts), calculated as percentages of the respective overall numbers of scenario instances and sub-concept instances. 5 See e.g. Charteris-Black (2004), Deignan (2005), Herrmann (2015), Herrmann et al. (2015), Moon

(1998), Musolff (2004), Pragglejaz Group (2007), Steen (2007), Steen et al. (2010), Tissari (2017).

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In addition to the body and geobody scenarios, the coding team identified three further scenarios, i.e. (i) conceptualisations of the nation as part of a (larger) body, (ii) as part of ego’s (i.e. the writer’s) body and (iii) as person. The following examples illustrate these additional scenarios:

part of (larger) body: England is like an appendix, not very significant anymore but can still cause trouble and make you realise its [sic] there if it wants to. (10) part of ego: Ukraine […] is my heart and blood, without it I cannot say I really alive. (11) person: Our nation is like a mother, who covers her children under her protection. China is like a giant person who moves forward step by step. China is a teenager still full of energy to do things. China is like an actor, who plays different roles on the world stage. (9)

In (9) the English nation is characterised as an appendix, which carries an association that is spelt out in the explanation, i.e. belittling its ‘significance’ and highlighting its capacity to make trouble, by analogy with the physical organ that is not essential for a body’s survival and potentially prone to a dangerous disease. Arguably, the latter part of the explanation (“cause trouble and make you realise its [sic] there if it wants to”) also evokes the person and part of ego scenarios in that it anthropomorphically ascribes to the appendix an ability to communicate with the speaker. However, it is not clear whether this anthropomorphism is used as an idiomatic ‘manner of speaking’ about the organ or is transferred onto the target referent, the English nation. If further evidence of such an analogical transferral could be found in the co-text (e.g. speculation about the nation-appendix acting and communicating), three different scenario instantiations would be recorded. In its absence, only the part of body scenario is attested. In (10), the speaker’s nation, Ukraine, is viewed as part of the speaker’s or ego’s own body. The two named sub-concepts in this example, blood and heart, are in fact the favourite ones in this scenario across all informant cohorts. This preference seems to be based on the cross-culturally established metaphor of blood representing ethnic ancestry (Johnson et al. 2013; Jones 1996) and the metonymically based concept of heart as the ‘seat’ of identity, character and emotions (Foolen 2008; Nacey 2004; Niemeier 2000; Pasamonik 2012; Reynolds 2007; Yu 2009b). Example (11) provides not just one but three different types of person subconcepts in addition to that of mother, i.e. giant person, teenager, actor. They appear to be conceived independently of each other, in order to highlight different aspects of the nation-personality, and are thus not necessarily seen as traits of one and the same individual. However, as further examples in the following chapters will show, this scenario can also give rise to extended characterisations of one and the same nation-person. In terms of quantitative classification, either type of response (i.e. different independent roles or one extended personification) counts as one instance of the person-scenario, whilst the respective sub-concepts are classified and counted separately.

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Together, the five scenarios of nation as whole body, as geobody, as part of body, as part of ego and as person cover all nation-conceptualisations both in the initially collected pilot dataset of several hundred responses that has been commented on previously (Musolff 2015b, 2016a, b, 2017) and in the final dataset, which underlies the discussion in the following chapters. The scenarios thus provide a grid for summarising all sub-concepts across different samples within the corpus. Examples (9)–(11) also show, perhaps more evidently than the examples quoted earlier, that metaphor scenarios can provide a conceptual-semantic platform for achieving further pragmatic effects such as ironical or sarcastic commentary, evaluation and emotive appeal. Calling a nation an appendix is not a neutral conceptualisation but implies a derogatory perspective on the part of the speaker. If that speaker is a member of that same nation, such a judgment amounts to self-criticism or self-irony. On the other hand, ‘internalising’ one’s nation as part of one’s own body, as in example (10), implies an enthusiastic self-identification with the nation and may be described as a private manifestation of banal-nationalistic ‘flagging the nation’ (Billig 1995). Likewise, identifying the nation with a mother who cares for her children, as in (11), implies a strong emotive affinity as well as evaluative praise. However, even the seemingly descriptive scenarios of body and geobody may have evaluative implications. Ascribing head, brain or heart status to a nation or to an institutional or territorial part of it suggests that it has an essential and controlling function, in line with the stereotypical organ-hierarchy that we know from the still popular sediments of ancient body-philosophies (see Chap. 2). In this respect, the survey scenarios are similar to those used in media and in political philosophy, which we studied earlier. In addition to providing semantic ensembles that ‘are more than the sum of their parts’ they fulfil pragmatic functions by evoking mini-narratives and suggesting evaluative and/or identity-building conclusions. In terms of corpus-coding, this pragmatic dimension was the most difficult to apply, as neither the scenarios nor the sub-concepts have an in-built bias: all of them can be used for any kind of argumentation, or for affective or emotive ‘colouring’, depending on their contexts. Assertive, or critical or ironical pragmatic meanings (“implicatures”) could only be established if sufficient context (in the sense of manifest co-text) was provided in the answer. Many short responses did not provide enough context to allow an unambiguous pragmatic assessment. In particular, distinguishing positive from neutral evaluations was not always possible; we eventually only coded emphatically negative and ironical scenario versions, as well as a few humorous ones that were not derogatory. Typical examples of these types of further pragmatic ‘exploitations’ of nation as body scenarios are statements such as: (12) The politicians are the tongue [of England], talking rubbish. (13) The backside of England is Hull. (14) The heart of Britain is essentially tea, with queues making up the limbs.6

6 Compare also example (1) in Chap. 1; for more examples highlighting an ironical or even sarcastic

stance see Chap. 5 and Musolff and Wong (2020).

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In example (12) england as a body has a body part (tongue) that is given an explicitly negative evaluation (talking rubbish), in (13) Britain’s geobody is said to contain a body part (backside) that is assumed to be unsightly or even offensive, and in (14) the body/person Britain is characterised by body parts (heart, limbs) that are associated with stereotypical habits of the British people (tea-drinking, queuing), which are commonly considered to be endearing rather than threatening or offensive. In many cases, however, distinctions of critical, ironical and humorous conceptualisations are difficult to decide, because the examples appear to be parts of a continuum or more or less serious dissociation, rather than being clear cut cases. In particular, ironical uses proved hard to determine as they relied on the discrepancy between an apparent positive evaluation and its implicit contradiction by circumstances that are presumed as shared knowledge of speakers and hearers (Colston 2017: 30–36; Willison 2017: 65–77). In relevance-theoretical accounts of irony this ‘contradictory’ relationship is viewed as “echoic” because the manifest utterance implicitly refers to a contrasting ‘precedent’ (echoed) proposition (Wilson 2006: 1722–1724; Wilson and Sperber 1992). The competing pretense-theoretical account (Clark and Gerrig 1984; Currie 2006; Kumon-Nakamura et al. 1995) holds that ironical speakers pretend to speak as if they were another person who makes an utterance that contradicts common ground knowledge and/or exposes a failed expectation. Despite their differences, both accounts share the assumption that the speaker implicitly dissociates him- or herself from the content of the ‘precedent’ utterance, whether echoed or pretended. In most survey responses, however, the implied or ‘echoed’ proposition is not provided in the context but has to be deduced from an evaluative metaphor scenario, such as that of the nation as a hierarchically ordered body. It is this hierarchical structure (from highly valued top/head down to lowly valued bottom/toe) that serves as the conceptual frame for the reader’s inference that the speaker’s ascription of backside-status to a part of the nation-body implies dissociation.7 In some cases, a response may combine two or even three such pragmatic effects. As we will see, their frequency varies considerably between cohorts, which will be illustrated and commented on in the respective chapters. A typical Excel spread sheet based on this coding includes three sections (see Appendix 2). In the first section all instantiations of the five main scenarios are recorded. The second section details all body-, health-, medicine- and personrelated sub-concepts. The third section counts the instances of (a) critical uses that state negative features of the national body/body part/geobody or person, (b) ironical or sarcastic uses that achieve a critical effect by seemingly praising but contextually denouncing the nation, and (c) non-derogatory, playful humorous uses. 7 This

inference schema seems to work also for the more drastic cases of sarcasm, which cannot strictly be deemed to be ‘implict’. Thus, conceptualisations of the nation in terms of taboo body parts and functions (ass, butt, excrement, sex …), which are rare overall but do appear in signifiant frequency in some informant cohorts (see following chapters), are openly derogatory but still rely on shared knowledge aboy taboo values in the respective discourse communities (see Allan and Burridge 2006: 1–28).

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The following section introduces the ways in which the L1-samples were determined and how the differential distributional weight of scenarios and sub-concepts was calculated.

4.3 Scenario Distribution Across L1 Samples This procedure meant that for many larger L1 samples, in addition to a main set of data from a specific country or countries, small groups of responses (sometimes just one or two) for the same language that had been collected in other countries were included. For the English L1 sample, for instance, we assembled responses by British, Irish, US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand speakers from sixteen different universities across the world. Linguistically, they represented “inner circle” varieties of English or “World Englishes”, but this variation parameter was largely disregarded because the sub-cohorts were too diverse in size. However, as we will see in Chapter Five, the US, Australian and New Zealand sub-samples show some significant stylistic variation in focusing on nation-as-body parts that are taboo or at least less popular in UK samples. These differences, which may be due to contrasts in popular discourse styles, are noted but need to be corroborated by further data before they can be regarded as valid. We also combined responses from speakers of Austrian and German nationality for German L1, from Belgian Flemish speakers and Netherlands Dutch speakers for Dutch L1, from speakers of Russian, Georgian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Moldovan and Armenian nationalities for Russian L1, from Serbs and Montenegrins for Serb L1. The decisive criterion in all these cases was the L1 self-assignment by the informants. However, in some cases this self-assignment was ambiguous, i.e. when several languages were claimed as L1. This was the case in three L1 samples: Arabic, Urdu and Chinese. For the Arabic L1 sample we not only had responses from countries that were geographically far apart (Algeria, Saudi-Arabia and Iraq), and hence had different dialects but in the case of Algeria, one sub-group (n = 22) self-identified as L1 speakers of Kabyle, a Berber language that is only remotely related to Arabic, which is their L2. However, as their answers had more in common with their coAlgerian Arabic L1 speakers than with other samples, they are discussed together with the other Algerians. Urdu speakers (n = 12) were all from Pakistan (Peshawar) and the majority self-identified as having both Urdu and Pashto as L1s. As the precise grounds for this double-assignation were beyond the survey remit, they are treated together and subsumed as one sub-group in the overarching category of “Middle-Eastern” cohorts: this ordering seems justified on the grounds that many of them claimed a common religious, Islam-inspired reading of the nation as body metaphor. The largest and in some respects most complex case was the ‘Chinese L1’ categorisation. This L1 sample, which is the largest of all with 325 relevant scripts, was collected from four Chinese mainland universities, one university in Hong Kong and six universities across Britain, Germany and the US. Most of their students, and

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notably all but one from the mainland, entered “Chinese” as L1, twenty Hong Kong informants wrote “Cantonese” (others from Hong Kong: “Chinese” or both) and some guest students in non-Chinese universities wrote “Mandarin”. The dialectal difference was judged to be secondary in terms of our survey. But, as we will see in detail, the Hong Kong sub-sample (collected in 2018) nevertheless shows a distinct scenario profile that can be related to a different, in some cases explicitly oppositional, political outlook from that of the responses from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Thus, while all Chinese sub-cohorts are treated as belonging to the same broad L1 sample, we have highlighted the political differences between PRC and Hong Kong, which have since been brought into sharp relief by the 2019 student protests in Hong Kong, in the respective (penultimate) chapter. The primarily L1-based sampling principle meant that the target referents of prominent sub-concepts varied in relation to the informants’ perception of the most important institution or office in their nation states, e.g. in the English-L1 case, Queen, President, government, parliament for head of the nation. Such variation at the target level was noted but deemed to be of minor importance because it did not change the hierarchical scenario-perspective, which was shared across different nationalities. Of greater significance were national discourse-traditions that affected references to nation-specific historical reminiscences. For instance, the historical legacy of wars that had changed countries’ geobodies was differently assessed by speakers who shared a language but were from diverse nationalities. Such differences were particularly evident in cases where informants belonged to a nation that had been a former colony of another nation state or a victim of occupation, or where informants articulated a self-critical consciousness of having been the collective perpetrator of aggression (e.g. in the case of Germany). The strongest nationalist “flagging” (Billig 1995) and critical ‘anti-flagging’, occurred in person characterisations, which attracted most of the negative/ critical and ironic/ sarcastic evaluations. In these cases, the emphasis of our analysis is on qualitative scrutiny, since the relative frequencies are at best indicative. Many of these examples provide evidence for the continuity of nation-specific discourse traditions. Once all L1 samples of scenario and sub-concept instances had been put together, it became evident that their size varied considerably, from single figures into several hundreds. The smallest L1 samples that had less than five responses were excluded altogether,8 which left 1772 of the overall 1850 completed questionnaires (see Appendix 3). The focus on eliciting nation-conceptualisations among students in language/communication-related university departments entailed a distinct age- and gender-bias: the vast majority of informants were 18–25 year old (overall 91%, see Appendix 3) and a strong majority were female (overall 72%). This age/gender bias is unsurprising given international student statistics (compare e.g. OECD 2020). The age and gender group percentages for specific L1 samples are recorded in the respective chapters.

8 The

excluded minimal L1 samples were: Afghani, Burmese, Czech, Estonian, Hindi, Indonesian, Iranian, Kurdish, Latvian, Malaysian„ Slovenian, Vietnamese.

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When all scenario instances were recorded, they totalled 2486 tokens (see Appendix 4). As it would have been meaningless to compare frequencies for all of the 24 vastly different-sized samples, only the larger L1 samples were scrutinised for distributional patterns of scenarios and sub-concepts, whereas the smaller samples were analysed mainly qualitatively. The cut-off point was a sample-size of at least fifty scenario instances overall, so that in principle for each of the five scenarios ten instances could be counted. The deviation from this even spread yielded distinctive L1-specific scenario profiles that could be investigated with a view to exploring the links between the most frequent scenarios and culture-specific discourse traditions for 16 L1 cohorts (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian L1). For smaller L1 samples, the culture-specific links were also investigated but, again, only on the basis of the qualitative analysis.

4.4 Overview of the Following Chapters As the range of L1 samples spanned several language families (i.e. Indo-European: Baltic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, Greek, Pashto; Finno-Ugric; Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew); Berber (Kabyle); Turkic; Hindustani (Urdu); Chinese and Japonic (Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese and Japanese) and also cut across nationalities, their ordering was not self-evident. But it made most sense to start in the following Chap. 5 with the English L1 cohort who were certainly familiar with the nation as body concept (as evidenced by the historical and contemporary usage data discussed in Chaps. 2 and 3). As hinted above, even this L1 sample includes evidence of contrasting national styles of metaphor use (British vs. US vs. Australian and New Zealand English). They have to be investigated across more balanced sub-samples to be confirmed. From English L1 we move on to other Germanic languages in Chap. 6; among these, only German L1 has a sufficiently large number of scenario tokens to allow a quantitative comparison; the Dutch L1 and Norwegian L1 samples are only discussed in qualitative terms. This pattern is repeated for other European languages, which are broadly ordered in the subsequent chapters (7–9) by language families: Romance, Slavic, other European (Hungarian, Lithuanian, Greek). It has to be borne in mind, however, that this arrangement is motivated more by the aspect of contact between the respective ‘related’ languages due to their regional adjacency, rather than by typological/genealogical relationships. The next group of L1 languages, Turkish, Semitic, Afro-Asian languages and Pashto are also grouped together for reasons of regional proximity, as ‘languages of the Middle East’ (Chap. 10). As we shall see, responses are mainly divided along lines of political and/or religious cultures. The last group of L1 backgrounds consists of samples from Chinese and Japanese L1 speakers. As mentioned above, the former group is divided between a mainland majority of presumably Mandarin-speaking informants and a Hong Kong-specific sub-sample, whose texts show a politically

4.4 Overview of the Following Chapters

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motivated critical tendency that distinguishes them from the mainland cohort. The Japanese L1 sample is more homogeneous and shows distinct discourse traditions compared with the Chinese L1 sample and all other samples.

References Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (2006). Forbidden words: Taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ataka, H. (2016). Geopolitics or Geobody politics? understanding the rise of china and its actions in the south china sea. Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, 4(1), 77–95. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage. Callahan, W. A. (2009). The cartography of national humiliation and the emergence of China’s geobody. Public Culture, 21(1), 141–173. Callahan, W. A. (2010). China—the Pessoptimist nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan. Chávez, E. A. (2010). The gaps to be filled: The (mis)treatment of the polysemous senses of hand, cool and run in EFL text books. In G. Low, Z. Todd, A. Deignan, & L. Cameron (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor in the real world (pp. 81–104). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Clark, H., & Gerrig, R. R. (1984). On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 121–126. Colston, H. L. (2017). Irony performance and perception. In A. Athanasidou & H. L. Colston (Eds.), Irony in language use and communication (pp. 19–41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Currie, G. (2006). Why irony is pretence. In S. Nichols (Ed.), The architecture of the imagination (pp. 111–133). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deignan, A. (2005). Metaphor and corpus linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Foolen, A. (2008). The heart as a source of semiosis: The case of Dutch. In F. Sharifian, R. Dirven and S. Niemeier (Eds.). Culture, Body, and Language. Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across cultures and languages. (pp. 373–394) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Herrmann, J. B. (2015). High on metaphor, low on simile? An examination of metaphor type in sub-registers of academic prose. In J. B. Herrmann & T. Berber Sardinha (eds.). Metaphor in Specialist Discourse. (pp. 163–190). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Herrmann, J. B., & Berber Sardinha, T. (2015). Metaphor in specialist discourse: Investigating metaphor use in specific and popularized contexts. In J. B. Herrmann & T. Berber Sardinha (eds.). Metaphor in Specialist Discourse (pp. 3–14). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Johnson, C. H., Jussen, B., Sabean, D. W., & Teuscher, S. (2013). Blood and Kinship: Matter for metaphor from ancient Rome to the present. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. Jones, S. (1996). In the blood. God, Genes and Destiny. London: Flamingo. Kumon-Nakamura, S., Glucksberg, S., & Brown, M. (1995). How about another piece of pie: The allusional pretense theory of discourse irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 3–21. Littlemore, J. (2003). The effect of cultural background on metaphor interpretation. Metaphor & Symbol, 18, 273–288. Littlemore, J., & Low, G. (2006). Figurative thinking and figurative language learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Littlemore, J., Chen, P., Koester, A., & Barnden, J. (2011). Difficulties in metaphor comprehension faced by international students whose first language is not English. Applied Linguistics, 32(4), 408–429.

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MacArthur, F., & Littlemore, J. (2011). On the repetition of words with the potential for metaphoric extension in conversations between native and non-native speakers of English. Metaphor and the Social World, 1(2), 201–238. MacArthur, F., Krennmayr, T., & Littlemore, J. (2015). How Basic Is “UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING” When Reasoning About Knowledge? Asymmetric Uses of Sight Metaphors in Office Hours Consultations in English as Academic Lingua Franca. Metaphor & Symbol, 30(3), 184– 217. Moon, R. (1998). Fixed expressions and idioms in english. A corpus-based approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Musolff, A. (2004). Metaphor and political discourse. analogical reasoning in debates about europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Musolff, A. (2015). Metaphor interpretation and cultural linguistics. Language and Semiotic Studies, 1(3), 35–51. Musolff, A. (2016a). Cross-cultural variation in deliberate metaphor interpretation. Metaphor and the Social World, 6(2), 205–224. Musolff, A. (2016b). Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios. London: Bloomsbury. Musolff, A. (2017). Metaphor and cultural cognition. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics (pp. 325–344). Singapore: Springer. Musolff, A., & Wong, S. T. D. (2020). England is an appendix; Corrupt officials are like hairs on a nation’s arm: Sarcasm, irony and self-irony in figurative political discourse. In A. Athanasiadou & H. L. Colston (Eds.), The Diversity of Irony (pp. 162–182). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Nacey, S. (2004). Head and Heart; Metaphors and Metonymies in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Published under then married name (Susan Mol) in K. Aijmer & H. Hasselgård (Eds.). Translation and Corpora: Selected Papers from the Göteborg-Oslo Symposium 18–19 October 2003. (pp. 1– 25). Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Nacey, S. (2013). Metaphors in learner english. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Niemeier, S. (2000). Straight from the heart — metonymic and metaphorical explorations. In A. Barcelona (Ed.). Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. A Cognitive Perspective. (pp. 195– 213). Berlin: De Gruyter. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development). (2020). Statistics for Education and Training. Retrieved Jan 11, from https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode= RPOP. Pasamonik, C. (2012). “My heart falls out”: Conceptualizations of body parts and emotion expressions in Beaver Athabaskan. In A. Idström & E. Piirainen (Eds.), Endangered Metaphors (pp. 77–101). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Philip, G. (2010). “Drugs, traffic, and many other dirty interests”: Metaphor and the language learner. In G. Low, Z. Todd, A. Deignan, & L. Cameron (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor in the real world (pp. 63–80). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Piquer-Píriz, A. (2010). Can people be cold and warm? Developing understanding of figurative meanings of temperature terms in early EFL. In G. Low, Z. Todd, A. Deignan, & L. Cameron (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor in the real world (pp. 21–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pragglejaz Group. (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor & Symbol, 22, 1–40. Reynolds, S. W. A. (2007). Organ Wars. The Battle for Supremacy. The Historic Struggle for Dominance between the Heart, Liver, and Brain. In M. Stapleton (Ed.) Proceedings of the 16th Annual History of Medicine Days. (pp. 377–382). Calgary: The University of Calgary. Steen, G. (2007). Finding metaphor in grammar and usage. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Steen, G., Dorst, A., Herrmann, B., Kaal, A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tissari, H. (2017). Corpus-linguistic approaches to metaphor. In E. Semino & Z. Demjén (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of metaphor and language (pp. 117–130). London: Routledge.

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Willison, R. (2017). In defense of an ecumenical approach to irony. In A. Athanasidou & H. L. Colston (Eds.), Irony in language use and communication (pp. 61–83). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wilson, D. (2006). The pragmatics of verbal irony: Echo or pretence? Lingua, 116, 1722–1743. Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (1992). On verbal irony. Lingua, 87, 53–76. Winichakul, T. (1994). Siam mapped: A history of the geo-body of a nation. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Yu, N. (2009). The Chinese HEART in a cognitive perspective: culture, body, and language. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Chapter 5

The Nation as a Body or Person in the English L1 Sample

5.1 Introduction The sample of responses from informants with English as their First Language was collected at seven universities across Britain, the USA, New Zealand, and Australia as well as from various European universities. It includes 183 valid responses altogether, 59 by British nationals, 34 by US, 42 by New Zealand and 46 by Australian nationals, one by an Irish and one by a Canadian national. More evenly balanced national samples would have been desirable but sampling met with practical problems in different locations. It is not possible to draw statistically valid comparisons between the different parts of the English L1 sample; nevertheless we can highlight conceptual and pragmatic patterns that seem to be indicative of nation-specific tendencies in conceptualising the own nation as a body. Like all other samples, the English-L1 sample is characterised by a strong preponderance of 18–25 year old informants, and by a female majority (Table 5.1). Table 5.1 Social Indicators: English L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 183 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

105

57%a

Male

78

43%

18–25

160

88%

26–30

6

3%

31–40

6

3%

41+

11

6%

a Percentages here and in all other tables are rounded figures

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_5

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According to the “scenario” categorisation (see Chap. 4), the English-L1 sample generated 232 scenario instances, which show the following distribution (Table 5.2). Table 5.2 Scenario distribution: English L1 Number of scenarios overall: 232 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

person

Scenario tokens

103

59

23

2

45

Percentages (%)

44

25

10

1

20

In the following sections we will discuss the different scenarios, starting with the most frequently represented one (body), then discussing the conceptually most closely related ones (body part; part of ego) and then moving on to the geobody and person scenario versions. The latter in particular give rise to affectively charged conceptualisations as well as to further pragmatic effects, e.g. argumentative exploitation and irony, which will be of special interest in cross-cultural comparison (see Chap. 12).

5.2 The Nation as BODY The body-based scenario type clearly dominates the English L1 sample. Its characteristic presentation is that as a part-whole relationship between the sub-concepts body and organs/body parts, as in this analogy 1 : (1) A human body only works effectively if all of its individual parts work. For example, a person can only survive if their heart/lungs/brain organs are functioning […]. A nation—like Britain—can only function well if all its body parts […] work together. If one thing gets taken away or isn’t able to voice its opinion, then the body will die or not function correctly. (E, UK, 21, F) In addition to body and the umbrella category organs/body parts/limbs, a further fifty distinct body-related and ten health/illness-related sub-concepts can be found across the 367 instances of lexical items from the combined body-health field in the English L1 sample. They range from the body-whole to extremities, inner organs, taboo body areas (anus, armpit) and to medical conditions and their treatment. The most frequent lexical sub-fields are: body(whole)-parts/limbs/organs (63 instances = 17%), head-brain (81 instances = 22%), heart (63 instances = 17%), blood-veins-arteries, arms-hands and leg-feet (each with 20–22 instances, i.e. between 5–6%). 1 Relevant

metaphorical terms have been italicised by the author. Besides italicisations, square bracketed omissions and explanatory additions are the only changes to the original texts. Spelling and grammatical errors are as in the originals. The abbreviations at the end of each quotation signify the sociolinguistic indicators supplied by the informants (first language, nationality, gender, age).

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69

The most prominent usage pattern is the classic hierarchical top-down model of the political anatomy from ‘head to toe’, which bears a striking resemblance to the famous formulations in the history of English-language literature and philosophy (see Chap. 2): (2) England is an organism. Its head is the Queen, its torso and limbs are the state and government. Its heart is culture and history, its brain is parliament. Its [sic] feet is the economy. (E, UK, M, 25) (3) The United States of America is like a human body. In fact, we often refer to it as the body politic. The government of the U.S. is the head, or the brain. It is (supposed to be) in control of the country’s functions. The states are the various parts of the body, functioning independently, but under the control of the ‘brain.’ (E, US, F, 48) (4) The head of the nation is the president and the members of Congress. (E, US, 20, F) (5) If New Zealand was a body, the Prime Minister would be the head in control and at the top. The Queen would be the hair, technically higher, but with no real power. The feet would be our farms, covered in mud but helps us trudge along […]. The hands would be our vineyards, full of fruit ripe for the picking, useful and helpful. (E, NZ, 19, F) (6) Our head of state [of Australia] is the English monarch. (E, AUS, F, 18) (7) The federal government [of Australia] is the brain. (E, AUS, M, 18) In many cases head and brain are treated as exchangeable, i.e. as the hierarchically ‘highest’, controlling parts of the body. As mentioned before, the target referents vary according to the particular governmental set-up. Where there is a distinction between the ceremonial or nominal “head of state” and the politically effective, controlling body part, the latter is accorded the brain function, whereas the former may be the head (see examples 2, 6) or, indeed, a more ephemeral part of the head, e.g. hair (see example 5). Critical stances are taken mainly vis-à-vis the brain rather than the head, i.e. for being dysfunctional or even abnormal: (8) [America’s] brain is bipolar and completely disjointed in the middle (E, US, 25, M) (9) […] like Frankenstein [i.e.: Frankenstein’s monster], we have an abnormal brain commanding the body, which is causing our country to act and react with more negativity and distastefulness (E, US, 48, F) In the British and New Zealand samples, such massive criticism of the brain is rare but here the well-known metaphorical dichotomy head/heart-brain (reason-emotion) is employed to signal a contrast between types of political motivation/identification (which also involves implicitly the person scenario): (10) The brain and heart don’t always agree with one another, and this conflict is normal (E, UK, 22, F) (11) New Zealand listens to its heart more than its brain. (E, NZ, 19, M)

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It would be wrong, however, to conclude from the latter examples that the heart concept is always or predominantly used in the ‘seat of emotions’ meaning. The majority of target concepts of heart in the body-scenario are either central political institutions (monarchy, parliament) or the people: (12) The heart of the nation is the American people. (E, US, 21, F) (13) The heart of the Australian nation is found in the working class, their ethics and prejudices, transporting these values and production to every appendage. (E, AUS, 24, M) An alternative source for the ‘people’ concept is blood, due to its ubiquity and continuous movement, which indicates liveliness/vitality. Other targets for blood are the economy, public finances, business and public transport (often likened to the veins and arteries). The concepts of arms, hands, legs, feet as well as eyes are associated with various ‘executive’ parts and functions of state and society (military, police, secret service, middle class, economy, workers). One British informant mentioned “the long arms are the reach of empire” (E, UK, 21, M) but did not specify whether this was supposed to describe a topical or a historical state of affairs. Often extremities are just listed as limbs that are complementary to the central control part (head-brain/heart), without further specification. The collective category organs fulfils much the same function: (14) New Zealand works as a collective body in that there are a number of different sectors of society that work like the different organs of a body in order to function as a whole. (E, NZ, 20, F) (15) […] a person can only survive if their heart/lungs/brain organs are functioning, […] A nation—like Britain—can only function well if all its parts, the government, the monarchy, and its inhabitants—work together. (E, UK, 21, F) illness/disease and medical treatment concepts are rare in this sample, amounting to no more than 4%.2 Both summary references (sick, ailment, scars, pain) and specific notions such as cancer, infection and transplant are only represented in single figures. They are used to express criticism of parts of the respective nation state, but mostly in the geobody scenario (see Sect. 5.3). Another vehicle for criticism is the sub-concept of taboo or ugly body parts, which occurs across various scenarios. In the body-hierarchy scenario there are only a few instances: (16) The queen sits at the face of the nation, with the flabby, saggy Tory government, as the aged, wrinkled décolletage. (E, UK, 19, F) (17) […] the anus would be the actual workers. While the brain thinks it controls the anus, the most it can do is ask or demand things to be done (E, NZ, M, 18)

2 Highlighting

healthiness is very rare, with just 3 instances in all, one of which accounts for the Canadian contribution: “Canada is like a healthy body. […] the numerous areas become strong and allows [sic] the country to work well as a whole, i.e. political, sporting and international representation” (E, CAN, 19, M).

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(18) The head is the white guys in charge. They also double as the asshole. (E, NZ, 18, F) Such drastic and offensive examples are few in number but they show the potential of the body conceptualisation to support strongly evaluative arguments and even insults. Whilst the target referents vary widely, the sources appear to be derived from a well-established stock of low-prestige sex-, excrement- and old age-relatedrelated concepts (Allan and Burridge 2006: 144–174). Their distribution patterns will be discussed later in the comparison of different national English L1 discourse communities.

5.3 The Nation as PART OF BODY and PART OF EGO To view one’s own (whole) nation as a body part, e.g. a limb or an organ is a perspective taken in almost one tenth of scenario instances in the English L1-sample. It is conceptually close to the previous scenario but differs insofar as its referent is either seen as part of a larger body (e.g. continent or world), or as a body part that stands for a particular socio-political function or status of the nation in question. Its applications are far less schematic and descriptive than those that view the nation as a whole body and they often carry an explicit or an implicit (ironical) evaluation. Affirmative uses highlight useful limbs/organs, such as eyes, hands, brain and heart (the latter again with its ‘seat of emotions’ symbolism): (19) […] GB represents the eyes of development […]. (E, UK, 21, F) (20) America is like the hands of a human body; they are used for work, get dirty often, and when backed in a corner, are used to fight. (E, US, 20, M) (21) Australia is like a brain—a bit isolated from the rest of the body, similar to how Australia seems isolated from the other countries in the world. Similar to how many people move to Australia for new opportunities, the human brain is full of potential (E, AUS, 18, F) (22) Our nation is like a beating heart, where pride and passion flow as blood (E, NZ, 20, M) In the critical/negative cases, the body part chosen to represent the nation is usually ‘low’ in the body hierarchy, due to perceived lack of importance, which achieves a denigrating or even satirical effect (bearing in mind that it is supposed to characterise the writer’s own nation): (23) England is like an appendix, not very significant anymore but can still cause trouble and make you realise its there if it wants to. (E, UK, 18, M) (24) Britain […] is the belly button. A part of previous high value […]. Now an aesthetic part with a lesser importance than the rest of the body (E, UK, 22, M)

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(25) NEW Zealand can be seen as the Middle toe [sic] of the world, while one may not acknowledge or care for it when removed the balance of the body will simply be off (E, NZ, 19, M) (26) Australia is the butt of the world, somewhere that seems laughable and sometimes unnoticeable […]. (E, AUS, 18, F) The US sub-sample contains no comparable satirical conceptualisations. However, one US student highlighted his nation’s double-edged role in world politics by both describing and drawing it as the lower back of the world that can be painful but is also indispensable (Fig. 5.1): (27) Lower back. You really need it and it is a very key part. It also gives a lot of people pain. Some people feel different ways about it. You really can’t ignore it and most things are connected to it (like your legs to the belly) (E, US, 20, M)

Fig. 5.1 America as a body politic part

Another US respondent’s answer constitutes one of the rare cases where a depiction of one’s own nation as a body part is followed by a conceptually matching characterisation of another country, with a humorous slant: (28) The first thing that came to mind for the United States was the head. The US in the sole remaining superpower state (although its influence is declining) making it arguably the most important nation to the rest of the world. […] on a lighter note, back home we call Canada “America’s hat”, where does a hat go but on the head? (E, US, 20, M) Such an association between a scenario version combining a body part and matching dress item with the relationship between different nation states is unique in the corpus and is probably a spur-of-the-moment invention by the writer. It underlines the potential for body part concepts to be exploited for further pragmatic, here humorous purposes.

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73

The scenario variant of the nation as part of ego’s (= the writer’s own) body is only minimally represented in the English L1-corpus: there are just two instances, one from the British, one from the Australian cohort: (29) Our culture is the feet we stand on (E, UK, 21, F) (30) No matter where we are in the world, Australia is still in hearts, allowing me to grow keeping them beating. (E, AUS, 18, F) In view of their rarity, these examples cannot be seen as representative; however, by comparison with other cohorts in which this scenario plays a greater role and is often used to express enthusiastic identification with one’s nation, its near non-existence in the whole English L1-sample may be significant.

5.4 The National Territory as GEOBODY If the nation is viewed as a territorial or geographical body whole, the body part concept lends itself to being applied to particular places or regions, with hierarchical or functional analogies. In the English L1-sample, this is not the dominant scenario but still accounts for 27% of all scenario uses. Its referents are partly predictable: the capital is seen as head, brain, or heart due to its status as the seat of government and its control function for the rest of the national body.3 London, Washington, DC, Wellington and Canberra are identified in these ‘top’ locations, often with another city (e.g. Birmingham, New York, Auckland, Melbourne) as the complementary ‘other’ central organ, e.g. heart. Rural regions (e.g. Yorkshire in the UK, the Midwest in the US) are associated with hands and feet on account of agricultural activity. Some respondents feel encouraged to declare their allegiance—or aversion—to specific places and regions: (31) I was born and bred in the north-east of England, so that’s where I picture as the heart of my home nation. Of course, the head of state is situated in the south east of England, so that it seems the heart is above the head—geographically speaking. (E, UK, 27, F) (32) […] perhaps London is the brain as it seems to be where people go to work after study. The real brain is Cambridge, the best university the country has to offer. Don’t talk about Oxford, that is the fungal nail infection, which we haven’t got round to treating yet (E, UK, 24, M) (33) The brain is Auckland. The heart is Wellington. The liver is Dunedin. NZ needs a liver transplant (E, NZ, 20, M)4 3 The

control function is not always necessarily seen as fully functional; thus one US student characterised Washington D.C. as the “undecisive [sic] brain who argues against itself all the time” (E, US, 20, F). See also example 32 below, for differentiation between a nominal and the “real” brain. 4 The liver transplant conceptualisation for Dunedin, NZ, in example 33 has been given a specific explanation by Takashi Shogimen (personal communication): “Dunedin used to be a major economic centre in the 19th century […]. However, from the early 20th century Dunedin witnessed

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(34) Washington DC is the brain/head/mouth. The legs are the producing states (It keeps the economy going/moving). Nebraska is the heart. LA is the cancer killing the nation/body. Florida is the wrinkles & parting lines. New York is the adrenaline. (E, US, 42, F) (35) Canberra is the heart of Australia. New South Wales is like the hands that craft fine things. (E, AUS, 20, M) As with national body part symbolism, such regional-territorial body part conceptualisations can carry implicit notions of a hierarchy among the body parts or organs, as well as associations with illnesses (e.g. cancer, nail infection as in examples 32, 34 above) and body aesthetics. As a result, depictions of regions as or as ‘lower’ and taboo body parts can again be exploited for humoristic or polemical effects: (36) The backside of England is Hull (E, UK, 19, F) (37) […] certain parts of [America] (specifically the upper eastern, but not on the coast) [are] referred to as the “armpit” of the nation, implying that it is stinky, and gross (E, US, 31, F) (38) Tasmania is the nether regions of Australia. (E, AUS, 19, M) (39) Canberra is the ass of Australia (E, AUS, 20, M) On the other hand, regions can be emphatically and ‘patriotically’ endorsed, most often as the heart, in the symbolic sense of the ‘seat’ of the soul of the respective nation: (40) Britain’s […] heart is in Yorkshire (E, UK, 21, F) (41) Uluru is the heart of Australia, soulfully connecting us to our surrounds (E, AUS, 18, M) (42) I grew up in the upper Midwest (Dakotas), and have always known it as “the heartland” for two reasons. First is that it is in the middle of the country, just as the heart is said to be in the center of the body. I have also heard it in terms of the fact that the people who live in the Midwest have a lot of heart (E, US, 31, F) (43) The Gaeltacht is the heart/soul of Ireland (E, IR, 19, F) Overall the geobody characterisations seem to serve mainly the function of distinguishing between prominent places/regions and sometimes attaching emotionladen evaluations to them. The head/brain—heart distinction is by far the most prominent one and in many cases linked explicitly with the conventionalised reason—emotion dichotomy, which favours identification with heart-status, whereas brain-function is ascribed varying evaluations.

economic decline and transformed itself as a campus city. The city of Dunedin is currently planning to reinvent itself over the next 10–20 years. [Therefore] the last two lines [may be] motivated by the historical understanding of Dunedin’s place and function in NZ and also the knowledge of its possible renewal in the years to come”.

