Metaphoric Values and Disciplinary Identity in English Research Articles

In academic discourse, metaphoric expressions often encode affective values on a scale of goodness or badness. More specifically, the emergence of certain metaphors is linked to the “beliefs, attitudes, values, and emotions of participants” (Cameron / Deignan 2006: 674) – a phenomenon that is salient in everyday conversation but also worthy of attention in specialised communication. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to explore the distribution and lexical repertoire of frequent evaluative metaphors employed by leading researchers in four unrelated academic disciplines (applied linguistics; medicine; law; economics). The results suggest that metaphoric lexis contains important cues to the axiology that underlies academic discourse, as scholars assert their disciplinary identity and construct a credible authorial voice by signalling the relative value (or non-value) of knowledge claims in their writing. The impact of these pervasive items is arguably greater than the more flamboyant metaphors employed by academics to enliven their style or coin a memorable phrase. It reminds us of the imperfect, impermanent nature of language even in its most specialised applications.