Combining large and small corpora to investigate tuningdevices around metaphor in spoken discourse

We studied metaphorical language in spoken discourse from a number of settings to explore the words and expressions that regularly appear in the cotext of both conven-tional and innovative metaphors. We found that expressions that we call “tuning de-vices ” are frequent in all the data consulted. Tuning devices have a number of differ-ent functions, clustered around the central notion of suggesting to the hearer how to interpret a metaphor. Our data was drawn from 2 computerized corpora, 1 small enough to be handsearched as well as concordanced, the other very large. Both small and large corpora present research problems, and we argue that combining the 2, by using a small corpus as a starting point for searches in a large corpus, may reduce the disadvantages of each. This article investigates the nature and role of a set of words and phrases that con-sistently co-occur with linguistic metaphors in spoken discourse, and that, for rea-sons that will be explained, we call “tuning devices. ” These are exemplified in the following extracts from our data by just, like, and sort of:1 1. … just “make a mental note” 2. This is where my family grew up and there’s a lot of history here and erm so you s it’s like sort of “putting down roots ” here Expressions such as these have been described as “hedges ” and as “vague lan-guage. ” The term hedges was put forward by Glucksberg and Keysar (1993); a