Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse

This new study reconciles cognitive metaphor theory with Critical Discourse Analysis to offer a fresh approach to the study of metaphor. In applying this framework to a substantial corpus of texts from business magazines, the author shows how metaphors of war, sports and evolutionary struggle are used to construct business as a masculinized social domain. In view of the subtle but pervasive socio cognitive impact of these metaphors, the study raises the question of possible alternatives and the scope for change in business media discourse.