The gulf of mexico oil spill a corpus based study of metaphors in british and american media discourse 3 1

The use of the semantic domains in WMatrix as a springboard for subsequent metaphorical analysis ensures that the starting point for the entire conceptual metaphor formulation process is

CHAPTER 3 THE INTEGRATED APPROACH TO THE

IDENTIFICATION OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS

(IICM)

3.1 Introduction

This chapter aims to amalgamate existing theories and findings pertaining to CMT from major contemporary perspectives into a suggested unified framework for metaphorical analysis This thesis proposes the combination of two integrated online concordancing platforms to be utilised in tandem with a structured methodological framework for the identification of conceptual metaphors in media discourse The two software platforms are WMatrix (Rayson, 2008) and the Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2004) respectively The strength of such an approach lies in two inter-connected areas Firstly, the inductive nature of this proposed conceptual metaphor formulating process marks a departure from existing discourse-metaphor studies Secondly, this proposed method harbours the potential for an exhaustive analysis of metaphors in a large swath of representative texts if deemed necessary by the researcher

It should also be made clear that the approach adopted in this chapter

to Conceptual Metaphor Analysis is a critical one - in the tradition of Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis This means that there will be a significant emphasis on the socio-cultural, political and situational context of the entire discourse in the resulting analysis The interpretation of

this critical aspect will be facilitated by the adaptation of Grady, Taub & Morgan’s (1996) metaphorical primitives and compounds A detailed account

of the proposed metaphor identification procedures will be expounded in the subsequent sections

It is important to clarify that a definitive statement on a newspaper’s stance cannot be made from a single study – due to the inherent limitations in the scope and corpus Thus, further research needs to be done in order to extend these claims and to triangulate these findings over a range of issues for statistical validity However, for this thesis, all statements and claims are true within the scope of these specific corpora

3.2 An Overview: WMatrix (Rayson, 2005) & Sketch Engine

(Kilgarriff et al., 2004)

Now, I will proceed with a quick overview of the two proposed online concordancing platforms WMatrix (Rayson, 2005), a web-based interface for corpus analysis with in-built semantic and lexical annotation capabilities, will

be used as a springboard for analysis WMatrix also includes an in-built selection of reference corpora obtained from sub-sections of the British National Corpus (BNC) to provide standard frequency information with reference to the corpus under analysis Such a comparison can be done either

at a lexical or semantic level The use of the semantic domains in WMatrix as

a springboard for subsequent metaphorical analysis ensures that the starting point for the entire conceptual metaphor formulation process is empirically based on Log-Likelihood values and is hence, both inductive and objective

This is due to the fact that only the semantic domains and the corresponding lexical items with a Log-Likelihood value of more than 6.63 corresponding to 99% significance will be chosen for metaphorical analysis

At this juncture, it is important to note that Krennmayr (2011) identifies two separate methodologies pertaining to the use of WMatrix as a tool for metaphorical analysis She divides these two methods neatly into a

“top-down” approach and a “bottom-up” approach I would like to clarify that there is a key difference for the terms of reference used in this paper What Krennmayr labels a “top-down approach” (p.194) is seen in this paper as a

“bottom-up approach” Krennmayr labels her method as “top-down” as there

is the assumption that a conceptual mapping pre-exists within selected semantic fields before linguistic evidence for metaphoricity is sought While Krennmayr has a valid point, this approach can also be seen as an inductive,

“bottom-up” approach This is because the USAS domains merely provide an

indication of the semantic categories that stand out from the reference text

The conceptual metaphors will only be formulated from a detailed analysis of the relevant lexical units and their respective concordances This point is best captured by Deignan (1999) who states that “there is no automatic way of discovering the linguistic realisations of any conceptual metaphor, because a computer cannot tell the researcher anything about speaker meaning Concordances will show the researcher words in their context, but he or she has to process this information” (p.180) Thus, it is undeniable that the need for informed researcher intuition remains necessary for metaphor analysis However, the USAS domains serve as an empirical springboard for further analysis in an inductive approach that does not depend on pre-determined

search strings It is important to note that this treatment of the WMatrix USAS semantic domains for metaphorical analysis is unique and differs from Hardie

et al.’s (2007) approach This novel treatment is predicated on the aim of this thesis to devise a point of entry to the analysis of data in a large swath of texts that is empirical and inductive It is important to note that the need for researcher intuition is not being discounted It is undeniable that informed researcher intuition is an integral part of all discourse-analytical corpus research past and present – and the entire range of early metaphor studies that use the intensive manual analysis of representative data have resulted in significant strides forward in the field of metaphor studies However, the main aim of this thesis lies in the formulation of a proposed method that exploits the major computational advancements in existing concordancing software and strikes an adequate balance between semi-automated and manual analysis

