1- CAD Metaphor at the Register Level

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Applied Linguistics 28/1: 124 Oxford University Press 2007

doi:10.1093/applin/aml046

Critical Discourse Analysis and theCorpus-informed Interpretation of

Metaphor at the Register Level

KIERAN OHALLORAN

The Open University

One aspect of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) involves examining how

metaphors in texts, particularly hard news texts (reports of very recent conflicts,

crimes, etc.), imply certain values. The usual theoretical basis for such analysis

is Lakoff and Johnson (1980). My article shows problems with transplanting

Lakoff and Johnsons discourse-level approach to a CDA register-level one. I use

Lees (1992) analysis and interpretation of what he identifies as metaphors in

a hard news text as a case study to show the following: problems with how

CDA prototypically draws on Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to critically analyse

metaphor at the level of register. I draw on evidence from a large corpus in order

to show collocational and phraseological evidence around what Lee identifies

as metaphors. I show how this evidence questions not only his interpretation

of these expressions, but also his Lakoff and Johnson (1980) inspired analysis.

In doing so, I offer the concept of register prosody as well as a corpus-based

method for checking over-interpretation of linguistic data as metaphorical,

in relation to regular readers of a range of registers.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Linguistic analysis which seeks to systematically detect and articulate how

values and ideologies are represented in text is one part of Critical DiscourseAnalysis. (See for example: Fowler et al. (1979), Lee (1992), Hodge and Kress

(1993), Caldas-Coulthard and Coulthard (1996), Chilton and Schaffner

(1997), Fairclough and Wodak (1997), Fairclough (2001).) In CDA, hard

news stories are a staple for analysis, given their salience in contemporary

culture. My article is embedded within the tradition of CDA and will also

analyse hard news material. The following from Bell (1991: 14) provides a

definition of hard news. I follow this definition in this article:

reports of accidents, conflicts, crimes, announcements, discoveriesand other events which have occurred or come to light since theprevious issue of [the] paper . . .. The opposite to hard news is softnews, which is not time-bound to immediacy. Features are the mostobvious case of soft news . . .. Hard news is also the place where adistinctive news style will be found if anywhere.


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One focus of CDA is highlighting how metaphors can be ideologically

significanthow metaphors can help to construct evaluation of the situations

being described. For instance, Chilton and Schaffner (1997: 222) point to

the use of the argument is war metaphor in politics, for example theoppositions claims were shot down in flames, a metaphor which constitutes

adversarial debate as a quasi-natural state of affairs. In taking this position

on metaphorical naturalisation of thinking, CDA has incorporated Lakoff

and Johnsons (1980) approach to metaphor, what has become known as

conceptual metaphor theory.1 Although Lakoff and Johnson (1980) do not

invoke the work of Foucault, its perspective is that of discourse in the

Foucauldian senseways of talking and thinking about the world which

promote dominant world views, cutting across a variety of situations in a

culture. So, for example, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) make much of theargument is war metaphor as a dominant way of talking and thinking.

Chilton and Schaffners (1997) perspective in the quotation above is likewise

at the level of discourse since they are referring to a way of talking and

thinking in politics generally.

CDA has also drawn on Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to examine metaphor

at the level of register. By register, I am referring to a concept associated with

systemic functional linguistics but which has been drawn on extensively in

text linguistics generally. Registers are varieties of language which are

typically associated with a particular situational configuration of field, tenor

and mode, (Halliday and Hasan 1985: 389). Registers are thus distinct

varieties. On this definition, newspaper journalism would not count as a

register since it could consist of hard news, soft news, reviews, recipes,

astrology forecasts, sports reports, etc. Being at a higher-level than hard

news, newspaper journalism could be seen as a genre; genres being groups of

texts which perform a similar function (Wales 2001: 338).2 In the case of

newspaper journalism (hard news, soft news, etc.) a central function is the

imparting of up-to-date information. So, while newspaper journalism would

not count as a register, on Halliday and Hasans definition above hard news

would. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) do not take account of register-specificmeanings with regard to metaphor since it is concerned with everyday

language (see quote in Section 2.1), although it seems to be based on

introspective data, invented data or data which seem to have been elicited

from informants (Deignan 2005: 27). But as Deignan argues, there is the

danger that informants may tend to produce examples that are rare in

normal conditions (Deignan 2005: 27).

1.2 Aims

1.2.1 Orientation

When CDA draws on Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to analyse metaphor at the

level of discourse, as Chilton and Schaffner (1997) do, then this level of

2 CORPUS-INFORMED INTERPRETATION OF METAPHOR


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analysis is logically consistent since Lakoff and Johnsons (1980) perspective

on metaphor is also at the level of discourse. But when Lakoff and Johnson

(1980) is applied in CDA at the level of register this is not logically consistent.

I will demonstrate this problem via a case study, an analysis by Lee (1992) ofmetaphor in a hard news text, an examination which is prototypical of the

way CDA draws on Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to analyse metaphor at the

register level. In turn, given this prototypicality, the results of my

examination will have ramifications for CDA more generally in indicating

that when it transplants Lakoff and Johnsons approach from discourse level

to register level, this is potentially problematic.

1.2.2 Use of corpora

I demonstrate problems in Lees (1992) use of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) by

taking evidence from large corpora, something that is becoming more

prevalent in work that takes a critical perspective on language use (e.g.

Stubbs 1996; Piper 2000; Widdowson 2000; OHalloran and Coffin 2004;

Orpin 2005). Corpora have also been used in metaphor analysis more

generally to show ways in which conceptual metaphor theory has ignored

real language data (e.g. Deignan 2005). My article is a contribution to a

corpus perspective on metaphor but mainly with regard to the way

conceptual metaphor theory has been used in CDA. Using a large corpus of

260 million words which includes hard news text, I show the following: howregular readers of the hard news register would be exposed to particular

collocates and phraseologies around the metaphors that Lee (1992) identifies,

which conflict with Lees analysis and interpretation. On this evidence,

I show where Lee produces an over-interpretation of his linguistic data as

metaphorical when it is not, in relation to habitual readers of the hard news

register. It is on this basis that I regard Lakoff and Johnsons (1980)

discourse-level approach as problematic when applied at register level. (I use

words such as problematic in this article rather than wrong to characterise

Lees analysis and interpretation since my examination of Lee (1992) isrelative to only one corpus, albeit a very large one, and I do not use other

methods in support, e.g., reader response studies.) Another of my aims is to

offer a convenient method for CDA to help reduce over-interpretation of

linguistic data as metaphorical, in other registers, in relation to the

perspective of regular readers of those registers.

