Conceptual metaphor of Russian-Ukrainian war in American media discourse

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Vasyl Stefanyk precarpathian national university

Conceptual metaphor of Russian-Ukrainian war in American media discourse

Nytspol V.I.,

Kobuta S.S.,

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor at the Department of the Foreign Languages and Translation

Abstract

Conceptual metaphor is an important unit in the field of cognitive linguistics because it allows us to understand how people perceive the world and tackle important issues. Currently, all the world's attention is focused on the Russian-Ukrainian war, so it is important to analyze how this war is covered in the mass media. The purpose of our research is to study the conceptual metaphor related to the Russian-Ukrainian war in the American mass media discourse. We analyzed articles devoted to the Russian-Ukrainian war in such popular American online publications as the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the USA Today. The research methodology is based on the theory of conceptual metaphor (J. Lakoff, M. Johnson). Among the research methods, the following were used: the method of conceptual analysis, component analysis, and the modeling method, when various models were developed in the form of conceptual metaphors, where one concept was revealed through a certain feature of another. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that, for the first time, the conceptual metaphors of the Russian-Ukrainian war were reconstructed in the American media discourse. Conclusion. The article systematizes the theoretical base of research on conceptual metaphors based on the works of famous foreign and Ukrainian researchers, as well as considers the classification of conceptual metaphors. After analyzing 15 articles from the three most famous American publications the Washington Post, the New York Times and the USA Today (5 from each), we came to the conclusion that the Russian-Ukrainian war is conceptualized in the American media discourse through such structural metaphors as WAR IS CRIME, WAR IS DAMAGE, WAR IS ECONOMY, WAR IS A LIE, WAR IS HUNGER, WAR IS A GAME, WAR IS THEATER, WAR IS A DISEASE, WAR IS A ROAD and WAR IS COMMUNICATION, which illustrate war mostly as a negative phenomenon and convey the qualities of the target domains to the source domain WAR. The ontological metaphor WAR IS A CONTAINER indicates the limitations of war, and the orientation metaphor UKRAINE IS UP AND RUSSIA IS DOWN indicates that Ukraine is higher than Russia on the spatial axis.

Key words: conceptual metaphor, source domain, target domain, structural metaphor, ontological metaphor, orientational metaphor.

Анотація

Ницполь В., Кобута С. Концептуальна метафора російсько-української війни в американському медіа - дискурсі

Концептуальна метафора є важливою ланкою в галузі когнітивної лінгвістики, оскільки вона дає змогу зрозуміти те, як люди сприймають світ і вирішують важливі питання. Зараз уся увага світу прикута до російсько-української війни, тому актуально проаналізувати, як ця війна висвітлюється в засобах масової інформації.

Метою нашого дослідження є вивчення концептуальної метафори, що стосується російсько-української війни в американському дискурсі масової інформації. Ми проаналізували статті, присвячені російсько-українській війні в таких популярних американських інтернет виданнях, як the Washington Post, the New York Times та the USA Today.

Методологія дослідження базується на теорії концептуальної метафори (Дж. Лакофф, М. Джонсон). Серед методів дослідження були використані: метод концептуального аналізу, компонентного аналізу та метод моделювання, коли різні моделі були розроблені у вигляді концептуальних метафор, де одне поняття розкривалось через певну ознаку іншого.

Наукова новизна роботи полягає в тому, що вперше було проведено реконструкцію концептуальних метафор російсько-української війни в американському медійно - му дискурсі.

Висновки. У статті систематизовано теоретичну базу досліджень концептуальних метафор на основі робіт відомих зарубіжних та українських дослідників, а також розглянуто класифікації концептуальних метафор, що в сукупності стало основою досліджень концептуальних метафор російсько-української війни. Проаналізувавши 15 статтей з трьох найвідоміших американських видань the Washington Post, the New York Times та the USA Today (по 5 з кожного), ми дійшли висновку, що російсько-українська війна концептуалізується в американському медій - ному просторі через такі структурні метафори як WAR IS CRIME, WAR IS DAMAGE, WAR IS ECONOMY, WAR IS A LIE, WAR IS HUNGER, WAR IS A GAME, WAR IS THEATRE, WAR IS A DISEASE, WAR IS A ROAD та WAR IS COMMUNICATION, які ілюструють війну здебільшого як негативне явище і переносять якості цільового домену на вихідний домен WAR. Виокремлено також онтологічну метафору WAR IS A CONTAINER, яка вказує на обмеженість війни та орієнтаційну UKRAINE IS UP AND RUSSIA IS DOWN, яка свідчить про те, що на просторовій осі Україна стоїть вище ніж росія.

Ключові слова: концептуальна метафора, вихідний домен, цільовий домен, структурна метафора, онтологічна метафра, орієнтаційна метафора.