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5.5 The Nation as PERSON The last conceptualisation scenario to be discussed, i.e. personalisation of the nation, appears to invite even more evaluative uses than the body part and geobody scenarios. However, in the English L1-sample the depictions of the nation’s character traits are judgemental but not particularly emphatic. Positive evaluations centre around concepts such as easy going, friendly, and polite, negative ones include headstrong, mouthy, messy, measly/weak, pessimistic. One New Zealand respondent (19, F) alleged, “The North hates the south” but conceded that both are “working for & against each other”; so presumably the ‘hatred’ cannot have been very strong. ‘National character’ stereotypes are exploited only by very few informants. In the UK-sub-cohort the national pastimes tea-drinking and queuing are highlighted with mild (self-)irony (four cases, all from female informants; see also example (1) in Chap. 1). In Australia, they are treated more sarcastically and hyperbolically, especially with regard to alcohol-consumption, allegedly “a gallon each second” (two cases, both from male informants). In a few instances, the personal characterisation is extended into a mini-narrative that ‘explains’ the origins of the quality in question, e.g. ageing and obesity for the UK and USA, respectively, and for the ‘younger’ nations of New Zealand and Australia, youth and adolescence: (44) England is an ageing person, one that has been going for a long time. A small frame with big potential. England used to have many other clothes (colonies) to dress itself in. However, it has since given away all of it’s [sic] clothes. (E, UK, 18, F) (45) My nation is fat. Lying supine, its head is in the center, as well as its feat [sic]. Its limbs branch like a star. Its fat is a combination of future pregnancy, a bloaded [sic] past and an uncontrollable metabolism. (E, US, 25, M) (46) New Zealand is like a little brother chasing after the nations of the world and clamouring for attention. (E, NZ, 18, F) (47) Being a relatively new country I would equate Australia to a body during adolescence. Ideologies are developing and changing at a rapid pace, though not without internal conflict. The brain is exposed to new hormones such as the older generation of Australia is exposed to multiculturalism and expected to adjust to it. The parasites are the people who reject these inclusive notions. (E, AUS, 18, F) Such characterisations are clearly evaluative and can be deemed ‘self’-ironical in that they highlight problematic aspects of the writer’s own nation’s history and politics (e.g. loss of international importance, lack of interest in other nations, internal conflict). Significantly, they depict these negative aspects as personal shortcomings but not as deliberate actions. They thus criticise but do not wholly condemn the home nation.5 5 An

exception to this generally restrained form of criticism is the highly condemnatory characterisation of the USA as “defecating [and] and pissing on our friends. The world smells our stench and

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5.6 Summary Our overview over nation-conceptualisations produced by informants with English as L1 shows that the body scenario is the dominant one. Its implications of hierarchical structure and interdependence (i.e. top-down orientation, functional and aesthetic hierarchies of life-essential vs. non-essential, ‘superfluous’ and ‘lowly’ organs/limbs) show a high degree of congruity with the European traditions of nation as body scenarios (head-to-toe hierarchy, Fable of the Belly). The body part scenario fits this pattern, too, and allows authors to comment on aspects of the body politic that they want to hold up to praise or ridicule. This pattern also applies to the territorial geobody-scenario, in which the respective capitals are assigned top status (head, brain or heart) whilst some places or regions are relegated to the ‘lower’ regions in the nation. part of ego examples are only minimally in evidence whereas the nation as person scenario, which accounts for one fifth of all instances, includes the most detailed characterisation. They depict the respective nation in a personal (e.g. age-specific) role, with (supposedly) corresponding ‘typical’ behaviour and provide an evaluative commentary that expresses ethical and/or emotional identification or distancing (see examples 44–47). When such normatively slanted, personalised depictions are combined with the more implicitly evaluative body or body part conceptualisations for the whole nation or for territorial or political entities in it, the amount of judgmental comment in the English L1 responses reveals itself as high: 94 answers contain conceptualisations that depict aspects of the respondents’ home nations in a partly or wholly negative light (39 instances), or ridicule it ironically/sarcastically (45 instances) or give a sympathetic-humorous (10 instances) characterisation.6 In this group of critical/ironical/humorous responses that we can find subtle differences between the distinct ‘national’ cohorts in the English L1-sample, although the imbalance of sample sizes makes it difficult to gauge their statistical significance. The British sub-sample (n = 59) is characterised by matching amounts of critical and ironical comments (n = 18 for each type) and a small minority of four humorous comments, yielding 40 instances altogether. The ironical remarks are still polite, focusing as they do on vaguely ‘problematic’ or ridiculous body parts and employing euphemisms (appendix, belly button, backside). Taboo-body part characterisations are avoided and, generally, even sarcastic criticism is often qualified by modal constructions. In the smaller US cohort (n = 34), the overall number of relevant examples for all three types is 17. Here the criticism is often more sarcastic, with references to bipolar brain function, Frankenstein-like features and deadly cancer threatening the body can’t escape, so we are left vulnerable, afraid, repressed and a body at war with itself. (E, US, 52, F). The writer is a mature student who evidently takes an extremely negative view of her country. This stance is not representative of younger US respondents. 6 When calculated as a percentage of scenario instantiations, this yields a figure of 41%, which is the highest across all the cohorts with more than 50 scenario instances. This aspect will be discussed further in the general overview in Chap. 12.

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politic. The New Zealand sample (n = 42) has 14 relevant examples, the majority of which are creative, humorous references to the nation as an inexperienced person (young girl/ boy), as being emotional rather than rational, or as a body part of uncertain status (middle toe). The 23 examples in the 46-strong Australian cohort show a predilection for taboo body parts and drastic conceptualisations (butt, nether regions, ass, parasites) that serve outspoken sarcastic, rather than implicit ironical criticism. The taboo sub-concepts in some of these sub-strands of the English L1 sample are highly distinctive in the whole corpus: in several of the quantitatively larger linguistic/cultural cohorts (e.g. German and Chinese, both > 300 scripts) they appear hardly at all. Due to the statistical imbalance, the reported percentages have only indicative significance, but they seem to indicate register characteristics in conceptualising national identity among 18–25 year-old, academically trained adults in these four countries.

Reference Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (2006). Forbidden Words: Taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6

The Nation as a Body or Person in the German L1 Sample and Other Germanic L1 Samples: Dutch, Norwegian

6.1 Introduction Three Germanic L1 languages other than English are represented in the corpus: German, Dutch and Norwegian. The first of these supplies a major cohort with 200+ completed relevant scripts. The other two samples are too small (comprising just twelve and seven scripts respectively) to be comparable in quantitative terms. They are included at the end of this chapter to account for a few, indicative findings of possibly culture-specific conceptualisations and narratives. These findings may provide a starting point for further research on larger datasets.

6.2 The German L1 Sample Among the European non-English L1 samples, the German L1 sample is the largest with 229 completed questionnaires. These were collected at the Universities of Heidelberg and Bonn in Germany and at the “Alpen-Adria University” in Klagenfurt (Austria), as well as from a few guest students in the UK and USA. There were no informants from Switzerland. The Austrian sub-cohort includes 22 students in Klagenfurt and 9 students at German universities, so that 31 students altogether have an Austrian background. As this represents just 14% of the German L1-cohort, a meaningful ‘cross-national’ comparison is impossible. Therefore, we highlight the Austrian variants as regards pragmatic (e.g. polemical, ironical) effects under the respective scenario headings. The social indicator questions reveal that the preponderance of female students in the German-L1 cohort is considerably stronger than in the English L1 sample, amounting to more than three quarters, while the concentration in the 18–25 age group is similar, with 90%+. There are no over 40 year-old students in the German-L1 cohort (Table 6.1).

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_6

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Table 6.1 Social indicators: German L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 229 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

179

78%

Male

50

22%

18–25

209

91%

26–30

17

8%

31–40

4

1%

Out of a total of 319 of scenario instances, their scenario distribution in the German-L1 sample shows an even stronger preponderance of the body scenario than the English L1 sample, and it has person, not geobody, as its second-most frequent scenario (Table 6.2). Table 6.2 Scenario distribution: German L1 Number of scenarios overall: 319 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

person

Scenario tokens

177

25

19

19

79

Percentages (%)

55

8

6

6

25

In order to facilitate the comparison with the English L1 sample, we will discuss the scenarios in the same order: body, geobody, body part, part of ego, person. This ordering has the advantage of ending on the person scenario, which provides the strongest contrasts vis-à-vis other samples and also includes most Austria-specific conceptualisations.

6.2.1 The Nation as BODY The German L1 sample has more lexical instances of the nation as body metaphor than the English L1 sample, i.e. 613, across 44 body sub-concepts (the latter are fewer than in the English-L1 sample) and 19 health/illness-related sub-concepts (they are almost double the number of English-L1 concepts). Its most frequent sub-concepts are the pairing (whole) body—organs/limbs (174 instances), followed by head-brain and heart (with 60+ instantiations, i.e. 10%+ each), and the collocating pairs of arms-hand, legs- feet (each with 30+ instantiations, i.e. 5%+).1 As in the English L1-sample, the (whole) body- organs/limbs pairing often serves to highlight the interdependency of all body parts:

1 blood,

which was among the ‘top’ five sub-concepts in the English-L1 sample, is less frequently represented in the German sample, with just 16 instances, i.e. under 3%.

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(1) The nation is a functional system made of several smaller organisms as is the body. For the nation to function groups of people have to fulfil certain tasks. This is comparable to human organs that accomplish a task within the body. (G, G, 20, F) As in the English L1-sample, the head signifies the highest place in the political body-hierarchy.2 Both Germany and Austria have the institution of a “federal president” who could occupy that slot. However, as it is referred to only once in the German L1 sample (i.e. for Austria), it seems that the head of state-position in the German-speaking countries does not match the kudos of long-established heads of state in other countries, such as a ceremonial monarch or a president as most powerful office-holder. The head position is instead either occupied by the most important national politician, e.g. in Germany the Federal Chancellor, or by the government or parliament, or by the abstract notion of a rule-governed state: (2) The chancellor is the head of the German nation as he/she can be seen as the brain that controls and leads every other part of the body. (G, G, 21, F)3 (3) If I wanted to talk about the German nation in terms of a human body, the head would probably be some [sic] of the most important politicians and political institutions such as the “Bundestag”. (G, G, 21, F) (4) The government is like the head of the human body. They are supposed to figure out what’s best for the nation and realise it. (G, G, 22, M) (5) Just as the human body, my home nation has a head, consisting of rules, boundaries, concepts and other structures. (G, AUST, 30, F) The heart concept is used predominantly to refer to the people/population or its social system, as a target for emotional or ethical identification, which brings the head/brain versus heart dichotomy (metonymically standing for reason versus emotion/character) into play: (6) Heart = population, in the same way as the heart supplies every organ with blood (i.e. life), in our democracy, power roots down [sic] to the nation’s inhabitants (elections, working force, …) (G, G, 19, M) (7) While people represent the heart of a democracy, our government sort of acts as its brain, even unwillingly so (G, AUST, 22, M) (8) The Austrian nation’s […] heart is ruled by our social state that says we have to help everyone, and forget ourselfs [sic]. (G, AUST, 19, F) hands, arms, feet and legs are used as source concepts for designating the subordinate ‘executive’ institutions and/or their personnel as well as other significant 2 An

exception to this rule is the singular case of one respondent (G, G, 22, F) allocating the feet (as weight bearers) to the government: “The government would be the feet—as it supports society and is the basis. The head […] would be the elite who does scientific and philosophical research”. 3 Instead of the Federal President who is officially the German state’s highest-ranking representative, the current Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is often mentioned as “head” of the nation and even called, technically incorrectly, “head of state” (“The head of state is Angela Merkel”, G, G, 30, F).

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parts of society. In the Austrian sub-cohort, arms feature mainly as a source for highlighting its welcoming, friendly attitude towards other nations and/or immigrants, i.e. in fact as a person-attribute: (9)

The hands and arms can be compared with people like teachers, policemen, justice etc. Our feet would be all the bus drivers and employees of the “Deutsche Bahn” if we speak about movement, but if we speak about innovation it would be the “educated” upper class. (G, G, 21, F) (10) The media can be referred to as the hands and arms because they interact and influence the way the whole system behaves. (G, G, 19, F) (11) You could possibly see law enforcement as the arms of the body, as we do things we have thought about with our hands, just like the laws of the government tend to be enforced in the nation. Alternatively, you could see people like diplomats or politicians in the EU as the arms, as they interact with other countries + try to represent/enforce the interests of their own (G, G, 24, F) (12) My home nation [is] always willing to help out others. Its arms are wide open to welcome everybody. (G, AUST, 19, M) In contrast to the English-L1 sample, the use of ‘lower’/intestinal or taboo body parts for categorising aspects of the nation is rare. The liver is employed once to characterise the justice system because of its cleansing function, i.e. not with denigrating implications. Likewise, the stomach (once spelt as “stomage”) or belly is positively connoted as a “vital organ” and refers to the people, or to its characteristic culture and typical manners. Taboo body part concepts, which are unambiguously of negative polarity, only appear twice, both times supplied by male informants. One informant called the government an ass (because “they constantly produce … [sic]”; G, G, 18, M). Another one, who also decried the whole nation as a fist (“since we waged several wars against other peoples all over Europe”) denounced a far-right wing party as an aggressive male sexual organ: (13) The Alternative für Deutschland, a party that recently emerged, can be described as a penis that penetrated our nation. (G, G, 24, M) Apart from these few cases of critical organ/body part ascription, the only ‘negatively’ loaded body-related concepts in the German L1 sample are drawn from the health- disease sub-domain. They are infrequent (with only 36 instantiations altogether = 6%) but highly differentiated, often targeting historical/current political problems, e.g. scars (“scarfs [sic] from history”), injury (“invasions during a war could be considered injuries”), infection (“dangerous mindsets, conjuring up horrific visions of past times”), cancer (“racism”), paralysis (“Germany is paralyzed with shock”, due to acts of terrorism).4 The immune system is related to the police. medical treatment is only minimally referred to, by way of the sub-concepts therapy, medical aid and doctor. 4 Written

after a terrorist attack in Berlin in December 2016, when the questionnaire was coincidentally distributed in a German university.

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In comparison with the English L1 sample, the German L1 cohort shows a stronger tendency to use health problem concepts to indicate historical and political topics, especially those connected with the legacy of Nazism, World War II and right-wing extremism, usually in a ‘serious’ way (scars, injury, infection).5 By contrast, in the English-L1 sample, especially in the British sub-cohort, problematic historical issues such as the colonial past are treated more dismissively and ironically, e.g. conceptualised as guts or (fallen out) hair (see Chap. 5).

6.2.2 The Nation as PART OF BODY and PART OF EGO In comparison with the nation as (whole) body scenario, the nation as part of (a larger) body and nation as part of ego scenarios’ frequencies in the German L1-corpus are small, amounting to less than 10% each. Among the source concepts, heart, head, brain, face, eyes and hands are the most frequent ones. Within the nation as body part scenario there is a clear divide between two main versions. One version, used exclusively by German nationals, relates Germany to Europe/the European Union as the larger whole, with an explicit leadership claim: (14) Germany may be described as the head, the leader or face in the context of the E.U. (G, G, 22, M) (15) Germany is the “heart” of Europe […] since the heart is the place where all other parts are connected to and get the oxygen that is needed from. (G, G, 20, F) (16) Germany can be described as the eyes of the EU, as they are watching out for people who need money or are in despair. (G, G, 22, F) The other version does not specify the larger body the nation is supposed to a part of, but focuses on its inherent qualities. This version is shared by German and Austrian respondents: (17) The nation can present itself first and foremost in the form of the human brain, able to recall past events and adapting present behaviour and attitudes to that history. (G, G, 20, F) (18) I would say that the nation’s characteristics could be compared to the brain. There’s a lot of thinking going on but hardly ever any changes or improvements can be achieved (G, AUST, 23, M) (19) Austria is like a heart and it helps other countries (organs) to work. (G, AUST, 24, M) (20) Austria in terms of nation is like a hand. It helps other nations, but as a stand alone [sic] it does not hold much power. It’s needed to fulfil a lot of things, but in order to accomplish anything, it needs other nations/body parts. It’s like a left hand in a world of right handed people. (G, AUST, 19, F) 5 For

the long-term impact of the WW2-/Holocaust-legacy in German memory culture see Niven (2002), Seymour and Camino (2017), Welzer et al. (2002).

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The last cited example is ambiguous in first portraying the hand Austria in a positive way, as helping other nations, but then voicing scepticism to the point of allocating the nation the relatively useless role of a left hand in a world of right handed people. It is, however, unique in acknowledging the complementarity of nations as body parts. In the nation as body part scenario versions of the German L1-cohort, the absence of negatively loaded or taboo sources is even more conspicuous than in the nation as body scenario. There are effectively no clearly critical uses of body parts as source concepts for the nation among the German or Austrian responses. The most ‘distanced’ uses of body part concepts are two interpretations of face and arms that exploit their conventionalised symbolism (as deictic expressions of specific attitudes: two-faced, folded arms forming a barrier) to imply a narratively extended critique of the nation as person: (21) Germany may seem as a face with two sides. This [sic] two faces may divide the nation in east and west; conservative—progressive; urban—rural; German— not-German. Nevertheless, there is one nation as there is one face but with a different outward appearance. (G, G, 29, M) (22) Austria is like folded arms, because the people are reserved and introverted. A person with folded arms holds back and thinks about something, without getting too much attention. (G, AUST, 21, M) These critical examples are unique. By contrast, the arms concept has ten positively slanted uses of arms as “open” or “extended” to welcome or link up with other nations in the German and Austrian sub-cohorts (see also example 12 above), and face appears 6 times, mainly as a friendly face of the Austrian or German nation-person (see below). Almost predictably (given its ‘identification’ potential), the nation as part of ego scenario includes only endorsements of national identity: (23) I grew up in my nation like I grew up in my body, getting to know better both of them with age. It’s the place my heart is at. Both act as the foundation of who I am. (G, G, 24, F) (24) Nation could be the skin colour or tongue. Standing together as the face of the nation (G, G, 21, F) (25) Austria is like the warm summer skin. The feeling of your skin is the same feeling you get when you explore the country. (G, AUST, 24, M) Both the part of body and part of ego scenarios overlap with the personscenario, on account of the fact that some body parts can be interpreted both physically and symbolically, as some of the examples cited above have already shown, e.g. references to open or folded arms, helpful hand, friendly face, friendly heart. We will take up the personalisation topic in Sect. 6.1.4, after discussing the geobody scenario.

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85

6.2.3 The Nation as GEOBODY As in the English L1-sample, the respective Austrian and German capital cities, Vienna and Berlin, feature as the heart and/or head/brain in the German L1 responses: (26) My home nation is Germany, its capitol [sic] Berlin is like the heart of the human body. I would equate the human brain with Berlin as well since most political activity takes place there as well (G, G, 23, F) (27) Vienna I consider the “heart” of Austria, not because of its location (which is northeast in Austria) but because it functions as the main city, “pumping” and vibrant as a whole (G, AUST, 26, F) A ‘second’ city-organ that would highlight a complementary function (like Birmingham or New York-heart vis-à-vis London or Washington-head,) is only found once, in an idiosyncratic, personal perspective (e.g. “Berlin is head. If home is where the heart is, the heart would be in Mannheim”; G, G, 23, F; presumably by a Mannheim-born student). Germany and Austria’s geobodies thus seem to have only main organ each. The remaining body parts of the two countries’ geobodies are being presented in two main interpretive perspectives. The first of these is praise or humorous criticism of the landscape as a body-scape: (28) The typical Austrian body consists of huge mountains […] The eyes of the body are a mixture of green and blue just like the many lakes we have in Austria.[…] Throughout the body are paths just like veins because Austrians like to go skiing, running or riding their bikes (G, AUST, 21, F) (29) Germany is as full of hills as a person with acne. (G, G, 22, M) The second perspective, which is exclusive to the German cohort, is an economicpolitical pro-Western ranking of federal states along the former East–West German dividing line: (30) Germany could be described as a body because it consists of various regions (= body parts). These regions differ from each other, there are different accents, mentalities, but also different chances on job market/education. Maybe the west would be the front of the body, while the east is the back. (G, G, 20, F) (31) My home nation Germany can be described using a body metaphor […], for example with regions in the south being the “legs” of Germany and regions in the east and west being “arms” of the nation. (G, G, 20, F) (32) […] due to the federal structure one might apply the main organs to the financially strongest states, such as Bavaria, Hesse or Baden-Württemberg. Simultaneously, the eastern German states could be viewed as belonging to the periphery (limbs) due to their number of population. This is of course historically incorrect as the current eastern German states were the former “heartland” of Germany. (G, G, 27, F) The reference to a German “heartland” in the last example is unique in the sample and implies a (self-conscious) problematisation of the geo-social ranking of different

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German regions. As example (32) shows, it can even be connected to the pre-World War II status of what is now ‘Eastern’ Germany as being in a central position vis-à-vis the even more easterly regions on the one hand and Western ones on the other, as the historical “peripheries”. On the basis of our data it is impossible to judge whether this pro-West biased ranking is only characteristic for West German informants or is shared nationally. To find out more, one would need to elicit further social information on the state/region of origin of informants and conduct control surveys at East German universities. Across the whole German-L1 sample, we can observe a conspicuous absence of any drastic denunciations of geobody parts, which contrasts with the English-L1 sample where a significant group of respondents seemed to be quick to assign ass, armpit or cancer status to particular places or regions which they did not fancy. We have to bear in mind, however, that the geobody scenario played a more significant role in the English L1 sample, with more than double the number of instances (59 vs. 25 in the German L1 sample), amounting to 25% of the overall scenario distribution. The English L1 sample thus provides many more opportunities for characterisations of specific places and regions. With just 8% of all scenario instances, geobody conceptualisations represent only a minor category in the German L1-sample.

6.2.4 The Nation as PERSON The person scenario in the German L1 sample not only makes up one quarter of all scenario instantiations but also ranges over 31 sub-concepts with 108 distinct lexical instantiations. The most frequent of these is the character trait generosity/friendliness with 14 instantiations, which are distributed equally between the Austrian and German sub-cohorts: (33) My home nation has a heart as good as gold, always willing to help out others. Its arms are wide open to welcome everybody. The nation’s mind is strong and powerful, aiming to make changes and decisions in favour of the population. No matter what, it always keeps its smile and tries to stay positive. (G, AUST, 20, F) (34) Nation is strong and respectful. My nation is like the good mother Theresa. The arms of my nation are open for everybody. My nation is openhearted for any problems in the world. (G, G, 22, M) The strong emphasis on a generous national character in the German and Austrian cohorts may have to with the fact that some questionnaires were distributed in the period 2015–2018, i.e. at a time when both countries experienced mass immigration of refugees from the Middle East, which was made possible by the German federal government’s 2015 decision not to close its borders to approximately two million refugees. While popular support soon changed from a “welcoming culture” (Willkommenskultur) to hostility at least in parts of both societies, leading to a

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marked rise in anti-immigrant populist parties,6 it seems plausible to assume that the German government’s decision, which was popularly connected with the Chancellor Angela Merkel, found support among most students, which also found its expression in statements such as (33) and (34). Other positive national character traits highlighted by German and Austrian informants are their nations’ liveliness, hard work, protectiveness, gentleness, rationality and ability to move forward as well as the role as father: (35) […] a nation is like/should be like a caring father trying to spark the brains of his children for being able to establish a consciousness based on moral. This father should guide his children until they are able to stand on their own feet and contribute to an appropriate social life with opportunity and tolerance. (G, G, 20, M) With six instantiations in the German L1 sample, father assignations are not abundant but are three times more frequent than mother assignations. In two cases they are explicitly linked to the term “fatherland”, in German: Vaterland, which is a historically highly prominent and loaded term linked to nationalist and patriotic folk-traditions and ideologies (Townson 1992). Masculine characterisations number twelve altogether, vis-à-vis five feminine ones. Apart from the Mother Theresa case cited in example (34), only one real-life person is viewed as epitomising the nation, i.e. A. Merkel (“As Angela Merkel is the representative of Germany […], I think of a female body [of the nation]”; G, G, 21, F). More ambivalent characterisations are couched in the form of an extended, apologetic depiction of an older man with a problematic past who has lots of experience and is able to give advice to the young generation but is also “shy” or “shadowy” and appearing (or anxious) to be “not very influential”: (36) The way Austria stands is like an old man. Bend [sic] back, lots of wrinkles that show what tolls life took, tired eyes and yet a bright smile, excited what [sic] the future still holds.[…] You see, Austria, has been thru [sic] a lot… dark days and brighter ones. (G, AUST, 22 F) (37) If Austria was a human it would be an old man sitting alone at a table or a bar. You would be able to see their [sic] wisdom and experience but also their grumpy attitude towards the other visitors of the bar, however, if you sit down and bring them a beer they would welcome you and share the wisdom and stories of past times. (G, AUST, 26, M) (38) “Bundesrepublik Deutschland” [= Federal Republic of Germany) as a metaphor in terms of a human body to me would be a naive old man who tries his best and contributes to society while helping others as much as possible. He also has a criminal past but fully recovered by now. (G, G, 21, F) (39) This nation is an older man, curmudgeonly, heavyset and full of selfimportance. Set in his ways, but acknowledging the need for change. He lived long enough to know that diplomacy is the only way to coexist with each other, 6 See

Fuller (2019), Holzberg et al. (2018).

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though he likes to quarrel. He is open to different opinions, but thinks his is the only right one. (G, G, 26, F) This scenario version reappears also in a slightly altered form, depicting an uneasy, troubled middle-aged man with a “strict facial expression even if he tries to smile” (G, G, 21, F) or even with a “fake smile” (G, AUST 27, M), on account of “difficult reminiscences” (G, G, 21, F). The distribution of these male-gendered examples across the two national sub-cohorts and across the informants’ gender groups is proportionally roughly even, i.e. not characteristic for only one of the sub-groups. The student writers in their early or mid twenties thus convey a critical-but-sympathetic attitude towards an authority figure of the previous generation whose weak or dark sides are known to them but are put in perspective by the ego as (grand-) child trying to do justice to the old man. This perspective hardly ever appears in the English L1 sample,7 and is also rare in other national samples. Unambiguously critical depictions of the national character in the German L1 sample do refer explicitly to the Nazi-past and link up with applications of disease concepts that we have encountered before: (40) Germany has been carrying the weight of (well-deserved) guilt and a sense of awkwardness with it since the 2nd world war. I guess that collective consciousness of guilt could be metaphorically described as weight on the ‘shoulders’ of Germany. (G, G, 27, F) (41) In my home country the term “nation” is a very sensitive one, mainly due to the Second World War. Therefore, I would not describe my “nation” as a proud and strong human body as probably other nations would. (G, G, 24, F) (42) We still carry the heavy load of history on our shoulder, but working together, taking everyone serious [sic], we can work for a better future. Sometimes, politics thinks [sic] that they can just ignore a rotten tooth and pretend it doesn’t exist, but the only way is to amend and address the problem and the needs [sic] to fix it (e.g. talking about Pegida).8 (G, G, 25, F) As the references to current right-wing extremist movements such as Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland (see example 13 above) show, the Nazi-past of the German nation-person is seen by some respondents as being also connected with its present-day behaviour, and therefore as a responsibility or commitment not to repeat the crimes of the past. Two informants refer to the post-2015 upsurge in immigration (which partly motivated the emergence of Pegida and the Alternative für Deutschland) but, significantly, they derive from it a positive characterisation of the German nation as a “mixed and colourful ‘person’” (G, G, 21, F) or as an 7 The

one partially comparable case is that of Britain being ridiculed as an “ageing person” on account of the ‘past glory’ of the British Empire (see example 44 in Chap. 5), but that past is not seen as criminal or highly problematic. 8 “Pegida” is a German acronym that stands for Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamicisation of the Occident’) and is the selfchosen name of a far-right wing, nationalist and xenophobic movement in Germany. Its depiction as a rotten tooth in (42) seems a deliberately sarcastic denunciation and/or illustration of the nation-person’s predicament.

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“integrated” body in which “everyone is accepted and belongs to another, no matter where they come from” (G, G, 20, F).9 Whilst ‘serious’ positive, mixed and negative characterisations are roughly evenly represented, ironical or sarcastic examples, which formed a distinct sub-strand in the English L1 sample, are rare. However, they do resemble the English L1 examples in playing on national stereotypes of drinking habits, albeit mainly beer-, not tearelated: (43) [My nation is] a white male holding something typical german, like beer, Sauerkraut, etc. Dressed in clothing not made in Germany, mostly soccer stuff. (G, G, 18, F) (44) The German body has a strange form, which causes it to be very diverse. Because there are so many different viewpoints, it always is in conflict with itself. To cure this conflict and to forget about past events, the body sedates itself with lots of beer. (G, G, 21, M) (45) Austria is a slightly overweight blonde man in his early 50 s.[…] He’s about 1.8 m tall, a pretty average size to display his mediocrity. (G, AUST, 27, M) In line with the generally restrained use of drastic or taboo language in the German L1 sample, the irony in these examples is not particularly shocking or offensive, but rather aims at gently mocking the mannerisms and hang-ups of the nation-person. Overall, German L1 speakers’ conceptualisations of their nation(s) as bodies or persons show some significant similarities and contrasts with the English L1 sample. The most obvious parallel is the preponderance of the body-model of the nation state with a hierarchically ordered anatomy and functional interdependence among the different body parts as its two governing principles. Vis-à-vis this nation as a whole body, the scenarios of the nation as body part and as part of ego remain ephemeral, which is again broadly similar to the English L1cohort. The two samples differ in the remaining scenarios: geobody, which played a significant role in the English L1 sample and provided many examples for polemical or sarcastic denigration (‘place/region X as the anus, armpit etc. of the nation’), is much less important in the German-L1 sample and its formulations in the latter serve predominantly to praise or neutrally describe the respective referents. The only observable similarity here is a shared preference for head and heart as the most important organs, of which the latter invites emotional identification, giving rise to stereotyped expressions of patriotic enthusiasm (my nation is warm/open hearted etc.). On the other hand, the conceptualisation of the nation as a person is the secondranking scenario in the German L1 sample (third in the English L1) and gives rise to strong moral-ethical evaluations. They express either enthusiastic endorsement of the nation’s friendliness and generosity or criticism of its troubled and difficult personality. 9A

historical perspective (though also reaching into the present) is taken in a single case that describes Germany as a “capitalist” nation-person: “Both its mental & physical health are falling apart and it can only be changed by a change of system. It needs to move away from the capitalism that’s destroying our very soul” (G, G, 22, F).

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The latter aspect is linked to the historical experience of Nazism, Holocaust and and World Wars, which are seen as a heavy burden on the nation’s shoulder. This perspective, although not hugely frequent, is characteristic of the German L1 sample, across both Austrian and German sub-cohorts. It has no equivalent in the English L1-sample or in other samples and is articulated in a self-consciously ‘serious’ way. Where it is foregrounded (see examples 40–42), it is often used to reach a quasi-didactic conclusion, i.e. of learning from the past for the present. In its more implicit uses (examples 36–39) it is often euphemistically hinted at in the context of the caricature of the nation as a grumpy old man. These cases overlap with the relatively few ironical hints at stereotypes (beer- drinking, sauerkraut eating etc.) that portray the nation as a ridiculous but non- threatening, mediocre man. Compared with the explicit problematisations of the Nazi past, these depictions appear to be understated and holding back from a forthright ethical evaluation of the nation-person’s past; they also leave open its chances for future development. Overall, the statistics of irony (8 occurrences) and humour (6) in the German sample is low. Even when combined with non-ironical criticisms (16), they amount to just 9% of all scenarios, i.e. 30 out of 319 scenario instances.

6.3 The Dutch and Norwegian L1 Samples The Dutch and Norwegian L1 samples (12 scripts and 7 scripts, respectively) are too small to allow a meaningful quantitative comparison with the German L1 or other language samples, so figures will not be presented in percentage tables and in general only sparingly. The social distribution in the Dutch L1 sample, which was collected at the University of Leiden and, for one guest student case, at the University of Oslo, is broadly in line with the rest of the corpus. Female respondents outnumber male ones narrowly (7:5) and 18–25 year-old ones represent 83%, i.e. 10 out of 12 informants (one each for the 26–30 and 32–40 age groups). Of their altogether 14 scenario instantiations, ten are based on the (whole) body scenario, and one each on body part, part of ego and two on person. The four latter ascriptions were supplied by the two Flemish, i.e. Belgian informants in the cohort. One of them emphasises his nation’s personal achievement of “crawl[ing] back up and keep[ing] on breathing” after every conflict it had to endure (D, BE, 20, M); the other one pictures Belgium as her own neck (thus creating a metaphorical blend with the ego-scenario): (46) Comparing [my home nation] to a body part, I say it is the neck. I often have awful neck pains, yet of course I cannot do without that part of my body. The reason why it hurts to think of my home nation (Flanders in Belgium) is that “flemishness”, for me, stands for a number of things I do not wish to identify with: it means right-wing, provincialist, excluding, “Calimero”thinking and -behaving.[…] Flanders is in my heart and in my head, my aching neck reminding me that home is not where I live now, and at the same time, that it is not what I would like it to be. (D, BE, 31, F)

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This last example would probably stand out in any sample as an argumentatively complex and highly reflected metaphor interpretation. It thus can hardly be seem as representative, but it does provide a significant insight into the mixed identity feelings of an emigrant mature postgraduate student. It thus illustrates the creative potential of interpreting body-based metaphors for reflecting on the relationship between national and personal identities. By comparison, the ten Dutch students’ responses are more schematic in applying the ‘standard’ hierarchy and interdependence principles of the body-scenario, descending as it does from the head/brain (= government or minister president) and the heart (= Royal family) to the hands, arms, legs and feet (judiciary, society at large), blood (= economy), down to the hormones (which are supposed to cause “bad social emotions and social strife”). In addition, disease can “attack and “infect” the body. Except for the last-but-one category of hormones, which is unique for the Dutch sample, these uses of the (whole) body-scenario are in line with those in the English L1 and German L1 cohorts. The Norwegian L1 sample is even smaller than the Dutch L1 sample; its cohort of informants is almost entirely composed of postgraduate (Ph.D.) students (all over 30 years old, four male, two female) at Oslo University, plus a younger female undergraduate student at UEA. This exceptional composition of the group of informants goes some way to explain the characteristics of this sample, which includes eleven scenario instances, six of which are personalisations. All answers are considerably longer (10+ sentences) than the average in other samples and they are highly reflected and rhetorically elaborate. Four of them depict the Norwegian nation ironically as a “petroholic”, i.e. as “addicted” to its revenue from North Sea oil, with further critical comments on Norway’s “state of denial” about that condition and its problematic relationship with its prominent environmental “conscience” and its “pointing fingers at fellow nations” (N, N, 38, M). In terms of scenarios, six of the seven informants use the person-scenario; one uses the body scenario (King as head of state), one uses geobody (heart of nation in Oslo), and one the part of body scenario (in conjunction with person): (47) Norway is a hand waving at the world. Sometimes it’s waving intensely, “Look at me, look at me!” Sometimes it’s pointing with a rude finger—and sometimes just waving gently and distanced from the top of the world (N, N, 39, M) Like example (46) from the Belgian postgraduate in Oslo, the Norwegian student’s response in (47) gives a carefully crafted, highly individualistic nationcharacterisation: the concept combination hand- finger is used to provide a threeway interpretation of Norway, (a) as an attention-seeking child, (b) as a badly behaved adolescent and (c) as an elevated (adult?) person who sits “on top of the world”. In its reference to the rude finger and hand waving themes and its epigrammatic style the answer displays a perspective on the metaphor of the nation as body or person that utilises its cliché applications and subverts them at the same time.

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References Fuller, J. M. (2019). Discourses of immigration and integration in German newspaper comments. In L. Viola & A. Musolff (Eds.), Migration and media. Discourses about identities in crisis (pp. 317–338). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Holzberg, B., Kolbe, K., & Zaborowski, R. (2018). Figures of crisis: The delineation of (Un)Deserving refugees in the German media. Sociology, 52(3), 534–550. Niven, W. (2002). Facing the nazi past: United Germany and the legacy of the third reich. London: Routledge. Seymour, D. M., & Camino, M. (Eds.). (2017). The holocaust in the twenty-first century. Contesting/contested memories. London: Routledge. Townson, M. (1992). Mother-Tongue and fatherland. Language and politics in German. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Welzer, H., Moller, S., & Tschuggnall, K. (2002). Opa war kein Nazi”: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer.

Chapter 7

The Nation as a Body or Person in Romance L1 Language Samples: Italian, Romanian, Spanish, French and Portuguese

7.1 Introduction The samples of respondents with Romance language backgrounds vary considerably in size. Only the Italian L1 one is large enough (144 scripts) to be comparable with the English and German L1 samples; the Spanish, Romanian, French and Portuguese L1 samples are medium-sized (with 54, 52, 49 and 37 scripts). We will discuss them in the order of relative size.

