CC BY
14
YffK 81.161.1
DO110.24147/2413-6182.2021.8(1)194-199
ISSN 2413-6182 elSSN 2658-4867
REVIEW ON THE MONOGRAPH BY A.P. CHUDINOV, E.V. BUDAEV, O.A. SOLOPOVA "DISCURSIVE HORIZONS OF POLITICAL METAPHOROLOGY" (Moscow, Flinta publ., 2020, 236 p.)
A.V. Kolmogorova
Siberian Federal University (Krasnoyarsk, Russia)
Abstract: The article presents a review on the monograph by A.P. Chudinov, E.V. Bu-daev and O.A. Solopova "Discursive horizons of political metaphorology" (Moscow, Flinta publ., 2020, 236 p.). The relevance of the monograph is due to the fact that, on the rich corpus of examples, the researchers demonstrate the productivity of interdisciplinary approach in linguistic studies. They argue that, in political communication, metaphor shows a particular sensibility to social challenges, to changes in social values - it doesn't only constitutes discourse, but modifies itself under discursive impact. The theoretical importance of the metaphor is ensured by the principle of systematicity used to present the scientific results achieved by researchers from Ural school of political metaphorology.
Key words: cognitive metaphor, discourse, political communication, political meta-phorology.
For citation:
Kolmogorova, A.V. (2021), Review on the monograph by A.P. Chudinov, E.V. Budaev, O.A. Solopova "Discursive horizons of political metaphorology" (Moscow, Flinta publ., 2020, 236 p.). Communication Studies (Russia), Vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 194-199. DOI: 10.24147/2413-6182.2021.8(1).194-199.
About the author:
Kolmogorova, Anastasia Vladimirovna, Prof., Head of the Romance Languages and Applied Linguistics Department
Corresponding author:
Postal address: off. 333b, 82a, Svobodnyi pr., Krasnoyarsk, 660041, Russia E-mail: nastiakol@mail.ru
Received: November 22, 2020
Accepted: February 15, 2021
© А.В. Колмогорова, 2021
Russian linguistics has largely implemented the principles and methods of the theory of cognitive metaphor in its research practice. One of the most interesting areas of application of this theory is political communication. Political metaphorology has been successfully developing as an independent research approach.
The reviewed monograph summarizes provisional results and outlines new prospects for the development of political metaphorology.
The theoretical concept base and the perspectives of its further development are described in the first chapter "DISCUSSIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE THEORY OF POLITICAL METAPHOROLOGY". The founder of the school, Ana-toly P. Chudinov, outlining the position of political metaphorology in the humanitarian knowledge, underlines that the school has all the features of an independent research area: sustainable deepening of the research field, active participation in scientific life, publications, etc. Thinking about its "zone of proximal development", he considers the inclusion of political metaphorology into a federation of sciences, and, possibly, into several federations at the same time - the federation of cognitive sciences and the federation of sciences those objects, even if being very different, find their manifestation in the social communication domain (it might be called, for example, "discursive federation"].
Such a broad theoretical message seems extremely promising and topical, since "Every boundary placement makes some things easy to see, and others impossible to see" [Hutchins 2010: 706]. The concept of "a federation of sciences" allows expanding the boundaries of a scientific area, but, at the same time, helps to preserve its research identity.
Thus, the authors don't deny the cognitive nature of the metaphor, but they suggest readers looking at this phenomenon in a broader perspective. An intriguing question they raise is: how a metaphor, being always deeply rooted in the cognitive experience of every individual and of the entire linguocultural society, has been modifying in discursive practice, flexibly reacting to changes in social practices and ideological formations? How cognitive metaphor mechanism does mitigate to meet the affective and constructive functions of discourse?
In this perspective, the facets are multiple. For example, the monograph provides vivid examples of how metaphors correlate with the problems that come to the fore at certain stages of the society development (terrorism, Euro-identity, economic crisis]; of how a metaphor can reveal a close connection with the idiostyle of a politician or a political group (metaphor of French nationalists, MEPs, etc.]; of how metaphorical images, which are used to describe a political event, can be predetermined by the type of this political event. In other words, if we imagine cognitive-communicative processes in the form of a sandglass, the metaphor is situated in its thinnest part, along which cognitive processes flow into communicative ones, and vice versa (see: [Kolmogorova et al. 2016]]. In this context, the position of the authors "doesn't suppose reducing the role of cognitive heuristics, but it focuses on supplementing them with discourse heuristics" (p. 38], what seems to be rather balanced and productive.
