Metaphor and economics: the case of growth

English for Specific Purposes 22 (2003) 131–151 www.elsevier.com/locate/esp

Metaphor and economics: the case of growth Michael White* Escuela Universitaria de Estudios Empresariales, Universidad Complutense, Av. De Filipinas 3, 28003 Madrid, Spain

Abstract There has been increasing interest in the use of metaphor in business and economics [e.g. English for Specific Purposes, 19 (2000) 137; 19 (2000) 149; 19 (2000) 167] both in the subject itself and as a methodological component of LSP teaching. Nevertheless, work here is still too sparse to reverse Cameron and Low’s [Language Teaching 32 (1999a) 91] statement that ‘‘the whole area of metaphor in use in ESP situations remains under-researched. . .’’. The present article attempts to further advance this research by focusing on a single concept while claiming that the field is vast and calls for work which pursues varied and multiple angles before attempts are made to establish overriding principles. The article sets out to investigate how variation in economic aggregates is put across in discourse and concludes that the concept of growth plays a key role in this respect. Growth is a concept of particular interest, both for metaphor studies and for economic discourse. Being a key economic concept, there is strong support for taking it to be lexicalised and as an example of dead metaphor. However, the hypothesis is that despite this lexicalisation, an examination, for instance, of the collocational behaviour of growth will show it to be highly active metaphorically and this in turn has significant discourse consequences. # 2003 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction 1.1. Economics Economy, in its Greek origins, had a very concrete and easily graspable application, being intimately connected with a single household and the management of its resources. In its wider, supra-household sense, historical definitions1 of economics * Fax: +34-91-394-67-51. E-mail address: white@filol.ucm.es 1 These run as follows: ‘‘the art of managing the resources of a people and its government’’ (Smith, A.), quoted in Onions (1973, p. 628); ‘‘a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life’’ (Marshall, 1890), quoted in McCloskey (1990, p. 148). 0889-4906/03/$22.00 # 2003 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0889-4906(02)00006-6

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have tended to highlight the inter-relationship between resources and collective humanity as central to the meaning of the term. A standard contemporary definition runs as follows: Economics=A social science concerning behaviour in the fields of production, consumption, distribution and exchange (Isaacs, Egerton, Marton, Smith, & Wright, 1990, p. 125) The key economic concepts here involved are of a largely abstract nature, namely, production, distribution, consumption and exchange. Yet when associated with concrete items, these concepts become more manageable and comprehensible. For instance, application of quantitative and numeric variables to the production, distribution, consumption and exchange of such items as wheat, oil, coffee and copperpiping or cars, computers and pencils gives us a very tangible physical picture. What we are faced with are simple cases of concrete weighing, measuring and counting— perhaps the most characteristic and reiterative activities at the micro-economic level. They are at the same time elements of the most basic experience of human beings in daily social and economic interaction. However, when we move away from concrete items, when we consider economy to be a composite of goods and services or if we come across a book entitled Measuring the economy (Johnson & Briscoe, 1995), we may feel that we are faced with a task which involves greater conceptual and linguistic challenges. The reason for this may simply be due to the increase in complexity, given the leap in scope from micro- to macro-economics. More significantly, however, it may stem from the fact that while macro-economics is, in the last analysis, an aggregate of micro-economic activity, it, nevertheless, confronts us with variables which firmly place us in a more abstract world and which consequently require a different type of yardstick. In this respect, a key paradigm of economics as it has evolved in the Western world is the notion of the scarcity of overall resources2 and the drive to increase them. My study will be set in this context of economic increase with the objective being to examine how discourse handles performance variation. To pursue this end I first need to look briefly at the nature and scope of metaphor. 1.2. Metaphor The theory of Cognitive Linguistics outlined over the last couple of decades claims that metaphor permeates daily conventional language and that this same process underpins the language of all abstract reasoning (amongst others see Dirven & Paprotte´, 1985; Gibbs, 1994; Johnson, 1987; Ko¨vecses, 1986, 1988; Lakoff, 1987, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff & Turner, 1989). The theory distinguishes

2

Note how Samuelson and Nordhouse (1992, p. 3) highlight this idea: Economics is the study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people. (my emphasis)

