Disciplinary Values in English Academic Metaphors

Abstract

The critical dissemination of research results within scientific communities is of special concern not only to the actors involved but also to the applied linguist. In this context it is interesting to identify what facets of research are prized or, conversely, stigmatised by different disciplines according to their theoretical framework and epistemology. Language thus provides evidence of the axiological variables that underlie scholarly communication, as confirmed by recent contributions on the wording of evaluative acts in written and spoken academic texts. However, the value system that guides such acts is signalled by claims that do not necessarily express judgement or evaluation: these include conceptual metaphors based on a source domain that connotes the target indirectly and whose impact depends largely on frequency, especially when they originate from the same semantic or experiential field. Drawing on a corpus of English academic texts (CADIS) compiled by the CERLIS research centre (University of Bergamo), this paper investigates the distribution and function of value-related metaphors in various disciplines – medicine, law, economics and applied linguistics. In order to minimise variables due to the type of genre considered, it covers a representative sample of research articles, abstracts, book reviews and editorials published in international journals. The results highlight a number of convergences/divergences across domains within a set of shared academic values.