Metaphorical headlines in business, finance and economic magazines

Abstract

This study explores the identification and analysis of conceptual metaphors which underlie linguistic metaphorical expressions, within the headlines of the business, finance and economic sections in three magazines, The Economist, Time and Newsweek, from 3/5/2004 to 1/1/2007. The magazines share a supranational quality and have an international readership. The linguistic metaphorical expressions within the corpus have been identified and classified onto the related, underlying conceptual metaphoric hierarchical mappings. Findings indicate that all the magazines under discussion employ conceptualizations of the economy and related features as humans, animals and plants, which derive from the ORGANISM conceptual mapping. Other frequently occurring conceptual metaphors are BUSINESS IS A SPORT/GAME, WAR and COMPETITION which are all lower mappings of the conceptual metaphor BUSINESS IS A CONTEST. A significant number of less frequently occurring conceptual metaphors are found to varying degrees in each section of the corpus.