This paper examines the motivations of Chinese learners of Japanese across three different grades through Elicited Metaphor Analysis and semi-structured interview. Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 Japanese majors (55 in total) in a Chinese university were asked to produce metaphors that reflected their motivations to learn Japanese. The metaphor data…

Based on recent theoretical insights into the conceptual role of metaphors, this paper investigates figurative discourse in the current conceptualisation of the European Union (EU) in Polish. The metaphorical expressions found in the data present a cline of conventionality, and many of them display processes analysed by Lakoff and Turner (1989),…

On the basis of a corpus of British and German press coverage of European Union (EU) politics over the 1990s, the paper analyses uses of the geopolitical HEART metaphor. Over the course of the 1990s, successive British governments promised to work "at" the "heart of Europe". However, no one ever claimed that Britain was…

This paper introduces a method for computer-based analyses of metaphor in discourse, combining quantitative and qualitative elements. This method is illustrated with data from research on German newspaper discourse concerning the ongoing system transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Methodological aspects of the research procedure are…