Metaphors We Drill By? (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,1, Technical University of Chemnitz, language: English, abstract: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill has caused an ecological disaster of unknown magnitude. In this respect, the institutions involved in this incident did not have a good standing in public. As the major party responsible for the accident, BP has been criticized heavily by the people and the government. The White House, although not directly responsible, is also held accountable for the disaster by many folks. These two organizations have had to engage in an uphill battle against the media and especially the public. Both have made attempts to ease the tensions and to confront the criticism put forward by the American people as well as the global community. BP and the White House have made use of speeches and remarks to establish a connection between them and the people. In these speeches, officials from BP and the President of the United States, respectively, have made it their goal to inform the public about the latest happenings concerning the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and their response efforts. Every event of such magnitude is an opportunity for certain parties involved to present themselves from their best side, and is therefore exploited accordingly. In this respect, the speeches serve as linguistic tools to communicate certain images that are intended to be conveyed by their speakers.
With this in mind, this paper will analyze the speeches published by BP and the Obama Administration, respectively. The ultimate goal is to find out what metaphors are used in the speeches and what images are conveyed through their use. It was suggested that both parties have specific agendas that could be uncovered by looking at the use of specific metaphors. What can these metaphors and their conveyed images tell the hearer about these agendas? Are there certain agendas that the respective parties want to push at all? All of these questions mark the essence of this paper. First, in order to understand the metaphor per se, several theories are presented, all with their individual approaches to metaphors. In this section, the Literature Review chapter, the questions of what a metaphor does, how it does it and its function are answered according to their respective interpretations. Second, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill will be looked at in more detail in the Background chapter. Third, the methodological setup will be explained. The results of the analysis and their discussion, and interpretation can be found in chapters 5 and 6, respectively.