The paper adopts the methods of visualization in bibliometrics to examine the current research topics and development trends in the field of metaphor studies by studying articles published in top international journals of linguistics in the past decade. It shows that current studies mainly choose to adopt the experiment method and use authentic data from language corpora, covering topics ranging from metaphors in body language, multimodal metaphors, and emotion metaphors to the relationship between identity and metaphor. And the studies feature awareness of register and genre, a turn to social and empirical approaches, and an integrated consideration of language, thought and communication. Furthermore, the studies are increasingly framed in the theoretical approaches of cognitive neuroscience, discourse analysis, discourse dynamics, and eco-evolution.