In order to legitimize such a discursive turn in political metaphorology, authors give an interesting insight into the history of studying the metaphor "outside" the famous work of G. Lakoff and M. Johnson [Lakoff, Johnson 1980]. You cannot but agree with the authors that the theory of conceptual metaphor, having become the cornerstone of the cognitive research in recent decades, has overshadowed some other interesting directions in the study of forms of figurative thinking in a language. In particular, these are the traditions of studying metaphors in rhetoric and stylistics, which focus on the discursive context of the functioning of a metaphorical expression. In this context, you cannot but mention the works of Nina D. Arutyunova [Arutyunova 1990, 1999], who anticipated this discursive turn, having showed the specifics of the role and functions of metaphor in everyday speech, in scientific discourse and in literature. However, the linguist didn't consider the political sphere. In Soviet times, according to the authors, political metaphor was mainly studied indirectly: in the practice of oratory and lecturing, in the coverage of issues related to the media, agitation and propaganda. Things were quite different in the West. The text of the monograph provides a detailed analysis of the concepts of M. Osborn's "archetypal metaphor" and J. Jaynes' cognitive theory of consciousness. Both concepts are brought together by the fact that their authors considered the metaphor as something more than a stylistic figure: for M. Osborn, it is a rudiment of mythopoetic thinking, which has a deep potential for influencing the mass consciousness; for J. Jaynes it is an inherent property of consciousness that helps to generate new ideas.
This part of the monograph also has a didactic potential - it can help students of linguistics to study the theory of metaphor. Unfortunately, it is not rare when young researchers, making a historic overview of the field, don't go beyond some significant works of modern authors, losing the deep and multi-layered context of the problem.
The second chapter of the reviewed monograph "COMPARATIVE POLITICAL METAPHOROLOGY" provides the results of a discursive study of political metaphor in a comparative aspect. In a fundamental paragraph devoted to intercultural comparative research (paragraph 2.3.1] on the bases of a pull of illustrative examples from the research corpus and scientific literature, the authors display a large set of linguistic and cultural features of political metaphors in Israel, the USA, Germany, France, China, Japan, and Singapore.
Nonetheless, the book focus falls on the other side of the coin.
The authors pay special attention to the "intra-lingual perspective" of comparison that is heuristically productive for the further development of modern studies of conceptual metaphor (p. 65]. Indeed, comparative studies of metaphorical modeling of a particular reality or phenomenon in several languages and cultures seem to dominate in scientific works and, in particular, in PhD theses. However, in such an analysis, aimed at finding cultural differences, more subtle nuances often slip away. The authors of the monograph stress that
due to the development of the Internet and globalization, cultural differences, even as striking as the differences between the West and the East, are gradually being erased (p. 49]. New facets of comparison emerge to show more the differences in discourses themselves, determined by their actors, plots, objects, social practices, rather than in cultures that enable them. Although, in our opinion, the authors do not suggest abandoning intercultural comparison, they rather invite to move to a new, deeper and more indirect level of search. Cultural specificity may not be reflected in the choice of the target domain or the source domain of the political metaphor. More probably, it shows itself at the level of the model of social behavior, social practice that is trigged in cultural communities by such metaphor. In this case, although cognitive metaphors may be close or identical, their discursive-cognitive vector has a different direction, and, in the analysis, such examples are to be interpreted as "false friends-metaphors" (p. 73].
Paragraphs 2.2 and 2.3 of the monograph outline the main vectors of discursive metaphorological comparisons: comparison of metaphors in discourses of political parties in different circumstances; in personal discourses of well-known political leaders at various stages of their activities; gender comparison; comparison of source domains and target domains of metaphorical expansion; diachronic comparison (for example, comparison of dominant metaphors of different eras], multimodal comparison.
It is necessary to dwell on some types of comparison in detail due to the originality and novelty of their foundations.
For example, gender comparison. In linguistic studies, gender linguistics has strong positions and its main assumptions are well known (see, for example, [Holmes, Meyerhoff 2003]. It focuses on linguistic manifestations of differences in feminine and masculine social roles. The metaphorical perspective of gender is intriguing: it is about the use of gender roles or gender stereotypes as source domains for metaphorical conceptualization. For example, in a situation of political conflict, actors of political discourse actively use a source domain with a sexual overtone, presenting one conflicting party as a victim of violence, and the other as a rapist. To discredit a political doctrine or a party, unfair media resort to images of male sexual dysfunction, impotence, etc. (p. 86].
The multimodal comparison is also interesting and extremely topical nowadays. According to Andrey A. Kibrik, the multimodal research is aimed at seeing the variety of processes involved in human communication [Kibrik 2016: 675]. Cognitive metaphorology is actively involved in this research field: scientists compare visual metaphors of one subject area, but in different eras, or in different types of discourse; researchers focus on comparing visual and verbal metaphors used within the same type of discourse or within the context of the same event. In our opinion, we might look further and understand how visual images change in order to represent the same event depending on the communication channel (Internet, television, press], on the communicative goal, on
the target audience, etc. It seems to become a large and productive area for scientific exploration.
