Popular science concepts and their use in creative metaphors in media discourse

Résumé

Media discourse continuously makes creative and eclectic use of science terminology – often to the point of contradicting the views of scientific experts on the subject matter in question. One such instance is the case of dinosaurs which have become prominent icons in popular culture, as well as favourite metaphors in various media discourse domains. Using corpusbased data from (English-language) public discourse, the paper explores metaphors based on the source-concept of DINOSAUR, which are characterized by creative elaborations that expand the basic source-target mapping into fables or ‘stories with a moral lesson’. It is argued that in order to explicate such innovative meaning construction, the conceptual analysis of metaphor that focuses on basic mappings needs to be complemented by an approach that accommodates “blended scenarios” that are not deducible from either the source or the target inputs and constitute emergent semantic structure. It will also be shown, however, that there are constraints to this innovation potential in the form of source-based default assumptions about ‘prototypical’ source aspects (e.g., that dinosaurs were/are victims of extinction). Even if these assumptions are violated in a specific metaphor blend, they represent the standard by which the blended scenario is judged to be extraordinary, ironic, or in other ways pragmatically marked.