The Metaphors of Boris Johnson

Abstract

As a journalist, Boris Johnson is an inveterate metaphor addict, and, while even fellow politicians find him untrustworthy and duplicitous, some of those who read his articles are addicted to their mixture of humour, moral reasoning and linguistic originality, as well as to moral intuitions that correspond with their own values. I interpret his metaphors in terms of simulated embodiment: his journalistic metaphors are framed by concepts of physical constraint and release from constraint and an allegory of unjust entrapment. His political metaphors are framed by typical Leave frames such as ‘Patriotism and the Nation’ and ‘War and Invasion’ as well as the nation-as-body and the nation-as-family frames that I explore in the next chapter. As a journalist, moral reasoning is often replaced by moral intuition as when he called the EU ‘playground bullies’, or made analogies between the European Union, Hitler and Napoleon. The moral reasoning behind viewing Britain as a defeated colony hardly stands up to analysis but it is attention grabbing and its moral indignation is emotionally appealing and intuitive, at least for some of his followers. The force of his metaphors derives from moral intuitions and he employs the full range of Haidt’s moral foundations. The basis for his invective was in embodied simulation: he would identify the topics that a ‘hard Brexit’ supporter might, based on their moral intuitions, feel frustrated about—Brussels diktats etc.—then verbally and physically re-enact the introspective states that he had acquired during experience of occasions when he had personally felt frustrated. By simulating the experience of his readers he was able to reach an embodied state or moral intuition that could create visceral allegory.