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

Abstract

The study aims to find whether the concept of metaphorical “BUBBLE” can assist us in understanding thephenomena of US housing bubble appearing from 2001 to 2007. With the node of “housing bubble”, the researcherssearch 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 bubbledevelopment and the context explains the cause and effect of housing bubble in every stage; 2)the maincorrespondences of BUBBLE metaphor have been concluded in the real estate market; 3)the combination of bubblemetaphor and orientation metaphor can explain the demand and supply curve of real estate. As a result, it can assistbusiness English teachers in teaching the supply and demand curve of the housing bubble.