Search

This article is an attempt of description and typology of the signals of metaphoricity present in applied texts. The illustrative material consists of metaphorical uses of sports vocabulary. The author suggests a division of metaphoricity signals into macro-textual and micro-textual. The macro-textual ones include the apparent clear contrast between the metaphorically used vocabulary, e.g. words related to sports, and the global topic of the text and the genre of the utterance. The micro-textual signals include indicators of metaphoricity at the level of metatext and at the level of the subject text. Metatextual signals are: the use of inverted commas, the use of the 'so-called' operator, the use of words such as like 'proverbial', 'peculiar', etc. Micro-textual signals in the subject language consist in changing the valence of the metaphorized word and altering its standard collocation profile. The metaphoricity signals in question only guide the interpretation of the meaning of words and expressions; they do not unequivocally determine their metaphorical meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]