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Baker, P. 2005. Public discourses of gay men. London: Routledge.

Baker, P. 2006. Using corpora in discourse analysis. London: Continuum.
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London: Routledge.
Ellis, N. C. & M. B. O’Donnell. Forthcoming. Statistical construction learning: Does a Zipfian
problem space ensure robust language learning? In J. Williams & J. Rebuschat (eds.),
Statistical learning and language acquisition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Hardie, A. In preparation. CQPweb – combining power, flexibility and usability in a corpus
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on the text beginnings of hard news stories. In Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (ed.),
PALC 2007 Practical Applications in Language Corpora 7 (Studies in Language), 189–212.
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(Received 2 September 2010)

doi:10.1017/S1360674311000189
Kathryn Allan, Metaphor and metonymy: A diachronic approach (Publications of
the Philological Society 42). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. Pp. x + 255. ISBN
978-1-4051-9085-5.

Reviewed by Gerard Steen, VU University Amsterdam

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 REVIEWS 565

Since metaphor was turned into a figure of thought, its conceptual analysis has
expanded across a great many disciplines (e.g. Gibbs 2008). One original motivation
of the radical reconceptualization of metaphor as a figure of thought, however, came
from linguistics, with the observation that many lexical items were polysemous in
systematically metaphorical ways. For instance, see, view, viewpoint, point of view, and
so on all display ‘vision’ senses as well as ‘understanding’ senses, which led cognitive
linguists to postulate an underlying metaphor in thought labelled UNDERSTANDING
IS SEEING . What is more, one explanation of these ubiquitous patterns came from
the claim that synchronic polysemy reflects diachronic developments and language
change, to the effect that non-metaphorical senses, such as the ‘vision’ senses, pre-
dated and motivated the emergence of metaphorical senses, such as the ‘understanding’
senses. This motivation was then in turn explained by the anthropological assumption
that personal embodied experience of our concrete environment is basic and prior
and provides a model for engaging with more abstract and unfamiliar or complex
experiences, such as our psychology, relationships, time and so on. This view of
metaphor has been uncontroversial in cognitive linguistics at least since the publication
of Eve Sweetser’s (1990) From etymology to pragmatics.
Kathryn Allan’s Metaphor and metonymy: A diachronic approach is a new addition to
this tradition. It presents what could be termed a case study of the way in which English-
language terms for the domain of ‘intelligence’ (including its opposite ‘stupidity’)
have arisen over time via metaphorical and metonymic mappings. Its inclusion of
metonymy is a reflection of developments in cognitive linguistics in the 1990s, when
work on metaphor could be used as a springboard for developing related views of
metonymy as a figure of thought. The distinction, relation and interaction between
metaphor and metonymy formed the focus of new theory formation concerning the
structure and function of conceptual mappings, and it was realized that it is not just
diachronic metaphor which can account for contemporary synchronic polysemy but
that diachronic metonymy may play an equally important role. Allan is therefore quite
justified in adopting this broader scope, which raises interesting questions about the
division of labour between metaphor and metonymy as distinct processes in language
change.
This academic background is usefully evoked in chapter 1, which offers an
introduction to the book. The difference between metaphor and metonymy is
downplayed somewhat, however, the author warning the reader that she is ‘not
concerned with a narrow classification of what constitutes metaphor and metonymy
so much as with an exploration of the kinds of factors that can motivate mappings of
various kinds’ (p. 2). She adds:

I do not intend to present a comprehensive, ‘scientific’ account of the motivation of a

group of mappings; rather I am interested in exploring the variety of both intra- and
extralinguistic reasons for the emergence of particular mappings in a single semantic
field. (p. 4)

Her book is well placed, then, in this series of Publications of the Philological Society.

