ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates and discusses a detailed definition/description of metaphor, showing seven different kinds of interpretation (section 4.2). It goes on to survey traditional theories of metaphorical interpretation, and concludes that metaphor is best conceived as an invitation to make comparisons (section 4.3). This being the case Similarity and Analogy are important factors and they are defined and exemplified (section 4.4). Finally it delineates less central kinds of metaphorical interpretation associated with literary and artistic representation (section 4.5), such as Subjective and Asymmetric metaphors, and discusses the concept of metaphorical worlds. These phenomena, which cannot be ignored when analysing metaphors in real texts, have a strong enough family resemblance to central kinds of metaphor to be subsumed under our definition.
