1

How patent can patents be? Exploring the impact of figurative language

on the engineering patents genre

Carmen Sancho Guinda and Ismael Arinas Pellón

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the import of figurative language (specifically of conceptual and

grammatical metaphors) in the discourse of engineering patents, a genre hardly

researched for stylistic and pedagogical purposes and traditionally regarded as highly

impersonal. To that end, a corpus of over 300 US electro-mechanical patents has been

analysed with the aid of a concordancing tool and applying a threefold convergent

framework that gathers the metafunctions of Systemic Functional Lingustics (Halliday

1978, 1985), the Applied Linguistic Approach to Metaphor (Low 2008) and the

Metadiscursive Approach (Hyland 2000, 2005). Findings reveal a complex network of

metaphorical schemata, most non-deliberate, which constitute a tripartite choice

dependent on the legal culture, the discipline and, to a lesser extent, on the authorial

voice. It also binds patent writers into a community of practice (Wenger 1998) sharing

a phraseological repertoire basically acquired by imitation and whose creative and

confident use requires explicit instruction.

Keywords: Patents, Figurative language, Community of practice, Metadiscourse

Systemic-functional metafunctions

2

1. Introduction and method: narrowing the focus of the Applied Metaphor Approach

Over the last two decades, a series of influential studies on the discursive application of

metaphor in the academic and political fields and in economics journalese (e.g. Cameron and

Low 1999, Cameron 2003, Charteris-Black 2004, Zanotto, Cameron and Cavalcanti 2008, White

2004) have paved the way for the current research into the pragmatic impact of tropes in

other specific professional discourses and even genres. The latest monographic issue of

Ibérica (Spring 2009), the journal of the European Association of Languages for Specific

Purposes, is a clear exponent of this shift of interest from the previous research on metaphor

and metonymy at a sentential level and within the exclusive domain of literature, to these

recent trends. Yet much remains to be investigated as to the functions performed by tropes in

the communication of specialized discourse communities, and even more so in those whose

discourses have been traditionally labelled as faceless. This paper attempts to bridge that gap

by exploring the discourse of engineering patents from a cognitive, metadiscursive and

systemic-functional perspective, and intends to serve a double purpose: didactic and

disciplinary. On the one hand, it tries to facilitate the comprehension and production of a

professional genre hardly accessed in the ESP classroom. On the other, to enrich the existing

descriptions of the genre through a blended framework virtually untapped in this type of

documents.

Our methodology comprises the scrutiny of a corpus of 333 US patents1 for

electromechanical devices granted from 1998 to 2009 (the most common inventions among

our technical colleagues at our polytechnic university) with the aid of the concordancing

program AntConc 3.2.1w (Anthony 2007)2 and the application of a threefold theoretical

framework in which Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday 1978, 1985), henceforth SFL, the

Applied Linguistic Approach to Metaphor (Low 2008) and the Metadiscursive Approach

(Hyland 2000, 2005) converge. To avoid unnecessary taxonomical complexities we simplified

3

the SFL framework to its three semantic metafunctions (i.e. ideational, interpersonal, textual)3,

under which the metaphorical and metonymic occurrences and their pragmatic functions may

be classified and discussed. Likewise, following Low’s deconstruction of metaphors in book

reviews, the Applied Metaphor Approach will draw on the traditional metaphorical schemata

proposed by Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Theory of Metaphor (1980). Finally, we will pay

special attention to the interplay between the metadiscursive functions of boosting

(foregrounding) and hedging (mitigation) as the internal strategic workings underlying the text.

2. A systemic overview of the genre

Lexicographic sources broadly define ‘patent’ as an official licence or right from the

government granting a person or business the right to make or sell a particular article for a

certain period, and by extension the term may refer to the invention so protected (Chambers

Giant Dictionary and Thesaurus 2007: 556). However, from a linguistics standpoint and

attending to our convergent framework, patents seem to mean much more. To begin with, the

ideational content of any patent document must fulfil three validity criteria: utility, feasibility

and novelty in combination with non-obviousness (in Europe called inventive step). Simply put,

inventors must realistically solve problems and plug lacks left by previous patents (the prior

art) in the same technical field and present a new product whose purpose and applications

should not be inferred from previous patent inventions or their combined elements, all this

claim as much exclusivity as possible without trespassing somebody else’s turf. In essence,

these three ruling principles coincide with those observed by Hyland (2000: 176) in research

articles: relevance, credibility and novelty. In our case, an invention is relevant when useful,

and the claiming of its property tacitly entails technical feasibility, which is but a sort of

credibility. The notion of maximum property needs clarification though: Whom does it really

4

affect or condition? Certainly it is no validity criterion for patent examiners, judges or lawyers

when dealing with the foreseeable legal effects of a patent application and litigation might be

involved, precisely because the ownership claimed seems excessive. Conversely, it is a validity

criterion for inventors and investors, who aspire to the amplest property and with it to the

most substantial profits.

