xii Steven C. Hamel
for a strong emphasis on authentic data and the empirical verification of many of the
fascinating theoretical claims‖ (1). The contributions present case studies of metaphor and
metonymy involving structural, textual, contextual, cross-linguistic, (cross-)cultural, social,
and/or ideological aspects. By challenging and refining established theories, and putting
forward frameworks for conducting corpus studies, the collection makes a timely, valuable
and inspiring contribution to the development of cognitive corpus research. In the following
sections I will summarize general conclusions this volume highlights, with particular
consideration for approaches and methodologies in the identification and retrieval of
metaphors and metonymies. Then I will elaborate on some essential problems revealed by the
contributions with respect to corpus research.
Chapter 10 - This chapter introduces the basic semiotic concepts of sign, sign vehicle,
meaning content, meaning giving and shared meaning as understood in the European semiotic
tradition, and investigates the role of semiotic tools as sign vehicles in mediating in-service
teachers‘ mathematical problem solving. Our particular interest is to interpret the basic
semiotic concepts from the cultural historical perspective for the analysis of discourses. The
participants in our study were a group of teachers participating in an in-service course whose
pedagogy draws on the sociocultural perspective. A specific discourse analysis method to
unravel the nature of the semiotic tool as a sign vehicle was developed for the study. The
dimensions of the discourse analysis method, grounded in the discourse data of the study,
were discourse moves, the role of the semiotic vehicle and the cultural focus of interaction.
The results of the study suggest that socially shared meaning making around the semiotic sign
vehicle consisted of three types of content episodes, namely problem solving, clarification
through mathematizing and clarification through hands on activities. Four different
participant roles emerged in the analysis of discourse moves. These roles were the tutor,
clarifier, questioner and silent supporter. On the whole, the semiotic sign vehicle and
discourse moves investigated in this study supported socially shared meaning making and
hence teacher learning in the problem solving situation in this study.
Chapter 11 - Law is the field in which today the application of semiotics remains
essential. It has furthermore "interaction" as a fundamental concept and guiding principle for
its social activities. However, legal discourse leaves important philosophical implications of
this principle untouched. The concept of interaction, theme of this commentary, shows a
static character despite its suggestion of dynamics, and a rigid sender-receiver scheme
qualifies its idea of interaction as "action between (inter) actors". These do, however, not fit
our experience that relating to others equals the unfolding of a dynamic vision and
interpretation of life! That other mode of experience is expressed with the concept of
"interactivity", which this commentary forwards as a semiotic alternative to "interaction". The
process of "being in a state of interactivity" thus changes the substance of "interaction" when
semiotics is applied to law.
Chapter 12 - Stylistics is the systematic study of the ways in which meaning is created by
linguistic means in literature and other types of text. It arose from a wish to make literary
criticism more ―scientific‖ by anchoring the analysis of literature more solidly in the actual
grammar and lexis of the texts put up for analysis. Since the first major flourishing of
stylistics in the 1960s, different linguistic paradigms and other academic trends of the times
have caused the field to branch off into a great variety of sub-fields such as formalist
stylistics, functionalist stylistics, cognitive stylistics, corpus stylistics, feminist stylistics and
others, which all from each their perspective pivot around linguistic aspects of meaning-