Conceptual metaphors in ironic references: the case of news headlines of Lithuanian and American websites ; Konceptualiosios metaforos ironiškuose pasakymuose: internetinės Lietuvos ir Amerikos naujienų antraštės

Abstract

In this study, irony is analysed applying the theory of Conceptual Blending, developed by G.Fauconnier and M.Turner (the theory developed out of two traditions of cognitive linguistics: the Theory of Conceptual Metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) and the Theory of Mental Spaces (Fauconnier, 1985)). Blending has been presented as a scientific model which encompasses and explains a variety of divergent phenomena, and shows how new meanings can emerge from old information. It claims to be capable of accounting for such a dynamic phenomenon as irony and treats irony as a complex mental operation, which exploits the mechanism of Conceptual Blending. In the analysis of Lithuanian and American news headlines it has been noticed that both Lithuanian and American ironic headlines make use of a metaphoric mode, as the integration structures exploit the mental models of conceptual metaphors, e.g., poli­tics is sport or poli­tics is a tale in Lithuanian ironic headlines and poli­tics is sport or politics is Business in American ironic headlines. The analysis shows that the use of the conventionalized models of metaphors enables irony to be accessible without its context. Irony, in its own way, exploits metaphors which have been conventionalized in political discourse in general. Metaphor- based input spaces (target and source) contain cardinally contrary elements, the clash of which supports the ironic shift of meaning. Though certain common patterns of metaphor- based ironies in news. [to full text]