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Флористическая и анималистическая метафора в российском публицистическом дискурсе 2022–2023 гг.
In Russian media discourse in 2022–2023 in connection with the special military operation, the names of military equipment are updated and the associations with these names are being actively metaphorized.
The purpose of the study is to trace the development of new meanings in floral and animalistic vocabulary in the context of military operations of the newest period. The material of the study was the semantic neologisms found in the texts of the mass media in 2022, the source area of metaphorical transfer of which are nominations, one way or another connected with the world of plants and animals. In addition, this group of vocabulary was also limited to the area of the target of metaphorical transfer – the sphere of armament.
The relevance of the study of phytonymic and animalistic metaphors is determined, firstly, by the fact that the metaphorical nominations of the plant world play one of the most important roles in our lives and are reflected in the system of human knowledge. Secondly, such metaphors are regularly used in political discourse, the language of the media. In addition, the importance of the study of metaphorical nominations is determined by the fact that a metaphor helps to convey information that the author, for one reason or another, does not consider it possible to designate directly, with the help of direct nominations.
In the media discourse in 2022, the animalistic metaphor was activated and updated due to the theme of NATO weapons used by Ukraine (FV430 «Bulldog», «Wolfhound», «Dingo ATF», «COBRA», «Cougar», «Leopard 2A6», «Leopard-1A5s», «Mastiff», «Lynx», «Husky»). The totality of the nominations of NATO military equipment, referring to representatives of various animals, becomes an occasion for playing around with this group of vocabulary. One of the most frequent metaphorical realizations of this language association is the zoo and menagerie nominations. In addition, the image of the totality of various animals collected in one place is reinterpreted in media discourse in the context of the biblical story of Noah’s Ark.
The principle of naming units of Russian military equipment through the names of flowers («Acacia», 2B9 «Vasilek», SAU «Gvozdika», UAV «Geran-2», SAU 2S5 «Hyacinth”, 2S7 «Peony», 2S4 «Tulip», 9P157 «Chrysanthemum-S») served in the Russian media space in 2022 as the basis for the associative implementation of the floristic metaphor of different levels. In relation to the types of weapons of the Russian Federation in 2022, in the media, their use begins to be widely floristic vocabulary, represented, for example, by nouns such as bouquet, geranium, seedling, sprout, flower garden, flower; adjectives: geranium, geranium-like, flowery; verbs: bloom, grow, flourish.
It seems that the use by the authors of media texts of non-militant, obviously non-aggressive floristic vocabulary to describe the military clash between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the avoidance of possible aggressive animalistic metaphors when describing the enemy side, was done to soften the military discourse, to reduce the level of tension with the help of figurative descriptions, the addressee of which is the civilian population.