კონცეპტუალური მეტაფორა 21-ე საუკუნის ბრიტანულ საბავშვო გოთიკურ ლიტერატურაში

Children’s Gothic literature can be considered as one of the developing directions in the 21 st century. Its rising popularity can be proved by numerous publications, their adaptations and cartoons which do not lose their relevance even today. The current thesis examines the 21st -century British children’s Gothic literature from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory.
This dissertation aims to identify conventional and creative metaphors characteristic of children’s Gothic literature, explain the formation of different creative metaphors and pinpoint cultural aspects behind specific metaphors; The paper also aims to present the general tendencies in modern children’s Gothic literature within the frame of conceptual metaphor theory.
Qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis were employed in the dissertation. The database of the research comprises four books by British authors. These are: “Coraline“ (2002) by Neil Gaiman, “The Lie Tree“ (2015) by Frances Hardinge, “The Dead of Winter“ (2010) by Chris Priestley and “The Ghost of Gosswater“ (2020) by Lucy Strange. With the assistance of MIP/MIPVU methods of metaphor identification, the selected linguistic expressions were grouped according to their target domains. The thorough analysis of the linguistic corpus demonstrated different thematic aspects, the linguistic tendencies that differentiate the styles of writers from each other; the main features and directions which are found in modern children’s Gothic literature. The quantitative analysis of the data revealed the most frequently used metaphors in the above-mentioned books.
The aims and findings of the dissertation highlight the relevance of Gothic themes in the 21 st-century children’s literature. The practical value of the study is that the findings and the empiciral data can be employed in different braches of humanities, such as stylistics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics and theory of metaphor.