This
paper investigates the mechanism of stylistics in European newspaper articles,
headlines and magazines by focusing on instances of public scandals with regard
to economy, law and politics. We will analyze the way in which the cognitive
processes of metaphor and metonymy constitute the vehicle of persuasion by
shaping public opinion and highlighting specific events. In particular, we will
attempt to support the view that metaphor and metonymy -when used in news- serve
not only as the media of communication but also affect public thought and simultaneously
construct ideology. These cognitive processes act as the facilitators of
conceptualization and comprehension of news events since they appeal
immediately to the readership’s mental apparatus, irrespective of national,
cultural and social characteristics, and educational background.
Furthermore, a cognitive analysis of media language
may imply that metaphor and metonymy mediate the gist of the current scandal by
communicating its message to the target readership. More precisely, we will try
to propose that such kind of mediation occurs when these two cognitive
processes are used in order to render a public scandal accessible to a wider
audience. Hence, we shall claim that their ubiquitous character narrows down
the conceptual distance of the sheer event by facilitating its conceptualization,
internalization and comprehension by the reader.
For instance, in the case of “the Stonehouse Scandal”
the metonymy “cash for honours” (The
Daily Telegraph, March 2010) triggers the issues of morality and ethics by
parallelizing and further identifying “honours” to “cash”. The metonymy degrades
the positive connotations of the notion “honours”, which happens to be
culturally entrenched to the British value system, by reflecting negative connotations
through its association and identification with “cash” and further urges the
reader to consider the possibility of equating something moral to something
material and maybe of a less ethical value. Consequently, the mechanism of
stylistics on the basis of metaphor and metonymy infiltrates the public scandal
by orienting audience’s attention to specific linguistic elements, which are
thematically related with the issues of politics, law and economy and shape ideology.
