Metaphorization of Emotions in German Football Fans’ Discourse

Abstract

The article considers peculiarities of verbalization of emotions in German football fans’ discourse. Social, psychological, biological relevance of emotions in a person’s world view provides vivid interest of specialists, including linguists, in studying language means to objectify emotional concepts. Despite the fact that the range of the studied aspects is urgent and is thoroughly examined, certain communicative domains organized by sports fans remain insufficiently explored, although according to some scientists, it is their subculture that is characterized by distinctive emotional background, «emotionally tense» attitude to events, phenomena, facts, people being under their magnifying glass. The article provides cases of verbalization of emotions through metaphoric descriptions. The most active source domains are determined that represent emotional concepts (war, colour, nature, equipment, space, etc.), their direc- tion vectors are identified, as well s objects and situations inducing emotions in a fans’ community. It can be considered productive for the futher study to analyze linguistic (metaphoric) conceptualization of emotions in football fans’ discourse in different ethnic and language cultures to elicit national character in building metaphoric patterns of people’s emotional sphere. The article makes use of discourse, component and conceptual analysis, building metaphoric patterns, clas- sification, lexicographical and comparative methods.