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In:At the Crossroads of Historical and Cognitive Linguistics
Edited by Anna Rogos-Hebda and Heli Tissari
[Figurative Thought and Language 21] 2026
► pp. 50–66

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Cognitive and historical concepts of the “career of metaphor”

The case of parasite

 | University of East Anglia
Published online: 29 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.21.03mus
Abstract
The stigmatizing metaphor of human individuals or groups as “(social) parasites” is often treated as an example of semantic transfer from the biological to the social domain. Historically, however, the application of the English term “parasite” to social entities/ actors precedes the biological identification of parasitical organisms. Even after the popularization of the concept of bio-parasites during the Enlightenment, the older figurative meaning was not fully superseded, so that in present-day use a continuum of variants is found. This chapter discusses methods of reconstructing the diachronic development of the parasite metaphor and argues in favour of an approach in which the cognitive idealizations of metaphors’ semantic “careers” are complemented — and partly corrected — by empirical evidence of socially situated metaphor use and comprehension.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cognitive metaphor theory and historical linguistics
  • 3.From socio- to bio-parasites to class- and race-parasites, and from predatory parasitism to social parasitism: Multiple metaphor careers
  • 4.Who calls whom a (social) “parasite” and why in present-day Britain?
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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