"Building out the Business": the role of metaphor in the construction of corporate identity in business audio-conferencing.

Using a specialized, self-compiled corpus of in-house corporate communications in audio-conferencing mode, the study discovers the significance of both cognitive and linguistic metaphor in the construal and display of corporate face, image and identity. Quantitative and qualitative methods illuminate the essentially interactive patterning of metaphorical systems over extended discourse. The study illustrates the value of empirical work on naturally-occurring data as well as the functionality of newly-emerging business genres.