Thinking by metaphor, fast and slow: Deliberate Metaphor Theory offers a new model for metaphor and its comprehension

Abstract

The immense increase in metaphor theory and research over the past decades is posing a threat of fragmentation to the field, which has been responded to by calls for new and more encompassing approaches to virtually all aspects metaphorical. This article argues that the opposite response may be more productive. By focusing on a different way of theorizing metaphor and its comprehension, existing theories and data can be re-ordered in an alternative and coherent way, which moreover breaks new grounds in tying up both with a general theory for all utterance comprehension as well as a general theory for all cognition as involving fast and slow thinking. The core of the new theory highlights the differentiation between deliberate and non-deliberate metaphor use, related to how people see the use of a metaphor as a metaphor in communication, that is, as a metaphor that counts as a metaphor between language users. It shows how this distinction can be employed to make sense of many insights about metaphor and its comprehension in innovative ways. The article outlines the foundations of the new theory and discusses how existing data, old and new, can be seen as supporting the new proposals.