Metaphoric Power as a Culturally Determined Characteristic of Discourse

Abstract

In the process of intercultural communication, it is important not only to identify the features of the communicative behavior of representatives of a certain ethnic group, but also to comprehend their nature. Research in cognitive linguistics can help meet this challenge by expanding the understanding of the relationship between language, culture and thinking. One of the tools for rethinking this relationship is metaphor as a cognitive phenomenon, reflecting the culturally conditioned experience of human interaction with the outside world in linguistic form. The purpose of the article is to study metaphoricity as a culturally specific characteristic of discourse. The key method used in the research was the complex analysis of metaphoricity of discourse aimed at the comprehensive study of the functioning of metaphorical models in the text. The method is based on the calculation of a set of indices: the strength of the metaphor (according to K. de Landtsheer), the functional typology of metaphors, the external and internal metaphoric power of the text. The material of the research included texts representing political, official and mass media discourses in Russian, Chinese and English, with a total of 255,119 words. The metaphoricity of the texts was determined by calculating the indices, which made it possible to quantitatively measure the intensity, density and dominant functions of the metaphor. As a result of calculating the indices, it turned out that the metaphoricity of texts attributed to the same type of discourse in different languages, while united by common pragmatic and extralinguistic characteristics, differs: texts in Chinese have a higher density of metaphors. It was revealed that this dependence is culturally determined. It is concluded that the higher density of metaphors in the Chinese language is explained by the specifics of the Chinese linguaculture represented in different aspects of the language, as well as the construction of Chinese discourse. Its specific features are first of all determined by the syllabic type of the Chinese language and the verbal-syllabic type of hieroglyphic writing, and, secondly, by the peculiarities of Chinese cultural thinking. The increased metaphoricity of discourses in Chinese also correlates with the collectivist type of Chinese culture and its long-term orientation.