Article published In:
Cognitive Linguistic StudiesVol. 3:2 (2016) ► pp.277–298
A variational approach to deliberate metaphors
While Deliberate Metaphor Theory is controversial from a psychological point of view, its advocates propose that the communicative notion of ‘deliberateness’ is valuable for structural-functional analyses of metaphors in the social world. Nevertheless, the inter-relationships between the linguistic, conceptual, and communicative dimensions of metaphor highlighted by Deliberate Metaphor Theory, and how these may vary across different discourse contexts, remains underexplored. This paper examines deliberate metaphor across four contrasting discourse categories of psychotherapy talk, news articles, popular science articles, and political speeches. 800 metaphor units were randomly sampled and coded under the variables DIRECT (direct/indirect), NOVEL (novel/conventional), DELIB (deliberate/non-deliberate), and CATEGORY. In the first part of the study, a hierarchical log-linear analysis identified three significant interaction effects: DELIB*DIRECT, CATEGORY*NOVEL*DIRECT, and CATEGORY *NOVEL*DELIB (χ2(7) = 0.0, p = 1). While generally reflecting the inter-relatedness of the three dimensions, the three-way interactions point towards underexplored patterns of variation which are discussed with respect to contrasting discourse objectives. In the second part of the study, six categories of deliberate metaphor features were inductively identified: elaboration, signal, analogy, stark novelty, topic-triggering, and repetition. They demonstrate diverse strategic ways in which ‘deliberateness’ is constructed across the four discourse categories.
Keywords: log-linear analysis, deliberate metaphor, metaphor variation
References
Altman, D
(1991) Practical statistics for medical research. London: Chapman and Hall.
Beger, A
(2011) Deliberate metaphors? An exploration of the choice and functions of metaphors in US-American college lectures. Metaphorikde, 201, 39–60.
Biber, D., & Conrad, S
(2009) Register, genre, and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
Bowdle, B.F., & Gentner, D
(2005) The career of metaphor. Psychological Review, 112(1), 193–216. Journal Article.
Cameron, L
(2003) Metaphor in educational discourse. Book, London: Continuum.
Cameron, L., & Maslen, R
(Eds.) (2010) Metaphor analysis. London: Equinox.
Charteris-Black, J
(2004) Corpus approaches to aritical metaphor analysis. Book, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Christidou, V., Dimopoulos, K., & Koulaidis, V
(2004) Constructing social representations of science and technology: The role of metaphors in the press and the popular scientific magazines. Public Understanding of Science, 13(4), 347–362.
Deignan, A
(2011) Deliberateness is not unique to metaphor. A response to Gibbs. Metaphor and the Social World, 1(1), 57–60.
Duit, R
(1991) On the role of analogies and metaphors in learning science. Science Education, 75(6), 649–672.
El Refaie, E
(2001) Metaphors we discriminate by : Naturalized themes in Austrian newspaper articles about asylum seekers. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5(3), 352–371.
Fairclough, N
(2000) New labour new language? New York: Routledge.
Gentner, D., & Bowdle, B.F
(2001) Convention, form, and figurative language processing. Metaphor & Symbol, 161, 223–247.
Gibbs, R.W
(2011) Are “deliberate” metaphors really deliberate?: A question of human consciousness and action. Metaphor and the Social World, 1(1), 26–52.
(2015) Does deliberate metaphor theory have a future? Journal of Pragmatics, 1–4.
Goatly, A
(1997) The language of metaphors. London: Routledge.
Guerini, M., Strapparava, C., & Stock, O
(2008) CORPS: A corpus of tagged political speeches for persuasive communication processing. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 5(1), 19–32.
Gumperz, J.J
(1982) Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kennedy, V
(2000) Metaphors in the news - Introduction. Metaphor and Symbol, 15(4), 209–211.
Koller, V
(2004a) Businesswomen and war metaphors: “Possessive, jealous and pugnacious”? Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(1), 3–22.
(2004b) Metaphor and gender in business media discourse: A critical cognitive study. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Krennmayr, T
(2014) What corpus linguistics can tell us about metaphor use In newspaper texts. Journalism Studies, (August), 1–17.
Lakoff, G
(1993) The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 202–251). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McMullen, L.M
(1996) Studying the use of figurative language in psychotherapy: The search for researchable questions. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 11(4), 241–255. Journal Article.
Müller, C
(2011) Are “deliberate” metaphors really special? Deliberateness in the light of metaphor activation. Metaphor and the Social World, 1(1), 61–66.
Musolff, A
(2006) Metaphor scenarios in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 21(1), 23–28.
Pragglejaz Group
(2007) MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22(1), 1–39.
Rundell, M
(Ed.) (2008) Macmillan English dictionary for advanced learners (2nd ed.). Oxford: Macmillan.
Semino, E
(2008) Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Steen, G
(2008a) The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol, 23(4), 213–241.
(2008b) When is metaphor deliberate? In Proceedings of Second Metaphor Festival. Stockholm.
(2011a) The contemporary theory of metaphor - now new and improved! Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 9(1), 26–64.
(2015) Developing, testing and interpreting deliberate metaphor theory. Journal of Pragmatics.
Steen, G., Dorst, A., Herrmann, J.B., Anna A, K., & Krennmayr, T
(2010) Metaphor in usage. Cognitive Linguistics, 4(4), 765–796.
Steen, G., Krennmayr, T., Dorst, A.G., & Herrmann, J.B
(2010) A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tay, D., & Jordan, J
(2015) Metaphor and the notion of control in trauma talk. Text & Talk, 35(4), 553–573.
Wee, L
(2005b) Constructing the source: Metaphor as a discourse strategy. Discourse Studies, 7(3), 363–384.
Cited by
Cited by 6 other publications
Jing, Youping & Guiying Jiang
2024. “No man is an island”: How Chinese netizens use deliberate metaphors to provide “depression sufferers” with social support. DIGITAL HEALTH 10 
Luke, Chad, Miller, Raissa & McAuliffe, Garrett
2019. Neuro-Informed Mental Health Counseling: A Person-First Perspective. Journal of Mental Health Counseling 41:1 ► pp. 65 ff.
Steen, Gerard J.
2023. Thinking by metaphor, fast and slow: Deliberate Metaphor Theory offers a new model for metaphor and its comprehension. Frontiers in Psychology 14
Sun, Ya, Deyi Kong & Chenmeng Zhou
2023. Economy or ecology: metaphor use over time in China’s Government Work Reports. Language and Cognition 15:3 ► pp. 551 ff.
Tay, Dennis
2022. Navigating the Realities of Metaphor and Psychotherapy Research,
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.