MARKET Metaphors: Chinese, English and Malay

In this paper, MARKET metaphors used by different communities (Chinese, Malay and English) are laid out based on the frequency counts of these metaphors and their occurrences in different syntactic positions. The results show that certain types of metaphors have preferences for different syntactic positions for ‘market. ’ For instance, MARKET IS A PERSON in all three languages prefers to place ‘market ’ in the subject position. In addition to this finding, the choice of metaphor types by different speech communities may also reflect their perspectives regarding their country’s economy. This is evidenced by the fewer instances of MARKET IS COMPETITION in the English data. The instances that describe how the market falls (plunges and crashes) may reflect the speakers’ concerns with the maintenance of their power in the market rather than the competitiveness of their market. Therefore, through using quantitative data, this paper is able to infer the economic status of these speech communities. This can be done not only through analyzing the semantic meanings of the metaphors but also their interface with syntax