DOI 10.1515/text-2013-0011 Text&Talk 2013; 33(2): 233 – 258 Paula Pérez-Sobrino Personiication and ideology in the American media coverage of the Iranian Green Revolution* Abstract: Research on metaphor has consistently proven that metaphors always involve a degree of perspectivation, where certain features are highlighted while others remain obscured (Lakof and Johnson 1980: 153). The awareness of this partial mapping is crucial for the construction and reproduction of ideology. Spe- ciically, this study claims that the nation is a person metaphor plays a crucial role in the mass media coverage of conlicts. Through a thorough analysis of a corpus of 17 articles from The New York Times reporting on the Iranian Green Rev- olution (June 2009), this paper intends to unravel the extent to which both tropes allow the inclusion of the Iranian protesters into the Western “Friendly Us” while rejecting the Iranian government as an “Evil Them.” This work is theoretically framed within critical metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black 2004), a fruitful inter- section between critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk 2001) and conceptual meta- phor theory (Lakof and Johnson 1980). The synthesis of the results shows evi- dence of the potentiality of metaphor as an essential resource in the construction and reproduction of ideological discourses in the news. Keywords: conlict reporting; Iranian Green Revolution; mass media; metaphor; ideology; critical metaphor analysis. Paula Pérez-Sobrino: Department of Modern Philologies, University of La Rioja, c/ San José de Calasanz 33, 26004, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain. E-mail: paula.perezs@unirioja.es * I would like to dedicate this work to Mario Serrano Losada for his enduring patience and con- stant support over the elaboration of this paper. This paper was written in association with the Center for Research in the Applications of Language (CRAL), University of La Rioja (Spain), with inancial support from Project No. FFI2010-17610, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain. Authenticated | paula.perezs@unirioja.es author's copy Download Date | 11/6/13 9:09 AM