The Role of Metaphor in Documentary

Exploring an area largely overlooked by scholarship from documentary studies and metaphor
theory, this thesis considers the often complex and profound ways in which metaphor permeates
documentary. The central research question is this: what role does metaphor play in shaping
documentary film and television? The project will address this question through a series of five
chapters, each a case study examining the work of a different documentarist. By looking at the films
of Agnès Varda, Patricio Guzmán, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, and Chantal Akerman, the research
will engage with some of documentary’s most significant figures, across diverse approaches to both
documentary-making and the employment of metaphor.
The methodology takes a multi-disciplinary approach involving close filmic readings of selected
documentaries by the filmmakers mentioned, focusing specifically on metaphoric formations that
manifest therein, taking into account extra-textual material, and engaging with a wide range of
relevant scholarship. The analysis will observe individual moments where metaphor appears to
present itself, and characterise the underlying metaphors and metaphoric structures which develop
over the course of a film or filmography, giving thematic shape to these distinctive renderings of the
real world. This methodology will incorporate Conceptual Metaphor Theory, as well as drawing on
aspects of documentary studies, Reception Theory and post-structuralist thinking to interpret the
ways in which documentaries convey meaning through metaphor.
While furthering the discourses in metaphor theory and documentary studies—expanding how
documentary can be understood, and how metaphor can be defined—the conclusions drawn
contribute to a much broader philosophical debate about how we interpret meaning in all forms of
communication, and how our deeply embedded metaphoric conceptualisations shape, and are
shaped by, our experience of reality.