METAPHOR, PARADOX AND AMBIGUITY. DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES
METAPHOR, PARADOX AND AMBIGUITY. DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES

Summary/Abstract: The paper represents an advocacy for refining the speaker’s discursive strategies, in order to apprehensively open (in a gesture of ‘semiotic’ decency) the Romanian imaginary dowry. Making appropriate, natural, choices, avoiding arrogance or vulgar ironies are the challenges to be undertaken in the current political discourse. I believe the analysis of certain metaphoric processes, symmetries and semantic paradoxes - from a semiotic and metaphor theory perspective - can provide insight within the speakers’ skills, within the symbolic representations conveyed in the construction of messages and within the power struggle negotiation. I have observed the deciphering of the metaphorical mechanism, the dynamics of meanings, as well as the possible correspondences of our cultural tradition within the “rhetoric archive”. I have started from the idea that the premises of a “colourful” metaphoric language, such as idioms, ambiguity and paradox may be identified in Romanian symbolic representations. Finally, I tried to find an explanation for the politicians’ lack of passion for the order of rational and argumentative discourse; one of the reasons for its absence from the local public sphere metabolism might be that the natural order of discourse rationality may explain the difficulties of adapting to linguistic, social norms etc., specific to the Western world.

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