As to the information conveyed by the text in accordance with these validity criteria,

the online brochure of the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation)4 distinguishes

three main informative strands: technical (provided by the description and drawings), legal

(contained in the claims) and business-relevant (bibliographical data such as the title of the

invention, patent date, names of the inventors and patent examiners, attorneys or agents, and

references to former similar patents and other technical documents). The structure of these

sections or ‘headings’ (bibliographical data, description and drawings—these latter in a

separate section), are strictly dictated by the codes and regulations of each country. In the

USA, for example, patent applications must abide by the ‘Consolidated Patent Rules’, Title 37

of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CPR37 for short) and Title 35 of the United States Code

(USC35). The patent applicants use as a reference for their application the Manual of Patent

Examining Procedures, abbreviated as MPEP.5

In the light of Genre Analysis (Swales 1990, Bhatia 1993, Bazerman 1999), the textual

component of every patent involves a number of moves or rhetorical shifts that may span

across several sections or ‘headings’ in the text. Arinas (2009) distinguished five basic moves

that could be entitled property scope, field and application, gaps in the prior art, physical and

functional description and cautionary statements. Their functions and sections most likely to

embrace them are shown in the table below.

5

MOVES FUNCTIONS SECTIONS

Property scope Delimit the invention, setting of boundaries

Claims

Field and application Indication of finality and context of the invention

Brief summary of the invention

Gaps in prior art

Antecedents (previous related inventions) and their evaluation

Background of the invention or prior art

Physical and functional description

Display of components and explanation of how they work

Detailed description (may include drawings/graphics)

Cautionary statements

Optional alternatives and specifications about the versatility of format and applications

Table 1: Rhetorical moves in the patent document and sections usually associated

Lastly, the interpersonal meaning transmitted by patents is subjected to a subtle

interplay of two strategic workings: hedging and boosting, which operate at a metadiscursive

level (Hyland 2000, 2005). While hedges emphasize subjectivity, are open to negotiation and

alternative viewpoints and withhold commitment to propositions, boosters highlight certainty,

do not leave room for other opinions and mark involvement and solidarity with the addressee.

In patents hedging is fundamentally oriented towards imprecision and boosting towards a

promotional evaluations and an apparent solidarity with the reader which is actually intended

to avoid litigation. Let us think, for instance, of the vague language commonly employed in the

denomination of well-known patented objects, such as vacuum cleaners (e.g. cyclonic

separating apparatus, dust collection unit, mulcher, etc.) or in the interactional formulas ‘One

skilled in the art will appreciate that…’, ‘It will be understood by those skilled in the art that …’.

Imprecise language is aimed at expanding property boundaries and thus dissuading

competitors from venturing into the same area, whereas solidarity metadiscourse might be

interpreted in two possible ways. One, as a deferential cognitive directive act (Hyland 2008)

6

telling the non-expert reader how to understand highly technical information without vetoing

his/her inclusion into the circle of experts, and the other as a litigation deterrent using

supposedly shared knowledge as shield. Interpersonal meaning, the least stable of the three

SFL metafunctions in the patent genre, intersects and overlaps with the ideational and textual

components, more constitutive of the genre, and provides a slight chance for variation by

means of stance and engagement markers: for example through metadiscourse items such as

attitude markers, recapitulators, code glosses and inferentials, these last three processing

information for the reader instead of letting the facts speak for themselves. Most often this

variation tends to be ‘idiolectal’ since it happens to concentrate on very few patent

documents.

3. Metaphorical schemata in the patent context

We might begin by wondering what Cognitive Linguistics has to say about such a specialized

genre. As any other communicative event, patents agglutinate several metaphorical schemata

and an active interaction between mental spaces, two operations of undoubted interest to the

cognitive analyst. But why is it relevant to make them explicit in our engineering environment?

Our point is that the insertion of cognitive features in a functional framework may become a

helpful mnemonic tool for students to 1) retain and handle high-frequency phraseology, 2)

understand better the promotional strategies resorted to in order to achieve patentability and

3) find ways to empowerment in patent writing by exercising their creativity as genre users.

Let us examine the diverse cognitive features in each of the SFL metafunctions.

