Metaphor as a Tool for Getting Knowledge About the Surrounding World
This article presents an analysis of metaphor as a cognitive tool for getting knowledge about the surrounding world. The paper describes a number of functions that a metaphor performs in the system of language and speech. The practical research material comprises public speeches of foreign politicians and media texts. The study is based on research in the field of political discourse, linguopolitology, cognitive linguistics, metaphorology and linguistic personology. The material for analysis was selected and examined in accordance with the methods of component, semantic, contextual and stylistic analyses. The author of the article focuses on the description of such functions of the metaphor as nominative, cognitive, imaginative, provoking, manipulative, modal and emotive. In addition, the article also pays attention to the study of language as the most important means for processing information that comes to a person through various communication channels. The author concludes that the accentuation of metaphorical meanings passes unnoticed for the recipient of the information message, whereas the metaphorical effect itself has a deep effect on the recipient. The methodological basis of this study of the metaphor as a means of cognition of the surrounding world is made up by the works of such scholars as E.V. Budaev, M.B. Voroshilovа, R.A. Kopnina, N.V. Melnik, T.G. Popova, A.P. Chudinov, R. Hoffman and other researchers.