The Potential of the Zoomorphic Metaphor with the Target Domain “the Future of Russia” (on the Material of the Chinese Language)

Abstract

The article presents the analysis of the zoomorphic metaphor with the target domain “The Future of Russia” in the context of the US sanctions policy against Russia in the Chinese non-institutional political Internet discourse. The chronological scope of the study covers the period from 2014 till the present. The Chinese website 悟空回答 (Wukong Q & A) was chosen as the source of the material. The analysis of metaphors is carried out within the framework of the methodology of linguistic political prognostics, using the methods of metaphorical modeling, linguistic, cultural, cognitive and discourse analysis. As a result of the analyzed 313 metaphorical contexts, it was found that one of the most frequent metaphorical models with the target domain “The Future of Russia” is a zoomorphic metaphor. The most frequent frame in this metaphorical model is the “Animal kingdom” frame, which contains three slots: “mammals”, “birds” and “fish”. The study showed that while representing the future of Russia in the Chinese non-institutional political Internet discourse in the context of anti-Russian sanctions, negatively colored metaphors which appear in the slots “mammals”, “birds” and “fish” prevail, depicting a “dark” future of Russian-American relations. Positively colored metaphors in the slot “mammals” are especially active in modeling the future of Russian-Chinese relations. The analysis of the metaphorical model showed that the activation of metaphors depends on the axiological attitudes of Chinese speakers and on changing political events.