Functioning of Military Metaphor in Modern Political Discourse

This article is devoted to the analysis of the military metaphor in the political texts (based on the text excerpts from the Russian National Corpus and the media) within the framework of the structural and semantic approach from the beginning of the ХХI century to nowadays. As a result of the research, 500 units of the “War” semantics with metaphorical meanings in the political discourse of the modern Russian have been indicated; 13 thematic groups of military vocabulary in the metaphorical use have been revealed; military metaphors have been analyzed from the point of lexical-and-semantic characteristics (metaphorical expression is often implemented by rethinking the military vocabulary from the thematic group “The name of hostilities and the ways of warfare”, “The name of weapon types, their elements and storage points” and “The name of the persons and group of persons directly and indirectly related to hostilities”). The results of the study allow us to come to a conclusion that the metaphorization of the semantic sphere “War” relevant for the various types of discourse in the modern Russian (sports, medical, social-and-everyday etc.), is often used in political discourse, due to the similar nature of the people behavior in the process of military operations and in the struggle for power.