Honesto Herrera-Soler, Michael White (Eds.) 2012.

Metaphor and Mills: Figurative Language in Business and Economics.
Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 329 pages.
ISBN 978-3-11-027296-3
e-ISBN 978-3-11-027458-5
Series: Application of Cognitive Linguistics, 19.

This volume brings together twelve papers which explore the figurative language in business and economics. While the role of metaphor in economics and business has produced multiple research articles, no comprehensive book-length study has yet appeared. The present book is a timely attempt to fill this gap, giving a global coverage of the role of metaphor in business and economics. It spans time (from Classical Greece to the current business network meeting-room), space (from Europe through the Americas to Asia), cultures and languages (from continental European languages, Brazilian Portuguese to Chinese). The theoretical grounding of the book is the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor taken in a dynamic sense as evolving with on-going research. The theory is thus used, adapted and refined in accordance with the evidence provided. Metaphor is shown to be theory constitutive in the elaboration of economic thinking down through the ages while, at the same time, the emphasis on evidence open to historical, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic considerations align with the current notion of situatedness. The book is a rich source of information for researchers and students in the fields of Metaphor Studies, Economics, Discourse Analysis, and Communication Studies, among others.

Tables of contents:
Introduction
Honesto Herrera and Michael White

SECTION I
Metaphor in economic theory and in economics as an academic discipline
From swap to coin: fresh metaphors in the Classical World
Paloma Tejada and Antonio Guzman
On the evolution of biological metaphors in economic discourse
Nicolaas Mouton
Towards a better understanding of metaphorical networks in the language
of economics: the importance of theory-constitutive metaphors
Catherine Resche
Metaphors of the Brazilian economy from 1969-2009,
Tony Berber
 
SECTION II
Cultural filters in contrastive Studies
Mandarin Translation of English Economic Metaphors: A Cross-linguistic Study of Conceptually-related Economic Terms.
Siaw-Fong Chung

Translating metaphor in business/economics dictionary articles: What the theory says and what lexicographers should do
Pedro Fuertes and Marisol Velasco
The use of metaphoric gesture in explanations of economic theory
Jeannette Littlemore
Bigger, a lot bigger, massively much bigger”: A comparative study of hyperbole in business and economics lectures.
Belinda Camiciottoli

SECTION III
Metaphor in the Economy and Business in practice.
The Perfect Storm: An Imperfect Metaphor. The organismic metaphor in political, economic and organizational theory
Philip Eubanks
Framing a bank: reputation management during financial crises
Lise-Lotte Holmgreen
Metaphor and knowledge specialization in the field of business management: the case of project management discourse
Hanna Skorczynska
Metaphor as an instrument of linguistic and social identity co-construction in business development networks (bdns)
Hana Blazkova

 

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