| Abstract [eng] |
This study aimed to identify the metaphors used in the discourse of the 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary elections, examine how they are distributed across different political groups, and determine how metaphor usage differs between political party programmes and posts published on the social network “Facebook“. The study is grounded in conceptual metaphor theory, critical discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics methods. The research material consists of the political programmes of the parties that participated in the 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary elections and “Facebook“ posts published by party leaders during the election campaign period. The material was divided into four political groups: the parties forming the governing coalition, the opposition parties, the mixed political group, and the parties that failed to win seats in the parlament. Eight specialised corpora were compiled and analysed using the “AntConc“ software. The Pragglejaz Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) was applied to identify metaphors, while the metaphorical pattern analysis method was used to determine recurrent metaphorical models. The results of the study revealed that metaphors are actively used in the discourse of the 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary elections. A total of 358 metaphors were identified. The findings showed that metaphors occur more frequently in political party programmes than in social media communication. The dominant metaphor type is personification, in which Lithuania or the state is most often constructed as an active agent capable of planning, deciding, regulating, caring for, or defending. The most productive personification scenario is the activity scenario, which is realised through the roles of caregiver, regulator, defender, and economic actor. The study also demonstrated that different political groups tend to construct different roles of the state: the governing coalition and the mixed political group more frequently emphasise the state as a caregiver and regulator, whereas opposition parties highlight the roles of defender and economic actor. The second most frequent metaphor group consists of competition metaphors, which are primarily characteristic of political party programmes. Conflict metaphors, on the other hand, are more common in social media communication, where political processes are presented as struggle, threat, or resistance. The study revealed that metaphors in the discourse of the 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary elections function as cognitive and evaluative mechanisms that help political parties construct preferred images of the state, society, and political processes. |