1.2.3 Register prosody

The concept of semantic prosody has had wide currency in corpus-basedlinguistics (e.g. Sinclair 1991; Louw 1993; Hunston 1995; Stubbs 1996;

Channell 2000; Sinclair 2004). Here is a recent definition from Sinclair:

A corpus enables us to see words grouping together to makespecial meanings that relate not so much to their dictionary

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meanings as to the reasons why they were chosen together. Thiskind of meaning is called a semantic prosody; it has beenrecognised in part as connotation, pragmatic meaning andattitudinal meaning. (Sinclair 2003: 178)

Sinclair (2004: 305) gives the example of the seemingly neutral phrase, the

naked eye. Corpus investigation reveals a common phraseology, visibili-

typreposition thenaked eye, which in turn reveals a negative

semantic prosody such as in too faint to be seen with the naked eye or

it is not really visible to the naked eye.

To call into question Lees interpretations of the metaphors he identifies,

I will use a concept analogous to semantic prosody. This concept, which I

have termed register prosody, indicates that some prosodies have probabilistic

relationships to register. This is in contrast to the non-register specific notionof semantic prosody.

2. CDA AND LAKOFF AND JOHNSON (1980)

2.1 Assumptions of metaphorical processing in Lakoff and

Johnson (1980)

Since the CDA treatment of metaphor is based on Lakoff and Johnson

(1980), let me outline the position of this book in a little more detail. I

reproduce the following since it has been regularly quoted and endorsed in

CDA as an example of analysis of metaphor:

. . . let us start with the concept ARGUMENT and the conceptualmetaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in oureveryday language by a wide variety of expressions:

ARGUMENT IS WAR

Your claims are indefensible.He attacked every weak point in my argument.

His criticisms were right on target.I demolished his argument.Ive never won an argument with him.You disagree? Okay, shoot!If you use that strategy, hell wipe you out.He shot down all of my arguments.. . . Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by theconcept of war. Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbalbattle, and the structure of an argumentattack, defense, counter-attack, etc.reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS

WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it structures theactions we perform in arguing. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 4)

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that human conceptual systems, relating

to how we both think and act, are at base metaphorical. In the above,



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Lakoff and Johnson invoke a macro-concept, war, to draw together shoot

down, target, etc. Their assumption here is that metaphorical processing is

structured by this macro-concept. Indeed, this pattern of inferencing from an

instance of a metaphor to a macro-concept is made throughout Lakoff andJohnson (1980), and is endorsed in Lakoff and Johnson (2003) and in work

in conceptual metaphor theory elsewhere such as Lakoff (1987), Lakoff and

Johnson (1999), Ko00

vecses (2000), and Gibbs and Wilson (2002).

2.2 Metaphor analysis in CDA

With regard to analysis of metaphor in CDA, here are some applications of

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in CDA at the level of register as well as genre

and discourse. In other words, for all these authors there is the assumption,implicit or explicit, that metaphorical processing is structured by a macro-

concept: Fairclough (1989/2001) (hard news);3 Kress (1989) (school

textbooks); Lee (1992) (hard news); van Teeffelen (1994) (popular novels);

Patthey-Chavez et al. (1996) (erotic romances); Santa Ana (1999) (news

articles); Koller (2004) (types of business English); Charteris-Black (2004)

(financial reporting, political manifestos, American presidential speeches,

sports reporting). Some of Lakoffs own work has had more of a political focus,

such as his examination of the political use of metaphor in the Gulf Wars

(Lakoff 1992, 2003). This work thus chimes more explicitly with work in CDA.

2.3 Metaphor and discourse exclusion

Another part of Lakoff and Johnsons (1980) perspective is that dominant

ways of metaphorisation can help to exclude other ways of thinking and

talking in a culture, that is, exclude other discourses. Let me give an

example. In British politics, the largest party not in government is known as

the opposition and practices for the opposition involve sitting, adversarially,

opposite the governing party in the elected chamber (the House of

Commons) of the British parliament. Indeed, argumentative exchangesbetween the prime minister and the opposition leader, at prime ministers

questions, have often been angry ones, with the parties behind them jeering

and hurling abuse. This practice helps to reinforce the argument is war

discourseit is not so far-fetched to say that prime ministers questions is,

in Lakoff and Johnsons words, partially structured by the concept of war

(see quotation above); such argumentative framing is often reinforced in

press accounts.4 This discourse also helps to exclude less dramatic but

potentially more rationally-based political discourse, for example where a

British prime minister listens to the perspectives of different members of theHouse of Commons before deciding on a course of action rather than trying

to defeat opposition to his or her own pre-determined perspective. Indeed,

because Lakoff and Johnsons (1980) perspective is a discourse-based one,

and discourses can be accompanied by reinforcing practices (e.g. oppositional

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seating arrangements and hurling of abuse in the House of Commons) one

might agree that, at the discourse level, dominant ways of metaphorisation

can help to exclude other types of discourse. So, there would seem to be

legitimacy for CDA to invoke a Lakoff/Johnson perspective for analysis ofmetaphor at the level of discourse (e.g. Chilton and Schaffner 1997). But is it

legitimate to do this at the level of register?

2.4 Case Study: Lee (1992)

Lee (1992) has proved to be a popular textbook, continuing to be

recommended reading for courses on CDA. Lees (1992) analysis of metaphor

in a hard news text is then reasonably well known. Indeed, it is a salient

example of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) inspired metaphor analysis in CDAsince Lee (1992) devotes an entire chapter to Lakoff and Johnsons (1980)

view of metaphor. Lee comments upon a hard news report from the British

newspaper, The Guardian, on 4 August 1976, concerning events in Soweto in

South Africa. Here are the first few paragraphs of the article which Lee

(1992: 912) reproduces:

Police open fire as Soweto erupts again5

From STANLEY UYS, Cape Town, August 4The black township of Soweto, which has been simmering with

unrest since the riots on June 16 and the shooting of 174 Africans,erupted again today.At least three Africans were shot dead, according to witnesses,although police deny this. The black hospital of Baragwanathnearby was reported to be overcrowded with injured Africans.The Minister of Justice, Mr Jimmy Kruger, announced in Pretoriathis evening that he is reimposing the ban on public gatheringswhich lapsed last Saturday. The ban will continue until the end ofthe month.The nightmare of many whites in Johannesburg of a black march

on their city almost came true today when between 20,000 and25,000 angry Africans began moving in procession out of Sowetotowards John Vorster Square, police headquarters in Johannesburg,where they planned to protest against the detention of black pupils.Police with automatic rifles and in camouflage uniform headed themarchers off after they had swept through a roadblock. Theyallegedly fired long bursts at the leading marchers and also raineda barrage of tear-gas canisters on them. A reporter said he took adead African to hospital, and witnesses said at least two otherAfricans were lying dead in the veld. [My bold] ( Guardian

