In my thesis, the relationship between technological innovation and the development of language and thought is analysed. For this purpose, three different fields of technology are investigated: 1) the steam engine, 2) electricity, and 3) motor vehicles, roads and ways. They have all either played an extremely important part in people's lives, or they are still essential to us. The overall aim is to find out in what ways these inventions and discoveries have helped people to develop abstract thinking and given speakers of English new possibilities to express themselves. Questions being asked are a) if the correlations in experience between the inventions and other domains have motivated new conceptual mappings? b) if the experiences that they provide people with may be used to re-experience certain conceptual mappings, and hence make them more deeply entrenched in people's minds? and c) if the uses of them as cognitive tools have resulted in meaning extension in the English lexicon? The study is based on metaphoric and metonymic phrases collected from a number of different dictionaries. In my material, a large number of metaphorical and metonymic expressions including terms connected to the inventions and discoveries that are part of my thesis are found. As is clear from the expressions, the steam engine, electricity, motor vehicles, roads and ways have all provided us with ample tools for structuring our thoughts, and for conveying our thoughts to others. Primarily, it seems to be the different functions of the discoveries and inventions, or the effects that they have on other objects that have motivated the mappings. As is evident from sentences such as 'The peace talks seem to have run out of steam' and 'Now that problem is out of the way it's full steam ahead to get the job finished' the steam engine may, for example, be used to conceptualise people, or even processes, that 'move or proceed with energy or force'. As a result of the similarities we perceive between electric excitation or tension in different objects and our own feelings, we may, for example, use the electric current to structure our experiences of 'emotional strain' and 'excitement'. Since motor vehicles, roads and ways are built for taking us from one place to another, from a beginning to an end, they are apt means for re-experiencing conventional conceptual metaphors such as ACTION IS MOTION, PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS and LIFE IS A JOURNEY. In addition to analysing the cognitive role of the inventions that are part of my thesis, some general conclusions are suggested on the basis of what has been described in my thesis. These suggestions concern the relationship between language, thought and world. (Marlene Johansson Falck)