Publications
Publication details [#13760]
Zinken, Jörg. 2007. Discourse metaphors: The link between figurative language and habitual analogies. Cognitive Linguistics 18 (3) : 445–466. 22 pp. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter
ISBN
16133641
Abstract
Zinken introduces the notion of discourse metaphor by relating this to analogical schemas negotiated among discourse participants in the shared language community in order to interpret insightful figurative constructions in active metaphorical contexts. Intersubjectivity may here plays a crucial role - even if Zinken does not refer to.
Nevertheless, as he emphasizes throughout the text "[...] the nature of the relationship between language use and analogical schemas remains unclear." This article underlines the significance of the appropriate context by prompting the speaker/hearer to construct an analogical meaning that has been negotiated in the discourse: "[...] a meaning that is relevant in the current context is constructed rapidly and seemingly effortlessly." In other words, what is required for metaphorical meaning making in a given space/time is the aforementioned selection of the contextually appropriate "lexical concept." Zinken calls this type of discourse metaphors “form-specific”, by pointing to the association with specific expressions, such as idioms, in opposition to fixed and static cross-domain mappings, as postulated in CMT.
Last, he tests his assumptions with a corpus analysis of more than 8000 discourse metaphors found in newspaper texts.