INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the study of metaphors in political discourse has attracted a growing interest among linguists and researchers (Mio 1996, 1997; Lakoff 1991, 2002, 2004; Charteris-Black 2005, Musolff 2016, to mention a few). Some studies have concentrated on the identification of different types of metaphors used in politics (Howe 1988; Cox 2012; Linkevičiūtė 2013; Wiliński 2016) while others have explored the discourse function of metaphors, their role in political communication, and persuasive power in rhetoric (Chilton and Schäffner 2002; Charteris-Black 2005, 2014; Musolff 2004, 2016). Many studies have also examined the use of military terms by politicians or journalists in spoken or written commentaries about politics. Howe (1988: 87), for example, has pointed to the prevalence of metaphorical expressions coming from the source domains of warfare and sports in American politics, and to the necessity to conceptualize politics as a rule-governed activity. Bacharach (2006), by contrast, has traced the evolution of war metaphors from rhetoric into public policy and has also addressed the issue of using the language of war by politicians in speeches. Military metaphors have also been used to report on political issues about warfare (Lakoff 1991; Jansen and Sabo 1994; Charteris-Black 2005). Analyzing metaphors selected from Party Conference speeches of Margaret Thatcher, Charteris-Black (2005: 3), for example, has indicated that military metaphors are used as rhetorical devices to evaluate political actions and to communicate that the political leader places a positive value on competitiveness.

Thus far, however, little attention has been paid to the employment of quantitative techniques and statistical methods for the exploration of military terms in the context of politics and for the empirical validation of previous hypotheses about the nature of particular metaphorical mappings and the significance of some military terms for the comprehension of political actions and events. The primary aim of this paper is therefore twofold: first, to carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of military terms used in American magazines, and second, to determine which source domain lexemes coming from the domain of warfare exhibit strong attraction to or repulsion from the target domain of politics (i.e. occur more frequently or less frequently than expected in political contexts).