Cognitive metaphor and precedent phenomena in the city space representation

The article studies polycode metaphorical reflection of the socio-cultural landscape of the capital city. The study is aimed at analyzing the peculiarities of urban space metaphorical conceptualization by appealing to precedent phenomena of different semiotic nature in polycode media texts. Point sampling of polycode units that are in the public domain in the Russian-language segment of the Internet and thematic pages of social networks, allowed to select 480 texts. They meet the criterion of urban space metaphorical reflection, a visual and / or verbal reference directly to the astionym “Moscow” or related toponymic elements, as well as a visual and / or verbal reference to precedent phenomena. The study was based on the systemic and functional approach to multimodal discourse analysis and a set of methods of structural, semantic and intertextual analysis. The metaphoric conceptualization of superiority, attractiveness and success, progress, illusions, inaccessibility, ergonomics and idleness is established. Dominant semiotic codes manifesting images underlying each of the established metaphors are revealed. The primacy of the visual is illustrated, provided by bright attributes that clearly determine superiority, progress, success and illusions associated with urban space. The most frequent sources of precedent phenomena are identified, namely cartographic materials, troll faces, image boards, computer games, modern cinema, elements of art, precedent images of heroes and antiheroes, statements of famous personalities and song lyrics. The text examples demonstrate that the semiotic organization of texts conceptualizing the metaphors of the capital urban space is based on the techniques of asymmetry and antithesis, which allow the most contrasting encoded evaluative meanings of irony and sarcasm.