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language might be to facilitate easier communication within an
information-dense field with a constant need of new terms for newly
arising technical or scientific concepts. It is a function substantially
different from but, arguably, no less intriguing or important than the
function of conceptual metaphor in the conceptualization of the abstract
notions in the world around us.
Interestingly, some metaphorical expressions mapped onto the domain
of MACHINERY display a strong tendency towards multiplicity of meaning.
Depending on the type of machine or machine part discussed, terms such
as teeth, arms or head can designate several very different mechanisms
with different functions, making the metaphorical expression polysemous
even within the specialized language domain. Similarly, the meanings of
verbs like bleed or feed in the domain of MACHINERY are not limited to a
single action involving one specific type of material and/or one specific
pathway: a detailed semantic analysis of the verbs bleed and feed
(Králiková 2015) shows that the meanings must be defined fairly broadly
in order to cover all the instances of the verbs found in the corpus.
Although this flexibility of meaning is not a case of polysemy in the sense
that we have found in teeth, arms or head, it suggests that the verbs have a
fairly broad, generic meaning even within the specialized language
discourse. These findings seem to be in line with what Evans (2013) says
about the entrenchment of discourse metaphors – figurative expressions
eventually assuming a broader or more generic meaning that exceeds the
single sense they were originally employed in.
Conclusion
We believe that our findings have shown the advantages of applying
Evans’ (2013) notion of discourse metaphor to analyzing specialized
language, as there are certainly instances in our corpus of metaphoric
language use that cannot be accounted for by the CMT. We propose that
Evans’s concept of discourse metaphor, a resemblance-based metaphor
that arises from language use to meet particular communicative means,
provides a useful insight on the origin and function of metaphor in
specialized language, which often involves mappings between two
tangible or physical domains of experience. In these cases, metaphorical
language seems to fulfill functions substantially different from those found
in conceptual metaphors but arguably not less worth of linguistic
exploration. Rather than facilitating the conceptualization of abstract
experiential domains, metaphors with tangible target domains are
employed in specialized language to facilitate more effective communication