Secondly, the use of “word sketches” in Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2004) adds another dimension of refinement This is because the actual formulation of the conceptual metaphors from linguistic evidence will be based on the node word’s grammatical and collocational behaviour This simply means that the concordances examined will be further parsed according

to the grammatical relation of the node word, resulting in a more refined approach to the formulation of conceptual metaphors from linguistic evidence Hence, the additional part-of-speech annotation afforded by word sketch refines the metaphorical analysis because “collocates may differ considerably between nouns and verbs of the same lemma” (Oster, 2010, p.735) This is a significant departure from the previous practice of merely examining the

“arbitrary window of text around the headword” for the first pre-designated

number of lines (p.3) Thus, the additional implementation of the word sketch function in Sketch Engine adds on to the arsenal of “corpus interrogation strategies” by further refining the generated concordances in accordance to the node word’s grammatical category (Kilgarriff et al., 2004, p.3) This provides

an added dimension of systematicity to the metaphorical analysis of the concordances

It is important to note that both WMatrix and Sketch Engine advocate a lexical approach as the springboard for the analysis for conceptual metaphors This method is justified by Kovecses (1990, 2008) who states that “language and its lexicon is a reflection of our conceptual system” (p.41) Thus, the analysis and formulation of the associated conceptual metaphors in this thesis

is based on the collective amalgamation of linguistic expressions such as

“metaphors, metonymies, idioms, proverbs and collocations” (p.43) This forms the backdrop for this bottom-up corpus-based study of conceptual metaphors from empirical linguistic evidence The key departure from Kovecses’ method is that the data used for analysis in this research is based on corpus data or found data rather than elicited data

Oster (2010) also justifies the use of the lexical unit as a springboard for the analysis in a large representative corpus He states that by exploring the span of the node word, we are able to “find evidence of conceptual metaphor and metonymy thatstructure the (target) concept” and “enrich” the description

of the concept with information with a “pragmatic viewpoint from a series of dimensions” (p.727) This justifies the corpus approach and the use of semantic domains, the lexical unit and the accompanying co-texts as a springboard for analysis

Hence, it is proposed that this framework for metaphorical analysis based on integrated online concordancing platforms like WMatrix (and its corresponding USAS and “broad-sweep” functions) and Sketch Engine (and

the resulting word sketches) reduces the reliance on researcher intuition as the

starting point of corpus research and results in findings that are inductive,

potentially comprehensive, empirically-based and repeatable Furthermore, with subsequent iterations, it can potentially serve as an alternative inductive framework that triangulates the findings of the corresponding deductive methodologies based on intensive manual analysis of representative corpora, providing an element of robustness that complements the integral function of informed researcher intuition

3.3 Theoretical Framework: A Unified Analysis of Conceptual

Metaphors

It is undeniable that the news is both, a primary determinant and an indicator of public perceptions This is because of its reach and the fact that it provides the masses with information within an “authoritative” framework for interpretation and/or disagreement While it is over-simplistic to attribute the news with the power to straitjacket the masses’ perceptions, particular aspects

of reality can become impossible to challenge when they become shared beliefs or represent “commonsense” through strategic media representations Graber, McQuail & Norris (2008) claim that the demand for information becomes heightened especially in situations of international conflict and political crisis This climate of unrest has become pre-eminent since the 9-11

attacks in 2001, exacerbated by the current climate of political uncertainty and economic malaise in the US and in the Euro-zone Apart from adapting to this climate of unrest, the news also needs to acclimatise to the highly fragmented, quasi-regulated nature of social media which has intensified media competition and “destabilised established media structures and relationships” (p.273)

