Source ‘ scenes ’ and source ‘ domains ’ : insights from a corpus - based study of metaphors for communication

1. Aims of paper The general aim of this paper is to present the implications of a corpus-based study of metaphors for communication in British English for the extrapolation of metaphorical ‘source’ domains from linguistic data. Our specific aims are: 1) to provide more evidence for the relevance and centrality of the notion of ‘scene’ (or ‘scenario’) in the analysis of metaphorical patterns, as has been suggested by Grady (1997a) and Musolff (2004); 2) to propose a distinction between different types of ‘scenes’, which would go some way towards explaining the relationship between Grady’s primary ‘scenes’ and Musolff’s more elaborate ‘scenarios’; 4) to show how ‘scenes’ may stand in a variety of relationship to larger ‘domains’, and to reflect on the appropriateness of generalisations at different levels of conceptual abstraction in metaphor analysis.