Abstract
The article is dedicated to representation and functions of tropes in American journalistic texts, their semantic and cognitive features. The figurative language under analysis is a reflection of American politicians’ language, in particular their everyday metaphors. Not only do we examine the main aspects of figurative language associated with aquatic habitat used by American politicians in public discourse, but we also rely upon an approach based on conceptual metaphor theory when we analyse and classify conceptual metaphors related to water. The object of cognitive analysis is political texts in American newspapers and magazines. The author provides a linguistic analysis of conceptual metaphors, their functions and application. Metaphors serve as indicators of functional changes in American English. Cognitive aspects of metaphors are being discussed. According to the theory of cognitive linguistics, a metaphor is an integral part of the cognitive process and an instrument that expresses and forms new notions. American politicians often use metaphors to affect the unconscious minds of the people. The research results show that the most frequently used conceptual metaphors in the analysed corpora are the linguistic realisations of metaphors from the source domain of aquatic habitat. All the metaphors of this group are classified into subgroups according to the key semantic component. A deep consideration is given to aquatic metaphors and reasons of their topicality.
Highlights
Metaphors make up a considerable amount of the word stock of modern English which is flexible, and dynamic
Do we examine the main aspects of figurative language associated with aquatic habitat used by American politicians in public discourse, but we rely upon an approach based on conceptual metaphor theory when we analyse and classify conceptual metaphors related to water
Modern linguistic researches are characterised by complex analysis of nominative units that presuppose studying of cognitive (Christian, 2013; Sternadori, 2008; Gunter, 2015; Andersson, 2011; Gravengaard, 2012; Gibbs, 2017; Ungerer & Schmid, 2015; Krennmayr, 2011), communicative (Sen, 2011; Jiri, 2015; Elleström, 2010; Chadwick, 2017; Graber, Dunaway, 2018; Cohen, 2016) and functional (Bischoff and Carmen, 2013; Gardner and Alsop, 2016; Nuyts, 2012; Liu, 2018) parameters
Summary
Metaphors make up a considerable amount of the word stock of modern English which is flexible, and dynamic. Constant enrichment of lexicon of American English by means of metaphors serves as an appropriate ground for analysis of language functioning in its connection with society development. The premises of functional changes in lexicon are as follows: 1) specificities of the language system that are reflected in the asymmetry of a language sign; 2) a human factor which includes a set of items such as memory functioning of a person, figurativeness of thinking, inclination to psychological reorientation, categorisation and recategorisation of reality, problem of correlation between language and thinking, associative ground for imagery reflection of the world; 3) peculiarities of realisation of language units in the process of communication, i.e. nominative and communicative significance of the word stock units and the action of communicative stereotypes The attention is paid to the conceptual-metaphoric mode of American journalistic texts
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