7

3.1 Ideational cognitive features

On the ideational plane, the conceptual schema INVENTIONS/DEVICES ARE LIVING

ORGANISMS stands out quantitatively and establishes a metaphorical coherence which,

although unintended, may prove an aid to vocabulary acquisition. The USC35 and the CPR37

mention the term embodiment to denote the best mode or version of an invention, and as a

generic metaphor its raw frequency of occurrence is high (7,365 tokens). Related bodily

metaphors, discipline-bound, are for instance body, limbs, (long)life, experience, grow/growth,

age/aging, fatigue, deplete, die/dead, annoy, harm, suffer, squeal, response, recover, feed,

nourish, nutrient, etc, all of them with variable frequencies and present in the detailed

descriptions of the embodiment and prior art mechanisms (see Examples 1a, b, c, d, e). They

form a consistent semantic network but non-deliberate due to their lexicalized condition. It is

well-known that the lexicon of technolects normally builds upon anatomical analogies (Alcaraz

2000: 43).

Example 1

(1a) ...the main body of the aircraft

(1b) ...by a radial arm 15 of said head

(1c) Each upper portion 2 and 3 of the telescoping legs 101 and 102 respectively

(1d) In this embodiment, aging means submitting the catalyst formulation slurry to a mild

thermal treatment

(1e) ...thus the neck portions grow to yield the bonded state hardened for extended wear and

to resist stress fatigue

A second prominent schema is that of FORCE DYNAMICS. Words like bear, exert and

force frequently associate with collocates such as influence, effect, action, compromise and

8

capabilities. Force is worth-studying owing to its abundance (3,292 tokens) and versatility. It

does not mean actual physical force but a cause and effect relationship re-phrasable as cause

to + verb, make + verb, impel to + verb or oblige to + verb. Verb tenses lead to more refined

nuances which determine their confinement to certain sections, and so force to + infinitive

(e.g. force to start/move/slip, etc.) can be found anywhere in the document (3,261 tokens, see

Example 2), either to define and praise the embodiment or signal flaws in the prior art, but

forced to + infinitive (95 tokens) is restricted to criticism of the prior art and in the gerund

forcing to + infinitive (22 tokens) is limited to actions and effects realised by the embodiment

parts described.

Example (2)

(2a) ...utilizing frictional forces to stop or slow a vehicle.

(2b) ...whereby a film of fuel is forced to flow through said space.

(2c) ...this signal can be used to cycle the power on the QA chips, forcing them to reset

themselves.

A third metaphorical schema is the one of CONTAINMENT, to which prepositions are

crucial. Inside only expresses literal meanings referred to the position of the embodiment

components but the triad within/out of/ outside, by contrast, also expresses compliance with

norms and standards, collocating with words such as range, scope, bounds, principles,

framework, constraints, limits, limitations, standards, specifications or industry. Within is the

most polysemic preposition, admitting the meanings of literal positioning (e.g. within the said

housing) and legality (e.g. within standards), as well as a third one of technical feasibility

showing the embodiment properties and variables range between accepted limits (e.g. within

+ speed limits, tolerance limits, the calculations workspace, efficiency, adjustment, etc.). To

9

conclude, the schema GENERAL IS/FOR SPECIFIC is decisive in the claiming of maximum

property. Vague language, in effect, deliberately blurs domain and application boundaries by

substituting concrete referents for superordinate terms bordering on ambiguity. It is not

infrequent to find printers and photocopiers referred to as imaging systems, imaging-forming

apparatuses, colour image forming apparatuses and image transfer systems, and we have

equally seen the different denominations given to vacuum cleaners (i.e. cyclonic separators,

mulchers, etc.).

3.2 Textual cognitive features

The whole of the patent document may be interpreted as a macro-speech act, even as the

textual metaphor of a certain linguistic function. Bazerman (1999) pointed out that patents

were performatives, an idea praised by Swales (2004) as promising but in reality somewhat

simplistic. It is true performativity does play a role in the claims (e.g. I/we claim that…) and the

reporting verbs associated to the visuals (e.g. Figure X

shows/describes/represents/depicts/illustrates…) but patents are complex speech acts

simultaneously commissive-directive (offer a beneficial product and indirectly persuade about

its convenience by fulfilling the validity criteria and resorting to boosters and hedges),

representative (describe and predict) and expressive (evaluate prior art and the present

invention). For that reason the label performative acts is not completely accurate. There are, in

addition, two more issues concerning performativity that should be taken into account: its

type and personalization.

