REPRODUCIBILITY OF PHRASEMES IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE (On the Example of Time Metaphors During Perestroika and in the German “Wende”)

Abstract

Time has had a high symbolic power since the beginning of modern times and serves as a metaphor. The aim of the article is the analysis of the linguistic contextualization of discursive practice using the example of reproducible Russian and German time metaphors, i. e. metaphors with a reference to time, which have become standing units, also in the Russian and German political discourse of the turn of 1988/89 in the Soviet Union and in the GDR.These time metaphors contain the words Russian час/часы/время or German Stunde/Uhr/Zeit, also as a key component in phrasemes. To what extent are reproductions of phrasemes reflecting social developments that appear in certain discourses? Starting from the thesis that time in times of upheaval gets its own symbolic power and becomes an actor in political discourse, the contrastively oriented analysis carried out by the discursive linguistic model DIMEAN shows striking differences in metaphorical modeling and allows to recognize different M-models for discourse of the Russian “perestroika” and the German “Wende” (reunification period). For example, personalization is by far the most reproducible M-model for Russian “perestroika” discourse, and can be categorized as discursive practice, which is not the case for the “Wende” discourse. In the German “Wende” discourse, on the other hand, phrasemes with Zeit ‘time’ and with Stunde ‘hour’ are elements of discursive practice. The material basis for the Russian language is provided by the newspaper “Pravda” texts from 1988, for the German language by texts of the newspaper “Neues Deutschland” from 1989.

Keywords:

reproducibility, time metaphor, time phrasemic, discourse practice, Russian Perestroika discourse, German reunification discourse, DIMEAN