7.2 The Italian L1 Sample The bulk of the Italian L1 sample was elicited at three Italian universities, i.e. Verona, Bari and Torino; seven further scripts were collected from British, German and Austrian universities. The sample seems to have a ‘northern’ bias as only one collection place (Bari) is situated in the South, which may have influenced the interpretations of the North–South divide (see the discussion of the nation’s geobody in 7.2.3). The social indicator data are, as usual, heavily slanted in favour of female, 18–25-year-old student respondents (Table 7.1). Table 7.1 Social indicators: Italian L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 144 (= 100%) Gender

Female

119

83%

Male

25

17%

Age group

18–25

135

94%

26–30

8

5%

31–40

1

1%

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_7

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Contrary to the distribution in the English and German L1 samples, the body scenario occupies only the third rank, following after the person and body part scenarios in first and second position, respectively (Table 7.2). Table 7.2 Scenario distribution: Italian-L1 Number of scenarios overall: 231 (= 100%) Scenarios

body geobody body part part of ego person

Scenario tokens

48

41

59

19

64

Percentages (%)

21

18

25

8

28

7.2.1 The Nation as BODY The field of body-and health/illness-related sub-concepts in the Italian L1-sample are highly differentiated (55 and 29 sub-concepts, respectively), and yields altogether 504 lexical instances. The top five sub-concepts are legs- feet (68) heart (66), arms- hands (50), head- brain (45), eyes (24). The popularity of lower extremity lexicalisations, which is unique in the whole corpus, is even more pronounced when we take into account that knee, calf, heel, ankles and toes are also specified. Not with standing this peculiar feature, the responses in the Italian L1 sample generally follow the ‘standard’ pattern of conceptualising the nation as a functionally integrated and hierarchically ordered whole: (1) The nation is like a living organism or a human body. We know that the body is composed by organs, all organs are important to keep the body alive and so they have to work together. The nation works like a body ‘cause [sic] it is composed by organs too (governer [sic], ministers). Every organ has a task, a particular task which improves a function. If all the organs work well, the body/nation will keep a high quality of living; if not there’s something to improve. We can say that Italian government is heart of Italy, ministers are the hands, arms, legs and feet, Italian population is the blood, the streets or the ways of communication are veins […] (I, I, 20, F) The head- position is, as usual, mostly assigned to the government and/or the president, on account of their “controlling” function. However, in many cases, this control is viewed as inefficient: (2) The head isn’t able anymore to take decision [sic] and control the rest of the body; every part does what’s best for itself and that’s one of the reason [sic] why she doesn’t walk anymore. (I, I, 20, F) (3) [Italy’s] head is not working as it should, it’s not focused on moving its limbs, but it’s distracted by other less important thoughts that are comprised [sic] the whole body. (I, I, 20, M)

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heart-status is assigned to the people or the government; arms- hands and legs- feet are in this perspective the subordinate, active parts of the executive (see example 1 above) or of the judicative power. However, the majority of ascriptions of these prominent organ/body part concepts fall into the geobody and body part scenarios, which are discussed below. disease and illness concepts are a popular way to express criticism of the nation (50 instantiations), both in general terms as well as in more specific, vivid and dramatic images, but usually without irony or humour: (4) Corruption in Italy is like a cancer in the stomach, at the centre of our national body. (I, I, 23, F)1 (5) In the end we can say that our nation is ill and old: the government is disconnected from the population, the economic system is living a constant crisis and our infrastructure system is old and inadequate. A body with this kind of problems would be already dead. (I, I, 24, M) The health/illness-related conceptual domain includes the sub-concept of the healer or doctor that can devise and apply a cure/therapy, either in the form of politicians or, replacing them by an outside authority, but the belief in their healing power seems to be low2 : (6) Italy is like the human body, but it seems to have lost doctors who can take care of it. (I, I, 21, F) (7) Italy’s physician—the European Union—will soon declare the impossibility for his patient to have a future. (I, I, 23, M) Unlike in the German L1 sample, references to history are not connected to war, genocide or dictatorship and thus are not perceived as a burden but rather as positive traits of which the nation can be proud and which have a central place in the body politic. (8)

History and tradition should be the spine, to give posture and confidence. (I, I, 23, F) (9) Beauty in art, history, food, knowledge and in everything we do is the heart of the nation. (I, I, 23, F) (10) In my opinion Italy can be considered a womb [of] a lot of arts (I, I, 19, M) 1 Historically, the scenario of corruption as a cancer that consumes the body politic can be followed back in Italian political thought at least to Niccolò Machiavelli who in the Discourses described in detail corruption as a cancer spreading through the body and if not stopped until it ‘reaches the bowels’ will consume it (Machiavelli 2003: 157–159). Its similarity to examples such as (5) should not, however, be seen as evidence that present-day Italian informants are consciously reproducing his theories. Rather, Machiavelli’s conceptualisation should be regarded as an integral part of the common tradition of the nation as body metaphor in Western political discourse (as argued in Chap. 2), which is sedimented in public awareness as expressed in public language use. 2 Again, Machiavelli’s legacy (as part of the European tradition) can be traced in these responses: in his Prince, written at a time when no national unification of Italy seemed feasible, Machiavelli bemoaned the lack of a “man who may heal [the nation’s] wounds” (Machiavelli 2005: 88).

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The most ‘critical’-sounding but in fact humorous characterisation of Italy’s historical legacy is its conceptualisation as freckles, followed by a unique geographical-physical analogy of its and Europe’s cultural roots as located in the belly- button (Rome?). (11) Italy [has] freckles of history all over her skin and a belly-button in which are the roots of Europe. (I, I, 19, F)

7.2.2 The Nation as PART OF BODY and PART OF EGO The part of body scenario in the Italian L1-cohort is to some extent similar to those of the English L1 and German L1-cohorts. In positive evaluations, the nation is described as a strong, beating heart, a clever brain, beautiful eyes, a strong spine, a smiling mouth, or a helpful hands, with heart and head/brain fulfilling the stereotypical, complementary roles of symbolising emotion and rationality. In a negative, critical perspective, the nation is depicted as a dead/broken heart, or a heart with two arms but without a brain,3 a superfluous appendix, bipolar brain, or a little finger (of a giant European body). A special case is the ‘qualified praise’ of the nation as being “sometimes” the head of Europe: “but the other European countries are the neck, that turn the head to the way they want and how much they want” (I, I, 19, F). This characterisation which favours the neck over the head derives from an international proverb about marital roles: ‘The man/husband is the head of the family/house but the woman/wife is the neck that turns the head’, which was made popular in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002).4 It is represented in several further samples in the corpus (e.g. Russian, Polish, Greek and Turkish L1, see Chaps. 8–10), which underlines the widespread popularity of this ironical proverb. Taboo body parts are hardly mentioned, except for one case of sarcastic criticism that is not directed at the nation but rather at the politicians as part of its intestinal system: (12) My nation is like the digestive system. There are politicians who eat the community money and they produce only excrements. (I, I, 20, F) The outstanding feature of the Italian version of the body part scenario is, however, the prominence and frequency of the leg- foot conceptual field resulting in a high relative frequency (26%), which is unique vis-à-vis all other samples. The underlying reason for this scenario version is that (in addition to the ‘executive’ 3 The

lack- of- brain control scenario is a recurrent feature of critical conceptualisations of the nation, see e.g. also “in Italy it’s like a powerful arm without a general nervous system able to control it” (I, I, 22, M); “the brain is unable to control all the organs. As a result of this, all its parts do whatever they want” (I, I, 22, F). 4 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1jD-s_DYFw; accessed 1 October 2019.

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function of legs as part of the state-hierarchy, as in example 1, or as subordinate parts of society, e.g. workers, farmers, which we also find in other cohorts) there is an established stereotype of Italy as shaped like a high- heeled boot (Nijman et al. 2010: 63; The Economist 2017). This conceptualisation is represented in the sample by its own lexicalisation (boot) in ten responses. Being geography-based, it is part of the geobody scenario, but the leg- foot variant gives rise to more than just geographical shape-motivated interpretations, as the following examples show: (13) Italy is like a beautiful and thin woman’s leg. (I, I, 27, F) (14) Italy is not a big country; it’s pretty small but very long. It is like a leg, if you watch it on a map, but it is an athletic leg […] Some call Italy ‘the boot’ because it looks like a high-heeled boot, because the southern part of the country is like a ballerina feet [sic], ready to dance on its toes. (I, I, 19, F) (15) If we think about the world as a human body, I live in the elegant foot of a lady Italy. (I, I, 19, F) In these cases, the nation’s leg shape assumes the qualities of beauty and elegance, which are stereotypically associated with femininity. It is part of a national stereotype of Italy as a beautiful girl/lady that the respondents are proud of, sometimes even identifying their ego with it: (16) I would like to describe it as an ankle and foot of my body (I, I, 20, F) (17) Italy is as long as my legs. (I, I, 22, F) Such self-identifications with the nation as leg(s) are exclusively employed by female informants; the few (n = 4) ego-ascriptions by male respondents only feature the nation as the respective writer’s own heart, head/brain or arm, without any reference to beauty.

7.2.3 The Nation as GEOBODY While the boot-shaped form of the Italian peninsula provides the source for its most prominent geobody feature, the different parts of the nation’s landscape are also imagined as body parts in their own right: (18) Italy’s geographical form remind [sic] me of a boot: in fact it is in the southern part of Europe, just like a boot is wore [sic] at the bottom of the human body. The northern part of Italy is like the upper part of the body (here we can see many factories). But the central part of it (including Rome) is like its heart because we can find many important buildings. (I, I, 19, F) As in other samples, the capital, Rome, is accorded heart or head/brain/face status. One informant described Rome as the knee within the leg-based scenario spanning the whole nation from north to south:

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(19) Italy is like a leg. It starts with a thigh that continues with a thin calf and ends up with a foot. In the middle there is the knee that moves the entire leg like the capital that is the centre of the government.” (I, I, 19, F) The only other Italian cities apart from the capital that are mentioned in the sample are Milan (as a second heart beside Rome) and Florence (as the tongue). The heart-Rome association is often doubly motivated, i.e. geographically (due to its central position in a north–south perspective) and on account of its importance as the seat of government and parliament as well as on account of its cultural/historical pre-eminence. (20) Rome, because of its position, its roman remains, its traditions can be considered the heart and the head of Italy. In fact the heart is in the middle of the body and the head is where all the memories are kept. (I, I, 19, M) The other contender for heart status is the Italian South; in the respective responses, Rome and/or Northern Italy are accorded the contrasting or complementary role of the brain. The basis for this distinction are cliché assumptions about the regions’ populations. Its associations with the rational-emotional distinction, which implicity also involve the person scenario, are illustrated in an exemplary answer given by a student from Turin: (21) There is a quite stereotypical metaphor that points of [sic] the difference between people for the Northern part of Italy and Southerners: Traditionally the first ones are depicted as rational and cold (thanks to their proximity to central Europe) while the others are portrayed as more friendly and emotional. Thus the metaphor: Northern Italy: head, Southern Italy: heart. (I, I, 26, F) The two- hearts scenario that was used for the Rome and Milan can also be applied to the North–South divide, aligning it again with the stereotypical rationality—passion dichotomy: (22) Italy is in my opinion a great heart, […] because people who live here reason with that; we are not a nation that reasons with brain. The southern heart may be more passionate and wild, while the northern heart is more cold, icy, but under the ice the heart is beating. (I, I, 23, F) The other exclusively and perhaps even more emphatically geography-based body part ascription is that of the womb of the nation, which is again predominantly situated in Southern Italy, e.g. in a response by a student from Bari University: (23) The beautiful South is [Italy’s] maternal womb, that is, her most impulsive, spontaneous and comfortable side that has always given shelter not only to her sons but also to foreigners with her reassuring and sunny smile (I, I, 28, F). On the other hand, neutral or negative body- part conceptualisations of the South are bottom, foot/feet (of the Italian leg/boot) and disease (on account of corruption caused by the Mafia). Overall, however, the head/brain versus heart/emotion characterisation dominates depictions of the North–South divide

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in the sample; in one case it is complemented by a depiction of the ‘intermediate’ central region as lungs5 : (24) The North is the brain: busy people, hard work, the most industrialised area. The centre is the green lungs of the nation: beautiful landscapers, seas. The south is the heart of the country: the land and the people are more passional [sic]” (I, I, 24, F)

7.2.4 The Nation as PERSON The theme of emotional strength and authenticity that is evident in heart-ascriptions within the body part and geobody scenarios is also highly prominent in personcharacterisations of the Italian nation. Depictions of its passionate, loving, and warm- hearted character make up 50% of the ‘personal’ trait sub-concepts, often combining with feminine, specifically mother-related gender ascriptions (see also example 23 above): (25) Italy is like an [sic] heart: appassionate [sic] and open to other people. (I, I, 20, F) (26) Italy is as hot and soft as a mother’s hug. (I, I, 23, F) (27) Italy can be described like a woman, 30–40 years old, […] She is curvy as a symbol of generosity and she has long hair symbol of charm, no make up; she boats [sic] of her natural beauty. She has the tenderness of a mom. (I, I, 22, M) Masculine gender ascriptions are outnumbered 5–1 in the sample (n = 21[f]: 4[m]) and are all at least partly negatively associated with old age,6 illness and insecurity. We can thus conclude that the personification of Italy as a nation is strongly feminine-gendered, with a strong emphasis on highlighting positive attributes such as beauty, passion and motherly love. This ‘feminine bias’ may well be influenced by factors such as the feminine gender of the country’s L1-name (Italia) and the preponderance of female respondents. But a powerful background influence can also be seen in the long-standing cultural and ideological tradition of the stereotype of mother italy in popular culture (Banti 2011; Barisonzi 2015). 5 The

northernmost region features three times, with a positive functional and aesthetic evaluation: “My Italy is a queen wearing the chain of the Alps like a crown on her head” (I, I, 28, F); “Alps are the thick foliage that covers its head” (I, I, 20, F); “The Alps are the shoulders that protect the country” (I, I, 25, F). 6 See e.g. “Italy is like an old man who losts [sic] his ability of doing things […]: his utility, his strength” (I, I, 24, F); “Italy can be seen as a 40-years-old man […] He looks good and gentle, but also naïve and insecure. (I, I, 20, F); “Italy is like an old man who doesn’t like to change himself and his ideas” (I, I, 25, M); “Italy, to my mind can be described as an old man’s heart that is ill. It is ill, old and it obviously has serious problems” (I, I, 25, M). The only old woman-depiction in the sample is also highly stereotyping: “Italy can be seen as an old woman. She speaks quickly and using her hands to emphasize what she is saying. She is good at cooking. […] She has a lot of problems in many fields” (I, I, 23, F).

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7 The Nation as a Body or Person in Romance L1 Language Samples …

The Italian L1 sample thus differs in several important aspects from the English L1 and German L1 samples as well as from the much smaller samples of Dutch and Norwegian surveys. In the Italian case, the dominant scenario is not that of the whole body but the person scenario, followed by the body part scenario. Both scenarios are dominated by separate, popular stereotypes: (a) the figure of mother italy, and (b) the cliché of Italy as a leg/foot that fits the shape of a boot. Whilst the latter use of the body part scenario is evidently geography-based but also ideologically motivated insofar as it assumes the political unity of the Italian peninsula as a nation, the nation as mother personification builds on an entrenched tradition of banal-nationalistic, gendered stereotypes. They are connected with the notion of a positively valued high degree of emotionality, which in turn is linked to the heart, thus combining to a symbolic complex mother- beauty- emotionheart that appears to dominate the sample. Although this scenario complex, which cuts across diverse scenarios (body, geobody, person), is also represented in the English and German L1-samples, it plays a far greater role in the Italian L1-sample (and, as we shall see later, again in the Chinese sample). In line with this validation/idolisation of emotionality as a positive national characteristic, denigrations of the nation play a comparatively small role in the Italian L1 sample. Although critical, ironical and humorous conceptualisations are well represented (n = 59, = 25% of scenario instances), there are almost no negatively loaded references to historical legacy and only a few references to topical issues (corrupt politicians, Mafiainfluence), which are depicted by standard metaphors such as illnesses or injuries. These critical depictions are, however, not extended or hyperbolically formulated, and they are often embedded in positively slanted scenarios.

7.3 The Spanish L1 Sample The Spanish L1 sample’s size is slightly more than one third of the Italian one. It comprises 54 scripts, 35 of which were collected at universities in Spain (Extremadura and La Mancha). The remainder are from students at British (4), German (5), Austrian (1), Lithuanian (3), US American (5) and Australian (1) universities. Two SpanishL1 students, one in the USA, one in Australia, are Argentinians; all the others are Spanish nationals. The social indicator data are (Table 7.3). Table 7.3 Social indicators: Spanish L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 54 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

39

Male

15

72% 28%

18–25

41

76%

26–30

11

20%

31–40

2

4%

7.3 The Spanish L1 Sample

101

Unlike in the Italian L1 sample, the body scenario is the most frequent one, followed by person (i.e., similar to the German L1 sample in this respect). Of the three remaining scenarios, only geobody accounts for more than 10% (Table 7.4). Table 7.4 Scenario distribution: Spanish-L1 Number of scenarios overall: 71 (= 100%) Scenarios

body geobody body part part of ego person

Scenario tokens

41

8

4

2

16

Percentages (%)

58

11

5

3

23

The number of different body/health-related sub-concepts is, predictably, smaller than in the Italian L1 sample (n = 38). The highest-ranking concepts are head- brain (38 instances), arms- hands, legs- feet and heart (23 instances each). The concept of torso is used to depict the unemployed as a class that cannot make any independent movement and are the least powerful part in the body hierarchy: (28) The head of our country is the government. It feels like a bad headache. The arms are the richest folks. They point out the direction in which the whole nation is supposed to walk. The legs are the workers. They slowly move towards the direction that has been pointed out. The backbone is made out of all the laws that have been passed. The torso equals the big amount of unoccupied people. It is big and it can’t move anywhere. (SP, SP, 24, M) Unlike in the English-L1 sample, the monarch is rarely mentioned at all as head and is apparently not in high regard. There are only four such cases. One of them is descriptive (“The king is the head of the state”, SP, SP, 28, F); another one differentiates without explicit evaluation between head-monarchy and brain-government (SP, SP, 21, F). The last two, however, are highly critical of the monarchy: (29) […] at the head it would be the king (who only thinks on his benefits and honor) (SP, SP, 20, F) (30) 2 Heads: Head of stateis the king?—Not sure anymore! Head of government are Rajoy [= Prime Minister] and the big banks’ presidents. (SP, SP, 26, F) As the King’s role as head is evidently problematic, the controlling organ is most often said to be the brain-government; ‘executive’ institutions such as police, army, administrators but also the education system and the workers appear as arms- hands and legs- feet. If they are not feet (at the bottom) or torso (unable to move), the people are positively viewed as the heart, “because we are the ones who keep this body alive” (SP, SP, 20, F). Inner organs such as stomach and liver, which are mentioned each only once, are related to the economy and finance system. There is one mention of taboo body parts: these are reserved for the outsiders of the mainstream society (who seem to have secret sympathisers inside):

102

7 The Nation as a Body or Person in Romance L1 Language Samples …

(31) The hidden parts of the body (butt and genitals) are all the low-life persons that enjoy life without caring much about the rest of the body, specially the brain. We all know they exist, we see them from time to time, but don’t want to acknowledge them, although secretly longing to live among them. (SP, SP, 25, M) The few body part and part of ego conceptualisations focus on the subconcepts: heart (e.g. Spain is the heart of the Hispanic world, SP, SP, 18, F; The Spanish nation is the heart of your life, SP, SP, 20, F), and eyes (The Spanish nation is the eye that controls your actions, SP, SP, 20, F). Spain’s geobody is viewed in conventional terms. The capital, Madrid, as the heart7 or the eyes (no other cities are mentioned); the North as the brain (on account of “better economy”; the South, specifically Andalucía, as the mouth, associated with cheerfulness (which seems to resemble the Italian conceptualisation of the North–South divide in terms of the ‘rational-emotional’ dichotomy). Catalonia, which has a strong separatist movement, is only mentioned twice. Once it appears as a hand that wants to separate itself from the rest of the body, “but it is attacked and it’ll be attacked forever” (SP, SP, 23, M), and once as a dissenting part of the nation-person who wants “to go out from Spain and be their own nation” (SP, SP, 25, M). Apart from the threat of Catalonian separation, the Spanish nation- person scenario is characterised mainly by positive traits such as cheerfulness, helpfulness, hospitality, which, as in other samples, coincide with the caring motherstereotype.8 On the other hand, the one and only father-ascription is that of a “selfish father”, whose “kids are affected by decisions without being asked” (SP, SP, 31, F). Among the six self-ascriptions of national emotions two stand out on account of their allusive references to political ideologies and historical legacies. One Spanish student justifies the “feeling of being Spanish, not as a fascist (as lots of Spanish people said) but as a positive aspect” (SP, SP, 20, M); another one describes Madrid as having been “in the past […] the close [sic] mouth of the dictatorship” (SP, SP, 21, M). One mature Argentinian guest-student in the US even provides a meta-critique of the nation as body metaphor’s effects as an ideological infection: (32) In Argentinian public discourse, the idea of a nation as a body is perceived as problematic since the country’s recent history implies a genocidal policy with sinister connotations.[…] There is also an association between politics and heart and vulnerability of the body-nation with references to the risk of infection by diseased elements that had to be extracted from the national body. (SP, ARG, 39, M) These examples are too few to be interpreted as representative but they show the potential of nation as body/person metaphor to serve as a platform for critical 7 Similarly, the Argentinian student in Australia views Buenos Aires, the capital of his home country,

as her nation’s heart (SP, ARG, 18, F). Spain acting “as the mother [who] puts the coat to her children” (SP, SP, 22, F). In a further occurrence, however, the mother ascription is used sarcastically: “My country is the corruption mother—currently” (SP, SP, 30, F).

8 E.g.

7.3 The Spanish L1 Sample

103

political argumentation and stance-taking in the Spanish L1-cohort. Overall, the frequency of critical comments is high (n = 26, 36%) but they are mostly non-ironic and non-humorous. Examples (30) and (31), which seem close to the sarcastic end of the irony spectrum, are among the exceptions.

7.4 The Romanian L1 Sample The Romanian L1 sample comprises 52 scripts, most of which were collected at Galati University. Five scripts were collected at German, Dutch and Italian universities. One student at Galati University and one guest student in Verona stated that they were of Moldovan nationality; all others were Romanians. As the social indicator table shows, the respondents at Galati University included a subgroup of significantly older students, i.e. of the over-30 and over-40 age groups. In terms of gender distribution, we find again an overall dominance of female students in the 18–25 years age range, which is typical for most samples in the corpus (Table 7.5). Table 7.5 Social indicators: Romanian L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 52 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

36

69%

Male

16

31%

18–25

41

79%

26–30

0

0%

31–40

5

10%

40+

6

11%

In terms of scenario distribution, the Romanian L1 sample resembles the English, German and Spanish L1 patterns, with a strongly dominant body scenario, followed by person, and with the body part, part of ego and geobody scenarios only as residual categories (Table 7.6). Table 7.6 Scenario distribution: Romanian-L1 Number of scenarios overall: 68 (= 100%) Scenarios

body geobody body part part of ego person

Scenario tokens

38

3

8

4

15

Percentages (%)

56

4

12

6

22

The number of sub-concepts comprises 44 body/health-related and 11 personrelated concepts. The list of most frequent as well as most highly valued limbs and

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7 The Nation as a Body or Person in Romance L1 Language Samples …

organs is headed by brain- head (31 instances), followed by heart (15), armshands (14), legs- feet (14). They denote the main parts of state and social hierarchy: president, government, parliament, economy, intellectuals, and people. Significantly, most of the brain- head ascriptions refer to the President, in relation to whom the Prime Minister, government and parliament are seen as hands or as neck (2 cases) or shoulders (= government, 5 cases), which points to an especially strong position of the President. This conclusion is supported by the finding that both the most strongly approving and most critical statements (n = 18) in the sample highlight the controlling function of the head-brain: (33) The head represents the President. Everything starts with him, and everything is controlled by him. The neck supports the head, which means that the Prime Minister supports the President. Ordinary people are represented by the hands. They do everything that brain thinks. (RO, RO, 19, F) (34) […] in the case of Romanian nation the body would be full of flaws. The head (or brain) would be the President […]; in our case, the brain is missing or is not functioning properly. The arms should be the ones who work very hard in order to live decently but in our case (again) the arms are represented by the ones hungry for power and money. [The] Romanian nation is a body which is limping too much because of the serious mistakes and poor functionality of the brain. (RO, RO, 23, M) brain/head, as well as hand and heart are also the most frequent sub-concepts of the part of body and part of ego scenarios, depicting the Romanian nation positively as a healthy heartbeat and helpful hand and also as luscious lips and humorously as a thumb: “It might not be very long or pretty, but it helps you pick up things” (RO, RO, 23, M).9 Negative depictions see the nation as an affected brain, sick heart, faulty liver or an “appendicitis” in the sense of appendix: “We all know it used to serve a purpose, but no one remembers what it was” (RO, RO, 23, M). They make up the bulk of the critical, ironical and humorous conceptualisations, which seem to be relatively highly frequent overall (n = 24, 35% of scenario instances). The person scenario is instantiated 15 times, most of which are positive characterisations of the nation as helpful, reliable, hard- working and proud of its historical identity, which is in one case likened to the body’s “genetical [sic] memory” (RO, RO, 18, F). Gender-ascriptions are few (one masculine, three feminine, of which one as mother). Negative depictions of the nation’s character do not feature at all, unless dysfunctional brain/arms cases (as in (34)) are included. What most strongly distinguishes the Romanian L1 sample from others are responses that highlight negative foreign perceptions of the nation in the topic context of emigration. Whilst they are few in number (3 occurrences) they are vivid, emphatically stance-taking and involve several scenarios: 9A

special case that straddles the part of body and geobody scenarios is the ascription of brain- lobe status to the nation, which is unique in the whole corpus: “If Terra is a brain, then nation is a little lobe” (RO, RO, 19, M).

7.4 The Romanian L1 Sample

105

(35) […] nowadays saying that you’re romanian in a foreign country is like saying that you are a convict. (RO, RO, 19, F; at Galati University) (36) Considering the negative reactions Romanians have received from the UK, I would say that Romania is seen as a limb that crippled Europe. UK was not hesitant in rendering Romania the image of a parasite. I prefer to see it as a vital organ of the European Community, as I believe all members are supposed to be equally important to make the European Body “work”, and not just a disposable appendix (RO, RO, 35, F; at Heidelberg University) (37) I’ve currently been living in Italy for 10 years now, and if I were to describe my life here in terms of a human body, I’d say I feel like gut-bacteria, in the sense that even though I don’t consider myself “part” of the body as a muscle-cell might be, I still feel pretty comfortable and integrated inside the system, as a productive and relatively comfortable organism. (RO, RO, 25, M) In examples (35) and (36), the notions of convict, crippled/crippling limb, parasite and appendix are applied to the national and personal Self as the denigrating, discriminating ascriptions used by other Europeans, which are clearly rejected by the writers. Example (37) is unique in several ways. It applies the gut bacteria-concept, which could be regarded as similarly denigrating in view of its well-established usage in racist and xenophobic discourses (Musolff 2010: 36–42, 2015), to the writer-Self as a foreigner in the different nation-body of Italy. However, the writer reinterprets and subverts this traditionally discriminatory conceptualisation in a positive way. He employs a sophisticated understanding of the function of gut bacteria as useful microorganisms and ‘internalises’ this situation as comfortable in the sense of himself being not fully but sufficiently integrated in the host body. Despite the last example’s surprisingly ‘positive’ recycling of the bacteriametaphor, the ‘mirrored’ Self-characterisation of Romanians as crippled, dysfunctional or parasitic body- or person- parts in the migration-topic context points to an important dimension of further research on national identity conceptualisations, i.e. the identification with or rejection of other nations’ concepts about the respective writer’s own national identity. In the case of emigration from Romania, the xenophobic metaphors used in the media of ‘receiver-countries’ have been publicly discussed in the media of the sender-nation (Romania) so that prospective emigrants were made aware of conceptualisations of their national identity by specific other countries (Neagu and Colipc˘a-Ciobanu 2014). Thus the xenophobic negative nationalism in receiver nations can become, though international media dissemination, a source for self-blaming Self-conceptualisations in the sender-nation. This finding opens new perspectives for research, e.g. on the impact of metaphorical conceptualisations of hybrid nationality (Rodríguez Betancourt et al. 2016) among migrants, as well as on the ‘migration’ of ideologically loaded metaphors across cultural and linguistic contexts (Musolff et al. 2014).

106

7 The Nation as a Body or Person in Romance L1 Language Samples …

7.5 The French L1 Sample The French L1 sample was collected at Lyon and Toulon Universities and includes also five more ‘international’ responses from the Universities of Leiden, Extremadura, Heidelberg, Monash University and the University of Nebraska. The social indicator data are ‘par for the course’, i.e., they show a majority of female 18–25 year-olds (Table 7.7). Table 7.7 Social indicators: French L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 49 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

42

86%

Male

7

14%

18–25

41

84%

5

10%

2

4%

1

2%

In relation to the number of scripts, the number of scenarios is particularly high (90:49) and their distribution pattern resembles that of the (almost three times larger) Italian L1 sample in that body part and person rank highest (but in reverse order from the Italian sample). To an even higher degree than in the Italian sample, body part scenarios collocate with part of ego and person, i.e. they combine to form a ‘personalised’ body part conceptualisation (Table 7.8). Table 7.8 Scenario distribution: French L1 Number of scenarios overall: 90 (= 100%) Scenarios

body geobody body part part of ego person

Scenario tokens

12

9

34

8

27

Percentages (%)

13

10

38

9

30

The field of lexical instances in the French L1 sample is differentiated into 27 body- and health-related sub-concepts and 14 person-based sub-concepts. The front-runners among the sub-concepts are the usual suspects, head- brain (16 instances) and heart (15), but the strongest ‘runners-up’ are, surprisingly, mouth (9) and stomach (7). These body parts serve, as we will see shortly, as highly characteristic identification symbols for French national identity, in both affirmative-patriotic and critical ironical perspectives. The (whole) body scenario of the French L1 sample is not only one of the least frequent in the corpus but is also curiously little institution-focused: there are just two instances of the head-president/government ascriptions at the top of the

7.5 The French L1 Sample

107

body-hierarchy. Instead, the majority of head- brain allocations link it with the intellectual and cultural elite: (38) The head [of France is led by] technocrates [sic], deconnected [sic] from the heart, the passions of its people. The head also because we value our intellectual heritage above all else. (FR, FR, 22, F) (39) Brain: culture (FR, FR, 23, F) (40) Brain: intelligence, clever people. (FR, FR, 22, F) Political institutions, which are conceptualised in other samples as limbs or organs, do not feature prominently in the French L1 sample. Instead, the ‘people’, as the whole national society, are allocated heart-status (see 38) or they are viewed as eyes, fingers (uniting to a hand), and as arms and legs “who disagree with the government” (FR, FR, 22, F). France as geobody is also a scenario of minor importance, with just a few instances of Paris in head/brain, face or heart position. The arms and legs of France’s geobody are allocated to the regions Alsace, Brittany, Riviera and “Occitany”. The bulk of the French L1 sample consists of conceptualisations of the nation as body part. As mentioned above, this scenario almost always collocates with the part of ego and person scenarios in this sample. Non-collocating uses are confined to short responses without interpretive elaboration (“France could be described to the brain of Europe, the mouth of culture and the heart of revolution” (FR, FR, 22, M); France is the heart of gastronomy (FR, FR, 22, F). Among the collocation cases, all of the part of ego scenarios appear in conjunction with body part uses. Some of these scenario combinations provide patriotic-sounding characterisations: (41) If I had to choose [the name of a body for my nation] that would be the heart because I love France (FR, FR, 30, M) (42) I’d refer to my home country as my feet. France is where my roots are, […] I feel I can grow well and develop my mind and body properly. (FR, FR, 38, F); (43) “[…] the only body part I would associate to my country would be my eyes—I see [all the things] through the lens of the French culture” (FR, FR, 22, F) However, most of the part of ego conceptualisations target the collective Self and often imply an ironical or humorous stance on stereotypical French habits, such as gourmet-culture, outspokenness and amorous activity: (44) France would be like a stomach: mostly because we like to eat, but also because of the way we like to digest everything in terms of culture (etc.) and make it unrecognisable, turn everything into a mushy soup that has no form or substance. (FR, FR, 24, M) (45) My nation could be described as a mouth, a trash mouth because we always say what we think and criticise others. We could be seen as a stomach too, because food is an important part of our culture and we think more with our stomachs than our brains. (FR, FR, 21, F)

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7 The Nation as a Body or Person in Romance L1 Language Samples …

(46) I would probably say that France is like a mouth, because of the food, the wine. It is also what we use to French kiss. (FR, FR, 23, F)10 The body parts said to be typical for the French collective Self (stomach, mouth) in these examples stand metonymically for the nation-person’s character and/or behaviour traits, and thus, arguably, imply the person scenario as well. Such a metonymic-metaphorical link also holds for other body parts that are interpretively commented on in the French sample: heart (romanticism, love of freedom), fist (demonstrating and protesting), cheek (greeting/kisses), arms (solidarity). The explicit personalisations of France are almost exclusively female (with the exception of yet another mouth-praise, which, uniquely, associates “the cliché of a French man with a mustache [sic]” (FR, FR, 23, F). The female personalisations highlight the “silhouette of a lady, linked to fashion and elegance”, FR, FR, 23, F), her “sensible & open-minded” character. (FR, FR, 20, M). They also link her with heart and womb and, in this latter connection, also with the traditional nationalist personification of France, Marianne, but also subtly transcending her stereotype11 : (47) “Marianne could be described as a pregnant woman” (FR, FR, 40, F) The French L1 sample consists overwhelmingly of positive characterisations, with the largely ‘benign’ critical/ironical/humorous uses, such as (44)–(46), amounting overall to just 13 instances, which represents a low percentage of 14%.

7.6 The Portuguese L1 Sample The Portuguese sample is small and much more homogeneous than those discussed above, with all data being elicited at the University of Braga (Table 7.9). Table 7.9 Social indicators: Portuguese L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 37 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

28

76%

Male

9

24%

18–25

37

100%

The scenario distribution is unique in that body, body part and part of ego scenarios are all equally strongly represented, accounting for 75 per cent of the 10 Not

all mouth-conceptualisations of France are ironical, though: the sample includes also a super-patriotic case, invoking the iconic singer E. Piaf: “To describe my nation, I would use ‘the mouth’, the mouth is that we use to speak up and revendications (France is known for its strikes), to explain our points of view (Descartes, philosophy), to kiss (French kiss), to sing (we have great singers: Edith Piaf), and above all, to eat, to savour our gastronomy” (FR, FR, 22, F). 11 For the History of the Marianne symbol as the personification of the French Republic and her revolutionary iconography see Agulhon (1981), Sohn (2006).

7.6 The Portuguese L1 Sample

109

sample between them. However, due to the small size of the sample, this finding cannot be regarded as more than indicative of a ‘split’ between these and the two remaining marginal scenarios (Table 7.10). Table 7.10 Scenario distribution: Portuguese-L1 Number of scenarios overall: 53 (= 100%) Scenarios

body geobody body part part of ego person

Scenario tokens

13

4

13

13

10

Percentages(%)

25

7

25

25

18

As a result of the small sample size, the number of sub-concepts is limited: there are just 24 body/health-related and just 5 person-related ones. The distribution shows the standard pattern, with head- brain, legs- feet, arms- hands and heart having the most frequent occurrences. The one ‘unusual’ sub-concept is that of the chest, which is applied once to the nation as ego, and once to the parliament: (48) Your nation is like your chest, it keeps your heart safe and protected as your nation keeps you and provides you the home you need […]. (POR, POR, 20, F) (49) To function properly we can say that Portugal has parts of a body like the President is the head, the Assembly of the Republic is the chest […]. (POR, POR, 20, M) Of the three main scenarios, the nation as (whole) body scenario follows the ‘hierarchy + interdependence’ model, with mainly descriptive assertions that the President and/or government direct a collaborative ensemble of executive organs. The nation as part of a body scenario is also partly descriptive, especially when it collocates with the geobody scenario, e.g. in references to Portugal’s relationship with other countries or continents, some of which concern its colonial past (though this is not explicitly mentioned): (50) (51) (52) (53)

Portugal as head of Iberian peninsula. (POR, POR, 20, M) Portugal is the left arm of Spain (POR, POR, 20, F) Portugal is the right arm of Brazil (POR, POR, 21, M) Portugal has almost a toe in Africa. (POR, POR, 23, F)

Other part of body scenario versions that do not refer to a geographical or geopolitical relationship are mostly emphatically positive (even implicitly referencing Portugal’s leading role in the history of maritime discoveries in 58) or, at worst, mildly ironical (example 59): (54) (55) (56) (57)

Our nation is like a head, full of wisdom. (POR, POR, 21, F) Our nation is like a helping hand. (POR, POR, 21, F) Portugal is the head of discoveries (POR, POR, 20, F) Portugal is like the nose that sometimes is dirty (POR, POR, 21, M)

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7 The Nation as a Body or Person in Romance L1 Language Samples …

Of the three main scenarios, the part of ego-scenario seems to be the most ambivalent in that it includes both emphatic endorsement and sarcastic criticism: (58) Your nation is like your eyes, you can see though them how lucky you are comparing with other nations. (POR, POR, 20, F) (59) We breathe Portuguese culture Portugal is culture. (POR, POR, 22, M) (60) My body is imperfect like my nation. (POR, POR, 19, F) (61) My feet have trampled people like my nation. (POR, POR, 25, F) As the last two examples show, part of ego scenarios can overlap with the person scenario in highlighting ethically problematic behaviour of the nation-Self. Such critical examples are ‘countered’ by positive ones, which often combine the body part and person scenarios, as in the French sample. Some of these also include gender allocations: (62) (63) (64) (65)

Portugal is hugging you. (POR, P, 19, F) Portugal is like a Mom’s heart. (POR, POR, 21, M) Portugal turned his [sic] back on racism. (POR, POR, 21, M) Portugal opened his [sic] arms to immigrants. (POR, POR, 20, M)

The number of critical, ironical and humorous scenario uses is low (n = 7, = 13%, similar to the French one) but also has to be treated with caution due to the small size of the sample.

