"People matter. Freedom matters. Peace matters": conceptual metaphor analysis of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speeches

COGNITION Is MEAsURE: It's meaning is much wider [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

A COUNTY Is A LIVING BEING:

Russia started a war.... [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

Russia is trying to defeat. [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

LIFE Is JOURNEY: This is only the beginning. [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

COUNTRY Is CONTAINER: .freedom of all people in Europe [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

WORLD Is CONTAINER: .all people in the world [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

A LIVING BEING Is BUILDING MATERIAL: .that makes us people [Zelenskyy, 2022a]. changes ARE movements: .acts in support of Ukraine [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

LIFE Is WAR: But the war continues [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

LIFE Is LENGTH: The acts of terror go on. One month already. That long [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

LIVING BEING Is FRAGILITY: It breaks my heart... [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

Consciousness Is A LIVING BEING: .your standing comes from your offices [Zelenskyy, 2022a].

WAR is MACHINE: .launched a full-scale war. [Zelenskyy, 2022b].

FREEDOM is FRAGILITY: .destroying our democracy. [Zelenskyy, 2022b]. attributes ARE possession: .had no idea. [Zelenskyy, 2022b].

COUNTRY Is TARGET: Baltic states will become the next target [Zelenskyy, 2022b].

FREEDOM is BUILDING MATERIAL: .freedom of Ukraine falls [Zelenskyy, 2022b].

FREEDOM is A LIVING BEING: Freedom must be armed [Zelenskyy, 2022b].

In conclusion, three phenomena were deemed statistically significant in the first speech: ATTRIBUTES, A HUMAN BEING, and FREEDOM - whilst only one was highlighted as such in the second speech and that is POSSESSION.

Axiology layer

According to Collins Dictionary, axiology is regarded to be derived from the philosophical plane and deals with the theory of values, morals, and aesthetics. R.L. Boyd, S.R. Wilson, J.W. Pennebaker and D. Stillwell states that the phenomenon of values reflects the actual way of human thinking in a particular situation [Boyd et al., 2015, p. 31].

It seems that discourse axiology could play a crucial role in the audience's understanding of such speeches, therefore determining how to build successful communicative messages. Hence, it may be said that axiology is directly related to the emotional spectrum and feelings and in some way depicts the speaker's mood and attitude towards a particular situation.

Obviously, in the context of war, axiology cannot be positive or neutral. It is worth mentioning that both speeches were selected at the very beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine's territory. Thus, emotional evaluation is regarded to be at its peak and is transmitted in the two of them. Volodymyr Zelenskyy's appeal for international and military support to be able to defend Ukraine's freedom asking for, makes his axiology negative. Table 6 presents the results of the manual annotation in the UAM Corpus Tool.

Axiology distribution

Table 6.

Finally, we can clearly see a strong negative progression in the second speech compared to the first one.

Conceptual blending

When examining the results of the manual annotation, it was found that Volodymyr Zelenskyy tends to draw parallels between Russia and Ukraine by applying two completely different axes namely evil and good. For instance, during the description of the activities and actions happening at the war, he appealed to the notions of tyranny, aggression, terrorism, crude, cruelty, and terror when describing Russia. On the contrary, when referring to Ukraine, he referred to the following concepts: peace, freedom, life, democracy, and victory.

Consequently, according to G. Fauconnier and M. Turner's conceptual blending theory, it is possible to construe the four-space models of Russia and Ukraine in the context of the Ukrainian president's rhetorics. This theory is viewed to serve as the most efficient tool to trace the way of conveying new meanings declared by the speaker in speeches that are shaped by various situational contexts. To specify, the four-space model comprises four crucial cornerstones such as Input 1, Input 2, Generic Space, and Conceptual Blend.

Conceptual blending is known to be the “basic mental operation that leads to new meaning, global insight, and conceptual compressions useful for memory and manipulation of otherwise diffuse ranges of meaning" [Fauconnier, Turner, 2003, p. 57]. Moreover, conceptual blending is regarded as an essential tool in forming meaning in various life domains and science. Initially, the key target of conceptual blending is to build “a partial match" among several “input mental spaces" reflecting factual information about concrete notions that ultimately construe a “blended" mental space, namely a completely new meaning that emerged on the input's basis [Fauconnier, Turner, 2003, pp. 56-57].

