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Metaphor and Metonymy in the Digital Age: Theory and methods for building repositories of figurative language
Edited by Marianna Bolognesi, Mario Brdar and Kristina Š. Despot
[Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication 8] 2019
► pp. 147–174

Chapter 6
The lexical vs. corpus-based method in the study of metaphors

| Eötvös Loránd University
| Eötvös Loránd University
| Eötvös Loránd University
| Eötvös Loránd University
| Eötvös Loránd University

In the past 15–20 years, there has been an increasing tendency to study metaphors found in real data (large corpora, specific discourses, conversations, etc.). What became known as “corpus-linguistic methods” of metaphor study, distinguish themselves from a prior way of studying metaphor that is often labeled “intuitive,” “subjective,” and “eclectic.”

In this paper, we propose an updated version of this “intuitive” method, which is termed here the “lexical approach.” We compare and evaluate this approach with the corpus-based one, making use of the concept of SURPRISE (see Kövecses, 2015) for demonstrative purposes.

We conclude with some methodological suggestions, in which we argue that the two approaches reinforce and complement one another, toward the common goal of advancing metaphor theory.

Keywords: lexical approach, corpus-based approach, cognitive linguistic methods, introspection
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Describing the lexical approach
  • 3.Surprise in the lexical approach
    • 3.1Lexical structure
    • 3.2Metaphors of surprise in the lexical approach
    • 3.3Metonymies of surprise in the lexical approach
  • 4.Surprise in a corpus-based approach
    • 4.1Metaphors of surprise – a corpus-based approach
    • 4.2Metonymies of surprise – a corpus-based approach
  • 5.Challenges of the two approaches
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Number of metaphors
    • 6.2Conventionalization
    • 6.3Types and tokens
    • 6.4Presence of target term
    • 6.5Synonyms
    • 6.6Polysemy
  • 7.Conclusions
  • ?ack?
  • Notes
  • References
  • Sources
Published online: 6 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.8.07kov
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