Metaphors of disease in the Russian press
Eduard Budaev
DOI: 10.18355/XL.2017.10.02.03
Abstract
The article deals with metaphors of disease used in Russian media texts within 2000-2010. The content-analysis of a corpus of 86000 texts demonstrated that the frequency of metaphors of illness was gradually decreasing in 2000-2006. These results correlate with the Russian citizens’ perceptions of socio-economic improvements that occurred in 2000-2006. However the frequency of metaphors of disease started increasing in 2007 on the eve of the global financial crisis, and increased greatly in 2008-2009. In 2010 the global economic crisis appeared to be over and the economic stabilization resulted in decreased frequency of images of illness in the Russian press.
Key words: metaphor, conceptual metaphor, Russian press, diachrony, mass media discourse