Metaphorical Representation of the Concept SCARCITY in the Mass Media Discourse

Abstract

The article considers linguistic means of metaphorical representation of the terminological cognitive concept SCARCITY, as well as the range of its cognitive metaphors in the English-language media discourse in 1970–2000. Following the principles of the cognitive metaphor theory, I established the cross-domain mappings and, in particular, that the concept SCARCITY interacts with the source domains OBJECT IN SPACE (subdomains MOVEMENT DOWN / MOVEMENT UP), MEDICINE (subdomains DISEASE / EPIDEMIC, MENTAL DISORDER, DEATH), LIVING ORGANISM (subdomains MAN, ENEMY), forming cognitive metaphor models SCARCITY is MOVEMENT DOWN / UP, SCARCITY is DISEASE etc., which also participate in the metaphorical representation of the concept ECONOMIC CRISIS that I considered in my previous articles. This can be explained by the fact that lexeme scarcity (n.) as the name of the concept SCARCITY is an element of the nominative field of the concept ECONOMIC CRISIS, in particular, its extension “Shortage of financial resources” motivated by the general semantic property ‘shortage’.

The range of metaphors (source domains) for the concept SCARCITY is a part of a historically stable set of source domains of the cognitive metaphor of the concept ECONOMIC CRISIS. The set of the source domains of the concept SCARCITY differs in a more limited range of source domains compared to those of the concept ECONOMIC CRISIS. The former’s set of domains includes OBJECT IN THE SPACE, MEDICINE, LIVING ORGANISM instead of the eight source domains of the concept ECONOMIC CRISIS. There is also a more limited set of metaphorical models in comparison with the concept ECONOMIC CRISIS and absence of metonymic and metaphtonymic models, which indicates a more pronounced degree of terminology for the concept SCARCITY compared to ECONOMIC CRISIS.