Karo metafora

Abstract

In this paper metaphor is understood not as a mere poetic device or a rhetoric flourish but as a part of a conceptual system, a pervasive phenomenon in everyday life, not just in language but also in thought and action. War metaphor comprises figurative meanings of numerous war terminology. It is pursued here that war metaphor, which appeared in the Soviet period, is a borrowed term. The proof of this is that a rapid development of loan figurative meaning* caused gaps in the semantic structure of polysemic words and discarded many regular non-military substitutes. Such conceptual metaphors as "Work is War", "Argument is War" turned out to be especially pervasive. Once borrowed and dissimilated war metaphor became a universal way to view reality and one of the fundamental concepts in Lithuanian culture.