226 Zhiying Xin
Alice Deignan challenges Conceptual Metaphor Theory by exploring ―the grammar of
linguistic metaphors‖. Based on the findings of her previous studies, relying on data retrieved
from the Bank of English, Deignan concentrates on the word classes of metaphorical and
literal uses of lexical items, in particular, those form the source domains ANIMALS and
PLANTS. In addition, taking rock and flame as examples, she examines the relationship
between single/plural inflections of these words and their metaphorical uses. Concerning the
results of her investigation, the following two attributes deserve special attention. First of all,
it is observed that word-classes may change in the process of conceptual mapping. Typically,
nouns from the source domain tend to perform as verbs in the target domain (119). Secondly,
different inflectional paradigms of words from the source domain may have quite different,
sometimes even opposite ―evaluative patterns‖ in the target domain. For instance, rock often
appears together with lexical items of positive denotation while rocks is generally associated
with negative connotations. Thirdly, metaphor has a close connection with collocation. That
is, different from literal meanings, metaphorical expressions require fixed grammatical
structures. In Deignan‘s view, these empirical observations on the one hand confirm the
studies of other corpus linguists. On the other hand, traditional ―theory-driven‖ approaches
will have to learn much from the booming ―data-driven‖ methods. For example, her findings
question Conceptual Metaphor Theory, especially Lakoff‘s Invariance Hypothesis, from at
least two aspects. Deignan‘s concordance analysis shows, instead of mere replication of
relationships from source domain to target domain, the mapping often involves grammatical,
especially inflectional changes. Besides, the mapping tends to be dynamic instead of static.
That is, there exist interactions between the source domain and the target domain. She ends
her discussion by advocating inductive strategies in metaphor studies.
In his contribution ―Keeping an eye on the data: Metonymies and their patterns‖, Martin
Hilpert deals with metonymy through an empirical exploration into linguistic patterns favored
by metonymies relating to the single lexical item eye. He begins by revealing the problems
with the traditional cognitive methodology for analyzing metonymy. Then he does some
ground-clearing work for his research by defining and classifying metonymy in terms of
domains. In short, metonymy is an ―intra-domain mapping‖, which has two basic types, i.e.
E-Metonymies (part-of relations) and C-Metonymies (kind-of relations) (127). Here Hilpert
also touches on chained metonymies (129-130). He goes on to give a detailed explanation of
the methodology adopted in this chapter. Particular attention is given to the aims of his
corpus-based investigations and the six-step data retrieving procedure. A 10 million word
sample of the British National Corpus was searched for metonymic expressions with eye. The
largest portion of the discussion is devoted to listing the 22 expressions found, each with brief
interpretations and supporting examples. The author continues his empirical examinations by
distinguishing and contrasting literal and non-literal uses of eye. The parameter adopted is the
word class in co-occurrence with eye. In terms of right-side word classes, literal eye favors
verbs and nouns while figurative eye prefers prepositions. In terms of left-side word classes,
definite determiners indicate literal uses and indefinite determiners figurative uses. In
addition, the concordance reveals 13 meanings of eye. Among them, ―watching‖ and
―attention‖ take up more than half of the total metonymic patterns. Hilpert‘s intent is to
convince the reader that conceptual metonymy can be and should be approached through
corpus analysis.
Of all the papers in the present volume, Katja Markert and Malvina Nissim‘s paper
―Metonymic proper names: A corpus-based account‖ concentrates most deliberately on