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According to Patterson (2011b: 16), the term ‘financial architecture’ is
used not only in the case of multinational corporations, but also in the
context of globalization to highlight the lack of any coherent or robust
global structure. The global financial and economic crisis led to a wide-
ranging debate on the structure and functioning of the international
monetary and financial system. As shown by the results given in the
Google search engine, compounds such as ‘international financial
architecture’ or ‘international monetary architecture’ are primarily
associated with International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group. Both
of these organizations are keenly interested in employing specialists in the
field of financial management.
Figure 2, on the other hand, presents visualization of ‘financial
architecture’ in the case of European Union institutions which is a
conceptualization of complex financial networks in the form of a building.
This clearly points to the operation of the conceptual metaphor
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT IS BUILDING A CONSTRUCTION.
Figure 2. The new European financial architecture (Silvia Vori, Banca d’Italia,
May 2012).
The study of conceptual metaphors by means of which intellectual
operations are conceptualized as ‘the construction of buildings’ has a long
tradition in cognitive linguistics. For example, the metaphor THEORIES
(AND ARGUMENTS) ARE BUILDINGS was first discussed by Lakoff