I have a question for anyone who may be knowledgable about academic literature on gold and its function in monetary systems, concerning why central banks stockpile it and why they do not want the price to get too high. This could be books (preferably not self-published books but instead those from academic presses) or journal articles from respectable academic journals that relate to this topic. I am doing an MA in Applied Linguistics and I have chosen for my topic Metaphors in Business Discourse, specifically as they relate to articles about gold in the mainstream media and how these metaphors may contain negative latent ideology. What I have in mind is similar to what I found in the 1970 book by Peter L. Bernstein entitled Economist on Wall Street: Notes on the Sanctity of Gold, the Value of Money, the Security of Investments, and Other Delusions. He states on page 171 that a much higher gold price would: damage those nations that have been our friends and held dollars instead of gold. It would open up a credibility gap of enormous and dangerous proportions. It might lead to more speculative hoarding of gold by those who would then be convinced that its price had no upper limit. It might create some uncertainty in international trade and investment. The problem is that this quote comes from a book prior to the US going off the Bretton Woods system in 1971, so it is less useful for today. Does anyone have any quotes or books to recommend that are more recent that show that the US would like to keep the gold price down? (Or not only the US--this could also apply to anyone who also has a vested interest in keeping the gold price low.) Here is an excerpt from an early draft of my paper on the nature of metaphors and how they relate to gold as an asset class: Metaphors involve the conceptualization of one domain through another, wherein a ‘borrowed sign… carries the… meaning’ of a formerly literal domain (Tietze, Cohen, & Musson, 2003: 34). This involves a transfer from a source domain to a target domain, with the aim of better understanding a target domain from the features of the source domain in a process called conceptual mapping (Littlemore and Low, 2006a). Metaphors and figurative thinking in general used to be considered a peripheral matter confined to abstract turns of phrase in poetic expression (Kövecses, 2010). However, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that metaphors are a central component of our conceptual systems. According to them, metaphors ‘govern our thought’ and influence us to think and act in certain ways, of which we are largely unaware (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 3). The centrality of metaphorical thinking, as well as the declaration that we are largely unconscious of our conceptual systems have been echoed by many subsequent metaphor theorists (Hiraga, 1991; Tietze, Cohen, & Musson, 2003; Goatly, 2007; Müller, 2008; Kövecses, 2010), as well as by Lakoff in subsequent publications (2002). As Hiraga states, metaphors ‘are not just mere words’, but instead ‘are deeply rooted in our conceptual as well as emotional processes’ (1991: 56). Hiraga goes so far as to say that metaphors ‘underlie social practices’, and so he makes a plea for greater ‘linguistic awareness’ concerning metaphors (1991: 55). Thus, metaphors are central—linguistically and conceptually. Metaphors can be used for the purposes of persuasion and manipulation, especially as differing values are invoked. The study of metaphor thus involves the intersection of words and values, and as Fairclough observes, ‘different metaphors have different ideological attachments’ (1989: 119). Further, Charteris-Black notes that ‘Rhetoric’ infused with metaphors ‘becomes persuasive when linguistic choices communicate an underlying value system or ethos’ (2005: 103). Moreover, unless subjected to scrutiny, ‘the values and evaluations’ language ‘carries may sometimes be concealed even from the language users themselves’ (Tissari, 2010: 139). The background values of metaphors are termed latent by Goatly (2007). But where metaphors are used consciously, they may be manipulative, and the manipulative function of metaphor has even been proposed by Littlemore and Low (2006b) to comprise its own distinct competence. Accordingly, given their centrality, it behooves us as users of the English language to become more familiar with figurative thinking and the linguistic expressions that embody such thinking by subjecting metaphors to close scrutiny and thereby making them explicit. Linguistic Metaphors and Conceptual Metaphors The language we use to express metaphors can be distinguished from the conceptual system that gives rise to such linguistic expressions. This distinction underlies the Conceptual Metaphor Theory of Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Subsequent researchers have further specified the precise relation between linguistic metaphors and conceptual metaphors (Littlemore & Low, 2006a; Kövecses, 2010). As Kövecses states, ‘We can state the nature of the relationship between the conceptual metaphors and the metaphorical linguistic expressions in the following way: the linguistic expressions (i.e., ways of talking), make explicit, or are manifestations of, the conceptual metaphors (i.e., ways of thinking)’ (2010: 7). This parallels the nature of the relationship between a language system and text, as Halliday and Matthiessen observe that, ‘The system of a language is ‘instantiated’ in the form of text’ (2004: 26). Indeed, Müller agrees in so far as she asserts concerning ‘lexical metaphors’ and ‘conceptual metaphors’ that ‘one is an instantiation of the other’ (2008: 15). The relationship between linguistic and conceptual metaphors is nevertheless a problematic one in so far as there is no empirical grounding between the two (Kövecses, 2010). Steen et al. therefore observe that ‘even researchers with great expertise in the study of metaphor… frequently differ in their judgments of what counts as a metaphor’ (2010: 165). The upshot, according to Littlemore and Low, is that, when it comes to the conceptual metaphors behind linguistic metaphors, ‘We can never be certain about our formulations. Essentially, we have to guess’ (2006a: 13). Littlemore and Low (2006a) also note that the precise words that characterize conceptual metaphors are not important—at least not as important as the precise wording of linguistic metaphors, where are comparatively much more objective. When looking at the objective evidence of linguistic metaphors, then, we can only make inferences to conceptual metaphors, and this is