Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in Tschechien im Spiegel von Metaphern
Economic Development in Czechia through the Lens of Metaphors

Summary/Abstract: Previous contrastive research has focused predominantly on comparing metaphorical expressions with regard to their degree of equivalence. In doing so, the quantitative representation of different types of equivalence has been largely neglected. A comparison of metaphors in German and Czech economic language revealed significant differences in the occurrence of metaphors in both languages, the reasons for which are examined here. Another task to be addressed was identifying the most productive conceptual domains (concepts) from which the metaphors were drawn. There are no fixed rules for assigning metaphors to one concept or another, and such assignments are often made subjectively. Therefore, the assignments made in this study are justified, and the reasons for the productivity of the source domains are explored. The analysis is based on current vocabulary with the aim of determining which metaphors reflect the economic developments of the past four years. 300 metaphors analyzed were taken from the bilingual journal of German-Czech economic affairs “Plus” and from publications of the German-Czech Chamber of Commerce, which are targeted at professionals. Czech equivalents were assigned to the German metaphors, forming the corpus for the analysis. Significant differences were found in the quantitative occurrence of metaphors in both languages. Fully idiomatic, figurative metaphors in German often lack a figurative equivalent in Czech, even when the corresponding image does exist in Czech. This is primarily due to stylistic reasons as the expression appears too expressive and figurative in Czech. Figurative verb constructions and vague, hard-to-understand metaphors are also paraphrased in Czech. Therefore, in the educational process, students should be made aware that the use of metaphors in both languages is by no means symmetrical, and that expressive, figurative German metaphors are often matched by sober paraphrases in Czech.

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