7.7 Summary Of the five samples reviewed in this chapter, only the Italian L1 one lends itself to a comparison with the English and German L1 samples ‘on equal terms’, as their numbers are in the same order of magnitude, with over 150 scripts and over 200 scenario instances each. The Romanian, Spanish and French L1 samples are roughly one third of the Italian and the Portuguese L1 one a fourth. There are two main conceptualisation patterns discernible in their scenario-distributions: (1) the Spanish and Romanian L1 samples are dominated by the nation as (whole- )body scenario, like the English and German L1 samples; (2) by contrast, the Italian and French L1 samples have body part- and person-scenarios as strongly collocating patterns. The results for the Portuguese L1 sample are inconclusive, due to three joint ‘front-runners’ but seem to fit better in the first group than in the second.

References Agulhon, M. (1981). Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France, 1789– 1880 (J. Lloyd, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Banti, A. M. (2011). Sublime madre nostra: La nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al Fascismo. Bari: Laterza.

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Barisonzi, M. (2015). Mother Italy: The female role in the rebirth of Italian nationalism in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Le Vergini delle Rocce. Studi D’Italianistica Nell’Africa Australe, 28(1), 22–48. Machiavelli, N. (2003). The Discourses. Ed. B. Crick. London: Penguin. Machiavelli, N. (2005). The Prince (P. Bondanella, Ed.; With an Introduction by M. Viroli). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Musolff, A. (2010). Metaphor, nation and the holocaust. The concept of the body politic. London and New York: Routledge. Musolff, A. (2015). Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 3(1), 41–56. Musolff, A., MacArthur, F., & Pagani, G. (Eds.). (2014). Metaphor and intercultural communication. London: Bloomsbury Linguistics. Neagu, M., & Colipc˘a-Ciobanu, G. I. (2014). Metaphor and self/other representations: A study on British and Romanian headlines on migration. In A. Musolff, F. MacArthur, & G. Pagani (Eds.), Metaphor and intercultural communication (pp. 201–221). London: Bloomsbury. Nijman, J., Muller, P. O., & Be Blij, H. (2010). The world today. Concepts and regions in geography. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Rodríguez Betancourt, G. Ortiz Cofer, J. and Levins Morales, 2016 (2016). The construction of identity through cultural and linguistic hybridization. Frankfurt: Lincom. Sohn, A.-M. (2006). La trilogie des Mariannes : Relecture de l’idée républicaine. In M. Agulhon, A. Becker, & E. Cohen (Eds.), La République en représentations : Autour de l’œuvre de Maurice Agulhon (pp. 33–43). Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. The Economist (2017). Italy is Europe’s leaden-toed boot. The Economist, 27 March 2017.

Chapter 8

The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian and Bulgarian

8.1 Introduction The samples from respondents with Slavic L1 backgrounds include three substantial sub-corpora: Russian L1 (86 scripts), Serbian L1 (59 scripts) and Ukrainian L1 (55 scripts); two smaller sub-corpora, i.e. Polish L1 (27 scripts) and Croatian L1 (22 scripts) and the smallest sample in the corpus, Bulgarian L1 (6 scripts). The Russian L1 and Ukrainian L1 samples share (together with French) part of body as ‘top’ scenario. They are therefore discussed first to highlight salient parallels and contrasts, followed by the Serbian, Polish and Croatian and Bulgarian L1 samples, which show the more usual preferences for the body and person scenarios.

8.2 The Russian L1 Sample All but one of the responses in the Russian L1 sample were collected at two Moscow universities, the “Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia” (RUDN), and Moscow State Linguistic University. In addition to them, the sample includes one Russian guest student’s response from Heidelberg University. The social composition is again dominated by 18–25 year-old female student respondents (Table 8.1). Table 8.1 Social Indicators: Russian L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 86 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

77

90%

Male

9

10%

18–25

78

91%

26–30

2

2%

31–40

2

2%

41+

4

5%

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_8

113

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8 The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples …

The scenario distribution appears to be highly characteristic in that body part scenario instances are by far the most frequent, followed by person instances. This pattern is similar to the French one but more pronounced, as it overshadows all other scenarios (Table 8.2). Table 8.2 Scenario distribution: Russian L1 Number of scenarios overall: 151 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

person

Scenario tokens

9

12

75

11

44

Percentages (%)

6

8

50

7

29

8.2.1 The Nation as BODY The semantic field of body- and health-related concepts in the Russian L1 sample is comparatively small (33 sub-concepts altogether), especially considering the high number of scenario instances. Its most frequent sub-concept is heart, with 38 instances (together with its collocate blood, 42), followed by body-parts (12), head-brain (12) arms-hands (9). The usually frequent legs-feet concept field is only residually manifest (5). The hierarchy of body organs plays only a small role and is restricted in target domain terms to the relationship ‘president/government—people’, without differentiation of social, economic or political institutions: (1) My nation is Russian. I think that people is the heart as it move [sic] the whole body. And the heart is responsible for the emotions. As for the brain (or sense), it’s the government as it’s responsible for serious decisions. (R, R, 22, F) (2) My home nation is Russian. If we look at as the human body, then the head would be the people. You might think that it rules the whole body. However, the government is the neck. And the neck moves the head. Unfortunately people in Russia are under a lot of pressure by the government. (R, R, 20, F) As the number of instances recorded above indicates, allocating heart status to the centre of political power is more important than head-status, which is the ‘usual’ candidate for targeting head of state or of government referents in Western European samples. The attribution of neck-status to the government in the sense of the ‘neck-turns head’ proverb in example (2) seems significant in this context. The writer assumes that in a functioning democracy the people (as head) should “rule the whole body” but that they are inadvertently moved/influenced by the governmentneck. The point of the proverb is that it subverts the ‘normally’ assumed body hierarchy: the seemingly ‘lower’ neck determines what the officially ‘higher’ head does. In the perspective of (2), the government is then lower than the people, which

8.2 The Russian L1 Sample

115

is an unconventional view (especially in comparison with examples in other Eastern European languages, see below in this and the following chapters). The proverb application in (2) may therefore be interpreted as a subtly ironic expression of the writer’s scepticism about how the political system in Russia works. Compared with the body hierarchy perspective, the interdependency of all body parts within the whole body scenario is depicted more often and more emphatically: (3) Russia is a single space as a human body, where each part is an important [sic] and performs his own function. In the human body everything is interconnected with each other. (R, R, 20, M) (4) I think that Russia is a single coordinated organism. (R, R, 20, F) (5) Russia is a complex organism that constantly functions. […] Each subject of our country is like a cog in the big mechanism, without it the country will not prosper. (R, R, 20, F) Whilst this emphasis on the interdependence of all body parts is similar to Western uses, the equation of body with organism or even mechanism in these examples shows a special abstract, quasi-scientific understanding of the bodywhole. In terms of conceptual history provenance, it comes close to mechanical body models applied to the state, as pioneered by Hobbes (see Chap. 2). There is no evidence to suggest that such theories were consciously invoked by any respondents, but their occurrence betrays the long-term impact of modern, mechanical body conceptualisations, rather than ‘intuitive’ body-experience affecting the metaphorical imagination of the nation.

8.2.2 The Nation as PART OF BODY, GEOBODY and PART OF EGO

body part is the most frequently used scenario in the Russian L1 sample and it is also the collocate of all instantiations of the geobody and part of ego scenarios; so they are treated here together. The central sub-concept employed to depict Russia is the heart, found across all three scenarios (and also often involving person): (6) Russia is like heart. Heart is a unique, the most important organ for all living beings. It’s a well-known fact that without normal functioning [sic] of heart life is impossible. It is the most powerful part of people’s bodies. Russia is the most powerful country for me, I believe in its further development and wish it only good! (R, R, 22, F) (7) From my point of view Russia may symbolise the heart of the world. It is the heart that circulates blood through the body. Russia provides gas for almost all European and other countries. I imagine that gas is like blood, and Russia is like a heart that circulates it through the veins of the body. (R, R, 32, F)

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(8) Russia is like heart burning with passion. At a first glance Russian people seem to be cold and reserved but deep down you understand it is not so. […]. Russia, like heart, is constantly working or beating to develop further to become better. And if it stops (I mean Russia) don’t you think that the world will be deprived of something valuable? (R, R, 22, F) In the part of ego scenario, the conceptualisation of the Russian nation as heart provides the focus of self-identification, as example (8) indicates. Relying on the topos of the ‘typical’ emotional Russian identity, the heart sub-concept aligns the part of body, part of ego and person-scenarios: e.g., “in my life […] Russia is like my ‘heart’” (R, R, 19, F); “Russia is like my […] people’s heart, which is so kind” (R, R, 20, F). heart is thus a key-concept in the Russian L1 sample, not just as the most central and most important part of the national body but also as the soul of the nation-person. In this function it is endowed with more than its physiological value; it is the seat of (usually, good) emotions,1 e.g. “bravery, courage and kindness” (R, R, 23, F) and the essence of Russian identity: (9)

[…] the basis of our country is the Russian soul. It is the broad, warm and kind heart of our country (R, R, 22, F) (10) In my opinion Russia is like a heart. Russia is the soul of humanity. (R, R, 19, F) As the last two examples show, heart and soul are treated as synonyms that characterise an ‘inner quality’ of the Russian nation, which may be invisible from the outside (see example 8). Apart from heart, a wide range of the most commonly familiar organs and limbs is also used to praise the nation: • brain: “observes all the situation [sic] in the world. It can make up a different solutions of dead-end problems” (R, R, 22, F) • neck: “where neck turns, there head turns. Russia is a big country and it has an influence on other countries. Many countries depend on Russia. Secondly, neck is the main support of our head” (R, R, 22, F) • blood circulation: “Russia is like a veins […] it occupies a big territory, spreading through the continent” (R, R, 21, F) • ears: “listening very attentively to the world” (R, R, 23 F) • back: “covers [small and weak countries] and protect [sic] from the outside [sic] problems”; “takes much responsibility and a lot of duties towards the other countries, so there is a heavy bag on the back of the world” (R, R, 19, F) • spine: “supports the whole world” (R, R, 20, F)

1 The

only exception is a depiction of Russia-as-heart as seat of sadness: “Russia is like a broken heart because there are so many sad people around me” (R, R, 19, F), without further explanation.

8.2 The Russian L1 Sample

117

• arms: “Russia’s arms can work hard […]. If they like you, they will hug you so sweet and warm. If you treat them bad they defenetly [sic] will punch you hard” (R, R, 20, F)2 • hand: Russia for me is […] a helping hand, (R, R, 20, F) 3 • legs: “this country strongly stays ‘on its feet’ for many centuries, even world wars couldn’t ‘strike it down’” (R, R, 23, F), • skin: “largest human organ” (R, R, 23, M) • lungs: “which helps the planet to breach [sic]” (R, R, 22, M) • liver: “involved in every process even though it might not want to take part in them [sic]. It also gets all the damage trying to cure the whole ‘body’” (R, R, 20, F) • guts: “due to its vast expanses” (R, R, 20, F) • hair: “If you look at Russia from space, you will see that almost all territory is covered with forests. […]. It creates special mood such as a hairstyle” (R, R, 19, F). The wide range of body part source concepts and the inventiveness in the selection of a tertium comparationis between them and the target concept Russia show that the Moscow informants creatively engaged in a kind of exercise to find an ‘interesting’ and entertaining link between characteristic features of their nation and ‘fitting’ parts of the human body. This is a different, perhaps more playful approach to the interpretation task than that focused on expressing the writers’ convictions about the essence of the Russian heart-soul identity that we exemplified earlier. Both types of responses are, however, similar in that they mainly eulogise the nation, even when they refer to body parts that are not traditionally highly valued, such as lungs, liver, guts, skin or hair. The few instances of criticism in the sample (n = 9, i.e. 6% of scenario instances) are humorous/ironical and only partly critical, rather than sarcastic or wholly negative: (11) Russian [sic] is like a mouth that speaks faster than a brain can think or manages [sic] to stop it. (R, R, 21, F) (12) My home is like a spleen. It aches but it is still a part of you, no matter what (R, R, 20, F)

8.2.3 The Nation as PERSON The most frequent sub-concepts in the semantic field of person(ality) include the character traits kindness-love-helpfulness (21 instances) and soul (9 instances).

2 In

the part of ego scenario, the arm/s features mainly as an active-outreaching limb: “With it I can be a creator of my own life. My country as my arms helps me in many heavy situations” (R, R, 18, M). 3 In the geobody scenario, the two hands signify the ‘complementary’, symmetrical main cities: “Moscow: right hand of Russia and St. Petersburg left hand of Russia” (R, R, 19, F).

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8 The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples …

By comparison, gendered conceptualisations are few and far between. The four depictions of Russia as a male figure emphasise macho qualities: broad shoulders, independence, strength and bad manners, at least superficially, (“rude in crowd but kind and simple in close conversation”, R, R, 19, F).4 There are even fewer, i.e. two depictions of Russia as mother and one as (grand-) mother, all endowed with friendly/helpful etc. feelings, in line with the (warm) heart theme. The apparent dearth of feminine characterisations is surprising in view of the fact that there is a well-established tradition of patriotic symbolism of Mother Russia and an associated phraseology of the terms motherland, and Mother Russia (Cepinskyte 2019; Haarmann 2000; Rutten 2010). The term motherland does appear twice in the corpus (in addition to the three above-mentioned mother personifications) but is not elaborated upon or attributed specific feelings/character traits. One possible explanation may be that the kindness-love-helpfulness concept complex already implies a female-gendered personalisation, so that for many respondents it does not need to be spelt out (in contrast to the male stereotype). In the three cases where (Grand-) Mother Russia is in fact invoked, this character-attribution is clearly foregrounded: (13) Russia […] protects weak [countries] similarly steadfastly as mom defends her child (R, R, 18, F) (14) Russia is like a heart of an old grandmother. […] when you get to know her better she turns out to be very emotional caring (R, R, 20, F) (15) [If you are Russia’s] friend you will always feel warmth of the mothers [sic] hand and good shoulder to help you. (R, R, 20, F) The writers’ identification of the nation-mother with the emotions of love, kindness, helpfulness, which are typically located in the heart (see examples above, 6–10, 14) also explains the strong focus on the soul: it, too, is located in the heart and encompasses both ‘motherly’ feelings and ‘deep emotions’ that are deemed to be nation-specific: (16) Some people don’t believe in existence of the soul. Just like the rest of the world doesn’t admit power and influence of Russia on the world stage. In addition, I’m consider [sic] that no matter what condition your body is, your soul should always be clear and ready to help people in need. And history showed that. During the WW2 lots of people were ready to sacrifice their lives to protect not only Russia, but the whole world (R, R, 18, M)5 The two concept-combinations, soul-conscience and mother-kindness, coincide in the heart, which is understood both in the organismic and the socio-symbolic sense (‘seat’ of emotion, character, identity) in the Russian L1 sample. Together with further organs (see the bullet-point list above) that are employed for similar symbolic 4 The

man Russia is also once depicted as “Serbia’s elder brother” (R, R, M, 21) but not accorded any father status. 5 References to the home nation’s historical achievements appear five times in the Russian sample; they are all focused on Russia’s helpfulness to other nations (e.g. as a shoulder, spine or back to lean on).

8.2 The Russian L1 Sample

119

personalising interpretations, e.g. the helpful hand, the reliable back/spine/shoulder, the supportive neck, the heart-soul-kindness complex forms a system of congruent body part conceptualisations whose main purpose is not so much to illustrate or legitimise political hierarchies or interdependencies, but rather to create a national character that serves as a focus for personal identification and trust.

8.3 The Ukrainian L1 Sample The Ukrainian L1 sample was collected mainly at the National Pedagogic Dragomanov University in Kyiv and the National Academy of the National Guard of Ukraine in Kharkiv. In addition, it includes responses by three Ukrainian guest students in Britain. 18–25 year-old female students are, again, in a strong majority (Table 8.3). Table 8.3 Social Indicators: Ukrainian L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 55 (= 100%) Gender

Female

Age group

48

87%

Male

7

13%

18–25

54

98%

26–30

1

2%

The scenario pattern resembles the Russian L1 one in that it, too, has body part in first place, albeit with a reduced percentage; however, the second most frequently used scenario is not person but (whole) body. As the analysis below will show, this may be of significance as regards the relative weight of cultural preferences. But we have to bear in mind that the size of the Ukrainian L1 sample is less than two thirds of the Russian L1 one (and the scenario count is even lower: 51% of the Russian one), so comparability may be limited (Table 8.4). Table 8.4 Scenario distribution: Ukrainian L1 Number of scenarios overall: 77 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

Scenario tokens

22

5

32

8

10

Percentages (%)

29

6

42

10

13

part of ego

person

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8 The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples …

8.3.1 The Nation as BODY Despite a considerably smaller number of scenario instantiations, the Ukrainian L1 sample is more semantically differentiated than the Russian one, with 37 body- and health-related sub-concepts. As usual, the complexes heart-blood (18 instances), head-face-brain (14), and body-body parts (12) are among the most frequent but, atypically, arms-hands-fingers (22) is the frontrunner, whereas legs-feet is only mentioned four times (three of them in the collocation arms and legs). For the body scenario, we find the hierarchy perspective to be as important as the interdependence perspective, with the usual allocations of organs to political institutions: brain/head: president and/or government 6 ; heart: parliament or people; ears, eyes and mouth: police, media; arms-hands: government, prime minister or army (vis-à-vis president), leg: population. Many of the body scenario instances include strident criticisms that reference serious illnesses, even if the body seems to be well-built and functioning: (17) […] nation is the whole organism, because we‘re doing everything as one. Everyone makes his function as good as it can be, journalists are our eyes and ears, deputies are our mouth, militaries are our strong hands that protect us […], scientists are our clever brain. But as in every organism there can be a cancer that lets down the whole body […] trying to change cultural legacy as they wish. I hope that once all our deseases [sic] will go away and we will be stronger in every part of body. (U, U, 19, M)7 (18) Parliament is a malignant tumor on the nation’s heart (U, U, 18, M) (19) Ukraine is like a human body dying of cancer. All organs are failing. The cancer is coming from within, it being the government. (U, U, 22, M) The strongly negatively evaluated medical conditions, cancer-tumour, blindness, paralysis, death make up the source concepts in most of the critical or ironical responses. In addition, hand(s)/finger(s) are used as sources for negative conceptualisations that focus on corruption (similarly to the English idiom of having your hand/fingers in the till):

6 In one case, where the parliament is depicted as the head, the president is said to be the neck (18, F). This may be an implicit criticism of power-relationships, which is based on the ‘neck-turns head’ proverb, as suggested also for the Russian usage cited above in example (2). However, in the absence of any further co-text indications, it could also be a neutral or even positive indication in the sense of the ‘president-neck’ supporting the ‘parliament-head’). In the other instantiation of neck, the meaning is explicitly connected to the proverb, with critical, ironical slant: “neck [=] oligarchs, turn “face” [= president]” (U, U, 26, F). 7 The target reference to the change of “cultural traditions” may be a topical allusion to the struggle about separate Russian and Ukrainian identities, which has played out in political discourse at least since Ukraine regained national independence in 1991 and especially since the 2014 Maidan ‘revolution’ in Kiev and the later military confrontation (A’Beckett 2012, 2019). Its depiction as cancer signals the existential challenge this conflict posits to the Ukraine. Another topical reference to the present-day conflict depicts it as damage to the “health of a nervous system” (U, U, 20, M).

8.3 The Ukrainian L1 Sample

121

(20) The hands: official and unofficial local authorities (including mafia groups): […] Determine how things ACTUALLY work (e.e.g. impose local “tax” of mafia “protection”. […] The fingers: people of a “higher social class” who live in main cities. Have certain power in getting things done through connections, favours and bribing […]. The fingernails: people typically from villages, where movements, fashions and values are dictated by the city people (hence direct contact of fingers and nails). Very little/no knowledge of or involvement with politics. (U, U, 27, F) Such negative polarity of hands in the whole body scenario changes when this conceptualisation is used in the context of the body part scenario, as we will see in the following section.

8.3.2 The Nation as PART OF BODY, GEOBODY and PART OF EGO

As in the Russian L1 example, Ukrainian conceptualisations of the nation as a body part are almost always praising the nation, e.g. hands (“which keep us together”, U, U, 19, F) and arms (“always in progress and looking for something new”, U, U, 18, F). Further positively valued organs representing the Ukrainian nation are heart (“big as heart of the mother”, U, U, 18, F; “heart of the universe”, U, U, 18, F), head (“our nation is like a human’s head. Ukrainian people are very democratic”, U, U, 19, F), back (“allows us moving”, U, U, 18, F), and even oesophagus (“because it saturates all organ nutrients”, U, U, 19, F). The comparatively few negatively evaluated conceptualisations of nation as body part, e.g. stomach and appendix, are formulated as general observations, i.e. they do not specifically target the Ukraine.8 There is, however, one Ukraine-specific, body part-based comment that stands out and links up with the above-mentioned critical commentaries on topical political-cultural conflicts: (21) My nation is the stomach of divided nations. It has to digest the conflicts. The heart of it is split between East and West but the mind is still stucked [sic] in Eastern doctrines. (U, U, 25, F) Generally, the Ukrainian respondents appear to share with their Russian counterparts a preference for fitting a body part, rather than whole body source conceptualisations, to the target referents they wish to describe. Again similarly to the Russian L1 sample, geobody and part of ego combinations in the Ukrainian L1 are positively slanted. The former is realised by depictions of Kyiv as head, heart, or eyes of the nation, the latter by identifications of the nation with the writers’ own heart, blood, busy arms and legs, productive head. 8 E.g. “Nation with bad people is like stomach with digestion problems” (U, U, 18, F); “nations that

almost not [sic] exist now, we can compare them with appendix (U, U, 18, F).

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Thus, with regards to the body part, geobody and part of ego scenarios, the Ukrainian L1 sample resembles the Russian L1 sample, but a crucial element is missing: the emphatic identification of heart, soul and ego. Soul appears 10 times in the Ukrainian L1 sample but is mostly used in formulaic statements, as in the following: (22) My nation is my soul (U, U, 18, F) (23) country is like a heart and soul (U, U, 18, F) (24) We are as one […], one soul” (U, U, 20, F) heart, soul and ego are thus also connected in Ukrainian national identity construction but lack a strong emotional appeal, perhaps due to a dearth of collocations with the mother-stereotype (the above-mentioned example big as heart of the mother only appears once).

8.3.3 The Nation as PERSON Personalisation is in fact rare in the Ukrainian L1 sample: it has just eight subconcepts, most of which appear only once, including three gendered conceptualisations, i.e. girl (1 instance) and mother (2). The most frequent character traits of the Ukrainian nation-person are brave, fighting, athleticism, industriousness, well organised and togetherness; there are no negative character traits that are commented upon. The concept of soul when used in this scenario, includes both emotional and intellectual aspects: (25) The country is a body, without soul the country dead (U, U, 19, F) (26) […] nation defends our mind and soul. (U, U, 19, F) (27) “Nation” is like a soul, which feels all around [sic]. (U, U, 20, F) Most person-depictions of Ukraine, like the ego-depictions, tend to be formulaic and are not used as platforms for extended narratives or for evaluative or critical comments. The latter are mainly found in the whole body scenario (see above); all in all, they amount to 13 instances (= 17%). The Ukrainian L1 sample shares features with the Russian L1 sample (body part as main scenario, few negative/critical responses) but also with the Western European samples (English and German L1) samples by also relying on the body scenario. Its very low personalisation percentage (13%) seems to be distinctive.

8.4 The Serbian L1 Sample The Serbian L1 sample was collected at the University of Belgrade; in addition, one guest student in Norway supplied a response. Four of the Belgrade students

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123

identified themselves as citizens of the independent state of Montenegro9 ; all others were of Serbian nationality. 18–25 year-old female students were, again, in a strong majority (but the gender ratio is less slanted in favour of female respondents than in the Russian L1 and Ukrainian L1 samples) (Table 8.5). Table 8.5 Social Indicators: Serbian L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 59 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

42

71%

Male

17

29%

18–25

57

97%

31–40

2

3%

The scenario distribution is more in line with some Western European patterns than with the Russian L1 and Ukrainian L1 samples, as whole body is the dominant scenario, followed by person (Table 8.6). Table 8.6 Scenario distribution: Serbian L1 Number of scenarios overall: 84 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

Scenario tokens

53

6

3

1

21

Percentages (%)

62

7

4

1

26

person

8.4.1 The Nation as BODY The body scenario is highly differentiated, with 49 sub-concepts, eleven of which concern health-conditions, yielding 261 instantiations overall. The main conceptual complexes are head-brain (57 instantiations), arms-hands (34), legs-feet (29) and heart-blood (26), but some other organs are also relatively frequently mentioned: eyes (13), mouth (10) and ears (8). The perspectives of hierarchy and of interdependence of the body parts/organs are both highlighted, with either the

9 The target referents of the body and person sub-concepts used by the Montenegrin respondents thus refer to Montenegro, not to Serbia. Where relevant, the Monenegrin identity is noted in discussing the examples.

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8 The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples …

president (in most cases), or the government (of Serbia or Montenegro, respectively), as the head,10 and the people as heart11 : (28) The nation leader is head of body. Every decision leader made, have [sic] influence on whole body. Arms of body are all organisation [sic] that are important for national economy. The most important part of body is heart. That heart are people. (SE, SE, 20, M) (29) The head of this “body” is government, that decides about big questions. The “arms” are employes [sic] in the companies because they work very hard. People from 18–50 year [sic] are representing “legs”, because they are holding the whole body. If a part of body is hurted [sic], all other parts are suffering, that´s why one nation should be united. (SE, SE, 20, F) Arms and legs or arms and hands collocate often and refer to ‘executive’ or ‘working’ parts of state and society, i.e. administration, justice, police and army (the latter also as fist), industry and workers. Feet, however, are only mentioned twice, referring once to “pensioners” (as the lowest body part in a scale of usefulness, “below educated classes” that feature as abdomen and legs, SE, SE, 20, F) and once to “young educated people” (as “driving the country forward”, SE, SE, 22, M). Eyes and ears is another popular collocation, usually referring to media, the police and/or the “intelligence services”.12 The neck-concept, which we found elsewhere being used to ironically qualify the head’s leading function is mentioned in the Serbian L1 sample, but not in an ironical or critical way, see e.g. “Neck of this country is Government. The reason why Government is this part of the body is because it allows body to move as one structure” (SE, SE, 20, M). body part concepts relating to burden-bearing and stabilising functions, such as spine, back, shoulders, torso, are applied to essential parts of society, e.g. industry, work force, hospitals and the school system. In one case, however, Serbia’s backbone as well as its brain and heart, are allocated to negatively loaded referents, i.e. “corruption, lies and wrong beliefs” (SE, SE, 20, F). Only one body part is spared from this condemnation but not necessarily viewed positively: “Ribs are singers and reality shows”. The mouth is ascribed, also in a pejorative sense, to ‘talking’ but non-decision-taking parts of the state-apparatus, e.g. vice president, prime minister, other ministers, all viewed as mere mouthpieces or just lips of the head-president.13 Two organs are used to identify particular ‘problem parts’ of the nation on account of perceived uselessness and lowly/taboo status in the body hierarchy, i.e. the appendix for the government as not being “useful for anything” (SE, 10 An unconventional target referent of the head, which is only found in the Serbian L1 sample, is the National Bank of Serbia, with its filial branches as arms (2 instances). 11 Other heart referents in the body scenario highlighted by Montenegrin informants are children (SE, MON, 22, F) and students (“where all the revolution, innovations and ideas come from”, SE, MON, 20, F). 12 On its own, the concept of eyes is also associated with university (SE, SE, 20, M). 13 In one case, a respondent used mouth to raise the issue of emigration, i.e. by ascribing its function to “people that initially lived in [our] country but left it, and now spread information about it elsewhere” (SE, SE, 20, F), but without any discernible evaluation.

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125

SE, 20, F) and the colon for the “poor ones and homeless” because they must go through the worst parts of living” (SE, SE, 19, F). The majority of critical comments in the Serbian L1 sample is expressed by way of illness-concepts, e.g. as being a cripple/in a wheelchair, blind, deaf, infected, or having a headache. However, these concepts appear just once or twice each and thus cannot be considered as representative of larger groups’ attitudes.

8.4.2 The Nation as PART OF BODY, PART OF EGO and GEOBODY part of body and part of ego scenarios are only marginally represented. In three instances, part of body is used to discuss the general concept of ‘nation’ as the head, brain or heart of the (national) society, respectively. part of ego is just once invoked as the (“ignored”) class of intellectuals including the writer, i.e. the brain. The slightly more often used geobody scenario includes four highly affectively and ideologically loaded uses that refer to the fought-over, nowadays multi-ethnic region of Kosovo,14 which declared independence in 2008 (Warbrick 2008), as being the Serbian nation’s wounded limb (in danger of amputation), heart, or crucified body: (30) One of our legs got broken a long time ago, and it still hasn´t healed. Others wanna [sic] force it to amputation, […] Those people aren´t doctors and have no idea what they are trying to do, and Serbia will not lose its leg, because it is still a part of Serbia´s body (SE, SE, 19, M) (31) The lungs are huge woods in the central part of SERBIA called Sumadija, arms are the connection that we have with other countries and the heart is KOSOVO (SE, SE, 20, M) (32) Kosovo is commonly reffered [sic] as the heart of Serbia (SE, SE, 20, F) (33) […] the loss of the territory of Kosovo […] is sometimes described as “crucified”- “raspeto Kosovo” (SE, SE, 34, F) The conceptualisation of a lost part of former national territory as a missing or amputated body limb is not unique to the Serbian L1 sample—it is also manifest in the Hungarian L1 and Chinese L1 samples (see Chaps. 9 and 11). Its depiction as Serbia’s heart in examples (31) and (32), and even as its crucified body (33) 14 Kosovo was the centre (heart) of the medieval Serbian Empire but also the site of the catastrophic

defat in the “Battle of Kosovo” (1389), after which Serbia lost its religious and political independence to the Ottoman Empire. This national ‘sacrifice’ has been invoked by religious and political leaders up to the present day. For detailed analyses of the “Kosovo myth” and its identification with the heart of serbia see Malcolm (1999: 58, 75), Rasuliç (2020: 121–125), Spasi´c (2016). Serbia’s present-day capital Belgrade is twice identified in our corpus as the geobody’s heart. This conforms to the conventional use of the geobody scenario but see Rasuli´c 2020: 125–129, for the political significance of “metonymic disguises” (capital cities for nations) in the SerbianKosovan dispute.

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8 The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples …

underlines the fact that in the Serbian perspective, the Kosovo still belongs to the ‘core’ of Serbia’s geobody.

8.4.3 The Nation as PERSON Of the altogether 21 person conceptualisations in the Serbian L1 sample, 13 are critical and/or ironical, whilst eight are positive or neutral. This is not in itself surprising, as nation-personalisations are a focus of critical and negative evaluations across most samples. Together with six other (body- and geobody-related conceptualisations) they add up to 19 instances of national self-criticism, which indicates a relatively substantial, though not excessively high percentage (23%). Positive characteristics ascribed to the Serbian nation-person are hard-working, forward-looking, fighting spirit; negative ones are corruption, untrustworthiness, depression and split personality. One seemingly positive characterisation is turned around to serve for sarcastic criticism of the emigration of intellectuals: (34) Serbia is a very generous human being because it is like […] organ donor by giving away well-educated young people. In this way Serbia is a brain donor. (SE, SE, 20, F) One person-focused criticism comes from the small (n = 4) Montenegrin subsample: the nation is identified “with the shape of our president” who “is almost a dictator” whose eyes are the spies and police and whose mouth is the vice president (SE, MON, 20, F).15 This identification of the nation-person, rather than the nationhead/brain, with the president is unique. Gender ascriptions are rare: one is male, two are female, one of which cites the term “Majka Srbija” and explains that the nation as mother “is often described as wounded, humiliated, suffering, on her knees, not going through her best period ‘now’ compared to its [sic] ‘glorious and heroic past’” (SE, SE, 20, F). This seems to be the echo of a tradition of banalnationalistic nation as mother conceptualisation and -symbolisation in Serbia (Bracewell 1996), which is, however, also represented in other political cultures (for comparison see Chap. 12).

8.5 The Polish, Croatian and Bulgarian L1 Samples The Polish, Croatian and Bulgarian L1 samples are too small, with just 27, 22 and 6 scripts respectively, to provide a database that can be compared with the larger Slavic/Eastern European samples. In terms of social composition, the Polish

15 The

other three Montenegrin examples also refer to the president but only as head or brain; none is as critical as example (34).

8.5 The Polish, Croatian and Bulgarian L1 Samples

127

and Croatian L1 samples conform to the general trend of majorities of female 18– 25 year-old respondents; the small Bulgarian L1 sample has equal numbers of male and female informants and two thirds of over-25 year old ones, but is clearly not representative. The informants are students from three Polish universities in Cracow, Łodz and Konin, one Croatian university (Rijeka) and one Bulgarian university (Sofia) as well as from two German universities (Bonn, Heidelberg). The scenario distributions show a few distinct patterns that seem worthy of comment. In the Polish sample, the whole body scenario is the most frequent one (n = 24 out of a total of 35). It highlights the body parts’ interdependence as well as their hierarchical ordering (presented here in order of relative body part status): • • • • • • • • • • •

head/face (president, prime minister, government) brain (prime minister, parliament) neck (prime minister, “turning the [president’s] head”) heart (government, people) eyes (president, intelligence agencies) mouth (government) arms, right/left hand (prime minister vis-à-vis president, other ministers) legs (courts, citizens) nerve system (administration) stomach (government) gall bladder (president, seen as “not having much power, but nothing will happen without him”).

As the references to the neck that turns the head and the use of ‘lower-ranking’ organs such as stomach and gall bladder to derogate holders of high offices) in this list indicate, Polish respondents are not averse to using ironical interpretations. There are 15 instances of ironical/sarcastic, other critical and humorous uses in the sample, which yields the extremely high percentage of 43% of all scenario instances but is statistically irrelevant, due to the small sample size. Some of these interpretations are highly creative, involving as they do also body part and person scenarios and hyperbolic as well as polemically suggestive formulations: (35) Our army is like few left broken teeth in country’s oral cavity. (POL, POL, 18, M) (36) My home nation is like a beautiful woman that [sic] mind changes one hundred times in a minute. (POL, POL, 34, F) (37) Our nation wants to be seen as thick-skinned. We are not a pimple of the world (POL, POL, 20, F) Only two target topics seem to be exempt from ironical treatment and are instead proudly highlighted: a) the nation’s recovery from (historical) illnesses such as occupation and dictatorship (“Body and mind didn´t work together properly the last 100 years that´s why it has been seriously ill at least two times”, POL, POL, 28, M) and b) the Christian religion and/or Catholic church (“Christian values and traditions are as our legs, they are our basics that you can find in every Pole on a daily basis”,

128

8 The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples …

POL, POL, 22, M; “Catholic Church can be perceived as a heart of our country”, POL, POL, 24, M). Both aspects appear to fit well with Poland’s metaphorical personalisation in”catholic-nationalist discourse” that A. Gomola (2019) has identified as a counter-imagining to ‘Europeanisation’ discourses in present-day Poland. It will need a larger database to explore in detail the interplay of body- and person-metaphors in these conceptualisations of Polish national identity and their impact on popular culture. In the Croatian L1 sample, person and geobody are the main scenarios, with, respectively, eleven and ten out of 31 scenario instantiations overall. The most important body-related sub-concept, with 15 instantiations, is heart, which straddles both scenarios, either as the most important place in the nation (i.e. the capital), or as the emotional centre of the nation: (38) The heart of our nation is situated in Zagreb the capital city. (CR, CR, 20, M) (39) In the heart of our nation lies great pride (CR, CR, 19, F) (40) My nation have [sic] open heart to other people (CR, CR, 20, F)16 heart is also integrated in the body scenario where it refers to ‘the people’ as the counterpart of the head (= president). Except for these two organs, however, no further body parts are mentioned. The ‘personal traits’ of the Croatian nation-person are divided into two sets: heroic/firm/brave and generous/big-hearted. These stereotypical traits are not explicitly gendered or preferentially used by either male or female respondents. Gendered personalisations include two instances of father and four of young woman/girl, but no mother conceptualisations. The referents of the father concept are nationalist politicians, i.e. in one case the founder of Croatian nationalism in the 19th century, Ante Starˇcevi´c (1823–1896), and, in the other case, the founders of the post-1990 independent Croatian state as “founding fathers” who “fought with all bravery and marked [sic] with their legs to free our country” (CR, CR, 20, M). The feminine-gendered personalisations include stereotyping clichés (beautiful, blue eyes, pure heart), except for one extended interpretation that combines a linguistic explanation with a folkloristic praise of the landscape: (41) Croatia is usually perceived as a woman, which might have to do with the grammatical category of gender (Hrvatska (Croatian name for Croatia) - > is feminine). Since Croatia is usually geographically divided into three regions, each region represents a different part of the body: her eyes are the color of the sea (Adriatic Sea), her hair is the gold color of the wheat (Eastern part which is agricultural); her strength is the strength of the mountains (hilly middle part). (CR, CR, 32, F) The Bulgarian L1 sample has nine scenario instances: three each for body and person and one each for the three other scenarios. They mostly serve to emphasise 16 As in other L1 samples, the ‘generosity’ meaning of open heart

can alternatively be expressed as open arms (“My nation has big heart. My nation opens it’s [sic] arms to everyone”; CR, CR, 20, F).

