Concept UP in the speeches of the US President Barack Obama ; Konceptas AUKŠTYN JAV prezidento baracko obamos kalbose

Abstract

The article presents the results of linguistic research into American political speeches. Descriptive-analytical and statistical methods have been used to discuss concept-up in the speeches of the US President Barack Obama. The scope of the research consisted of 15 speeches of Obama delivered in 2009 and 2010. Theoretical comments on cognitive linguistics, semantic fields enabled to identify 70 samples of conceptual metaphors with the concept up. The samples were grouped into two semantic fields: economic matters (40 samples) and social matters (30 samples). It was found that the sphere of economic matters depicts the following phenomena: the rise of prices, profit, expenses, costs, exports, imports, capital, loan, inflation, etc. The sphere of social matters dealt with unemployment, workforce, challenge, prosperity. In the first sphere (economic matters) the value of the conceptual metaphors with the concept up is negative, while the second sphere (social matters) presents positive value. The findings of the study have implications for cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics in terms of the research being a type of attempt to identify axiological aspects of semantic fields important for linguistic analysis of political discourse.