In this paper, I look at four different aspects of metaphor research from a corpus linguistic per... more In this paper, I look at four different aspects of metaphor research from a corpus linguistic perspective, namely: (1) the lexicogrammar of metaphors, which refers to the patterning of linguistic metaphor revealed by corpus analysis; (2) metaphor probabilities, which is a facet of metaphor that emerges from frequency-based studies of metaphor; (3) dimensions of metaphor variation, or the search for systematic parameters of variation in metaphor use across different registers; and (4) automated metaphor retrieval, which relates to the development of software to help identify metaphors in corpora. I argue that these four aspects are interrelated, and that advances in one of them can drive changes in the others.
This article discusses the use of metaphors and metonyms in texts about climate change in differe... more This article discusses the use of metaphors and metonyms in texts about climate change in different registers, with a particular focus on the information given to young people, and what they understand about the topic. It begins by considering the role of metaphorical thinking and language in science, and reviews some of the work on scientific metaphor in expert and popular genres. The article analyses the different functions of metaphors in two texts about anthropogenic climate change from different genres, arguing that in the popular text analysed metaphors tend to have the function of entertaining and dramatizing, and introducing and concluding (interpersonal and textual), as opposed to their informational (ideational) function in the research article that was analysed. I then discuss a corpus and discourse analysis of young people's talk about climate change. The young people's use of figurative language is compared with that of researchers and educationalists. The analy...
Current Approaches to Metaphor Analysis in Discourse, 2019
Metaphor is used for different functions, including supporting the development of new knowledge a... more Metaphor is used for different functions, including supporting the development of new knowledge and theory, communicating this, and persuading or framing its topic. All of these functions have been noted in economics texts. Analyses of popular economics texts have found that the same metaphor vehicles can be exploited in different ways to present different evaluations of their topic. For instance, both the Eurosceptic British press, and the Europhile Italian press framed the introduction of the Euro using a BIRTH metaphor, but used it very differently to convey their views (Semino 2002). We study the metaphors used to write about Sino-EU trade disputes in two popular newspapers, from China and the UK, in two corpora of approximately a third of a million tokens each. We find that similar metaphor groupings are used, notably FIGHT/ WAR, but with differing frequencies and in different ways. The Chinese texts used FIGHT/ WAR metaphors to write about protectionism, which tended to be personified and was rarely associated with a specific country. The UK texts used similar metaphors about free trade, which was characterised as the victim of assaults and in need of defending. As well as these qualitative findings, we found the quantitative data suggestive, though larger corpora would be needed for robust statistical conclusions.
Many education professionals in Britain believe that school pupils have difficulty accessing acad... more Many education professionals in Britain believe that school pupils have difficulty accessing academic texts because of inadequate knowledge of vocabulary. Previous research has suggested that some high frequency words used in non-specialised contexts have academic meanings that can cause problems for school pupils. We take corpus techniques used in the study of higher education texts and apply them to a corpus of texts designed for school pupils aged 11 to 14, attempting to identify such words automatically. We use the Spoken BNC2014 as a reference corpus. We identify a list of semi-technical words ( Baker, 1988 ), many of which are polysemous, having everyday meanings and related school subject meanings that may not be familiar to pupils. We investigate how semi-technical vocabulary can be identified and distinguished from both specialised and general vocabulary. Some supplementary qualitative analysis was needed, using collocation and concordance analysis. While time-consuming, th...
espanolEste articulo discute el uso de las metaforas y metonimias en los textos sobre el cambio c... more espanolEste articulo discute el uso de las metaforas y metonimias en los textos sobre el cambio climatico en diferentes registros, con un interes especial en la informacion proporcionada a la gente joven, y en lo que ellos entienden sobre el tema. El articulo comienza considerando el papel del razonamiento metaforico y del lenguaje en la ciencia y revisa el trabajo de las metaforas cientificas en los generos expertos y populares. El articulo analiza las diferentes funciones de las metaforas en dos textos sobre el cambio climatico antropogenico en diferentes generos y defiende que en los textos populares analizados las metaforas tienden a realizar la funcion de entretenimiento y dramatizacion asi como de introduccion y conclusion (interpersonal y textual), en contraposicion con la funcion informacional (ideacional) del articulo de investigacion que se analizo. A continuacion llevo a cabo el examen de un analisis de corpus y del discurso de la gente joven sobre el cambio climatico. La...
Cognitive Foundations of Language Structure and Use, 2010
It has been asserted by a number of writers from a range of disciplines that metaphors have evalu... more It has been asserted by a number of writers from a range of disciplines that metaphors have evaluative and persuasive properties. In the Conceptual Metaphor Theory literature, it is widely agreed that metaphor is evaluative, persuasive and therefore potentially ideological. Outside the cognitive literature, metaphor’s persuasive qualities have been studied by researchers in fields from Critical Discourse Analysis to consumer research. This chapter reviews the mechanisms through which evaluation seems to be carried out, discussing a number of studies. Four themes are identified: metaphors as stories, with entailments, metaphors which map evaluative connotations from source to target domain, the deliberate choice of a source domain which resonates with particular groups of language users, and the use of metaphorical scenarios. I investigate these mechanisms in a small number of metaphorical expressions, using corpus techniques, with a focus on detailed analysis of form as well as meaning. I find that the evaluations conveyed by the expressions that I investigate seem most consistent with Musolff’s scenarios model (2006). However the evaluative meaning expressed is often even more specific, contextually and pragmatically, than his theory would predict. I also argue that the characteristic form of evaluative metaphorical expressions raises challenges for our current categories of linguistic description.
Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication, 2015
This paper presents an analysis of metaphors for punishment in policy discoursein Scotland, which... more This paper presents an analysis of metaphors for punishment in policy discoursein Scotland, which has embarked on an ambitious programme of penal reform.We analysed a corpus consisting of the four key policy documents of the penalreform programme. Our objectives were firstly, to identify the most frequentlyused lexical metaphors and metonyms in the corpus, and then to analyse theentailments that these metaphors have, and how they frame the topics of thetexts. We found widespread use of metaphors from the domain of management,providing support for the thesis that the discourse of management framespublic services in the UK. We then specifically investigated the use of paybackbecause of its salience in current penal philosophy, with the objective of findingout how frequently it is used, and whether the theme of reparation frames thetexts more widely. Our findings suggest that as a metaphor from the sourcedomain of reparation, it appears to be a ‘one-shot’ metaphor. However, in termsof semantic groupings, it could perhaps be viewed as a metaphor of businessand management.
1. Introduction In the 2002 special issue of Style on metaphor, several writers discuss the impor... more 1. Introduction In the 2002 special issue of Style on metaphor, several writers discuss the importance of embodiment in metaphor. For instance, Raymond Gibbs and Nicole Wilson discuss a number of idioms involving lexis for parts of the human body, arguing that these are "not simply ...
MacArthur questions the use of the “Macmillan Dictionary” in metaphor identification. In this res... more MacArthur questions the use of the “Macmillan Dictionary” in metaphor identification. In this response, I argue that the ideal way of determining basic meaning is by analysis of concordance citations sampled from an appropriate corpus. This is demonstrated using a 1000 word sample of the concordance forsayand its inflections, taken from the “British National Corpus”. It is shown that it is very difficult to identify separable senses, which calls into question whethersayis actually a realisation of a mapping from writing to speaking. A dictionary developed on corpus principles is a good alternative to using corpus data directly. It is argued that learners’ dictionaries are more suitable than native speaker dictionaries for this purpose.
In this paper, I look at four different aspects of metaphor research from a corpus linguistic per... more In this paper, I look at four different aspects of metaphor research from a corpus linguistic perspective, namely: (1) the lexicogrammar of metaphors, which refers to the patterning of linguistic metaphor revealed by corpus analysis; (2) metaphor probabilities, which is a facet of metaphor that emerges from frequency-based studies of metaphor; (3) dimensions of metaphor variation, or the search for systematic parameters of variation in metaphor use across different registers; and (4) automated metaphor retrieval, which relates to the development of software to help identify metaphors in corpora. I argue that these four aspects are interrelated, and that advances in one of them can drive changes in the others.
This article discusses the use of metaphors and metonyms in texts about climate change in differe... more This article discusses the use of metaphors and metonyms in texts about climate change in different registers, with a particular focus on the information given to young people, and what they understand about the topic. It begins by considering the role of metaphorical thinking and language in science, and reviews some of the work on scientific metaphor in expert and popular genres. The article analyses the different functions of metaphors in two texts about anthropogenic climate change from different genres, arguing that in the popular text analysed metaphors tend to have the function of entertaining and dramatizing, and introducing and concluding (interpersonal and textual), as opposed to their informational (ideational) function in the research article that was analysed. I then discuss a corpus and discourse analysis of young people's talk about climate change. The young people's use of figurative language is compared with that of researchers and educationalists. The analy...
Current Approaches to Metaphor Analysis in Discourse, 2019
Metaphor is used for different functions, including supporting the development of new knowledge a... more Metaphor is used for different functions, including supporting the development of new knowledge and theory, communicating this, and persuading or framing its topic. All of these functions have been noted in economics texts. Analyses of popular economics texts have found that the same metaphor vehicles can be exploited in different ways to present different evaluations of their topic. For instance, both the Eurosceptic British press, and the Europhile Italian press framed the introduction of the Euro using a BIRTH metaphor, but used it very differently to convey their views (Semino 2002). We study the metaphors used to write about Sino-EU trade disputes in two popular newspapers, from China and the UK, in two corpora of approximately a third of a million tokens each. We find that similar metaphor groupings are used, notably FIGHT/ WAR, but with differing frequencies and in different ways. The Chinese texts used FIGHT/ WAR metaphors to write about protectionism, which tended to be personified and was rarely associated with a specific country. The UK texts used similar metaphors about free trade, which was characterised as the victim of assaults and in need of defending. As well as these qualitative findings, we found the quantitative data suggestive, though larger corpora would be needed for robust statistical conclusions.
