The role of metaphtonymy in verbalizing futurological concepts

The paper touches upon the problem of metaphtonymy in futurological discourse as well as its role in verbalizing futurological concepts FUTURE SHOCK, THE THIRD WAVE, and SUICIDE. The investigation aimed to determine the peculiar features of metaphtonymy and define its role in the verbal representation of futurological concepts. The investigation is based on the novels of a prominent American futurologist A. Toffler “The Future Shock,” “The Third Wave” and a famous American publicist P. Buchanan “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”. The techniques employed include conceptual analysis, metaphor, and metonymy modeling. 75 contexts of metaphtonymy of certain types (“metaphor in metonymy,” “metonymy in metaphor,” “metonymy, metaphor in metaphor”, “metaphor, metonymy, metaphor in metaphor,” etc.) were identified, and all of them proved to be involved in the verbal representation of the futurological concepts. The analysis showed that all the metaphtonymic unities had a hierarchical structure with one prevailing component and one or several subordinate elements. Moreover, metaphors are more likely than metonymies to act as a dominant member of the hierarchy, their target domain or/and source domain being motivators for other components emerging in a metaphtonymic unity. As for the forms of metaphor and metonymy thinking in metaphtonymies under analysis, we found extended metaphors and metonymic chains and clusters. Metaphors (their target or/and source domains) turned to be most active in verbalizing the futurological concepts. The variants of verbalization are as follows: “future shock as a disease,” “the third wave as evolution design,” “suicide as ethnomasochism,” etc.

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