Election Metaphor and SELF/THE OTHER Conceptualization in Iran Newspapers' Headlines: A Critical Metaphor Analysis

Critical Metaphor Theory is an interdisciplinary approach in linguistic studies beginning with Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and introduced as a theory by Chartris-Black (2004). This research is to find the quality of election conceptualizations in Iran's Political Newspapers Headlines. Then, it attempts to investigate how the two dominant political ideologies of reformism and fundamentalism function to legitimate the self and illegitimate the other candidates and ideology. To do so, Chilton's (2004) Deictic Dimension Model was used. The data were extracted from the election headlines of 12 political newspapers during a two-month period of 2017 presidential election. Having analyzed the data, the researcher found that there are three dominant election metaphors, namely: Election is a journey, Election is a battle, and Election is a sport competition in both reformist and fundamentalist' newspapers' headlines. The result of this study is significant in that it was found that THE SELF is conceptualized as now, here, and good, near the deictic center, though THE OTHER is spatially and temporally far from deictic center and its values. This paper shows that political structures and processes like SELF/ THE OTHER opposition obviously influence metaphorical conceptualizations.