Main part

Introduction. Conceptual metaphors are important units in the field of cognitive linguistics as they make it possible to understand the way people perceive the world and tackle some important issues. Nowadays all world's attention is drawn to Russian-Ukrainian war, so it is relevant to investigate the way this war is highlighted in mass media. The purpose of our research is to study the conceptual metaphor related to the Russian-Ukrainian war in the American mass media discourse. In this research we analyzed articles devoted to Russian-Ukrainian war from such popular American online newspapers as the Washington Post, the New York Times and the USA Today.

Literature Review

For a long period of time, a metaphor was studied as a stylistic means only, but later it has acquired a new quality in cognitive linguistics and is treated as the tool of cognition. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson state that a conceptual metaphor is a mental phenomenon, which shows «understanding of one domain in terms of another» [1, p. 112]. These two conceptual domains include the source domain, which represents a metaphor itself and the target domain, which explains it. The source domain consists of a set of literal attributes, relationships and processes, which are linked semantically and stored together in mind. The target domain tends to be abstract and takes its structure from the source domain through the metaphorical connection. A systematic set of connections between the source and target domains is called mapping when one word can acquire the peculiarities of the other one [1, pp. 74-80].

Ukrainian linguist Svitlana Zhabotynska mentions that in conceptual metaphors there is a correlation not only between separate singular concepts but between wide meaningful spheres, which can include different related concepts [2, p. 48]. Hanna Vorobyova considers that metaphors should be studied interdisciplinary, where cognitive linguistics emphasizes the connection of metaphors with thinking and conceptual system of a person, discursive analysis considers them as a tool of politics and power, rhetoric emphasizes their role in communicative influence [3, p. 93]. These approaches show the versatility of conceptual metaphors and the need to their systematic study and classification.

Lakoff and Johnson provided a classification of conceptual metaphors which includes structural, ontological and orientational conceptual metaphors, where structural metaphors organize one concept in terms of another, ontological express abstract notions and ideas as substance, mechanism or a person and orientational explains concept through its spatial orientation [1, p. 167]. Malgorzata Fabiszak divides conceptual metaphors according to their structures into paragraph-structured and isolated metaphors, where first include metaphors that are organized not just into a sentence but larger parts of text (one or more paragraphs) and the latter «constitute single instances in a particular text» [4, pp. 112-113] and appear through the text again and again. We will use both classifications during studying conceptual metaphors of Russian-Ukrainian war.

Media discourse is a rich source for conceptual metaphor research. Zoltan Kovecses while investigating various forms of media language, such as discourse by journalists, advertisements, headlines, pictures, pointed out that conceptual metaphors can structure media discourse intertextually and intratextually [5, p. 130]. Christopher Hart also pays attention to intertextuality when researching conceptual metaphors of British Miners' Strike. He explains intertextuality as «the appropriation of or allusion to prior texts, linguistic and visual, in order to elicit a frame for understanding the situations described or depicted in the current text» [6, p. 25]. Hart also points out that when described texts belong to different frames than the target situation, intertextuality becomes rich source for metaphorical interpretation.

Yuriy Velykoroda and Oksana Moroz investigated intertextuality from the recipient's point ofview and found out that this phenomenon is recognizable by most participants of their experiment, who where reading articles from Times magazine [7, p. 78]. This proves that media discourse is productive for intertextual metaphors.

While analyzing conceptual metaphors of war we also found some examples of intertextuality. Here is a connected to Russian - Ukrainian war conceptual metaphor PUTIN IS A BUTCHER. Following example is taken from the New York Times: «Mr. Putin will go down in history as a butcher» (the New York Times, May 19, 2022). This nickname appeared when American president Joe Biden called putin butcher after meeting Ukrainian refugees in Poland. According to CNN Biden also called russian president «war criminal» and «murderous dictator, a pure thug who is waging an immoral war against the people of Ukraine» (CNN, March 26, 2022). This shows negative attitude to putin and American media sources like New York Times use such quotes in their articles to add more expression.

Results and Discussion

Cognitive metaphors allow to conceptualize different parts of the reality. With their help we can transfer the characteristic features of the known areas of experience to the unknown ones with the help of analogy or similarity between these areas. One of the mostly widespread conceptual metaphors among all analyzed abstracts is WAR IS A CRIME. There are a lot of laws and rules that should regulate warfare, but in reality we can see that russia has already violated most if not all of them. American journalists also mention this in their articles: «Meanwhile, a global movement to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression is growing, as the invasion has turned attention to the issue of illegal war» (the Washington Post, July 14, 2022). Epithet illegal shows the mapping of crime, which is out of the law on the source domain WAR. The author of the given article also mentions global movement, which directly calls the war crime of aggression. This metaphor is structural as it defines war in terms of crime.

