Recent corpus studies found that academic prose is particularly rich in metaphor,
but exhibits an unexpectedly low proportion of forms of ‘direct metaphor’,
such as simile (cf. Steen, Dorst, Herrmann, Kaal, & Krennmayr, 2010a; Steen
et al., 2010b). One explanation is deliberate metaphor use: in opposition to
indirect forms (he attacked my argument), direct forms of metaphor (the leaf is
shaped like a minaret) are normally explicitly signaled and often appear more
vividly ‘metaphorical’. To control precision of linguistic reference, and to abide
by an overarching stylistic maxim of academic prose that regulates marked
figurativeness, writers of academic texts may thus try to delimitate deliberate
metaphor use in the form of direct metaphor.
However, recent advances in the study of English for Academic Purposes
have stressed that the analysis of academic discourse cannot ignore ‘disciplinary
specificity’ (cf. Hyland, 2009). Using an exploratory approach, the present chapter
hence transgresses the rather broad unit of ‘register’ to zoom in on academic
prose as specialist discourse of distinct ‘sub-registers’. Using the academic text
sample (some 49,000 words) of the VUAMC (Steen et al. 2010c), it analyzes
three metaphor types (indirect, implicit, and direct) across four different academic
sub-registers (humanities arts, natural sciences, politics law education,
social sciences). I report variation of metaphor type across the sub-registers,
with the highest proportion of direct metaphors in natural sciences, followed by
humanities arts. My findings on variation of metaphor type advances a finergrained
view of metaphor use in academic prose, taking into account distinct
communicative functions of metaphor types.
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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