Cho, Youngsoon. (2022). Problem-solving metaphors and their uses. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 30(4), 105-123. The purpose of this study is to describe the conceptual metaphor of problem-solving in American English and to analyze its use based on the COCA corpus. Since the puzzle metaphor was explained as a characteristic problem-solving metaphor of American culture in Lakoff and Johnson (1980), no detailed linguistic research has followed. In this study, we reveal that there are two prevalent types of conceptualizations of PROBLEM and PROBLEM- SOLVING in English: PROBLEM is a given task such as a puzzle, and PROBLEM- SOLVING is fulfilling the task by finding the correct answer; PROBLEM is a danger, and PROBLEM-SOLVING is eliminating the danger with or without the correct answer. In the first type of metaphors, there emerges an entailment that the correct answer is in the problem itself, not in the outside environment. Analyzing the use of metaphors reveals that the machine breakdown metaphor and the disease metaphor are major alternative metaphors to the puzzle metaphor. The two metaphors ask us to find the correct answer before eliminating a danger, showing that, in American culture, finding the correct answer is crucial in problem-solving regardless of how a pr...