Metaphorical Modelling of the Conceptual Sphere “Love” in British Song Discourse

This study relies on the conceptual metaphor theory, which postulates that metaphor means understanding one fragment of reality in terms of another and is an indispensable part of our conceptual system, reasoning and speech, making the world around us understandable and conceivable to us. The conceptual metaphor theory is used to identify, interpret and analyze conceptual metaphors of love in the modern song discourse of Great Britain. This study establishes the relationship and juxtaposition of such metaphorical linguistic expressions in various contexts and suggests a classification of metaphorical models of the conceptual sphere investigated. The most productive metaphorical models explicating the conceptual sphere of “love” in the British song discourse include “Love is light”, “Love is an element”, “Love is a game” and “Love is addiction”. The set of frames represented within the framework of these models indicates the prevalence of negative images of the analyzed concept.