THE INTERPRETIVE POTENTIAL OF RELIGIOUS METAPHOR IN BREXIT REPRESENTATION
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2020-4-16-22
Introduction. The socio-political event of the UK’s exit from the European Union has attracted widespread attention in the mass media since 2016. The article focuses on the metaphorical conceptualization of Brexit in news discourse. Material and methods. The research is based on the news texts on Brexit from the British internet-editions such as The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and BBC News. The research methods used in the paper are the definitional analysis, componential analysis, complete enumeration method, interpretation analysis, content analysis, metaphorical conceptualization method. Results and discussion. The paper gives a detailed analysis and interpretation of Brexit metaphorical representation from a religious perspective. The religion has always played an essential role in the history of human society. It is considered not only to permeate all the spheres of human activity but also consciousness and subconsciousness. Therefore, journalists implicitly try to influence the values of recipients. The metaphorical submodel BREXIT – RELIGIOUS BELIEF revealed in the paper describes Brexit primarily as a religious belief to add more value for the British society. The metaphorical submodel BREXIT – RELIGIOUS BELIEF is transformed into the submodel BREXIT – CULT with a negative connotation as a pseudo-religious organization. The metaphorical submodel BREXIT – SECT considered in the paper has a destructive nature and it compares B. Johnson and his supporters with the terrorist group Al-Qaeda that is ready to murder and die for its ideology. Conclusion. Productive religious metaphorical submodels interpret Brexit as a negative process. The interpretive potential of conceptual religious metaphor is realized.
Keywords: Brexit, news discourse, metaphorical model, metaphorical conceptualization, interpretive potential, cognitive mechanism, news construal
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Issue: 4, 2020
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: GERMANIC STUDIES
Pages: 16 — 22
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