The Power (and Problem) of Money

Zoltán Kövecses ()
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Zoltán Kövecses: Department of American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Society and Economy, 2018, vol. 40, issue 3, 365-376

Abstract: In the paper, I examine what English idioms related to money reveal about the conceptualization of money. Most money-related idioms in English are based on metaphor. Working with conceptual metaphor theory, I suggest that money idioms in English rely especially on two conceptual metaphors: MONEY IS A MOVING SUBSTANCE / OBJECT / LIQUID and MONEY IS A FORCE. It is well-known that both in everyday talk and expert communication money is conceived of as a MOVING SUBSTANCE / OBJECT / LIQUID. Several studies have dealt with this conceptual metaphor from a cognitive linguistic perspective. However, the FORCE metaphor has received much less attention in the metaphor literature, though it is the latter metaphor that captures the way we view our relationship to money, that is, the way we see the role of money in our life in society. Given this focus, I analyze the FORCE metaphor in some detail, raise the issue of what motivates the emergence of this metaphor, and, finally, address the question of what lends especial cultural significance to it.

Keywords: conceptualizing money; money metaphors; experiential grounding for money metaphors; problem of money; power of money (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: I want to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Orsolya Putz for their valuable comments on a previous version of this paper.
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