4) Metaphor as diatextual yeast of organizational identity

Abstract

Inglês: Metaphoric discourse enlightens the unstable and restless semiotic core of human condition/nature, which triggers simultaneously the dynamics both of thought and of language. The recent perspective of cognitive linguistics allows us to overcome the traditional stance aiming at aligning the special rhetorical and expressive strength of metaphor with its evident argumentative nature. The psycho-semiotic approach to metaphorical discourse moves precisely in this direction, framing each human event of sense-making within the notion of diatext, in order to highlight the never-ending dialogical tension betweenthe―text ‖ and the―context‖ of e nunciation and/or of reception. Hence, the diatextual approach-here proposed as methodological option-focuses attention on the pragmatic orientation given to some of the patterns proposed by cognitive linguistics in metaphorology The aim of the present paper is to show through a corpus of empirical data collected within the organizational/professional contextusing narrative interviews how metaphors actually work as―yeast ‖ for human discourses.
Key words: metaphor; organizational identity; psychosemiotic approach; discourse analysis; diatext.