This volume contains seven synchronic and diachronic empirical investigations into the expression and conceptualization of linguistic action in English, focusing on figurative extensions. The following issues are explored:
• Source domains, and their relation to the complexities of linguistic action as a target domain.
• The role of axiological parameter, the experiential grounding of metaphors expressing value judgements and the part played by image-schemata, how value judgements come about and their socio-cultural embedding.
• The graded character of metaphoricity and its correlation with degrees of recoverability/salience.
• The interaction of metonymy and metaphor, e.g. the question what factors motivate the conventionalization of metonymies, which includes the perspective that conventionalized metaphors frequently have a metonymic origin.
• The role of image-schemata in the organization and development of a lexical subfield, which raises new questions on the nature of metaphor, the identification of source and target domains and the Invariance Hypothesis.
