Economy is a living organism: Metaphorical expressions in a learner corpus of English

Abstract

This paper presents results from a qualitative corpus-based study on Spanish EFL learners’ metaphorical production. The analysis of a learner corpus of business English, which included essays written by undergraduates, showed that learners do make use of metaphorical language and that the metaphorical expressions identified in their texts — economy/business is a living organism, business is war, business is a relationship, and economic success and failure are movements on a vertical axis — match those used by native speakers, as stated in the literature (Burcea, 2010; Kovacs, 2006; Kovecses, 2002; White, 2003; among others). In addition, data also confirmed that even in learner’s language metaphors are connected in large networks within the same text, which contribute to enhancing text global coherence, as pointed out by Semino (2008). Finally, the potential benefits of raising learners’ metaphorical awareness and making explicit to them cross-linguistic differences in the expression of general conceptual metaphors are highlighted.