With regard to the type, it could be said that the performativity of patents is at the

same time metalinguistic (e.g. claim, say) and collaborative, since it requires at least two

parties to establish the legal nature of the document and acknowledge the significant

consequences the claims may bring about. As for personalized performativity, it is only found

10

in the claims, with almost an identical proportion between the pronouns I and we (22 and 23

tokens respectively), both outnumbered by the impersonal but emphatic construction What is

claimed is… (246 hits). Yet a large amount of patents may enunciate their claims directly,

without any performative (42 cases in our corpus). This undermines Austin’s hypothesis that

apart from reporting about the world, language also serves to do things and change it

somehow. If to this fact we add the possibility that patents may not contain performatives

anticipating the function of graphs, and even not contain visuals at all, unless they are strictly

necessary, then we can conclude Bazerman’s ‘textual metaphor’ may be an over-

generalization that does not necessarily come true. An additional argument against labelling

patents as a single speech act is that its descriptive body also tries to persuade the reader

about the patentability of the invention (which meets the three validity criteria explained

under the ideational metafunction) and there is no such speech act as persuasion. For patent

writers, in any case, the persuasive goal is implicit in the validity requisites to be met (i.e.

novelty, utility and non-obviousness) and therefore per se it may not seem to be a priority

concern during the writing process. The various instances within Example 3 enumerate some

of the most usual performatives referred to visuals (marked as V) and text (T), excepting the

legal claims.

Example (3)

(3.a) FIG.7 shows a partial perspective view of the right side of the shuttle. (V)

(3.b) German Patent No. 19632943 describes a method for operating motor vehicle. (T)

(3.c) FIG. 5c depicts a perspective view of the ball end of FIG.5. (V)

(3.d) FIG.2 illustrates a second embodiment of the bending machine... (V)

11

3.3 Interpersonal cognitive features

The interpersonal metafunction gathers four major metaphorical schemata as evaluative

devices: the PATH schema, the PART FOR WHOLE schema, the schema DESIRABILITY IS

FACTUALITY and the grammatical metaphor PROCESS AS THING. In its ‘horizontal variant’

(FARTHER IS MORE) the path schema is a low-frequency feature. Far + comparative occurs only

six times in evaluative comments and by far only twice, in positive appraisals of the invention

(see the corresponding examples 4-6).

Example (4) …and perform the work with far less expense. (Praise of invention)

Example (5) …is subjected to vibrations and shocks far more severe than those occurring

during… (Negative criticism of prior art)

Example (6) …by far strong enough to ensure the positional accuracy of the sliders… (Praise of

the invention)

In its ‘vertical variant’ (UP IS MORE), nonetheless, occurrences become more

abundant although they still remain within a low-frequency band (the most recurrent item

does not reach 70 tokens). The adjectives high and low turn into low-frequency features

(respectively 67 and 50 instances) in evaluations, while appearing over 2,000 times each in

other contexts. Let us not forget that they are common in compounds (e.g. high/low- +

temperature, speed, voltage, pressure, etc.) which often give name to the invention itself. As

evaluators, their most frequent collocations are HIGH + accuracy, efficacy, precision and

efficacy and LOW + cost, expenditure and yield. Another vertical path schema item is superior

(30 tokens), used to praise the invention globally. There are some basic collocations (see

examples 7-10) contrasting the present embodiment advantages with the deficiencies of the

prior art:

12

Example (7) Superior + TO (13) …it is still superior to the traditional piezoelectric compound.

Example (8) Superior + IN (8) Hence, the axle driving unit becomes superior in assembly

efficiency.

Example (9) Superior + NOUN denoting property (power, control, balance, performance,

resistance, etc.) (7) The EST has superior speed control and can reverse direction…

Example (10) Superior + NO PREPOSITION (2 occurrences in the same document) …the drum

brake system is considered to be superior.

The synechdochical schema PART FOR WHOLE may be applied to the statement of the

utility criterion by criticising negatively the prior art without enumerating the advantages of

the present embodiment. Analogously, the functions of the invention may occasionally be

accounted for without describing its components. One more descriptive phenomenon

involving metaphorical (or metonymic) schemata is the transposition of desirability and

factuality: DESIRABILITY IS FACTUALITY or its paraphrasing metonymy POTENTIALITY FOR

ACTUALITY (Panther & Thornburg 1999), according to which patents reveal themselves as a

blend space of both properties. Such blend underpins inventions that are not socially

demanded, realistic or eventually manufacturable devices (e.g. patents for flying saucers and

Santa Claus detectors, to cite some). Equally, it causes metaphorical (or metonymic)

displacements that end up qualifying inherent features as choices and the optional

modifications as initially desired or planned. More accurately, there is a collocational

fluctuation between the adjectives desired/desirable and preferred/preferable. The inherent

features of an invention are those which correct the flaws of the prior art and make the

inventor design his/her creation in response to certain needs. On the contrary, the

embodiment or best mode of an invention hardly (or at least not always) coincides fully with

13

its initial design, which has been successively modified for improvement and preferred among

several in that process. The collocational swap referred to above mismatches features and

inventions with preferred/preferable and embodiments with desired/desirable (Example 11).

