About the project

The project Conceptual metaphors: social relevance and Estonian database (Metafest) has two objectives: to study conceptual metaphors used in the Estonian language and to compile the results of metaphor research on Estonian into a conceptual metaphor database.

We have chosen to investigate:

1) Metaphors that conceptualize critical aspects of societal life: ecological crisis, green transition, climate change, wars and pandemics, perception and understanding of threats. We examine whether and how different interest groups may shape ideologies and attitudes through the use of conceptual metaphors.

2) Metaphors that reflect human experience: medical discourse, mental health, serious illnesses. The goal is to identify the most frequent metaphors associated with thinking and talking about diseases (e.g., metaphors of enemy, war, machine). We aim to show their most common usage contexts and associated thought patterns based on corpus data, and to analyze the role of metaphors in coping strategies.

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The project (EKKD-TA23) runs from 2024 to 2027 and is funded by the Ministry of Education and Research through the national programme Estonian Language and Cultural Memory in the Digital Age.