Klaipėdos universitetas

The present article analyses one of the fragments of naïve psychology – conceptual WAVE metaphor related to the Lithuanian language world-view. The approach to language which is close to cognitive linguistics is taken into consideration: it is referred to cognitive theory of metaphor, that allows to describe the characteristics of abstract phenomena by employing their relation to this what is concrete and understandable and what is fixed in language world-view. On the basis of the names of internal life phenomena as well as word combinations with different forms of the word wave, collected from Contemporary Lithuanian Language Corpus, those phenomena of the domains of feelings and emotions are described, which in the Lithuanian language world-view are perceived as waving.

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.