Example (11)

(11a) Thus, it is desired to create a machine design that reduces cogging torque, without the

drawbacks of present methods.

(Inherent feature of the invention as desired to bridge the gaps of previous patents. Justifies

the validity of the present patent application at the end of the background/prior art

description section)

(11b). In the present invention, it is preferable that the braking section form a unit by itself.

(Inherent feature as alternative or preference over other modes—conceptual displacement)

(11c) If it is desired to operate the secondary units electrically independently from the drive

unit, this design is beneficial because it eliminates the separate supply of these

secondary units with an electric unit and reduces the weight accordingly.

(Alternative or choice as desire, equated with an inherent feature)

The blending diagram below (see Figure 1), based on Fauconnier’s theory (1985, 1997),

gives us an idea of the mental construct so generated and its multiple projections: firstly,

inventors are aware of the lacks of the prior art and of the validity criteria to be fulfilled.

Secondly, a logical mapping takes place—the actual embodiment, belonging to the target

domain of factuality, is defined in terms of potentiality (source domain). The resulting blend

space reflects the reserved outcome of that projection.

14

Figure 1.

A productive schema, and perhaps the most salient one given its evaluative role, is A

PROCESS IS A THING, listed by Downing and Locke (1992: 147-153) in their inventory of

grammatical metaphors. Grammatical metaphors, essentially nominalisations, are key to any

technical document because of two powerful reasons: ideationally, they transmit technical

content, while interpersonally they express different shades of commitment. A low

involvement on the writer’s part by diluting agency and increasing abstraction and vagueness,

and a high one with anticipatory and other thematising resources (i.e. by means of it-

structures and pseudoclefts, respectively). That is, they function as hedges or boosters.

15

Despite their status as low-frequency features, the constructions found in our corpus are

valuable for being precisely the only explicit devices used to create a niche for patentability.

There is a need (52 tokens) concentrates in the background of the invention (i.e. description of

prior art) whereas It is preferable (139)/preferred (62) are located in the description of the

embodiment, marking features not vital to the invention to be patented. It is desirable

(156)/desired (17), however, oscillate between both sections.

There is a need (Example 12) acts as a mitigator or hedge avoiding categorical

assertions of the type ‘The industry/discipline needs…’, which never occur, and tends to be

preceded by a transition marker (an inferential), preferably by thus and therefore. This is

logical since it is normally contained in the last paragraphs of the background of the invention

(or description of related art) section, encapsulating the gaps left by former patents and

deducing the importance of the patent application. Common verbs collocating with it are

adjust, accomplish, provide, prevent, monitor or set, which hint at the nature of those gaps.

Example (12)

(12a) Thus, there is a need in the industry for an improved driveline coupler suitable for use in

irrigation sprinkler systems and the like.

(12b) Therefore, there is a need in the art for technology which works well in 4-cylinder

engines.

It is preferable (Example 13) introduces numerous that-clauses (84 tokens), although

most occurrences are detected in a small number of documents—hence it could be regarded

as an idiolectal feature in our corpus. Common main verbs in the clause are be in the

subjunctive mood (e.g. be capable, be separate, in contact, be placed, be enclosed, be

16

hermetically sealed, etc.), is + past participle (e.g. is introduced, is formed, is mounted, is

placed, is refilled, etc.), has, include(s) and comprise(s). Constructions with to are less frequent

(48 tokens) and cluster around the verbs use and provide (and to a lesser extent dispose,

employ and include). A variant is the structure It is preferable for X to…, which scarcely

amounts to five cases and overwhelmingly collocates with to be.

Example (13)

(13a) In the present invention, it is preferable that the driving-force storing section and the

braking section be separate from each other.

(13b) It is preferable to provide a distance adjusting device which can change the distance

between the braking member 225 and the air-current suppressing wall 224 placed

therearound.

(13c) It is preferable however to adjust the resonance frequency when needed as described

above.

