Govor, Vol. 42 No. 2, 2025.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22210/govor.2025.42.09
Ideological metaphor in the speeches of Josip Broz Tito
Anita Runjić-Stoilova
orcid.org/0000-0001-5060-2083
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split Croatia
*
Anamaria Špar
orcid.org/0009-0007-1455-920X
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split Croatia
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
In the analysis of political rhetoric, metaphor is often associated with ideology, pragmatic aims and rhetorical persuasion. The choice of metaphors in combination with other linguistic devices in political speeches can be seen as part of a persuasive strategy. There is a range of approaches available when designing research into political metaphor, e.g., Charteris-Black (2018) proposes a critical metaphor analysis as a method for the analysis and interpretation of metaphor as a tool of ideology. This paper explores how systematic analysis of the Josip Broz Tito’s New Year’s speeches can help us understand how these communist discourse processes are driven by underlying metaphors. Nine speeches from Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician who served in various positions of national leadership from 1943 to 1980, were considered for the analysis. Metaphors were identified, interpreted and explained. The analysis has shown that metaphors are of various source and target domains, the most common domains are current values or danger and risk: truth (our fight for the truth, voice for the victory of the truth), unity (unity is our strongest tool, let’s be united), struggle (liberation from the occupier), construction (let’s build socialism, build a new society) and similar. With these recurrent patterns or conventional metaphors in communicating ideology Tito is creating enemy-images, he is escaping into myth, and he is also creating stereotypes.
Keywords
ideology; communist regime; political discourse; metaphor
Hrčak ID:
341107
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2025.
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