Image of Aggression in the Russian Metaphorics of Inebriation

The metaphorical conceptualization of inebriation represents a salient component of the Russian linguistic worldview, reflecting bodily, emotional and cultural perceptions of alcohol’s impact on the individual. The aim of this study is to identify and describe the metaphorical models through which inebriation in Russian is conceptualized as a form of aggression. The theoretical foundation relies on a multi-layered cognitive approach developed within the extended conceptual metaphor theory. The analysis is conducted on three levels: the lexical level, based on 61 nominations from an ideographic thesaurus of alcohol-related terms; the contextual level, including 54 examples from the Russian National Corpus; the conceptual level, involving the reconstruction of frames and a unified conceptual domain. The lexical analysis establishes the core inventory of metaphors that frame inebriation through the imagery of aggression, while the corpus analysis reveals their dynamics, including the personification of inebriation as an active adversary. The conceptual-level analysis demonstrates that inebriation is consistently represented as an aggressive force that typically results in somatic and cognitive damage and disrupts psychophysical equilibrium. Accordingly, the conceptual metaphor «inebriation is aggression» displays high cognitive productivity and reflects the profound interplay between language, embodied experience and cultural perceptions. The findings confirm that aggression-based metaphorics are not incidental stylistic embellishments but entrenched cognitive models that structure the understanding of physiological and social states within the Russian linguistic worldview. Future research prospects are associated with cross-linguistic comparison of aggression in inebriation metaphors and with exploring their role in contemporary discourses of addiction, altered states of consciousness and social identity.