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The increased interest of international cognitive linguists in the mechanisms of conceptualizing modern social phenomena has necessitated cognitive linguistic analysis of such phenomena as globalization, which is one of the most important trends setting the vector for modern society development.This study attempts not only to identify key concepts and means of their representation in terms of the globalization phenomenon, but also to build with the help of these concepts elements of the modern moral system inherent in the English-speaking community. To this end, a conceptual and cognitive-semantic analysis of contemporary English-language political discourse was carried out on the basis of speeches delivered by delegates to the United Nations.The investigation is premised on the theory of conceptual metaphor, emphasizing the need to understand the metaphorical foundations of human consciousness and communication. The study collected and analyzed empirical data that can be used to draw conclusions about the models of representation and assessment of reality by members of the English-speaking community, which in turn opens up prospects for further research in a linguistic pragmatic way and studying the specific features of English-speakers’ view of the world.As a result of lexicological and discourse-based analysis of speech transcripts, the paper uncovers several basic metaphorical models (Morality as 1. Commitment; 2. Nurturant Parent; 3. Resilience; 4. Fairy Tale of the Just War; 5. Progress), which outline globalization within the conceptual view of the world and which are underlined by such antitheses as “moral - immoral,” “success - loss,” “strength - weakness” etc.

This research paper is set in the context of growing interest towards globalization and its effects on contemporary English-language discourse. The focus on the United Nations’ discourse can be explained by the pivotal role of this organization in identifying, shaping and spreading global trends. The underlying assumption is that conceptual, cognitive and semantic analyses of the English-language UN discourse enable deeper understanding of the western worldview, which expands into other types of discourse with a broad audience (media, educational, etc). The application of the conceptual metaphor theory has allowed to discover a conceptual-definitional level as well as image and value levels of the employed concepts in order to find out cognitive linguistic tools which construct the world order model and the view of today’s reality. The study has shown that the language behaviour can be described with the dichotomy “uniting – separating”. On the one hand, reality is represented as a “family” field of life (based on the conceptual metaphor THE WORLD IS A FAMILY) with inherent family values and obligations. On the other hand, the world is subject to explicit categorization through the conceptual opposition of FRIEND vs. FOE and the conceptual and metaphorical model of “The fairy tale of the just war”. Mechanisms of linguistic hierarchization of participants’ relations were also revealed with the help of conceptual metaphors RELATIONS AMONG STATES ARE PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS and LEADER STATE IS A NURTURANT PARENT. The results of the study may be useful for further research on contemporary English-language discourse in a cognitive-pragmatic way, with the possibility of using the identified conceptual metaphors to detect speech tactics and strategies, as well as for comparative analysis of the constructed English-language world view with language models represented by other official UN languages: Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic.