Metafora i proksymizacja w analizie dyskursu zagrożenia pośredniego - studium retoryki administracji amerykańskiej wobec konfliktu rosyjsko-ukraińskiego

Abstract

The research goal of the dissertation is the analysis of the discursive formulation of indirect threat in political discourse with American administration discourse regarding Russia and its actions in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as the newly-arisen case study. More precisely, the thesis examines how Barack Obama’s rhetoric relies on metaphor and proximisation to the end of the formulation of the indirect threat that Russia constitutes to the US, the aim behind which is to prove the applicability of the two – both as rhetorical strategies and methodological apparatuses – in the indirect threat-focused discourses as well as hypothesize on further prospects of proximisation studies in yet different contexts of political discourse and beyond it. The dissertation offers an overview of the roots and current state of knowledge and use of metaphor and proximisation out of which it employs the tripartition of metaphorical roles in Lakoff’s (1991) fairy-tale scenario, Critical Metaphor Analysis of Charteris-Black (2004, 2006), Wieczorek’s (2013) P-D-P (Perspective-Distanciation-Proximisation) model and finally the S-T-A (Spatial-Temporal-Axiological) proximisation model by Cap (2013). In the empirical part concerned with the use of metaphor the twenty (main) metaphors or source domains found in Obama’s administration discourse (comprising seventy-five texts of various kind obtained from the White House official website in 2014) are analysed against their contribution to the tripartition of metaphorical roles assigned respectively to Russia as the villain, Ukraine as the victim and America as the hero. The proximisation analysis is led through the gradation of the threat that Russia constitutes to entities on the subsequent layers of the Deictic Centre and in its three aspects: spatial, temporal and axiological, paying special attention to their cooperation for the superior goal of legitimisation of America’s leadership in the world, reminiscing of the US war-on-terror and policeman-nation notions in Bush’s post 9/11 interventionist rhetoric. The final result of the analysis, pinpointing values, ideals and rules as the pivotal element of America-Russia opposition and the starting point for the proximised threat, whose natural progression is the threat in spatial terms, allows to draw more far-reaching suggestions as to the applicability of proximisation in any discourse thanks to its axiological aspect that is never-exhaustive in face of prevalence and boundlessness of differences in value systems.