Denominal verbs with metaphorical meanings in British business media discourse

Abstract This study is a corpus-based examination of denominal verbs with figurative meanings in the British business broadsheet The “Financial Times”. Based on the study of word-formation as the source of metaphoricity ( Brdar & Brdar-Szabó, 2013 ; Janda, 2011 , 2014 ; Steen et al., 2010 ) and propositional analysis ( Pankrats, 1992 ; Steen, 2002 ), it presents the classification of such verbs, and discusses how and why denominal verbs with metaphorical meanings were used in the journalistic discourse about business. The empirical base of this study was a 621,000 word corpus of articles from The “Financial Times” from the years 2014–2015. The authors conclude that the frequency of denominal verbs is due to the conceptual and evaluative functions of metaphor. There is consideration of the implications of these findings for linguists, translators, ESP students and those interested in corpus research into metaphor.