Metaphorical Conceptualization of Chernobyl Disaster (Based on Non-Fiction Prose)

Nowadays a huge amount of people may have forgotten about the catastrophe appeared on April 26, 1986, in an abandoned city in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, Pripyat. In consequence of explosive destruction, a large number of radioactive substances were released into the atmosphere. The accident is considered the largest of its kind in the history of nuclear energy. The Chernobyl disaster had an indescribable impact on eyewitnesses and their language. Subsequently, a huge layer of conceptual metaphors was formed, which helped sufferers to express their spectrum of feelings and overall emotions. An important clause lies in the necessity to understand the causes of the origin of certain metaphors and to analyze the reasons for specific analogies used in formation of conceptual metaphors. In this paper, we concentrate on the pecularities of conceptual metaphor appearance in Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster and analyze the Russian cultural features that have had a tremendous impact on the final form of the conceptual metaphor.