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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton September 25, 2007

Discourse metaphors: The link between figurative language and habitual analogies

  • Jörg Zinken EMAIL logo
From the journal Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract

Cognitive linguists have long been interested in analogies people habitually use in thinking and speaking, but little is known about the nature of the relationship between verbal behaviour and such analogical schemas. This article proposes that discourse metaphors are an important link between the two. Discourse metaphors are verbal expressions containing a construction that evokes an analogy negotiated in the discourse community. Results of an analysis of metaphors in a corpus of newspaper texts support the prediction that regular analogies are form-specific, i.e., bound to particular lexical items. Implications of these results for assumptions about the generality of habitual analogies are discussed.


*Correspondence address: University of Portsmouth, Department of Psychology, King Henry I Street, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK. Tel.: +44 23 9284 6333. Fax: +44 23 9284 6300.

Received: 2006-01-26
Revised: 2007-01-24
Published Online: 2007-09-25
Published in Print: 2007-09-19

© Walter de Gruyter

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