8.5 The Polish, Croatian and Bulgarian L1 Samples

129

the necessity of unity of national body and spirit, or bemoan a lack of it, and again show the potential of body-/person-scenarios to express the writers’ identification with—or dissociation from—the publicly established national identity constructs: (42) My home and my nation look like a heavy man, strong body including different parts: round head, long arms, solid legs. The body expresses credibility and support and […] the impression is that we can believe him/it (BUL, BUL, 28, M) (43) My home nation is a healthy strong body. It is tall. It has wise eyes […] The body is in harmony with its soul and spirit. (BUL, BUL, 35, F) (44) […] our nation has got many ill parts or such that do not function properly, which leads to total society dysfunction. [That is why] many people do not feel comfortable and satisfied by reality and life (BUL, BUL, 35, F)

References A’Beckett, L. (2012). The play of voices in metaphor discourse: a case study of “nations are brotherS”. Metaphor & Symbol, 27(2), 171–194. A’Beckett, L. (2019). Displaced Ukrainians: Russo-Ukrainian discussions of victims from the conflict zone in Eastern Ukraine. In: Lorella Viola and Andreas Musolff (eds.). Migration and Media. Discourses about identities in crisis. (pp. 265–289) Amsterdam: Benjamins. Bracewell, W. (1996). Women, motherhood, and contemporary Serbian nationalism. Women’s Studies International Forum. Pergamon, 19(1–2), 25–33. Cepinskyte, A. (2019). The meaning of state created through symbols and metaphors: German Heimat and Russian Motherland. In L. Šari´c & M.-M. Stanojevi´c (Eds.), Metaphor, nation and discourse (pp. 177–200). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gomola, A. (2019). Godly Poland in godless Europe: Catholic-nationalist discourse in Poland after 2004. In L. Šari´c & M.-M. Stanojevi´c (Eds.), Metaphor, nation and discourse (pp. 75–100). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Haarmann, H. (2000). The soul of Mother Russia: Russian Symbols and Pre-Russian Cultural Identity. ReVision, 23(1), 6. Retrieved 02 May 2019. Malcolm, N. (1999). Kosovo: A short history. New York: University Press, New York. Rasuli´c, K. (2020). Turning the heart into a neighbour (Re)framing Kosovo in Serbian political discourse. In M. Huang & L.-L. Holmgreen (Eds.), Metaphors, frames and discourses (pp. 111– 135). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rutten, E. (2010). Unattainable bride russia: gendering nation, state, and intelligentsia in russian intellectual culture. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press. Spasi´c, I. (2016). The trauma of Kosovo in Serbian national narratives. In R. Eyerman, J. C. Alexander & E. Butler Breeze (Eds.). Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering. (pp. 81–106). London: Routledge. Warbrick, C., & Kosovo, I. (2008). The Declaration of Independence. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 57(3), 675–690.

Chapter 9

The Nation as a Body or Person in Other European L1 Language Samples: Hungarian, Lithuanian and Greek

9.1 Introduction There remain three samples of informants with other Eastern European L1 backgrounds that do not belong in the three language families discussed above. They are: Hungarian L1 (53 scripts), Lithuanian L1 (45 scripts) and Greek L1 (32 scripts).

9.2 The Hungarian L1 Sample The Hungarian L1 sample was elicited at two Hungarian universities, the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and the István Széchenyi University in Györ. The social indicators show a moderate majority of female informants and a stronger majority of 18–25 year-old informants (Table 9.1). Table 9.1 Social Indicators: Hungarian-L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 53 (= 100%) Gender

Female

32

60%

Male

21

40%

Age group

18–25

41

77%

26–30

3

6%

31–40

3

6%

41+

6

11%

The scenario distribution is in line with the English L1 scenario pattern, as it favours the body scenario, and has geobody in second place (Table 9.2).

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_9

131

132

9 The Nation as a Body or Person in Other European L1 Language Samples …

Table 9.2 Scenario distribution: Hungarian-L1 Number of scenarios overall: 81 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

Scenario tokens

40

26

2

5

8

Percentages (%)

49

32

3

6

10

person

9.2.1 The Nation as BODY and GEOBODY The semantic field of body-and health/illness-related sub-concepts in the Hungarian L1 sample is relatively compact and almost evenly split (26 and 20 subconcepts, respectively), and yields 196 lexical instantiations. The top three conceptual complexes are heart-blood (43), head-brain (40), body-body parts (29). The concepts of the extremities arms-hands, legs-feet play a smaller role than in other samples. health-related concepts show a cluster of ‘missing/amputated limbs’, which is characteristic for a specific strand of responses highlighting historical national grievances (see below). The main (whole) body scenario is dominated by the standard notions of hierarchy and interdependence of political organs/institutions, as in (1)–(3): (1) The government is the head. The people are the blood. (H, H, 20, F) (2) The government is the head of the nation. The heart of the nation is the national consciousness. The eyes of the nation is the folk [sic]. (H, H, 20, F) (3) The eye of nation is the attorney general. The face of the nation is the republican president because he is present [sic] the nation and the country in the political life. The brain and the heart of the nation is the prime minister, because he is first man in the country, who is responsible for the nation. (H, H, 36, F) However, the nation-body is also conceptualised as being larger than the nationstate because the nation’s territory has been reduced: (4) I think members, people of a nation are connected with each other just like parts of the body by having a common descent, history and language. […] during the history, our country, the territory of Hungary was cut several times, the borders were drawn through other countries and families were torn from each other like a body without some parts of the body. […] A lot of Hungarians live all over the world but wherever they live they will remain parts of the body. (H, H, 54, F) In this example, the nation’s people-body is larger than the geobody of the nation-state. The complementary perspective of the nation’s geobody not being complete will be discussed below in more detail. Within the body scenario, there are also several other referents for the head-brain concept, e.g. inventors and scientists of the National Academy (brain) and, uniquely, God, as in the following example1 : 1 “God”

also appears in an apparently humorous answer that was not counted in the scenario distribution, as it does not exactly apply body/person-scenarios to the nation but rather pictures it as

9.2 The Hungarian L1 Sample

133

(5) The head of country should be God as we confess our country Christian. The right and left hand of the body are the leaders of the country […] the legs are the citizens because the country is full of us actually. (H, H, 25, F) This response expresses a view of the nation that is partly reminiscent of medieval models of a Christian state as headed by God, with its “leaders” as his executive organs (NB the absence of modern political terminology to specify the leaders). In its religious motivation of state authority it is unique in the Hungarian sample as well as among the European/Western samples, but finds its counterparts in responses from the Middle East (see following chapter). Most instances of the body scenario are descriptive or positive but, like all scenarios, it can also be used to give a negative evaluation of the nation’s state of health: (6) The nation’s body is a bit fatty because the Hungarian people are lazy. (H, H, 22, M) (7) Hungary could be a rotting flesh of a human body. Our brain is infected by our prime minister and his followers; the whole FIDESZ [governing party in Hungary] is a big infection that has to be cured. We need some medicine, unless [sic] our Hungarian body will turn to dust in less than 20 years, and all of its cells will leave it, to get to another body […] where they can live peacefully. (H, H, 21, M) The writer of (7) evidently argues from a specific ideological position, using the scenario to attack the ruling party and warn, in the sub-scenario of cells leaving the body, of its citizens disengaging from their original nation-body. One might speculate in the spirit of example (4) whether these cells then still retain a Hungarian identity or whether they become integral parts of the other nation-bodies. In the absence of any documented dialogue between the writers of (4) and (7), such speculation must remain inconclusive. The strongly represented geobody scenario is dominated by references to the capital Budapest as the heart and various other cities and regions, e.g. Györ, Debrecen, Lake Balaton, Alföld as further body parts. A sub-strand is constituted by references to former parts of the nation’s territory, which nowadays belong to neighbouring countries, as amputated, torn, lost or mutilated limbs (example 4 above). The historical background for these conceptualisations is the partition of Hungary after World War I in the 1920 Trianon Peace Treaty, which is both explicitly and implicitly recalled in the following examples: (8) (9)

In the Trianon Peace Treaty we lost big parts of our country, therefore we have the term ‘truncated Hungary’ (H, H, 26, F) Our bloods were torn away from the nation in 1920 [but] the country managed to stood up (in Hungarian literally: stood into its sole) […] (H, H, 25, F)

the appendage to a clothing item: “If the world is the hat of God, Hungary is the ribbon on it.” (H, F, 58, F). God is here the implied person; the nation is imagined as a picturesque but expendable accessory.

134

9 The Nation as a Body or Person in Other European L1 Language Samples …

(10) […] this body has been tortured many-many times since its birth. It has been also mutilated and raped (H, H, 49, M) Such responses show that conceptualisations of a truncated and damaged geobody are entrenched in Hungarian popular discourse. They confirm discoursehistorical and cognitive findings about the enduring trauma of the Hungarian nation losing large parts of its territory and of its population in the 1920 Treaty, which to this day sustains a remembrance culture focused on the perceived unjust dispossession of essential parts of the nation-body in Hungary (Molnár 2001: 262; Putz 2016, 2019).

9.2.2 The Nation as BODY PART, PART OF EGO and PERSON The body part scenario is only minimally represented in the Hungarian L1 sample, with just two instances. One of these humorously depicts the nation as wavy hair (“needs maintenance and constant care”; H, H, 22, M), the other one as a fist (“fights for European liberty”, H, H, 21, M). In the second case the body part fist stands metonymically for a (brave) person, i.e. it overlaps with the person scenario, which is confirmed by the rest of the response: “like a waymaker which walk [sic] in front of the queue”. The part of ego scenario is also only marginally represented: its instances have the collective Self as referent, visualised as blood (see also example 9 above), 2 heart and face, to profess the writers’ patriotism: (11) The nation is in accordance with the heart. Our hearts beat for the nation. […] The nation is our blood, lungs and hearts. Nation is like the blood in the veins. Nation is like the heartbeating. (H, H, 28, F) (12) The hair on your head is like the cities in Hungary besides Budapest the capital city which is like your face. (H, H, 20, F) Within the person-scenario three instances reference the nation’s soul or spirit; gender- and age-roles have just one instance each for mother (= heart of nation), male (see example 13 below), old grandpa, young), and the ‘national character traits’ are limited to forced smile, and the ‘fighting spirit’ of the fist/waymaker figure (see above). The few remaining uses of the person-scenario collocate with the negative/critical instances of the body and geobody scenarios. Curiously, one of the former turns the historically motivated sub-concept of amputation on its head: it is viewed not as a historical catastrophe but as the sole chance for survival (from gangrene): (13) If my country was [sic] a human, it would be a male. His body began to decay in the legs, it looks like gangrenous. The other parts of the body seems to be 2 In

one case the blood concept arguably appears to be used in a physical sense: “Everybody has some kind of a blood type so everybody belong [sic] to some kind of team. This team is our common nation” (H, H, 21, F).

9.2 The Hungarian L1 Sample

135

average and nice, but the bacteria that attacked the legs are slowly circulates [sic] in the blood, poisoning the whole human. The eyes are closed, and the face broke in to a forced smile. Due to the pain, the mouth often has a tick in the corner. He seems to be dying, but could be saved if the legs were amputated; however, he is too proud to do that. (H, H, 22, F) This highly detailed application of the body/person scenario combination stands out from the other 14 instances of critical and/or ironical (example 6) depictions of the nation in the Hungarian L1 sample, most of which focus on historical losses (see above). Together they amount to 17% of scenario instances. The illness agents identified in example (13), bacteria, blood poisoning, are not identified at target level, so it is impossible to determine precisely the topical references that may be implied. Hence, it could be a morbid fantasy or a polemical, but enigmatic allusion to specific political and/or social problems of present-day Hungary, as in example (7) quoted earlier.

9.3 The Lithuanian-L1 Sample Almost all responses in the Lithuanian L1 sample were collected at Vilnius University, apart from two scripts that were supplied by guest students in Britain and Norway. The social background is remarkably homogeneous, with over 90% of all informants being female and 18–25 years of age (Table 9.3). Table 9.3 Social Indicators: Lithuanian L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 45 (= 100%) Gender

Female

42

93%

Male

3

7%

Age group

18–25

44

98%

26–30

1

2%

The scenario distribution is again dominated by the body scenario, with person in second place (Table 9.4). Table 9.4 Scenario distribution: Lithuanian L1 Number of scenarios overall: 69 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

person

Scenario tokens

38

11

3

2

14

Percentages (%)

55

16

4

4

21

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9 The Nation as a Body or Person in Other European L1 Language Samples …

9.3.1 The Nation as BODY and GEOBODY The semantic field of body- and health-related sub-concepts is relatively limited, with 27 and 6 sub-concepts respectively. The clear favourite is the head-brainface complex with 41 tokens, followed by the extremities-related sub-concepts legs-feet (27), hands-arms (23), then the part-whole relationship of body-body parts (20) and lastly heart-blood (11). A salient sub-concept is the neck (14), which collocates in twelve cases with head: seven of these are applications of the proverbial saying that ‘it is the neck that turns the head’, which we encountered in other European samples. The head is usually the government or head of state, the neck is the parliament or people, in ironical uses, the rich3 : (14) If Lithuania will be a human body, the president of the country should be a head of human. Neck and shoulder consist of government (L, L, 18, F) (15) Head is politicians and those who control our country; neck is our whole society—it controls where the head turns, but cannot completely control it (the mind for example) (L, L, 19, F) (16) The head is a government that thinks (decides) everything for us. The neck is rich people who have influence to [sic] the government. Money belongs to middle-class and poor people, because, thanks to them, humans (nation) can move, increase economy (L, L, 19, F) The last-cited example was accompanied by the following sketch that illustrated its classic, partly critical view of the social hierarchy (in view of which its intended sense should probably be: … money should belong ….) (Fig. 9.1).

Fig. 9.1 Lithuania as a body politic 3 Two

of the ‘non-turning’ applications are praises of the neck (people/government) as supporting or holding the head (president/government); another one refers to the two main cities (see example 18).

9.3 The Lithuanian-L1 Sample

137

The legs-feet and hands-arms concept complexes refer mainly to state institutions or the people, especially working people and young (‘forward moving’) people, invariably in an affirmative-complimentary sense. This positive evaluation is also characteristic for the geobody scenario, whose 11 instantiations refer five times to cities (Vilnius, the capital and Kaunas) and six times to the nation’s landscape and nature: (17) Lithuania’s nature is like beautiful eyes, it makes our country more beautiful. (L, L, 18, F) (18) The head would be Vilnius, because it is the capital of Lithuania, a historical city with ancient buildings and beautiful surroundings. The neck would be Kaunas, holding the head because once Vilnius was taken from us, Kaunas became the capital of Lithuania and held the spot safe till Vilnius a Lithuanis [sic] is capital again. The part from shoulders to legs would be Lithuanian nature. (L, L, 18, F) (19) Unique heart-shaped Lithuania looks like it’s always smiling. (L, L, 18, F)

9.3.2 The Nation as PART OF BODY and PART OF EGO Example (19) above is based on the geographical shape of the country but also invokes the heart as body part (and its smile as a person-aspect). The only other body part depictions in the sample are the critically slanted description of the nation as a stomach (“digests money and it cares just about itself” L, L, 19, F) and a positively slanted one as fist (“all people are ready to […] deal all problems together”, L, L, 20, F). The equally infrequent part of ego scenario is represented by the heart-blood complex symbolising patriotic emotions: (20) Heart is our dedication. (L, L, 18, F) (21) […] what goes through the veins of this body, is love for our nation. (L, L. 18, F)

9.3.3 The Nation as PERSON As in several other samples, the person-scenario provides the basis for the most evaluative and narratively extended conceptualisations. Six of the person-depictions are gendered, the feminine ones explicitly as beautiful woman and mother, the masculine ones implicitly. Of the former, only mother is exclusively positively connoted (“take[s] care of Lithuania people all the time like mother”, L, L, 18, F), whereas beautiful woman is associated with mixed attributes: (22) Lithuania is like strong independent woman who in her hands keep long lasting traditions. (L, L, 19, F)

138

9 The Nation as a Body or Person in Other European L1 Language Samples …

(23) Lithuania is a body. A nice woman. She has a very good heart. She is nice but her body is full of parazites [sic] which damage her body (all politicians and rich monopolists). (L, L, 19, F) (24) [Lithuania has a] green, thick haired woman’s with low self esteem body [sic]. […] Even though it can be the most beautiful woman, still it will be not intelligent and naïve. (L, L, 19, F) The masculine conceptualisations are stereotypical hero-figures, e.g. a young soldier “who’s been in a war and just came back from the warzone” (L, L, 20, F) and “Vytis, the white armour-clad knight on horseback with sword and shield” that appears in the national coat of arms”. The writer’s interpretation of this heraldic figure is deliberately complex, invoking three divergent readings that include further cultural associations (reference to Hamlet) and expand on the Vytis-figure as a charging knight: (25) From one perspective it seems to hint at quarrelsome nature, willingness to bicker and fight both inside the population and with the “outside” forces; or, on the contrary, the ability to unify against the sea of troubles, as Hamlet would put it, and by opposing end them. From another angle, it looks like a constant chasing after something—Europeanness, modernisation, leadership, brighter future. (L, L, 30, F) The only age-related personification is that of Lithuania as a growing kid or young adult, on account of its relatively recent independence since 1991 (when it broke away from the Soviet Union), which is a source of national pride. Overall, this sense of patriotic assertiveness is dominant, with most of the 11 critical, negative qualifications being confined to statements that qualify but do not contradict the preceding praise (e.g. beautiful but naïve, sad etc.), whilst the seven ironical texts apply the proverbial head-neck analogy to different parts of the political system. Together they make up more than a quarter (26%) of scenario instances (there are no specifically humorous instances).

9.4 The Greek L1 Sample All but one of the responses in the Greek L1 sample come from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, with one additional response by a Greek guest student in Heidelberg. The sample is small with 32 scripts altogether but still generates just over 50 scenario instantiations. The social indicators are as follows (Table 9.5).

9.4 The Greek L1 Sample

139

Table 9.5 Social Indicators: Greek L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 32 (= 100%) Gender

Female

29

94%

Male

2

6%

Age group

18–25

31

97%

26–30

0

0%

31–40

1

3%

The scenario distribution is characterised by a strong preponderance of the person scenario, followed by body part. Given the small size of the sample, these percentages can only be regarded as indicative, not as a reliable frequency distribution (Table 9.6). Table 9.6 Scenario distribution: Greek L1 Number of scenarios overall: 51 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

Scenario tokens

4

2

13

2

30

Percentages (%)

8

4

25

4

59

person

9.4.1 The Nation as BODY, GEOBODY and PART OF BODY The dearth of body scenario instantiations is reflected in the narrow range of bodyand health-related sub-concepts, which together number just 19. Only the heartblood complex, with 13 tokens, is of noteworthy size. The four whole body scenario uses cover no more than the mouth, “giving voice to the people” (prime minister), the brains (national ‘hero-figure’ and former Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos (1864–1936)), blood (tradition) and the people themselves as the nation’s muscle. Greece’s geobody is vaguely indicated as having Athens as its heart and as breathing the air from the Mediterranean Sea. The body part conceptualisations in the sample often focus on the nation’s cultural history, with repeated references to the fame of ancient Greece: (26) Greece is the heart of democracy that thrived in ancient times, giving the example to other nationalities. (GR, GR, 21, F) (27) Greece is like the brain of Europe because my country is the start of each innovation since the ancient years (GR, GR, 21, F) (28) Greece is the womb of democracy (GR, GR, 22, F) (29) Greece is the eyes through which we see civilisation, culture, tradition, humanity. (GR, GR, 20, F)

140

9 The Nation as a Body or Person in Other European L1 Language Samples …

These examples show a special aspect of popular nationalism, i.e. as an imagined world-historical credit account. By way of an implicit comparison with other nations, Greece is awarded a high status because of its ancient history, rather than because of its present-day role in politics.

9.4.2 The Nation as PART OF EGO and PERSON The two part of ego conceptualisations collocate with personalisations of the nation as a woman, which is by far the dominant, though not exclusive, gendered subconcept (24 tokens, of which 11 specify mother). Again, it is the world-historical dimension that informs the scenario uses: (30) Greece is like a mother that gave birth to “democracy” [and] a strong, brave and independent woman that knows how to fight. (GR, GR, 21, F) (31) Wherever I go Greece hurts me. (Greece is like a woman) (GR, GR, 21, F) (32) My country, Greece is the mother of democracy. (GR, GR, 21, M) This female authority figure is even elevated (4 times) to the status of a goddess, who “wears a light, white dress”4 and holds a “torch of fire that leads the world towards democracy and philosophy” (G, G, 21, F). It seems plausible to assume that artistic symbolic representations of ancient Greek goddesses serve as the imagined model for the stereotype of Greece as a beautiful and at the same time motherly figure. Accordingly, the character traits associated with her are mainly generosity and hospitality (especially to refugees), protectiveness, courage and independence. There are, however, two other sub-strands of nation-personalisation that are repeated several times, though not as often as the mother-authority figure. One is that of Greece as a female victim: (33) Greece is like a woman with long, curly black hair. She wears a long, white, ancient greek [sic] style dress which indicates her long glorious past; her dress, however, is ripped due to the hard times she has been through. (GR, GR, 25, F) (34) Greece could be seen as a devastated woman in torn, white dress sitting desperately in ancient ruins and collapsed monuments. (GR, GR, 21, F) (35) Greece as a beautiful, but poor lady with shredded clothes often shamed by other nations. She is left with no money or power, unable to survive on her own. (GR, GR, 21, F) Whilst examples (33) and (34) again use the reference to the ancient glory (white dress), as a contrast to present-day hard times and devastation, (35) seems more probably an allusion to the economic crisis post-2009, which left the national economy and society at the mercy of the European Union’s monetary diktat. 4 The

blue and white dress, which alludes to Greece’s national colours, reappears six times in the sample.

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141

The other sub-strand is masculine-gendered and associated variously with positive, negative and mixed attributes: (36) Greece has become an indifferent egocentric man who does not care for (the young) his family, but only for his self [sic]. (GR, GR, 21, F) (37) Greece is like a sophisticated man who has enlightened the whole world in relation to culture and arts. (GR, GR, 21, M) (38) My nation looks like a 65 year old man, who is wise and clever but he hasn´t been able yet to use his intelligence to become happy. His happiness until now was based on promises from others. Although he could learn a lot from his friends, due to his former past, he thinks he should show everyone originality. So he doesn´t learn a lot. He is sometimes too self confident, too lazy and too suspicious. On the other hand he´s friendly, generous und has a good heart. (GR, GR, 40, F) The last example stands out as an individual portrait of the nation-person, possibly modelled on personal acquaintance and/or imagination. However, it also sounds like an apologetic depiction of a decidedly non-authoritative male figure who has his merits but is not really impressive, due to his own weaknesses. He evidently contrasts with the dominant mother-stereotype. Another half-apologetic characterisation portrays the nation as a “bipolar”, overexcited child that deserves sympathy but also needs psychological support: (39) Greece is like a selfish crying child who always pursues to be [sic] the centre of attention. When in trouble, the little Greek becomes tormented and disorientated, gets lost and desperately seeks hope in an attempt to compensate for its own immature nature. When in euphoric state, the little Greek kid gets overenthusiastic [and] passionate but vulnerable. (GR, GR, 23, F). Whilst the source-narrative is highly detailed and suggests a sympathetic attitude by a friendly adult, the target meaning is only vaguely implying a reference to presentday political problems. The passage thus reads like the start of an essay about the ‘troubles’ of the young Greek nation-child, more than as apolitical comment. It strikes an ironical, moderately critical note, not unlike the old man characterisations cited earlier on. Altogether there are six critical and/or ironical instances, representing 12% of all scenario instances. As mentioned before, the Greek L1 sample is too small to derive points of comparison with other samples. Its distinctive characteristic is the focus on the past glory and fame of its ancient nation-person, which is unparalleled in the whole corpus. The Hungarian and Lithuanian samples are more in line with Western European samples than with Slavic ones. The Hungarian L1 sample is characterised by several intensive references to geobody amputations on account of the Trianon Treaty, whilst the Lithuanian L1 sample highlights pride in the regained independent body- and person-status for the nation.

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References Molnár, M. (2001). A concise history of hungary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putz, O. (2016). Metaphor evolution and survival in Hungarian public discourse on the Trianon peace treaty. Metaphor and the Social World, 6(2), 276–303. Putz, O. (2019). Metaphor and national identity. Alternative conceptualization of the Treaty of Trianon. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Chapter 10

The Nation as a Body or Person in L1 Language Samples from Middle Eastern Countries: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan

10.1 Introduction The Middle Eastern survey results of nation as body responses consist of four samples, i.e. Arabic L1-speakers from Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, Morocco and Algeria (with a residual sample from Algerian speakers of Kabyle, for details see below), Turkish L1-speakers (all from Turkey), modern Hebrew L1-speakers (all from Israel) and Urdu- and/or Pashto-L1 speakers (all from Pakistan). This grouping is evidently culturally and linguistically highly heterogeneous and is mainly motivated by the fact that notwithstanding their diversity, the communities are in question in close intercultural contact due to regional proximity. The only two quantitatively substantial samples are the Arabic and Turkish L1 samples with over 80 valid scripts each. The Israeli and Pakistani cohorts (25 and 13 scripts, respectively) are too small to calculate meaningful scenario percentages. Nonetheless, they do show some conceptual and argumentative overlaps that allow for comparative observations.

10.2 The Arabic (and Kabyle) L1 Sample The sample of Arabic L1-speakers’ responses consists of 91 scripts that were collected at Algerian, Iraqi, Moroccan and Saudi-Arabian universities, as well as from four Saudi Arabian guest students and one Iraqi student at British universities and one Lebanese guest student at Bonn University. The Algerian sample forms the bulk of the cohort, with 73 scripts (= 81% of the sample). In addition, there is a further sub-sample of responses from the Mouloud Mammeri University of TiziOuzou (n = 22), whose students have the Berber language Kabyle as L1 and Arabic as L2. Typologically, Berber languages are seen as separate from Arabic but they are related as members of the larger Afro-Asiatic family and they are in close contact with Algerian Arabic, This sub-sample is of course not counted as belonging in the

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_10

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Arabic L1-cohort but it is commented on as supplementary evidence in this chapter as the informants are influenced by Algerian political culture. The social data for the Arabic L1 sample show a high preponderance of female respondents and a similar dominance of the 18–25 year age group (Table 10.1). Table 10.1 Social indicators: Arabic-L1a Number of valid scripts overall: 91 (= 100%) Gender Age group

a All

Female

75

82%

Male

16

18%

18–25

76

83%

26–30

7

8%

31–40

7

8%

41+

1

1%

22 Kabyle L1 speakers are female and in the 18–25 age bracket

In terms of its scenario distribution, the person scenario dominates the 132 scenario instances but, uniquely, it is nearly matched by part of ego, as the secondmost frequent scenario, whilst body and body part make up most of the rest and geobody is only marginally represented (Table 10.2). Table 10.2 Scenario distribution: Arabic L1a Number of scenarios overall: 132 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

Scenario tokens

21

4

15

44

48

Percentages

16%

3%

11%

33%

37%

person

a The scenario percentages for the Kabyle L1 cohort, calculated out of a total of 29, are: body 35%,

geobody 0%, part of body 10%, part of ego 18% and person 41%. The sample is too small to derive any significant conclusions from it but the preponderance of the person scenario is even more pronounced than in the Arabic L1 data. This and the total absence of geobody tokens seem broadly in line with the other Algerian data

10.2.1 The Nation as BODY, GEOBODY and PART OF BODY Arabic L1 body-conceptualisations that resemble the ‘Western’ model, i.e. with an emphasis on hierarchy and interdependence, amount to about one sixth of the sample. The range of semantic elements is limited: there are 25 sub-concepts of named body parts and functions and eight state of health sub-concepts, i.e. 33 altogether. The Algerian and Iraqi informants employ them mainly for criticising

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145

parts of the body politic that do not fulfil their duty (and thus let the other organs down). Sometimes the dysfunctional members are identified at target level (examples 1–2) but in other cases the identity of the referents is left open (examples 3–4). (1) The Algerian parliament is an open mouth with broken hands (talks a lot without applying). Algeria is like human blood: warm when it is inside the body, and cold when it goes out. (AR, AL, 23, F) (2) The nation-as-body metaphor can be applied on our nation: the head in the nation is the wealth monopoly (money holders), both arms are the government and political power (parties). The two legs are both the qualified and the unqualified working class (workers) and the two feet are jobless women and people with disabilities. (AR, AL, 43, F) (3) My nation has a heart disease, it is a body that always has a killing attack. (AR, AL, 21, F) (4) My nation is like a body that is recovering after an operation, like the human body it is fragile and needs healing. The nation needs love and care to heal the scars. (AR, IRAQ, 20, F) Positively slanted uses pick out ethnic and socio-cultural targets rather than political referents (examples 5, 6): (5) Like a “skeleton” my nation is formed of many cartilages with different languages and origines [sic]. But yet all together contribute to form one single unit: despite of all the differences which are regarded to be the base of the nation. (AR, AL, 23, F) (6) The brain is, naturally, the organ of thinkers, of the philosophers, who create mentality. The hand is the part that applies that mentality—the government and law. But it is the heartthat provides the body with the ability to use both brain and hands by pumping life into them, and in the case of the nation, it´s the citizens who comprise the most important thing without which no nation, no body, can begin to function. (AR, LEB, 20, F) Whilst (5) and (6) specify key organs, most other body-focused responses only stress the interdependence of all parts (e.g. “[…] nation is like the whole human body. If one part is ill, so the whole body will be ill”; if you lose one organ the body will not work correctly. We function better when we are unified”). Two examples in the Algerian cohort praise president and parliament as being indispensable (e.g. “A nation without a president is like a body without a soul”, “A nation without a government is like a body without a brain”).1 Two writers in the Saudi-Arabian subsample identify the king as the head-authority. Mostly, however, the hierarchical 1 Similarly,

in the Kabyle L1 sample, which includes the statement: “In my own nation, the term ‘Nation’ is closely related to the human body; for instance, the use of body parts to refer to different professions, such as [the president as] the Head of State”. Apart from head, the only other recurring source concept in the Kabyle sub-sample is heart, which is reserved for ‘the people’ or ‘nation’, which can be ambiguous between all Algerian people and Kabyle-speaking people. In one case it is the latter: “Our nation in Algeria is like a heart, i.e. in Algeria there are several tradition language and dialect and origines [sic].”.

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perspective of the body scenario is used for conceptualising political problems and social inequality (see examples 1–2 above), and the legacy of colonialism, as in (7) and (8): (7) The hands of our nation are still holding the French’s hands. (AR, AL, 23, F) (8) Our nation I still carrying the colonialism wounds. (AR, AL, 19, M) The three instantiations of the geobody scenario in the Algerian sample are structurally similar to Western ones (Algiers, the capital, as head; the North of Algeria as heart; the nation’s fertile land as its face), whilst the one from the Iraqi sample describes the nation as a “fractured body” on account of its de facto partition into three regions under diverse political and military rule. Geographical/geopolitical status is also highlighted in the instances of the body part scenario, which make up a sizeable subgroup that is exclusive to the Algerian sub-sample praising the nation’s status, vis-à-vis its African neighbours: (9) Algeria is like the heart of North Africa. (AR, AL, 26, F) (10) Algeria is the eyes of Africa since it is the largest country situated in the North. (AR, AL, 23, F) (11) As it is the lungs of Africa, it smells integrity, love for traditions and great sense of hospitality towards foreigners. (AR, AL, 27, F) (12) Algeria nation is like brain of Africa. Africans always rely on Algeria like the human body that may consult its brain for decisions and plans. (AR, AL, 26, F) Two Algerian responses invoke religious discourse; one just in a formulaic blessing but the other one uses the nation as body part metaphor for a detailed analogy that acknowledges other nations’ more prominent roles in the world but still asserts the importance and indispensability of Algeria as an organ that works for the common good of the whole creation: (13) Our God has created the world and all its beauty, as he created our body with all its miracles. Many nations play different roles on the academic, political and economic fields, such as America, the brain that controls the world; China, the hands of hard working and manufacturing; Switzerland, the eyes that watch everything and keeping track of it. Beyond the skin the unseen vital organs that give us our lives; some countries play their role in the shadow. Like the liver that produces the proteins, sugar and creates the blood cells, and keep our system clean and regulated, our country gives the world the best elements to make it better. Everywhere you will find Algerians doing amazing things in their field: engineers, doctors…. Algeria is the source of energy of the world, feeding it with passionists [sic] for knowledge. (AR, AL, 23, F) With its introductory religious reference, this extended scenario resembles an allegorical narrative that leads the reader towards drawing philosophical and ethical conclusions. God is viewed as having created the whole world of nations and the human organism in each other’s image, with different nation-states/organs fulfilling

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147

their respective pre-ordained functions. In this well-ordered universe,—not unlike the Great Chain of Being framework of medieval Europe—the “unseen vital” organs/nations, which “play their role in the shadow”, are as important as the more prominent ones. This general lesson is then applied to Algeria whose role in the world is likened to the liver’s assumed blood- and protein-creating effects. Whilst the biomedical source characterisation is vague, based as it is on popular knowledge (which may have been sourced from the internet,2 school textbooks and/or popular scientific literature), the ‘lesson’ to be learned is target-specific: Algeria, though not as famous or powerful as America or other named countries, should be acknowledged as being as essential for the well-being of the world- body as other nations. A further religiously motivated response is by a Saudi guest student in the UK who quotes the founder of Islam, Mohammed: (14) The Muslim community is like a body, if part of it is harmed, all the body will be in fever (Prophet Muhammed). The believer is like the body, if part of it is bad, all the body will be bad. Shall I tell you what this part is? It is the heart. (Prophet Muhammed). (AR, SAUDI, 23, M) Here, the target referent of the nation-body is not a nation state but the whole Muslim community; it is not seen as body part but as a whole body and part of ego (if the Self is a believer!). Whereas (13) comprised all nations of the world, irrespective of their religion, in (14) it is the “Ummah”, i.e. the community of Islamic believers that form a united ethical-religious body (Cook 1983: 50–61; Denny 1975). The identification of this religious body with the ego is again reminiscent of NeoPlatonic conceptualisations of the microcosm-macrocosm correspondences within the Great Chain of Being (outlined in chapter 2 above).

10.2.2 The Nation as PART OF EGO In comparison with the other samples, the Arabic L1 cohort stands out by including an unusually high proportion (33%) of this scenario, all of which express emphatic patriotic praise.3 The following examples are typical: (15) Nation is something as near as our hearts and as warm as our mothers’ hugs. (AR, MOR, 20, F) (16) My nation is like my eyes. I couldn’t see without them. (AR, AL, 32, F) (17) My home nation controls my life as the brain controls the other organs. (AR, AL, 22, F) (18) My love to Algeria won’t stop, even after my blood stop walking [sic] in my veins, because simply it is my blood. (AR, AL, 23, F) 2 See

e.g. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/305075.php (accessed 12 January 2020). Kabyle L1 sample has a smaller proportion (18%) of nation as part of ego scenarios; they stress cultural and ethnic coherence, e.g. “Everyone belonging to any given nation, carries in his body a part of this nation”; “Kabyle people tend to act as one unique form, as in solidarity”. 3 The

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The organs identified as the Self’s embodied nation are mainly the heart (as vital for survival and as seat of character, soul, courage), blood and eye. Less frequently used are hands and legs (for “moving”), lungs, mouth and nose (for “breathing”), tongue (“giving voice”), stomach (“holds us so it holds food”). The explanations of these conceptualisations are formulaic, following the pattern: ‘My nation is X [organ]—I could not X1 [verb relating to X-specific activity] without it’. They are often combined with conceptualisations of the nation as a person, especially with mother as the most recurrent personalisation (see example 15 and below). In one unusually original and emphatic case, the writer imagines himself as having been ‘reborn’ by the nation: (19) Words cannot express our feeling to our homeland but letters we draw in our lips do not deny it. The homeland is the second abdomen that carries us after the mother’s belly. (AR, AL, 31, M) Such nationalistic part of ego scenarios are repeated often and are formulaic, which suggests that they are a well-known frame for expressing patriotic enthusiasm.

