ABSTRACT
In both life and fiction, metaphors are produced and understood in context. Such contextualizing reaches beyond “the surrounding verbal text” (Forceville 1995: 697). This verbal context, or co-text, almost goes without saying, though sometimes forgotten or minimized in examples cited by theorists. Generally, it is both available and extendible in concentric circles (from the sentence that frames a metaphor through the utterance to the discourse whole). However, the non-verbal contextual parameters involved—or their very involvement—are anything but manifest, and so far less known. They still need to be mentioned, and often even to be redefined, uncovered, established, sorted out: adequately theorized, in short. Thus, Forceville suggests that context
may also consist of the perceptual environment in which the metaphor is used, of the (sub)cultural context, and, in the case of persuasive or didactic communication, of the intentions that the utterer of the metaphor has. In the broadest sense, these intentions always are the triggering of some sort of effect in the addressee’s cognitive environment. (ibid.)