In the case of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the inextricable nature of the relationship among journalism, politics, society and the inelastic nature of the embedded socio-historical and cultural factors necessitate a critical tradition in the analysis of metaphors Hence, critical metaphor analysis plays a major role

in uncovering the underlying competing ideologies between the stakeholders This is especially intriguing as this crisis has dimensions of an international conflict between America and Britain (as BP has distinctly British origins), and thus, nationalistic sentiments will undoubtedly be brought to the forefront

on both sides On the other hand, this crisis also contains elements of a national domestic crisis in terms of the resulting environmental destruction and the widespread public discontent arising from the lack of an enforcement body that protects and regulates national interests Hence, this interaction between the global and the national fronts is of significant interest as we enter the post-9-11 timeframe, widely recognised as a period of international unrest and increased military intervention by the state due to the “newly perceived threats to the established international order and its value system” (p.270) However, before a validated metaphor analysis of the target discourse can take place, there is an urgent need to ensure a well-structured and comprehensively documented metaphor identification and formulation procedure that is

theoretically sound and repeatable The key concern is thus to formulate coherent methodological criteria that are well delineated at every step such that the formulation of conceptual metaphors from linguistic evidence can be repeatable and exhaustive (Oster, 2010, p.731) The next segments will expound on the three major theoretical underpinnings underlying the proposed

Integrated-approach to the Identification of Conceptual Metaphors

(henceforth IICM):

1 Extracting metaphors from corpora by searching for target domain

vocabulary (Stefanowitsch, 2006) (Section 3.3.1)

2 An adaptation of Grady, Taub & Morgan’s (1996) Metaphorical

Primitives and Compounds (Section 3.3.2)

3 The Major Metaphorical Categories used in this analysis (Lakoff &

Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1992; Gibbs, 1999; Kovecses, 2002) (Section

3.3.3)

3.3.1 Extracting metaphors from corpora by searching for target

domain vocabulary (Stefanowitsch, 2006)

In Stefanowitsch’s (2006) insightful overview of the methodological problems and possible solutions to corpus-based research in the field of metaphor, he expounds on the methodological possibility of searching for conceptual mappings by identifying the relevant target domains (p.3) The key pre-requisite for this endeavour would be the existence of a large, representative and “monothematic” corpus dealing with target domains (e.g

ECONOMICS, SPORTS, POLITICS) In this thesis, the corpus essentially focuses

on the target domains comprising the BP Oil Spill and the relevant entities encapsulated within the narrative (such as BP itself, the British and American Governments, the spilt oil as an entity, the notions of POLITICS and

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS in general etc.) The next step would involve identifying the conceptual metaphors occurring within the vicinity of the selected node word that embodies the target domain It is important to note that Stefanowitsch expresses two main reservations with this methodology – due mainly in part to the technological limitations at the time of writing (p.3-4):

1 It will “only identify a subset of metaphorical expressions (that) contain target domain vocabulary”

2 It will not identify metaphorical expressions “exhaustively or systematically” as it will only identify the source domains that are associated with statistically-salient lexical items within the corpus

However, both these concerns are alleviated to a certain extent with the recent developments in concordancing technology As WMatrix provides comprehensive lexical and semantic corpus annotation, exhaustive lists of semantic domains and lexical items are fully available for the metaphor

analyst This simply means that the metaphor analyst is free to systematically

analyse the complete range of semantic domains for metaphoricity if the

need arises Thus, the efficient annotation of large corpora has enabled the complete and practical realisation of Stefanowitsch’s proposed methodology

However, the key shortcoming that remains with this approach would be the need for manual post-editing of the corpora due to a number of “false hits” This is the result of the shortcomings with the semantic tagger where its accuracy remains in doubt - especially with respect to new lexical additions and culture-specific semantic shifts to the lexicon At this juncture, it is important to note that the specific exploitation of WMatrix for metaphorical analysis within this thesis is unique and is a departure from existing methodologies in the tradition of Hardie et al (2007) and Koller et al (2008) Thus, the framework for formulating conceptual metaphors advocated in this thesis is an inductive approach that uses empirically-based linguistic evidence generated from concordances to formulate the “reconstructed conceptual structures” in a systematic manner that can be potentially exhaustive (Steen et al., 2010, p.760)

