Res Humanitariae

The research presented in this article discusses the specificity of health discourse, which has not been described yet in Lithuanian linguistics: it is strived to substantiate the title of the discourse under analysis and present one of the possible ways of analysis. The approach to language that is close to cognitive linguistics is taken into consideration, thus it is strived to describe the fragment of health discourse with reference to the theory of metaphorical model. On the basis of the examples drawn from daily newspaper “Komjaunimo tiesa” of 1980–1989 years and daily newspaper “Lietuvos rytas” of 1990–2001 years it is compared how during more than 20 years, metaphorical WAR model has been realized in Lithuanian public discourse.

The article deals with conceptual metaphors tied to the source domain SEA in Lithuanian political and economic discourse. The study is based on the dictionary compiled during the research project “Conceptual Metaphors in Public Discourse”, funded by the Research Council of Lithuania. The analysis refers to the traditional conceptual metaphor theory, theoretical problems relevant to metaphor analysis in discourse are considered. Features of the source domain SEA conceptualize the political and economic instability and insecurity. Although political and economic discourses are rather different, the analysis of metaphorical expressions related to the source domain SEA reveals that their linguistic, conceptual and communicative properties are basically compliant.

On the ground of conceptual metaphor conception, metaphor is discussed as thinking strategy, which is implemented in language by metaphorical expressions. Metaphorical expressions for which target domain is criminal and crime were gathered from texts which were published in two Lithuanian news portals in the years 2001–2015. It is important to reconstruct the conceptual metaphors not only because they reflect viewpoint of society regarding certain phenomenon, but also because implemented in the texts of media influence on the public opinion, inasmuch as the metaphor is not only some linguistic form and conceptual structure, but also manifestation of communicational function.