Authors from the New York Times call russia's aggression «unprovoked», which proves their understanding of russia's guilt. Here is one more example where this war is perceived as crime: «Ukrainian officials called Thursday for the establishment of a special tribunal to try Russia for its war of «aggression» (the Washington Post, July 14, 2022). From this example one more conceptual metaphor can be formulated: RUSSIA IS A CRIMINAL, where tribunal is a vocabulary unit from the target domain CRIME and russia is a source domain. This metaphor can be classified as isolated according to Fabiszak's classification. One more example: «Russian atrocities during the invasion of Ukraine - including the shooting of unarmed civilians, sexual violence and forced deportations - have prompted an unprecedented global effort to hold Russia accountable under international law, even as the fighting grinds on» (the Washington Post, July 14, 2022). This abstract enumerates some crimes committed by russia and points out the necessity to make the criminal be accountable for these crimes.

Russian-Ukrainian war can be also illustrated by conceptual metaphor WAR IS TERRORISM, where RUSSIA IS A TERRORIST: «Russian missiles struck a business complex in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday, killing at least 23 people in an attack Ukrainian authorities described as a war crime and act of terrorism» (the Washington Post, July 14, 2022). Target domain is terrorism is mapped on the source domain war, but through the context we can also see that American authors just provide citation of Ukrainian authorities and don't call russia terrorist directly, which can be connected with the policy of the USA.

War is always associated with destruction, ruins, damage and devastation. The analyzed articles contain the conceptual metaphor WAR IS DAMAGE and this is how the scene after the missile struck depicted by the Washington Post journalists: «A quarter mile away at the recreation facilities struck in the attack, images showed a pile of debris and mangled railings strewn across the ground among the ruins of the building's bright pink facade. A mountain of debris covered what had previously been a large swimming poof» (the Washington Post, July 1,2022). This metaphor is a paragraph-structured as it shows the whole atmosphere of the place and it is also structural as it defines war in terms of such an abstract notion as damage. The target domain DAMAGE is expressed by nouns debris, ruins and adjective mangled. Stylistic metaphor mountain of debris adds more expression and details of the facade's colour bring more drama to the description.

Next example also depicts similar scene: «Images taken by journalists show emergency responders sifting through the rubble. Nearby, the charred husks of cars are stained with blood» (the Washington Post, July 14, 2022). Again we can imagine a lot of damage caused by war and the word choice evokes a lot of emotions. Journalists from the New York Times characterize damage caused by russian army like terrible destruction: «Expecting easy victories, the Russian Army inflicted terrible destruction - especially in its shelling of cities - but for the most part failed to take territory outside the southeast of the country» (the New York Times, May 11, 2022). This example can also be used to illustrate one more conceptual metaphor: WAR IS A GAME, which was also found in media discourse of other wars (Fabiszak, 2007) and is also common for Russian-Ukrainian war: «This is what governments are duty bound to do, not chase after an illusory 'win'» and «the pledge by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that the United States would support Ukraine «until victory is won» - may be rousing proclamations of support, but they do not bring negotiations any closer» (the New York Times, May 19, 2022). The words which belong to the core of the concept GAME (easy victories, win, etc) are used to talk about the war, so it's also a mapping, which creates the conceptual metaphor WAR IS A GAME.

Here is an example of a conceptual metaphor WAR IS A THEATRE: «Russian officials and state-run media outlets have suggested, without evidence, that the attack on the shopping mall was a deliberately staged provocation by Ukrainian forces» (the Washington Post, June 27, 2022). The source domain WAR is expressed through the vocabulary used in theatre sphere «staged», which shows that war attacks can be perceived like plays in the theatre, but we should also pay attention to the context where the words were given as citation of Russian officials and authors of Washington Post question the credibility of these words, which can be seen in the following: «without evidence». Taking into consideration this example one more conceptual metaphor appears in this paragraph - WAR IS A LIE or it is better to paraphrase it into RUSSIA IS A LIAR. This metaphor can be traced in other articles as well: «Ukrainian officials accusedRussia of striking a target with no military value. Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of the Russian state-sponsored media organization RT, said the Defense Ministry in Moscow told her the Vinnytsia strike hit a military officers' club. The Washington Post could not verify the claim» (the Washington Post, July 14, 2022). Here we can see that American media perceive russia as a propagandist state and check all the information that comes from that side.

There is one more example where russia tries without success to justify its terrorist attacks on civilian: «Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was not attacking civilian areas in Ukraine, and said its airstrikes were focused on buildings used to store ammunition and train troops. There is no evidence, however, that the buildings targeted in Serhiivka were used by the military» (the Washington Post, July 1, 2022). Word combination «no evidence» represents the target domain LIE and maps it on the source domain WAR.