3.3.2 Metaphorical Primitives & Compounds (Grady, Taub & Morgan,

1996)

There is an urgent need to formulate a systematic model that streamlines the sprawling metaphorical complexes that often arise from large-scale discourse studies This is simply due to the resultant range of metaphors that seem to lack a coherent hierarchical structure Hence, an adaptation of Grady, Taub & Morgan’s (1996) proposed diagrammatic representations of metaphors will enable the analyst to have a pictorial grasp of the overarching entailments and the range of conceptual metaphors employed in the analysis of the discourse The diagrammatic representation of these metaphorical

complexes would facilitate the critical study of metaphors by identifying the metaphorical compounds and the range of associated metaphorical primitives Grady, Taub & Morgan (1996) claim that metaphors are either primitives or are composed of primitives This means that virtually every complex metaphor

is a “metaphoric compound” that is compositional in nature Here are the two key terms involved in this delineation (p.181):

1 A metaphoric primitive consists of a single metaphorical mapping

which exists independently of any particular complex metaphorical structures They tend to have “an independent and direct experiential

basis and independent linguistic evidence”

2 A metaphoric compound is a “self-consistent metaphorical complex”

composed of two primitives or more

A pictorial representation of this idea is captured by Grady, Taub & Morgan in Fig 3.1

• Firstly, this classification essentially refines CMT by resulting in the efficiency of analysis This simply means that the current sprawling metaphorical complexes can be adequately represented in an effective diagram, organising the range of conceptual metaphors into a coherent hierarchical framework The hierarchical aspect of the representation in terms of frequency is reflected by the corresponding size of the circles – the more statistically significant the metaphor type, the bigger the circle This is significant as efficiency should be the “default goal for any formal analysis” (p.185)

• Secondly, the delineation of metaphors into primitives and compounds also enables the cross-cultural comparisons of complex metaphors This is due to the fact that a direct inter-textual comparison of the metaphorical primitives (which tend to be more experientially embodied) enables the analyst to see the direct contextual and cultural influences This is because metaphorical primitives offer an important set of “general constraints” on people’s thinking that are bound by context and culture (Johansson Falck & Gibbs Jr, 2012, p.254) Hence, including Grady, Taub & Morgan’s classification in the present study can facilitate cross-cultural critical comparisons of metaphors across a representative set of British and American media texts through an in-depth pictorial overview of the associated conceptual metaphors

• Thirdly, this neat delineation is cognitively efficient as it accounts for the phenomenon where conceptual mappings usually turn out to be amalgamations of multiple overlapping partial mappings due to the

invariance principle The invariance principle states that only those

portions of the source that do not “conflict with the schematic structure

of the target can be mapped” (Kovecses, 2002, p.94) Hence, metaphorical mappings from a source to a target are only partial as each source can only structure certain aspects of a target for analogy formation, metaphorical referencing and conceptual blending As a result, these diagrammatic depictions adequately capture the eclectic combination of the conventional, the contextual and the innovative Thus, the adaptation of Grady, Taub and Morgan’s representation of conceptual metaphors provides for a more complete representation of the resultant interactions between the conceptual metaphors in the target discourse

3.3.3 Key Metaphorical Classifications (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980;

Lakoff, 1992; Gibbs, 1999; Kovecses, 2002)

The metaphor representations mined inductively from the online concordancing platforms will then be classified diagrammatically into four separate metaphor categories This will be done in accordance to a classification that amalgamates Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1992), Gibbs (1999) and Kovecses’ (2002) classifications of metaphor categories Here are the four proposed categories:

1 Structural Metaphors ( A IS B/ A IS LIKE B ): Refers to the typical

cross-domain metaphors and similes in the traditional form of

conceptual metaphor where an abstract concept is understood by the structure of the source concept (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p.3; Koveces, 2002, p.37)

2 Ontological Metaphors (e.g Container Metaphors/ Personification): Provides much less cognitive structuring for

concepts than structural metaphors but it assigns a tactile link to objects and substances for conceptual concretization (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p.25; Kovecses, 2002, p.38)

