Extended metaphor, discourse relations, and metaphorical content

Abstract

This paper argues that extended metaphor is a linguistic phenomenon governed by discourse structure, rather than a purely cognitive or imaginative one. I consider two theoretical traditions: non-cognitivism, which holds that metaphors invite a “way of seeing” without conveying additional propositional content (Davidson 1978, Lepore & Stone 2010), and cognitivism, which explains metaphor extension through cognitively-represented mappings between conceptual domains (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Romero & Soria 1998, 2014, Stern 2000, Wearing 2014). Both accounts predict that metaphorical extension should not demonstrate typical linguistic patterning— a prediction this paper challenges through novel empirical data. I argue that these patterns follow from two independently motivated constraints within Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (Asher & Lascarides 2003): the requirement to establish discourse relations and topicality requirements imposed by certain discourse relations (Kehler 2002, Asher 2004, Altshuler & Truswell 2022). This analysis challenges non-cognitivist accounts by showing that metaphorical content plays a role in establishing discourse coherence, and challenges cognitivist accounts by demonstrating that conceptual maps are not a sufficient explanation of extended metaphor.

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