LINGUO-COGNITIVE MODELLING OF THE “POLITICS IS THEATRE” METAPHOR
Keywords:
cognitive metaphor, military-political discourse, linguo-cognitive modelling, metaphorical model, source domain, target domainAbstract
This article explores the conceptual metaphor “politics is theatre” and examines how political reality is shaped through theatrical metaphors. It focuses on the linguo-cognitive mechanisms that enable political events to be interpreted in theatrical terms. The analysis shows that this metaphor is widely used in American political discourse as it helps make complex political processes clearer, more vivid, and more accessible to the general public. As a result, politics is often modelled as a carefully structured theatrical performance in which political actors, the audience and backstage processes together construct a coherent representation of political reality.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Ani Harutyunyan; Anna Aghayan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
