“Detroit is a Blank Slate”: Metaphors in the Journalistic Discourse of Art and Entrepreneurship in the City of Detroit

“Detroit is a Blank Slate”: Metaphors in the Journalistic Discourse of Art and Entrepreneurship in the City of Detroit

Siobhan Gregory

In the current discourse about Detroit’s renewal, metaphoric language often reflects tensions between ideas about the physical, economic, and the emotional “landscape” of the city: abandonment vs. investment, stagnation vs. movement, physical change vs. ideological change. This paper investigates metaphoric language in two Detroit discourse communities, artists and business entrepreneurs, to reveal ideas about race, class, identity, and sense of place. Local and national news sources and independent online publications from 2009 to 2011 are reviewed for themes reflecting metaphorical content. These sources include the Time. Inc, Detroit Blog, Time Magazine Online, CNN.com Assignment Detroit, The New York Times Online, Huffington Post Detroit, and the online publication Model D. The analysis is shaped utilizing Lakoff’s and Johnson’s three key frameworks for metaphorical concepts: orientational metaphors, ontological metaphors, and structural metaphors. A literature review of metaphors in gentrification discourse provides a background for this discussion. The metaphorical language of Detroit, particularly at this period in its history, serves both to confirm and challenge existing metaphors evident in gentrification discourse. Key metaphors are identified: DETROIT AS OUT-OF-PLACE, dissolving, vacant, and unbounded; DETROIT AS A SUICIDE VICTIM who, responsible for its own demise, can only to be brought back to life through the help of outsiders; DETROIT AS A SEXUALIZED FETISH, a prize to be both exploited and guarded, and which, in a state of submission and reckless abandonment, is aestheticized and glamorized. The local and national media attention to these discourse communities creates a prevailing narrative of the city that parallels the metaphorical construct of GENTRIFIER AS PIONEER, GUARDIAN, and SALVATIONIST.