Аннотация:The subject of our research is political metaphor in discourse of modern English-speaking politicians. Since it was unfeasible to analyze all metaphors of each English-speaking politician over recent years, we were guided by the following principles of material choice. First of all, we observed the geopolitical situation of recent years. The year 2014 drew our attention as it seems to have become a geopolitical turning point. The world had witnessed the escalation of the Syrian conflict, the Ukrainian revolution, the rapid emergence of ISIL, the crisis over Iran's nuclear program, to mention just a few. And each time the world was convulsed, one couldn’t fail to notice a surprising unanimity of the Anglo-Saxon countries. It is also important to notice that in 2014 the Russian-American confrontation (and, more broadly, Russian-Western) has intensified specially. That is why this very period is of special interest for us as for Russian researchers.
What is more, not long ago the word ‘Anglo-Saxon’ was mainly used in relation to the historical period (V-XI), whereas nowadays it is generally used to refer to the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada as to a special group. These facts have made us ponder over the current status of the Anglo-Saxon world, its constituents and their purposes.
The second object of our attention is even more obvious. Donald Trump’s election campaign became one of the most striking and distinctive phenomenon in modern world politics. He drastically changed the way of working with electorate. Before, the main instrument of agitation was the mass propaganda – advertising, television, billboards, etc – and the politicians relied on the adjusted propaganda machine. Trump’s team was the first to fully concentrate on the thorough analysis of electorate and individual work with each of them. In order to gain information they used technologies of the so-called micro-targeting in Facebook, which allowed to speak directly to each voter.