Respondent
Theme
Tropes and Tropeization of English Mass Media Discourse.
Defence Date
Annotation
Thesis for the Candidate degree in Philology, speciality: 10.02.04 — Germanic
Languages. — Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ministry of Education and
Science of Ukraine, Lviv, 2016.
Thesis deals with the tropes, their structural–semantic, cognitive–discursive
parameters and the process of tropeization of English mas media discourse.
In the paper the essence of metaphor as the process of transferring the figurative
meaning and interpretation of the evolution of tropes within linguophilosophical and
linguistic studies is revealed. The content of the concept of “trope”, its structural and
semantic types and characteristics are outlined. Thus, the tropes as figures of speech
include metaphor and metonymy, euphemism, dysphemism and paraphrase based on
substitutive, comparative, emotional and evaluation characteristics.
The analysis of metaphor–metonymical transfers reveals a symbol of
metaphor / sense motivator or the type of related change, i.e. the associative sense, which
undergoes a series of transformations. Within the cognitive interpretation, the source and
target domains that are most involved in the process of mapping are outlined.
Frame analysis of tropes and cognitive modeling method confirm people’s
perception of specific social events. Recurrence of tropes proves their word building
potential. Most efficient ways of derivation are affixation, stem building, semantic
contamination, analogy and other less productive ways of word formation (sound
imitation, word chains, word hybrids).
At the syntactic level the trope enters the syntagmatic units as a fully functional
member but expresses its imagery in different ways. The use of quotes graphically
distinguishes the trope; presence of sociocultural or etymological comments emphasizes
the creation conditions of the figures of speech; fully functional tropes do not cause
difficulties in understanding and do not require additional markers for the correctness of
interpretation. The tropes can also show their figurativeness through nonverbal way of
expressing, especially vivid in the visual means of advertisements.
Based on the study of contemporary English mass media discourse and the
proportion of recurrence of tropes in a certain period, the notion of the tendency to
tropeization is suggested. It is the involvement of tropes to the figurative description and
analysis of certain phenomena and events, especially in media texts. The reasons for the
emergence and use of tropes are extralinguistic factors of social development and the need
for clear notions of complex phenomena. Wide use of tropes causes functional analysis to
be done.
Informative group of trope functions focuses on the nominative and cognitive
capabilities of tropes. With communicative and expressive functions tropes transmit
feelings and attitudes to events under media focus. Pragmatic functions aim at influencing
readers’ opinions by underlining meanings of prevention, prosecution, invitation,
coaching, prohibition, promise, etc.
Key words: metaphor–metonymical transfer, paraphrase,
euphemism / dysphemism, tropeization, mass media discourse.