News & Media Ltd 1976)

Now Lees (1992: 93) comments:

[A] feature of the first paragraph that could be said to derive froma white perspective is the metaphorical process that treats the



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people of Soweto as some kind of natural force, specifically here asa volcano which has been simmering with unrest and thenerupted. This is echoed in the later report that the marchers hadswept through a roadblock, like a river. Note, too, that theemotions of individuals and the actions that they give rise to aretransferred onto the place where they live. It is the township thathas been simmering and that now erupts, rather than theSowetans experiencing feelings of anger and deciding to march.The effect of these processes of metaphor . . . is arguably to distancethe reader from the subjects of the report. In speaking of theSowetans as a natural force and as a place, the emotions of thepeople involved and the decisions which they make to engage inparticular actions are eliminated from the process of interpreta-tion. The situation is seen as resulting from some kind ofinevitable set of natural laws rather than from human feelings anddecisions.

As can be seen above, Lee argues that the natural force metaphors distance

the reader from an understanding of Sowetans as human beings who are

capable of acting as agents. Lakoff and Johnson (1980), at their discourse-

level perspective, infer a macro-concept, war, to encompass shot down,

right on target, etc. It should be apparent that Lee too infers a macro-

concept, volcano, to draw together erupt and simmer. He also infers a

broader macro-concept, natural force. Lees analysis is then in line withLakoff and Johnson (1980) in inferring macro-concepts. His interpretation

relates the metaphors to natural forces specifically and generally. Lee (1992:

93) goes on to say that the fact that Sowetans are represented as a volcano is,

in part, due to banality of journalistic style. Since, as Lee seems to

acknowledge, erupted has conventional usage in hard news, how far can

one assume that a routine reader of the hard news register would come to

this text and understand Sowetans in terms of the macro-concepts, natural

force/volcano?

3. METHOD

3.1 Lexicogrammar

Lexicogrammatical patterns can be sensitive to register, as Halliday and Hasan

(1985: 389) argue:

[S]ince it is a configuration of meanings, a register must also, ofcourse, include the expressions, the lexicogrammatical andphonological features, that typically accompany or REALISEthese meanings. And sometimes we find that a particular registeralso has indexical features, indices in the form of particular words,particular grammatical signals . . . that have the function ofindicating to the participants that this is the register inquestion. . . . Once upon a time is an indexical feature that

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serves to signal the fact that we are now embarking on atraditional tale.

Given the above, just a prototypical lexicogrammatical fragment froma register could cue that register for a reader. Investigation of large corpora

bears out the fact that there is a greater likelihood of some lexicogrammatical

patterns in certain registers than others. So corpus investigation can show

clearly the distinctive style of hard news (see earlier quotation from Bell

(1991)).6 Using large corpora of news texts can create a sense of what regular

readers of news text are conventionally exposed to. As Stubbs (2001: 20) says

with regard to this issue of convention:

our (unconscious) knowledge of what is probable . . . involves

expectations of language patterns. Our knowledge of a languageinvolves not only knowing individual words, but knowing verylarge numbers of phrases . . . and also knowing what words arelikely to co-occur in a cohesive text . . .

If it can be shown through corpus investigation that:

(i) erupted, simmering, and swept through tend to have conventional

meanings in hard news text which are bound up with their prototypical

lexicogrammatical patterning in this register,

(ii) these meanings are different to the meanings Lee makes in hisinterpretation,

then this will raise doubts about his analysis of metaphor as inspired by

Lakoff and Johnson (1980). In turn, this would have implications for what

linguistic data CDA identifies as metaphorical in other registers.

3.2 The corpus used in this investigation

To perform this investigation, I will draw upon The Bank of English, a corpusof 450 million words made up of separate subcorpora. It is particularly

skewed towards newspapers, which suits my purposes. I shall use 260 million

words from six newspaper subcorpora from the period 19992003: 60

million, UK The Times; 30 million, UK regional newspapers; 45 million, UK

The Sun and The News of the World; 51 million, UK national news; 38 million,

US News; 36 million, Australian newspapers. They are not pure register

corpora since they consist of many different newspaper texts, not just

hard news. However, since the Bank of English allows the investigator to

expand concordance lines to five lines of co-text, it is thus possible toestablish whether the texts come from hard news or not by inspecting

whether the text is in line with Bells (1991) definition given in Section 1.1.

Clearly in using contemporary corpora, I am not attempting to reconstruct

how a reader in August 1976 would have come to the Soweto text.



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This would be difficult to achieve since to the best of my knowledge there

is no corpus of newspaper texts of comparable size (260 million words)

from the early to mid-1970s, let alone a sizeable corpus of Guardian hard

news texts up to August 1976. Since my purpose is ultimately to show howCDA metaphor analysis, which imports an approach from the discourse level

to a register level, can be problematic, I treat the text non-historically

(like Lee).

3.3 Collocation: frequency and t-score

To get an initial sense of how the metaphors identified by Lee regularly

function in the hard news register, my first step is to look at their collocates

using the 260 million word newspaper corpus. I do this because, as Sinclair(2004) points out, regular collocation patterning indicates delexicalisation

of words:

The meaning of words chosen together is different from theirindependent meanings. They are at least partly delexicalized. Thisis the necessary correlate of co-selection. If you know thatselections are not independent, and that one selection depends onanother, then there must be a result and effect on the meaningwhich in each individual choice is a delexicalization of one kindor another. It will not have its independent meaning in fullif it is only part of a choice involving one or more words.(Sinclair 2004: 20)

So, for Sinclair, lexical items in collocation have a strong tendency to

become delexicalised. Delexicalisation in collocation brings delocalisation7 of

meaningmeaning is not then located in a single lexical item but across the

collocation. By extension, evidence for regular collocational patterning in

hard news would tell us whether apparent metaphors are actually

delexicalised in this register (for example, is erupted, in the Soweto text,

likely to involve the meaning volcano?).In all of my collocation searches in this article, I use a span of 4:4, the

default span of The Bank of English; that is, I look for collocates within a

span of four places to the left and four places to the right of the search term

(simmering etc.), also known as the node word. I produce the raw

frequencies for collocates. Comparing raw frequencies is initially useful in

seeing which collocates are recurrent. However, it is difficult with raw

frequencies to attach a precise level of attraction between a collocate and a

node word. The statistical measure, t-score, provides this information.8 More

precisely, it measures the certainty of collocation (Hunston 2002: 73)because it takes into account the size of the corpus used. The Bank of English

software automatically generates t-scores in collocate searches. Since a

t-score of more than 2 is normally taken to be significant (Hunston 2002:

72), I include collocates with such a value. The advice that one should regard

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t-scores of more than 2 as being significant derives from the experience of

corpus linguists that such words are likely to be the most interesting

(Barnbrook 1996: 98). Furthermore, the larger the corpus, the more reliable

t-scores will be. The 260 million word corpus that I am using is a very largecorpus and so t-scores calculated are fairly reliable.