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metaphor as the abstract principle from metaphoric expressions which would be the concrete instantiations of that metaphor, as is exemplified in Fig. 1. 1.3. Metaphor and economics If metaphor is ‘‘the omnipresent principle of language’’ (Richards, 1936, p. 92), if it is ‘‘a highly revealing instance of the human capacity for making sense’’ (Steen, 1994, p. 3), if it is ‘‘the main mechanism through which we comprehend abstract concepts and perform abstract reasoning’’ (Lakoff, 1993, p. 244) then in an abstract discipline like economics we should expect to find its use ubiquitous. In fact, hot on the heels of Lakoff and Johnson’s 1980 book, Henderson (1982) and Jeffreys (1982) broached this subject. Their work was soon followed by McCloskey (1985, 1990). In more recent years and at the moment, work on the metaphoric dimension of this kind of discourse is showing a dramatic increase (Boers, 1997a, 1997b, 1999, 2000; Boers & Demecheleer, 1995, 1997, 1998; Charteris-Black, 2000; Dudley-Evans & Henderson, 1990; Henderson, 1994, 2000; Herrera & White, 2000a, 2000b; Ja¨kel, 1993; Lindstromberg, 1991; Lo´pez Maestre, 2000; Mason, 1990; Smith, 1995; White, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2001). Such a proliferation of work is in itself indicative of how metaphor is felt to permeate economic discourse. While Boers (2000), Charteris-Black (2000) and many of the authors just mentioned present a wide range of metaphors prevalent in economics discourse, the present study, addressing how language expresses the process of variation—particularly incremental variation—in economic activity, focuses on a single area dominated by a single concept. Basically, we find that with the exception of the highly formalised literature in the field of Macroeconomics and Economic Dynamics, heavily biased towards applied mathematics,3 variation in global economic aggregates is characteristically referred to by the concept of growth. Although this term is now totally institutionalised as an indispensable economic performance indicator, its history in this precise sense is relatively short.4 Pinning my enquiry to a single factor will enable us to see not only expected analogies but also discover metaphoric developments which at first sight may even appear incompatible with those analogies. A further contribution of this article to the literature in the field will be to show 3

Even though here too, metaphor and other tropes are quite to the forefront as McCloskey shows with respect to the operations of mathematics applied to economics. See especially McCloskey (1985, pp. 79– 86) where he concludes ‘‘no economist could speak without metaphor and the other master tropes’’ (p. 86). In a later work, and in his characteristic style, the same author adroitly reaffirms this point: ‘‘The jumble of responsibility, habit, conflict, ambition, intrigue and ceremony that is our working life is supposed to be similar to a chalked curve on a blackboard’’ (McCloskey, 1994, p. 329). However, this aspect of metaphor, deriving from formalisation procedures, will not concern me as this particular kind of discourse is not considered. 4 Witness how a pioneer in the field, as is Solow (1969), had to struggle to establish the term in its modern sense (i.e. the increase in economic aggregates in general) and wrestle it away from its tie with the economic processes characteristic of developing countries only. However, even today some seem to continue to entertain such a conception as Blaug (1994, p. 121) points out: ‘‘. . .some have even questioned whether there is such a thing as ‘development economics’ or whether the entire field is just economics applied to the Third World’’.

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Fig. 1. Relation between metaphor and metaphoric expression.

how a lexicalised, mainstream economic concept, such as growth, evidences systematic metaphoric behaviour in the collocational patterns it enters into. I shall now examine these in detail.

2. The case of growth 2.1. Sources and methodology My sources have basically been the British press (particularly The Financial Times) over the last decade. I also incorporated growth collocations which I came across in economics books and journals. My objective has been to come up with as wide a range as possible of these collocations in economic discourse rather than a concern for any frequency count and subject these collocations to analysis to ascertain the predominating patterns in operation. As the examples used were modified and reconstructed for classroom purposes over the years, they will have to be taken as edited or constructed versions, except where reference is specifically given. However, to support their viability as evidence, I then checked them against the Collins Cobuild Bank of English entry for ‘‘growth’’ as it stood in October 1996 and carried out a further check on the collocational behaviour of growth in a full year’s issue of the Financial Times. While examples from these two sources were not incorporated into my evidence, the latter check does provide an objective referent regarding the occurrence and frequency of what had appeared in my body of exemplification (see later, Section 4). The fact that some of my examples originate in specialist economics books may serve to qualify Henderson’s (2000, 169ff) claim in querying the validity of ‘‘trying to reach conclusions about the use of metaphors in formal economics, by using evidence from journalistic writing’’. He also remarks that recourse by teachers of English for Economics to such sources ‘‘is not uncommon’’ (p. 169). Two points are relevant in these respects. Firstly, regarding ESP teaching, Henderson points out that his interests originated from the stance of the economist teaching formal eco-

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nomics to students of a non-English speaking origin. He is thus in the inverse position to the typical ESP teacher plotted by Hutchinson and Waters (1987). In the intervening years, ESP has doubtless focused more on the subject specific features of disciplines (as the literature and attendance at conferences in this area reveal), but nevertheless, such practitioners are rarely trained as lawyers, doctors, architects or economists and, in any case, remain, as Dudley-Evans and St John (1998, chaps. 1 & 5) note, primarily language teachers. Thus the use of journalistic material for language teaching is favoured by non-specialists for its ‘‘convenience’’ (Henderson, 2000, p. 169) and adaptability. Secondly, it is difficult to disagree with Henderson’s well argued and balanced differentiation between formal economics and journalistic accounts of business and economics issues. Nevertheless, in the case of growth, I will argue that at least certain examples appearing in economics writing reveal use of the same patterns as found in journalistic discourse, reinforcing Henderson’s notion of ‘‘family resemblance’’ (p. 179). 2.2. Basic quantification Definitions of economic growth typically highlight the notion of increase and in concrete situations it is often highly relevant to quantify the extent of the increase in question. This leads to a more literal than metaphoric use of growth since it acts as a sheer quantifiable referent allowing the term to appear with core quantity modification collocates such as percentage, factor or other numeric values as seen in the following examples: (1) (2) (3) (4)