10.2.3 The Nation as PERSON The beautiful woman/mother-conceptualisation of the nation dominates the nation as person scenario in the Arabic L1 sample, with 28 feminine instantiations vis-à-vis seven masculine ones. Of these, the 24 depictions of the nation as mother, which often collocate with heart as part of ego-scenarios, are invariably positively loaded and depict a caring, bountiful and beautiful figure.4 Three out of the five depictions of the nation as father similarly highlight the caring function and two even describe an over-indulgent parent: (20) Our nation is the father that feeds its lazy youths. (AR, AL, 35, F) (21) Basically, Algeria is like a patient father who lose [sic] control over his family, and certainly will lose control over himself one day. (AR, AL, 22, F) The other masculine-gendered nation- person conceptualisations tend to be even more critical, exposing both physical and spiritual weaknesses5 : 4 Abdel-Raheem

(2019) has investigated person conceptualisations in metaphorical cartoons in Egyptian media and comes to the conclusion that they are dominated by depictions of Arab nations (including but not limited to Egypt) as “mothers [that] (i) are able to protect and support the family, (ii) are strict enough to punish their kids when they do wrong, (iii) bear the major responsibility, and (iv) make the major decisions” (2019: 24). Whilst we have no data from Egypt in our corpus to support this conclusion directly, it stands to reason that this dominant mother-figure is widely established across the Arabic-speaking world and plays an important role as the source for our informants’ responses. 5 Critical person- based examples in the Kabyle L1 cohort are not gender-specific but relate to the “black soul” and the “filthy pockets of the nation’s petrol”. The target is most probably the Algerian

10.2 The Arabic (and Kabyle) L1 Sample

149

(22) My nation is like an ill man, all his organs are suffering, but he still standing [sic] in unknown sand, he is still searching for his way. (AR, AL, 33, F) (23) Algeria take the shape of the big guy between the Arabic countries, the big brother who always aims at helping his brothers, but this man himself is not smart enough to manipulate his problems. This man’s heart beats for nothing but stealing and tricking people without caring about them. This free man forgetted [sic] that the one who gave him birth is already dead. (AR, AL, 25, M) In (22), the chief vehicle for the negative characterisation is a conventional illness scenario, but the further characterisation depicts a man in the culture-specific environment of the desert (“sand”) being disorientated and in grave danger. The following example is even more complex. It depicts an ambivalent character who is on the one hand helpful to his “brothers” (= citizens?) but disorganised and even criminal as well as forgetful of his parentage that “gave him birth” (and presumably freedom). Without a clear reference, identification of that parent figure must remain speculative but it might be related to Ahmed Ben Bella (1916–2012), the first president of independent Algeria. Like examples (20)–(22), the response in (23) seems to be intended as a topical political comment, which, however, still avoids explicit criticism of named political groups or institutions.6 Critical, or negative characterisations of the nation as woman are rare but not completely absent. While criticism of the nation as mother seems to be taboo, political criticism can be expressed with reference to the nation as a beautiful lady that has been injured or is severely ill: (24) My country is like a ripped up body, we do not have the right to dream. (…) My country is like a beautiful lady with no luck. (AR, AL, 22, M) (25) My nation is a beautiful woman. The youth are her beating heart. (…) But after surviving terrible wars and illnesses, she got ill. She has a brain tumor represented by the corrupted system. This tumor have [sic] to be removed before it can spread in the entire body. So that she can show her real beauty. (AR, AL, 20, F) These woman-based examples seem less pessimistic/condemnatory than some of the non-gendered or masculine criticisms (examples 3–4, 20–23), insisting as they do that there is still “real” beauty in the nation, which could be recovered if the injury or disease is removed. Whilst including instances of all five scenario types, the Algerian sample shows a strong preference for personalising, especially mother-related conceptualisations of the nation. They often collocate with part of ego scenario instantiations, especially the heart and blood conceptualisations that carry both physiological (essential for nation state rather than the Kabyle people. One solitary token of the mother-scenario in the Kabyle L1 sample is positively slanted. 6 The Kabyle L1 sample contains one further partly enigmatic, possibly critical example: “our nation is like an old man holding a walking stick. The old man represents wisdom, destiny, traditions, customs and history. However, the man cannot walk without his stick”. (K, AL, 23, F).

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survival) and symbolic meanings (‘seat of emotions’ or ‘soul’, carrier of ethnic or cultural identity). The overall range of conceptualisations is limited when compared with the subdifferentiation of the semantic fields of body- and person scenarios in other samples. Many of them are repetitive and embedded in formulaic praise of the nation. The rhetorically more elaborate exceptions relate to the history of colonialism (examples 7, 8) or to topical political issues, with a critical slant and an implied moral ‘lesson’, i.e. to give up lazy parenting (examples 20, 21), to remember one’s origins (examples 5, 23) and to overcome or cure the illnesses (examples 3, 22, 24, 25) of the nation’s body politic. The altogether sixteen critical or ironical characterisations (15 from the Algerian, one from the Moroccan cohort) make up a small but distinct part of the scenario distribution (12%) and are at least as emphatic as the patriotically enthusiastic body-conceptualisations.

10.3 The Turkish L1 Sample The sample of responses by informants with Turkish as their first language is slightly smaller than the Arabic L1 sample, with 83 scripts altogether, 76 (= 92%) of which were collected at Amasya University in Turkey. The remaining seven scripts come from German, Lithuanian and Australian universities. In terms of social group membership, the preponderance of female respondents is lower than in the Arabic L1 cohort, whilst the concentration in the 18–25 age bracket is higher (Table 10.3). Table 10.3 Social indicators: Turkish L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 83 (= 100%) Gender Age group

Female

56

67%

Male

27

33%

18–25

78

94%

26–30

2

2%

31–40

3

4%

In the scenario table, the number of scenario instances is higher than in the Arabic L1 sample, even though the number of scripts is almost 10% less. This seems to be due the fact that Turkish-L1 responses include more sub-concepts on average than the Arabic-L1 ones (Table 10.4).

10.3 The Turkish L1 Sample

151

Table 10.4 Scenario distribution: Turkish L1 Number of scenarios overall: 134 (= 100%) Scenarios

body

geo body

body part

part of ego

person

Scenario tokens

17

9

60

19

29

Percentages (%)

13

7

45

14

21

10.3.1 The Nation as BODY, GEOBODY, PART OF BODY and PART OF EGO The semantic field of body-related concepts is larger than the Arabic L1 one, with overall 37 concepts (26 body/body part sub-concepts and 11 health- illness sub-concepts). whole body scenarios only rank fourth and are unspecific, mainly stressing the interdependence of all body parts, as a general rule or ideal, or as a benchmark against which some members fall short: (26) The concept of the nation is like a human body. Human body is a whole constitution, but it consists of different parts such as arms, legs, eyes etc. This means that different parts come together and make a whole. (T, T, 25, M) (27) Each part of the human body is different from each other but in spite of this fact they are in unity.[…]. It is the same with nation, there are lots of races in my country that are really different from each other but in order to carry on as a nation they work together and form a unity. (T, T, 21, F) (28) There are different parts in the human body and each part has a different role like all the people in the nation.[…] Of course sometimes some people like diseas [sic] harm or try to harm the nation. But if we look at the whole and the history and today, our nation is still a whole like a healthy body. (T, T, 21, F) The hierarchical aspect of the body scenario is only invoked with regard to the head, and it becomes a problem if that organ is dysfunctional: (29) Being Turkish is like to be the part of the body. Every part of the body needs to be perfect to have a healthy body.[…] But the most important thing in the body is the head.[…] If the people (governers [sic]) that are in our head will do something or so many things wrong, it will be wrong things like today. (T, T, 21, M) Research on Turkish proverbial sayings has underlined the unique status of the head as a social application of the cognitive up- down schema, with the feet as the opposite end. It underlies proverbial sayings such as ‘The apocalypse happens when the feet take the position of the head’ or ‘Feet are punished for the wrongdoings of a mindless head’ (Aksan 2011: 242, 254). Example (29) may be based on such a ‘folk-theory’ of socio-political hierarchy. The geobody scenario, though more often represented than in the Arabic-L1 cohort, ranks last amongst the scenarios in the Turkish L1 sample. Conventionally, it

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includes the capital Ankara, as the heart (2 instances); in addition, it conceptualises Turkey as an organ that mediates between East and West, due to its position at the crossroads of Europe and Asia: (30) Turkey is like a heart that connect [sic] east countries to west countries like blood cells in vessels. (T, T, 20, M) (31) Turkey is like a brain […] between Asia and Europe. (T, T, 22, F) (32) Turkey’s […] head is its geographical position, attracting lots of attention from other countries. (T, T, 19, F) As these examples show, the geobody scenario also collocates with the body part scenario, which dominates nation-conceptualisations in the Turkish L1 sample. Of the 26 body/body part sub-concepts, 17 instantiate this scenario, i.e. in descending order of frequency: heart, brain, hand(s), foot/feet, legs, eyes, fingers, skeleton, hair, arm, fist, neck, lung, trunk, spine, joint, and generally organ. The two ‘front-runners’, i.e. heart and brain, combine physiological and symbolic features, and collocate not only with the geobody scenario but also with the part of ego and person scenarios: (33) Turkey is like a heart for us. Cause [sic], heart is an organ that contains our emotions.[…]. Like heart our country is vital for us. (T, T, 19, F) (34) Turkey is like heart. Without a heart people can not [sic] live. So Turkey is important for Turkish people.[…]. A heart attack leads to some problems in our body. So our nation needs to have a healthy heart. (T, T, 21, F) (35) Turkey is like a human’s brain. You can have a beautiful face or fascinating body. It doesn’t matter if your brain doesn’t work they all throw away [sic]. (T, T, 20, F) (36) Turkey is like a brain. Because the world can not [sic] keep moving without Turkey like people can not live without their brain. Turkey is the main part of the world. (T, T, 20, M) A main motivating factor for the informants’ choice of heart and brain conceptualisations appears to be their essential status for the body politic’s existence and proper functioning. The hand- fingers- fist complex, with 10 instantiations altogether, is used to highlight mutual help/complementarity of different parts of the nation (e.g. “My home nation is like the two hand [sic] in a body.[…] They […] can work better when they are together”; “[Turkey’s] separate regions [are] like fingers and […] when they came together they make anything they want”; “whenever it is in dangerous situations [Turkey] comes together like [fingers] which create a fist”). The nation as feet- leg(s), but also as skeleton or spine, supports the collective and/or individual self to stand, walk, and bear its own weight, and even “face dangers of a species that is so-called ‘Human’” (T, T, 21, M). Similarly, the conceptualisations of the nation as hair or lung focus on highlighting its inner coherence and common political purpose:

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153

(37) Turkey is like hair. For instance, you may cut it, you may dye it but every time it will grow. It is strong when it is together.[…] Together it is beautiful. Together it makes sense and has a purpose. (T, T, 22, M) (38) Turkey is like a lung of a human body since people cannot breathe if they don’t have a lung. They will also feel themselves comfortable and relaxed, as they know that not only they breathe but also they smell together.[…] This smelling refers to democracy. (T, T, 21, F) Some organ/body part conceptualisations focus on Turkey’s relationship with the rest of the world, either in terms of an open-minded, altruistic attitude or a relationship of dominance (see also example 36 above): (39) Turkey is the eyes of the world, opening to other nations. (T, T. 32, M) (40) My nation is like an injured arm. Although it has so many injuries, it gives hand everybody needing help. (T, T, 22, F) (41) Turkey is a joint. It can connect everything and people each other. (T, T, 20, F) (42) Turkish nation is like a neck because Turkiye [sic] is a power country in the Middle East. (T, T, 22, F) (43) Turkey is like a trunk.[…] Trunk carries the heart, […], therefore trunk is the most strong part [sic] of the body. (T, T, 19, M) As many of the above examples show, the body part characterisation of the nation is often linked with the part of ego scenario; as in other cohorts the latter is focused on the heart (see example 33 above) and the closely related concept of blood (“Turkey is like my heart, I live with it. Turkey is like my blood. I am living I am thankful”, T, T, 23, F). Mostly, the part of ego-perspective is used in an affirmative, patriotic way but it can also serve to criticize the nation, e.g. in conceptualisations as an injured or missing body part (see also examples 34, 35, 40 above): (44) Being a Turkish is like trying to run without legs. Because living condition are so hard for the poor people. (T, T, 21, M) (45) Turkey’s economy and society is like a pair of cripple [sic] legs of an old man. (T, T, 20, M)

10.3.2 The Nation as PERSON The person scenario in the Turkish L1 sample often combines with body part conceptualisations, which results in complex conceptual mixes or “blends” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002). Literally speaking, a body part of course cannot have personal traits, a consciousness or a conscience. But in a “blend” with the person scenario this is not a problem, especially given the established symbolic figurative functions of organs such as brain and heart, which conventionally stand for

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reason and emotion (see 46 and 47). But other body parts such as eyes and even skeleton can also be credited for personal achievements (48–49): (46) Turkey is heart. Turkey is emotional. Turkey decides something emotively. For instance I think Turkey shouldn’t go to war but [it] did. (T, T, 33, F) (47) My home nation is like a brain. Everything which is occurred [sic] on human body is stored in brain.[…] if we lose our conscience of nation, we lose everything of our past and lose all our personality. (T, T, 23, F) (48) Turkey is like eyes. Turkey is eyes of the world. If you see wrong things you can protect innocent people. If you close your eyes you disappear and lose. (T, T, 22, F) (49) The Turkish nation is like a skeleton in human body, it not only keeps the whole country in one piece but also creates the strong and holy [sic] social values (T, T, 20, M) Like the body part and part of ego scenario combinations, those of body part and person often serve to express an ethical evaluation of Turkey’s role in the world. Such assessments are not tied so much to specific topical, party-political or governmental projects but rather to Turkey’s status and influence in the world at large or more specifically, in the Middle East. In one special case, an informant cites half of a body part-focused proverb to draw a conclusion about Turkey’s need for caution in a geopolitical context where it is surrounded by enemies: (50) Turkey is like a foot. It has many enemies. A Turkish proverb say [sic] that your enemy look your foot [sic]. Turkey has to think well before doing or saying anything. (T, T, 20, F) The proverb in question seems to be “The friend looks at your head, the enemy at your foot” (Cordry 2015: 103, no. 7061), with the implication that the “enemy” will try to trip up the victim. In example (50), the foot from the proverb-scenario stands for potential victim status; in the blend, the nation-person is warned to prepare for such a situation. In terms of gender- and age-specifications, the Turkish L1 sample is less detailed than other samples: there are only three ascriptions of masculine/ father and feminine/mother status, and two and one for old andyoung respectively. Positive character traits (e.g. helpful, tolerant, hard-working) are mentioned but not elaborated on; negative ones are avoided. The only extended personality description is the response by a mature student that references historical and topical issues: (51) Turkey is like an old man with Alzheimer disease. […] His children die (soldiers) he forgets; his father is being humiliated (Atatürk) but he forgets and continues life as if nothing has happened. (T, T, 29, M) In the whole Turkish L1 sample, this is the only response that names an individual (historical) leader-figure. As founder and first President of the modern Turkish Republic after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938) was officially awarded the honorary title Atatürk, i.e., “Father of the Turks”, in 1935. In

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(51) the present nation-state-person is still seen as his descendant who now, as an old man, loses his conscious memory and identity. Thus, whilst including a patrioticsounding reference to the modern nation’s ‘founding father’, example (51) strongly criticises the present-day nation’s sense of identity. As in the Arabic-L1 sample, patriotic praises of the nation as ego or nation as person form the great majority of the responses, but critical and/or ironical evaluations constitute a distinct sub-strand (n = 14, i.e. 10% of all scenario instances). These instances only exceptionally reference political or ideological issues or political groups (for the exceptions see examples 29 and 51). Instead, they often target the nation-person’s efficiency, self-esteem and rationality (examples 40, 44–45, 50). In contrast to the Arabic-L1 sample, the Turkish L1 sample does not include religiously motivated conceptualisations.

10.4 The Modern Hebrew L1 Sample The sample of responses by Hebrew L1-speakers includes 25 scripts and is thus only about one third the size of the Arabic and Turkish-L1 samples. A frequency comparison is not informative; so we omit the presentation of social information and scenario distribution in tables. The responses were given by undergraduate students at the Hebrew University and Hadassah College in Jerusalem. The informants showed an almost even split in terms of gender distribution (12 male–13 female) and all were in the latter part of the 18–25 years age bracket. The scenario distribution is dominated by body conceptualisations (17 instances), followed by person (9), body part (8), geobody (5) and part of ego (2), out of 41 scenario tokens overall. In relation to the small size of the sample, the semantic field of body- and health-related conceptualisations is highly differentiated into 35 sub-concepts. The body scenario is usually realised in a conventional way, stressing hierarchy and interdependence among all body parts, with the central roles allocated to heart and brain. A special aspect is a strong interest in function-specific organ-complexes, e.g. references to the muscular system (for the executive), immune system (for army, police,) nervous system (for the judiciary, or for Israel’s role in relation to world), integumentary system, i.e. skin, hair, nails (for the intelligence services) and the digestive system (for the economy). A further characteristic feature seems to be a strong focus (10 instances) on the role of the army as target concept, which may be motivated by the fact that the students had all served in the Israeli Defence Force. The army is depicted in the body scenario as immune system, arm or muscle and also features in the person scenario as the “martial art and the weapons he [= Israel] is using” (H, ISR, 24, M). In another militarily pertinent reference, the geobody scenario includes the nickname “eyes of the country” given to Mount Hermon in the Golan region after the battle for that mountain range between Israeli and Syrian forces in the 1973 Yom Kippur war (Rabinovich 2007: 447).

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Another source of quotations is the Bible, with references to the patriarch Abraham as “Avraham Avinu” (grandfather),7 to the story of the Israelites’ encampment in the Sinai desert, as an occasion when the nation was united “as a single man, with a single heart” and to their “having a divine right” of nationhood, all of which fit in the person scenario. By contrast, the body part scenario is mainly used to depict Israel as part of a larger entity, i.e. the Middle East or the whole world: (52) Israel is like the heart of the middle-east [sic]. It is a main artery that transporting [sic] Merchandise for all the middle east. (H, ISR, 24, M) (53) Our country is as the size of small fingernail in the hand of the world map […] The world try to change our fingernail to design us, cut us, color us, shape us and besicly [sic] not letting us to “ grow” as we want naturally. (H, ISR, 24, M) (54) Israel is the heart of world peace—if there’s peace in Israel, it opens a door for world peace. (H, ISR, 24, F) (55) Our nation is like a Aorta that gives blood–life–place for all the Jewish around the world. (H, ISR, 24, F) The scenario implications in these examples are highly evaluative: Israel as part of a larger body is depicted variously as essential for the life of the whole region (example 52), as victim of an overbearing international community (53), vividly identifying with the fingernail being clipped and not allowed to grow,8 as the centre of world peace (54) or of Jewish presence in the world (55). Overall, the amount of critically or ironically commenting responses is medium (n = 9, equalling 22% of 41 scenario instances). They include sharp criticisms of internal Israeli target referents, e.g. of left wing parties and politicians, as a cancer or as a disabled left hand (compared with a strong right hand); or of inner conflicts as poisoning the nation like viruses. The part of ego scenario is used to picture territorial concessions as the loss of a limb. Another respondent interpreted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a potential case of schizophrenia in the nation-person, which might, however, in a more optimistic speculation, “evolve into two different [creatures] (and maybe even more and more)” (H, ISR, 24, M). Given the small size of the Israeli sample, it is impossible to gauge the representativeness of these answers but they seem to be indicative of a highly argumentative political culture among Israeli students (who tend to be a little older than undergraduates in other countries). They employ the nation as body—scenarios to express strongly polarised, even polemical opinions about its politics, partly based on religious references.

7 Gendered

nation-personalisations are rare in the Hebrew L1-sample: altogether there are just two masculine references to the nation. 8 Another informant expressed a similar sentiment of national victimhood more starkly in terms of the body scenario: “all of the world is touching our private parts” (H, ISR, 24, F).

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10.5 The Urdu and Pashto L1 Sample The data from Pakistani informants are in several ways exceptional. The sample is very small (12 valid responses); the gender distribution is 10 male: 2 female, and the age range is exceptionally wide and includes 50% of informants over thirty years of age. Their first languages are given as Urdu and Pashto (or both), which belong to different Eastern branches of the Indo-European family. The main reason for including the Pakistani sample in this chapter is that, like the Arabic L1 ones, they do include references to Islam. One of them defines the Muslim community as one body, similarly to example (14): (56) […] Muslim nation is considered is one body and Islam as religion says that as when [sic] there is a pain one part of body will give pain to whole body, and the same stands for whole Muslim nation (Urdu/Pashto, P, 33, M) The opposite view is taken by a student who identifies Islam with a faulty heart within the larger body of the nation-state: (57) Islam which is heart of the body, has lost its religious identity, rather has transformed into sectarian identity […]. such strain and stress has caused cardiac issues. (Pashto, P, 32, M) There are another two references to religion in the Urdu/Pashto L1 sample. One is combined with part of ego (“To me my Nation is part of my self. My presence is because of my Nation.[…] My prayers are with those who serve it and consider their own efforts as part of their faith”, Urdu, P, 31, M), one with person (“nation is very sensitive to matters of faith”, Urdu/Pashto, P, 54, M). On the basis of the small dataset we can perhaps still conclude that the religious dimension of the nation as body or person metaphor plays a significant role for Pakistani speakers, but it seems not to be linked to one specific scenario (or evaluation). The body scenario dominates the sample with seven tokens; the remaining eight instances are evenly split between the other four scenarios. Scenario collocations can be observed between body, person, and geobody and between body part and part of ego. The latter combination resembles the patriotic nation-Self identifications that we have also seen in the Arabic L1 and Turkish L1 samples: (58) Nation is the face for every individual as face is the identity for every human and like that [sic] nation is the identity for every being as well. Nation is the heart of every being as heart pumps blood into the body nation pumps individuality and soul into every being. (Urdu, P, 29, M) As in the other Middle Eastern samples, however, it would be wrong to assume that such patriotic interpretations of the nation-body/person are uncontested. Poison, microbes, diseases endangering the nation-body are also highlighted in the Pakistani sample. An exceptional application is that of the life cycle as differentiated between that of a nation and an industrial product:

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(59) Just like a product, the nation also goes through the stages of Intro, Growth, Maturity and Declining stages. The difference is that some nations regrow after experiencing the Declining stage, especially when they review their policies, revisit their programmes and fix the problems and causes of the declining. (Urdu, P, 29, M) The writer uses the product-analogy to ‘correct’ the nation-body metaphor implicitly, insofar as its life cycle version could lead to fatalistic conclusions about the inevitability of decline and/or death of the nation-body. As an alternative, he sketches a more person-adequate learning process that opens a chance to stop the decline and develop new growth. The use of such a secondary analogy to qualify the basic metaphor is an exception in the corpus and a testimony to the individual writer’s creativity.

References Aksan, M. (2011). The apocalypse happens when the feet take the position of the head: Figurative uses of ‘head’ and ‘feet’ in Turkish. In Z. Maalej & N. Yu (Eds.), Embodiment via body parts: Studies from various languages and cultures (pp. 241–255). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Abdel-Raheem, A. (2019). Moral metaphor and gender in Arab visual culture: Debunking Western myths. Social Semiotics. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2019.1604991. Cook, M. (1983). Mohammad. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cordry, H. V. (2015). The Multicultural dictionary of proverbs. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland. Denny, F. M. (1975). The meaning of “Ummah” in the Qura¯ n. History of Religions, 15(1), 34–70. Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books. Rabinovich, A. (2007). The Yom Kippur War: The Epic encounter that transformed the Middle East. New York: Knopf.

Chapter 11

Understanding the Nation as Body/Person from Asian Perspectives: China and Japan

11.1 Introduction Two main samples were collected in East Asia, with the help of colleagues in China, including Hong Kong, and Japan: one set of data from various universities on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong, one from Tokyo. Both sets were augmented with responses by students from Chinese and Japanese backgrounds at British and other non-Asian universities, to produce the largest L1 overall sample (Chinese: 325 scripts) and another substantial one (Japanese 102 scripts).

11.2 The NATION AS BODY/ PERSON in the Mandarinand Cantonese-L1 Samples Chinese responses were collected from nine Higher Education institutions: four universities in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which make up the bulk of the sample (n = 296), one in the special city area of Hong Kong (n = 29), plus smaller samples from British and US, Australian and German Universities. There were no informants from Taiwan, but the island still features in the responses. In the Social Indicator questions, the entries for the “L1” and “nationality” questions were mostly (94%) “Chinese” in both the PRC and Hong Kong samples; only few informants specified the linguistic categories “Mandarin” or “Cantonese” . As systemic linguistic differences between Mandarin and Cantonese were not an important parameter of our investigation, this aspect was disregarded and all L1-entries counted as Chinese (“C”) L1. Nevertheless, we must take into account that 10% of the Chinese sample were produced by students in or from Hong Kong, where the political culture is different from that of the People’s Republic. It so happened that the main samples from Hong Kong were collected in the years 2014–2019, which saw an upsurge in student-led protests in Hong Kong against perceived increasing influence © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5_11

159

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of the PRC’s government in the city’s governance, i.e. the so-called “Umbrella Movement” in 2014 and in the protests against the “Fugitive Offenders Amendment bill” in 2019. The former of these movements is referred to explicitly in some responses, and both movements provide relevant topical background for the pragmatic, argumentative import of the responses by the Chinese L1 informants who participated in the survey during and after 2014. This aspect will be particularly highlighted in the discussion of the geobody and person scenarios, which appear to be the ones used most often for comments on the relationship between the PRC and Hong Kong. In these cases, the nationality indication for the authors of specific examples from the Chinese cohort (“C”) will be amended to “C [HK]” in order to identify the Hong Kong sub-group. The age distribution was concentrated almost exclusively in the 18–25 year age bracket; the preponderance of female informants was clearly but not overwhelmingly noticeable (Table 11.1). Table 11.1 Social indicators: Chinese-L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 325 (=100%) Gender Age group

Female

202

62%

Male

123

38%

18–25

319

98%

26–30

1

0.5%

31–40

4

1%

41+

1

0.5%

The Chinese sample has 360 scenario instances that include 632 tokens of physical body/health concepts and 293 of person concepts, which add up to 925 tokens altogether. The two most frequent scenarios are person and geobody, with body in third place. Conceptualisations of the Nation as body part and as part of ego each make up about 10% of the total (Table 11.2). Table 11.2 Scenario distribution: Chinese Number of scenarios overall: 360 (=100%) Scenarios

body geobody body part part of ego person

Scenario tokens

67

102

36

34

121

Percentages (%)

19

28

10

9

34

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11.2.1 The Nation as BODY Overall, there are 632 instances of 58 body- and 15 health/illness-related subconcepts; this constitutes the widest lexical range in the whole survey. Excepting the very first group of respondents who encountered the early questionnaire version in 2011 and answered only by way of the geobody scenario (see above, Chaps. 1 and 4), the body scenario was employed by Chinese informants in almost one fifth of all scenario instantiations. Its most frequent sub-concepts were, heart, brain, blood and hand(s), with, respectively, 12%, 10% and twice around 6%. There are some uses of the body scenario that come close to the ones we encountered in the English L1 sample1 : (1) As for my home nation China, I think the central government is like the brain of a body, which can use the energy to make some important decisions. And the working class, including the business and factories [sic] are like the muscles which can provide the energy for the moving of the whole body. Besides, the transportation system is like the blood vascular system. (C, C, 19, M) (2) Our country is like a whole human body. Many ingredients make up of it. The government is the head and brain with all sorts of sectors just like the five sense organs on it. The people from all trades and professions make up the hands and feet that make the country working. Also the citizens are like the blood which all cover [sic] the body. The environment is like the skin, we live in it, meanwhile, it protects us. With all of these can the country (body) be complete. (C, C, 19, F) However, most uses of the body scenario are unspecific about individual organs and their functions and do not highlight the interdependence of the whole body and all of its parts or organs (if one member falls ill/is missing, the whole body suffers) often—the respective percentages are marginal: 3% for body- whole and just 2% for parts/organs in the Chinese sample (compare for instance, in the English L1sample: 16% for body and 6% for parts/organs). Instead, the most recurrent scenario theme is the “control” that the brain (referring to the Chinese government, the ruling Communist Party or the “People’s Congress”) has over the rest of the body. brain is used more than three times as much as head(10%: 3%), which is unique across all samples in the corpus. The heart concept is employed mostly to refer to the people, their culture and their long history; in the latter cases, the body scenario often combines with the person scenario (examples 4–6): (3) The people, as a whole, is like the heart. (C, C, 19, M) (4) Culture is the heart of a nation. Well goes an old saying: “If you want to kill a country, you should kill his [sic] culture at first.” (C, C, 18, M) (5) And history can serve as heart, because it forms the whole country’s behavioural concept, or spirit. (C, C, 19, M) 1 Compare

also examples (7) and (8) in Chap. 4.

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(6) Our nation is a sophisticated man who looks peaceful and calm from the appearance. But inside the different voices in his heart are fighting with each other. (C, C, 20, F) In addition to the heart, the following source concepts target the people as a whole in the body scenario: whole body (“China is like a whole human body of a normal person”), blood (“the citizens are like the blood which all cover the body”), hands and feet (“people from all trades and professions make up the handsand feet that make the country working”), cells (“our ordinary people are cells”). A distinct sub-theme is the role of police and army as the nation’s immune system (less frequent variants: arms, hands, fists, bones,)2 : (7) The police officers are our immune system. (C, C, 18, M) (8) Army is the skin and immune system, keep the body in fit [sic]. (C, C, 19, M) (9) Our army is like immune system that keep [sic] us away from incursion. (C, C, 19, M) The target focus on the defence of the nation- body against “incursions” fits also in with the geobody scenario; their combination informs the responses that highlight contested regions that were relatively recently (re-)integrated into the nationwhole, e.g. Hong Kong and Tibet, or that still are expected (by Mainland informants) to be integrated, e.g. Taiwan (see below, Sect. 11.1.3). The illness- disease and medical treatment sub-concepts of the bodyscenario are mostly general references to bad state of health, sickness, illness, or patient- status, with specific concepts (e.g. cancer, obesity, weakness, blindness, deafness3 ) all remaining in single figures. One example stands out on account of its apparently radical stance against “parasites” within the body (as opposed to “incursions” from outside, as mentioned above): (10) Our body is a fat, powerful man with a lot of minor illnesses. He can be rude and self-conceit [sic] sometimes, but he is a kind person in most cases. Now he is taking pills to wipe out the parasites in his body. I believe one day he will get recovered [sic] and be strong and healthy again. (C, C, 19, M) This example is unique in several ways: it combines body and person scenarios in an individualising way (‘occasionally rude but essentially kind, beset by illnesses, against which he takes pills’) and focuses on the nation- person’s need to take medication against parasites. The target-referent of this parasite- concept is not specified, but the alleged necessity to wipe out the agents of illness fits with a more 2 The

informants who focused on the security forces as referents are predominantly male, which stands out against the near-2:1 majority of female respondents in the Chinese cohort. 3 In some cases, concepts of illnesses or handicaps are reinterpreted as metaphors for psychological and/or political shortcomings, which also situates them in the person scenario, cf. e.g. “My nation like a blind. It can’t see the desire of the citizens; My nation like a deaf. It doesn’t listen to the citizens” (C, C[HK], 21, F), “our nation is like having a short sight. It is hard for them to take a clear sign [sic] on the whole picture in front of them” (C, C, 21, F).

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‘radical’, biologised version of the body v. parasite scenario that has been used historically to justify persecution of so-called ‘enemies from within’ (see Chap. 2). Such use of the parasite sub-concept is, however, not repeated in the Chinese L1 sample, nor is the focus on an ‘inner’ alien body.4 It would therefore be misleading to regard example (10) as representative.

11.2.2 The Nation as PART OF BODY and as PART OF EGO The Chinese L1 informants’ conceptualisations of the nation as a body part, i.e. a limb or organ, serve to highlight the indispensability of the nation for the survival of the world. In contrast to other samples (especially, the English L1 sample), their responses do not include any ‘superfluous’, unimportant or taboo organs (e.g. appendix, anus, armpit), nor do they frequently highlight the fact that the part is smaller than the whole. There are only two examples of the latter aspect: “China is like a cell, which is a small part of the world” (C, C, 21, M); “In my opinion, […] my nation can be metaphored as fingerprint. It is a unique symbol […], but it’s not that necessary” (C, C, 19, M). Instead, Chinese L1 part of body conceptualisations serve mainly to articulate highly positive assessments of China’s preeminent political and economic role in the world, as in the following examples: (11) China is like back of body. It is the basic [sic] of the world (C, C, 19, F) (12) China resembles the feet of human body. It stands erect at the east of world just like the feet on the ground. (C, C, 22, F) (13) China is like vein because it connects with many countries (C, C, 21, M) (14) China is the heart of the body made up by all countries.[…] Just like the heart, China delivers blood to the body of world. (C, C, 18, M) The nation as hand(s) sub-concept in the last example is also employed to underline China’s inventiveness and power: (15) I’d like to think my home nation as the hands. From a long history, Chinese people are never lack of creation and production. And as for the international affairs, China has the power to act as a counterweight to some so-called superpower. It is just like a hand to both assault and defend. (C, C, 19, M) A similar evaluation pertains to conceptualisations that depict the nation as part of the writer’s own body/person (ego). Here the positive evaluation is even stronger than in part of body because the writer identifies with it more directly and personally, thus intensifying the alleged praiseworthiness. There are no cases of informants criticising their nation in this scenario, as this would amount to (imagined) 4 The

only comparable example to the parasite case is a reference to bacteria (again only one token), which are, however, imagined as invaders from outside that are held back from the body by the nation’s skin = Customs Offices: “Customs is the skin. As we all know, skin is a natural barrier that prevents bacteria from entering into our bodies.[…] International trade and external communication should go through the customs, so it can keep bad things like drugs, contrabands, etc. from being transported into our country (C, C, 20, F).

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self-denial of their own wellbeing or even existence. Typical examples of part of ego conceptualisations are. (16) My nation China is like my heart. It supports me to live and study. Without it, I will be homeless and lose my passion for life. I love my nation and cherish it. I look it as my heart [sic] which makes me alive. (C, C, 18, F) (17) I’d like to compare my nation as my hands. It gives me chances to do something I like. (C, C, 19, M) (18) From my perspective, our motherland is just like the blood of our body. As blood is the red liquid, I think motherland is also red, which represents the energy and passion of our nation. (C, C, 21, F) (19) China is so important to all the Chinese as eyes are important to human’s body. People will not die if they lose their eye. But they see clearly who they are once they possess the eyes. (C, C, 21, F) heart, blood, eyes and hands are the most frequently used body part concepts for the nation that are ‘incorporated’ by Chinese informants into their own physiology and anatomy.5 As examples (18) and (19) show, the body part conceptualisation can be attributed either to the speaker as an individual or as a member of the nation (“our body”). In the latter case, the scenario part of ego often overlaps with that of the nation as a body/body part or as a person.

11.2.3 The Nation as a GEOBODY The geobody scenario stood out as the main (and seemingly exclusive) scenario for the nation- as- body metaphor complex used by Chinese students in the first class exercise. But it turns out to account for ‘only’ 28% in the wider Chinese-L1 sample, which makes it the second most-frequent scenario behind person. Besides the two most frequent source concepts, brain and heart, which are mainly applied to Beijing and Shanghai (see examples 3 and 4 in Chap. 4), the body-source concepts applied to cities, provinces, landscapes, rivers and landmarks such as the Great Wall are: artery,back, backbone, bone, blood, chest, face, eyes, foot/feet, ear(s), hair, hands, kidney, leg(s), lung(s),6 mouth, stomach, shoulder, skin, throat, and womb. Of these, face and eyes, hands and arms, mouth and throat are applied to border or harbour cities and provinces (such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao, Wenzhou, Guangdong and Guangzhou) and are accompanied 5A

few isolated uses are also attested for nation as limbs conceptualisations (“is part of me and what makes me whole”), as brain (“controlling my actions and thoughts”), and as skin (“provides shelter for me”). 6 There is, exceptionally, one critically used lung-based conceptualisation (out of 11, with the other ten all being positively slanted): “The marsh of China is the lung of a serious smoker. Firstly, the marsh plays an important role in atmospheric circulation which the lung does so to the person. Secondly, the marsh of China nowadays is heavily polluted which is quite similar as the lung absorbed in much smoking.” (C, C, 23, M).

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by ‘fitting’ explanatory notes such as looking outward, embracing and connecting with and receiving or providing nutrition from/to the outside world. Overall, the vast majority of instantiations are of neutral or positive polarity. Even politically ‘exceptional’ regions such as Taiwan, Tibet or Hong Kong, which present the PRC government with difficult questions on sovereignty, minority rights and independence, are for the most part considered to be essential and/or valuable/beautiful parts of China’s geobody: (20) Tibet is just like the eye of China. Because it is the highest place in China. (C, C, 19, F) (21) Taiwan and Hong Kong just like two foot [sic] of our China. As we all know, Taiwan and Hong Kong are inalienable parts of our China.[…] As economically developed regions, both of them can drive the economic development of mainland China. In that way, China can keep striding ahead to the world. (C, C, 20, F) (22) Taiwan–hair–we cannot live without hair. To have hair is a more beautiful fashion. (C, C, 20, F) (23) Taiwan is like foot of a body. You can’t walking [sic] without it, it is necessary (C, C, 21, F) Instances of the geobody scenario that explicitly highlight the problematic status of regions are rare. When authored by PRC informants, they emphasise their indispensability for China or their exposed position and ensuing vulnerability; only in one case (27) a confrontation is envisaged: (24) Taiwan is China’s hair which can be long or short but still is part of body. (C, C, 19, F) (25) China, a cripple at present staggers to the future for the lack of Taiwan. China waits for Taiwan to come back. (C, C, 21, F) (26) Tai Wan [sic] is the elbow, it can hit others and get harm easily. (C, C, 21, M) (27) Taiwan: potential disease maybe one time/finally we have to fight against it and occupy it. Tibet: stomach (sometimes you feel uncomfortable). (C, C, 24, F) Hong Kong informants, on the other hand, view the role of the PRC more critically and instead defend Hong Kong’s autonomy or even claim whole body status for the former colony (30): (28) The Umbrella Revolution is the heart of Hong Kongers. We don’t like the head of Hong Kong (C, C[HK), 20, F)7 (29) Nation to me seems more of a dislocated limb (Hong Kong) and the body (the rest of China), […] Hong Kong plays the first role in stepping/reaching out to the western civilisation – pretty similar to how one walks out of a door and/or stretches arm out in search of new things [C, C[HK], 20, M] 7 Umbrella revolution references metonymically the 2014 pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, which saw the use of umbrellas as protection against the use of pepper-spray by the police against demonstrators.

