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Contents › Section 9: Figurative language › answer 3 of 11

A comprehensive list of conceptual metaphors

Answered 6 February 2014

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No. The only one I'm aware of is the list you mention. The reason is that relatively few people in linguistics actually still use the X IS Y format (mostly you find it in relatively superficial treatments). Most people see metaphor as much more complex and having a single list would simply lead to proliferation of metaphors like "ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANLINESS IS EU NATIONALISM" (made up example). So I think if we brought together a list of metaphor thus identified in the literature, we'd have a rather embarrassing mixture of various agendas. It would be an interesting project for someone, though. I once started compiling a list of metaphors used in education by people who were inspired by Lakoff and Johnson but didn't get very far.

© Dominik Lukeš. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Originally published on Linguistics Stack Exchange, attributed there to Dominik Lukes (profile).