Prisoner

Introduction:

While looking through the Columbus Dispatch, there was a particularly interesting article about the justice system being too harsh to prisoners. This is a very controversial topic as no one wants to see someone committing a crime twice in a row. The theory is to scare people into not committing crimes but this article talks about the other half; getting the prisoner reintegrated back into society. The problem is that prisoners are very likely to not having anything after being incarcerated so they are more likely to commit the same crimes as before.

Research Question:

The question I put forth was to see what sort of Metaphors and Metonymies would show up in this type of article.

Data Set:

I use the article Broader prison-release programs needed from the Columbus Dispatch.

Methodology:

After first reading through the article a few times to find out what it was about, I next read though it more times, these times however I paid close attention to the metaphors and slowly started to highlight and categorize them by type.

Findings:

I only discover a total of 6 metaphors in this article: I found two conceptual metaphors, two metonymies, and two personification metaphors. One example of a conceptual metaphor that I found was

As a corrections professional, I was saddened to see some campaigns use Willie Horton-style ads that painted all offenders with a broad, scary brush and seemed to Imply that if we do anything other than lock up offenders for a long time, we expose society to all sorts of dangers.(Robinson 1)

Conclusions:

This article didn't have as many metaphors as I thought I would have found