Conceptual Metaphor BUSINESS IS A JOURNEY in Business Terminology

Departing from the conventional understanding that metaphor is merely a component of rhetorical and poetic expression, the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor provides linguistic evidence that metaphor plays a crucial role in creating new specialized vocabulary. The present study attempts to apply the Conceptual Metaphor Theory to analyze the metaphor BUSINESS IS A JOURNEY in nominating business terminology. The corpus of the study comprises 179 metaphorical business terms collected from business dictionaries and textbooks. It is discovered in the study that certain attributes of the “journey” source domain are mapped onto those of the “business” target domain, resulting in four derivative metaphors in business terms, namely companies are conventionally viewed as travelers, business tools are metaphorically described as vehicles, business growth is conceptually viewed as the roadmap and distance covered, and business challenges are metaphorically described as obstacles encountered. The research findings highlight metaphorization as an effective method of business term nomination.