A Corpus-based Study of Bubble Metaphor in the American Real Estate Market

Guihang Guo, Zhaohui Wang

Abstract


The study aims to find whether the concept of metaphorical “BUBBLE” can assist us in understanding the
phenomena of US housing bubble appearing from 2001 to 2007. With the node of “housing bubble”, the researchers
search the collocates of it and dig into the context of highly frequent collocates. The study finds: 1)the collocates of
“housing bubble”, mainly categorized in “v+N”, “n/adj+N” and “N+v”, reflect the 5 stages of housing bubble
development and the context explains the cause and effect of housing bubble in every stage; 2)the main
correspondences of BUBBLE metaphor have been concluded in the real estate market; 3)the combination of bubble
metaphor and orientation metaphor can explain the demand and supply curve of real estate. As a result, it can assist
business English teachers in teaching the supply and demand curve of the housing bubble.


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5430/ijelt.v5n2p34

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