Metaphors in scientific discourse: some observations on a Nobel lectures corpus

 This paper aims at describing the role and the different manifestations of metaphor in scientific discourse, drawing a distinction between creative and conventional metaphors. To this end, a corpus composed of nineteen Nobel lectures, delivered by nineteen women, will be analysed by means of the critical discourse analysis theoretical and methodological tool, with particular attention to the framing that metaphor produced in scientific discourse. Our analysis shows that scientific discourse tends to privilege conventional metaphors, rather than creative ones, above all as far as the main shared domain concepts are concerned.