ABSTRACT
Towards the end of The Inheritors Lok is desperately trying to understand the terrible things that have happened to him and his people. Until quite recently, metaphor was thought of by most people as a process that was marginal to the everyday use of language, as a phenomenon that was confined to special domains such as that of literary language. In recent years linguists have devoted considerable attention to the use of metaphor in discourse. Linguistic categories are not 'given' and particular texts constitute the site of negotiation, sometimes conflict, over classificatory processes. Metaphor has a crucial role to play in allowing language to adapt to an ever-changing world. The metaphor, in other words, is highly productive. Its viability derives from the fact that there are many perceived similarities between argument and battle. Metaphor is quite clearly a major source of creativity in the everyday use of language.
