Computer Analysis Methods in Political Metaphorology
The paper examines how such a phenomenon as politics is categorized and metaphorized in twenty Englishes. The study also suggests different ways of using various methods of computer analysis when working with corpus data. Cryptotype analysis has shown that in English variants, the name “politics” is primarily considered as a small object that can fit in the hand (cryptotype Res Parvae); secondly, politics is categorized as a threadlike object (cryptotype Res Filiformes); the third priority is the metaphor of a long, thin object (cryptotype Res Longae Penetrantes); also, occasional examples of “liquid” politics (cryptotype Res Liquidae), “acute” politics (cryptotype Res Acutae) and “round” politics (cryptotype Res Rotundae) were found in linguistic corpora. The quantitative data obtained were used for further computational cognitive modeling and intellectual analysis (Data Mining, Text Mining). Thus, as a result of constructing Kohonen self-organizing maps, English language variants were grouped into five clusters corresponding to geographical areas and categorizing politics in a similar way. Correlation coefficients were calculated both for all twenty variants of the English language (67%) and for the detected clusters (86.0-99.7%). The correlation coefficients made it possible to visualize the similarities and differences in the categorization of the name “politics” in twenty variants of the English language using network analysis tools. Rules based on the decision tree were also created, which can later be used to create a computer program capable of establishing the areal affiliation of an English language variant. The results obtained were summarized in the form of a cognitive continuum of politics categorization in the format of a multidimensional diagram.