Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy 229base, the higher the predictive value of the context. According to the results, for each of the
four metaphors, contexts containing metaphorical references have the strongest power in
metaphor predication, while contexts containing literal source concepts have the weakest. To
take a striking example, for the metaphor COMMERCIAL-ACTIVITY-AS-WAR, no literal
contexts were found. On the contrary, the change from base rate of the metaphorical contexts
is as high as 25.20. Martin then surveys some recent psycholinguistic research that offers
experimental support for his hypothesis. This review is helpful and informative though none
of the experiments were conducted with measurements similar to his investigations. Martin
also defenses his hypothesis from discursive coherence perspectives. Concerning the main
implication of his findings, the ultimate goal is to construct a computational model for
metaphor processing in natural environment. According to Martin, such a model should met
five constraints, namely Total Time Constraint, Non-Optionality Constraint, On-Line
Constraint, Differential Behavior Constraint and Contextual Influence Constraint (228-229).
His proposal is a framework based on the theories of Construction Grammar and its
extensions, and of course, the findings of his corpus analysis.
The essay ―Of critical importance: Using electronic text corpora to study metaphor in
business media discourse‖ by Veronika Koller attempts to offer a transdsciplinary approach to
the study of metaphorical mappings. Koller shows her ambition to integrate cognitive
theories, functional linguistics (especially systemic functional grammar), critical discourse
analysis and corpus methodologies into the understanding of metaphors. In my view, this
rather broad viewpoint indicates a promising future but definitely invites problems. However,
Koller‘s contribution deserves loud applause in that it provides a platform for readers from
different disciplines to negotiate for feasible cooperation. She is careful to devote a very large
portion of the article to the theoretical foundations and methodological considerations in
doing quantitative and qualitative metaphor investigations. The gist of her argument is that
cognitive theories of metaphor have pretty much to offer to functional linguistics and critical
linguistics. Meanwhile, cognitive studies will gain inspirations from the approaches whose
orientations are more social, cultural and ideological. Assumptions and statements about
metaphor usage have to be verified with empirical evidence. Her case study is limited to
―printed media articles‖ in Business Week, The Economist, Fortune, and Financial Times.
Two corpora were constructed, one on marketing and sales and the other on mergers and
acquisitions. Three lexical fields were defined for each corpus: war, sports and games for
marketing and sales, and fighting, mating and feeding for mergers and acquisitions. For each
field, 35 lemmas were selected. The corpora were searched for all these words. She calculates
the absolute frequencies of metaphors and average metaphor density of the corpora, and
examines relative frequencies of metaphors across domains. And the type-token ratio is
shown as well. The results indicate that in both corpora the metaphors of war and fighting are
the most frequent and are realized by the highest number of various metaphorical expressions.
This prominence of the ―masculinized‖ domain of war and fighting can be explained when
positioned at a broad social and ideological stage. The related metaphor BUSINESS IS WAR in
fact construes the reality in the world of business. And the fact that more than two thirds of
the readers of these publications are men contributes to the masculinization of this type of
discourse. After listing several questions not covered but of research significance, the article
ends with an emphasis upon the importance of interdisciplinarity in future studies.
Alan Partington devotes his article entitled ―Metaphors, motifs and similes across
discourse types: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) at work‖ to two roles the corpus