THE EXPRESSION OF THE CONCEPTUAL OPPOSITION ALLY (PARTNER) – ENEMY (ADVERSARY) IN ENGLISH MILITARY JOURNALISTIC TEXTS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the ways of representing the concepts of «ally (partner)» and «enemy (adversary)» in modern military-publicistic texts in English. The studied language means have confirmed the existence of these concepts created by the authors of English military genres and the fact that these concepts are fundamental in the military discourse. The study of the conceptual area occurs through the analysis of human cognitive activity. The concept, according to the definition given by Z.D. Popova and I.A. Sternin, is a phenomenon of consciousness, it is modeled according to the signs of its manifestation [Popova, Sternin, 2007, 163]. These signs of the concepts are: culture, habits, education, religion, political relations, values and traditions. The analysis of lexical means objectifying these concepts is carried out on the basis of printed (2006–2007) and electronic journal and newspaper texts (2018–2019). Based on the lexical, semantic, contextual and quantitative analysis of vocabulary selected by the continuous sampling method, the core and periphery of these concepts have been determined. The revealed language means determined the core and periphery of these concepts. The dominant lexical means allow the authors to determine this opposition in English as ally (partner) – enemy (adversary). The texts of three English genres have been analyzed: an analytical article, an interview and a commentary. The conceptual opposition ally (partner) –the enemy (adversary) finds priority use in the genre of an analytical article. In military texts, in accordance with the value reference points, the estimating perception of the opposition occurs, in the authors’ opinion, with positive connotation without an expressive assessment.