3 Orientational/Spatial Metaphors (e.g MORE IS UP/LESS IS DOWN, HEALTHY IS UP/SICK IS DOWN ): Provides even less

conceptual structure than Ontological metaphors but they serve the vital function of enhancing the coherence of target concepts via physical/spatial orientation (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p.14; Kovecses, 2002, p.40)

4 Image Metaphors/Analogy-based Metaphors (e.g “My wife whose hair is brush fire, whose waist is an hourglass”, “American civilisation is like an orchestra (the symphony of civilisation)”):

Used in contexts where mental images from one source of knowledge are mapped onto another in a “one-shot metaphor” (rather than inter-domain concept mapping) In particular, this describes situations where aspects of the part-whole structure of one image is mapped onto aspects of the part-whole structure of another, limited only by the Invariance Principle It is important to note the potential overlaps with Ontological Metaphors (Lakoff, 1992; Gibbs, 1999, p.32)

Thus, this proposed framework for the classification of conceptual metaphors from linguistic evidence is clear By incorporating WMatrix and Sketch Engine as empirical springboards for metaphor analysis, the resultant system of conceptual metaphor identification has the potential to be more systematic, empirical and exhaustive, minimising the possibility of the researcher overlooking potentially salient alternative mappings and inadvertently compromising on the potential metaphorical richness of the data

3.4 The Integrated-Approach to the Identification of Conceptual

Metaphors (IICM)

The following segments will demonstrate and explicate the use of the

proposed IICM for an in-depth metaphorical analysis of the BP oil spill in

British and American newspapers This will be accomplished through the use

of WMatrix and Sketch Engine as springboards for metaphorical analysis

The new proposed framework comprises an amalgamation of the three theoretical underpinnings discussed earlier in this chapter

1 A unique approach to the exploitation of WMatrix based on Stefanowitsch’s (2006) proposed methodology of extracting metaphors

from corpora by searching for target domain vocabulary

2 The classification of these inductively mined metaphors into four categories based on existing classifications by respected metaphor theorists (section 3.3.3)

3 An adaptation of Grady, Taub & Morgan’s (1996) pictorial representation of metaphorical primitives and compounds in a diagrammatic arrangement (section 3.3.2)

3.4.1 An overview of the IICM Framework

Here are the steps for the proposed Integrated-Approach to the

Identification of Conceptual Metaphors (IICM) It is broadly divided into

three separate Phases

Phase One: After running the corpus through WMatrix, identify candidate USAS semantic categories for analysis based on frequency

• The informative writing section of the BNC sampler will be used as a reference corpus Only the top-30 semantic domains that are overused, i.e with a log likelihood threshold of at least 6.63 (corresponding to 99% significance or 1 degree of freedom) or above will be selected for this preliminary analysis1 This step is followed by the identification of

a statistically-salient metaphor related node-word on a linguistic level within the target USAS semantic domain in WMatrix (e.g a target domain like “oil”)

• Upon the selection of the Semantic Domain, the “broad-sweep” function in WMatrix will be executed As mentioned earlier (in Section 2.2.10), the “broad-sweep” function ensures that the search includes all

1

lexical items with a relevant tag in their list of tags Thus, this provides

a platform for a thorough metaphorical analysis that is inductive and comprehensive – limited only by the shortcomings of the in-built semantic tagger However, this can be easily rectified with some manual reconfiguration of the lexicon within the target corpus

• The node word for analysis should be empirically selected from this broad-list based on its frequency of overuse/salience as determined by the raw and relative frequency counts accompanying each lexical item This process is facilitated by the fact that the lexical items within each semantic domain is presented in descending order of frequency, with the most frequent occurrences on the top of the list Hence, the final selection of USAS semantic domains and the associated lexical items for analysis should be influenced by empirical suggestion (embodied

by a log likelihood value of >6.63 for one degree of freedom or by the accompanying frequency indicators) and by the specific demands of the discourse in context This is a significant departure from the usual practice of using “pre-determined search strings” as a point of entry for metaphorical analysis This proposed utilisation of the USAS semantic domains thus systematises the pre-selection of the data for metaphorical analysis

