Metaphorical Representations of the 2008 Russian-Georgian War: Critical Analysis of Conceptual Metaphors of War in Relation to Gender (A Case Study based on the newspaper -The Georgian Times)

Abstract

This paper focuses on conceptual metaphors of war, supposedly shaping peoples’ world-views in relation to gender. Any social event or phenomenon connected to human activity has a discursive representation in the media. War is not an exception. Discourse structures have an ideational function which represents human views of the world. Metaphor is a powerful linguistic tool to serve this function. The objective of the research is to reveal conceptual war metaphors based on the print media coverage of the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, which reflects male and female perceptions of the reality. The research blends Critical Discourse Analysis with Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The blending creates a relevant theoretical and methodological basis for making an attempt to uncover the conceptual metaphors, apparently underlying male/female cognition. The domain of war is the target domain in the present study; As for the source domain, it is not uniform, it may have a variety of revelations. BYU (Brigham Young University) Corpora data were used to enhance the results of the study.