Distinguished researchers from around the world examine the interplay between gender and metaphor in political language in Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, and Singapore. They draw on a wide variety of corpus data to determine to what extent metaphors used by women in political power differ with, or remain the same as that of men. They also examine what effect metaphor use has on women's power in the political arena. This wide-ranging collection of language-based studies will interest students and researchers in discourse analysis, political communication, gender studies, journalism, and media studies.
"The importance of this book can be seen in the way that it brings together a focus on language (and conceptual metaphors in particular) and politics and applies feminist research questions and methodologies in thinking through this relationship. Language is a tool involved in knowledge production and thus political action, thus it should be analyzed cautiously which is precisely what the contributors of this book manage to do." - International Feminist Journal of Politics
ABOUT ME
Professor, Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Multi-cultural leadership experience at 4 universities in Taiwan & Hong Kong
Dept Head at HKBU for 7 years - responsible for hiring, tenure, promotion
Director of HKBU's Int'l Writers' Workshop for 5 years
Chair, Department Research Committee, PolyU - 6 years
Over 70 journal articles & book chapters in linguistics & metaphor studies
Over US$1.6 million in research funding
Panel Member, Hong Kong Research Grants Council Psychology and Linguistics
Supervised/co-supervised 11 Ph.D. students and 3 post-doctoral fellows, ten of whom now hold full-time faculty positions
Fluent in Mandarin Chinese
ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP
I served as the Chair of the Executive Board of the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor, a registered UK charity (’18-’22). I was elected to the Hong Kong Academy of Humanities in 2015 and served as Vice-President (’17-’18) and President (’18-’19). I am also an International Advisory Board member for the Metaphor Lab Amsterdam (’15-present). I served as a Board Member for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (’08-’21). I have delivered invited talks and keynote addresses in universities in the US, Italy, Taiwan, China, Singapore, the Netherlands, Japan. I gave a plenary address at the 15th Conference on Researching and Applying Metaphor which was organized by the University of Bialystok, Poland in 2022.
RESEARCH PROFILE
My recent research has focused on corpora-based analyses, with a particular emphasis on examining the lexical choices made and the conceptual metaphors used by speakers from different groups. This area of research contributes to understanding how these linguistic choices reflect a speaker’s worldview and their associated strategies to influence others to their points of view.
In addition to these corpora-based analyses, I also run experiments using web-based systems to ascertain participants’ judgments about carefully constructed texts in order to better model how the conceptual metaphors used in those texts may influence reasoning.
FAQ
WHERE CAN I FIND YOUR ARTICLES?
You can go to my webpage on ResearchGate or my PolyU Scholars page. Additional information about recent publications can be found on my SCOPUS page as well as on my ORCID page.
ARE YOU TAKING ON PHD STUDENTS?
No, my lab is full! But check out other great researchers at our department website and be sure to look into the fellowship opportunities at HK PolyU!
WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE ACADEMIC SUBSTACK WRITERS?
I am so glad you asked! I have two: Heather Cox Anderson, who brings a historical perspective to current US political news, and Mirya Holman, who writes humorous posts about succeeding in academia. Both are free!
