Матасова И.Н., Худик Ю.И.

Карагандинский государственный университет им. акад. Е.А. Букетова,

г. Караганда, Казахстан

Linguistic and pragmatic parameters of the political metaphor in the modern English-language press

At the present stage of the development of linguistics, metaphor is the key to the formation of public opinion; it also serves as a way of expressing the author’s assessment in foreign media using the example of various newspaper articles that are devoted to the relationship between society and the state. Metaphor is a trope that allows us to create at the right moment the necessary associative links, which, in their turn, help to mitigate the negative reaction of society to the information that provokes doubt.

In the electronic version of the “Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language” by S.I. Ozhegov, the following definition is given: “Metaphor is a hidden figurative comparison, the assimilation of one thing, phenomenon to another one” [1].

The following definition is provided in the book “Characteristics of the political discourse” authored by Sineokaya N.A.: “Political discourse is a form of policy-making, i.e. political action or in other words a combination of political and speech action together” [2].

This article is devoted to the study of the frequently used political metaphors in the modern English-language press. According to the Russian linguist Beztsennaya Zh.P., nowadays cognitive science studies metaphor as the main mental process, as a way of understanding, structuring and interpreting the world. A person explains his thoughts with the help of metaphors, and also thinks with metaphors, shapes his world using metaphors [3, P. 24-26].

Proceeding from the fact that the political metaphor in the speech of politicians is a special device for discovering people’s reaction to innovation, we in our work have set the following tasks: to determine the main role of political metaphor, to analyze the concept of “political metaphor”, to study various classifications, categories and functions of political metaphor.

For this reason, we have conducted a practical analysis of the use of political metaphor in the media from the point of view of its belonging to different classifications.

Our main goal was to study the use of political metaphor in the English-language modern press and prove its importance for a better understanding of the political situation in the English-speaking countries.

To conduct practical analysis, we have selected, as well as studied various examples of political metaphor in the article by Karen Deyang “European officials criticize Republican letter to Iran” [4].

Metaphors were analyzed in terms of their belonging to different classifications, namely:

- functions of metaphors (cognitive, nominative, evaluative, modeling, instrumental, communicative, pragmatic, aesthetic);

- semantic types of political metaphors (anthropomorphic, naturemorphic, sociomorphic, artifact).

In the future, we will analyze the classification of metaphors by O.G. Ananchenko in terms of their involvement in the following categories: sports, theatrical, culinary, health care, military, negative [5, P.10].

Our choice is due to the fact that the first classification allows us to pay attention to the “complexity” of metaphors used in the text and to highlight what kind of feeling they are designed to inspire, and the second classification allows us to link the theme of the metaphor to the subject matter of the text.

The most important function, in our opinion, is the cognitive one, because it has been found out that metaphors often have a pronounced expressive emotional coloring designed to persuade the reader to a certain type of perception of the information being given. The following examples can be provided:

“Suddenly, Iran can say to us: ‘Are your proposals actually trustworthy if 47 senators say that no matter what the government agrees to, we can subsequently take it off the table?’, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said during a visit to Washington”. - «Непонятно откуда Иран может говорить нам: «Действительно ли ваши предложения заслуживают доверия, если 47 сенаторов утверждают, что независимо от того, что правительство решит, сенаторы данное решение не поддержат?», - сказал во время визита в Вашингтон министр иностранных дел Германии Франк-Вальтер Штайнмайер».

The metaphor is “take it off the table” (i.e. out of sight, out of mind), but the meaning in this context will be the following: no matter what decision the government takes, 47 senators will pretend that this decision was not taken.

According to its semantic classification, this is the artifact metaphor; according to the thematic belonging it is of technical nature and fulfills a cognitive function in the sentence.

Using the example of Karen Deyang’s article, we have analyzed ten examples of the political metaphor in accordance with the semantic classification, thematic categories of belonging and functions.

An analysis of the materials collected has shown that, according to the semantic type, the most frequently used are anthropomorphic metaphors closely related to the concept of man. We have found out that, by the subject matter, the most frequently used metaphors in the article are military, medical and technical.

Equally, the article manifests nominative, instrumental and communicative functions, as well as the other ones. Certain political metaphors by their semantic load reveal expressive characteristics of various objects, as well as phenomena, the evaluation and imagery of the speech of political conversation. We also have made our subjective conclusion that this work will be useful to both students and teachers of the English language.

Literature:

1. Electronic version of the “Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language” by Ozhegov S. I. - М: Russian language, 2000 [electronic resource]. - Access mode. - URL: http://www.ozhegov.com/words/15735.shtml (application date is 02.12.2017).

2. Sineokaya N.A. Characteristics of the political discourse // Modern problems of science and education. - 2012. - No. 6. - URL: https://www.science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=7695 (application date is 02.12.2017).

3. Beztsennaya Zh. P. The role of metaphor in the political discourse [electronic resource] / Beztsennaya Zh. P. // Bulletin of Kharkiv National Automobile and Highway University. - 2007. - No. 36. - P. 24-26. – Access mode: http://elibrary.ru, (application date is 02.12.2017).

4. The electronic version of Karen Deyang’s article “European officials criticize Republican letter to Iran”. - Access mode. - URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/european-allies-join-in-criticism-of-republican-letter-to (application date is 02.12.2017).

5. Ananchenko O.G. Evaluative metaphors in newspaper texts of the beginning of the XXI century. - Maykop, 2011. - P. 10.