Conventional metaphors as a manipulative tool in British and American media: axiological perspective

Drawing on the results of an in-depth analysis of modern English-language media discourse the article examines cognitive mechanisms that allow metaphors to serve as an effective manipulative tool to shape the opinion of target audience. We demonstrate that “precedent” metaphors - figurative expressions that through their long use have acquired a stable, even fossilized character - function as an allusive core, which predetermines the value content of the media product. The addressee’s background knowledge about the semantic motivation and historical connotations of the idiom helps build an integral frame, which is superimposed on the current situation, generating pseudo-identifications. We argue that metaphorical mapping is the leading cognitive mechanism to create axiological reference points of English-language media. Conceptual metaphor allows a transfer of precedent frames with a limited set of roles, a detailed internal structure and a built-in system of stable assessments along the scale “bad - good” to new situations. The result is stereotyping that allows activation of generalized and schematized notions within the binary opposition “us - them”. By establishing fictitious causal links between existing objects and levelling the boundaries between reality and fiction, stereotyping shapes false analogies, which are absorbed by the mass recipient as an “a priori” knowledge. We reach a conclusion that the manipulative use of metaphorical cliches, which serve as aesthetically attractive even if unverified “models of thinking”, results in the English-language media space losing its traditionally inherent values.