CONVENTIONAL METAPHORS IN RUSSIAN AND POLISH POLITICAL COMMUNICATION (based on mass media texts on parliamentary election)

Abstract

According to foreign and Russian linguists, metaphors are used more actively during political campaigns. It is important to distinguish conventional metaphors from novel ones when analyzing the metaphoric mosaic of national discourse. Being commonly accepted and high-frequent, conventional metaphors form a “framework” of any metaphoric model. Using mass media texts on parliamentary election the author compares conventional metaphors used to conceptualize the political sphere in the Russian and Polish languages. These metaphors mainly come from such source domains as “Sports and games”, “War”, “Theatre and other performing arts”. The article also examines so called “precedential metaphors” used by famous politicians (V. Putin, M. Prokhorov, D. Tusk and J. Kaczyński) that hold a position between conventional and novel metaphors.