The government expects the existing 2% growth to increase. Growth should double in the coming year. The tiger countries are close on registering double-digit growth. ‘‘The basic assumption was that growth proceeded exponentially’’ (Burningham, Bennet, Cave, Herbert, & Higham, 1984, p. 233).

This use of growth and its frequency is a mark of how the word has become lexicalised in economic discourse as a mainstream term for aggregates of economic activity. But the point is that despite this lexicalisation, when economists and journalists deal with economic performance the metaphoric sense of growth is highly active and indeed more complex than what might be expected from a folk understanding of the concept. 2.3. ‘The economy is a living organism’ This metaphoric potential derives in the first place from the core sense of growth as proper to the domain of living things. In this respect the leximetric principles guiding the hierarchical structuring of word meaning entries in the Collins-Cobuild English Dictionary (1990) is highly revealing. In that dictionary, the entry for the verb ‘‘grow’’ shows its living organism sense as most frequent. On the other hand, in the case of the abstract noun ‘‘growth’’, its economic sense takes top position while

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the living organism sense is relegated to seventh place. Both facts are significant and support, on the one hand, the living organism domain as the core constitutive sense behind the term ‘‘growth’’ while, on the other hand, the predominance of the economic sense of growth is evidence of the extent to which the term has become so naturalised in the field of economics. An initial framework then for handling the understanding of economics could commence with the general metaphor: the economy is a living organism. Even at this superordinate level, the metaphor is available for linguistic realisation since one of the classical referential terms to cover the diverse range of economic activities is ‘economic life’. Witness, for example, how Solow (1969, p. 1) poses the crucial question as to the scope of the field of economic growth: (5) ‘‘What features of economic life is the theory of growth supposed to decide or explain?’’ But the productivity of the metaphor will be more obviously available at the basic level (see Lakoff, 1987, pp. 31–40; Ungerer & Schmid, 1996, pp. 66–78)—for instance that of the plant, animal or human level—giving us the following subcategorisation within the general metaphor just mentioned: the economy is a plant or the economy is an animal or a human. 2.3.1. ‘The economy is a plant’ All three sub-domains share common or overlapping features so that certain metaphorical expressions could be assigned to two or even three of these. On the other hand, certain attributes are more proper to one or other sub-domain resulting in metaphoric expressions more proper to those fields. In practice, it can be said that the salient feature of a plant is its propensity for growth and this growth may vary widely under different circumstances. Basically, a scenario of growth would show a cyclic situation within which certain factors would contribute to and foster effective growth (and are therefore positive) while others would impede or diminish it (and are therefore negative). There are many realisations of this metaphor which can be classified under different semantic and syntactic functions as laid out in the following sub-sections. 2.3.1.1. Growth as agent. The instances of growth, appearing with partial predicate information in Fig. 2 may be judged to refer to natural growth in the plant world— for example, growth revives every spring; withering and wilting take place in autumn and winter. This surely would be the core meaning and use for growth. However, examination of journalistic writing on economic issues shows that these expressions also naturally occur in the context of economics. Examples 6–9 show how economic growth can be seen to revive, recover, or break out in accordance with the prevailing circumstances in the world of the economy. (6) Experience shows that growth revives after a period of stagnant economic activity at the bottom of a negative cycle.

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(7) Growth is certain to recover in the US under the present $ exchange rates. (8) Growth is set to break out all over Europe in the wake of generalised interest rate reductions. (9) With growth now pushing up across all sectors, employment prospects are optimum. Hence, the core sense of growth is tapped as a basic source for the conceptualisation of economic activity and, secondly, core growth vocabulary is immediately available in describing specific aspects of that activity. Furthermore, the word growth here fulfils the classical role of semantic agent and syntactic subject. 2.3.1.2. Growth as affected participant. Proceeding with the same binary opposition of positive and negative, we also find the use of growth in the semantic role of affected participant and the syntactic role of object (Fig. 3). This outline is fleshed out, in the context of the economy, in examples 11–15 where the relevant circumstances, for example, control of public debt, low interest rates, etc., nourish, boost, or nurture growth, while opposing circumstances, galloping public debt, political uncertainty, etc., smother or arrest existing growth.

