By Word of Mouth

This volume contains seven synchronic and diachronic empirical investigations into the expression and conceptualization of linguistic action in English, focusing on figurative extensions. The following issues are explored:
• Source domains, and their relation to the complexities of linguistic action as a target domain.
• The role of axiological parameter, the experiential grounding of metaphors expressing value judgements and the part played by image-schemata, how value judgements come about and their socio-cultural embedding.
• The graded character of metaphoricity and its correlation with degrees of recoverability/salience.
• The interaction of metonymy and metaphor, e.g. the question what factors motivate the conventionalization of metonymies, which includes the perspective that conventionalized metaphors frequently have a metonymic origin.
• The role of image-schemata in the organization and development of a lexical subfield, which raises new questions on the nature of metaphor, the identification of source and target domains and the Invariance Hypothesis.

James Fife, Word 49:2 (98):
The empirical depth to which this volume examines one coherent area of metaphorization in English, including theoretical and historical discussion, is a true benefit to the maturation of Cognitive Linguistics.