Metaphorization of German socio-political discourse

Abstract

The emergence of new phenomena and concepts determines the constant need for new means of cognition, nomination and evaluation — a process in which metaphors traditionally take the leading place. The article is devoted to the processes of replenishing the actual vocabulary of socio-political discourse through metaphorization as a means of secondary nomination. The subject of the study is the metaphorical character of this part of the modern German lexicon and the processes of metaphorization that took place in the German-language socio-political discourse during the last decade. The object of the study was lexical units selected from publications in modern German-language media. The paper describes the functioning of topical metaphors in the social sphere, domestic and foreign policy, economy, education, modern technologies, and ecology. The processes of metaphor migration between different spheres, as well as the expansion and specialization of their meaning are presented. The linguistic material is considered first of all in cognitive and nominative aspects and is analyzed according to several criteria: conceptosphere, belonging to parts of speech and language of origin, structural and functional characteristics, word-formation potential. Special attention is paid to the description of conceptual (cognitive), figurative and expressive-evaluative metaphors, as well as the anthropocentric nature of metaphor. The article analyzes a number of so-called «leading metaphors» of modern socio-political discourse, which, due to their high frequency and manipulative use, have lost their metaphoricality over time and undergone significant semantic changes. The problem of manipulative nature of some metaphors, the issues of morality and political correctness of their use are discussed. Theoretical considerations are illustrated by actual linguistic material, which is a cross-section of a particular stage of language functioning and allows us to study its dynamic and creative essence.