Cognitive Script of Verbalization of Concept "Threat" in Media Discourse (as Exemplified in D. Trump's Statements)

Abstract

The paper presents such basic units of cognitive linguistics as frame, script, and concept from the perspective of theories and concepts introduced by leading scientists. It introduces some results of the construction of the nominative field of the concept "threat". The research featured the concept "threat" in the political mass media discourse as a universal means of speech influence. The lexical units under analysis belonged both to the core and periphery of the nominative field of the concept. The authors defined the most frequent scripts of the concept "threat", both general and particular, e. g. direct threat, indirect threat, explicit threat, and implicit threat. Their structural characteristics were based on the examples from D. Trump’s statements. The most characteristic attributes of the concept "threat" proved to be verbs of destructive semantics, nuclear lexemes of the concept field, etc. This article reflects the features of the verbal representation of the concept "threat", as well as the purposes of the speech act of threat as a universal leverage in the modern political communication.