Metaphoric landscape of alcohol addiction in contemporary English-speaking culture

The paper presents a systemic linguistic analysis of the subjective experience of alcohol addiction looking into the ways it is metaphorically described in English drunkalogs - personal memoirs of drinking and recovery. The research is carried out within the general paradigm of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Of particular relevance are three main approaches. One is the Deliberate Metaphor Theory (G. Steen), which focuses on the mechanisms of metaphor construction when a new source domain is being consciously introduced into a piece of discourse. The deliberate character of the metaphor is seen in the degree of detail with which the different aspects of the source domain are explicated, in the presence of special markers (analogy / the way / similar to, etc.) and extended metalinguistic comments (to use a metaphor / it requires an analogy / how about a mixed metaphor?, etc.), as well as in the structure of the context, where the addressee is being carefully prepared for the new metaphoric vision of the subject before the metaphor is finalized. The relevance of deliberate metaphors in discourses under study is accounted for by the highly idiosyncratic character of alcohol addiction, which necessitates original metaphorical mappings in order to convey the individual nuances of this experience. Another approach is the Discourse Metaphor Theory (J. Zinken), which focuses on the framing potential of metaphors deliberately introduced into discourse and negotiated within it. Metaphor becomes an efficient mechanism of discursive construal imposing a certain vision of the subject and regulating ways of describing it. Chief among the discourse metaphors of alcohol addiction is ADDICTION IS A DISEASE, which has replaced the earlier metaphor ADDICTION IS A SIN, morally legitimizing alcoholism and invalidating the idea of personal responsibility. The paper describes the phenomenon of metaphoric clustering: once alcoholism was classified as a disease, its discursive space was opened to all kinds of metaphors commonly used as means of conceptualizing the latter, including the dominant military metaphor. An alternative discourse metaphor is ADDICTION IS A JOURNEY, which is actively promoted by Alcoholics Anonymous and other sobriety activists. Both metaphors serve as active framing devices stabilizing the discourses of addiction and regulating metaphorical creativity within the discourse community. Most importantly, we use the Metaphoric Landscape Theory (J. Lawley, P. Tompkins) which enables us to systematically analyze addiction as a type of subjective experience in all its possible symbolic representations, considering both common (conventional) and idiosyncratic (creative) metaphors, and reveal general conceptual and discursive trends. The research is based on 25 drunkalogs, with the sample containing 498 units, 88 of which are analyzed in the paper. Among the groups of metaphors are ADDICTION IS PARTNERSHIP, ADDICTION IS A TRAP, ADDICTION IS INCARCERATION, ADDICTION IS MOVEMENT and others, all of them represented with a variety of verbal variants. Among idiosyncratic metaphors are ADDICTION IS PART OF THE BODY, ADDICTION IS A WEAPON, ADDICTION IS A PLANT and others. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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