The metaphorical construction of the Ramadan war in the social media messages of the presidents of Iran and the United States

This study aims to investigate how the metaphorical meaning of the Ramadan War is constructed in the discourses of Donald Trump and Masoud Pezzekian. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the integration of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory and Charteris-Black’s (2004) critical metaphor analysis model. The findings showed that the two discourses, although they share some fundamental common origin areas, have significant differences in the selection of salient origin areas, activation of cognitive implications, and discursive functions. These differences lead to the construction of two different interpretive frameworks of the agency, responsibility, legitimacy, and identity of the war actors. In Trump’s discourse, war is conceptualized through a network of metaphors of management, competition, leadership, spectacle, and the sacred in a way that makes American power appear natural, legitimate, and necessary. In contrast, in the physicians’ discourse, metaphors based on the body and the legal system make sense of war in terms of legitimate defense, resistance, and the demand for moral and legal legitimacy. This difference reveals two different models of governance in crisis situations: leadership based on authority, management, superiority, and the display of power in Trump’s discourse, and leadership based on solidarity, presence, bodily experience, and the demand for legitimacy in the physicians’ discourse.