Legitimation by metaphor: Figurative uses of language in academic discourse in favour and against EU policies

Abstract

Ever since its birth, the European Union has resorted to a wide array of symbolic concepts in order to make itself acceptable to its members (Abélès 1996, Chilton & Ilyin 1993). However, over the last years the EU has been under serious criticism for what has been described as a “democratic deficit”, which has given rise to an intense controversy at various levels (in the media, or in academic circles) about whether its structure and organization respond to what is demanded from democratic states. In this argumentation, the “weapons” used by both sides appeal not only to reason, but also to affective factors, and for this latter purpose a whole array of imagery has been developed by both sides in an attempt to win an academic argument which seem ever more present nowadays. Criticism of the EU structures resorts to images like “democratic deficit” (Moravcsik 2008) or “integration has costs as well as benefits” (THE EU IS A COMPANY WITH MONETARY VALUE), which are given physical existence when the “growth” of such deficit is mentioned, or it is said that the “European regulations are often out of proportion to the benefits” (ABSTRACT IDEAS ARE PHYSICAL OBJECTS WITH PHYSICAL DIMENSIONS) , or say that political integration is pursued “under the guise of economic integration” (ABSTRACT IDEAS ARE CLOTHING), which is why “doubts emerge” (TO APPEAR IS TO COME TO THE SURFACE). This paper analyzes codeswitching (see Auer 1998) among Spanish YouTubers specializing in fashion, as well as the lexical, discursive and pragmatic influences of English in the expert discourse of female fashion YouTubers. Our hypothesis is that the English lexis and structures used by women fashion YouTubers exceed mere borrowing and become an almost “normal” metapragmatic instrument close to intersentential and intrasentential code-switching. Through a qualitative analysis of a selection of messages from the ten most famous Spanish fashion YouTubers, we aim to show how English and Spanish are used by expert speakers to attract lay internet audiences, especially through English-Spanish switches or alternations as well as Anglicized lexis, word-formation mechanisms, discourse and /or pragmatic markers and any other device which may be typical of this specific jargon (Balteiro & Campos 2012; and Balteiro 2014). For their part, EU supporters also view abstract concepts like tangible objects with physical properties, as in “measure the state of EU democracy along these dimensions” or “shape voting decisions and fundamental political alignments”, or compare the EU to a human being and the EU’s limitations to clothing, as in “the EU acts under the procedural straightjacket of extreme transparency”. In our study, drawing from an ad hoc sample of papers by political scientists on both sides of the arena, we shall analyse the metaphorical imagery used in the academic discourse of political science within the debate on the legitimacy of the European Union, with particular focus on the way negative metaphors are “deconstructed” (another metaphor in itself) by EU supporters. It is our belief that this analysis will shed light on both the language of political science used by academics in scholarly debates and, in general, on the use of metaphor in academic discourse.