METAPHORIZATION OF THE COUNTRY CONCEPT IN THE INTERNET DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article represents the metaphorization mechanism of the COUNTRY concept in the Internet discourse as the medium of the liveliest and most changeable communication. The authors conduct their research via the classical methodology of conceptual metaphor by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson in combination with the metaphorization order parameters by N.V. Tatsenko (the spatial, dimensional, discrete, possessive, artifact, perceptive, personifying ones, etc.). As the authentic research material, the authors use the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Via random sampling, a set of 100 contexts with the word “country” is selected, which is the name of the COUNTRY concept itself. The choice of this American corpus is explained by two facts. Firstly, the English language is the main means of international communication. Therefore, it is the American Internet discourse that represents the broadest concept consideration by the social community. Secondly, the Corpus of Contemporary American English updates annually with the latest authentic examples of the COUNTRY metaphorization as a socially significant concept. The sample contexts are processed to define metaphors of the COUNTRY concept within the semantically valent collocations. From the perspective of the order metaphorization parameters by N.V. Tatsenko, the concept is considered via metaphors COUNTRY is PLACE; THING; COMPLEX, FRAGMENTED or LEVELED OBJECT; MECHANISM; PHYSICAL BODY; SHIP; LIVING ORGANISM; ANALYZING OBJECT; OWNER; PROPERTY; GOODS; RESOURCE; PROTECTING OBJECT; PRODUCT; GAME. The most frequent realization proved to be the metaphor COUNTRY is LIVING ORGANISM. The simultaneous overlaying of several metaphorization parameters makes a multidirectional COUNTRY association with a human. That underlines its vitality and social nature. Regardless of the first-ever attempt to study the COUNTRY concept in this aspect, we are going to research the same concept via broader samples in future (to clarify the results). Besides, we can study the COUNTRY metaphorization in other discourses or languages.