Conceptual Metaphors Based on Binary Value in Political Speech: Oppositional Metaphor

Though conceptual metaphor theory works well with most metaphorical linguistic expressions found in ordinary language, it is not enough to explain all the metaphorical linguistic expressions, especially in political language, with the existing three types of conceptual metaphor. For the solution of this matter, 'oppositional metaphor' which is another type of conceptual metaphor based on binary value is proposed in this paper. The purpose of this study is to show how these oppositional metaphors are applied to political speech and find out what their characteristics are. From the analysis of the data, we can find that: First, the oppositional metaphors have their default meaning between the two opposite concepts. Second, one of the two opposite source concepts works to understand a single metaphorical expression but we unconsciously recall the other opposite concept as well, and therefore oppositional metaphor makes a completed image-schema. Third, the positive or negative value of its image-schema is not arbitrary.