The present research is an attempt to analyse metaphors in English and Ukrainian clothing inscriptions in a comparative aspect. The study focuses on providing a sufficient semantic classification of this versatile figure of speech in the discourse that has never been analysed in terms of metaphors. It deals with English and Ukrainian metaphorical inscriptions on clothing harvested on the Internet over a two-year period (2017-2019). The paper shows that metaphorisation is unevenly typical of English and Ukrainian linguocultural environments. The peculiarities of the source from which the units under analysis were collected allows us to identify seven main vehicle-driven categories of metaphors employed in clothing inscriptions: anthropic, zoomorphic, botanomorphic, creaturemorphic, artefactomorphic, ecomorphic and sensory. The research proves that both English and Ukrainian metaphorical clothing inscriptions have their peculiar sources; moreover, even if metaphors are built on the same or similar images, the focus is usually quite different. This study argues that metaphors on clothing inscriptions can serve as an applicable source to study social priorities, values and tendencies of two different European linguocultural environments. The outcome of the research can be used as an interesting material for sociolinguistics and linguocultural studies.
Clothing performs not only the typical protective and utilitarian functions, but also becomes a means of communication. This position is particularly evident in garment with inscriptions and prints. The growing popularity of such textile fabrics causes the study of the typology of inscriptions on clothing from a linguistic standpoint. The purpose of the work is to determine the main approaches to the study of inscriptions on clothing in modern science in general and linguistics in particular. It has been determined that within the framework of linguistics, inscriptions on clothing are considered in the context of the communicative-pragmatic paradigm. However, there is no unified approach to the interpretation of this linguistic phenomenon, some researchers define it as a separate genre or subgenre of a particular discourse, others – as a new type of media. As a result of the study, it has been established that inscriptions on clothing are characterized by certain linguistic features (use of abbreviations and numbers, prevalence of simple sentences and elliptical constructions, use of colloquialisms, youth slang and puns, specific style of writing, use of imperatives and intertextuality) and perform various functions (communicative, regulatory, informative-representative, expressive-pragmatic, epistemological, aesthetic). Though most modern linguists agree that inscriptions on clothing function as a means of communication, the problems of using the appropriate term (inscription, slogan, message) and studying inscriptions not only on T-shirts, but also on other types of clothing remain unsolved.