Metaphor Power of Military Doctrines in Russian, Chinese and American English

Abstract

Metaphor in modern linguistics is understood not only as a means of decorating speech, but also as a means of structuring, transforming and creating new knowledge, evoking emotions, influencing the perception. The article aims to estimate the potential speech impact of the military doctrines’ texts with the help of the metaphor power quantitative index. The methodology is based on calculating the indices of metaphor density (MDI), intensity (MII) and functionality of metaphors in the text (MfPI). The theoretical basis of the research is the conceptual metaphor theory by J. Lakoff and M. Johnson, as well as ideas about the metaphor power and the potential persuasiveness of metaphors in the text and discourse, most fully presented in the works on meta-analysis of the metaphor speech impact by P. Sopory and S. van Stee. Thus, we assume that the higher the density of metaphors in the text, the higher is the per-suasiveness of the given speech message. Metaphors of different intensity are based on two different cognitive mechanisms, namely, categorization and comparison, and affect the recipient in different ways, since they are perceived differently by him. Conventional metaphors tend to have a so-called cognitive effect, and new “creative” metaphors, in turn, may have a considerable emotional impact. Different types of metaphors also have different functions: orientational metaphors perform a descriptive function, ontological metaphors are used to explain (translate) complex objects and phenomena, identifying them in the mind of recipients, structural metaphors serve the purpose of restructuring the signified (le signifié in terms of Saussure) of an object or phenomenon, changing the recipient’s point of view on the subject. The material under study includes the latest published doctrinal military documents – the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation (2014), the White Paper “China’s Defense in the New Era” (2019), and a Summary of the US National Defense Strategy (2020). The empiric results of the study show that the metaphor power of the Chinese text in comparison with American English and Russian is higher in terms of the density and intensity of the metaphors used, which indicates the intention to make the White Paper more convincing and emotionally affecting. “The US National Defense Strategy” is less saturated with novel metaphors, but at the same time it uses a greater number of structural metaphors, which indicates the intention to produce a cognitive declarative impact rather than emotional effect. The text of the Russian Military Doctrine has the lowest indices of the density and intensity of metaphors; the number of structural metaphors found in it was also the smallest, which leads us to conclude that this document highlights the informative function, having the identifying nature. The method of metaphor power analysis proposed and tested in this study allows us to single out two different types of speech impact – emotional and cognitive –, as well as makes it possible to express quantitatively their degree. In addition, the values of the metaphorical indices can be used to specify the genre and style of texts under study.