Changing socio-cognitive frames through anti-genderviolence metaphors in Spain: a multimodal metaphor analysis

Abstract

Violence against women is one of 4th Wave Feminism’s main worries. Feminist journalists and discourse analysts insist that, when addressing gender violence, a new discourse of solidarity and hope, rather than the traditional one of danger and threat, needs to be deployed; and this new discourse seems to be already permeating institutional anti-gender violence campaigns. Drawing on critical and socio-cognitive approaches to discourse, this paper focuses on how the struggle against gender violence is conceptualized by Spanish Institutions as represented in posters for November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) from 2005 to 2022. More specifically, we use the concepts of (multimodal) metaphorical creativity, metaphor scenario and metaphorical polarization to analyze how different scenarios or narratives are created in the posters under study. Preliminary results show how: (i) the use of metaphorical strategies increases throughout the 20 years studied; (ii) there is a shift in the target recipients of the texts, gradually moving from women to society in general, including men; (iii) the metaphor scenarios identified focus mainly on action, exhorting women to escape and fight gender violence, but also society to get involved, while the danger scenario is decreasing. Results thus show that the new social and cognitive frames related to gender violence developing within the Spanish society, in which women are conceptualized as active citizens and not submissive victims, are being reflected by institutions as well.

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Original in English