Axiological Potential of Metaphors in Modern English Drama

Abstract

The article is devoted to axiological marking of speech metaphors in English stylized communication within drama discourse. Modern drama discourse, being the discursive space of its own status, unites the characteristics of belle-lettres discourse and colloquial speech, due to which the traditional linguistic markers of fiction obtain new meanings. While embedding into the context of stylized communication, metaphors significantly extend their functional paradigm, the centre of which is now taken by axiological function with expressive and emotive actualization. The article is aimed at systematization and linguistic interpretation of speech metaphors in English-language drama with the purpose of adequate determination of their evaluative potential and their role in linguistic representation of linguocultural axiosphere. The axiological nature of metaphors as their leading characteristic in the English-language drama has not previously been the subject of a separate linguistic study. The empirical base of the research includes 200 metaphors and metaphorical complexes recorded in modern English-language plays; the method of complex linguoaxiological interpretation was employed as the main one. In the course of the study, the boundaries of structural variation of axiological metaphors in the English-language drama discourse were determined and their leading patterns were identified, such as one-component metaphorical nominations, multi-component metaphorical nominations and metaphorical complexes. Besides, the types of thematic transfers of speech metaphors were determined, with attention being paid to the implementation of their evaluative function in the utterance. The defined system of evaluative objects within metaphorical evaluative statements allowed to identify the components of English linguocultural axiosphere which are conceptualized in drama with the help of various structural and thematic metaphorical types, namely 'family', 'intellect', 'truth'. Each of these axiological dominants acts as a value guideline in the English-language linguoculture being linguistically marked by a certain set of metaphors fulfilling their interdiscoursive evaluative potential

Keywords

• speech metaphor, drama discourse, linguistic axiology, english linguoculture, axiosphere, value dominant, evaluative utterance, evaluative marker