3.4 Phraseology

Recent advances in corpus investigation have thrown up many insights about

the nature of phraseological language (Wray 2002; Butler 2005). Since

lexicogrammatical patterning is sensitive to register, taking a phraseological

approach enables me to use more syntagmatic information to check how

simmering, erupted/erupts and swept through are used routinely in hard

news. Inspecting phraseologies of the metaphors that Lee (1992) identifies

forms the second part of my investigation. I examine, in turn, each of the

metaphors Lee identifies.

4.RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

4.1 Simmering

The black township of Soweto, which has been simmering with

unrest since the riots on June 16 and the shooting of 174 Africans,erupted again today.

4.1.1 Collocates for simmering

Collocates for simmering in the newspaper corpus of 260 million words are

as follows. For all my inspection of collocates in this article, the first number

in brackets is the frequency, the second is the t-score:

water (103 10.0), row (39 6.2), dispute (30 5.4), tensions

(29 5.4), resentment (25 5.0), feud (21 4.6), tension(21 4.6), anger (17 4.1), conflict (17 4.0), discontent(17 4.1), debate (8 2.6), rivalry (8 2.8), saucepan (8 2.8),unrest (7 2.6), violence (7 2.5), boiled (5 2.2), frustration(5 2.2), scandal (5 2.1), [volcano (2 1.4)].

There would seem to be two different semantic fields represented in the

collocates: boiling water (perhaps in relation to cooking?) and dispute/

anger. There are only two instances of volcano; the t-score for volcano is

non-significant as it is less than two. So, initially, the newspaper corpus

evidence would seem to call into question reading simmering in the Sowetotext as connected with volcanoes. I shall look at this issue specifically with

regard to hard news when I examine phraseologies for simmering in 4.1.2.

Water occurs as a collocate of simmering 103 times and has the highest

t-score (10.0) of any of the collocates. A t-score in double figures is very



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significant (Hunston 2001: 16). (In personal communication with Susan

Hunston, I was told that the comment about t-scores in double figures is

based purely on experienceyou dont often come across figures that high in

a large general corpus). So does the collocational evidence suggest that,actually, people could read The black township of Soweto, which had been

simmering, . . . in terms of water being heated? If this is the case, Lee might

have been amiss in inferring volcano, but it could still be argued that Lees

(1992) original interpretation is basically in accord with a water being

heated reading. In other words, Soweto would still be viewed as non-

human and thus readers would still be distanced from the subjects of the

report. Indeed, it might also be argued that the large number of collocations

which include water bolsters a Lakoffian container metaphor view. Lakoff

(1987: 383) argues that the ANGER IS HEAT metaphor (e.g. dont get hotunder the collar) when applied to fluids combines with the metaphor THE

BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR THE EMOTIONS to yield the central metaphor

of the system. He then goes on to offer as evidence a number of examples

which includes simmer down!. So it could be said, from a Lakoffian

perspective, that the township of Soweto is being conceptually metaphorised

as a container of angry fluid rather than as a collection of human beings.

I will return to this point shortly.

4.1.2 Auxiliarybeen simmeringSimmering in the Soweto text occurs in the following: The black township

of Soweto, which has been simmering with unrest . . .. Following up the

collocation search with a phraseological one, I searched for the pattern

auxiliarybeen simmering. Figure 1 offers a random sample of 20 lines;

the node words are right-centred to allow more left-span co-text and thus to

make it easier to see the nature of the phenomenon which has been

simmering.

Interestingly, of the 63 instances of has/have/had been simmering,

around 70 per cent are associated with the hard news register andoverwhelmingly show a semantic preference for human phenomena such as

violence and conflict as can be seen in the concordance lines of Figure 1.

Indeed, this is reflected in the Soweto text by the prepositional phrase, with

unrest, following has been simmering. Only two of the instances are

related to water boiling and these are not from the hard news register. The

reason for the very high t-score for the collocate water is because water

and simmering (rather than has/have/had been simmering) commonly

show up as collocates in newspaper recipes.

One can say, then, that phraseological evidence for simmering, whenused in the perfect progressive in the hard news register, suggests it has

hardly any associations of water boiling nor indeed of volcanoes. In turn, this

negates a Lakoffian reading that has been simmering would trigger a

conceptual metaphor in which the township of Soweto is likened to a

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container of angry fluid and thus dehumanised in the eyes of the reader.

More significantly, it creates a difficulty for generating macro-concept

inferences from simmering in the Soweto hard news text, that is

transplanting Lakoff and Johnsons (1980) approach from discourse level toregister level.

4.1.3 Was simmering/simmered

I continued my investigation using the 260 million word newspaper corpus

and looked at was simmering. I found only four instances, one of which

was from the hard news register (anger was simmering in Afghanistan over

continued US bombing . . .). Expanding my search of was simmering to the

whole of the Bank of English, apart from recipes, there are a number of

instances from fiction (a smaller part of the Bank of English includes fiction)

such as in the following:

He lifted her and settled her, stomach to ridged abdomen, thenfilled her mouth with caresses that stirred her to her toes. She wassimmering when he drew back. Brushing his lips across herforehead, he murmured, I fantasized for weeks about having thecountess reveal herself to me. His palms skimmed down hernaked back to cup her . . ..

She had ridden in sports cars with Bobby, who was truly agiant, and had never felt a bit of the wariness, eagerness, and senseof sensual risk that was simmering in her blood now. As Chasewatched Nicole hesitate about moving up to front seat, hewondered what was going on in her calculating little mind.

morning to demand a fairer wage. This discontent has been simmering all week

gone on since fighting last May. The dispute has been simmering since Eritrea

are agitating for action.

The union dispute has been simmering for the

thority to withhold payment? The seating dispute has been simmering since June

the excesses of the war against drugs has been simmering at the state

A row between the Israeli authorities and the EU has been simmering for moremost notorious fans in the game and ill-feeling has been simmering since the teams

been received. A low-level separatist insurgency has been simmering in the

but a row between the two Cabinet ministers has been simmering for months

chairwoman.

