BIBFRAME Work

Title

Creative metaphor, emotion and evaluation in conversations about work

Type

• Monograph
• Text

Contribution

• Tuck, Penelope (author )
• Turner, Sarah (Professor of cognitive linguistics) (author )
• Littlemore, Jeannette (author )

Subject

• Employees--Great Britain--Language (LCSH)
• Language and emotions--Great Britain (LCSH)
• Metaphor--Social aspects (LCSH)
• Creative thinking--Great Britain (LCSH)
• Language in the workplace--Great Britain (LCSH)
• Civil service--Great Britain (LCSH)

Language

• English

Classification

• DDC: 401/.43 (Assigner: dlc)
• LCC: P301.5.M48 L57 2024 (Assigner: dlc) (Status: used by assigner)

Content

• text

Supplementary content

• bibliography
• index

Summary

"This book explores the roles played by creative and conventional metaphor in expressing positive and negative evaluation within a particular workplace, drawing on interviews with 32 current and former employees of the British Civil Service. Metaphor is often used to express evaluation but relatively few studies have investigated the ways in which metaphor is used to evaluate personal emotionally charged experiences. The volume explores how metaphor serves a predominantly evaluative function, with creatively used metaphors often more likely than conventional metaphors to perform an evaluative function, particularly when the evaluation is negative or ambiguous. The findings provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between evaluation, creativity and metaphor. Examples, including military metaphors and family metaphors, show how creativity often comes through subverting the norms of use of a particular metaphor category, or altering the valence from its conventional use. The study elucidates the myriad ways in which people push at the boundaries of linguistic creativity in their efforts to describe the qualitative nature of their experiences. Demonstrating how metaphor can be a powerful tool for the nuanced expression of complex and ambiguous evaluation, this book will appeal to researchers interested in better understanding metaphor, creativity, evaluation, and workplace cultures"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

"I'm sort of running on this soapy conveyor belt with people throwing wet sponges at me and I've got this sodding great elastic band attached to my back" -- "I'm surprised anybody can hear anything going on for the crashing of all of these elephants in the room" -- "She did the traditional sort of chuck it all up in the air, so get all the deckchairs and throw them up in the air, cause chaos for a year and a half and then leave" -- "As people rotate round, some will spin off the merry-go-round and shoot off back to the private sector".

Authorized Access Point

Littlemore, Jeannette. Creative metaphor, emotion and evaluation in conversations about work

Admin Metadata

• Date: 2026-09-11T20:15:44.815725+00:00
• Agent: cbc
• Status: c
• Derived from: 23234116

Admin Metadata

• Date: 2026-09-11
• Cataloger id: Unknown
• Description level: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe-2-6-0/
• Description language: eng
• Description authentication: pcc