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 566 E N G L I S H L A N G UA G E A N D L I N G U I S T I C S

The introduction continues with an adequate account of the complexities of metaphor

research in contemporary linguistics. It sketches the main points of the cognitive-
linguistic approach and the way it branched out from metaphor to metonymy. It then
moves on to the relation with a corpus-linguistic approach and to the method of the
present study, which is based on the Historical thesaurus of English and the Oxford
English dictionary. A clear picture is presented of the way the data have been collected
and analysed, as well as a preview of the three main groups of lexical entries comprising
the INTELLIGENCE corpus: terms belonging to the lexical fields of the senses, density
and animals.
Chapter 2 deals with the senses as one conceptual domain that can act as a source for
the metaphorical motivation of lexical meanings in the target domain of intelligence.
The data comprise 157 entries relating to vision, such as wise, redewise, sightly
(including 34 cases having to do with light, such as dimwit and opacity), 32 items
belonging to touch (e.g. conceitful, apprehensive, nimble), 12 entries relating to taste
(e.g. insipid, salted), and 6 entries pertaining to hearing (including deaf). In all, these
204 ‘sense’ words make up almost 19 per cent of the complete ‘intelligence’ corpus.
The bulk (141) of these 204 ‘sense’ entries are positive in the sense that they signify
cleverness, not stupidity.
The motivation of the assumed metaphorical mappings from sense to intelligence
is discussed in a separate section, dealing with each of the senses in turn. Arguments
are related to the discussion by Sweetser (1990), but also to plain common sense.
For vision, Allan draws on the conventionalized conceptual metaphor in thought
KNOWING / UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING . This is an example of the more general position
that

our physical experience cannot be separated from the way we conceptualise, and
consequently affects language. From very early experience, humans have access to
knowledge and understanding through the physical senses, and as a result the process
(gaining knowledge/understanding) and the end result (being knowledgeable/having
understanding) are inextricably linked, to the extent that one affects the way the other
is perceived. (p. 44, my emphases, GS)

I have highlighted a number of expressions in this view because they raise a

fundamental question about the status of the mapping between seeing and intelligence
as metaphorical: when physical experience cannot be separated from conceptualization,
it is contiguous to it, and part of the same conceptual domain. Metaphor, however, is
defined in cognitive linguistics as invoking a separate conceptual domain that needs
a cross-domain mapping. The same problem holds for the situation where humans
have access to knowledge and understanding through the senses; and when, as a result,
process and result are linked, we are looking at a classic process-for-result metonymy
rather than some metaphor, which is based on a cross-domain mapping in which there
are non-literal correspondences between two conceptual domains. In other words, the
question arises why the senses are taken as a conceptual source domain in a metaphorical
mapping to intelligence, and not as a conceptual domain in a metonymic one.

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 REVIEWS 567

This question is also addressed by the author, in a later section in the same chapter.
Before, Allan discusses data from Proto-Indo-European in an attempt to check the
general validity of the claim that the senses are used ‘metaphorically’ in order to
structure intelligence. Her motivation here is to critically engage with the paradigmatic
work by Sweetser, who has claimed that ‘Vision verbs commonly develop abstract
senses of mental activity’ (1990: 33). According to Allan, however, Sweetser has been
selective in her collection and analysis of the data. In her own analysis, Allan finds that
the abstract and concrete meanings often co-occur, reflecting the generally perceived
contiguous connection between the senses and intelligence mentioned above instead
of some sort of experiential and conceptual priority of the senses which could then
function as a more basic source domain for the mapping of conceptual structures onto
the target domain of intelligence. Her conclusion to this section is rather damaging to
the classic cognitive-linguistic position:

In general, it is not possible to be certain that sense-intellection lexis is the result of a clear,
physical to mental, source to target metaphorical mapping. At best this seems simplistic,
and at worst, inaccurate; although it is intuitively satisfying it does not appear to reflect
subtleties in the etymological data. (p. 54)

