ISBN : 9780198744573
This volume offers an empirical and diachronic investigation of the foundations and nature of metaphor in English. Metaphor is one of the hot topics in present-day linguistics, with a huge range of research focusing on the systematic connections between different concepts such as heat and anger (fuming, inflamed), sight and understanding (clear, see), or bodies and landscape (hill-foot, river-mouth). Until recently, the lack of a comprehensive data source made it difficult to obtain an overview of this phenomenon in any language, but this changed with the completion in 2009 of The Historical Thesaurus of English, the only historical thesaurus ever produced for any language. Chapters in this volume use this unique resource as a basis for case studies of semantic domains including Animals, Colour, Death, Fear, Food, Reading, and Theft, providing a significant step forward in the data-driven understanding of metaphor.
List of figures
List of tables
List of abbreviations
List of contributors
Preface: Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus
1 Andrew Prescott: Introduction: The pursuit of metaphors
Part I: The External World
2 Carole Hough: The metaphorical landscape
3 Judith Paterson: Metaphorical beasts in the history of English
4 Carole P. Biggam: Plants as metaphorical headgear in English
5 Christian Kay: Food as a fruitful source of metaphor
6 Beth Ralston: Metaphors of death in the Historical Thesaurus of English
Part II: The Mental World
7 Rachael Hamilton: The metaphorical qualities of cool, clear, and clashing colours
8 Wendy Anderson: Waves of excitement, waves of metaphor
9 Kenneth Austin: Metaphors of religious anxiety in Early Modern England
10 Ellen Bramwell: Madness, sanity, and metaphor
11 Antonette diPaolo Healey: The importance of Old English head
Part III: The Social World
12 Marc Alexander: The metaphorical understanding of power and authority
13 Fraser Dallachy: The dehumanized thief
14 Daria Izdebska: Metaphors of weapons and armour through time
15 Jane Roberts: Silent reading
16 Irma Taavitsainen: The case of address terms
Appendix: Mapping Metaphor categories
References
Index