Fig. 2. Growth as semantic agent and syntactic subject in the plant world.

Fig. 3. Growth as affected participant.

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(11) The control of public and fiscal debts will nourish growth. (12) The 12 percentage point easing of interest rates will boost growth. (13) A drop in interest rates, albeit symbolic, at this juncture would nurture the incipient growth signs already appearing in the demand for raw materials. (14) The galloping public debt is liable to smother whatever growth is left in the economy. (15) The political uncertainty is sure to arrest existing growth. 2.3.1.3. Grammatical modification of the word growth. Modification provides a further way in which metaphorical expressions of growth are extended indefinitely (Fig. 4). All these modifiers provide collocations of growth consistent with the context of plant life and, once again, they can easily take on a metaphoric role in the context of economics: (16) Healthy growth is primarily due to a competitive economy. (17) Sustained growth which will not trigger inflation is the primary objective of the government. (18) The only answer to stunted/lacklustre growth is a substantial easing of interest rates. 2.3.1.4. Novel expressions. Once established, a metaphor is realised through an open-ended number of metaphorical expressions. With use these expressions become conventional and thus fixed in the language system. Indeed, they become so fixed as to acquire a referential, denominative value. Hence, given the lexicalisation of growth as an economic referent, it is quite likely to be written off as ‘dead metaphor’. This is hardly surprising, given the unobtrusive nature of the working of basic metaphor which is, in the words of Lakoff and Turner (1989, p. 80), ‘‘conventional, unconscious, automatic and typically unnoticed’’. This can lead us to overlook two essential points: on the one hand, the productivity (see Clausner & Croft, 1997) of conventional metaphor and, on the other, its potential for novel, creative use. In this connection, I would like to call to mind a statement made over 60 years ago by Richards (1936, p. 101): ‘‘however stone dead5 metaphors seem, we can easily wake them up’’. Thus, while the conventional nature of the above growth expressions and their integration in economic discourse might hide the metaphorical basis which underlies them, that basis can be easily foregrounded by more novel or creative expressions which are possible and indeed are effectively driven by the prior existence of the metaphor. For example: (19) Growth is in full bloom at the moment and should continue in the coming months.

5 I feel Richards is using ‘stone dead’ as an intensifier and so is not referring to any category of metaphor as we might find in contemporary discussions where the term (or similar terms) is used for metaphors that cannot or certainly normally are not woken up (see Goatly, 1997, pp. 31–35).

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Fig. 4. Grammatical modification of growth.

(20) Forced growth, like a hot house plant, may well be spectacular in the short term but, alas, short lived. (21) Emu makes you grow.6 Although I am restricting the main discussion to the instances of growth as a word, this does not mean that we lose sight of the wider category of growth as domain (see Ko¨veces & Szabo, 1996, pp. 329–330) which dramatically broadens the possible instances of the use of the metaphor. For example, when the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, went before his party’s convention in October 1991 to comment on his perception of the economic situation at the time, he did not use the actual word growth but the sense and the force of his words derived from the existence of both the domain growth and the metaphor of growth as discussed earlier: (22) The green shoots of economic recovery. . . The same pattern of the use of the domain growth but not the word growth is evident in the following cases: (23) The worst of the recession may be over but the economy still needs some time to put down roots before any significant results can be expected. (24) Seed capital (=initial investment anticipating significant results which, however, will not be expected to materialise until a certain period of time has elapsed). Hence, despite being lexicalised, the point is that such examples bear out Richards’ claim as to the waking up of dead metaphors (see also Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 55). Now, while the world of plant life provides a core source for the metaphoric structure of growth in economics, further growth collocations lead beyond this 6

This is a chapter title from Johnson and Briscoe (1995) where the author stylistically personalises economic activity as a reader. Emu=European Monetary Union.

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source to the animal and human worlds giving us the metaphorical configuration I shall deal with in the following section. 2.3.2. ‘The economy is an animal or a human’ A cursory look at plant and animal/human as metaphorical sources displays a certain similitude—both share the nature of living organism, which explains why many of the collocations in the previous section could also be listed under the present heading. At the same time there are certain differences which ensue from the saliently animal and/or human characteristics, particularly those of a sentient and/or intellectual dimension. Growth collocations evidencing such characteristics show considerable variety, ranging from the form of such bodies—shoulder, face, back— through actions and processes characteristic to them—anaemia, aggressiveness, depression, bloatedness and so on, as seen in Fig. 5 and in the examples below. (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35)

Depressed growth augurs high joblessness. Jobs improve on the back of strong growth. Growth poised to break out all over the world. The economy is sick and growth mortally wounded. Bloated growth won’t last. Growing demand from the foreign sector spurs growth at home. Extra growth will shoulder the main burden of the Treasury’s drive to reduce the deficit. Western companies just cannot close their eyes to the aggressive growth of the tiger countries. The measure is intended to rein back runaway growth. Will troubled birth hold back growth ? Industry hopes for swift growth after DVD’s troubled birth.7

As in the case of the economy is a plant, variety in the metaphors under investigation runs right across semantic and syntactic boundaries. Thus, as well as the

Fig. 5. Body and embodied terms and processes collocating with growth.

