Metaphoric Expressions and Editorial Identity Across Disciplines

In order to shed further light on the use of figurative language as an identity-marking resource, this study investigates how leading scholars in four domains – Applied Linguistics, Economics, Law and Medicine – portray themselves by means of metaphoric expressions which qualify, more or less explicitly, the editorial persona. The results suggest that editors are most likely to be presented as workers, socialisers and enquirers, that is as individuals whose task is to do a job well, using their academic and personal networks to advance disciplinary knowledge (and the journal’s scientific standing). The texts in hand also show considerable differences between domains, with Law almost four times more likely than Medicine to contain such metaphors. Borrowed from the domains of employment, socialisation, exploration, domestic life, entertainment and warfare, the metaphoric lexis identified in the corpus suggests an editorial identity built on a polyphony of narratives. Thus journal editors portray themselves in a multi-faceted and inherently dynamic role, whose constituents vary in prominence across disciplinary fields.