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(30) Hong Kong is a complete body. She has all the body parts, just like Hong Kong has her own judiciary system, her own land, her own political system, and own development, thus is one single human body.[C, C[HK], 21, M] Although the two perspectives, i.e. a wish for swift and full integration of the contested limbs: in examples (20)–(27) and Hong Kong students’ critical (self-)distancing from the main geobody in examples (28)–(30), are opposed to each other, they do show a common concern for the ‘part-whole’ relationship. The motivational and cultural background for this heightened interest may be connected to the experience of China having been for a victim of colonialist attacks by foreign powers during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, when China was repeatedly humiliated, forced to give up parts of its territory and threatened with further partitions (Bickers 2012; Callahan 2009, 2010; Schneider and Hwang 2014). As a result, post-1949 visualisations of China’s borders, e.g. in maps, formed a “Cartography of National Humiliation”, according to the political scientist Callahan (2009). Until the end of the last century, cartography in Chinese Mainland publications, for instance, served to articulate fears of future territorial “dismemberment”, as in a map from 1999 that purported to show an “international conspiracy to divide up the PRC into a clutch of independent states” (Callahan 2009:143). More recently, the main goal of geopolitical maps in China has become “no longer primarily to recover lost territory” but to achieve “symbolic recognition, acceptance and respect” (2009: 171). If the geographical contours and locations are of such prominence in the public sphere of China, the grounding of conceptualisations of its state organs and body parts in geopolitical metonymies, which we observed in a substantial part of Chinese L1 (both mainland and Hong Kong) students’ reveal themselves to be a framework for legitimising two opposing views of the nation-body that are of far-reaching geopolitical consequence. On the one hand, they can be used (from a mainland perspective) to justify a policy of ‘reuniting’ all past and present body parts to restore one ideal whole nation-body; on the other hand they can be used to legitimise a sovereign, independent body-existence (from the viewpoint of PRCcritical Hong Kong informants). This principal conflict is also expressed at the level of the person-scenarios.

11.2.4 The Nation as PERSON The most frequently invoked scenario in the Chinese sample is that of the nation as person, with just over one third (34% = 289 instances) of all conceptualisations. In terms of explicit gender assignations, masculine ones account for 10%, feminine ones for 21%. Among the latter, mother assignations alone comprise 11% (of all scenario instances!).8 Typical examples are: 8 The

examples counted here only include attributive and predicative mentions of the term mother, i.e. not the routine reference motherland, which would distort the frequency count. Apart from

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(31) China provides her people lands, food and protection, just like a selfless mother. (C, C, 19, F) (32) China is like a mother, always kind to others, turning fierce when its children are bullyed. (C, C, 19, F) (33) I regard China as a mother, for the simple reason that she breeds hundreds of millions of people. (C, C, 22, M) (34) She’s our mother. Although she has many disadvantages, we still love her and [are] willing to contribute to her. (C, C, 19, M) Such mother assignations are often followed up by stereotyping gendered character traits, such as selflessness and protectiveness for her children, warmheartedness, kindness, generosity, tolerance (cf. examples 31–32, above). These characterisations are in line with patriotic songs that are promoted in the PRC’s media and party-led youth organisations, such as the “Ode to the Motherland” (Xinhua 2007) and the “Song of the Seven Sons”.9 Their appearance in our sample may thus well reflect previous ideological training. Apart from the mother stereotype, we find also that of the charming young lady,10 complete with beautiful clothes and goddess-like status: (35) Our nation is just a beautiful young lady who wears a charming colorful dress made of seasons. (C, C, 19, F) (36) My mother country is a beautiful lady who shows her unique charm every day. (C, C, 20, F) (37) China wears a beautiful dress to show her elegance to the whole world. (C, C, 21, F) (38) In the east of the world, there stands a goddesswearing shining clothes. (C, C, 19, F)11 father assignations are rare: there are just two in the Chinese sample, plus one grandfather assignation, which is associated with the current president of the PRC: examples where “motherland” is used and then also given an explicit mother-assignation (which are of course included in the count) there are also references with no or opposite gender-assignation, e.g. “motherland is a gall bladder”; “motherland is like a man’s heart”. They are evidently irrelevant as mother- scenario examples. 9 The Song of Seven Sons by Wen Yiduo, composed in 1925 (Yiduo 2013), is a set of songs that talk about Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Weihai, Guangzhou Bay, Kowloon, Ludai (i.e. Lushunkou district/Port Arthur) and Dalian, which were once colonies of other countries, including Portugal (Macau), Britain (Hong Kong, Kowloon, Weihai), Japan (Taiwan, Ludai), France (Guangzhou Bay. These places are portrayed as sons of China which want to return to their mother. Each song ends with the exclamation 母親! 我要回來, 母親! (Mother! I have to come back, mother!). (Personal communication by D.S.T. Wang, T. Zhou). 10 youth assignations amount to 10%, compared with just of 2% old age assignations and collocate strongly with female-gendered person instantiations. 11 The goddess-personifications partly resemble others in the corpus, e.g. in the Greek L1 sample (see Chap. 9) but note that unlike the Greek L1 examples, which highlight the historical dimension by alluding to ancient historical fame (‘Greece as goddess mother of democracy, philosophy’) the Chinese L1 examples assume present-day topicality.

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(39) China is a father who has survived many vicissitudes but still has infinite power. Hong Kong, who had been abandoned helplessly, is his favourite daughter among lots of children. Nowadays, after the excited and impressive coming [sic], her father does all he can and does his best to compensate for this abandoned thing. (C, C [NB: not from Hong Kong], 20, F) (40) […] our nation is like our father, giving us a hand when we feel lonely, gloomy and hopeless; our nation is like a guardian, defending us all the time. (C, C, 19, M) (41) Our country is like “grandpa” because our president Xi is always very kind to our normal people. And he is the representative of our country (C, C, 19, F) The great majority of masculine-gendered conceptualisations focus on professional roles, such as soldier- warrior, doctor, captain, lawyer, teacher/ guardian, business leader, engineer,12 with ‘fitting’ stereotypical attributes such as pride, steel-like spirit, responsibility, dignity. These characteristics also fit the father cases cited above but the figures for the latter are too small to allow any conclusions about collocations. Overall, the feminine gendered stereotypes, in particular the mother and lady scenario versions, are dominant in the Chinese sample. In addition, the Chinese L1 sample (both PRC and Hong Kong) also has a few nongendered conceptualisations. The two main lexical elements manifesting the Chinese nation-person in this way are soul (2%) and face (17%). The former have as their target referent China’s culture, conceived as an inalienable national asset. The latter (apart from those referring to places/regions in the geobody scenario) express the nation’s imagined feelings towards its own citizens or towards the world which are invariably positive and reassuring, e.g. friendliness, or steadfastness.13 By comparison to these affirmative characterisations of the nation-person, critical, ironical and humorous instances of this scenario are hard to find, especially in responses from mainland informants. The whole Chinese L1 sample has just 22 instances (=6% of all scenarios) of them, and eleven of these come from Hong Kong informants. The latter group is not just proportionally over-represented but also supplies the most stridently negative and sarcastic conceptualisations: (42) My home nation is a little kid. It is growing just like the development of the nation. But its growth is hindered by adult, such as Beijing. (C, C[HK], 20, F)

12 The

only explicitly political characterisation is that of pacifist.

13 There seem to be only minimal explicit traces of “face”-theoretical conceptualisations in the sense

of socio-psychological and pragmatic “politeness’ concepts (Goffman 1972; Brown and Levinson 1987; Spencer-Oatey 2007) or Chinese folk-theoretical versions of them (Kádár and Pan 2012;Yu 2009:153–186). One informant characterises China as “slapping America’s face” (C, C, 19, F); one other sees the Nation itself as a person’s “inborn face” which, if “disliked”, can be “changed” (C, C[HK], 20, F). In the absence of further co-textual information, this aspect cannot be decided here but could be a promising object of further research.

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(43) China sees nobody in her eyes. China is taking away freedom from Hong Kong. China gets whatever she wants. China is not afraid of harming its people. (C, C[HK], 21, F) (44) My nation have [sic] a mad mind. It supress [sic] the citizens when it wants. (C, C[HK], 21, M) (45) My home nation is an arrogant bitch. She always bitching about others but never herself. She might look good outside but is weak as fuck inside. (C, C[HK], 20, M) Examples such as these articulate profound fears about Hong Kong’s political freedoms being curbed or cancelled by the PRC. Examples (42) and (43) explicitly criticise the PRP; in (44) and (45) it is left open what the “home nation” is, but it seems most likely to be the PRC which, after all, has political sovereignty over Hong Kong since 1997. The last example even employs taboo words, which appear nowhere else in the Chinese sample. Such a stance implies a ‘split conceptualisation’ of the “Chinese” nation as a person by some Hong Kong respondents: they accept PRC-China as their official political identity and power-holder but at the same time also identify with a separate Hong Kong identity. By comparison, the critical responses from mainland Chinese respondents are moderate and always qualified. For instance, they admonish the nation for being “a fat, powerful man with a lot of minor illnesses. He can be rude and self-conceit sometimes, but he is a kind person in most cases” (C, C, 19, M), or portray it as “a strong man who have clever brain.[…] But sometimes, he does not pay attention to personal hygiene” (C, C, 20, M), or as “having a short sight […] only focus on short term” (C, C, 19, F). Criticisms such as these seem like exercises in modesty, to avoid giving an impression of triumphant or hyperbolic affirmation. But in comparison with the Hong Kong sub-sample they do not target fundamental character traits or touch on the writers’ personal identities. The Chinese L1 sample is thus characterised by contrasting trends in the two sociopolitical sub groups, i.e. the students from/in mainland China (PRC) and those from/in Hong Kong. In the former group, which makes up 90% of the sample, scenarios are used overwhelmingly in praise of the “motherland”, with the person scenario showing a focus on the caring mother-ideal. Instances of the geobody scenario as used by this group to emphasise the need for territorial wholeness (leading to appeals for reunification with those body parts that are still missing), and the part of ego scenario is predominantly employed to express emphatic identification with the nation as part of one’s own physical and/or personal ‘Self’. Critical and ironical comments make up a tiny residual category (11 out of 326 scenario instances, i.e. 3%). In the small Hong Kong sub-sample, on the other hand, the critical and even sarcastic examples account for a much larger portion of scenario instances (11 out of 34, i.e. 32%!). These include ethical–political condemnations of the PRC in terms of the person scenario and uses of the geobodyscenario that seem to justify independent body-status (see examples 29, 30 above). In view of the heavily uneven numbers of the two sub-samples, a balanced comparison is impossible but should be a priority for further investigation.

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11.3 The NATION AS A BODY or PERSON for Japanese L1 Speakers The Japanese L1 sample’s size is slightly less than a third of the Chinese one (n = 102 scripts). It is, however, much more homogenous as it consists almost entirely of one group of Japanese students of English at Rikkyo University (Tokyo), with a few additional Japanese exchange students at British universities (UEA and Birmingham University) (Table 11.3). Table 11.3 Social indicators: Japanese L1 Number of valid scripts overall: 102 (=100%) Gender Age group

Female

63

62%

Male

39

38%

18–25

101

99%

41+

1

1%

Perhaps partly due to this homogeneous group structure of informants, the scenario distribution (n = 126) is dominated by one scenario, i.e. body, whilst the other scenarios together make up less than a third (Table 11.4). Table 11.4 Scenario distribution: Japanese L1 Scenarios

body

geobody

body part

part of ego

person

Scenario tokens (Total: 126)

86

22

3

1

15

Percentages (%)

68

17

2

1

12

As before, the different scenarios will be discussed in turn, with a view to highlighting and explaining major conceptual foci and their distribution.

11.3.1 The Nation as BODY, PART OF BODY and PART OF EGO

The range of BODY-based sub-concepts is relatively narrow, with just 25 distinct body-related and three health-related sub-concepts, which may also be a reflection of the group’s homogeneity. The most frequent sub-concept complexes are head- face- brain (together 56 instances), legs- feet (24 instances) and, uniquely, bones (21 instances) and heart (15 instances). health-related conceptualisations are absent altogether. The complexes head- face- brain and heart dominate depictions of the nation’s leaders:

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(46) In Japan, the emperor is the face of the country. It’s mainly because it’s one of the Japanese symbols. For example, the emperor will visit to [sic] the other country, however, he do not discuss about political things. (J, J, 18, F)14 (47) The emperor is heart. Because if the emperor were killed (It’s if), Japan is like being died [sic]. (J, J, 18, M) (48) In Japanese [sic], many people think the government is the face of the country. It’s mainly because the government meet other country [sic] government. (J, J, 18, M) (49) The prime minister is head of Japan, because he is top of Japan (J, J, 19, F) face, which alone accounts for 24 of all body scenario instances (more than head or brain) refers to representative-ceremonial or diplomatic functions; hence its association with the emperor’s politically neutral role in the state. The government and the Prime Minister are also associated with the brain/head (as being ‘in control’); in contrast to other samples, however, further political or administrative layers of the state are not accorded any specific organ status. This lack of relevant conceptualisations may have to do with the high degree of centralisation that has been the hallmark of modern Japan since the “Meiji restoration”, which has been prominently promulgated in public and educational institutions and in state ideology to this day (Diamond 2019: 124–127, 134–139, Gluck 1985; Keene 2002). The few characterisations of ‘lower’ strata of society (i.e. working people, students, young people, communities) are unsystematically designated as legs, arms, feet and bones. legs and feet are also used as labels for the transport system, which is a highly prominent target topic; it appears in 27 separate responses: (50) Public transport is legs of Japan because we can go somewhere with it. (J, J, 18, F) (51) In Japan, amazing number of people use public transport everyday. For example, the people who are white collars, students, visitors… So, I think public transport is feet for Japan. (J, J, 19, M) (52) The public transport like the blood of body makes Japanese’ anythings [sic] smoothly. (J, J, 18, F) (53) I think public transport of Japan is very important. It’s like a bones [sic]. There are many public transport in Japan. For example, trains and buses and so on. If public transport of Japan break down, we can’t go to anywhere. (J, J, 18, M) Other distinctive target topics that receive more attention than in other L1 samples are ‘technology’ (20 responses), which attracts broadly the same range of source 14 Similarly

to the Chinese case, the source concept of face in Japanese examples may implicitly invoke the Japanese folk-concept of face (Hudson et al. 2018). The depiction of the emperor as face of the country, for instance, may be a direct English translation of a common expression in the Japanese language: ‘kuni no kao’, (the face [=representative figures] of the country)” (personal communication, Takashi Shogimen). Again, this issue seems a highly promising object for further investigation, e.g. by way of elciting more co-text in responses and explanatory information from respondents.

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concepts as ‘transport’, i.e. legs, feet, arms, bones, but also brain, heart and even nails (“because they keep evolving”), and ‘education’ (19 responses), which is, unsurprisingly, often seen as the nation’s brain or head, but also as its eyes, bones, and hands. The nation- body that emerges from these depictions is strongly unified and centrally controlled and pervades all of society without much class differentiation but pays a lot of attention to its outside face for representation purposes. This focus on unity is reinforced by the very few instantiations of the nation as part of a larger body and nation as part of ego scenarios. Example (55) in particular might be regarded as the prototypical expression of the notion of a maximally centralised Japanese nation’s body: it depicts that body as consisting only of the brain and its extensions. (54) Japanese are heart. They are small and they stay inside. But their function (working) is important for others, and they never stop working. (J, J, 25, F) (55) “Nation” could be described as the brain. All part of the brain have particular role like society. The government should control the whole part of nation like from part of brain. (J, J, 23, M) (56) Japanese society: Always having smiley faces, but the movements of arms and legs are constantly controlled by others. (J, J, 24, F)

11.3.2 The National Territory as GEOBODY The twenty-two instances of the geobody scenario have between them just three targets: the capital Tokyo (as head, face or heart), mount Fujiyama (as face) and, most frequently, (10 instances), various geographically unspecified “shrines” and “historic places”: (57) In Japan, people think historical place is the bone of the country. It’s mainly because it has many historical memories that we have to remember. (J, J, 18, F) (58) In Japan, people think shrines is the soul. Because almost all shrines exist thousands years ago, so it will be able to say that Japanese people has been living with shrines. For example, when people have the problems or anxiousity [sic], they go to shrines and pray. (J, J, 18, M) (59) I think temples is the soul. It mainly because temples have a lot of “haka” [= tombs]. So temples connect the soul. (J, J, 18, M) In contrast to the capital and landscape features, historic places or shrines are hardly ever mentioned in other L1 samples as targets of the geobody scenario. They thus appear to be uniquely characteristic for the Japanese idea of the nation. The veneration of Shinto shrines again seems a product of nation-flagging ideologies propagated since the Meiji Restoration, partly as a counterweight to the rapid Westernisation of military, administrative, economic and social institutions in post-1835

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Japan (Diamond 2019:125). When viewed as a territory, the Japanese nation seems to be unified not so much by borders or provinces but by its geographical and political top ‘locations’ and the shrines that relate to its historical/legendary ancestors, their memory and with it, the nation’s soul, i.e. its personal character.

11.3.3 The Nation as PERSON soul is almost the only person- related concept in the Japanese L1 sample (13 instantiations): there are no explicitly gendered conceptualisations and just one for youth and old age, respectively. Most instances of the soul scenario collocate with geobody and have shrines and historic places or temples as their target (see examples 58–59 above). There are just three other uses of soul, one each for ‘the emperor’, ‘the family’ and ‘young people’. There are no explicitly critical or ironical or otherwise dissociating comments about the nation-person, nor any about other scenarios. Again, this may be a sampling effect, which needs to be tested in further research, but in a corpus that records at least some, if little criticism for every other L1 sample, it marks an extreme and unexpected result. (If corroborated, it would of course not mean that the Japanese nation is never criticised but rather, that the nation as body/person metaphor is not employed for that purpose by the informants.) The Japanese L1 sample constitutes a unique case by comparison with all other samples, due to a number of specificities in the apparent source and target selections that seem to be typical for this cultural context. These are a) exclusive control of the whole nation-body by the head/brain, b) a focus on (and approval of) national unity across all main scenarios, and c) the veneration of ancestors’ shrines as bones and/or soul of the nation. Thus, the anatomy of the nation- body, its geobody and its personality are all imagined as highly unified and centrally overseen as a hierarchically ordered collective.

References Bickers, R. (2012). The scramble for China. Foreign devils in the qing empire. 1832–1914. London: Penguin Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Callahan, W. A. (2009). The cartography of national humiliation and the emergence of China’s geobody. Public Culture, 21(1), 141–173. Callahan, W. A. (2010). China–The pessoptimist nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diamond, J. (2019). Turning points for nations in crisis. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Goffman, E. (1972). On face work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. In J. Laver & S. Hutcheson (Eds.), Communication in face to face interaction (pp. 319–347). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gluck, C. (1985). Japan’s modern myths: Ideology in the late Meji period. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hudson, M. E., Matsumoto, Y., & Mori, J. (Eds.). (2018). Pragmatics of Japanese: Perspectives on grammar, interaction and culture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Kádár, D. Z., & Pan, Y. (2012). Politeness in historical and contemporary Chinese. London: Bloomsbury. Keene, D. (2002). Emperor of Japan: Meji and his World. New York: Columbia University Press. Schneider, F., & Hwang, Y.-J. (2014). China’s Road to Revival. “Writing” the PRC’s struggles for modernization In Q. Cao, H. Tian & P. Chilton (Eds.), Discourse, politics and media in contemporary China (pp. 145–170). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Spencer-Oatey, H. (2007). Theories of identity and the analysis of face. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(4), 639–656. Xinhua. (2007). President Hu watches grand show marking 10th anniversary of HK’s return. Xinhua. The song’s Name in English - “Ode to the Motherland”; https://english.cpc.people.com.cn/66485/ 66548/66551/6202008.html (accessed 15 December 2018). Yiduo, W. (2013). Listen to Wen Yiduo. Beijing: Chinese Radio and Television Publishing House. Yu, N. (2009). From body to meaning in culture: Papers on cognitive semantic studies of Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Chapter 12

Cultural Variation in Figurative Scenarios of the Nation’s Body and/or Person

12.1 Introduction At the start of this book, we introduced the nation as a body metaphor as a test-case for modelling conceptual and discursive variation phenomena in Cultural Linguistics. In cognitive accounts such variation is acknowledged but remains a problem area because the linguistic evidence, i.e. data of active language use and its processing in comprehension, is assumed to provide direct access to underlying conceptualisations. This assumption is informed by a universalist perspective, namely that all source concepts are “experience”-based, in the sense of physiologically embodied, “primary” metaphors combining to build more “complex” mappings and blendings. Variation is thus reduced to a secondary phenomenon of differential usage, which is contingent on situational, historical and social circumstances including “national cultures” but is of little consequence for metaphors’ conceptual/cognitive import. Against this universalist bias, the Cultural Linguistics approach to figurative conceptualisations not only eschews the essentialist reification of “culture” but also avoids the illusion of directly deriving universal concepts from the manifest linguistic data. Instead, we aim to discern distribution patterns in an empirically constituted corpus, which can then be linked in a further step to hypotheses about culture- specific preferences in conceptualising and arguing about the target topics in question. This ‘intermediate’ level is captured by the analytical—not ontological or psychological—construct of the “metaphor scenario”, which summarises the semantic and pragmatic clusters in a given corpus on the basis of (inter-)textual links such as collocations, quotations and further metacommunicative features.

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12.2 Types of Metaphor Scenario Analysis Our analysis of nation as body scenarios first focused on the shared European legacy of this metaphor complex, which built on intellectual and discursive traditions reaching back into classical Antiquity. Through the revival of ancient philosophical systems and their combination with Biblical and Christian theology, medieval thinkers in Europe established a conceptual and narrative platform to imagine sociopolitical communities as “mystical” bodies, with the rulers, seen as God’s representatives on Earth, as the respective chief organs (belly, head, heart). In the context of socio-political conflicts and religious reform movements during the 15th and 16th centuries, this medieval worldview of Christian society as a body that was a unitary entity became more and more problematic, but at the same time gained a new relevance as a focus for defining emergent (proto-) national communities. Due to the already established tradition of associating these communities with their dynastic rulers, their “mystical” or “political” bodies” were first conceptualised as ‘attachments’, which led to the dual concepts of the ruler’s body natural and body politic in early modern English. But in later stages of the Renaissance, the national communities themselves became the main target referents of the body source concept, which was now endowed with narrative and argumentative scenarios that had been partly inherited from ancient sources and was now adapted to fit new social formations and developments. Three scenarios were particularly prominent in this process: (1) the Fable of the Belly which had been used for more than a millennium as an ‘exemplary’ story to justify political authority as the guarantor of coordination among all body parts and equitable distribution of nourishment among them, (2) a focus on the pre-eminence of head or heart, which was used to legitimise command- and consent-oriented types of rulership, respectively, and (3) the illness-cure scenario as a model for explaining and solving socio-political crises, with an apparent preference, specific to the ‘Western’ tradition, for drastic, radical therapies such as amputation or eradication of the disease agent. The links that connected instances of these scenarios in our diachronic corpus were their explicit or implicit intertextual references, i.e. quotation, comment, allusion, and common narrative patterning. This diachronic corpus could be called, adapting Lovejoy’s (1936) title, a ‘Great chain of Metaphors’—in the sense that the authors and their audience(s) were aware of writing in a shared textual and intellectual tradition and could take over the respective figurative motifs from more or less well-known or even fictitious predecessors, in order to develop them further and/or comment on them. This intertextual cross-referencing was done not for archival or historical reasons but to provide persuasive and perhaps also aesthetically pleasing conceptualisations for imagining the respective communities in the evolving Western “cultural schemas” (Sharifian 2017a, b). Insofar as the contemporary addressees of such texts were small sections of society, it is plausible to assume that their shared educational and cultural backgrounds (including knowledge of texts in Greek, Latin and several early modern European languages) facilitated the recognition of these intertextual links. Thus, an

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identifiable tradition of the nation as body metaphor was established (across country boundaries, across languages and across centuries) as a ‘virtual debate’ about key-conceptualisations of the sovereign, the state and/or the nation as ‘corporeal’ and/or ‘personal’ entities. This intertextual chain was built by the totality of quotations and allusions produced by philosophers and publicists from Antiquity to the Renaissance and Enlightenment right up to the 21th century. Like the Great Chain of Being complex, the conceptualisation of the nation as a body did not die out in the industrial era; rather, it has evolved as an active and culture-specific metaphor tradition to the present day, even if its ancient versions have by now sedimented into a seldom noticed background awareness of a shared Western tradition of speaking about the nation, e.g.in formulas like head of state etc. In chapter three we studied the nation as a body metaphor’s presence in current public debates about nation, nationality and sovereignty in Britain, with a special focus on the discussions about the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union (“Brexit”), as documented in a synchronic research corpus of media texts (EUROMETA). It provided ample evidence that the nation as a body metaphor is still highly prominent in English-language political discourse, which corroborates a tenet of numerous cognitive analyses of political discourse (Chilton and Lakoff 1995; Lakoff 1996; Lakoff and Wehling 2016; Musolff 2010, 2012; Šari´c and Stanojevi´c 2019). But in contrast to the classic cognitive method of deriving all nation as body mappings directly from “experiential” sources, we used the “scenario”-based approach to identify and interpret collocation patterns and textual (narrative and argumentative) clusters to find out how national identity and sovereignty were ‘imagined’ by the British public today. The Brexit-discourse data showed that the conceptualisation of nations as bodies is by no means neutral or just descriptive (as one might assume by supposing a purely experientialist view). In fact, the body-based scenarios present a highly loaded scenario-choice between nation as independent body and nation as part of a larger body, i.e. here the European Union. Brexit proponents relied on the former scenario to denounce the Union both as being an alien body (with parasitic and poisonous effects on the British body politic) and/or a diseased body that was going to die, with Europe’s heart being the main target of criticism and derision. The only therapeutic options were either to excise the European parasite from Britain’s national body or, in a second scenario version, to distance the UK as quickly and radically from the EU’s infectious body as possible, if need be, by way of self-amputation. In the corresponding version of the nation as person scenario, the EU was depicted as a hostile agent or force: either as the vengeful ex-partner with whom a messy divorce had to be negotiated or as a colonialist-imperialist oppressor/slave owner against whom the national ‘Self’ had to wage a war of liberation. In those versions where Britain was viewed as being in the stronger position (i.e. mainly in the early negotiation phase 2016/17), the conflict was conceptualised as a bargaining contest, in which Britain could have its cake and eat it, in the sense of maximising the benefits of Brexit for itself at the expense of the European Union. Brexit opponents tried to engage with these scenario versions mainly reactively, i.e. by questioning and

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12 Cultural Variation in Figurative Scenarios of the Nation’s …

ridiculing them, but they seem not to have been successful in construing persuasive alternative scenarios, e.g. of Britain as an important part of a vigorous, healthy EU body or a successfully acting person. Apart from occasional instances of the lexicalised phrases body politic, and heart of Europe, the main Brexit-related scenario versions—nation as own body versus as body part , as person in a divorce from or a fight/contest with a hostile party—did not repeat the classic narratives of the Fable of the Belly or of the heart/head commanding the body. However, the Brexit-related metaphor applications did reiterate the illness-cure scenario, with some ‘updated’ popular medical terminology (e.g. immunosuppressants, bypass etc.). This scenario allowed its users to conceptualise the issue of national sovereignty as one of bodily and personal independence and identity in a new way. In contrast to traditional discussions that were still influenced by the metonymic association of the body politic with a ruler figure, the body politic is today no longer viewed as an ‘attachment’ to a real-life individual. Instead, it is exclusively identified with the nation state as a corporeal entity ‘in its own right’. In this perspective any connection with another (single or multi-) nation-body can be viewed as a potential danger. In the illnesscure scenario this danger is proximised (Cap 2017; Kopytowska et al. 2017) as the threat of either having an alien illness agent inside one’s own body or of being attached to a dying, infectious body. In both cases, a radical separation or detachment of the bodies is necessary for the Self’s body to survive. This scenario version stands in the European tradition of imagining a diseased nation state as being in need of drastic cures involving surgery, rather than suggesting alternative, less extreme therapy models (Shogimen 2008). At the level of the nation as person scenario, its “event structure” (Lakoff 1993) of radical problem-solving is repeated in the form of an all-or-nothing contest or war of liberation, in which the national Self must be defended and the enemy defeated at all cost. Comparing the diachronic and synchronic data, we can conclude that the basic scenarios of the nation as an independent, whole body or person are not only continued today but if anything more creatively used and endorsed than in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. This continuous tradition of usage includes specific ideological implications, e.g. the presumption of a right to defend one’s own nation-body by fighting and destroying other bodies. The polemical fervour and sharpness of the Brexit debate, as framed in the illness-cure scenario, can thus be characterised as being fully in line with the European body politic traditions. So, we have to agree with Sontag’s (1978) conclusion—albeit with a more sceptical evaluation of pre-modern traditions—that the choice of the illness-cure and liberation war/fight scenarios that favour radical therapies or conflict solutions is still the dominant way of conceptualising national identity in the British and other European discourse communities. Perhaps reassuringly, this verdict seems not to be applicable with equal strictness to the metaphor interpretation data that we have discussed in Chaps. 5–11. The five scenarios we identified in the responses to our questionnaire survey included conceptualisations of the nation as (whole) body, as part of body, as part of self and as person and in addition, the geobody variant. None of these

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179

scenarios was completely absent from any particular cohort, so at the conceptual level they may be called ‘universal’. On the other hand, the scenario distributions in the L1 samples showed clear contrasts in their distribution and collocation patterns and in their pragmatic, narrative-argumentative application to national debates. On account of the nature of our survey corpus including explicitly elicited data it might perhaps critically be argued that the manner of elicitation, i.e. a questionnaire with a prompt highlighting the metaphor interpretation task, enticed informants to produce particularly inventive answers and thus pre-empted any question of universality or non-universality. However, our research focus as laid out in the introductory chapters was different: we did not set out to establish whether the scenarios did or did not occur in a specific language or culture, but instead we have demonstrated culture-specific preferences in interpreting the nation as body in terms of scenario distribution patterns. In the following section we review the most significant culturespecific trends that are discernible from the differential scenario distributions and applications across the diverse cohorts of informants.

12.3 Scenario Preferences Across L1 Samples In Chaps. 5–11 we discussed these conceptualisation trends, across 24 samples that were identified by the informants’ L1 background information and grouped together on the basis of geo-cultural criteria. As the cohorts differ in size and in demographic composition, the observed frequency contrasts are indicative only. In any case, the results could not count as representative of any language/cultural community as a whole because the informants were exclusively university students in specific (Language- and Communication-related) study programmes. Bearing these qualifications in mind, the elicited scenario distributions in the L1-samples seem to show significant culture-specific patterns, as do the metaphors’ pragmatic and evaluative applications. Overall, critical metaphor applications are in the minority whereas endorsements of the nation as a healthy, efficient body ensemble, as a body part or geobody of beauty and great value to the wider region or the world, as a fully embodied part of the self or as a generous and successful person, provide the vast bulk of speech acts performed in the responses. This result can be seen as testimony to the pervasiveness and impact of banal nationalism (and of not so banal indoctrination) in present day political cultures across the globe. This predominance of affirmative nation as body conceptualisations is even discernible in the most ‘critical’ of all large-size L1 samples, i.e. English L1, which shows a ‘criticism index’ (frequency of critical + ironical + humoristic scenarios) of 41%. Within this sample, the most drastic condemnations or sarcastic denunciations of the ‘home nation’s’ body or person came from two smaller sub-cohorts, i.e. the US and the Australian groups. In particular, the use of taboo-body parts to ridicule the nation seemed to be a stylistic preference in these cohorts rather than expressing a deep-seated disgust or hatred of one’s nation. Among the British and

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12 Cultural Variation in Figurative Scenarios of the Nation’s …

New Zealand sub-cohorts, ironical and humorous distancing from the nation-body was preferred. In terms of scenario distribution, there were no notable differences between the British, US, Australian and New Zealand sub-cohorts: they all focused on the whole body and geobody scenarios (44% and 25% respectively), with a strong emphasis on the interdependence and hierarchical ordering of the body parts, but almost no incorporation into the writer’s ego. (This lack of evidence for part of ego scenario does not necessarily mean a lack of patriotic enthusiasm among the informants—it only indicates that this scenario was not a favourite means to express such attitudes). The preference for body-conceptualisations and their frequent extension into argumentative, critical and ironical formulations leads to the conclusion that the continuity of the body politic scenarios, which we demonstrated on the usage side in Chap. 3, finds its counterpart on the interpretation side in the responses of English L1 speaking students. The first non-English L1 sample that we considered was German L1, which showed an even higher preference for the whole body scenario (55%). However, in contrast to the English L1 sample, the second-ranking scenario was not geobody but person (25%). The latter was the main focus of the small amount (9%) of critical/ironical comments that were found in this sample, most of which dealt with the legacy/guilt theme of Germany’s twentieth century history. The Dutch and Norwegian L1 samples were too small to calculate meaningful distribution percentages: body was the main scenario in the Dutch L1 sample, person in the Norwegian L1 sample. We could thus not detect any “Germanic L1” pattern (nor for any other language family). Instead, nation-based stereotypes seemed to be the main markers of the sample-specific distribution patterns. Thus, it was the target themes of colonial history, historical guilt, and ‘petroholism’ that featured most strongly in the English, German and Norwegian L1 samples respectively, reflecting nationally relevant topics. The richness of ironical and sarcastic commenting in the English L1 sample and in particular, in the Australian and US sub-cohorts, stood in contrast to the stereotypical German dearth of ironical/humorous commenting, but the latter can also be related to the ‘preferred’ target topic of historical guilt, which hardly lends itself to humorous treatment. Among the Romance languages, the Spanish and Romanian L1 samples show a similar scenario distribution to the German L1 sample by prioritising the body scenario as the most frequent and person as the second most frequent scenario. However, both samples scored considerably higher than the German L1 sample in terms of the criticism/irony/humour index, with percentages of 36% and 35% respectively. Their distancing comments are mostly directed at currently topical, rather than historical grievances. The largest sample in this group, i.e. Italian L1, shows a different pattern of scenario distribution with person and body part as top-ranking scenarios. The latter preference seems partly motivated by the wellestablished stereotype of the Italian leg being encased in its boot, which informed many combinations of body part and geobody scenarios. The Italian L1 sample also shows a fairly high criticism index of 25%, relating to both history and presentday politics. The French sample also has person and body part in the highestranking places, but in reverse order to the Italian L1 sample. The two scenarios seemed

12.3 Scenario Preferences Across L1 Samples

181

to be particularly closely connected, due to the fact that in most cases the respective body part (head, heart etc.) was read both as an anatomical-institutional analogy (e.g. people as heart) and as a symbol of character traits of the nation-person (e.g. warm-heartedness of the nation-mother). The small Portuguese L1 sample proved difficult to categorise, as three scenarios (body, body part and part of ego) were in joint first place. The strong representation of the part of ego scenario here was indicative of a high degree of enthusiastic expressions of patriotic identification with the nation. (This linkage proved the same across other samples such as the Arabic and Turkish L1 ones, where the scenario part of ego scores higher than 10%.) Both the Portuguese and French L1 samples had a relatively low criticism/irony index (13 and 14%)—this result may, however, be an effect of their limited size. Among the Slavic L1 language samples, the two largest ones, Russian L1 and Ukrainian L1, had in common that body part was their most frequently instanced scenario. For Russian L1, the second-ranking scenario was that of person, which made its distribution similar to that of the French L1 sample, as characterised by strong collocation and double reading of the body parts in question as sources for anatomical analogies and symbolic indications of character traits. This combination is a specific interpretative choice, as shown by the contrasting Ukrainian L1 sample, which laid more stress on the part-whole relationship in the body and body part scenarios and conceptualised the person scenario much less emphatically. The Serbian and Polish L1 samples had body in first place and person and geobody in second place, resembling the English L1 and German L1 samples. The Croatian and Bulgarian L1 samples had person in first place and geobody in second. Among the larger L1 samples in this group, the criticism/irony index was the lowest for Russian (6%) and medium for Ukrainian (17%) and Serbian (22%). The extremely high percentage for Polish L1, 43%, which is numerically the highest scoring sample of all, seems to be partly a distortion due to the small size of the sample. But a close look at the Polish L1 still revealed a distinct predilection for creative uses of ironical characterisations (e.g. of the army as broken teeth in the country’s oral cavity or of the nation as not being the pimple of this world). This trend may be indicative of a special, polemically ‘engaged’ style in applying the nation as body metaphor. Of the three further Eastern European L1 samples that did not belong to the Germanic, Romance and Slavic language families, the Hungarian L1 sample resembled the English L1 responses most closely, with body and geobody in first and second place. Critical and/or ironic comments (17%) seemed to make use of these scenarios’ collocations in particular, to express resentment about amputated parts of both the national territory and populace. The Lithuanian L1 sample also had body in first place but person in second, like the German, Dutch, Spanish, Romanian and Serbian L1 samples. Its criticism/irony index is relatively high (26%), on account of a preference for the head moved by the neck proverb, which allows writers to acknowledge and still qualify/question official political authority. The Greek L1 sample has the highest-scoring person scenario (59%) in the corpus, followed by body part in second place. As in other samples, they are often combined to yield an anatomicalsymbolic double reading (organ or limb as both bodily entity and ‘seat’ of emotions

182

12 Cultural Variation in Figurative Scenarios of the Nation’s …

and character traits). In addition, this sample has a strong representation of motherpersonifications (often with reference to Greece’s history as mother of democracy and philosophy) and a smaller group of masculine-gendered characterisations, which together account for the high person-score. In the Middle East group, the Arabic L1 sample, including the Kabyle sub-sample from Algeria, also had the person scenario in first place and part of ego in second. The two scenarios may seem incompatible in terms of the part-whole relationship but they are still frequently combined in this sample to emphasise the nation’s greatness and the writers’ patriotic enthusiasm. On the other hand, some person conceptualisations were used to express deep resentment against authoritarian character traits, thus sustaining a small but distinct criticism/irony index of 12%. A similar evaluative picture emerged for the Turkish L1 sample, but with body part and person as top-ranking scenarios, whose collocations provided the platform for the aforementioned organic-symbolic double reading. The scenario combination usually expresses a patriotic view of the nation as heart/head etc. that stands for benign character traits and emotions. When non-collocating with body part, the person scenario gave rise to critical and ironical comments. The Hebrew and Urdu/ Pashto L1 samples were too small to calculate meaningful percentages. Both of them are dominated by the body scenario, with person in second place for Hebrew L1. Criticism and (mainly sarcastic) irony in this sample, amounting to 22%, seemed to focus on diseases or vulnerable or taboo body parts (cancer, fingernails and private parts). In the ‘Asian’ group, the Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) and Japanese L1 samples also exhibited strong culture-specific preferences. Responses across the whole Chinese sample showed a distinct pairing of person and geobody. But they were divided sharply by an almost complete lack of criticism, irony and humour in the mainland (PRC) sub-sample on the one hand, and, a fairly substantial occurrence of these features in the Hong Kong sub-sample on the other hand. The latter focused on perceived intrusive and overbearing behaviour and character traits of the PRC nation-person. This perception was ‘matched’ by a highly assertive insistence on the part of mainland-informants that regions not fully integrated in the PRC, which were conceptualised as trouble-making, cut-off, injured or diseased provinces, had to be (re-)incorporated into the nation-body, if need be by force. In terms of frequency, critical responses were eclipsed by a majority (overwhelming in the PRC-sub sample, still dominant in the Hong Kong sub-sample) of those praising the nation-person as a benign and protective mother figure. Lastly, the Japanese L1 sample was highly distinctive in exhibiting the absolute maximum frequency for the (whole) body scenario (68%) in the corpus, with geobody in second place. The pattern as such is familiar from other samples but in the Japanese L1 case still exhibits characteristic nation-specific features. In the first place, the predominance of the body scenario is exceptional, far surpassing, for instance, that of English L1 (44%). This result points to a deeply entrenched tradition of this version of the nation as body metaphor. With reference to Shogimen’s (2008, 2016) comparative studies of political thought in medieval Japan and Europe,

12.3 Scenario Preferences Across L1 Samples

183

this finding can be explained as reflecting a culture steeped in body- nation analogies. Japan’s premodern political thinking was based on an “image of government as an art of daily healthcare and preventive medicine” rather than of radical surgery and illness-extermination as in Western countries (Shogimen 2008: 103). Despite this variation in the illness-cure scenario, body- and health-related conceptualisations were and are still the sources of political thought in Japan. When traditional political philosophy in Japan took over Western conceptualisations from the nineteenth century onwards, the idea of the nation as body was, if anything, reinforced. At the same time, the Japanese version has retained a characteristic focus on a maximally unified, hierarchically ordered nation-body that is beyond reproach.

