Abstract

Writing studies has been all but silent on the subject of metaphor because no theory has sufficiently forged a connection between the way metaphor works and what we actually say and write. Even the best accounts of metaphor put forward by proponents of conceptual metaphor do not consider important patterns of variation that concrete data reveal. Presenting findings from a study of the conceptual metaphor trade is war, the author offers a reconsideration of metaphor that refutes the standard Aristotelian view of metaphor and substantially expands upon current understandings of conceptual metaphor. Like all language, metaphors are fundamentally responsive. They are therefore implicated in a rhetorically constituted give and take among related groupings of metaphors and literal concepts. Moreover, metaphors are inflected by speakers' and writers' social commitments and are constrained by a concomitant rhetorical etiquette.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1999-04-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088399016002002
Open Access
Closed

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. Rhetoric Review
  2. Rhetoric Review
  3. Written Communication

Cites in this index (4)

  1. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  3. Written Communication
  4. Technical Communication Quarterly
Also cites 14 works outside this index ↓
  1. The formal method of literary scholarship: A critical introduction to sociological practices
  2. Aesthetics: Problems in the philosophy of criticism
  3. 10.2307/358989
  4. 10.2307/358557
  5. 10.1207/s15516709cog0702_3
  6. 10.1037/0003-066X.40.2.181
  7. The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, reasoning and imagination
  8. Metaphors we live by
  9. More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor
  10. Naturalistic inquiry
  11. 10.2307/375964
  12. 10.1037/0033-295X.86.3.161
  13. 10.2307/358894
  14. The rule of metaphor
CrossRef global citation count: 19 View in citation network →