Metaphorizing deception in political communication: The Wall metaphor in Tunisian electoral politics as a case study

People perceive the world through metaphors and tend to align their behaviour to match those metaphorically framed perceptions. Politics, which promotes partisan world-views, recruits metaphor to frame ideologies and shape opinion. Notably, metaphors generate a profiling function that confers cognitive salience and emotional relevance to selective focal points, to gain special prominence in texts and talks. Electoral rhetoric, commonly viewed as selective in nature and persuasive in purpose, seems moreover to enact manipulative and potentially deceptive schemes. Building on the use of the Wall metaphor in Tunisian electoral politics, this article sheds light on the deliberate use of political metaphors for deceptive purposes. Considered as an examplar of 'metaphors we vote by', the Wall metaphor structured Tunisian electoral campaign speeches around an alarming car-crash scenario to trigger emotion and afford cognition.