Identifying conceptual features of the country through purposeful corporate metaphor

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of rethinking the image of the state with the help of the anthropomorphic metaphor COUNTRY IS A PERSON. Taking into account the anthropocentric paradigm of linguistic knowledge, we believe that in the process of their nomination and characterization in the language, objects, surrounding a person, become similar to a native speaker. The experiment was carried out in the form of a survey, in which respondents described Russia through a metaphor with the HUMAN source sphere. 100 people took part in the survey: 70 respondents aged from 18 to 40 and 30 above the age of 40. The proposed method of analyzing anthropomorphic metaphorical modelling of the country image has shown its applicability for identifying the essential attitude characteristics towards the country. Seven cognitive features were identified: a strong-willed character, conservatism, desire to help, militancy, changeability, coldness and patience, which demonstrate a certain level of variability both within the cognitive framework itself and their dependence on the age of the respondents. In particular, we suggest that the most significant feature should be a stronger manifestation of the conceptual sphere “unfriendliness” among the responses of younger respondents, and a more obvious manifestation of the feature “strong-willed character” among the older generation.