Frames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language

“Karen Sullivan has written a great book. The problem she solved is deep: In a sentence that is understood via conceptual metaphor, how can you tell which words fit the metaphoric source, and which fit the metaphoric target? Frames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language explains, for example, why spiritual wealth is about the richness of spirit, while blood-stained wealth is about ill-gotten wealth. The solution comes from integrating independent results in cognitive linguistics. How much more elegant can you get?”

“Within cognitive linguistics, there is a strong grammatical component that studies the meaning and structure of language, but cognitive grammarians have not paid a great deal of attention to metaphor. Cognitive linguistics also has a strong component that studies metaphors, but conceptual metaphor theorists have not paid a great deal of attention to grammatical aspects of metaphorical meaning. In her book, Karen Sullivan provides a wonderful combination of the two efforts. The result is a new and convincing theory of the interplay between metaphorical meaning and grammatical structure. This is a substantial contribution to the field of cognitive linguistics.”

“This is a major advance in the study of metaphor, and broadly useful to those interested in literary metaphor, grammatical analysis, and the place of metaphor in thought. Sullivan's close-up corpus-based analyses dig into what are sometimes metaphor analysts' "old favorite" examples, and let us see the the fine-grained texture of the relationships between form and meaning. If you already recognized the inseparability of metaphoric language and thought from the literal, you'll gain a newly solid basis for that recognition from this book.”

“ Frames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language is a stimulating read that gives new insights about well-known issues and supplies a fresh approach to the study of conceptual and linguistic metaphor. Also, the book is engaging from the point of view of both form and content. In fact, even if the topic on which the research focuses is not easy to address, the use of examples taken from a corpus and the systematic contextualization of what is theoretically described make the reading clear and pleasant to those who work on metaphor and related fields.”

“[...] I recommend Frames and Constructions in Metaphoric Language as an addition to the professional library of theoreticians and researchers in conceptual metaphor, syntax, and Cognitive Linguistics in general. Students in these fields would also benefit from the book’s clear explanations of fundamental theories and concepts as well as examples of their application in linguistic research.”

“Sullivan’s style of writing is clear, consisting of explanations of the theories and terminology used, well-founded argumentations, and many sources for further reference. [E]veryone interested in the (conceptual) structure of metaphoric expressions should at least take notice of this publication. It opens “a semantic toolbox” (p. 17) from which many of us can undoubtedly benefit.”