The row between Hynes and Power has been simmering since the over

moves by Railtrack to dilute their safety role has been simmering since October

ause of foot-andmouth disease, the resultant row has been simmering on. Earlier

is making her sick and ruining her life. The row has been simmering for more than

separatist movement against Jakarta's rule has been simmering for years.

The broad Franco-Italian squabble has been simmering since the

hard feelings for Mr Horan. Leadership tension has been simmering in the

current account deficit. Why does a problem that has been simmering for years

precedented service highlights the conflict that has been simmering for years

whites didn't budge. Fueling a controversy that has been simmering for years,ut the case has also highlighted a problem which has been simmering in the

Figure 1: Sample concordance lines for auxiliary beensimmering fromthe 260 million word newspaper corpus



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Rather than anger, simmering in the above examples relates to sensuality

and sexual feelings, hardly negative in themselves. In the following example,

again from fiction, the simple past form, simmered, is used in a positive

co-text:

Ellel wishes me to announce that she is only days away fromhaving in her custody the Gaddir childno, the Gaddir youngwoman. Ander simmered delightedly under their incredulousstares. Youre fibbing, whispered Berkli. At the very least, youreexaggerating! No, hes not, said Mitty, gravely.

Although there are only a few examples from fiction, nevertheless the positive

associations for the past tense (with or without progressive aspect) clearly

contrast with the negative associations of the perfect progressive use,

auxiliarybeen simmering, in hard news and neutral associations inrecipes. They thus provide an indication of how the lexicogrammar of

simmering can potentially realise meaning in a genre-sensitive way

(in fiction)9 as well as in a register-sensitive way (in recipes, hard news), for

which there is much more empirical evidence in the Bank of English. Thus,

given the different context-dependent values for the lemma, simmer, instead

of thinking in terms of a semantic prosody, I judge instead that it is better,

for hard news reporting, to think of simmer in terms of a register prosody.

So, has been simmering has a negative register prosody for hard news.

4.2 Erupted

The black township of Soweto, which has been simmering withunrest since the riots on June 16 and the shooting of 174 Africans,erupted again today.

4.2.1 Collocates for erupted

As he did with simmer, Lakoff (1987: 385) refers to erupted when

discussing HEAT OF FLUID IN A CONTAINER as the source domain and toANGER as the target domain for the metaphor, ANGER IS HEAT. He gives

examples such as: When I told him, he just exploded; She blew up at me;

We wont tolerate any more of your outbursts. He goes on to say that this

can be elaborated upon and gives the example, volcanos: She erupted. Once

again, we see the characteristic Lakoffian macro-inference, volcano, from an

instance, She erupted, which is mirrored in Lees analysis. Lakoffs

perspective on erupted would seem to bolster Lees interpretation that the

people of Soweto are being metaphorised as a volcano in the hard news

text. The corpus evidence, however, would suggest otherwise.Let me begin once again with a collocate search (frequency and t-score) in

the 260 million word newspaper corpus. Erupted is in the past tense in the

Soweto text. Since the collocate search can only look for the form erupted,

this will include collocates for the past participle erupted as well.

KIERAN OHALLORAN 13


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The following collocates were found, shown here with their frequency and

t-score:

violence (214 14.5), row (190 13.7), fighting (87 9.2), fury

(82 9.02), scandal (79 8.8), war (78 7.8), crisis (53 7.0),controversy (53 7.2), trouble (50 6.8), volcano (41 6.4),rioting (34 5.8), gunfire (32 5.6), battle (30 5.0), riots(28 5.2), dispute (28 5.2), clashes (21 3.8), furore (20 4.4),protests (19 4.27), conflict, (18 4.0), feud (14 3.7), protest(13 3.39), revolt (12 3.4), tensions (12 3.4), chaos(10 3.03), killing (8 2.4), struggle (8 2.5).

This time, there are more instances of volcano (41). There are also eight

instances of Vesuvius and five of Nyiragongo. But still, the number of

instances of volcano and names of volcanoes as collocates actually amountsto only around 4 per cent of the total. The largest t-score, 14.5, is for

violence whereas the t-score for volcano is much lower at 6.4. Since the

t-score for violence is over 10, it is very significant. These instances of

violence refer to human phenomena. So, overwhelmingly, erupted has

a semantic preference for human phenomena. As with simmering, the

newspaper corpus evidence initially raises doubt about reading erupted in

the Soweto text as connected with volcanic meaning.

4.2.2 Erupted in the past tenseThere are 2,509 instances of erupted in the 260 million news corpus.

Around 90 per cent of the instances of erupted are in the past tense.

A random sample of 20 lines of erupted in the past tense from the 260

million word news corpus can be seen in Figure 2.

Around 75 per cent of the instances are from the hard news register, and

again overwhelmingly show a semantic preference for human phenomena

(e.g. fighting erupted; row erupted). Given that in hard news there is

repeated evidence for a phraseology of abstract noun for human

phenomenonerupted in the past tense, erupted in the past tense inhard news could well be understood prototypically, by regular readers of this

register, in terms of violence, conflict, etc. rather than volcanoes. Since these

meanings are overwhelmingly negative, one can say there is a negative

prosody for erupted in the past tense. But is it a register prosody or does

erupted in the past tense carry a negative prosody across registers, that is to

say a semantic prosody?

One example of erupted in the past tense which has positive associations,

and which is not from the hard news register, is the pub erupted. This

example is from the sports report register. Here is the expanded co-text:

Just as another undeserved German victory loomed, up poppedRobbie Keane to score a dramatic last-minute equaliser. The puberupted. Another heroic draw for the Irish to celebrate. I suspectRoy Keane would have been furious that they had failed to win.



15/24

What is interesting about this football report example is that there is no

modification of erupted, for example, with a postmodifier such as with joy.

However, we would understand erupted here in a positive sense since

football supporters are celebrating a goal. Other metonymic10 collocates, in

the sports report register, such as press box, ground, room, and stadium

all relate explicitly to eruptions of applause, joy, etc. in relation to the

watching of a sports game. The non-metonym, crowd, is particularly

marked in this usage; there are 51 collocates with a significant t-score of 7.0

in the 260 million word news corpus. Indeed, the fact that erupted in the

past tense has largely positive associations in the sports report register, but

largely negative ones in the hard news register, provides evidence for seeing

erupted in register prosody terms rather than semantic prosody terms.

I should stress that the concept of register prosody is a probabilistic one.

