Metaphorical adjective-noun phrases in German journalese
(2020) Figurative Meaning Construction in Thought and Language — ISBN: [9789027207050], 129-150, published
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- German journalese texts abound with metaphorical nominal phrases composed of an adjective + a noun, e.g. (1) Der Regierung Merkel ein sozialdemokratisches Gesicht geben (Hamburger Abendblatt 12.3.2015) ‘To give the government Merkel a socio-democratic face’ (2) Die Börse – Seherin, launische Dame oder hysterische Frau? (Die Welt 25.2.1983) ‘The stock market – prophetess, lunatic lady or hysterical woman?’ Traditional research in (metaphorical) adjective-noun combinations (Fries 1952) already recognized that “the predicational value is not the same in all adjectives and that it may vary according to the noun that an adjective co-occurs with” (Aarts & Calbert 1979: 81). Earlier studies tried to capture this variety with the description of ‘semantic (or contextual) features’ (Aarts & Calbert 1979; Meyer 1988). This kind of approach has its limitations, especially when it comes to describing metaphorical adjective-noun combinations which depend on encyclopedic knowledge as illustrated by the above examples. In spite of the structural similarity of the examples, “the semantic contribution of the adjectives to a phrase cannot be explained by a uniform function” (Strohner and Stoet 1999: 195) or by compositionality (see also Bickes 1984: 80, Neubauer 1977: 234; Tribushinina 2011). More recent research has shown that the adjectives in the nominal groups are non-predicating, as illustrated among others by Coulson’s (2001: 134) discussion of hot lid for the paper cups that contain hot drinks. Metaphorical nominal phrases can instantiate a variety of metaphorical predications. With a collection of examples from journalese texts and following Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), the study first describes the different predications that can be realized with the nominal phrase and the roles played respectively by the adjective and the noun. E.g., the adjective can be part of the expression for the source domain like in example (2), or the metonymical expression of the target domain (see example 1). The CMT has to be enriched by the Blending Theory (see Coulson 2006) for the definition of the ‘structure emerging’ from the metaphorical nominal phrase. The study further examines the nature of the adjectives most frequently used in metaphorical nominal phrases and shows that denominal adjectives derived with productive suffixes are particularly suitable for their use in metaphorical nominal phrases, e.g. polit-isch (‘political’), hemdsärml-ig (‘with shirt sleeves’). Among less frequent simplex adjectives many colour adjectives can be found (e.g. ‘green’ for the green party).
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De Knop, S. (2020). Metaphorical adjective-noun phrases in German journalese. In Baicchi, Annalisa (ed.), Figurative Meaning Construction in Thought and Language (pp. 129-150). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.9.06dek.