Emotive metaphorics in the genres of diplomatic discourse: A dynamic aspect (based on the texts of the press conference and interview of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in 2023)

The article presents the analysis of emotive metaphors used by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov in the genres of interview and press conference in 2023. The research is a continuation of an earlier similar study based on the materials of 2022. The relevance of the topic is determined by the fact that these genres of diplomatic discourse, combining the properties of status-role and relatively personal communication, allow us to identify the aspects of the use of emotive figurative means in achieving the main goal of diplomacy – in approving the course of the country’s foreign policy in the context of a consistent escalation of the “hybrid” (including informational) war of the “collective West” against the Russian Federation in 2023. The purpose of the study is to identify the functional aspects of emotive transfers used by S. V. Lavrov in the studied texts in the dynamic aspect (in comparison with similar transfers in 2022). The research is based on 46 transcripts of the two genres, published from 01.01.23 to 06.06.23 on the official website mid.ru (mid.ru/ru/press_service/minister_speeches). Based on the complex methodology of semantic, discursive, linguocognitive analysis, it was found that in 2023, as in 2022, the Minister regularly uses emotive metaphors in order to draw attention to the most acute and significant, from the state point of view, problems of international relations (escalation of tension in the world, “hybrid” war against Russia, the main source of which is the aggressive policy of the “collective” West”), as well as to express the attitude towards them (in status-role and personal aspects). To solve these problems, S. V. Lavrov not only continues to systematically use reduced, ”undiplomatic” hyphenations (“vulgarisms”), but also more actively attracts bookoriented (“rhetorical”) metaphors. The cognitive and pragmatic functions of emotive metaphorics are most fully realized, as in 2022, in a system of conceptual models, the composition, structure of which and the main trends in development in 2023 are directly related to the solution of topical political and ideological problems. 

genres of interview, press conference of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, expressive and evaluative conceptual metaphors