12.4 Further Perspectives Our overview of L1 samples from across five continents has shown that the nation as body metaphor seems to be universally interpretable and so are its five main scenario interpretation variants. However, there are significant differences in their distribution patterns. These patterns are indicative of community-preferences in (a) using the scenarios more or less frequently and (b) exploiting them for pragmatic effects, such as criticism, irony and humour but also for enthusiastic praise and endorsement of the respective “home nation”. Even if one allows for a relatively wide margin of error due to imbalances in the sample size and a lack of uniformly controlled survey delivery, these contrasts in distribution patterns are strong enough to build hypotheses linking them to culture-specific traditions of conceptualising the nation state and formulating arguments about it. In the case of the English L1 and some European L1 backgrounds, such traditions were outlined as regards their historical evolution in Chap. 2 and their continuing relevance in present-day usage in Chap. 3. For other L1 backgrounds, such links between interpretation preferences and community-specific traditions could only be indicated with reference to topics that are high on the political agendas of the specific countries, e.g. legacies of colonialism, national crises, wars or loss of territories. In addition, long-standing stereotypical symbolisations of nation states, ranging from allegorical personifications (Marianne, Mother Russia, Mother China etc.) to detailed characterisations of allegedly typical national behaviours (fashion, eating/drinking habits, pessimism or ‘warm-hearted’ generosity), are integrated into the scenarios and are commented on. These comments may reaffirm beliefs in one’s own nation’s greatness in the majority of cases, but they can also engage in creative, often ironical and humorous distancing from it. Evidently, the results we have recorded can only be deemed preliminary in view of the sampling issues affecting the quantitative findings. For future research, more analytical depth can be attained by surveying different L1 samples, i.e. by not relying on data from English L2 speakers. Such an extension of the research would necessitate formulating and conducting the survey in diverse L1 languages and entail methodological complications. But it can be expected to yield richer data for culture-related variation. If nation as body scenarios are used and interpreted differently even

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in an English-as-L2 context, culture-specific variation may perhaps be predicted to be even stronger in informants’ L1 texts. Beyond providing evidence for cultural variation in metaphor interpretation in general, the survey demonstrates that the uptake of thenation as body scenarios at the level of individual responses varies between the extremes of reproducing longstanding, perhaps explicitly inculcated clichés on the one hand and creative applications which range from the occasional coining of a new sub-conceptualisation to full-scale extended wordplay and allegory. In our data they even included multi-media conceptualisations such as the sketches we presented in Chaps. 1, 5 and 9. A further source for innovative conceptualisations that deserves investigation are the responses by migrant and/or minority informants that highlight problematic and/or hybrid nationalities by way of blending literally incompatible aspects of body/person scenarios. The interplay between established clichés of nationalism, their critical or ironical application and new scenario-blends that construe unconventional national identities allows us to understand better how the nation-body analogy has been kept alive and adaptable to new contexts for so long.

References Cap, P. (2017). The Language of fear: Communicating threat in public discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Chilton, P., & Lakoff, G. (1995). Foreign policy by metaphor. In C. Schäffner & A. Wenden (Eds.), Language and peace (pp. 37–59). Aldershot: Dartmouth. Kopytowska, M., Grabowski, Ł, & Wo´zniak, J. (2017). Mobilizing against the other: Cyberhate, refugee crisis and proximization. In M. Kopytowska (Ed.), Contemporary discourses of hate and radicalism across space and genres (pp. 57–97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 202–251). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. (1996). Moral politics: What conservatives know that liberals don’t. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G., & Wehling, E. (2016). Your brain’s politics. How the science of mind explains the political divide. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Lovejoy, A. O. (1936). The great chain of being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Musolff, A. (2010). Political metaphor and bodies politic’. In U. Okulska & P. Cap (Eds.), Perspectives in politics and discourse (pp. 23–41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Musolff, A. (2012). Cultural differences in the understanding of the metaphor of the ‘Body Politic’. In S. Kleinke, Z. Kövecses, A. Musolff, & V. Szelid (Eds.), Cognition and culture. The role of metaphor and metonymy (pp. 145–153). Budapest: Eötvös University Press. Musolff, A. (2013). The heart of Europe: Synchronic variation and historical trajectories of a Political Metaphor. In K. Fløttum (Ed.), Speaking of Europe: Approaches to complexity in European political discourse (pp. 135–150). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Musolff, A. (2016). Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios. London: Bloomsbury. Šari´c, L., & Stanojevi´c, M.-M. (Eds.). (2019). Metaphor, nation and discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sharifian, F. (2017a). Cultural linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sharifian, F. (Ed.). (2017b). Cultural linguistics: The state of the art. In Advances in cultural linguistics (pp. 1–28). Singapore: Springer.

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Shogimen, T. (2008). Treating the body politic: The medical metaphor of political rule in late medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan. The Review of Politics, 70(1), 77–104. Shogimen, T. (2016). The pressure of coherence and the diachronic reconfigurations of metaphorical discourse: The case of the body politic metaphor in medieval political texts. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 3(1), 50–69. Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as metaphor. New York: Vintage Books.

Appendix 1

Overview of Completed Relevant Questionnaires and Survey Venues

Countries

Universities

Algeria

Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou, University of Sidi Bel Abbes, University of Mascara, University of Tebessa

95

Austria

Alpen-Adria University Kagenfurt

28

Australia

Monash University

69

Bulgaria

Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridsky”

China (PRP and Hong Kong)

Hangzhou Normal University, Shaanxi Normal University, Beihang University, Beijing; Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Croatia

University of Rijeka

20

France

University of Lyon III, University of Toulon

44

Germany

Universities of Bonn, Heidelberg

244

Greece

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

29

Hungary

Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest, Széchenyi István University, Györ

53

Iraq

University of Basra

Israel

Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Hadassah College, Jerusalem

Completed questionnaires

6 271

4 25

Italy

Universities of Bari, Turin, Verona

Japan

Rikkyo University, Tokyo

139 97

Lithuania

University of Vilnius

49

Netherlands

University of Leiden

13

New Zealand

University of Otago

48

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5

(continued) 187

188

Appendix 1: Overview of Completed Relevant Questionnaires and Survey Venues

(continued) Countries

Universities

Norway

University of Oslo

13

Poland

Łodz University, State University of Applied Sciences in Konin, Jagiellonian University Kraków

25

Pakistan

University of Peshawar

12

Portugal

University of Braga

37

Romania

University of ‘Dunarea de Jos’ University, Galati

47

Russia

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), Moscow; Moscow State Linguistic University

86

Saudi-Arabia

King Saud University, Riyadh

Serbia

University of Belgrade

62

Spain

University of Estremadura, University of La Mancha

37

Turkey

Amasya University

UK

University of East Anglia, University of Birmingham, Aston University

114

Ukraine

National Pedagogic Dragomanov University, Kyiv; National Academy of the National Guard of Ukraine, Kharkiv

54

USA

University of Nebraska, Pennsylvania State University

48

Total

Completed questionnaires

5

76

1850

Appendix 2

Spreadsheet: Scenario Table

(I) Scenarios in L1 (cohorts X-Xn)

No. of Instances per cohort X

Cohort X+1

Cohort … Xn

Sums

body geobody part of body part of ego person

Total

(II) Sub-concepts Body-concepts hand head heart … Health-/Illness-concepts healthy ill cancer … Medicine-concepts doctor operation … Person-concepts father mother (continued) © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5

189

190

Appendix 2: Spreadsheet: Scenario Table

(continued) generous ….

Total

(III) Pragmatic comments Critical Ironical/Sarcastic Humorous Total

Appendix 3

L1 Languages, Gender and Age Group Distribution

L1-Languages

Gender Female

SUM Male

Age group distribution 18–25

26–30

SUM

31–40

40+ 1

Arabic L1a

75

16

91

76

7

7

Bulgarian L1

3

3

6

2

1

3

Chinese L1

202

123

325

319

1

4

91 6

1

325

Croatian L1

17

5

22

21

1

0

0

22

Dutch/Flemish L1

7

5

12

10

1

1

0

12

English L1

105

78

183

160

6

6

11

183

French L1

42

7

49

41

5

2

1

49

German L1

179

50

229

209

17

3

0

229

Greek L1

30

2

32

31

0

1

0

32

Hebrew L1 (Israel)

13

12

25

25

0

0

0

25

Hungarian L1

32

21

53

41

3

3

6

53

Italian L1

119

25

144

135

8

1

0

144

Japanese L1

63

39

102

101

0

0

1

102

Lithuanian L1

42

3

45

44

1

0

0

45

Norwegian L1

3

4

7

1

0

5

1

7

Pashto/Urdu

2

10

12

4

2

5

1

12

Polish L1

17

10

27

19

6

2

0

27

Portuguese L1

28

9

37

37

0

0

0

37

Romanian L1

36

16

52

41

0

5

6

52

Russian L1

77

9

86

78

2

2

4

86

Serbian L1

42

17

59

57

0

2

0

59

Spanish L1

39

15

54

41

11

2

0

54

Turkish L1

56

27

83

78

2

3

0

83

Ukrainian L1

48

7

55

54

1

0

0

55 (continued)

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5

191

192

Appendix 3: L1 Languages, Gender and Age Group Distribution

(continued) L1-Languages Sum Percentage a Kabyle

Gender

SUM

Female

Male

1276

496

72%

28%

Age group distribution

SUM

18–25

26–30

31–40

40+

1772

1608

75

56

33

1772

100%

91%

4%

3%

2%

100%

L1 speakers included (see Chap. 10)

Appendix 4

Scenario Distribution by L1

L1-Languages

Scenario distribution

L1/ Scenarios

body

geobody

Arabic

21

Bulgarian

1

Chinese Croatian

No. of scenarios part of body

part of ego

person

4

15

44

48

132

3

1

1

3

9

67

102

36

34

121

360

7

10

2

1

11

31

Dutch

9

1

1

1

2

14

English

103

59

23

2

45

232

French

12

9

34

8

27

90

German

177

25

19

19

79

319

Greek

4

2

13

2

30

51

Hebrew

17

5

8

2

9

41

Hungarian

40

26

2

5

8

81

Italian

48

41

59

19

64

231

Japanese

86

21

1

3

15

126

Lithuanian

38

11

3

3

14

69

Norwegian

2

1

1

1

6

11

Pashto

7

2

2

2

2

15

Polish

24

4

1

2

4

35

Portuguese

13

4

13

13

10

53

Romanian

38

3

8

4

15

68

Russian

9

12

75

11

44

151

Serbian

53

6

3

1

22

85

Spanish

41

8

4

2

16

71

Turkish

17

9

60

19

29

134 (continued)

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194

Appendix 4: Scenario Distribution by L1

(continued) L1-Languages

Scenario distribution

No. of scenarios

Ukrainian

22

5

32

8

10

77

Sum

856

373

415

207

634

2486

Percentage

34%

15%

17%

8%

26%

100%

Index (a) Names, Idioms and Analytical Concepts

A Adonis, A., 45 Aesop, 18, 20 Africa, 109, 146 Algeria -Algiers, 146 -Tizi-Ozou, 143, 187 Allegory, 184 Anderson, B., 3, 16 Arabic language, 9, 21, 51, 60, 62, 143, 144, 147–151, 155, 157, 181, 182, 191, 193 Arendt, H., 28 Argentine, 100, 102 Aristotle, 5, 15, 16, 18 Asia, 152, 159 Australia -Canberra, 74 -New South Wales, 74 -Tasmania, 74 -Uluru, 74 Austria -Klagenfurt, 79 -Vienna, 85 Averell, W., 19 Avraham, 156

B Becket, T., 22 Belgium -Flanders, 90 Ben Bella, A., 149 Berber language family, 62 Billig, M., 2, 3, 28, 58, 61 Blair, A., 40, 43 Blending, 175, 184

Body politic -hierarchy (within body politic), 47 -interdependence (of parts of body politic), 47 Boniface VIII (Pope), 22 Brexit, 9, 36–47, 177, 178 Britain -Birmingham, 53, 56, 73, 85, 170 -British Empire, 88 -Cambridge, 73 -Dover, 56 -England, 55, 59, 69 -London, 37, 38, 56, 73, 85 -Norwich, 1 -Oxford, 73 -Yorkshire, 73, 74 Brok, E., 44 Brown, G., 40 Bulgaria -Sofia, 187

C Camden, W., 19 Canada, 70, 72 Charles I (King), 24 Chaucer, G., 5 Chilton, P., 40, 42, 177 China -Beijing, 51, 55, 164, 168, 187 -Great Wall, 164 -Guangdong, 164 -Guangzhou, 164, 167 -Hong Kong -umbrella revolution, 165 -Macao, 164

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196 -People’s Republic of China (PRC), 51, 61, 159, 160, 165–167 -Shanghai, 55, 164 -Song of the Seven Sons, 167 -Taiwan, 52, 55, 159, 165, 167 -Tibet, 52, 162, 165 -Wenzhou, 164 Chinese language -Cantonese, 61, 62, 159, 182 -Mandarin, 62, 159, 182 Christianity -Bible, 21 -Christ, 18, 21–23 -Church Fathers, 21 -St. Paul, 18, 22 Christine de Pizan, 15, 21, 22 Cognitive linguistics -Conceptual Metaphor Theory, 3 -domain, 4 -frame, 4 -mental space, 4 -schema, 4 Colonialism, 146, 150, 183 Conceptual history, 115 Context, 4–6, 8, 9, 15, 17, 20, 25, 47, 52–54, 58, 59, 83, 90, 104, 105, 114, 121, 154, 173, 176, 184 Corpus -BODYPOL corpus, 38 -diachronic corpus, 15, 176 -EUROMETA corpus, 36, 37, 40 -synchronic corpus, 177 Croatia -Rijeka, 127, 187 -Zagreb, 128 Cultural linguistics -cultural conceptualisation, 7 -cultural metaphor, 7 -cultural schema, 7 Culture, 3–8, 10, 15, 17, 28, 39, 51, 52, 56, 62, 69, 73, 79, 82, 83, 86, 99, 107, 110, 126, 128, 134, 139, 141, 144, 149, 156, 159, 161, 168, 175, 177, 179, 182, 183. See also culturespecific variation

D D’Alembert, J., 25 Dante, 5 Diderot, D., 25 Duncan Smith, I., 45 Dutch language (incl. Flemish), 60, 191

Index (a) Names, Idioms and Analytical Concepts E Einstein, A., 53 Elizabeth I (Queen), 3 English language -English as L1, 76 -English as L2, 52 -World Englishes, 60 Enlightenment, 17, 25, 26, 28, 177 Essentialism, 175 European Union, 9, 36–47, 82, 83, 95, 140, 177, 178 Europe (geog.), 96, 97

F Fable of the Belly, 18–21, 36, 47, 76, 176, 178 Farage, N., 41, 43 Finno-Ugric language family, 62 Forset, E., 19 Fortescue, J., 15, 22 France -Alsace, 107 -Brittany, 107 -French Revolution, 26, 28 -Marianne, 108, 183 -Occitany, 107 -Paris, 107 -Riviera, 107 Frankenstein (‘s monster), 69 Freeden, M., 28

G Galen, 16 Germany -Baden-Württemberg, 85 -Bavaria, 85 -Berlin, 82, 85 -Bonn, 79, 127, 187 -East G., 85, 86 -Heidelberg, 79, 105, 106, 113, 127, 138, 187 -Hesse, 85 -Mannheim, 85 -West G., 85, 86 Gove, M., 43 Great Chain of Being, 5–7, 15, 19, 20, 27, 35, 147, 177 Greece -Athens, 138, 139, 187 -mother of democracy, 140, 167, 182

Index (a) Names, Idioms and Analytical Concepts H Hayward, J., 19 Head of Government, 35, 101 Head of State, 35, 69, 73, 81, 91, 101, 114, 136, 145, 177 Heart of Europe, 38, 39, 178 Henry VIII (King), 24 Herder, J.G., 25, 26 Hindustani language family, 62 Hippocrates of Kos, 16 Hitler, A., 46 Hobbes, T., 24, 27, 28, 115 Hobsbawm, E., 16, 28, 42 Humoral medicine/(four) Humours, 16, 17 Humour, 16, 27, 28, 35, 90, 95, 180, 182, 183 Hungary -Budapest, 131, 133, 134, 187 -Györ, 131, 133, 187 Hyperbole, 36, 75, 100, 127, 169 I Indo-European, 62, 157 International relations, 36 Iraq, 60, 143–146, 187 Ireland -Gaeltacht, 74 Irony -‘Echoic’ analysis, 59 -‘Pretense’ analysis, 59 -sarcasm, 59 Islam/Muslim community, 147, 157 Israel -Golan, 155 -Jerusalem, 155, 187 Italy -central, 98 -Florence, 98 -Milan, 98 -Mother Italy, 99, 100 -North I, 98 -Rome, 96–98 -South I., 98 -Turin, 98, 187 J James I (King), 24 Japan -Meiji restoration, 171, 172 -Mount Fujiyama, 172 -Tokyo, 159, 170, 172, 187 John of Paris, 22

197 John of Salisbury, 15, 21–23, 26 Johnson, B., 39, 40, 44–46 Johnson, M., 3, 4 Juncker, J.-C., 44

K Kabyle language, 60, 62, 143–145, 147–149, 182, 192 Kantorowicz, E., 15, 18, 21–24 Kövecses, Z., 3, 4, 6

L Lakoff, G., 3–6, 8, 15, 19, 20, 42, 178 Langdon Forhan, K., 21 Lebanon, 143 Leviathan, 24, 25, 28 Lithuania -Kaunas, 137 -Vilnius, 135, 137, 187 -Vytis, 138 Livy, 18 Long arm of the law, 35 Lovejoy, A.O., 5, 6, 19, 176

M Machiavelli, N., 27, 95 Major, J., 38, 39 Marsilius of Padua, 15, 22, 23 Marx, K., 20 May, T., 38, 43, 45–47 Merkel, A., 81, 87 Metaphor. See also Index B -metaphor interpretation, 9, 47, 52, 91, 178, 179, 184 -metaphor scenario. See also Index C -argumentative function of s. (criticism, evaluation, praise), 17, 183 -interpretation scenarios, 9, 52, 183 -narrative function of s, 17 -usage scenarios, 9 -metaphor use, 4, 8, 17, 36, 62 Metonymy, 37, 42. See also Index D Middle Ages/medieval, 5, 6, 8, 17–25, 27, 37, 47, 125, 133, 147, 176, 178, 182 Middle East, 62, 86, 133, 153, 154, 156, 182 Milton, J., 19 Mohammed, 147 Montenegro, 123, 124 Morocco, 143 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 154

198 N Napoleon, 46 Nation -national character, 2, 42, 75, 86–88, 134 -national culture, 3, 175 -nationalism, 105 Nazism, 83, 90 Nederman, C., 15, 21, 22 Neo-Platonism, 6, 27, 147 New Zealand -Auckland, 73 -Dunedin, 73, 74 -Wellington, 73 Nicholas of Cusa, 15, 23 North, T., 19 Norway -Oslo, 90, 91, 188

P Pakistan, 60, 143, 188 Palestine, 156 Palmer, G., 7 Pashto language, 60, 62, 143, 157, 182, 191, 193 Plato, 5, 18 Plutarch, 18, 19 Poland -Cracow, 127 -Konin, 127, 188 -Łodz, 127, 188 Pope, A., 5, 22, 23, 25 Portsmouth, 56 Portugal -Braga, 108, 188 Pragmatics -implicatures, 58 Proverb, 46, 96, 114, 115, 120, 154, 181 Putin, W., 40

R Racism, 6, 26, 82, 110 Rajoy, M., 101 Reformation, 19, 23 Renaissance, 5, 6, 17–20, 24, 26, 35, 37, 47, 176–178 Romania, 105, 188 Rousseau, J.-J., 25 Russia -Moscow, 113, 117, 188 -Mother Russia, 118, 183 -Soviet Union, 138

Index (a) Names, Idioms and Analytical Concepts S Sarcasm. See Irony, 59 Saudi Arabia, 60, 143, 188 Semantics, 3, 8, 9, 15, 17, 58, 114, 117, 132, 136, 144, 150, 151, 155, 175 Semitic language family, 62 Serbia -Belgrade, 122, 125, 188 -Kosovo, 125, 126 -Sumadija, 125 Shakespeare, W. -Coriolanus, 19 -Hamlet, 138 Sharifian, F., 2, 6, 7, 176 Shogimen, T., 15, 21, 22, 27, 73, 171, 178, 182, 183 Sidney, P., 19 Sontag, S., 21, 26, 178 Sovereignty, 9, 28, 38, 42, 46, 47, 165, 169, 177, 178 Spain -Andalucía, 102 -Catalonia, 102 -Madrid, 102 Sperber, D., 59 Starˇcevi´c, A., 128 Survey -sampling method, 61, 183 T Taboo, 59, 60, 68, 70, 74, 76, 77, 82, 84, 89, 96, 101, 124, 149, 163, 169, 179, 182 Thomas Aquinas, 22, 23 Totalitarianism, 26 Turkey -Amasya, 150, 188 -Ankara, 152 Turner, M., 3–6, 15, 19, 20, 153 U Ukraine -Kharkiv, 119, 188 -Kyiv, 119, 121, 188 United Kingdom. See Britain, 37 United States of America/US -Florida, 74 -Midwest, 73, 74 -Nebraska, 74, 106, 188 -New York, 73, 74, 85 -Washington, D.C., 73, 74, 85 Universals/universalism, 2, 4–8, 15, 19, 175, 179

Index (a) Names, Idioms and Analytical Concepts Urdu language, 60, 62, 143, 157, 158, 182, 191

V Variation -culture-specific, 52, 56, 184 -diachronic v., 3, 4 -synchronic, 3 Venizelos, E., 139

W Western cultures, 5, 15, 17

199 Wilson, D., 59 Worldview, 5–9, 24, 176 World War I, 133 World War II, 83, 86 Wyclif, J., 23

X Xenophobia, 88, 105

Y Yiduo, W., 167 You cannot have your cake and eat it, 46

Index (b) Metaphors Source Concepts

A ACTIVITY OF NATION/STATE AS PERSON -BREATHING, 90, 139, 148 -EATING, 46, 90 -GOING FORWARD, 57, 87, 136 -HUGGING, 110 -KISSING, 108 -MARRIAGE -DIVORCE, 42, 43 -EURO-COUPLE, 43 -MENAGE A TROIS, 43 -OPENING ARMS, 84, 86, 128 -SMILING, 96, 136 -TURNING ONE’S BACK, 110 ANATOMY OF NATION/STATE AS BODY -ABDOMEN, 124 -ADRENALINE, 74 -ANKLE, 94 -ANUS/ASS/ASSHOLE, 68, 70 -AORTA, 156 -APPENDIX, 124 -ARMPIT, 68 -ARM(S), 68, 70, 80–82, 94, 95, 114, 120, 123–125, 132, 136, 137, 145, 151–153, 162, 171, 172 -ARTERIES, 68, 70 -BACK, 124 -BACKBONE/SPINE, 124, 152 -BACKSIDE/BUTT/BOTTOM, 38, 58, 59, 72, 74, 76, 77, 97, 98, 101, 102 -BELLY BUTTON, 96 -BELLY/STOMACH, 18 -BIG GUY/GIANT/HULK/SUPERMAN, 39, 57, 149

-BLOOD, 68, 70, 94, 114, 120, 123, 132, 133, 136, 139, 145, 147, 152, 153, 161, 162, 171 -BONES, 162, 171, 172 -BOWELS, 95 -BRAIN, 68–70, 80, 81, 94, 114, 120, 123, 124, 132, 133, 136, 139, 145, 146, 152, 161, 171, 172 -CALF, 94 -CARTILAGE, 145 -CELL, 162 -CHEEK, 108 -CHEST, 109, 164 -COLON, 125 -DIGESTIVE SYSTEM, 155 -DNA, 17 -EAR(S), 120, 123, 124 -EXCREMENT, 71 -EYE(S), 55, 70, 94, 120, 123, 132, 152, 172 -FACE, 70, 120, 136, 146, 152, 157, 170–172 -FINGERNAIL(S), 121 -FINGER(S), 91, 96, 107, 120, 151, 152 -FIST, 82, 124, 152, 162 -FOOT/FEET, 152 -FRECKLES, 96 -FRONT OF BODY, 85 -GALL BLADDER, 127 -GENES, 38 -GENITALS, 102 -GUT-BACTERIA, 105 -GUTS, 83 -HAIR, 69, 83, 152, 153 -HAND(S), 68–70, 80–82, 94, 95, 114, 120, 121, 123, 132, 136, 137, 145, 146, 152, 161, 162, 172

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202 -HEAD, 35, 51, 55, 68–70, 72, 80, 81, 94, 120, 123, 124, 132, 133, 136, 137, 145, 146, 151, 152, 161, 170–172 -HEART, HEARTBEAT, 35, 51, 68–70, 80, 81, 94, 95, 114, 120, 123, 124, 132, 133, 136, 139, 145, 146, 152, 153, 161, 162, 170, 172 -HEEL, 94 -HORMONES, 75, 91 -IMMUNE SYSTEM, 82, 162 -INTUGEMENTARY SYSTEM, 155 -JOINT, 152 -KNEE, 94, 97, 98, 126 -LEG (BODY), 98 -LIMB, 52, 68, 70, 80 -LIPS, 124 -LIVER, 82, 101, 147 -LUNG(S), 68, 70, 125, 146, 152, 153 -METABOLISM, 75 -MOUTH/ORAL CAVITY, 55, 120, 123, 124, 127, 139, 145 -MUSCLES/MUSCULAR SYSTEM, 155, 161 -MUSTACHE, 108 -NECK, 114, 124, 136, 152 -NETHER REGIONS, 74 -NERVOUS SYSTEM, 155 -NOSE, 55 -OESOPHAGUS, 56, 121 -ORGAN, 35, 55, 68, 70, 80, 82, 95, 114, 120, 121, 123, 152, 153, 161, 171 -ORGANISM, 115 -PENIS, 82 -PIMPLE, 127, 181 -PROTEINS, 146 -PUSTULE, 37 -RIBS, 124 -SENSE, 114, 137, 161, 175 -SKELETON, 145, 152 -SKIN, 96, 146, 155, 161 -SMALL, 114, 143 -SPLEEN, 117 -STRONG/STRENGTH, 37, 120 -THIGH, 98 -THUMB, 104 -TOE, TOENAIL, 37 -TONGUE, 98 -TOOTH/TEETH, 127, 181 -TORSO, 69, 101, 124 -TRUNK, 152, 153 -TUMOR, 120 -VEIN(S), 68, 70, 94 -WOMB, 95, 98, 139

Index (b) Metaphors Source Concepts C CHARACTER TRAITS OF NATION/STATE AS PERSON -BIPOLAR, 141 - BITCHINESS, 169 -BRAVE/FIGHTING SPIRIT, 122, 126, 128, 134 -CHEERFULNESS, 102 -CREDIBILITY, 129 -DIGNITY, 168 -EGOCENTRIC, 141 -EMOTIONAL, 77, 89, 99, 122, 128, 154 -FRIENDLY/GENEROUS/GENTLE/KIND, 75, 82, 84, 86, 87, 118, 126, 128, 141, 162, 169, 179 -HARD-WORKING/INDUSTRIOUS, 104, 126, 154 -HEADSTRONG, 75 -IMMATURE, 141 -LOW SELF-ESTEEM, 138 -MEDIOCRE, 90 -MESSY, 75 -MOUTHY, 75 -NAÏVE, 138 -PESSIMISTIC, 75, 149 -POLITE, 75, 76 -PROTECTIVE, 87, 140, 167, 182 -PROUD, 88, 104, 135 -RATIONAL, 77 -RESPONSIBLE, 39, 114, 132 -RUDE, 118, 162, 169 -SENSE OF GUILT, 88 -SOPHISTICATED, 141 -SPLIT PERSONALITY, 126 -UNTRUSTWORTHY, 126 -WELCOMING/HOSPITALITY (TOWARDS STRANGERS/IMMIGRANTS), 82, 102, 140 H HEALTH OF THE NATION/STATE AS BODY -FITNESS, 37 -IMMUNE, 37, 82, 155, 162 -VITALITY, 37, 70 I ILLNESSES OF THE NATION/STATE AS BODY -ACNE, 85 -AILMENT, 37, 70 -ALLERGY, 37

Index (b) Metaphors Source Concepts -ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE, 154 -BACTERIA, 135 -BLINDNESS, 120, 162 -BLOCKED ARTERY, 38 -BLOOD CLOT, 38 -BOIL, 37 -CANCER, 70, 74, 82, 95, 120, 162 -CIRRHOSIS, 37 -COLLAPSE, 41 -COMA, 37, 41 -CONVULSIONS, 40 -CRIPPLE/CRIPPLES, 105, 125, 153, 165 -CUT, 26 -CYANIDE, 40 -DEAFNESS, 162 -DISABLED, 156 -FAT/OBESE, 133, 162 -FEVER, 37, 55, 147 -FRACTURE, 37, 40, 146 -GANGRENOUS, 134 -HEADACHE, 125 -INFARCT, 38 -INFECTION, 41, 70, 74, 82, 83, 133 -INJURY/WOUND, 51, 82, 83 -LIMPING, 104 -MICROBES, 157 -MUTILATED, 133, 134 -NEUROSIS, 37, 38 -PAIN, 37, 70, 135 -PARALYSIS, 37, 41, 82, 120 -PARASITE, 37, 162 -PATHOLOGY, 40 -PATIENT, 21, 27, 37, 95, 148, 162 -PIMPLE, 127 -POISON, 27, 28, 37, 40, 157 -PUSTULE, 37 -ROTTEN/ROTTING, 37, 38 -SCAR(S), 70, 82, 83 -SCHIZOPHRENIA, 156 -SCLEROSIS, 37 -SICK, 37, 70, 162 -SPASM, 37 -SYNDROME, 38 -TORN, 132, 133 -TRUNCATED, 133, 134 -VIRUS, 38, 156 -WEAKNESS, 37, 162 -WRINKLES, 74 L LIFE CYCLE OF THE NATION/STATE AS BODY

203 -ADOLESCENCE, 75 -AGEING/OLD, 71, 75 -BABY, 37 -BEING KILLED, 171 -BIRTH, 37, 134 -CHILD, 91 -COFFIN, 41 -CORPSE, 37 -DEATH, 37, 39, 41, 120, 158 -DECLINE, 158 -DECOMPOSE, 138 -DECREPITUDE, 41 -GROWTH/REGROWTH, 158 -MATURITY, 158 -STRENGTH, 24, 37, 39, 99, 118, 128 -SUICIDE, 37, 41 -YOUNG, 75, 137

M MEDICINE AS HEALING POWER OF ANCESTOR BEINGS, 8

S SOUL OF NATION/STATE, 74, 116, 122, 134, 145, 157, 168, 173 STATUS OF NATION/STATE AS PERSON -ACTOR, 57 -BROTHER, 75, 149 -BUSINESS LEADER, 168 -CAPTAIN, 168 -CONVICT, 105 -DAUGHTER, 168 -ENGINEER, 168 -FATHER, 87, 102, 148, 154, 167, 168 -GIRL, 122, 128 -GODDESS, 140, 167 -GRANDFATHER, 167 -GRANDMOTHER, 118 -LADY, 140, 149, 167, 168 -LAWYER, 168 -MAN, 141, 149 -MOTHER, 57, 87, 99, 100, 102, 118, 122, 126, 137, 140, 141, 148, 149, 154, 166–169 -QUEEN, 51 -SOLDIER/KNIGHT, 138, 168 -TEACHER/GUARDIAN, 168 -TEENAGER, 57 -WOMAN, 128, 137, 138, 140, 148, 149

204 T THERAPY/CURE OF THE NATION/STATE AS BODY -AMPUTATION, 26, 27, 35, 37, 41, 134, 176 -ANAESTHETIC, 37 -BYPASS, 37, 38, 178 -CLONE, 37, 38 -DOCTOR/HEALER/PHYSICIAN, 26, 27, 37, 82, 95 -DRUG, 37, 40 -HEALER, 25–27, 95

Index (b) Metaphors Source Concepts -IMMUNOSUPPRESSANT, 37, 38, 40, 178 -MEDICINE, 133 -OPERATION, 37, 145 -ORGAN DONOR, 126 -PANDEMIC, 38 -PILL, 37, 162 -ROOT CANAL TREATMENT, 38 -STERILE, 37 -STEROIDS, 37, 38 -SURGERY, 27, 35, 37, 40, 41, 178, 183 -TRANSPLANT, 38, 40, 70 -X-RAY, 37, 38

Index (c) Metaphor Scenarios

I ILLNESS-CURE, 21, 29, 35, 37, 38, 40–42, 176, 178, 183

N NATION AS BODY PART, 58, 60, 71, 72, 83, 84, 89, 96, 107, 115, 121, 125, 134, 137, 139, 144, 146, 151, 160, 163, 170, 178 NATION AS GEOBODY, 85, 115, 121, 125, 132, 136, 139, 144, 151, 164 NATION AS PART OF EGO, 57, 71, 73, 76, 83, 84, 89, 96, 115, 121, 125, 134, 137, 140, 147, 151, 163, 170, 172

NATION AS PERSON, 42, 46, 75, 76, 84, 86, 99, 117, 122, 126, 137, 148, 153, 155, 166, 173, 177, 178 NATION AS (WHOLE) BODY, 2, 3, 9, 15– 17, 25, 36, 37, 42, 51–53, 58, 60, 62, 67, 68, 71, 76, 80, 83, 84, 89, 91, 94, 95, 102, 109, 110, 114, 120, 123, 136, 139, 151, 156, 157, 159, 160, 164, 170, 173, 176–179, 181–184

P POLITICS AS ENSLAVEMENT LIBERATION, 45–47 POLITICS AS WAR, 45–47

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Musolff, National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic, Cultural Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8740-5

OR

205

Index (d) Metonymies

F FIST FOR BRAVE PERSON, 82, 124, 134

H HEAD/BRAIN FOR REASON, 69, 74, 81, 94, 98, 154 HEART FOR EMOTION/CHARACTER, 69–71, 74, 81, 96, 98, 100, 102, 114, 116, 118, 128, 137, 150, 152, 154, 181, 182

P PLACE/REGION FOR POLITICAL INSTITUTION. See also scenario: NATION AS GEOBODY, 52, 55, 56, 73, 74, 85, 86, 98, 107, 125, 146, 152, 153, 156, 164–166, 172

R RULER FOR NATION, 20, 21, 25, 27, 35, 42

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