‘‘It’s not rocket science’’: metaphors and idioms in conflictual business meetings MICHAEL HANDFORD and ALMUT KOESTER Abstract This study examines the use of metaphors and idioms (MIDs) in two con- flictual business encounters from two corpora of spoken business and work- place interactions. As overtly conflictual or aggressive forms of communica- tion are unusual in business encounters, these meetings are anomalous within both corpora. While MIDs have been described as devices employed to develop interpersonal convergence and solidarity in face-to-face conver- sation (Carter 2004), this study examines their use to create the opposite e¤ect—to mark divergence. All the MIDs in the data were identified and categorized according to type (metaphors, formulae, and anomalous collo- cations) and function (evaluation, intimacy, intensity, and discourse). The results showed that the two meetings contained a higher concentration of MIDs than other comparable nonconflictual encounters in the corpora. The MIDs identified performed similar functions in the two meetings and were used most frequently to express intensity. The intimacy function was used to express divergence more frequently than convergence, and often marked highly conflictual or even rude exchanges in the interaction. Keywords: conflictual language; business meetings; metaphors; idioms; divergence; spoken corpora. 1. Introduction Metaphors and idioms are often described as devices employed to de- velop relationships and create a sense of interpersonal convergence (Gibbs and Gerrig 1989; McCarthy 1998; Moon 1998; Carter 2004). While metaphors as persuasive and argumentative devices have been examined within political discourse (Charteris-Black 2005; Mio 1997; Musol¤ 2004) and business media discourse (Koller 2004, 2005), the use 1860–7330/10/0030–0027 Text & Talk 30–1 (2010), pp. 27–51 Online 1860–7349 DOI 10.1515/TEXT.2010.002 6 Walter de Gruyter