7 Examples 34 and 35 refer to the issue of prolonged intercompany copyright negotiations delaying the commercial launching of the Digital Video Disc (DVD) (see The Financial Times, 31 October 1996, pp.1 & 15).

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classical case of growth as semantic agent and syntactic subject (25, 27, 29, 31), we also see it as the affected party (30, 34) and as accompanied by modification (25, 26, 29, 31, 32, 33). Furthermore, with this conventional way of conceiving economic growth through the animal or human metaphor firmly established, any novel or creative expression consistent with the existing metaphor will be available. Thus, examples such as the following are quite feasible: (36) The government’s dismal handling of the economy so far makes its quest for the growth hormone sound like a quixotic endeavour. (37) The measure will give anaemic growth a much needed shot in the arm.8 The collocations here accompanying growth are a step removed from the more immediately available domain of plant growth. Nevertheless, their communicative force and ease of comprehension ensures their natural occurrence in the context of economic issues. Such use, in turn, firmly establishes conventionality and at the same time prepares the way for further development by the use of any novel or creative metaphorical expressions consistent with the established metaphor. On the other hand, the evidence presented in this section is yet another example of the deep rooted anthropomorphic centrism in our culture—the drive towards understanding phenomena of the world in human terms. Consequently, the increase or decline in economic activity, which would ultimately be a quantitative issue, is seen as imbued with the communicative force of matters such as physical development, health, illness and death, so vital to mankind. So far, I have shown how the core sense of growth and what might be expected of that concept are highly active metaphorically in economics discourse. Further collocative evidence, however, forces us to recognise a very unexpected and altogether different though, nonetheless, highly productive metaphorical process which is diametrically opposed to growth in this core sense and which I shall examine in the following section. 2.4. ‘The economy is a mechanical process’ In sharp contrast to the previous examples, it is very surprising to find growth, captured as a mechanical activity. The collocations arising in this respect, on face value, overtly jar with the nature of growth as a living process. Yet recourse to this metaphor is by no means rare but, as our examples show, it is a rich and varied source, and recourse to it repeatedly occurs in writing or discussion on the economy.9 If we look at the following list of words or expressions out of context, they

8

From the point of view of grammatical versatility, this latter example is a good instance whereby growth can be seen in a recipient role (see Downing & Locke, 1992, 117ff). 9 Witness also the adroit combination of the living and the mechanical in the following mixed metaphor from a general Economics book: ‘‘Some economies can be likened to rather unstable and temperamental machines that overheat and occasionally break down’’ (Burningham et al., 1987, pp. 1–2) my emphasis).

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may well be felt to transport us to the world of force dynamics and mechanics: trigger, kick start, spark, fuel, drive, accelerate, catalyst, main engine, locomotive, lever, put a damper on, put the brake on, keep on track, pick up steam, derail. However, if we go on to contextualise these terms in the field of economics, we realise how established they too have become in that world: (38) Any increase in interest rates at this time would trigger a sharp decline in growth. (39) Drastic measures are needed to kick start growth. (40) The fear is that high demand may spark inflationary growth. (41) The overseas sector is expected to fuel/accelerate/drive growth throughout the year. (42) With economic activity in the doldrums a catalyst is desperately needed to get growth going. (43) Germany remains the main engine/locomotive of growth within the EU. (44) The government desperately need to get the growth engine going. (45) The present overheated growth cannot last and is sure to cause painful correction. (46) Weakening consumer demand will put a damper on growth. (47) The Prime Minister’s primary concern must be to keep growth on track. Furthermore, as with the case of the living organism metaphors, once the mechanical is established as a conventional metaphor in the context of economics, this paves the way for more sophisticated or creative use within that same metaphor. One way in which this can arise is by recourse to more specific or technical aspects of the mechanical world as can be seen in the following cases: (48) Control of monetary policy must be retained to give direct access to the levers of growth. (49) Growth shifts up a gear as demand increases. (50) ‘‘Manufacturing has a special role to play on both the demand and the supply side of a modern economy, as what Kaldor called the ‘flywheel of growth’’’ (Coates, 1994, p. 17). These juxtapositions of the natural and the mechanical worlds may seem to confront us with an incompatible alliance of radically distinct and indeed mutually exclusive domains. Yet a number of important reasons may be given to counteract the apparently anomalous combination of the above source domains for the same target domain of economic growth. In the first place, there is the dominant position of mechanical and industrial elements in Western culture and particularly in industry and economics since the start of the industrial revolution (see, amongst others, Chenery, Robinson, & Syrquin, 1986; Landes, 1969; or Mokyr, 1990). Secondly, the fact that mechanical processes are at the very core of economic activity—they are essential elements in manufacturing and distribution processes—establishes a close connection between the two

