Exploring the Role of Part of Speech in the Formation of Conceptual Metaphors

Abstract

Most scholarly research on conceptual metaphor has been concerned with measuring the breadth with which a given conceptual metaphor is used in language, while there has been a lack of literature on how such metaphors are formulated in the first place or what parts of speech are typically involved in their construction. This paper aims to research the influence of word class on metaphor recognition and construction. Results of the study show that high-frequency noun keywords, especially those that denote abstract ideas and concepts, tend to be employed as major target domains for conceptual metaphors in discourse. In addition, they indicate that linguistic expressions of conceptual metaphors tend to take the form of verbs. They also prove that using a corpus-based approach offers a reliable means for determining what constitutes a conceptual metaphor.