LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP ACROSS BORDERS

Proper names occupy a significant part of the news space. Names of countries, cities, international unions are found in great frequency in media texts, as they play a key role in the construction of news. In media reality, countries fight, oppose each other, ally, threaten and warn one another, then unite again, often one country dedicatedly helps and safes another country ‘in need’, trying to protect it from a supposed enemy.Lakoff’s STATE AS PERSON metaphor and Musolff’s Family scenario are used in articles on international affairs. International relations are represented as personal relationships and a certain line of policy is represented as a type of behaviour. Countries who maintain a stable diplomacy are represented as people with good relationships which vary from ‘friendship’, ‘romance’ and ‘affair’ to ‘marriage’. Problems in diplomacy are viewed as an ‘end of a relationship’, ‘quarrel’, or ‘divorce’Countries which maintain good political relations between one another are presented as friends and lovers, with variations in those categories. Being friends with someone is equal to maintaining stable diplomatic relations.The idea of friendship can be expressed even stronger – with the help of the “best friends” metaphor. If becoming friends with a country means establishing and continuing diplomatic relations with that country, to become someone’s best friend means reinforcing already existing relationsCountries are sometimes presented as friends with benefits and said to have a “special relationship”. The use of a notion from the domain of FAMILY (fraternal association) is also a way to stress the importance and strength of the relations between two countries.Depending on the degree of stability of counties’ relations, the kind of friendship can vary. As a result, countries can be “friends”, “best friends”, or “friends with benefits”.Relations between nations are often compared to a romantic relationship with its stages – wooing, flirting, love affair, marriage and divorce. When a country tries to establish diplomatic relations with another country, this is described as FLIRT, or WOOING. When those relations become stable, they are presented as a LOVE AFFAIR or a ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP.Countries that have a long-standing economic and political relations are presented as marriage partners. The topic of international relations is mapped on the topic of family relations. Diplomatic problems are presented as family problems: misunderstanding, frustration, indifference, rejection, hostility. A marriage that has become cohabitation is used to stand for the decline in the diplomatic relations between the two countries. When a country totally ends diplomatic relations with another country or leaves an organization, this is presented as divorce.