Conceptual Metaphors of Identity in Contemporary Romanian Public Discourse A Cognitive and Quantitative Approach

By using the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), Comparative Imagology (CI) and a corpus based approach, this article studies the frequency and the content of conceptual metaphors of Romanian and European identity in the Romanian public discourse of 2012-2018. Our working practice focuses on the systematization of the characteristic occurrences of the Romanian auto- and hetero-images, the comparison of the two series of data, as well as the analysis of the dominant trend therein, in relation to the previous time interval (2007-2011). The conclusions of the article concern the increase or decrease in the Romanian speakers' interest in identity-related problems, the structure of each identity ethno-profile, with a special attention paid to the relationship between the negative and the positive traits assigned to the two communities, as well as the analysis of the extent to which the Romanians have assumed a European identity, at the level of their public discourse.