Abstract
In political discourse, metaphor production/use can serve to achieve irony and sarcasm, e.g. ridiculing (Brexit: the kind of divorce that involves the police), (apparent) self-effacement (I am the toenail of the body politic), or devastating critique (the heart of Europe is rotten). Can such sarcastic or ironical effects also be observed in responses to metaphor interpretation tasks? This paper looks at comprehension responses for the metaphor nation-as-body that include critical, ironical or sarcastic comments on the perceived ‘health’ or ‘character traits’ of the nation in question (e.g. England is a body with feet designed for queuing; My nation have [sic] a mad mind). We analyse such metaphor interpretations by speakers from English-L1 and Mandarin- or Cantonese-L1 backgrounds and highlight contrasting usage that calls for further investigation.