In a similar vein, it is preferred most often leads to that-clauses (43 cases) whose

predominant main verbs are be (subjunctive mood), is, has/have and contain. When followed

by an infinitival clause (8 hits), the accompanying verbs tend to be use, utilize, provide and

have, and with the exception of one of its six occurrences, the variant containing a subject

introduced by the preposition for (i.e. it is preferable for X to… / that Y…) is found in the same

document. Somewhat more profuse (78 occurrences), it is desirable displays a varied

collocational pattern that may include a metadiscursive item and several clausal options to

introduce novelty with respect to the previous art. Its combinations, shown in Table 2 below,

are subject to certain restrictions: some elements of the first and third columns cannot co-

occur. Curiously, here infinitival clauses (49 cases) outnumber that-clauses (23), appear in a

17

few documents and their main verbs are basically limited to have, control, prevent, utilize and

provide, all of which positively-loaded and with a generic meaning denoting the generic

benefits of the invention. These are commonly stated in the last lines of the description of the

prior/related art. In contrast, it is desired (only 17 cases) combines exclusively with infinitival

clauses and verbs of specific meaning (e.g. operate, take advantage, rotate, uncouple, etc.),

which suggests a detailed description of the present embodiment.

Accordingly,

It is

accordingly

desirable

for Alternatively, also

For this purpose, also highly

For this purpose, also often

in Frequently, frequently

From this point, generally

Furthermore, highly

gerund In addition, in fact

In particular, most

Moreover, not

that Obviously, particularly

Therefore, probably

Thus, therefore to + infinitive

Table 2: Combination of the most frequent collocations of ‘desirable’

Another thematised grammatical metaphor ruled by the schema A PROCESS IS A

THING is the emphatic what-construction (pseudocleft sentence), of which we have detected

only three cases (see Example 14) among 403 structures, and two of them in the same

document. For Hunston and Sinclair (1999: 89-90) it is a typical evaluative cluster, like the

anticipatory it-constructions formerly examined. To that we could add that both border on the

expression of attitudinal and epistemic stance: attitudinal since they underscore certain bits of

information by means of a prospective or anaphoric fronting, and epistemic as they

18

communicate assertiveness by means of non-modalisation. In our corpus, their pragmatic

function consists in selecting and interpreting contents for the reader, as a focalizing and

summarizing guidance, in the detailed descriptions of the preferred embodiment. Through

them, the reader’s attention is directed towards the most relevant aspects of the description,

but in such a way that it resembles a neutral fact speaking by itself—or at the most a subtle

suggestion that may be followed or not—and avoids the brusqueness of a plain imperative

(e.g. ‘Notice that…’).

Example (14)

(14a) What is important is that the wheel wells 45, which are common to all different designs,

are shifted apart for the new wheel transporter arrangement.

(14b) What is especially to be noted is that the engine 24 is mounted to the front portion 14 of

the frame 12 and provides power to the drive system 30 providing zero turn

capabilities.

There-constructions, also thematised, are equally scant (4 hits of grammatical

metaphors in a total of 29 cases). Their function is either to account for failed attempts at

improving the prior art, or to introduce a generalization about the lacks or needs it left

unresolved. In doing so, the gradual and unstoppable nature of the tendencies and

circumstances leading to those needs are stressed through the durative aspect of agentive

adjectives (Example 15). As expected, there-constructions concentrate in the ‘background of

the invention’ section.

Example (15)

(15a) In recent years, there have been increasing demands for small tractors with cabs.

19

(15b) There has been an increasing trend in recent years towards incorporating many types of

motion control devices in the same vehicle to control the motion of the vehicle.

(15c) Over many years, there have been attempts to provide a continuously variable

transmission (“CVT”).

We will complete our commentary on the schema A PROCESS IS A THING by touching

on three more instances: we have, the fact that, and gerund + link verb + adjective, this latter

being the least frequent of all three with one single hit and serving to praise the described

embodiment positively (Example 16). Its effect comes across as ‘axiomatic’ due to the absence

of modalisation, which confers it a tinge of ‘scientific truth’ despite the subjective evaluation it

conveys (‘simple’, for whom and according or compared to what?). The fact that, however,

turns out to be a more polyvalent construction depending on the preceding accompanying

conjunction (in Example 17 the sentence could be rephrased as ‘Because the drive gear 81a,

800a and driven gear 81b 800b, are made eccentric gears …’), although it seems to be a mere

idiolectal trait (only two occurrences and in the same document). Last, we have (8 tokens)

converts an action into a direct object (e.g. we have + authentication/access violation) while

functioning as a highly idiolectal solidarity formula including the reader in a perception of

deduction. It may as well precede mathematical formulae, which themselves condense

calculation and reasoning processes. Like the pseudoclefts in Example (11), we have-

constructions act as cognitive directives indicating to the reader those outstanding aspects

that should be noted.

Example (16) The working of the concrete machine 1 is simple and as follows.

