Abstract
The present paper is a corpus-based inquiry into the importance of vivification for producing a systematic and persuasive Arab economic discourse. Thus, this article examines how and why the economy is metaphorically conceptualized in modern Arabic as a Living Organism that can be said to ‘grow’, ‘revive’, etc. Having analyzed the frequency with which the various instantiations of this generic metaphor appear in Arab economic discourse, the paper goes on to discuss the value judgments that they convey. The analogy between a living organism and an economy is shown to induce very specific evaluations of such conditions as ‘growing’ or ‘being revived’. Hence, vivification is demonstrated to play a vital role in providing Arab economic discourse with textual cohesion. Although this article argues for the universal bodily grounding of the Economy Is A Living Organism metaphor, it also shows this experiential basis to be subject to cultural interpretation. The analyses carried out here suggest that projecting such physical concepts as those of ‘growth’ or ‘revival’ onto the social domain of economics entails that they are interpreted in accordance with the particular social interests of a given community.
About the author
Mikolaj Domaradzki graduated from the Faculty of Modern Languages at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland), where he also obtained his PhD in philosophy and is currently employed as an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences. At present his linguistic research is concerned with metaphors in the Arabic language, on which he has published several articles, among others, in Cognitive Linguistics and Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Dilworth Parkinson for his kind permission to use the data from the Arabic Corpus, his illuminating instructions and helpful explanations. I would also like to extend my thanks to Husam Freikh for his useful comments on the Arabic examples. Finally, I am indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful remarks and inspiring criticisms. At the same time, I wish to acknowledge that all errors are mine alone.
Appendix
In the morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, the following standard abbreviations are used:
- 3
third person
- ACC
accusative
- CONJ
conjunction
- DEF
definite
- DU
dual
- F
feminine
- GEN
genitive
- M
masculine
- PART
particle
- PAS
Passive
- PL
plural
- PREP
preposition
- PRS
present
- PST
past
- SG
singular
- SBJV
subjunctive
In accord with the established convention, the class of every verb is marked by a Roman numeral.
References
Abdou, Ashraf. 2012. Arabic idioms: A corpus based study. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203808788Search in Google Scholar
Boers, Frank. 1997. ‘No pain, no gain’ in a free market rhetoric: A test for cognitive semantics? Metaphor and Symbol 12(4). 231–241.10.1207/s15327868ms1204_2Search in Google Scholar
Boers, Frank. 2000. Enhancing metaphoric awareness in specialised reading. English for Specific Purposes 19. 137–147.10.1016/S0889-4906(98)00017-9Search in Google Scholar
Boers, Frank & Murielle Demecheleer. 1997. A few metaphorical models in (Western) economic discourse. In Wolf-Andreas Liebert, Gisela Redeker & Linda Waugh (eds.), Discourse and perspective in cognitive linguistics, 115–129. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.151.10boeSearch in Google Scholar
Buckwalter, Tim & Dilworth Parkinson. 2011. A frequency dictionary of Arabic: Core vocabulary for learners. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Cameron, Lynne. 1999. Identifying and describing metaphor in spoken discourse data. In Lynne Cameron & Graham Low (eds.), Researching and applying metaphor, 105–132. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139524704.009Search in Google Scholar
Castaño, Emilia, Isabel Verdaguer, Natalia Judith Laso & Aaron Ventura. 2014. Economy is a living organism: Metaphorical expressions in a learner corpus of English. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 27(2). 323–337.10.1075/resla.27.2.04casSearch in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2000. Metaphor and vocabulary teaching in ESP economics. English for Specific Purposes 19. 149–165.10.1016/S0889-4906(98)00025-8Search in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2004. Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.10.1057/9780230000612Search in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan & Timothy Ennis. 2001. A comparative study of metaphor in Spanish and English financial reporting. English for Specific Purposes 20. 249–266.10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00009-0Search in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan & Andreas Musolff. 2003. ‘Battered hero’ or ‘innocent victim’? A comparative study of metaphors for euro trading in British and German financial reporting. English for Specific Purposes 22. 153–176.10.1016/S0889-4906(02)00012-1Search in Google Scholar
Deignan, Alice. 1999. Corpus-based research into metaphor. In Lynne Cameron & Graham Low (eds.), Researching and applying metaphor, 177–199. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139524704.012Search in Google Scholar
Deignan, Alice. 2005. Metaphor and corpus linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/celcr.6Search in Google Scholar
Dirven, René & Wolf Paprotté. 1985. Introduction. In Wolf Paprotté & René Dirven (eds.), The ubiquity of metaphor, vii–xix. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.29.01dirSearch in Google Scholar
Domaradzki, Mikolaj. 2011. The self in Arabic and the relativism-universalism controversy. Cognitive Linguistics 22(3). 535–567.10.1515/cogl.2011.021Search in Google Scholar
Domaradzki, Mikolaj. 2013. Conceptualizing conflict in Arab economic news reporting. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 1(1). 114–135.10.1075/jlac.1.1.06domSearch in Google Scholar
Fukuda, Kosei. 2009. A comparative study of metaphors representing the US and Japanese economies. Journal of Pragmatics 41. 1693–1702.10.1016/j.pragma.2008.12.005Search in Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W. 1994. The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Goatly, Andrew. 2007. Washing the brain. Metaphor and hidden ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/dapsac.23Search in Google Scholar
Henderson, Willie. 1994. Metaphor and economics. In Roger E. Backhouse (ed.), New directions in economic methodology, 343–367. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203204085.ch16Search in Google Scholar
Hunt, Shelby D. & Anil Menon. 1995. Metaphors and competitive advantage: Evaluating the use of metaphors in theories of competitive strategy. Journal of Business Research 33. 81–90.10.1016/0148-2963(94)00057-LSearch in Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark. 1987. The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226177847.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Koller, Veronika. 2004. Metaphor and gender in business media discourse: A critical cognitive study. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.10.1057/9780230511286Search in Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2000. Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2005. Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511614408Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Turner. 1989. More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226470986.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
López Maestre, María D. 2000. The business of cognitive stylistics: a survey of conceptual metaphors in business English. Atlantis 22(1). 47–69.Search in Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald N. 1985. The rhetoric of economics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.Search in Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald N. 1990. If you’re so smart. The narrative of economic expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald N. 1994. How to do a rhetorical analysis, and why. In Roger E. Backhouse (ed.), New directions in economic methodology, 318–342. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203204085.pt4Search in Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2004. Metaphor and political discourse: Analogical reasoning in debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.10.1057/9780230504516Search in Google Scholar
Ryding, Karin C. 2005. A reference grammar of modern standard Arabic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486975Search in Google Scholar
Semino, Elena. 2008. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Smart, Jack R. 1993. Arabic. Kent: Hodder and Stoughton.Search in Google Scholar
Wang, Huili, Tamara Runtsova, Hongjun Chen. 2013. Economy is an organism: A comparative study of metaphor in English and Russian economic discourse. Text & Talk 33(2). 259–288.10.1515/text-2013-0012Search in Google Scholar
Wehr, Hans. 1979. A dictionary of modern written Arabic. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Search in Google Scholar
White, Michael. 1997. The use of metaphor in reporting financial market transactions. Cuadernos de Filologia Inglesa 6(2). 233–245.Search in Google Scholar
White, Michael. 2003. Metaphor and economics: The case of growth. English for Specific Purposes 22. 131–151.10.1016/S0889-4906(02)00006-6Search in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton