Examining Metaphors in Biopolitical Discourse

This essay argues that common metaphors and metaphoric phrases used in biopolitical discourse limit how meanings are constructed by framing messages narrowly: so much so, that alternate readings are delimited, resulting in less opportunity for cognitive scrutiny of such messages. We moor our discussion of metaphors in cognitive linguistics, building on three decades of research by scholars including Sam Glucksberg (2008), George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980, 1999), and Ray Gibbs, Jr. (2006, 2008), demonstrating how research in framing effects bolsters our claims of limited entailments resulting from message construction. By situating our discussion of framing in biopolitics we make a case that metaphors including Frankenfood, designer baby, vegetative state and death tax address how life and death are "managed" in discourse (Foucault 1980). In this essay we demonstrate ways in which the framing of some metaphors in social discourse slip under readers' and viewers' cognitive radars, and thus become "under-the-radar metaphors."