20

Example (17) Owing to the fact that the drive gear 81a, 800a and driven gear 81b, 800b are

made eccentric gears, the throttle valve 70 can be finely opened and closed when the

opening of the throttle valve 70 is small.

A final grammatical schema6 is AN ATTRIBUTE IS A THING, composed of a definite

article, a noun, a link verb and a clause as subject complement (The + noun + link verb +

clause). In our corpus searches we analysed the behaviour of signalling nouns (Flowerdew

2008), also known as shell, carrier or metadiscourse nouns and likely to function as textual

beacons to orient the reader. Owing to their positive or negative affective load, in the

discourse of patents they are used to praise the embodiment or criticise the related art, and

might help patent examiners to visualize the strong points of the invention, the prior art flaws

it covers or the improved versions of the embodiment. We restricted the collocation to the

verb to be in the third person singular because the structure The + signalling noun + is + clause

is more focal and therefore more emphatic than its plural counterpart (e.g. The advantage is…

vs. The advantages are…). The singular version seems to single out a defining feature whereas

the plural one may be a simple enumeration.

Example (18)

(18a) The solution to this problem is to maintain the temperature of the nozzle, no higher than

its materials of construction allows. (Positive load)

(18b) The improvement is a check valve 38 resting on a seat 39 in the top portion of the choke

30. (Positive load. We take the qualifying structure ‘resting on…’ as an elliptical relative

clause)

21

Surprisingly, the number of signalling nouns employed in attributive grammatical

metaphors is very reduced: from the list of most frequent items shown in Table 3, only two

positively-loaded ones, solution (7 hits) and improvement (1 case) have been found, as is

shown in Example (18) above. They are generic and epitomize the reasons making the patent

convenient, so they require a syntax that underlines that unique underlined feature. On the

other hand, it seems understandable that nouns such as utility, usefulness, feasibility,

innovation, novelty and viability are not subject to this attributive metaphorical frame as they

are part and parcel of the validity criteria, the raison d’être of every patented invention.

POSITIVELY-LOADED HITS NEGATIVELY-LOADED HITS

advantage(s) 559 error(s) 872

solution(s) 521 problem(s) 474

efficiency 434 failure(s) 273

improvement(s) 184 stress 198

utility 54 disadvantage(s) 82

convenience 38 corrosion 76

interest 26 aging 75

refinement(s) 21 fatigue 45

applicability 20 drawback(s) 45

efficacy 7 difficulty (-ies) 37

usefulness 7 deterioration 27

remedy 4 breakage 27

feasibility 4 destruction 24

innovation 2 instability 15

novelty 1 deficit 13

viability 0 malfunction 12

hazard(s) 12

inconvenience(s) 11

danger(s) 7

Table 3: Frequencies of the main signalling nouns

Negatively-loaded signalling nouns exhibit a very different behaviour altogether. They

do not associate with the former attributive string but rather with the non-finite qualifying

cluster of + gerund, introduced by the verb to have or by cause and effect markers (Example

22

19). Once again, the combining nouns are of a generic nature: disadvantage (7 hits), difficulty

(2), danger (2), drawback (1) and hazard (1).

Example (19)

(19a) Electromagnetics could also be used but they have the disadvantage of requiring a power

source.

(19b) Mono and tri-functional species affect the rate of polymerization, possibly both in melt-

phase and solid-stating, but usually more so in solid-stating due to the difficulty of

obtaining high molecular weight especially with monofunctional, chain-terminating

species present.

(19c) The danger of deadly chlorine gas escaping caused the evacuation of nearly a quarter of a

million people from their homes or businesses.

(19d) It should be pointed out that the abovementioned adjustment devices have the

drawback of not allowing the distance between the main lever and the handlebar

handgrip to be adjusted unless the motorcycle is stationary.

(19e) Thus, the blocking means prevents the user from the hazard of hanging too many

connected medical devices 12 or 14 from the support surface 24.

Conceptual and grammatical metaphors, in sum, interweave shaping the genre at the

ideational and textual levels and generate interpersonal nuances that, being low-frequency

features, permit individual choices and maintain the genre flexible. The excerpts gathered in

Examples (18) and (19), for instance, illustrate how some grammatical metaphors may be more

or less lexicalised but their use continues being a matter of personal stylistics, as opposed to

the discipline-bound bodily metaphors typical of electromechanical engineering or the term

embodiment, covertly prescribed by the US national regulations.

23

Conclusion: metaphor as a cohesive tripartite choice

All throughout this paper we have contended that the discourse of patents is not as

straightforward or patent as might be believed but is propped up by a compact set of

metaphorical schemata, some of them deliberate, which interrelate to ensure patentability.

