THE ROLE OF GESTURES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIMODAL METAPHORS: analysis of a political-electoral debate

This paper intends to analyze the role of gestures in the construction of multimodal metaphors in the "political-electoral debate" genre. Theoretically, we considered that metaphoric gestures can be analyzed as expressions of conceptual metaphors. We mainly approached and illustrated the importance of spatial orientation in the emergence of the metaphors in the political discourse. Methodologically, we have selected four sequences of a second-tour debate. Starting from the operational concept of gesture excursion, we specifically observed the multimodal metaphoricity in speech and gesture compounds. After analyzing the metaphors found in the debate sequences, we established a continuumbetween metaphors of a conventional nature and those of a new nature. We also tried to establish a comparative relation between the metaphors used by the two candidates, Dilma Rousseff (from the Labor Party) and José Serra (from the Social Democratic Party).

本研究旨在剖析手势在「政治选举辩论」这一文类的多模态隐喻（multimodal metaphor）构建中所发挥的作用。理论层面，本研究提出，隐喻性手势可被视作概念隐喻（conceptual metaphor）的具象表达，重点探讨并阐释了空间取向在政治话语隐喻生成过程中的重要意义。方法层面，本研究选取了第二轮竞选辩论的四个语段作为分析样本，以「手势游走」（gesture excursion）这一操作性概念为切入点，重点考察了言语与手势复合结构中的多模态隐喻性（multimodal metaphoricity）。在对辩论语段中的隐喻完成分析后，本研究构建了常规性隐喻与新颖性隐喻之间的连续统（continuum）；此外还尝试对比分析两位候选人——劳工党（Labor Party）迪尔玛·罗塞夫（Dilma Rousseff）与社会民主党（Social Democratic Party）若泽·塞拉（José Serra）——所使用的隐喻。