Phase Two: Formulating the associated Conceptual Metaphors using a

proposed four-step approach

• Step One – Identifying the Collocations & Lexical Items for

Metaphorical Analysis (via Sketch Engine) This entire process is

facilitated by the “word-sketch” function in Sketch Engine A word sketch is essentially a “corpus-based summary of the grammatical and collocational behaviour of a node word” (Kilgarriff et al., 2004, p.1)

It provides an added modicum of refinement to the metaphor formulation process by dividing the node word analysis into separate grammatical categories This is a distinct improvement from the usual analysis of an “arbitrary window of text around the head-word” (p.3) The word sketch function hence facilitates the exhaustive identification of clauses and the accompanying verbs, adjectives and

nouns within a fixed span of the node word A “sentential” span of

one sentence preceding and one sentence after the node word will

be used in order to ensure internal consistency throughout this

analysis

• Step Two – The identification of Conceptual Keys/Scenarios

(Charteris-Black, 2004; Musolff, 2004) from the accompanying verbs, adjectives and nouns within a fixed sentential span of the node word through the use of an ordered table These identified

words within the designated span of one sentence before and after the node word will be organised through the use of a table It is important

to note that while the MIP (Pragglejaz Group, 2007) makes decisions

on linguistic metaphoricity at the level of individual words, this thesis

chooses to analyse the relevant clauses as a whole, focusing on the

cognitive structuring provided by the conceptual metaphors and their resultant entailments rather than on the derivation of the linguistic

metaphors per se This is based partially on Oster’s (2010)

“qualitative context-based filtering”, which is essentially an adaptation of the MIP as the analysis in this thesis deals with a “list of co-occurrences” rather than “linear textual analysis” (p.738) This simply means that the co-text is scanned for potential metaphoricity before the contexts are retrieved and expanded for further analysis The significant collocations of the node words are then identified by virtue of their salience in terms of frequency The dictionary definition of these significant collocations are then sought to determine its contextual meaning This is done in order to identify the relevant Conceptual Keys and Scenarios that structure the associated Conceptual Metaphors Just like the MIP (Pragglejaz Group, 2007), this thesis utilises the Macmillan Online Dictionary and the Collins Online Dictionary, corpus dictionaries based on a systematically processed corpus of 220 million words of contemporary English, which is important for the formulation of metaphors in contemporary news texts The use of corpus-based dictionaries systematises the formulation of conceptual metaphors by counter-balancing the analysts’ intuitions with actual linguistic evidence

However, for the IICM, it is important to identify the relevant political/situational contexts in the target discourse and the co-texts that can be linked to a conceptual shift rather than on the metaphoricity of the individual words in the sentence per se This is

socio-in accordance to Ssocio-inclair’s (2004) postulation that the lexical unit is merely the pre-determined centre of a longer sequence of co-

occurring words The importance of examining the co-text is best captured by Hunston’s (2007) study of the phenomenon of semantic prosody where the “attitudinal context of a lexical item may be contingent upon other aspects of items in the immediate co-text” (p.253) Hence, this underscores the importance of examining the immediate co-text in determining the underlying attitudinal discourse function of the unit of meaning under analysis

• Step Three – The identification of the range of conceptual

metaphors through the macro-reclassification, comparison and analogical structures of the available socio-political and situational contextual details linked to the node word This means

that the source and target domains associated with each node word are determined by analysing and grouping the words within its designated sentential span Once again, the significant collocations of the node words are then identified by virtue of their salience in terms

of frequency and the dictionary definition is then sought to determine its contextual meaning as the basis for conceptual metaphor formulation This adds an element of systematicity to the formulation

of conceptual metaphors as it is based on the definitions of the Macmillan Online Dictionary and the Collins Online Dictionary, two contemporary corpus dictionaries The use of reliable corpus dictionaries substantiates the scope for the identified metaphorical lexical unit, making it “possible to characterise the mappings with greater precision than typically done in linguistic research which rely solely on an individual analyst’s intuitions with no supporting

criteria” (Pragglejaz Group, 2007, p.35) Further detailed analysis of the selected node word can be done via an expansion of the co-text surrounding the node word This function of complete co-text expansion is provided by both the WMatrix and Sketch Engine platforms It is important to note that this methodology focuses on the cognitive structuring of the metaphorical manifestations from the salient broad source and target domains and their relevant extensions This simply means that the focus is placed on the cognitive function

of metaphors, with the general understanding that many instances of the linguistic manifestations of metaphor and its accompanying cognitive dimensions often overlap and co-occur

