This paper investigates metaphorical uses of the terms “misogyny” and “sexism” in US public discourse using the COCA corpus. It hypothesises that both are framed negatively, especially through metaphors of violence and crime.
Metaphors offer insight into social ideologies and help make abstract concepts like misogyny and sexism more tangible, though identifying them in a corpus poses challenges.
The study uses a sample of 200 concordances for each term from COCA, manually identifying and analysing metaphorical patterns with help from Stefanowitsch’s methods due to the corpus’s lack of metaphor annotation.
From the selected data, both “misogyny” and “sexism” showed frequent metaphorical use, particularly framed as a living creature or a crime.
92 out of 200 concordances were metaphorical, with “MISOGYNY IS A LIVING CREATURE” (38 occurrences) and “MISOGYNY IS CRIME” (13) being the most frequent.
This was the most creative and dominant metaphor, often evoking violent or oppressive imagery, depicting misogyny as a harmful force.
Though less frequent, this metaphor was more conventional and consistently linked misogyny to legal terminology, reinforcing its perceived severity.
Sexism showed 109 metaphorical uses, with similar conceptual metaphors to misogyny but slightly more negative in tone.
This metaphor appeared 48 times, and more of its realisations were negatively connoted than in the misogyny sample, indicating a more hostile view of sexism.
Appearing with legal language like “charges of,” this metaphor portrayed sexism as a serious and punishable offense, even more gravely than misogyny.
Overall, both terms are metaphorically conceptualised as violent, oppressive, and criminal. However, sexism appears to carry slightly stronger negative associations than misogyny. Future studies could broaden the sample or compare findings across different linguistic and cultural contexts.