While the meanings around erupted in the past tense in hard news areoverwhelmingly negative, there are a small number of instances of erupted

in the past tense in hard news which carry positive meanings (e.g. fireworks

erupted and champagne corks were popping in a story about the first day of

the new millennium).

Biber et al. (1999: passim) comment that the need for economy affects

lexicogrammatical choices in news given the need to save space in hard news

and maximise what is novel. This is why Biber et al. (1999: 477) argue the

short passive is common in news, (e.g. Doherty was arrested in New York in

June). Extrapolating to the use of erupted in the Soweto text, one mightsay that because erupted in the past tense carries a negative register prosody

in hard news, its use allows the compressed meaning-making that there has

been a dramatic initiation of violence without violence actually having to

be mentioned. In the Soweto text, it could thus be argued that erupted

issue since the scandal in America erupted. "Behavior which might give

in the West Bank and gun battles erupted in the Gaza Strip yesterday, a day

called by passers-by after a dispute erupted between the driver of a Mercedes

tourists.

Last week's fighting erupted around the old Spanish colonial

at Kabul airport. Fresh fighting erupted yesterday in northern Afghanistan

nto the city since renewed fighting erupted between Palestinians and Israelisone said. On Friday, when firing erupted in this corner of southern Kosovo,

Officers slam 'cosy deal'

FURY erupted last night after a police chief

18 May 2002

FURY erupted yesterday as an arsonist aged 15

Terminal when the gunfire erupted. "It echoed all over the airport,"

new system."

Other protests have erupted in the ghetto satellite district

The tension of the occasion erupted at odd moments. Speaking too long,

Then seven years later the problem erupted again when the couple tried to

Rumbles of controversy recently erupted over the world of famed US jock

the two clubs continues.

The row erupted last week when Andrew accused

their silence. But the scandal erupted this year with new allegations of

of the council that horrible scenes erupted. They held out no olive branch,

the Marines. When a political storm erupted in April over an American spy

village of Montrado when violence erupted after the murder of a Dayak boy.were sent to Bosnia when civil war erupted there in 1992. They quickly

Figure 2: Sample concordance lines for erupted in the past tense from the260 million newspaper corpus

KIERAN OHALLORAN 15


16/24

serves a textual function in systemic functional terms (Halliday and

Matthiessen 2004). Similar things could be said with regard to erupted in

the sports report register. Here erupted would seem to have a positive

register prosody and so communicate joy without it having to be inscribedin the text.

In tune with Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoffs (1987: 377415) case

study of the metaphorisation of anger is register non-specific. His examples

too relate to everyday language and seem to be based on introspective data,

invented data or data elicited from informants. Moreover, most of

the sentence examples with metaphors in Lakoff (1987) (and Lakoff and

Johnson 1980) have pronouns as subjects just as in She erupted (and like

the argument is war examples in 2.1). But in the whole of the Bank

of English, the majority of the instances of erupted do not havesubject pronouns. (There are only eight instances of Lakoffs example of

She erupted). As with the 260 million word newspaper corpus, the

overwhelming majority of instances of erupted in the whole of the Bank of

English relate not to volcanoes but to negative human phenomena, and

human phenomena represented lexically rather than human beings

represented through subject pronouns. The phraseological approach as

afforded through corpus techniques of investigation shows up the problems

with concocting examples, as well as those arising from failing to consider

register specificity.

4.3 Erupt(s)

(headline) Police open fire as Soweto erupts again

I move on to looking at the present tense form, erupts, as this is the form in

the headline. Since the results are similar to those for erupted, my coverage

here will be briefer than in Section 4.2. Erupts has collocates in common

with erupted, with the highest co-occurrence for erupts being violence

(38 instances; t-score 6.1). As with erupted, there is a strong semanticpreference for human phenomena. In contrast, there are 10 instances

of volcano collocating with erupts but the t-score is at borderline

significance at 1.8.

There are 1,468 instances of erupt(s) in the present tense. 36 of

these instances occur in headlines in hard news. In contrast, erupted occurs

in only two headlines and neither of these is from hard news texts (one is

from soft news and the other is from a letters page). Volcano makes up

5 per cent of the total lexical collocates of erupt in hard news text bodies

and 17 per cent of the total lexical collocates of erupt in headlines.This figure is still only 17 per cent; collocates of erupt(s) in headlines

overwhelmingly have a semantic preference for human phenomena such as

disputes. The prosody is usually a negative one, as with erupted. In sum,

and similar to the evidence for erupted, corpus evidence suggests erupt(s)



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in the Soweto headline is not likely to be associated with volcanoes for

regular readers of the hard news register.

4.4 Eruption(s)

To obtain a better sense of phraseological behaviour of the (broadly defined)

lemma erupt, let me now go a little further and compare the results for

erupt(s) and erupted with those for the noun form, eruption(s), in the

260 million word newspaper corpus. Interestingly, collocates for eruption(s)

are overwhelmingly connected with volcanoes or related geological

phenomena:

Eruption: volcanic (68 8.2), Nyiragongo (18 4.2), violence

(16 3.9), volcano (15 3.8), Vesuvius (9 3.0), lava (5 2.2),scientists (5 2.2), tremors (5 2.2), violent (5 2.2).Eruptions: volcanic (59 7.6), earthquakes (9 3.0), ash(5 2.2), violence (5 2.2), volcano (5 2.2), volcanoes (5 2.2).

The relatively high frequencies and t-scores for volcanic provide evidence

that eruption(s) is much more likely to have meanings associated with

volcanoes in news than erupted and erupt(s). (The phrase violent

eruption(s) refers in the main to volcanic disturbances.)

To further explore the phraseological behaviour of eruption(s), I lookedmore generally across the 450 million word Bank of English, which also

contains academic texts amongst two book subcorpora. With this wider

exploration, I found that eruption(s), either in hard news or academic texts,

is predominantly used to refer to volcanoes. Here is one example from an

academic source:

Both these methods act as geochemical stopwatches, which arereset to zero in the rocks that are formed from volcanic eruptions.Potassium has been given the symbol K, from the Arabic kali

(alkali). It is one of the commoner elements in the earths crustand indeed in our own bodies.

Overall, in contrast to erupt(s) and erupted, there is a much greater

tendency for eruption(s) to have meanings associated with volcanoes

and in a way which would appear to be not so register-specific. It would

seem also that in hard news the semantic extension of eruption(s) is

much more restricted than for erupted and erupt(s). This is also reflected

in only two instances of a positive meaning for eruption, that of applause.

