Applying metaphor: issues raised by a ‘prosaic’ approach

Applied metaphor studies cannot avoid the issue of rigorous identification of metaphorical, in contrast to non-metaphorical, language. Identification through defining, by setting up necessary and sufficient conditions for metaphoricity, produces apparently insuperable problems; identification through knowing and describing, in the manner Wittgenstein suggests, would seem a more promising approach. This chapter describes how, for the purposes of a specific applied research study, the unit of analysis ‘metaphor’ was established. It argues that metaphoricity can only in practice be identified relative to particular socio-cultural groups and discourse contexts. Rather than trying to find necessary and sufficient conditions for categorising metaphor, identification began by comparing possible metaphors with noncontroversial, or typical, instances. Boundary criteria were then used to limit the category by excluding doubtful cases of metaphor. A set of graded descriptors was developed for metaphors through a process of interaction between theory and data.