Metaphorical Representation of the Image of Kazakhstan in Russian Media Discourse (from 2010 to 2021)

Abstract

The multidimensional phenomenon of “country image” is considered one
of the actively operated and discussed problems in the academic world community. The research
interest in the issue is due to the fact that the image of this/that country presented in the modern
information space may change depending on social and political events. Therefore, it is the media
discourse that is able to capture these changes, influence the mass consciousness, and identify value orientations and value judgements. Thereby, media discourse constructs a certain vision of
the other country.
Furthermore, such changes are undoubtedly reflected in language posing new research
challenges. This means that the dynamics of the verbalization of the image of the country requires
special study. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze metaphorical models that
represent the image of Kazakhstan in the texts of the Russian media. The interest in Kazakhstan in
the Russian media discourse is determined primarily by the historically and geographically
conditioned close cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan in the political, economic, and
cultural fields.
The research material consists of a corpus of 320 texts from Russian newspapers
(Kommersant, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Argumenty i Fakty, Izvestiya, Moskovsky Komsomolets,
and Nezavisimaya Gazeta). Text fragments were also collected using the National Corpus of the
Russian Language (http://www.ruscorpora.ru/), where the main search word was “Kazakhstan”.
The temporal framework of the collected and analyzed empirical corpus is limited to the period
from 2010 to 2021.
The article presents an analysis of three dominant metaphorical models. Perception and
comprehension of the image of Kazakhstan occur in the consciousness of the mass reader within
these metaphorical models: anthropomorphic (“Kazakhstan – the Initiative Agent”), naturemorphic (“Kazakhstan – the Great Steppe”), ethnocultural (“Kazakhstan – Cultural and Value
Memory”).