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Metaphor and the Social World
Vol. 7:2 (2017) ► pp.252–269

Analysing metaphor in the family register through scripted sitcom conversations

| Universitat Politècnica de València
| Universitat de València

This study looks into the patterns of metaphor use in the family register of scripted sitcom conversations. Previous studies of metaphor in conversation adopted different approaches to the concept of register, resulting in a rich but complex picture (Cameron, 2003, 2007, 2008; Deignan, Littlemore & Semino, 2013; Kaal, 2012). This research attempts to reduce such complexity by using an approach to register based on closely defining communicative settings and the participants’ roles (Giménez-Moreno, 2006). In this way, we were able to focus on the register used by family members and close friends and the contexts of private oral communication, as opposed to other possible registers characteristic of professional conversations or those between friends. The study provides data on the frequency, typology, grammatical form and function of the metaphors used in the fictional dialogues between family members and close friends from two British sitcoms, “Gavin & Stacey” and “The Royle Family”. The findings, in general, confirm the patterns of metaphor use in naturally-occurring (UK) conversation, but show lower frequency ranges than other more purpose-oriented contexts. The main contribution of this study is the evaluation of metaphor as an ‘appraisal resource’ (Martin & White, 2005) and its frequent use in assessing the participants’ attitudes. The study suggests that defining register in terms of communicative setting and participants’ roles can help to provide comparable data on metaphor variation.

Keywords: metaphor, register, conversation, appraisal
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Register in metaphor studies
  • 3.Metaphor in conversation
  • 4.Metaphor functions in conversation: expressing appraisal
  • 5.Corpus description and procedure
  • 6.Results and discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 20 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.7.2.05sko
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