Cognitive Metaphor in Symbolic Convergence for Political Action

Joseph F. Delgado, Ph.D., J.D. Auckland, NZ: Besús&Abadi, 2024.
How do political orators create rhetorical communities in which fantasy dramas of the past and the present combine into proposals for action in the future? How does a contemporary political leader lead the people to construct a new symbolic reality? This book redefines the concept of metaphor as it applies to politics and social movements. It illustrates the application of Delgado’s cognitive-transfer model to analyze political communication. The model innovatively combines George Lakoff’s approach to conceptual metaphor and Ernest Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory to provide a holistic approach to rhetorical analysis, including the formation of rhetorical communities such as those of penal reform, LGBTQ+ rights, the Black Lives Matter movement and Trumpism’s MAGA fantasy themes. Delgado applies the model to the political rhetoric of Puerto Rico’s charismatic and transformative leader Luis Muñoz Marín between 1948 and 1952, when he successfully used metaphor in chained-out fantasy themes to change attitudes toward the island’s social and economic future. In the process he also connects the use of metaphor, to reveal and conceal social reality, in the rhetoric of movements on the left and on the right, as well as of governments such as Cuba, Puerto Rico and the United States.