Exploring the technicality of LIQUID metaphorical chunks in business discourse

Abstract

liquid metaphors, usually used to conceptualize core concepts in economics, tend to be realized linguistically to be chunks or multi-word expressions in form (such as cash flow) and to be more or less technical in meaning. Yet few studies have been conducted on how far liquid metaphorical chunks in business discourse, consisting of a word from the source domain liquid and a word in the target domain related to business, are technical and what their technicality is associated with. This study aims to explore the association between their technicality and frequency, collocational strength, concreteness asymmetry, and construction type, using corpus analysis, multinomial logistic regression and chi-square tests. Results show that their technicality is significantly correlated with their frequency, collocational strength, concreteness asymmetry, and construction type. liquid metaphorical chunks with low frequencies, low collocational scores and high concreteness asymmetry scores are likely to be more technical than those with high frequencies, high collocational scores and low concreteness asymmetry scores. Those in the constructions of N(Source)-N(Target) and A(Source)-NP(Target) are likely to be more technical than others. The findings may shed light on how far learners and practitioners grasp technical vocabulary and metaphorical chunks in business communication.