Good Intentions Exploited Badly: Contested Metaphors of Russian Patriotism

ABSTRACT

Generating and cultivating patriotic sentiments has been universally recognized as being critical for any nation. The originally sacralized Russian patriotism has evolved into an ambiguous concept due to its discrediting in the post-Soviet era. The paper claims that patriotism is an essentially contested concept, frequently employed as a promotional tool in political campaigns, with figurative language serving as a tool for articulating patriotic sentiments. By applying corpus-based methods, the study elicits dominant metaphors employed in the discursive construction of Russian patriotism. It reveals variation, found in a set of preferred metaphors, which reflects diverging metaphorical narratives in the current patriotic discourse. The paper argues that metaphors are effective explanatory and framing tools applied in constructing the Russian national identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Patriotism
• national identity
• contested concepts
• metaphor
• corpus
• cross-domain mappings
• preferential conceptualization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inna Skrynnikova

Dr Inna V. Skrynnikova is an associate professor in the  Department of German and Romance Philology, Volgograd State University, Russia. Her research interests are cognitive linguistics, neurolinguistics, psycholinquistics, political linguistics and miltimodal comminication.

Tatiana Permyakova

Dr Tatiana M. Permyakova is a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages, HSE University (Perm, Russia). Her research interests are intercultural communication theories, discourse analysis with emphasis on EFL and ELT situations, English for specific purposes, professional and business communication.

Ekaterina Pozdeeva

Dr Ekaterina V. Pozdeeva is an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages, HSE University (Perm, Russia). Her research interests are intercultural communication theories, cognitive linguistics and translation studies.