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.
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