This raises a problem which is addressed in the next section, in which Allan invokes a
cognitive-linguistic proposal by Chris Johnson (1999). He has suggested that children’s
acquisition of metaphorical meanings of sense-intellection terms such as see does not
proceed via metaphorical mapping from some prior concrete to some later abstract
sense. Instead, he argues, acquisition of metaphorical ‘intellect’ senses works via their
differentiation from concrete ‘sense’ meaning in a stage which follows upon a more
basic stage in which the two types of senses were still conflated, in one monosemous
lexical unit. If this is how word senses in acquisition arise, Allan argues, it might
also account for her alternative findings to Sweetser’s original picture, and it leads her
to search for more evidence for this differentiation hypothesis in non-Indo-European
languages. She consults sources on Proto-Afroasiatic and on Austronesian and comes to
the conclusion that conflation between concrete senses and abstract intellect seems to be
a general pattern, indeed, vision occupying a privileged position in that it is the clearest
case. As a result, Allan resurrects the old parallel between ontogeny and phylogeny
as an interesting point of view for further research into the conceptual connection
between the senses and the intellect, concluding that the connection between them
‘must be re-evaluated’ (p. 64).
In discussing where this revaluation might go, however, Allan does not want to go
as far as to decide that we are dealing with a case of metonymy instead of metaphor
here – which would place her in a different camp than Sweetser. Instead, she maintains
that the discussion in cognitive linguistics about the nature and function of different
types of mappings, within and between conceptual domains, is unresolved and needs
more attention. This is true. Yet some pointers to different groups of cases and their
implications on the basis of her own data might have been useful, for both historical

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 568 E N G L I S H L A N G UA G E A N D L I N G U I S T I C S

linguists and cognitive semanticists, who typically do not have access to this particular
historical point of view.
This is particularly important since the next chapter presents a data set, from the
domain of ‘density’, whose motivation ‘provides an interesting parallel to the SENSES
data, since the mappings involved in each are motivated by metonymy’ (p. 89). This
comment is not a slip but returns in two other places in the chapter: ‘and in this
sense it can be compared to the SENSES mapping explored in the previous chapter’
(p. 93); ‘Although, as with the SENSES mapping, the connection between density and
intelligence is motivated by metonymy, . . . ’ (p. 94). Where in chapter 2 the author was
not prepared to shift the analysis from a metaphorical to a metonymic footing, this has
occurred implicitly in chapter 3. The demarcation and interaction of the two types of
mapping that are the topic of the book is obfuscated. Moreover, this shift in position
about the analysis of the senses entails another critique of the position of Sweetser:
it does not just question the alleged priority of the non-metaphorical senses, as was
concluded at the end of chapter 2, but also their non-metaphorical status. Given the
academic tradition within which the book is positioned from the start, I would have
liked to see a more explicit engagement with these points.
Chapter 3 includes three main subgroups under the rubric of DENSITY: 34 terms for
wood (e.g. compounds from block, such as blockhead), 12 for earth (e.g. derivations
from clod, such as clod-head and mud-headed) and 16 for food (e.g. words deriving
from meat, beef and mutton: for instance, beef-witted, beef-brained), with 18 general
(thick, including thick-skulled) as well as 9 miscellaneous terms completing the data set.
All of these cases share the following characteristics: they conceptualize intelligence
in terms that are more common, familiar, and somewhat worthless (or without much
value) and formless. Additional interpretations are then needed to see why as thick
as two planks makes sense: if one’s skull is as thick as that, it may be hard to get
some sense into a person. The author offers interesting interpretations here of specific
sets of cases, aiming to show that ‘attempting case studies of this kind that focus on
particular mappings, either with a source or target concept as a starting point, gives the
opportunity to gain some sense of the complexities involved in metaphor’ (p. 117).
A third source domain frequently used to conceptualize intelligence and stupidity is
the one of animals, which is the subject of chapter 4. Here, too, the point is to show that
metaphorical mappings onto one of the core characteristics of people, intelligence, are
not just simple projections from self-evident properties of animals, but that additional
conceptual work as well as cultural background knowledge are at play. This is then
shown to hold for all major groups within the data, including terms related to mammals
(39), birds (36), insects (15) and fish (9).
The descending order in frequencies from mammals through birds and insects to
fish is argued to reflect an underlying principle by which humans tend to compare
themselves to those animals that are most like them. In a section invoking the Great
Chain of Being and its use by Lakoff & Turner (1989), Allan asserts that ‘The
association of people with animals in general tends to be derogatory, and often indicates
some quality perceived as “less than human”’ (p. 138). This is why most animal

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 REVIEWS 569

metaphors tend to be derogatory, as when sheep and donkeys are used to say something
about somebody’s lack of intelligence.
This argument sits well in a section that makes connections with other cultural
influences on language change, such as the medieval tradition of the bestiary, the
classics and the Bible. In that context, speculations are presented about a possible rise
in animal metaphorizing over the centuries, which is supported by the relatively more
recent dates of these metaphorical mappings of intelligence than for the other two
groups. The dates themselves, however, turn out to be somewhat problematic, which
makes the author duly cautious about her suggestions.
The latter part of the chapter then presents an inventory of the particular animals
found. Detailed discussions of specific cases go into the varied motivations for using,
for instance, donkeys and asses, sheep and rams for the metaphorical conceptualization
mostly of stupidity. Most of these present acceptable interpretations along the lines of
common sense, folklore and cultural history.
Chapter 5 offers a brief conclusion to the study. It presents a clear summary of
the differences between the three groups of source domains, and repeats the idea that
metaphor and metonymy may be hard to distinguish because they might be located on
one continuum. Methodological reflections are then offered on the various approaches
informing the study, including the issues of a corpus, diachrony and interdisciplinarity.
This conclusion is followed by an extensive appendix offering all of the data that are
part of the intelligence corpus, including lexical entries from other source domains
than the three most popular ones analysed in this book.
The value of this study lies in its detailed presentation of specific cases in the
context of similar and related cases. What is on offer here is a goldmine for historically
interested metaphor scholars and metaphorically minded philologists. However, I do
not feel that the author has succeeded in giving ‘an account of some of the factors
that can be involved in the motivation for mappings of different kinds of metaphor and
metonymy’ (p.180), because that would have required a more ambitious and distanced
approach to some of the fundamental theoretical issues in this area. The conclusion
does not offer a summary of this more general account either. This is particularly the
case for the differentiation between metaphor and metonymy themselves, which might
have afforded a solid starting point for becoming more precise about the way in which
various factors relate to these two distinct kinds of mappings, and why. It would also
have given some interesting fuel to the more general debate about what counts as a
metaphorical mapping and why. In that respect, the title of the book might have been
better if it had profiled the book’s major focus on the figurative conceptualization of
intelligence in the history of the English language.

Reviewer’s address:
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Faculteit der Letteren
De Boelelaan 1105
1081 HV Amsterdam

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 570 E N G L I S H L A N G UA G E A N D L I N G U I S T I C S

The Netherlands
gj.steen@let.vu.nl

References
Gibbs, R. W. Jr (ed.). 2008. The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, C. 1999. Metaphor vs conflation in the acquisition of polysemy: The case of SEE. In
M. K. Hiraga, C. Sinha & S. Wilcox (eds.), Cultural, typological and psychological issues in
cognitive linguistics, 155–69. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lakoff, G. & M. Turner. 1989. More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sweetser, E. 1990. From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of
semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(Received 20 September 2010)

doi:10.1017/S1360674311000190
Donka Minkova (ed.), Phonological weakness in English: From Old to Present-Day
English. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Pp. xii + 357. ISBN
0-230-52475-3.

Reviewed by R. D. Fulk, Indiana University

Phonological weakness is a familiar concept in historical linguistics, but it is

an ill-defined one. This volume brings together papers treating the concept from
various perspectives, including the theoretical and the analytic, the phonetic and the
phonological, the diachronic and the synchronic, in an attempt to shed light on what
weakness is and how it is manifested in the history of English. Phonological weakness
has been a central concern in the work of the volume’s editor over many years, most
memorably in Minkova 1991, 2003, and so the collection seems a fitting outgrowth of
theoretical advances that she has played a notable role in introducing to the field of
English historical linguistics. She expresses the hope (p. 6) that the book will become
a standard work of reference on the topic; there is every reason to think that it will be
that.
The book is divided into four parts, the first of which, ‘Phonetic and phonological
aspects of weakness’, begins with ‘Treatments of weakness in phonological theory’,
in which Kie Ross Zuraw outlines the various ways that weakness has been defined
and accounted for in phonology. To avoid the circularity of defining weakness and
weak segments interdependently, it has been widely maintained that a weak segment
is diachronically intermediate between another segment and Ø: for example, since Old
English final [A] becomes Middle English [ə], which is lost in Modern English, [ə] may

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