The lexicogrammar of metaphor in the discourse of architects

Resumen

The present paper is concerned with the kind of metaphors used by architects as illustrated in the genre of the building review, and focuses specifically on (a) how they are realised at a lexicogrammatical level, and (b) how they co-occur in the texts under study (metaphorical variation). This linguistic approach not only attempts to draw a bridge between the different but, nevertheless, compatible functional and cognitive linguistic approaches, but also aims at restating the importance of syntax in metaphor research. The analysis is done on a corpus of 95 texts drawn from six architectural design magazines, and is theoretically indebted to the experientialist approach to metaphor expounded in Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1987) and Lakoff and Turner (1989) as well as other applied linguistics approaches (Goatly 1987; Cameron 1999).