In other words, delexicalisation of eruption(s) in collocation is less likelyto happen in hard news than with erupt and erupted. This has

an interesting corollary: if the writer of the Soweto text had chosen

eruption in describing Soweto, then the corpus evidence suggests that

volcanic meanings would be more likely to be associated with Soweto

KIERAN OHALLORAN 17


18/24

than if he had used erupted. This would then have chimed with Lees

(1992) interpretation.

4.5 Swept through

Police with automatic rifles and in camouflage uniform headed themarchers off after they had swept through a roadblock.

4.5.1 Had swept through

Lee (1992) interprets swept through as metaphorising the Sowetan

marchers as a natural force like a river with the agentive element

downplayed as a result. This is a very revealing analysis and interpretation. It

is a macro-inference and so is in line with Lakoff and Johnson (1980). But,

in another sense, it is not in line with this book. Since Lee takes a Lakoffian/

Johnsonian approach, I would expect him to generate a macro-inference to a

source domain, perhaps brooms, or cleaning equipment or something else

which is connected to sweeping.

There are 38 instances of had swept through in the whole of the Bank of

English. There is only one instance of the broom meaning of swept through

in the street cleaners had swept through. All the other instances of swept

are delexicalised, that is there are no associations of brooms, cleaning

equipment, etc., including eight instances that occur in the hard news register(e.g. . . . the flu epidemic which had swept through his squad . . .). (Had)

swept through is something akin to a phrasal verb with a phrasal meaning of

rapid movement. In earlier sections, it was found that (has been) simmering,

erupted, and erupt(s) collocate with negative human phenomena

actualised by an abstract noun in grammatical subject position. What was

not found in significant numbers were human agents as common collocates.

However, in five of the instances for had swept through in hard news,

human agents collocate with had swept through. Here are two such co-texts:

That handed the whole of the key Takhar provinceincluding theTalibans main garrison town of Taloqanto the Alliance. But theAlliance army had swept through other provinces. As each fell,trapped Taliban soldiers raced into two mountain ranges near theTajikistan border for a last stand.

On Sunday morning, Serbian special forces wearing whitejumpsuits and black masks that showed only their eyes hadswept through this Kosovo village, breaking down doors anddemanding to see the young men. Eight of the men they foundwere marched, hands on heads, into a narrow gully in the pineywoods . . ..

In addition to the meaning of rapid movement, meanings of determina-

tion and decisiveness are taken on when the grammatical subject is



19/24

a human agent. It must be said, however, that for had swept through,

there are only a small number of instances in the Bank of English

and so there is a danger of generalising too far beyond this data

(which is why I have not generated t-scores). It might, then, be better tohave a broader perspective by looking only at swept through, rather

than just had swept through, across news corpora in The Bank of English.

4.5.2 Swept through (with or without auxiliary)

In the 260 million word newspaper corpus, I found 437 instances of swept

through. Around 10 per cent of these have human agents as in the

following:

We were here for the sole purpose of expelling terrorists fromthe country and establishing a government that would notharbour terrorism. Before arriving in Kabul, Mr Rumsfeld sweptthrough the capitals of all three Caucasus republics and predictedan end to US sanctions, and military help for Azerbaijan andArmenia.

However, about 30 per cent of collocates relate to natural forces. Around

50 per cent of these collocates (i.e. about 15 per cent of the total 437

instances of swept through) semantically prefer the natural force of fire;

there are 42 instances of fire, 10 instances of blaze, and 8 instances of

flames with significant t-scores of 6.5, 3.2, and 2.8 respectively.

Floodwater, in contrast, just about receives a significant t-score of 2.0.

But there are only two instances of floods, its t-score being non-significant

at 1.4. There are no instances of river(s).

Since fire sweeping through is substantially more represented than river(s)/

flood(s)/etc. sweeping through, and given the t-scores for fire, blaze, and

flames, the corpus evidence is in conflict with Lees intuition of river. But

does this mean while Lees choice of specific natural force, river, is problematic,

that if he had chosen fire his interpretation would have had more validity? Inother words, does the corpus evidence suggest that the (Sowetan) marchers

referred to in after they had swept through a roadblock could be understood

by readers of hard news in terms of the particular natural force of fire?

On the basis of the hard news corpus evidence, there is indeed the

possibility that swept through is partially imbued with the meaning of fire.

But this still would not debar the human agency of the (Sowetan) marchers.

This is because readers of the hard news register will also have been exposed

to human agents such as armies, troops, etc. sweeping through villages and

the rest, that is in cases where the extra meaning of determination anddecisiveness can be activated; there are seven instances of Israeli as agents

with a t-score of 2.6; six instances of forces as agents with a t-score of 2.4.

Readers will also be aware of swept through collocating with human agents

in sports reports; as in this example from the Bank of English: Hewitt swept

KIERAN OHALLORAN 19


20/24

through without a hitch and put on a ruthless performance to win 61, 63,

62. In sum: on the basis of the corpus evidence, the (Sowetan) marchers

sweeping through a roadblock could, for regular readers of hard news text,

have some particular natural force meaning.11

This is in the sense that themarchers are unstoppable as are some fires. Nonetheless, given the evidence

mentioned above, it is unlikely that readers will not understand that the

marchers are human agents.

5. DISCUSSION

I have shown how, in the hard news register, has been simmering, as well

as erupted in the past tense, have a semantic preference for human

phenomena, rather than for volcanoes, and carry a negative register prosody.The same is true for erupt(s) although not to the same degree. However,

there is evidence that eruption in collocation is much more likely to carry

meanings associated with volcanoes inside and outside the hard news

register. So, across different forms of the lemma, erupt, there would seem to

be a cline of delexicalisation from eruption(s) to erupt(s) to erupted. This

extends Louws point (cited in Sinclair 2004: 198) that literal and

figurative are points close to the extremities of a continuum of

delexicalization since the corpus evidence suggests: (i) a cline

of delexicalisation can be related to lexicogrammar; (ii) delexicalisation

(e.g. of erupted and erupt(s)) can have a strong affinity with register.

Further corpus exploration may identify that context-dependent prosodies

can operate at the level of genre as well (i.e. a genre prosody).

Looking overall at Lees interpretation of simmering, erupted, and

swept through, there is inconsistency in the way he identifies the linguistic

data as metaphorical. The corpus evidence shows that Lee has a lexicalised

interpretation of both simmering and erupted but has a delexicalised

reading of swept through (in not relating the data to a broom, etc.). So it is

not only Lees analysis and interpretation of individual bits of data that is

problematic but also how he makes overall interpretation of the data.Widdowson (2004) uses the term pretextual to describe how certain

scholars, particularly some critical discourse analysts, interpret texts in a way

which corroborates their values while implicitly assuming that target readers

will understand the text in the same way. I have also shown how corpus

evidence is useful in avoiding:

(i) pretextual metaphorical lexicalisation of textual data

(ii) producing a misleading overall interpretation of textual data identified

as metaphorical from the perspective of readers who have beenroutinely exposed to the texts register.

