Importance of Compression in Metaphorical Conceptual Integration Networks: Selected Examples from the Political Discourse of Serbian Daily Newspapers
The paper explores the role of compression in single scope metaphorical conceptual integration networks by relying on the theoretical framework of the Conceptual Blending Theory. The corpus consists of metaphorical expressions which correspond to the conceptual keys POLITICS IS CONFLICT and POLITICS IS SPORT. It was taken from Politika, a major Serbian daily newspaper. Among other results my corpus revealed a high degree of systematicity in the forms of emergent structures. This is due to a highly entrenched nature of the two conceptual keys, and the systematic nature of compression. In conclusion, compression facilitates not only the construction of meaning at human scale, but also the rhetorical aspects of metaphorical expressions.