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fields of mechanics and economics and that very contiguity can provide motivation for the use of one to conceptualise the other. Thirdly, as mechanical factors and their accompanying lexis, have growingly invaded and, consequently, now pervade daily life and habits in general, they have thereby acquired a colloquial, commonplace status. Hence, what would, in origin, be a specialised knowledge, the language of which would, in turn, be a specialised jargon, becomes conventional and thereby swells the resources of conventional language providing ready-made sources for metaphorical exploitation. As further seen, once established as conventional, that conventional metaphor provides the springboard for more sophisticated or novel instantiation as the use of ‘‘flywheel’’, for example. Fourthly, the skill of metaphor in transcending the classical taxonomy of the world into the compartmentalised great chain of being (Lakoff & Turner, 1989, chap. 4) has always made trans-category relationships a very productive and highly communicative device. Fifthly, mechanical devices and their constituents are overtly concrete and visually available while their processes are perceived to display the most reliable of sequential structural patterns. Consequently, in accordance with the thinking of mainstream conceptual metaphor, they are highly appropriate as a source domain. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the core sense of growth as a natural phenomenon, showing clearly a dynamism that can increase or decrease and that can be acted upon in multiple ways so as to bring about these effects, allows us to conceptualise economics as a dynamic process. The examples given from the world of mechanics likewise evidence the quintessential purpose of acting on dynamic processes in a parallel way. Hence, at a more abstract semantic level, both systems configure an identical scenario, namely a situation in which a dynamic process is acted upon by elements which drive the speed, intensity or scope of that process. In this respect, a closer analysis of the complementary nature of both structures shows us that these two metaphorical domains actually coalesce within one of our most basic and pervasive conceptual frameworks, namely that of motion and I shall analyse this issue in the following section.

3. The motion paradigm Any motion process characteristically exemplifies a schema consisting of a point of departure, a trajectory and a goal. Secondly, external factors by their inherent nature typically aid or hinder the movement involved to varying degrees or may even completely impede it altogether (see Lakoff, 1993, pp. 220–222). Thirdly, mechanical developments have characteristically spelled qualitative leaps in motion

Fig. 6. Growth collocates showing organic cycle pattern.

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potential for mankind and it is significant that the mechanical collocates of growth are essentially of the vehicular type suggesting the power and drive in motion that they originate. Re-analysing our set of examples from the perspective of motion, it can be affirmed that the factors shown to impinge on growth from one or other source domain largely coincide.10 While the living organism metaphor presents growth as a vertical movement (of the more is up type) and the mechanical metaphor as a horizontal movement (of the journey type), the crucial issue in both cases is the decisive role played by aids and impediments in the strength and drive of the respective movements. Nevertheless, it seems to me that a significant difference may ensue from framing growth through one or other source domain. The scenario from the living organism domain corresponds largely to that of a life cycle: birth)development)zenith) decline)death. As is plain to see, this is a dynamic process and the movement inherent in such a process can be acted upon in ways that alter that movement in an incremental or decremental manner which is precisely what is found in the evidence and which can be seen in Fig. 6. At the same time, the foregoing analysis is consistent with a mainstream methodological approach in economics literature, namely the tendency to frame economic performance over time as prototypically cyclical (see, amongst others, Lucas, 1981; Mitchell, 1941; Rostow, 1960). On the other hand, framing growth from the mechanical source domain as opposed to framing it from a living organism domain leads to the following crucial distinction. For instance, while any living organism develops and then dies, the goal of economic growth is the pursuit of a perpetual on-going process. This latter would be a contradiction in terms with the movement schema implicit in the dynamic process of a living organism as seen above. Yet such an on-going process may be much more conceivable as a logical possibility in the case of the movement schema derivable from the mechanical domain. The evidence from this domain does highlight patterns of initiation and continuity, comparable to the evidence from the living organism domain, with many factors implying incremental values. By contrast, however, the decremental values in the mechanical case are more focused on control of that movement for the purpose of its maintenance or continuity rather than heralds of its extinction, as was the case with the living organism pattern. Where extinction does happen to arise, in the mechanical domain, it does so as the result of accident rather than as a norm which was the case in the natural cycle—see Fig. 7.

4. Representativity and impact of growth metaphors As my study had sought to come up with as wide a range as possible of growth collocations without considering frequency, the question may be posed as to the 10 Not only is this parameter utterly pervasive in economics discourse but the skill with which it is occasionally used cannot but draw admiration. Witness in this respect Abramovitz’s (1986) title: ‘‘Catching up, Forging ahead, Falling behind’’.

