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Metaphor Metaphor, traditionally considered a figure of speech, one trope among others such as synecdoche, understatement, hyperbole, is also clearly a matter of thought. Metaphor is thinking of one thing (A) as though it were another thing (B), and results linguistically in applying an item of vocabulary or larger stretch of text in an unconventional way (including unusual reference, collocation, predication, modification or complementation). In traditional terminology, A is the topic/target and B is the vehicle/source. Metaphorical thinking involves establishing some similarity or analogy linking A and B. This process is mapping, and the similarities or analogical relationships are the grounds. In the famous metaphor from J.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between (1958), ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’, these three elements of metaphor are all specified. The target is the topic we are literally talking about, ‘the past’. The source is the entity with which the target is being compared ‘a foreign country’. The ground, the similarity mapping features across them is ‘they do things differently there’. Such full specification is not always provided

textually. Metaphors such as mouse which label a new entity, the computer attachment, only mention the source. Metaphorical sources may be realised by various phrase types, not just nominals, as in the Hartley example, but adjectives, verbs and even adverbs (to think highly of ) or prepositions (to be in trouble). With these word classes the source itself may not be fully specified. When Matthew Arnold in ‘Dover Beach’

refers to ‘the naked shingles of the world’, he evokes the usual collocate of naked, body, and then explores the similarities/analogies between a naked body and a shingle beach when the tide is out. Similarly, conventional metaphors like ‘invest time’ suggest that the source of the metaphor is money. The underlying conceptual metaphor here can be labelled TIME IS MONEY. As metaphor is a matter of thought it may

have a pictorial (Forceville 1996) or other symbolic realisation: the chains at the foot of the Statue of Liberty realise NO FREEDOM IS TYING/ BINDING (Kövecses 2002); and placing bargains in the bargain basement realises LESS IS LOW.