• Step Four - The formal representation of the identified complex

of metaphors through the adaptation of Grady, Taub & Morgan’s

(1996) concept of Metaphorical Primitives and Compounds This

is significant as the adaptation of Grady, Taub & Morgan’s (1996)

concept of Primitive and Complex metaphors provides a systematic

account of the various metaphorical complexes in the target discourse In other words, it is a systematic and integrated visual

representation of Musolff’s (2004a, 2004b) Scenarios/Conceptual Metaphors and Charteris-Black’s (2004) Conceptual Keys/ Conceptual Metaphors/Linguistic Metaphors The hierarchical aspect

of the representation is captured by the corresponding size of the circles that reflects the frequency of occurrence of the selected metaphor type The delineation between metaphorical primitives and compounds provides an additional contextual and experiential basis

for the analysis This is because the embodied nature of metaphor results in participants negotiating the way a concept is represented and understood in specific situations This facilitates a textured cross-

cultural metaphor analysis

Phase Three: Generalizing the findings in order to suggest understanding or

thought patterns that construct or constrain people’s beliefs and actions through Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004) This process is facilitated by the diagrammatic representations in Step Four where the hierarchical representations and the socio-political/historical contexts are taken into account This final step completes the entire metaphor formulation and analysis loop, propagating a metaphor identification and analysis procedures that is based on empirical and inductive principles in a critical tradition

Thus, this framework aims to use a combination of automatic semantic analysis, key word identification and domain techniques in order to develop a new methodology for the computer-assisted analysis of metaphorical patterns

in discourse for large collections of texts that is both inductive and empirical

in its pre-selection of data for metaphorical analysis In other words, this proposed framework can potentially be used to triangulate the findings of traditional intensive manual analysis of representative data through the use of

a framework that minimises the use of “pre-determined search strings” In the process, this proposed framework also minimises the chances of missing out

on large chunks of relevant and possibly significant lexical items as the researcher can theoretically adopt an exhaustive approach to the analysis of

the semantic domains and the lexical items comprehensively generated by WMatrix and Sketch Engine Furthermore, the selection of lexical items for analysis in this framework is based on the empirical suggestion of candidate semantic fields proposed by USAS, a semantic annotation tool embedded within the WMatrix web-based concordancing programme As a result, this method of analysis is potentially a lot more inductive, has the potential to generate comprehensive results and most importantly, is repeatable and empirical Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, this methodology has the added advantage of potentially being used to triangulate the findings of traditional intensive manual analysis of representative data in order to augment the robustness of the associated study

3.5 The IICM in action

3.5.1 Preliminary Procedures

The next few segments will demonstrate the use of the IICM framework for metaphorical analysis Utilising the USAS semantic domains within WMatrix as the starting point of the analysis, an analysis of the semantic tagset was carried out, with the initial focus being the frequency counts of the statistically salient semantic domains A keyness analysis was also run on the corpus with respect to the 745, 726 word BNC Sampler written informative corpus (Fig 3.2) The analysis was based on the lexical choices found within the top-30 semantic domains of interest These semantic domains have log-likelihood values way above the critical value of 6.63, or the 99th

percentile for one degree of freedom for the comparison of two sets of corpora While the steps outlined here are for the purposes of a preliminary analysis, the key advantage of using WMatrix as a springboard for a discourse-analytic metaphorical study is that an exhaustive analysis can be carried out for all the lexical items generated by the platform if deemed suitable by the researcher

Fig 3.2

Screenshot of reference corpora for analysis: BNC Sampler Written: Inform

]

Fig 3.3 shows a partial screenshot of the top-30 semantic domains pertaining

to the BP Oil Spill for the New York Times Corpus (henceforth NYT-Corpus)

Fig.3.3.

USAS Semantic Tagset for NYT-Corpus (Top-30 semantic domains)

These semantic domains will be the springboards from which the relevant conceptual metaphors will be identified As an example, ‘Substances and