National-Cultural Features of Political Discourse of English Press (on Material of Article from “The Economist”)

Abstract

The study focuses on the analysis of a sample of political discourse in the UK from linguistic and cultural positions. The theoretical position of the relationship between language and culture are covered. The necessity of taking into account national and cultural characteristics in the course of a critical analysis of political discourse is proved. The purpose of the study is to reveal language units with national-cultural specificity. The text from the magazine “The Economist” is analysed. It is shown that, firstly, the literary allusions (Shakespeare and Huxley); secondly, the metaphorical images (a natural disaster as changes and a state as a sick person); thirdly, the cultural stereotypes ( stiff upper lip ) do have cultural identity in the text. Special attention in this paper is paid to the metaphors, based on specific British source spheres. It seems that those are “sea” metaphors that appeared in the power of past of the United Kingdom as a Maritime power. Functional load of distinguished culturally-specific elements in the analyzed text is commented at different levels: fixing images typical to this cultural and linguistic community and cohesion of the text. Actuality of research is caused by growing interest of researchers to the relationship of language and culture.

Keywords

• allusion
• cultural linguistics
• metaphor
• national-cultural semantics
• national and cultural specificity
• political discourse
• stereotype