A research on metaphors found in academic discourse implies the necessity of the development of metaphor identification criteria. Metaphor cannot be discussed adequately without understanding its connections with a wider text material, and this fact leads to a deeper problem - subjectiveness of linguistic/discourse analysis. Academic discourse, taken as a material of the research, is considered to be lacking figurative expressions, however, metaphors in this type of text often occur. The identification of an expression as metaphoric reveals itself as a problem of understanding the text. Arguing that academic texts in any given case contain metaphors, we mean that there is an expression which, in our opinion, is a metaphorical entity. However, when studying academic texts, it is quite difficult to define a metaphoric expression, which means there is a problem of understanding the metaphor. The specifics of text material, such asstyle, affect the identification of metaphors occurring within. Along with the criterion of truth , the principle of identifying the metaphors using dictionaries would be a sufficient basis for identifying a metaphor in academinc texts. The base of the truth would highlight the transfer of meaning (non-literal use of language means), and using a dictionary we could fix the identification of a metaphor by identifying the source of transfer. A linguist recipient is characterized by all the same features that are inherent to any other recipient, in particular, the inevitable inadequacy of understanding. However, understanding is a goal by itself, which a linguist is achieving through interpretative (linguistic) analysis. A linguist researcher is aware of its subjective features and he or she depends on them, as one has to develop a system of criteria leading to the “objective scientific character” of the study. The criterion of truth conditions of utterance combined with the lexicographic analysis proves to be relevant and sufficient. If the discourse analysis takes into account the unity of the theme field, and is based on a system of relevant identification criteria, the results can be viewed as consistent, and subjectiveness of such analysis appears to be ignorable.
metafora, metaforicheskoe vyrazhenie, nauchnyy tekst, ponimanie, diskurs-analiz, adekvatnost' ponimaniya, lingvisticheskiy analiz, problema identifikacii, sub'ektivnost'
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