ABSTRACT
Metaphors often appear in stories, both in literary fiction and in more casual conversations. Often metaphors are used in story-telling for much the same reasons and with much the same effect as in other forms of discourse, e.g., to express complex or abstract ideas or to induce audiences to experience a particular relationship among apparently unrelated ideas. These uses of metaphors are treated in detail in other chapters in this volume. This chapter will focus on phenomena of a different sort, in which:
a) Stories are told with apparent metaphorical intent, as in ‘George Bush was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple’ (Jim Hightower at the 1988 Democratic National Convention); or,
b) Metaphors refer to, imply, or have the potential to activate stories, as in ‘Mitt Romney is a vulture capitalist’ (Rick Perry, during the 2004 Republican Presidential Primary debates), where ‘vulture capitalist’ potentially activates a story about vultures and a story about a certain kind of capitalist.