Many education professionals in Britain believe that school pupils have difficulty accessing acad... more Many education professionals in Britain believe that school pupils have difficulty accessing academic texts because of inadequate knowledge of vocabulary. Previous research has suggested that some high frequency words used in non-specialised contexts have academic meanings that can cause problems for school pupils. We take corpus techniques used in the study of higher education texts and apply them to a corpus of texts designed for school pupils aged 11 to 14, attempting to identify such words automatically. We use the Spoken BNC2014 as a reference corpus. We identify a list of semi-technical words ( Baker, 1988 ), many of which are polysemous, having everyday meanings and related school subject meanings that may not be familiar to pupils. We investigate how semi-technical vocabulary can be identified and distinguished from both specialised and general vocabulary. Some supplementary qualitative analysis was needed, using collocation and concordance analysis. While time-consuming, th...
espanolEste articulo discute el uso de las metaforas y metonimias en los textos sobre el cambio c... more espanolEste articulo discute el uso de las metaforas y metonimias en los textos sobre el cambio climatico en diferentes registros, con un interes especial en la informacion proporcionada a la gente joven, y en lo que ellos entienden sobre el tema. El articulo comienza considerando el papel del razonamiento metaforico y del lenguaje en la ciencia y revisa el trabajo de las metaforas cientificas en los generos expertos y populares. El articulo analiza las diferentes funciones de las metaforas en dos textos sobre el cambio climatico antropogenico en diferentes generos y defiende que en los textos populares analizados las metaforas tienden a realizar la funcion de entretenimiento y dramatizacion asi como de introduccion y conclusion (interpersonal y textual), en contraposicion con la funcion informacional (ideacional) del articulo de investigacion que se analizo. A continuacion llevo a cabo el examen de un analisis de corpus y del discurso de la gente joven sobre el cambio climatico. La...
Cognitive Foundations of Language Structure and Use, 2010
It has been asserted by a number of writers from a range of disciplines that metaphors have evalu... more It has been asserted by a number of writers from a range of disciplines that metaphors have evaluative and persuasive properties. In the Conceptual Metaphor Theory literature, it is widely agreed that metaphor is evaluative, persuasive and therefore potentially ideological. Outside the cognitive literature, metaphor’s persuasive qualities have been studied by researchers in fields from Critical Discourse Analysis to consumer research. This chapter reviews the mechanisms through which evaluation seems to be carried out, discussing a number of studies. Four themes are identified: metaphors as stories, with entailments, metaphors which map evaluative connotations from source to target domain, the deliberate choice of a source domain which resonates with particular groups of language users, and the use of metaphorical scenarios. I investigate these mechanisms in a small number of metaphorical expressions, using corpus techniques, with a focus on detailed analysis of form as well as meaning. I find that the evaluations conveyed by the expressions that I investigate seem most consistent with Musolff’s scenarios model (2006). However the evaluative meaning expressed is often even more specific, contextually and pragmatically, than his theory would predict. I also argue that the characteristic form of evaluative metaphorical expressions raises challenges for our current categories of linguistic description.
Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication, 2015
This paper presents an analysis of metaphors for punishment in policy discoursein Scotland, which... more This paper presents an analysis of metaphors for punishment in policy discoursein Scotland, which has embarked on an ambitious programme of penal reform.We analysed a corpus consisting of the four key policy documents of the penalreform programme. Our objectives were firstly, to identify the most frequentlyused lexical metaphors and metonyms in the corpus, and then to analyse theentailments that these metaphors have, and how they frame the topics of thetexts. We found widespread use of metaphors from the domain of management,providing support for the thesis that the discourse of management framespublic services in the UK. We then specifically investigated the use of paybackbecause of its salience in current penal philosophy, with the objective of findingout how frequently it is used, and whether the theme of reparation frames thetexts more widely. Our findings suggest that as a metaphor from the sourcedomain of reparation, it appears to be a ‘one-shot’ metaphor. However, in termsof semantic groupings, it could perhaps be viewed as a metaphor of businessand management.
1. Introduction In the 2002 special issue of Style on metaphor, several writers discuss the impor... more 1. Introduction In the 2002 special issue of Style on metaphor, several writers discuss the importance of embodiment in metaphor. For instance, Raymond Gibbs and Nicole Wilson discuss a number of idioms involving lexis for parts of the human body, arguing that these are "not simply ...
MacArthur questions the use of the “Macmillan Dictionary” in metaphor identification. In this res... more MacArthur questions the use of the “Macmillan Dictionary” in metaphor identification. In this response, I argue that the ideal way of determining basic meaning is by analysis of concordance citations sampled from an appropriate corpus. This is demonstrated using a 1000 word sample of the concordance forsayand its inflections, taken from the “British National Corpus”. It is shown that it is very difficult to identify separable senses, which calls into question whethersayis actually a realisation of a mapping from writing to speaking. A dictionary developed on corpus principles is a good alternative to using corpus data directly. It is argued that learners’ dictionaries are more suitable than native speaker dictionaries for this purpose.
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