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representativity of my exemplification. For the sake of verification, a full year’s edition of The Financial Times (1997) was subsequently checked, seeking out the instances where growth collocated with the main adjectives listed throughout this study (Table 1). The results consistently showed an enormous bias in favour of the more conventional forms and those of positive connotations, while, at the other end of the spectrum, few if any instances of the more creative appeared. Such a distribution is no more than expected and conforms with mainstream cognitive linguistics theory of metaphor. On the one hand, the proliferation of conventional expressions provides evidence of their common denominator in the relevant conceptual metaphors and at the same time it supplies the springboard for nonconventional or more creative use of these same metaphors. On the other hand, creative or novel uses, by their very nature are necessarily rare, but the potential impact and communicative force of such uses are inversely related to their frequency of use. In this respect, evidence of the qualitative impact attained by creative uses is highlighted by the fact that it is precisely these uses which tend to be picked up and quoted by other authors as highly significant or as decisive in confirming or carrying the point they are making. For instance, in our exemplification, example 50 shows how Coates (1994, p. 17) picks on Kaldor’s ‘‘flywheel’’ metaphor, while in connection with the example quoted in footnote 10, O’Keefe and Williamson (1994, p. 894) seize on and laud Abramovitz’s title in the following way: ‘‘Moses Ambramovitz

Fig. 7. Schema for mechanical collocates of growth.

Table 1 Frequency of adjectives collocating with growth in Financial Times 1997 rapid slow forced firm steady controlled sustained aggressive

1083 1014 689 604 590 432 428 412

healthy depressed accelerating booming weakening explosive stagnant lacklustre

411 314 213 169 161 105 95 85

swift faltering scant overheated bloated runaway stunted wounded anaemic

71 50 36 36 31 31 19 17 12

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captured these ideas with his apt phrase ‘Catching Up, Forging Ahead, and Falling Behind’’’.11

5. Lexical priming and metaphor We may pose the question as to the motivation behind the array of growth collocations presented earlier. Language is pre-eminently relational so that the use of any given term will tend to call up or trigger the use of related words. This has long been dealt with in lexical and cohesion studies. Furthermore, certain rhetorical uses of language (e.g. poetry, proverbs, publicity slogans, press headlines, etc.) exploit this natural potential to very high degrees of sophistication. One assessment of such language behaviour could assign this phenomenon to the use of lexis and concretely to lexical priming. In this view, the use of one lexical item can prime or trigger the use of related items. Indeed this natural tendency towards lexical synergies in discourse is so marked that certain experimental studies need to neutralise its effect. For instance, when researching readers’ responses to the differential appropriacy of idioms in discourse, Nayek and Gibbs (1990), needed to adopt strategies (e.g., the minimising of semantic associates in the story contexts presented to experimental groups) to pre-empt such priming. In fact for these authors, the tendency is so powerful that their avoidance strategies are only of limited effect: ‘‘we are less sure whether it would be at all possible to write story contexts that highlight certain conceptual metaphors that did not have some degree of thematic overlap with the words in the idiom phrases’’ (Gibbs & Nayek, 1991, p. 95). Hence, in relation to the present study, the very presence of the word growth may be seen to provide the gateway for the entries outlined earlier. This may certainly play a role, but if our analysis were merely to concern itself with this as a lexical phenomenon, we would be overlooking both the striking systematicity which characterises it and the productive nature of that systematicity. From the evidence on growth presented, it can be claimed that it is decisive for words to relate within certain structures. This is crucial since priming turns out to be available, not just relevant to the word or concept in question but relevant to the structural patterns this word or concept may fall into. In this respect, one of the most productive structural patterns is, undoubtedly, provided by metaphor. Hence, in the case of growth, lexical priming may contribute towards explaining the wealth of closely related animate collocations available but it does not seem a satisfactory 11 In the latter example, rather than being creative in itself, the novel use springs from the adroit combination of conventional expressions providing a very sophisticated interrelated motion cluster. Moreover, it is not just Ambramovitz’s title which is apt. Rather, the relational network implicit in that title and the values associated with the entailed inferences are what provide the author with the structural tools to compare changing economic performance over time in certain countries relevant to each other. Thus, throughout the article, such a structure is evident in the multifarious motion expressions, particularly of a competitive race nature, which pervade the text and which effectively show the performance of any country in question by means of its relative position to that of another country. For a linguistic discussion relevant to the schemata involved in the expression in question, see Fauconnier, 1997, pp. 25–33.

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explanation of why such a totally alien word, as ‘‘flywheel’’, can collocate with growth. The ease with which this word does collocate with growth in the economic domain seems to be better explainable as being motivated by the prior existence and conventional use of the metaphor growth is a mechanical process which typically paves the way for any novel linguistic realisation within that same metaphor. Furthermore, to focus on structural patterns as distinct from lexis can have significant consequences for other areas of language use, as for instance, the pedagogical area, which will concern us in the following section.

