EMERGENCE OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN ECOLOGICAL FILMIC DISCOURSE

• Main Author: Yana V. Vermenych
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Alfred Nobel University Publisher 2020-12-01
• Series: Vìsnik Unìversitetu ìm. A. Nobelâ: Serìâ Fìlologìčnì Nauki
• Subjects: correlation-based metaphors; emergence; multimodal conceptual metaphor; semiotic mode (verbal; visual); similarity-based metaphors; schematization-based metaphors
• Online Access: https://phil.duan.edu.ua/images/PDF/2020/2/16.pdf

Nowadays, in the context of the global ecological crisis, the task of raising ecological awareness becomes more urgent than ever. One of the effective instruments of achieving this end is documentary films, which in their turn, make use of conceptual metaphors, which are one of the main instruments of thinking and conceptualization. This article presents an analysis of conceptual metaphors in ecological filmic discourse, in particular English documentaries addressing ecological issues. In my research, I focus on multimodal instantiations of conceptual metaphors. Theoretically, the article departs from the conceptual metaphor theory and moves on to the emergentist metaphor theory. It also extends the latter by taking into account multimodal manifestations of the metaphors under analysis. I consider verbal (written and spoken) and visual (static and dynamic images) semiotic modes. Taking English documentaries on ecological problems as empirical data, I aim to reveal how conceptual metaphors emerge in ecological filmic discourse. According to the emergentist metaphor theory, an individual conceptual metaphor emerges over language in use. The results obtained here show that individual conceptual metaphors in the discourse under study emerge over the elements of several semiotic modes (verbal, visual), as well as their interaction. The visual mode can contribute to conceptualization by vividly illustrating the information presented verbally, by appealing to the embodied experience, or by emphasizing certain features. It was also proved that the pairings of the source and target domains can happen on the basis of the correlation with the embodied or bodily experience; a certain similarity between the source and the target domains; the construal operation of schematization. These three kinds of metaphor motivation help to conceptualize complex ecological concepts or reconceptualize wrongly-perceived ones by appealing to their similarity to easier or better defined concepts, addressing the embodied experience, or schematizing one key feature into the target domain