Pragmatic Forces in Metaphor Use: The Mechanics of Blend Recruitment in Visual Metaphors

Abstract

Metaphor and analogy are cognitive tools which, in serving specific goals and descriptive needs, are subject to a host of pragmatic pressures. Knowing that these pressures will shape the interpretation of a given metaphor, an effective communicator will exploit them to structure the conceptual content of the metaphor in such a way as to maximise its perceived aptness and argumentative force to the recipient. This paper considers the form that such pressures can take, and the computational strategies that a communicator can emply to maximise the effectiveness of a given metaphor. We choose as our domain of discourse a collection of visual metaphors which highlights the effect of pragmatic strategies on metaphoric communication.