6. Pedagogical implications The field of language teaching is always keen on developing the pedagogical implications of theoretical linguistics. Some 30 years ago Chomsky’s statement that he didn’t see any applications of generative linguistics to language teaching (Wilkins, 1972, p. 171) came as a disappointment to practitioners in that field. Cognitive linguistics, on the other hand, with its vocation to be interdisciplinary, can claim to offer a great deal to the language teacher. Work in this respect, though still scant, is showing considerable advances in recent times. There has been both a generalised call in language learning bibliography to assign metaphor due consideration (Dudley-Evans & St-John, 1998, p. 84; Lewis, 1993, p. 198; McCarthy, 1990, pp. 27–30; Nattinger, 1988, pp. 73–75), and concrete work on the pedagogical role of metaphor (see amongst others, Barcelona, 1997; Boers, 1997a, 1997b, 1999, 2000; Boers & Demecheleer, 1995, 1998; Cameron & Low, 1999a, 1999b; Charteris-Black, 2000; Charteris-Black & Ennis, 2001; Ko¨vecses & Szabo, 1996; Lindstromberg, 1991, 209ff; Low, 1988; MacLennan, 1994; Ortony, 1993a, 1993b;12 Rolda´n Riejos, 1999; Trosborg, 1985; Ungerer & Schmid, 1996, 267ff). All this work is highlighting the explicative value and productive patterns underlying metaphor and the potential value that these bear for teaching. Yet a query raised by Graham Low at a recent conference13 is the following: is this work getting into textbooks? Perhaps, we would have to answer ‘‘very scantily’’, but it does seem to have begun (see e.g., Powell, 1996a, p 46, 1996b, p. 20; Tullis & Trappe, 2000, pp. 118–120 and 125). In pursuit of this line of research, we have conducted experimental procedures to test how a focus on the growth vocabulary in keeping with the approach of this article might affect the learning process of students of English as a foreign language (Herrera & White, 2000b). There we show that the student group who were given a Cognitive Linguistics approach to the growth concept in keeping with the structural patterns laid out above, as opposed to the student group who were given a more conventional separate items explanation, showed a clear advantage in so far as memorisation, recall and test performance were concerned. As well as these advantages, supported by objective data, we can also vouch for advantages for which as 12 See especially the section ‘‘Metaphor and Science’’ (various authors) pp. 447–558 and ‘‘Metaphor and Education’’ (various authors) pp. 559–632 13 Researching and Applying Metaphor IV, Tunis, April 2001.

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yet we count on evidence of a more subjective nature–student reaction, comment and feedback in the wake of the experimental sessions. In this respect, some students declared it was a discovery for them to realise that the concept growth was so rich and not just a matter of basic quantification (as seen in Section 2.2), others declared their interest in taking up an optional subject in the syllabus denominated ‘‘growth’’, others were impressed by the patterns the metaphors showed. We also felt that exercises of this nature have a very positive effect in raising foreign learners’ awareness of the decisive role of modifiers and qualifiers. The challenge in this area of tapping metaphor in second language learning, as I see it, is to translate the often rather complex findings of metaphor research into attractive materials which facilitate learning in a way that is economical in both student effort and time.

7. Conclusions This article shows how quantitative events in the world of economics are typically understood and explained in metaphoric terms. Framing these events via the growth metaphor presents us with a case whereby ‘‘the relationship between metaphor and narrative is continuously reinforced’’ (Henderson, 1994, p. 360). Furthermore, examples quoted earlier show that such patterns are not merely due to the rhetorical prerequisites of journalism but are also to be found, at least to some extent, in specialist economics literature. The evidence presented supports the claim that the lexicalisation of a term does not pre-empt the metaphorical potential inherent to that term from surfacing. Rather, this is shown to be productive and systematic and to drive novel uses of the metaphor. Such productivity and systematicity conflates some of our over-arching metaphors bringing together what Henderson (1982, p. 149) called the ‘‘two basic metaphorical traditions: the mechanistic and the organic tradition’’ (see also Henderson, 1994, p. 360), while both combine within the ubiquitous motion metaphor. In so far as pedagogical considerations are concerned, an awareness of the inferential structure of the growth concept, accompanied by a rich and coherent lexical field would empower the native speaker student in the field of understanding and argumentation. Grasping that inferential structure plus a reasonable number of the lexical items of its accompanying semantic field would equally empower foreign language learners enabling them to take advantage of the relational or interconnected vocabulary structures and equipping them to use such structures, not only in the context of economic growth, but in any of the many other contexts where they would be equally feasible.

Acknowledgements My gratitude to my institution, Escuela Universitaria de Estudios Empresariales, Universidad Complutense, for supporting my presence at conferences where parts of the present work were first presented. I would also like to thank my colleagues,

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Honesto Herrera and Toma´s Martı´nez Vara for their invaluable help, and anonymous referees for their advice.

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