Warfare influences economy to a great extent, so the conceptual metaphor WAR IS ECONOMY emerges in media: «The early U.S. response to the invasion was simple: Supply the defenders and apply America's unique financial weaponry to the Russian economy» (the New York Times, May 11,2022). This metaphor is also intertextual because financial weaponry means sanctions imposed on Russia mentioned in previous articles and president Biden's speeches. Metaphoric combination of adjective financial from economic sphere and noun weaponry from military terminology also proves the strong connection between war and economy.

Here is one more example of this conceptual metaphor: «Though Russia's planning and fighting have been surprisingly sloppy, Russia remains too strong, and Mr. Putin has invested too much personal prestige in the invasion to back down» (the New York Times, May 19, 2022). This time target domain ECONOMY is represented by the verb invest, which is used in this context not with money but with prestige. The subordinate clause of this example is also characterizing russia as sloppy, which means careless and shows their small success but there is also adjective strong in the main clause, which leaves some expectations for them.

Conceptual metaphor WAR IS HUNGER is relevant for Russian - Ukrainian war as this war poses a threat of starvation for many countries because of the blockade of Ukrainian grain: «U.N. Secretary General Guterres has been working on a plan that would enable Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain stockpiles that have been stuck in Ukraine's Black Sea ports due to the war - a move that could ease a global food crisis that has sent wheat and other grain prices soaring. At least 22 million tons of grain are stuck in Ukraine due to the war» (the USA Today, May 27, 2022). Journalists of the USA Today use the word combination a global food crisis, which shows the global aspect of the problem. This example has also connection to the previous metaphor WAR IS ECONOMY as we can see that this food crisis leads to soaring prices.

There are examples of less productive conceptual metaphors like WAR IS A DISEASE, WAR IS A ROAD and WAR IS COMMUNICATION:

«Ukraine's foreign minister warned that without a new injection of foreign weapons, Ukrainian forces would not be able to stop Russia from seizing Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk» (the USA Today, May 27, 2022).

«The conflict between Ukraine and Russia could take «a more unpredictable and potentially escalatory trajectory» (the New York Times, May 19, 2022).

«Presented as a common-sense response to Russian aggression, the shift, in fact, amounts to a significant escalation» (the New York Times, May 11, 2022).

The underlined words in the given examples represent target domains DISEASE (injection), ROAD (trajectory), COMMUNICATION (response) and map their qualities and characteristics on the source domain WAR. These metaphors are also structural like all of the given above but there are some ontological metaphors in analyzed articles as well: «Instead, the war's boundaries are being expanded and the war itself recast as a struggle between democracy and autocracy» (the New York Times, April 24, 2022). This example illustrates ontological conceptual metaphor WAR IS A CONTAINER as it shows that war has boundaries. Here we can also find more structural conceptual metaphors as UKRAINE IS DEMOCRACY and RUSSIA IS AUTOCRACY.

Orientational metaphor, which explains concept war through its spatial orientation shows that UKRAINE IS UP and RUSSIA IS DOWN: «Ukrainianfighters have spent weeks trying to defend the city and to keep it from falling to Russia, as neighboring Sievierodonetsk did a week ago» (USA Today, July 2, 2022). This example is about Lysychansk which was Ukrainian at the time when this article was published and Ukrainian soldiers defended city to keep it from falling to Russia, and if something falls it falls DOWN, so it shows that RUSSIA IS DOWN. This metaphor shows that Ukraine is situated higher in our mind and russia is found at a lower position.

While analyzing media discourse we also paid attention to epithets used for the description of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In the Washington Post war is described as Russia's war in Ukraine, illegal war, cruel and senseless war. The New York Times describes the war like: a costly, drawn-out war, Mr. Putin's war. The USA Today is not productive for epithets or war description and no examples were singled out in analyzed articles. Given epithets have connection to some conceptual metaphors like WAR IS CRIME (illegal, cruel) and WAR IS ECONOMY (costly).

Conclusion. After analyzing 15 articles from the three most famous American publications the Washington Post, the New York Times and the USA Today (5 from each), we came to the conclusion that the Russian-Ukrainian war is conceptualized in the American media discourse through such structural metaphors as WAR IS CRIME, WAR IS DAMAGE, WAR IS ECONOMY, WAR IS A LIE, WAR IS HUNGER, WAR IS A GAME, WAR IS THEATER, WAR IS A DISEASE, WAR IS A ROAD and WAR IS COMMUNICATION, which illustrate war mostly as a negative phenomenon and convey the qualities of the target domains to the source domain WAR. The ontological metaphor WAR IS A CONTAINER indicates the limitations of war, and the orientation metaphor UKRAINE IS UP AND RUSSIA IS DOWN indicates that Ukraine is higher than Russia on the spatial axis.

Our study included research on the basis of 3 media discourse sources mentioned above. Future studies can include other printed, or digital media to find out if there are any differences across content and if other metaphors can be singled out.

References

conceptual metaphor linguistics war

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