Metaphor and ideology in business and economic discourse in British and American English

This study investigates the relationship between metaphor and ideology in business and economic discourse. The analysis of a corpus of comparable texts in British and American publications reveals that whilst both British and American varieties draw on phraseology from nature, their relationships with the physical world have slightly different overtones. After identifying the most frequently-occurring metaphors in business and economic discourse in British and American English, it assesses their socio-cultural implications with the intent of uncovering converging and, above all, diverging viewpoints and attitudes. The diverging viewpoints emerging from this analysis highlight a fundamental difference between the roles of American economy and that of Great Britain within a world context.