Ida Raffaelli

A DISCOURSE APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS: A CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS OFSPORTS DISCOURSE IN CROATIAN

This paper deals with the analysis of sports discourse in Croatian through the theoretical framework offered by conceptual metaphor theory. Within this framework, certain metaphorical expressions found in sports discourse are analyzed as expressions of two conceptual metaphors: sport is war and sport is force. The analysis of these metaphorical expressions combines the methodology of cognitive linguistics with corpus linguistics, resulting in the proposal of a new method for discourse analysis in general. In our research, we introduce the notion of the specialized digitized corpus as a basis for further quantitative and qualitative research. On the basis of the specialized digitized corpus created for the purposes of this research, it is shown how the formation of sports discourse is dependent on three categories of metaphorical expressions relative to the degree of their conventionalization within sports discourse: (a) conventionalized, (b) semi-conventionalized, and (c) innovative metaphorical expressions. Each of these categories is analyzed according to their frequency and various aspects of meaning that it entails. Through the introduction of the semi-conventionalized metaphorical expression category, we aim to examine the gradable line between language creativity and conventionality as it is formed within the discourse of sports.