A Cross-Linguistic Study of Conceptual Metaphors in Financial Discourse

Abstract

This study analyses the explanatory strength of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980; Lakoff, Cogn Linguist 1(1):39–75, 1990; McGlone, Lang Commun 27:109–126, 2007; Kövecses, Metaphor: a practical introduction, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, New York, 2010) in the field of economics and financial reporting. This type of discourse is, in particular, “heavily metaphorical” (McCloskey, J Econ Lit 21:481–517, 1983), for its complicated and specific terms that are difficult to decode by a non-expert eye. The work analyses the most salient metaphorical expressions within this field, showing how experts conceptualize financial constructs and how non-experts are able to process and understand them through specific metaphorical projections in English and Spanish. As a parallel goal, the results might be used as a tool to enhance the teaching and learning of Lakoffian Conceptual Metaphor Theory in ESP programmes (Charteris-Black, Engl Specif Purp 19:149–165, 2000; Charteris-Black and Ennis, Engl Specif Purp 20:249–266, 2001).

To this aim, concepts such as ‘situationally, topically and culturally triggered metaphors’ coming from recent work within metaphors in real discourse (Semino, Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008; Kövecses, Annu Rev Cogn Linguist 6:168–184, 2008, Iberica 17:11–24, 2009, Metaphor: a practical introduction, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, New York,2010; Semino, Deignan and Littlemore, Metaphor Symb 28:1–19, 2013) helped to understand how these financial notions are conceptualized. The corpus consists of texts from six financial newspapers (Expansión, Cinco días, El Economista, The Economist, The Guardian and The Financial Times). Following Stefanowitsch’s (Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy. In: Stefanowitsch A, Gries ST (eds) Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/NewYork, pp 1–16, 2006) ‘metaphorical pattern analysis’, all the expressions referring to five selected target areas were searched for in the corpus. Moreover, Moreno Lara’s taxonomy, used by scholars studying metaphor in economics discourse (Silva, Rev Media Jornalismo 23(1):11–34, 2013a, Obese bodies, indebted families and good students: metaphors of austerity in the Portuguese press. In: Philip G, Barnden J, Lee M, Moon R, Wallington A, Shank C (eds) Corpus-based approaches to figurative language: metaphor and austerity. The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, pp 29–32, 2013b, The persuasive power of metaphor in ‘austerity’ discourse: embodied and moral metaphors of austerity in the Portuguese press. Paper delivered at the 47th annual meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan, Poland, 11–14 Sept, 2014; Rojo López and Orts, J Pragmat 42:3300–3313, 2010) was applied to divide the metaphors according to three generic groups: the Great Chain of Being, the Image-Schema and the Events metaphor.

In sum, the results show similar mappings at a generic level but different at more specific ones and in the inner distribution of each group. This work contributes to studies on the pervasiveness of metaphors in real specific discourse, and supports the belief that cross-linguistic studies of metaphor-in-use should help raise translators’ and L2 teachers’ awareness of the relevance of such intrinsic linguistic component in finance discourse.