Article published in:
Metaphor and the Social World
Vol. 5:1 (2015) ► pp. 124–136

On using a dictionary to identify the basic senses of words

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This article-cum-narrative reflects on the use — indeed usefulness — of a dictionary in helping the researcher to identify metaphorical and non-metaphorical uses of language. Focusing on a group of ‘saying’ verbs as they were used in a face-to-face conversation between a university lecturer and an undergraduate student, it describes a researcher’s attempts to use the dictionary recommended by the Pragglejaz Group in their seminal article on metaphor identification (2007) to discover what basic sense of different words might (or might not) motivate their metaphorical meaning in context. The quest to identify the basic meanings of these verbs using this dictionary was fraught with difficulties and led to a less than satisfactory dénouement.
Keywords: dictionary, metaphor identification, discourse
Published online: 10 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.5.1.07mac
Cited by

Cited by other publications

MacArthur, Fiona
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MacArthur, Fiona
2019.  In Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 22], ► pp. 290 ff. Crossref logo
Semino, Elena
2019.  In Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 22], ► pp. 314 ff. Crossref logo

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