The three semantic planes in which they mesh (ideational, textual and interpersonal) have

been seen here separately for clarity purposes and represent different degrees of

dynamicity—the disciplinary metaphors and those directly subservient to the validity criteria

are an ideational must for the patent to exist, textual performativity may occur or not, and the

schemata studied under the interpersonal metafunction are generally optional. This complex

fabric makes patent writers constitute themselves into a community of practice (Wenger 1998:

47) drawing on a shared (and on the whole highly constrained) rhetorical and lexico-

grammatical repertoire that is not closed to individual, disciplinary and cross-cultural variation.

Although it is true that much patent writing—and consequently the acquisition of its

phraseological and structural repertoires—is based on imitation, it is no less certain that such

practice is cohesive and binds the inventors of electro-mechanical devices into a community

with a common discourse and ways of doing. It is our task as teachers of professional

communication to foster the noticing of acceptable stylistic alternatives among patent writers

and thus equip them with the awareness and tools that may enable a more confident and

creative use of the genre. We hope that the cognitive dissection carried out here contributes

to that aim.

24

Notes

1. Selected and downloaded from the website of the US Patent and Trademark Office:

http://www.upsto.gov

2. Lawrence Anthony, University of Waseda (Japan). Downloadable from

http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.htlm

3. Very basically, in SFL the ideational metafunction refers to the content of the message,

the textual one to its organization and layout, and the interpersonal one to the

communicative strategies determined by the relationships between the participants:

shared knowledge, status and power, common goals and expectations, etc.

4. WIPO brochure website:

http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/freepublications/en/patents/434/wipo_pub_l

434_02.pdf

5. Documents accessible at:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/

http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/cfr.php?title=37

http://www.uspto.gov/web /offices/pac/mpep/documents/2100.htm

Although there may be differences in the wording, the headings mentioned above are

the ones most frequently used.

6. Downing and Locke’s inventory of grammatical metaphors also includes

CIRCUMSTANCE AS THING, PROCESS AND CIRCUMSTANCE AS PART OF THING and

DEPENDENT SITUATION AS THING, but none of these have proved to be minimally

significant in our corpus.

25

References

Alcaraz Varó, E. (2000). El inglés profesional y académico. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

Arinas Pellón, I. (2010). How does a patent move? Genre analysis has something to say about

it. In Gotti, M. & Williams, C. (Eds.), Legal Discourse across Languages and Cultures (pp.

313-334). Bern: Peter Lang.

Bazerman, C. (1999). The Languages of Edison’s Light. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT

Press.

Bhatia, V. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.

Cameron, L. & G. Low (eds.) (1999). Researching and Applying Metaphor. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Cameron, L. (2003). Metaphor in Educational Discourse. London/New York: Continuum.

Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus Approaches to Critical metaphor Analysis. London: Palgrave

Macmillan.

Downing, A. & P. Locke (1992/2002). A University Course in English Grammar. London/New

York: Routledge.

Fauconnier, G. (1985/1994). Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural

Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fauconnier, G. (1997). Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Flowerdew, J. (2008). From Noun to Clause to Discourse: Reconciling Clausal and Textual

Properties of Signalling Nouns. Plenary lecture given at the INTERLAE International

Conference –Interpersonality in Written Academic Discourse: Perspectives across

Languages and Cultures. Jaca (Huesca, Spain), 11-13 December 2008.

26

Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic. The Social Interpretation of Language and

Meaning. London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1985/1987). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London/Hong Kong:

Edward Arnold.

Hunston, S. & Sinclair, J.M. (1999/2003). A local grammar of evaluation. In S. Hunston & G.

Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of

Discourse (pp.74-101). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hyland, K. (2000/2004). Disciplinary Discourses. Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Ann

Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse. Exploring Interaction in Writing. London/New York:

Continuum.

Hyland, K. (2008). Teaching and researching genre: academic writing in the disciplines. Seminar

given at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 18 December 2008.

Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Low, G. (2008). Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews. In M.S. Zanotto, L.

Cameron & M.C. Cavalcanti (Eds.), Confronting Metaphor in Use. An Applied Linguistic

Approach (pp. 79-100). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Swales, J. (2004). Research Genres: Explorations and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Panther, K. & L. Thornburg (1999). The potentiality for actuality metonymy in English and

Hungarian. In K. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Metonymy in Language and Thought (pp.

333-360). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

27

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

White, M. (2004). Turbulence and turmoil in the market or the language of a financial crisis.

Ibérica 7, 71-86.

White, M. (ed.) (2009). Special Issue on Metaphor and LSP/Número monográfico sobre

metáfora y LFE. Ibérica 17 (Spring/Primavera 2009).