Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority

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This detailed study of fire metaphors provides a deep understanding of the purposeful work of metaphor in discourse. It analyses how and why fire metaphors are used in discourses of awe (mythology and religion) and authority (political speeches and media reports). Fire serves as a productive and salient lexical field for metaphors that seek to create awe and impose authority. These metaphors offer a rich linguistic and conceptual resource for authors of mythologies, theologies, literature, speeches and journalism, and provide insight into the rich interplay of thought, language and culture. This book explores the purpose of fire metaphors in genres ranging from the Norse sagas to religious texts, from Shakespeare to British and American political speeches. Ultimately it arrives at an understanding of the rhetorical work that metaphor accomplishes in communicating evaluations and ideologies.

Reviews

The book is successful both as an analysis of metaphor and an introduction to each of the text types it discusses. A broad range of linguists, religious studies scholars, theologians, and political scientists will find something useful within it, and the ability to draw them together in one text is especially admirable. * CADAAD *
[It is] a substantial, relevant and important contribution, much like the authors previous works. There can be no reservation in recommending it. * Discourse & Communication *
Impressively detailed ... there is little doubt as to the contribution this monograph makes to the field: not only does it enhance our understanding of how we conceptualise fire ... but also proves how the intricacies of metaphoric thinking have and will continue to shape some of the most crucial aspects of the world in which we live. * Metaphor and the Social World *
The pheonomenon of fire has fascinated humans from the very beginnings of our history. In this highly accessible book, Jonathan Charteris-Black spells out the reasons why this is the case. Through doing a detailed cognitive linguistic analysis, he shows the metaphor-based symbolic meanings of fire in many of its uses in mythology, culture, religion, and current politics. A superb achievement - with wide-ranging implications for understanding how language, culture, and mind work together. -- Zoltn Kvecses, Professor of Linguistics, Etvs Lornd University, Hungary
Jonathan Charteris-Black explores fire-metaphors across space and time, but argues an ambitious thesis. Fire is not simply a metaphor, but rather a transformative force from which metaphor itself arises as a linguistic universal. This book is rigorous and challenging. -- Terrell Carver, Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol, UK

Author Bio

Jonathan Charteris-Black is Professor of Linguistics at University of West of England, UK.