Motivations for everyday English metaphors for speech and linguistic communication are analyzed in the framework of a set of basic metaphorical structures: directionality, language as an exchange of objects, mapping of mind as a body in space, thought as a journey and speech expanse as a shared journey, and game and combat metaphors. Arguments are presented for the cognitive reality of this pervasive, systematic metaphor complex, and its creative extensions in poetic language are explored. The extent to which the effectiveness of poetic metaphor results from activation of an underlying conventional system is assessed, and the correlation between metaphors and instances of polysemy and semantic change is discussed. (Copyright 1993, Sociological Abstracts, Inc., all rights reserved.) (J. Hitchcock in LLBA 1993, vol. 27, n. 3)