Who Should Write about Africa: Framing the Debate

Abstract

Transcending one’s own lived experience has always been one of the hallmarks of fiction, yet recent discussions on the subject reveal that this very practice has been criticized by some as an act of cultural appropriation. In the present study, we analyze the opinion of fiction writers by focusing on their linguistic choices. We examine metaphorical expressions in news articles which highlight the concerns surrounding the authors’ right to write about Africa. The data has been compiled from eight articles (27,449-word sample) published in The Guardian, in the period between 2009 and 2022. The study of lexical choices in news discourse, within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff, Johnson 1980), revealed the underlying ideologies and how the debate has been framed in the time period analyzed. Three framing possibilities were observed. Namely, the documented metaphorical expressions belonged to territory, law, and violence-related metaphors which all focused on different aspects of the experience.