Elävä metafora antiautoritaarisen karisman retoriikkana

Authors

• Kyösti Pekonen

Abstract

Charisma and charismatic leadership usually arise in times of crisis in which the basic values, institutions, and legitimacy of the society become challenged. In this sense genuine charisma is the problem of the »new». Genuine charisma as the vehicle of the »new» is irrational in the sense that all rules are foreign to it and revolutionary in the sense that it repudiates the past. Transcending everyday routines requires charisma with its extraordinary way of using language, »charismatic rhetoric» so to speak. »Living metaphor» seems, on the one hand, to be the rhetorical means which charisma tries to use, because in metaphor the non-verbal and the verbal are firmly united at the core of the imaging function of language. On the other hand, the image and aura of an anti-authoritarian charisma seem to function in the same way as »living charisma» does. Charisma is metaphorical in the sense that it is exciting and captivates imagination. The aura of the rhetoric of charisma arises in its opposition to the everyday and routine in particular. »Living metaphor» as a linguistic strategy that at least transiently transcends everyday life, challenges traditional beliefs and gets imagination into motion. Routinization, on the contrary, means the death of the power of imagination.