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Patterson (2011b: 32) describes financial management as a component
of the management function that concerns itself with an enterprise’s
sources and uses of financial resources, i.e. its finance function. This view
allows us to formulate a claim that the concept of financial management
has been introduced as a result of conceptual blending between the
concepts of MANAGEMENT and FINANCE where attributes from the
two domains are selectively transferred to a hybrid conception.^2 Naturally,
the causes of this new conceptualization are primarily related to the
demands of large corporate businesses and only secondarily result in
linguistic innovations. The concept is intrinsically associated with the post
of finance director in big companies, but once introduced, it can also be
applied to small and medium enterprises where it would probably never
have developed.
FINANCIAL OPERATIONS ARE MATERIAL GOODS
The basic function of conceptual metaphor is to develop abstract ideas
(target domains) by means of conceptualizations referring to concrete and
well understood phenomena (source domains). Most frequently, these
source domains are identified with physical, tangible objects or material
things. Financial operations, which constitute part and parcel of financial
management, seem to be highly abstract and elaborate intellectual
activities which require a lot of careful thinking, planning, reasoning and
calculating. It comes as a surprise, however, that these mental operations
are perceived as physical objects and can be conceptualized in the form of
material objects.
First of all, financial operations can be conceptually ‘packed’ and
mentally manipulated as if they were ‘products’, ‘units’ or ‘things’. Thus,
we rely on metaphors by means of which concepts such as money, stocks
or options are treated as if they were material goods that can be sold,
bought, exchanged, counted, evaluated. Notice that a collection of
transactions in equity securities is commonly termed as an investment
portfolio, making the specialist and abstract conception easy to handle and
as routine as everyday shopping.
To take another example, financial operations (such as planning) or
their results (e.g. budgets) are presented in the form of documents which
by their very nature have a material character. Nowadays, however, these
financial documents can be also presented in the electronic format which
(^2) The process of conceptual blending is explained in Fauconnier and Turner (2002)
and, for example Ureña Gómez-Moreno (2011), Grygiel (2008, 2013).