Metaphorical image of the BRICS in South African media discourse: A corpus-based study

The BRICS grouping functions as a civilizational project that realizes unique strategies of identification, self-identification, and image formation on the geopolitical arena. The topicality of the BRICS’ image study is determined by its growing role in the international setup. The present study seeks to examine the BRICS’ metaphorical modelling in the mass-media discourse of one of its member states, the Republic of South Africa. The research data were collected from the News on the Web Corpus. The illustrative corpus was compiled based on thematic, chronological, and frequency principles with the help of computer-aided and manual processing. A total of 521 metaphors were selected from 1000 texts. The methodological foundation of the study is the theory of image schemas, as proposed by M. Johnson and G. Lakoff. The metaphors were studied through quantitative and qualitative methods: quantitative estimation, metaphorical modelling, cognitive, discursive, linguistic and cultural analysis. The findings of this study suggest that despite a relatively low metaphor density in South African media discourse, the BRICS image is structured by more than 10 source domains. The frequency of similar image schemas (e.g., SOURCE-PATH-GOAL, CONTAINER, CENTRE-PERIPHERY, FORCE, LINK, etc.) underlying the metaphors is linked to their capacity to reflect the fundamental characteristics of the grouping: multipolarity, national sovereignty, equality, and mutual beneficial cooperation. Family, game and sport, body, and animal metaphors, based on social and biological archetypes, were found more culturally marked than those relying on universal physical laws (path, mechanism, architecture, war, celestial body). The research contributes to the development of medialinguistics, which provides a solid theoretical and analytical framework for studying international relations and phenomena from a linguistic perspective.