How do you react to charity appeals?
In an earlier summary
(Tay 2011: http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/you-know-its-like-bomb-squad-right.html), we looked at how we can use
metaphors to explain and deal with abstract concepts during therapy. Taking another emotive context, Lynne Cameron and Irene Bruna Seu analysed how a focus group of 5
British women used metaphors to discuss the impact of charity appeals.
The women, who all
lived in London and were aged between 32 and 52, were presented with 3 visual
and textual prompts (2 from Amnesty International and one article from the
British newspaper The Guardian). These all related to what they term the suffering Other, and provided
information outlining cases of torture and abuse in Afghanistan and Saudi
Arabia. The idea of the suffering
Other was used by Cameron and Seu to identify a being that is distinct from a
person’s Self and someone with whom we may wish to empathise. The analysis looked at how members of
the focus group reacted to the suffering Other and what justifications they
used for rejecting charitable appeals.
In order to conduct
the analysis of metaphor use, they identified what they called metaphor vehicles. For example, in the phrase “it’s a
pressurised world”, pressurised is
identified as a metaphor vehicle as, even though in context it means that life
is busy and stressful, it has another meaning relating to actual physical pressure
or force. Once these metaphor
vehicles were identified, they were grouped to reflect their basic meanings –
for example, pressurised can be
grouped with rammed (e.g. “rammed
down your throat”) so as to reflect a wider group of Physical Force Vehicles.
The results of the
analysis highlighted how more than half of the metaphors used by the focus
group (295 out of 538) related to spatiality. In other words, vehicle terms
grouped as, for example, Location and Distance were used frequently (e.g. “it’s
easy to think ‘oh, that’s over there’ ”).
It seemed that assessments of closeness or distance were frequently used
as justifications for not wanting to respond to charity appeals. Cameron and Seu noted how metaphors
relating to House and Home were also prominent (e.g. “it’s brought home to
you”, “I’d rather change something closer to home”) and when this personal
domain was seen to be under threat, negative and physically aggressive
metaphors were often used to describe reactions and emotions (e.g. “I don’t
think it should be shoved down their throats”).
However, the analysis
of the focus group discourse highlighted how empathy may be generated when the
participants could identify directly with distant situations (for example, one
woman had done voluntary work in Africa), and when close-up experiences (such
as a beggar asking for money in the street) were deemed as non-threatening (a
beggar sitting down was considered less threatening than a beggar directly
approaching you). As a result,
they conclude that there is an optimal ‘distance’ for people to feel empathy
and that the more threatening an appeal is to a person’s Self, the more in
control they need to feel in order for empathy to be activated.
In conclusion,
Cameron and Seu suggest that, by analysing and evaluating how people express
their empathy or justifications for lack of empathy, charitable organisations
can develop optimal ways of enhancing and promoting empathetic feelings towards
the suffering Other.
____________________________________________________________
Cameron, L. and Seu,
I. B. (2012) Landscapes of Empathy: Spatial scenarios, metaphors and metonyms
in responses to distant suffering. Text
and Talk 32: 281-305.
doi:
10.1515/text-2012-0014
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