what Lakoff and Johnson mean when they write that ‘language is an important source of evidence for what that [conceptual] system is like’ (1980: 3). Metaphors in Business Discourse: Gold as an Asset Class Gold is an asset class that has gone from a low in 2001 below $300 to a 2011 high above $1900, as denominated in U.S. currency. This spike in value mirrors similar price spikes throughout history for the yellow metal, especially as has happened in times of war or economic crisis (Schoenberger, 2010). It is also a basic economic principle that resources allocated to one asset class are not available for allocation to others. This type of resource competition is highlighted below by the phrase that ‘the move out of gold’ signifies a move ‘into equities’ (Appendix 3). Accordingly, this paper aims to study the linguistic and conceptual metaphors in business discourse—specifically as contained in articles about gold by mainstream business publications meant for general consumption. It is reasonable to suppose that any reader of such articles is interested in the price of gold as either an actual or potential investor in precious metals or financial markets in general. The aim will be to clarify the ideology or value system behind such metaphors in order to attain to the linguistic awareness advocated by Hiraga (1991) concerning how the authors accomplish their potentially persuasive purposes vis-à-vis asset allocation. The importance of such linguistic awareness is especially acute given the dominance of English (Bargiela-Chiappini et al., 2007) in today’s globalized business world. Applied to gold, the types of metaphors sketched above appear to instantiate a very negative ideological stance. For example, while it is possible to linguistically express an up-down spatial metaphor more neutrally, the authors in this corpus frequently chose to express themselves using language with extremely negative lexicalized polarity. So, the price of gold is not merely falling, it is ‘crashing’ (Number 17), ‘plunging’ (Number 22), undergoing a ‘brutal… decline’ (Number 26), or ‘gold falls off a cliff’ (Number 36). These expressions are so extreme that they could almost be expressing the conceptual metaphor EXTREME LACK OF GOLD BUYERS IS A PLANE CRASH. Similarly, concerning the conceptual metaphor INVESTING IS WAR; INVESTMENT IS FIGHTING (Numbers 118-126), there is a ‘retreat’ in gold (Number 118), or a ‘rout’ (Number 123), while it is also said that ‘this thing has been taken out to the woodshed’ (Number 126). Thus, the portrayal of gold’s fall is almost gleeful in that the negative ideology is so blatant that it abandons all pretense of objectivity and begins to verge on yellow journalism. This prominent negative stance toward gold and gold investors was evident through the use of many negative conceptual metaphors and this negative stance was not confined to only one article (See Appendix 5). Calling gold investors gold bugs (Appendices 1, 2, and 4) appears to be a latent form of denigration or castigation that is summed up by expressing it as a conceptual metaphor: GOLD INVESTORS ARE ANIMALS. The term gold bug even appeared in an article reporting upon the rise of gold (Appendix 4). This is paralleled by the more general conceptual metaphor INVESTORS ARE ANIMALS in that the buying and selling of financial assets is characterized as a fight between bulls and bears (Appendix 5, Lines 57-61). However, the bull/bear dichotomy appears to be much more neutrally used in the articles in this corpus, since it is applied to stocks as well. Gold is even asserted to be ‘an animal in and of itself’ (Line 117). This appears to be a type of personification embodying the metaphor that INVESTING IN GOLD IS LACK OF RATIONALITY, since, in the conventional opinion, animals have no intellects by which to reason. Thus, gold buyers, hoping to profit from such low probability scenarios as war or financial collapse, appear to be seen as such a lunatic fringe that it necessitated naming them their own species in metaphorical terms in business discourse. Another conceptual metaphor with negative latent ideology is GOLD INVESTMENT IS GAMBLING (Appendix 5, lines 62-69). If gold investors are merely gamblers, then the act of buying gold is the same as someone plopping $50 on a blackjack table. Such a gambler may win, or such a gambler may lose, but such a metaphor in fact entails the repudiation of any intelligence or skill on the part of gold investors to judge why gold changed in value. The strongest linguistic metaphor along these lines is that gold investors are those who ‘are scrambling to reverse their bets’ (Line 63). In such a conceptual metaphor, profit stems merely from unpredictable chance, and thus again this serves to implicitly denigrate the intelligence of those who invest in gold. A final conceptual metaphor this study will discuss is notable chiefly for its virtual absence in the articles under study: GOLD IS INSURANCE. There is but a single linguistic metaphor instantiating this conceptual metaphor: ‘gold is one of the cheapest forms of protection’ (Number 173), and it occurs, as expected, in an article noting a rise in the price of gold (Appendix 4). As discussed by Schoenberger (2010), the fact that gold is a type of insurance is its chief function and value. Yet the underrepresentation of this conceptual metaphor is no doubt related to the negative ideological stance of the authors in this corpus. If it were more valued and less denigrated in the financial community at large, gold would probably have many more authors willing to sing its praises by using conceptual metaphors to speak of it as a form of insurance. Finally, there were other types of figurative thinking in the articles than only metaphors, such as similes (See Appendix 5, Lines 1 and 138). This is important as Littlemore and Low note that, regarding similes, ‘figurative thinking would still seem to be necessary’ (2006a: 43). ‘A chart of the crashing price of gold looks like a wedding ring rolling off a table’ (Line 1) evokes a particularly strong image and it would seem to be no coincidence that a wedding ring was chosen. Lee (2013) offers his advice: ‘Don’t get married to trades’. This simile thus appears to invoke the conceptual metaphor BELIEF IN INVESTMENT THESES IS A FORM OF MARRIAGE because one is ideologically wed to an investment thesis. According to Peter Coy (Appendix 1), then, in witnessing previous buyers sell their gold, we are witnessing an ideological divorce, and this of course carries quite negative connotations for gold investors.
Posted on: Sat, 31 May 2014 09:26:56 +0000