Contested paths

Abstract

Recent studies of metaphor usage (e.g., Cameron, 2011; Semino et al., 2013) have shifted focus from relatively static mappings between source and target domains towards an emphasis on how metaphors are appropriated and recontextualized across different genres to convey new meanings and serve new functions. More recently, this emphasis has begun to be applied to the study of metaphor usage in religious discourse (Pihlaja, 2014; Richardson, 2017; Richardson et al., 2021). The current article investigates how metaphors of movement are used in conjunction with metonymy, force dynamics, and conceptual blending to create particular rhetorical effects in a debate between the atheist Richard Dawkins and the Christian apologist John Lennox. It demonstrates how previous figurative language is expanded and reconfigured during the course of the debate in an attempt to establish situated, dominant conceptualizations.