{"id":473,"date":"2010-05-03T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T08:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=473"},"modified":"2010-03-04T12:21:07","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T10:21:07","slug":"corpus-based-approaches-to-metaphor-and-metonymy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy"},"content":{"rendered":"
Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy.<\/strong> Ed. by Anatol Stefanowitsch<\/strong> and Stefan Th. Gries<\/strong>. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006. Pp. 319. ISBN 9783110198270<\/a>. $57.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Dinha T. Gorgis<\/strong>, Jadara University <\/em><\/p>\n

This book is a collection of twelve articles. The first article, by Anatol Stefanowitsch (1\u201316), focuses on some methodological problems of corpus-based research into metaphor and metonymy from both the linguistic and cognitive perspectives. Stefanowitsch describes the field as \u2018still very much in its initial stages\u2019 (12).<\/p>\n

In \u2018Metaphoricity is gradable\u2019 (17\u201335), Patrick Hanks<\/strong> extends the idea that \u2018metaphor depends on \u201cresonance\u201d between at least two concepts\u2019 (31). In cases in which the resonance gets amplified, some metaphors become more metaphorical than others \u2018when two concepts share fewer semantic properties\u2019 (31).<\/p>\n

Elena Semino<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018A corpus-based study of metaphor for speech activity in British English\u2019 (36\u201362) is filled with new ideas, although Semino draws heavily on previous celebrated work outside the field of corpora studies. Based on a corpus of more than a quarter-of-a-million words, this study goes beyond the now classical conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT is WAR (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999) and Michael Reddy\u2019s (1979) CONDUIT metaphor.<\/p>\n

Stefanowitsch\u2019s second contribution, \u2018Words and their metaphors: A corpus-based approach\u2019 (63\u2013105), is undoubtedly challenging. Set against the George Lakoffian tradition and K\u00f6vecses (1990), Stefanowitsch examines five basic universal emotions (i.e. anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness) using metaphorical pattern analysis (MPA). Being committed \u2018to quantification and exhaustive data extraction\u2019 (66), MPA is demonstrated to be superior to introspective frameworks.<\/p>\n

In \u2018The grammar of linguistic metaphors\u2019 (106\u201322), Alice Deignan<\/strong> suggests that data-driven approaches should be balanced with theory-driven methods to conceptual metaphors. Deignan argues that theory-driven methods \u2018can allow linguistic patterns to be ignored, possibly at the expense of useful insights\u2019 (121).<\/p>\n

Similar to the preceding papers, Martin Hilpert<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018Keeping an eye on the data: Metonymies and their patterns\u2019 (123\u201351) strongly recommends a data-driven approach over intuitive methods. Looking into a ten-million word selection from the British National Corpus (BNC), Hilpert uncovered 909 usages of eye<\/em>, of which almost half are metonymic or metaphoric. He claims that \u2018metonymic expressions like \u201cunder the eye of NP [noun phrase]\u201d have entered the lexicon as constructions and are thus a matter of semantics\u2019 (147) rather than of pragmatics.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Metonymic proper names: A corpus-based account\u2019 (152\u201374), Katja Markert<\/strong> and Malvina Nissim<\/strong> discuss their study of four-thousand annotated occurrences of location and organization names extracted from the BNC. Their framework is based on seven principles designed to account for conventional and unconventional metonymic patterns as well as literal and mixed readings. Through experimentation, Markert and Nissim discovered that the reliability of their annotation scheme is exceptionally high (169).<\/p>\n

Kathryn Allan<\/strong>\u2019s article, \u2018On groutnolls and nog-heads: A case study of the interaction between culture and cognition in intelligence metaphors\u2019 (175\u201390), is a diachronic corpus-based study that links intelligence and density as expressed by the conceptual metaphor STUPIDITY is CLOSE TEXTURE. Investigating Old English through to present-day English, Allan notes that STUPIDITY is associated with the source domains WOOD, FOOD, EARTH as well as a few other substances.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sense and sensibility: Rational thought versus emotion in metaphorical language\u2019 (191\u2013213), coauthored by Paivi Koivisto<\/strong> and Heli Tissari<\/strong>, is a historical study that compares metaphors associated with the English words mind<\/em>, reason<\/em>, wit<\/em>, love<\/em>, and fear<\/em> as used in Early-Modern and present-day English. The authors claim that \u2018cultural change is reflected in cognitive metaphors\u2019 (210).<\/p>\n

James H. Martin<\/strong>\u2019s article, \u2018A corpus-based analysis of context effects on metaphor comprehension\u2019 (214\u201336), is an examination of the facilitation and inhibition effects observed in laboratory subjects. His experiments demonstrate that \u2018recognition time was shorter with metaphorical context, longer with relevant literal target contexts, and much longer still with literal source contexts\u2019 (225).<\/p>\n

Veronika Koller<\/strong>, \u2018Of critical importance: Using electronic text corpora to study metaphor in business media discourse\u2019 (237\u201366), uses texts published between 1996\u20132001 from Business Week<\/em>, The Economist<\/em>, Fortune<\/em>, and the Financial Times<\/em> to compare metaphoric expressions in marketing and sales corpora with mergers and acquisition corpora. Koller focuses on \u2018the socio-cultural and ideological aspects of metaphor usage\u2019 (238).<\/p>\n

Finally, Alan Partington<\/strong>, \u2018Metaphors, motifs and similes across discourse types: Corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) at work\u2019 (267\u2013304), observes that (i) \u2018the presence of certain prepositions and adverbs can be indicative of metaphors specific to a certain discourse type\u2019 (275); (ii) \u2018some discourse types are more dense in metaphor than others\u2019 (293); (iii) \u2018familiarity automatically reduces the cognitive distance of juxtaposition\u2019 (296); and (iv) the difference between similes and metaphors is in whether scalar functionality is intended or inferred.<\/p>\n

Disregarding dozens of typos, this book will be valuable for cognitive or corpus-oriented figurative language students and researchers.<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

K\u00f6vecses, Zolt\u00e1n. 1990. Emotion concepts. <\/em>Dordrecht: Springer Verlag.<\/p>\n

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by<\/em>. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh<\/em>. New York: Basic Books.<\/p>\n

Reddy, Michael. 1979. The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. Metaphor and thought<\/em>, ed. by Andrew Ortony, 284\u2013324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy. Ed. by Anatol Stefanowitsch and Stefan Th. Gries. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006. Pp. 319. ISBN 9783110198270. $57. Reviewed by Dinha T. Gorgis, Jadara University This book is a collection of twelve articles. The first article, by Anatol Stefanowitsch (1\u201316), focuses on some methodological problems of corpus-based research into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":474,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}