The language of war in the English translation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speeches on the Russian war in Ukraine: a conceptual metaphor approach

The aim of the article is to survey the usage of metaphors in President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speeches on the Russian aggression against Ukraine. To be precise, the objective of the paper is to study and present the conceptual metaphors of war present in the speeches of the leader of Ukraine from the 24th of February 2022, the day Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, up to the 24th of March, i.e. the first month of the war. The speeches available on the President of Ukraine Official Website https://www.president.gov.ua/en are analysed using the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor, as introduced by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and developed by Kövecses (2002), with reference to the role of conceptual metaphor in political discourse (Fabiszak 2007, Neshkovska and Trajkova 2020, Wen Lin Cheng 2011).