Metaphors of Distinction and Transgression - Conceptualizations of the Religious and Secular in the USA on the Example of Moral Majority and Human Potential Movement between 1960 and 1980

本研究旨在通过系统的隐喻分析，探讨隐喻在1960-1980年间美国两次宗教运动中的使用情况。该研究项目调查了宗教现实是如何以隐喻的方式构建的，以及宗教如何在概念上与它的其他/相反的或与之相关的新位置区分开来。其目的是得出结论，说明在20世纪下半叶的社会分化过程中，为什么宗教在某些宗教环境中以这样或那样的方式重新概念化，它对哪些社会文化进程和话语做出反应，以及哪些解释和行动选择与之相关。该项目追求最重要的假设，即社会的功能分化产生了宗教以及世俗和相应的隐喻框架的多种概念差异和重新调整(越界)。因此，这两个案例研究是对功能分化过程的两种可能的反应，每一种都代表着不同形式的宗教概念性去分化：道德多数代表宗教和政治的去分化类型，人类潜力运动代表宗教和科学的去分化类型。在这两种情况下，该项目都调查了宗教与其他宗教之间的隐含的交流差异和越轨。因此，该项目引发了现代社会中关于世俗化理论和分化理论的辩论，并旨在通过询问宗教交流的隐喻结构来做出创新的贡献，通过这些结构来进行概念差异和越轨(从而认知世界观和思维方式的框架)。区分和越界的概念描述了一个不断调整社会意义区域的过程，并假定分化的社会过程产生了高度动态的新概念化。因此，该项目假设对隐喻的分析可以显示认知概念化如何共同决定社会和宗教运动中的生活世界感知和行动。为此，将对这两个运动的中心和外围来源进行筛选、探索和选择，以便对关键文本进行深入的隐喻分析。该项目的研究设计基于扎根理论方法论，并基于乔治·莱科夫和马克·约翰逊以及进一步发展的鲁道夫·施密特对隐喻的系统分析。

This research project aims to investigate the use of metaphors in the communication of two religious movements in the USA between 1960 and 1980 by means of systematic metaphor analysis. The research project investigates how religious reality is constructed metaphorically and how religion is thereby also conceptually differentiated from its other/opposite or newly placed in relation to it. The aim is to draw conclusions as to why, in the processes of social differentiation in the second half of the 20th century, religion is being re-conceptualized in one way or another in certain religious milieus, to which socio-cultural processes and discourses it reacts, and which options for interpretation and action are associated with it. The project pursues the overarching hypothesis that the functional differentiation of society produces a plurality of conceptual distinctions and readjustments (transgressions) of religion and the secular and corresponding metaphorical frameworks. The two case studies therefore serve as two possible types of reaction to functional differentiation processes, each of which stands for different forms of conceptual de-differentiation of religion: The Moral Majority represents the type of de-differentiation of religion and politics and the Human Potential Movement represents the type of de-differentiation of religion and science. In both cases, the project investigates the implicit communicative distinctions and transgressions of religion and its other.The project thus takes up a current debate on secularization theories and theories of differentiation in modern societies and aims to make an innovative contribution to it by asking about the metaphorical structures of religious communication through which conceptual distinctions and transgressions (and thus the cognitive framing of world views and ways of thinking) are made. The concepts of distinction and transgression describe a constant process of readjustment of social provinces of meaning and also postulate that the social process of differentiation generates a high dynamic of new conceptualizations. Accordingly, the project assumes that the analysis of metaphors can show how cognitive conceptualizations co-determine life-world perceptions and actions in social and religious movements. To this end, central and peripheral sources of the two movements will be sifted, explored and selected in order to carry out in-depth metaphor analyses of key texts. The research design of the project is based on the Grounded Theory Methodology and on the systematic analysis of metaphors according to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson and, in its further development, Rudolf Schmitt.