Metaphors We Understand by: Conceptual Metaphors and the Framing of Canadian Identity

Abstract

This paper examines the conceptual metaphors through which Canadian national identity is constructed and framed. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003) and framing theory, it argues that the figures recurrently used to describe Canada are not incidental turns of phrase but systematic mappings that structure how the country is reasoned about, in politics and policy as much as in self-description. Based on existing scholarship, government and institutional discourse, and canonical literary criticism, the study analyses six dominant mappings: CANADA IS A MOSAIC, A PEACEKEEPER, A NORTHERN FRONTIER, A FAMILY, A LAND OF OPPORTUNITY, and A STOREHOUSE OF RESOURCES. It also considers two schemas derived from literary criticism, Atwood’s CANADIAN EXISTENCE IS SURVIVAL and Frye’s garrison mentality, the latter grounded in the CONTAINER image schema. Each metaphor is approached from a dual perspective, setting its institutionally endorsed, celebratory reading against the critical counter-reading it backgrounds. Two patterns emerge. First, across otherwise unrelated source domains, the counter-readings converge on the position of Indigenous peoples and the structures of settler colonialism, which suggests that this backgrounding is a structural feature of how Canadian identity is figuratively organized rather than an accident of any single metaphor. Second, both the mosaic/melting pot opposition and the contrast between Frye’s CONTAINER and the American PATH schema show an identity defined against the United States. Written from an outsider’s European perspective, the paper concludes that Canadian identity is best described as a contested field of competing metaphors rather than one master metaphor, and that the choice among them is itself a form of political work.