Metaphorical framing of sad and happy narratives in Jordanian Arabic: A cognitive-discursive perspective

This study was motivated by the initial observations of Jordanian people’s distinct use of live (novel) and dead (conventional) linguistic metaphors when they narrate their different sad and happy experiences in natural contexts in Jordan. While there has been sufficient research into metaphor from a cognitive-discursive perspective, there has been a lack of metaphor research that links cognitive analysis with practice. The present study aims to examine if live and dead metaphors correlate with speaker’s types of experiences and find their practical implications. In this study, participants were selected using the convenience sampling strategy. The collected metaphorical expressions from participants went through four analysis stages: transcription, manual identification of metaphorical expressions, inductive coding and interpretation. The present study uses discourse analysis to enrich the practice approach (e.g., effective (in)formal communication). This paper found that people narrating their sad experiences rely on live metaphors more than dead metaphors. This can be attributed to two reasons. Live metaphors serve as rhetorical devices that can attract the addressee’s attention and facilitate articulating sensitive issues more effectively than conventional or dead metaphors. This study thus suggests that live metaphors have a more effective role than dead metaphors in various modes of professional communication such as psychological counselling, politics and debates. This distinction, as revealed by the data analysis, can bear important implications that are worth considering in various fields. Thus, this study recommends communication and rhetoric researchers to investigate how live metaphors can strategically be employed in such modes of communication in various cultures.