images of international negotiation in local news media discourse: a war-court metaphoric contrast between iranian and english news media discourses on nuclear negotiations

This study examined how metaphors in the news media of the united states and iran screened reality about nuclear negotiations. two corpora, each one comprising nearly 100,000 words, were compiled. metaphor identification procedure vrije universiteit (mipvu) and critical metaphor analysis (cma) were performed. news media discourse in the us suggested nuclear negotiation was a court in which the us was in the position of prosecutor and iran as criminal. news media discourse in iran portrayed nuclear negation as an imposed war in which iran was in position of defending and the us as invading. it was argued that even though they ultimately agreed to a landmark deal, cross-cultural news media discourse readily delegitimized this internationally significant negotiation. thus, the study suggested that one of the prominent functions of metaphors in news media discourse is to be aggressive and terrorizing rather than tolerating and peace-seeking and as such, media literacy is called for.