Understanding Metaphor through Corpora

This book introduces a unique methodology to the study of metaphor, integrating a corpus linguistic approach to explore the lexical, grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics of metaphoric instances of language. The volume questions the reliability of attempts to identify metaphor based on dichotomy and, drawing on data from a corpus of nineteenth-century writing, instead advocates for the notion that metaphoricity is context-dependent and fluid, in relation to the respective social a