Veronika Koller

Veronika Koller

Lancaster University

    • Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University (UK). 
    • Research focuses on corporate communication, political discourse, and language and gender.
    • Particularly interested in metaphor. She is associate editor of Metaphor and Symbol. 
    • Work published in journals including Discourse and Society, Journal of Sociolinguistics and Social Semiotics. She has (co-)authored and co-edited eight books to date. 

Polarisation as metaphor, polarisation and metaphor 

In this talk, I will first problematise the metaphoric notion of polarisation, which conceptualises social and political processes in terms of natural science, making them seem inevitable. Related to this, I will discuss van Dijk’s (1998) influential notion of the ideological square, drawing attention to domains where it does and does not apply, such as business media and corporate discourse, respectively.  
 
Moving from polarisation as metaphor to polarisation and metaphor, I will review recent work on the latter (e.g., Peterssen and Soares da Silva 2024, Alonso-Belmonte et al. 2026). This overview will be supplemented with examples of metaphor functioning to create or reinforce polarised public debates. These include social media comments by supporters and opponents of populist parties across Europe (Koller et al. 2023), gendered polarisation in the loose misogynist online network known as the “manosphere” (Bogetić et al. 2023) and spoken interaction in business contexts.   
 
Returning to the metaphor of polarisation, I will conclude by discussing how the related scenario can be revised to enable connection and commonality.   

References:

Alonso-Belmonte, I., Porto, M. D., & Romano, M. (eds) (2026). Polarised Discourse: Language, cognition and social practice. De Gruyter.  
Bogetić, K., Heritage, F., Koller, V., & McGlashan, M. (2023). Landwhales, femoids and sub-humans: Dehumanising metaphors in incel discourse. Metaphor and the Social World, 13(2), 178-196.  
Koller, V., Borza, N., Demata, M., Filardo Llamas, L., Gustafsson, A. W., Kopf, S., Miglbauer, M., Reggi, V., Saric, L., Seiler Brylla, C., & Stopfner, M. (2023). Voices of Supporters: Populism, social media and the 2019 European elections. Benjamins.  
Peterssen, S., and Soares da Silva, A. (2024). Polarising metaphors in far-right populist tweets: A comparative crosslinguistic study. In Romano, M. (ed.) Metaphor in Socio-Political Contexts: Current Crises (pp. 107-134). De Gruyter. 
van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology: A multidisciplinary introduction. Sage.