Chapter published in:
Producing Figurative Expression: Theoretical, experimental and practical perspectives
Edited by John Barnden and Andrew Gargett
[Figurative Thought and Language 10] 2020
► pp. 331–362

Rock bottoms, juggling balls and coalprints

Exploring the metaphors L2 speakers of English produce in face-to-face interaction

| Universidad de Extremadura
In comparison with the interest shown in the difficulties second language (L2) speakers have in understanding English metaphors, very little attention has been paid to examining the metaphors they actually produce, particularly in the oral mode. In this chapter I examine the metaphors used by L2 speakers in face-to-face interaction with native (L1) speakers or with other L2 speakers, using data from three different sources: the Vienna-Oxford Corpus of International English (VOICE), the European Corpus of Academic Talk (EuroCoAT), as well as smaller databases compiled in the course of other research. I consider the following aspects of metaphor production in L2 conversation: its frequency, its general characteristics, its conventionality, and some of the factors that prompt its use in discourse.
Keywords: metaphor, conversation, production, English as a second language, English as lingua franca, VOICE, EuroCoAT, repetition, systematicity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Researching metaphor production in L2 speech: Issues and challenges
  • 3.The data
  • 4.L1 and L2 metaphor use compared: The EuroCoAT corpus
  • 5.Entrenchment: Conventional and unconventional metaphors in L1 and L2 discourse
    • 5.1 The use of thematically related conventional metaphors in L2 speech
    • 5.2Conventional phraseological metaphors in VOICE
    • 5.3Conventional single word metaphors in VOICE
    • 5.4Novel uses of conventional English metaphors in VOICE
  • 6.Repetition: Quoting and misquoting others’ metaphors
  • 7.Summary of findings and avenues of further research
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 December 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.10.12mac
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