"THE MONEY IS SOLID METAPHOR IN ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS TERMINOLOGY IN ENGLISH*"

Abstract

Within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, as propounded by cognitive linguists (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Kövecses 2002), in this paper we deal with the MONEY IS SOLID metaphor as linguistically instantiated in English economic terminology. Whereas money in its physical form comes in the shape of notes and coins that are tangible, visible and solid, we show that money in its more general and more abstract meaning is frequently structured conceptually by means of the MONEY IS SOLID metaphor, which is firmly grounded in our knowledge of the behaviour of solid matter. Based on a corpus of money-related terms collected mainly from several English dictionaries of economics and finance, the aim of our research is to determine and examine the various conceptual mappings the metaphor under discussion rests on.