Olena Materynska

ABSRTRACT

This research highlights the anthropomorphic representation of war in the German, English and Ukrainian mass media within the general framework of media ecology being a part of the project "Ecolinguistic modes of discursive space of Ukraine in the European multicultural continuum" (registration number 2020.02 / 0241) supported by the National Research Foundation of Ukraine. Media ecology within the ecolinguistic mode of discursive studies aims at the awakening of the ecolinguistics consciousness, harmonising the coexistence of different languages and cultures in a multicultural, multilingual continuum, preserving the speakers' identity [2, p. 214]. The semantics of the anthropomorphic metaphors of war makes them a real challenge for translation because of the multilayer meanings implied and their powerful manipulative impact on the readership. The study combines the traditional linguistic paradigm (the theory of conceptual metaphor, the semantic, contextual, discursive [1, p. 6] analysis), translation studies framework and an ecolinguistic approach to explore the translation of the anthropomorphic metaphors of war as an element of media environment [3, p. 162]. The analysed contexts are derived from the mass media publications (2014-2021). The empirical data obtained has been verified with the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic experiments (questionnaires), enabling a better understanding of the formation of the anthropomorphic profile of war by the speakers of the contrasted languages. It has been shown that the role of a translator / interpreter (often journalist at the same time) is changing to that of a mediator and peacemaker maintaining the ecological balance in a speech community.

Keywords

media ecology, anthropomorphic metaphor, the anthropomorphic image of war, socio- and psycholinguistic experiment, ecological consciousness

References

1. Caple, H., & Huan, C., Bednarek, M. (2020) Multimodal News Analysis across Cultures. Cambridge University Press.

2. Mey, J. L. (2018) The pragmatics of Metaphor. An ecological view In A. F. Fill, & H. Penz (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics. (pp. 211-223). Routledge.

3. L. Strate, Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition. Peter Lang Publishing (2017)