With this in mind, the approach toward constructing a four-space model of Russia and Ukraine represented by Volodymyr Zelenskyy aims to figure out not only the peculiarities of their policies and strategies in the context of war but to scrutinise the effect that their images impose on the international audience. It is strongly believed that this is an effective method for reaching communicative goals since by its means is possible to define the crucial characteristics of describing notions that enhance a mutual understanding. Since it could label or identify the crucial characteristics of describing notions in such a way as to create much stronger inputs to comprehend the ongoing situation.

Accordingly, the following Image 2 and Image 3 were designed to illustrate how the Ukrainian President progressively depicts and construes the images of Ukraine and Russia in the layout of his speeches for the international audience in order to trace the way of forming the

Accordingly, as it might be seen, in the conceptual blend the role of Russia is identified through the role of terrorism. Additionally, the interesting similarities touch upon purposes, since the purpose of Russia is to absorb the new territories by means of war, crudeness, cruelty, and ruthlessness. Similarly, the purpose of terrorism is to achieve any political, ideological, or religious goal using violence, aggression, and killing.

Moreover, the essential layout for Russia and terrorism may be defined in terms of "bloodlust", because this phenomenon stands behind the purpose and means indicated in Input I and Input II which are defined by both sides as key notions. Thus, such an interpretation of Russia's role in both speeches provides the full picture of its actions on the Ukrainian lands during wartime. From the stylistic device perspective, such a strong comparison assists in solving all needed “puzzles" in the understanding of the current situation. In order to compare the equation of Russia to Ukraine in the speeches delivered by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Image 3 is built nd structurally organised.

Image 3. The four-space Model of Ukraine

The key cornerstones of Table 3 are Input I and Input II where the role, purpose, and means of the notions of Ukraine and freedom are described. Initially, according to the content of the speeches delivered by the President, the purpose of Ukraine is to foster its development and spread EU values. Accordingly, the essential means of reaching these aims are the conducting right national policy based on the principles of the rule of law and democracy allowing to be a part of the EU and NATO. It is important to mention that this policy has an absolutely peaceful and non-radical form of implementation on local and international levels.

Considering Input II, freedom is regarded as an abstract notion, specifically, opportunity. The purpose of freedom is to choose according to individual preferences and targets in life. Additionally, the main means for that is the acquirement of knowledge existing in the objective reality.

Consequently, in the conceptual blend, the role of Ukraine absolutely coexists with the role of freedom jointly with their purposes and means. Hence, the meaningful idea unframed in the conceptual blend is "Ukraine wants to have the right to choose".

Conclusions

In this research, the conceptual metaphor analysis is implemented by means of the theoretical foundation exposed in Conceptual Metaphor Theory established by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson [1980] that was incorporated in the UAM Corpus Tool for realising the manual annotation of the texts corpora. The self-created scheme for analysis consists of five layers such as conceptual, novel, target domain, source domain, and axiology.

The empirical material for this case study was gathered in alignment with the following principles: the materials are represented in English and the timeframe fluctuates in timeframe up to one month from the beginning of the war.

According to the received outcomes, Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses exclusively conceptual metaphors such as structural, ontological, and building in two speeches “The war of Russia is not only the war against Ukraine" dated 1 March, and “Ukraine needs heavy weapons" dated 13 April. The target domain of conceptual metaphor comprises various abstract elements such as ATTRIBUTES, CHANGES, LIFE, TIME, A LIVING BEING, COGNITION, COUNTRY, WAR, FREEDOM, WORLD, and CONSCIOUSNESS. The target domain is represented by the following notions POSSESSIONS, MATERIAL OBJECT, WAR, MONEY, VALUABLE THING, BUILDING MATERIAL, FRAGILITY, A LIVING BEING, MACHINE, and TARGET.

In the first speech, he uses more frequent ontological metaphors than container and personification. Furthermore, in the second speech in the target domain, the aspects of ATTRIBUTES and FREEDOM prevail in comparison to the first one where the notion A HUMAN BEING is predominant. Similarly, the element of POSSESSION is of scientific significance in the source domain. Last but not least, negative axiology is considered to be central in the layout of these two speeches.

Conducting the structuring of the four-space models of Russia and Ukraine identification conveyed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, it was admitted that in the generic space, Russia coexists with the notion terror, while Ukraine with the phenomenon of freedom.

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