This article dwells upon the metaphorical model “Sport is war” in Japanese sport discourse. The aim of the study is to describe the linguistic representation of military metaphor arising in Japanese sports discourse. The material of the research is the Japanese transmedia project “Volleyball!!”. Metaphorical modelling and qualitative and quantitative analysis are used as the main research methods. Qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed high frequency of military metaphors in sports discourse, and the reasons that led to their choice by the author were identified by the means of linguocultural analysis. The most
productive frames turned out to be “Participants of military actions, military units and subdivisions” and “Military actions, their scenario and elements”, which is derived from the nature of the studied material. Military metaphor in Japanese is manifested predominantly at the lexical level. The analysis of the metaphors composing the metaphorical model “Sport is war” has revealed a close connection between the sphere-source «Sport» and the sphere-target “War”. Consequently, military metaphor is a phenomenon characteristic of sports discourse represented by a variety of ways. Military metaphors have become an integral part of sports discourse, not only fulfilling the role of artistic meaning amplification, but also enhancing the knowledge and experience of communicants by stimulating cognition.
For citation:
Kozachina A.V., Korepanova E.V. Metaphorical model “Sport is war” in Japanese sport discourse, Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2023,
iss. 3, pp. 74—83.