I have shown how difficulties can arise in transplanting Lakoff and Johnsons

(1980) approach to metaphor from discourse level to a register level. This

raises the prospect that importing Lakoff and Johnsons discourse level



21/24

analysis into other register-based critical analyses of metaphors is potentially

problematic. I offer the method used above as a convenient way for CDA

to help reduce the following: over-interpretation of linguistic data as

metaphorical, in relation to regular readers of a range of registers. Indeed, themethod is straightforward enough to be used by students in seminars

(with an appropriate and large corpus resource), either on texts of their own

choosing or on texts previously analysed by critical discourse analysts

together with their interpretations.

Finally, I would argue that critical discourse analysts cannot automatically

claim that metaphors are lexicalised without reference to empirical evidence,

something which, in invoking Lakoff and Johnsons discourse-based

perspective, they often take as a matter of course. To be as conclusive as

possible, it must be said that a combination of corpus inspection andreader response exploration is needed. This article also offers a method for

developing constrained hypotheses about how readers are likely to interpret

what might initially appear to be metaphors. In being constrained, such

hypotheses are more likely to be worth empirically testing in reader

response studies.

Final version received March 2006

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for perceptive and useful comments on this article.

Special thanks as well to Sarah North for the same. I am grateful to Guardian News and Media

Limited for permission to use the extract from the Guardian.

NOTES

1 In its analysis of metaphor, CDA hasmostly referred to this pioneering work

in cognitive linguistics rather than any

subsequent work on metaphor. When

in 2003 Lakoff and Johnson (1980) was

reissued, it carried a new (second)

afterword which, in part, takes stock

of the ideas in the book and the impact

the book has had in its over twenty

years of circulation. There was, how-

ever, no revision of the main body

of the text.

2 On the distinction between register

and genre, I follow McCarthy and

Carter (1994) and Wales (2001), as

well as systemic functional linguisticwork on genre (see, Martin and Rose

2003: 2545), where genre is treated

at a higher level than register.

As Wales (2001: 338) comments:

It is probably easiest to see registers

as particular situational configura-

tions of linguistic resources, quite

specifically contextually determined;

genres are larger or higher-level

structures, groups of texts which

are recognised as performing broadly

similar functions in society. So [the

genre of] advertising comprises

KIERAN OHALLORAN 21


22/24

specific types which vary in choices

of linguistic features, for example

according to medium (TV, radio,

magazine, etc.), field (beauty pro-

ducts, mobile phones), tenor (target

audience, etc). Register is thus a

usefully flexible concept: we can

appreciate genres for their shared

elements; but no two registers can

be identical.

Both registers and genres can cue

a variety of discourses (in the Foucaul-

dian sense). So the above registers and

genres could potentially cue discourses

of lifestyle, health, and nutrition. A text

from the hard news register, on the

other hand, covering the 11 September

2001 atrocities in the USA, could cue

very different discourses, e.g. US nation-

alism, terrorism, religion, war. More-

over, different registers and genres

could cue the same discourse. Hard

news texts relating to the recipe register(e.g. on eating in schools) or the food

preparation instructions genre all could

cue discourses of nutrition. Discourses

cut across registers and genres.

3 The analysis of metaphor in a hard

news text by Fairclough (1989, 2001)

is endorsed by Weber (1996: 7).

4 On how UK parliamentary discourse on

one day was framed in the press

using metaphors of war, violenceetc, see: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/

conservatives/story/0,,1662005,00.

html (accessed 21 December 05).

5 Lee (1992) does not provide the

headline of this extract.

6 Here is one example of a lexicogram-

matical pattern in hard news from

Biber et al. (1999) which is marked in

contrast to evidence from academic

prose, fiction, and conversation inEnglish. Hard news is for Biber et al.

(1999: 844):

particularly marked in its use of after,

where it often provides background

information about prior events,

following presentation of the main

story line:

In a related case, four TrinityCollege Dublin student leaders

were cleared of contempt after

the society sought to have

them jailed for alleged breaches

of an earlier injunction restrict-

ing distribution of literature on

abortion services. (NEWS).

7 Such a delocalised collocational

approach ties in with connectionistmodelling of language processing.

The meaning of lexical items in a

sentence is not compositional but

distributed in connectionist represen-

tations of sentences (see McClelland

et al. 1986, Rumelhart et al. 1986).

8 T-score depends on a number of

calculations. The first is the number

of instances of the co-occuring word

in the specified span. This value isknown as the Observed. The second

calculation is based on the null

hypothesis: the co-occurring word

has no effect at all on its lexical

environment. In other words, its

relative frequency of co-occurrence

with the node word in the specified

span is the same as its relative

frequency in the whole of the corpus

under investigation. This value isknown as the Expected. The final

calculation that t-score depends on is

standard deviation. This calculation

involves the probability of co-occur-

rence of the node and the collocate

and the number of words in the

specified span in all concordance

lines. T-score is calculated by firstly

subtracting the Expected from the

Observed and dividing this number

by the standard deviation value.

9 Given that the Bank of English only

allows five lines of co-text to be

inspected, it is difficult to say whether

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/http://politics.guardian.co.uk/


23/24

the was simmering extracts come

from highly specific types of romantic

fiction which might be categorisable in

register terms rather than genre terms.

Given also the much smaller amount

of fiction data available in the Bank of

English in contrast with news data, it

would be difficult in any case to say

definitively whether was simmering

has a register prosody in specific

romantic fictional texts. But, it may

be that was simmering is strongly

associated with positive connotations

in romantic fiction more generallyspeaking, i.e. it has a genre prosody.

With a large corpus of romantic fiction

textsbroadly definedit would be

possible to investigate the possibility

that was simmering instead carries a

genre prosody.

10 See Widdowson (2000) for a critique

of Lees (1992) perspective on meto-

nymy in the Soweto text.

11 Although I acknowledge the prospect

that swept through may carry some

associations of a particular natural

force, this is not an endorsement of a

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) macro-

inference generation from a metaphor

at the register level. This is because a

Lakoff and Johnson macro-inferencefrom swept through would be based

on a compositional reading and thus

a focus on swept.

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1- CAD Metaphor at the Register Level