Smoothies, pizzas and sponge cakes: food metaphors in Brexit news explainers

Abstract

The multiplicity and fragmentation of news streams online have given rise to a range of peripheral texts that accompany mainstream news reports. This paper investigates news explainers, a particular type of non-mainstream journalistic texts, and their role in rendering news more accessible to lay readers and viewers. Drawing on Musolff’s model (2006) of metaphor scenarios, it analyses a series of video explainers circulated by BBC news online during the week leading to the Brexit referendum (June 2016). The analysis reveals the prevalence of particular metaphors in mediatized explanations of the EU as a politico-economic union and discusses the ideological standpoints embedded in the evaluative and attitudinal elements of metaphor scenarios related to cooking and food.