The monograph ends with a large chapter "HISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL METAPHORICS" that contains a huge amount of practical material and describes an interesting case of a comparative diachronic study of political metaphor used to present the future of Russia in British and American political discourse of the 19 th and 21st centuries. This excellent chapter includes a lot of exciting examples.
One of the most important contribution of the monograph to the general linguistic context is that it involves extensive terminology elaborated within the scientific school. It gives a systemic view on basic terms already developed in studies on cognitive metaphorology (for example, dominant metaphor, meta-comparison of metaphors]. In addition, there are various new, but very suggestive and evocative terms, many of which, due to their imagery, will be of use in further works on political discourse: metaphorical storms and calms, the discursive career of a metaphor.
In conclusion, we would like to emphasize that the publication of the reviewed monograph is an important milestone in the development of Russian traditions of political metaphor studies. The authors - Anatoly P. Chudinov, Eduard V. Budaev and Olga A. Solopova - develop a new discursive-communicative vector of political metaphorology. Its theoretical contribution is associated with the deep reflection on the results achieved by this scientific school, presenting them systemically in the context of foreign and Russian works in the field of discursive and cognitive linguistics. Apart of its scientific value, the didactic potential of the publication is promising due to the consistency, logic and clarity of its structure and content.
References
Arutyunova, N.D. (1999), Yazykovaya metafora (sintaksis i leksika) [Metaphor in language (syntax and vocabulary)]. Language and Human Universe, Moscow, pp. 346-370. (in Russian). Arutyunova, N.D. (1990), Metafora i diskurs [Metaphor and discourse]. Arutyunova, N.D., Zhurinskaya, M.A. (eds.) Teoriya metafory [Theory of metaphor], Moscow, pp. 5-32. (in Russian). Kibrik, A.A. (2016), Yazyk kak on est' [Language as it is]. Aleksandrov, Yu.I., Ano-khin, K.V. (eds.) Proceeding of the 7th International Conference on Cognitive Science, Svetlogorsk, June 20-24, 2016, Moscow, Institute of Psychology of the RAS publ., pp. 674-676. (in Russian). Kolmogorova, A.V., Chistova, E.V., Martynyuk, K.V., Ukanakova, N.V., Radevich, V.V., Varlamova, O.N., Sharova, M.K. (2016), "Rizomorfryi klubok": kognitsiya vs kommunikatsiya ["Rezomorphic clew": cognition vs communication], collective monograph, Krasnoyarsk, Siberian Federal University publ., 385 p. (in Russian). Holmes, J., Meyerhoff, M. (eds.) (2003), The Handbook of Language and Gender, Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, xv + 759 p. DOI: 10.1002/9780470756942.
Hutchins, E. (2010), Cognitive ecology. Topics in Cognitive Science, no. 2, pp. 705-715. Lakoff, G., Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live by, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980, xiii + 241 p.
РЕЦЕНЗИЯ НА МОНОГРАФИЮ А.П. ЧУДИНОВА, Э.В. БУДАЕВА, О.А. СОЛОПОВОЙ «ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАЯ МЕТАФОРОЛОГИЯ: ДИСКУРСИВНЫЙ ПОВОРОТ» (М.: Флинта, 2020. 236 с.)
А.В. Колмогорова
Сибирский федеральный университет (Красноярск, Россия)
Аннотация: Представлена рецензия на монографию А.П. Чудинова, Э.В. Будаева, О.А. Солоповой «Политическая метафорология: дискурсивный поворот» (М.: Флинта, 2020. 236 с.). Актуальность монографии обусловлена тем, что в ней на обширном исследовательском материале иллюстрируется идея продуктивности междисциплинарного подхода в лингвистике. В книге убедительно доказывается, что метафора в политической коммуникации тонко реагирует на запросы общества, на изменение его ценностных ориентиров -она не только конституирует дискурс, но и сама меняется под его воздействием. Теоретическая значимость монографии связана с тем, что в ней систематизируются научные результаты, достигнутые Уральской школой политической метафорологии на современном этапе.
Ключевые слова: когнитивная метафора, дискурс, политическая коммуникация, политическая метафорология.
Для цитирования:
Колмогорова А.В. Рецензия на монографию А.П. Чудинова, Э.В. Будаева, О.А. Солоповой «Политическая метафорология: дискурсивный поворот» (М.: Флинта, 2020. 236 с.) // Коммуникативные исследования. 2021. Т. 8. № 1. С. 194-199. DOI: 10.24147/2413-6182.2021.8(1).194-199. (На англ. яз.).
Сведения об авторе:
Колмогорова Анастасия Владимировна, доктор филологических наук, профессор, заведующий кафедрой романских языков и прикладной лингвистики
Контактная информация:
Почтовый адрес: 660041, Россия, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 82а, ауд. 333б E-mail: nastiakol@mail.ru Дата поступления статьи: 22.11.2020 Дата принятия в печать: 15.02.2021
