FAMILY AND HUNTING METAPHORS BASED ROLES OF THE MPS IN THE UK PARLIAMENT

Abstract

Introduction. Parliamentary system of the United Kingdom is a vivid example of a highly resistant to any changes system with a long history of its formation. The efficiency of its procedures is regulated by a number of political norms, rules, customs, stereotypes, traditions etc. One of them is the traditional provision of the basic roles that are reflected in the peculiarities of the parliamentary terminology based on the metaphorical associations.

Purpose of this paper is to define the traditional metaphors of family life functioning in the political discourse of the parliamentary debates in the House of Lords and the House of Commons in the British parliament.

Methods. The basic methods used in this paper to analyze the transcripts of the UK parliamentary debates are the metaphoric modeling that helps to understand the mechanism of source and target domains’ integration and the propositional modeling that helps to define the structures of propositions in the source domains FAMILY LIFE, HUNT and in the target domain POLITICS. One more method is the contextual-interpretational analysis used to interpret the taken from the transcripts text fragments that contain metaphoric lexemes.

Results. The strict following of the traditional roles in the UK parliament such as the position of Father of the House in the parliamentary hierarchy becomes the key to providing continuous work of its whole system and stipulates efficient regulation of the parliamentary debates that affect the decision-making process in the country and abroad. This naming is formed via the language signs borrowed from the source domain FAMILY LIFE into the target domain POLITICS. The UK parliament is sometimes referred to as Mother of parliaments being the pattern for the other parliaments’ formation within the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations. Traditional roles of the British parliament also include the official who holds the position Leader of the House of Commons / Lords. This official usually works in coordination with the so-called parliamentary whips that serve as the important coordinative means of the parliamentary business. The order of the parliamentary debates is organized in accordance with the preliminary agreements between members of the Coalition and Opposition sides. Key role in this process is given to the Whips as parliamentary party’s organizers. This naming is formed on the basis of the hunting metaphor.

Conclusions. The studying of metaphors in the UK parliamentary debates shows the usage of basic metaphorical representation of politics as family relations and hunting. The usage of this metaphor is stipulated by the role of the politicians in the processes of the political life tackled in the parliament of the United Kingdom and the perception of the British parliament as a whole.