Diversifying communication strategies. Topics and metaphors in the electoral ads of the 14 February (14-F) campaign

Abstract

Electoral ads are key elements in the campaign strategy of political parties because they allow them to construct and send messages to their electorate without passing through the journalistic filter. Political adverts make it possible to establish the cognitive frameworks for the topics which the political actors consider to be significant and they allow these topics to be presented in a direct and attractive way to the political actors’ electorates. In this article, we consider metaphor as a stylistic and cognitive tool allowing us to analyze both the conceptual domains presented by political parties and the persuasion strategy that validates them. We therefore identify the main topics defined by the political parties during the campaign as well as the metaphors used to define these topics and to make them persuasive. Our analysis confirms that in these elections there was a diversification both in the topics covered and the metaphors used, which allows us to speak of a rupture between the pro-independence and constitutionalist blocs’ communication strategies.