ABSTRACT
Metaphor analysis has been gaining credence as a profitable tool in critical discourse studies (CDS). This chapter provides an overview of the cognitive approach to the study of metaphor, before surveying a range of critical research that has given attention to metaphor in the analysis of discourse. It analyses an instance of branding and promotional discourse, in the process also advocating greater analytical attention on metaphor beyond language, especially visual image, given the increasing salience of the latter in contemporary discourse and communication. Metaphor has traditionally been viewed as belonging to the province of poetic and literary language. In classical cognitive metaphor theory (CMT), metaphor encompasses a mental process where a target domain is conceptualised in terms of a source domain. CMT stresses that the mapping of elements between the target and source is not random, but involves systematic and structured correspondences between the two domains.
