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This paper provides a framework which, being compatible with Lakoff and Johnson's theory (1980), allows a description of metaphoric verbal utterances. The development of this theoretical expansion is encouraged by Lakoff and Johnson's distinction between nonliteral and literal metaphoric expressions, and by the fact that they do not provide an explanation of the nonliteral metaphoric use of expressions as distinct from the literal metaphoric one. They simply say that metaphoric expressions are nonliteral when they are parts that are not used in our normal metaphoric concepts. This suggestion is included in our model, in which a metaphoric utterance is identified when the speaker perceives both a contextual abnormality and a conceptual contrast, and it is interpreted using, among other things, a pragmatic process of mapping to derive subpropositional metaphoric provisional meanings. This explanation of the metaphoric mechanism allows an explanation of the utterances in which nonliteral metaphoric expressions intervene without having to resort to a previous literal interpretation of these utterances.

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Abstract:In this article we show the evolution of the view of metaphor in relevance theory and challenge its deflationary account of metaphor, defended from its inception, as loosening in a continuum. In current relevance theory, loose uses not only convey implicatures but also explicatures in which ad hoc concepts appear (CARSTON, 2002(CARSTON, , 2010aSPERBER; WILSON, 2008). These, in the case of metaphor, cause the emergent property issue which, according to them, is solved taking into account that a loose use may be included in a loose use CARSTON, 2008). In addition, the most creative cases have to be explained considering an interpretation route different from ad hoc concept construction (CARSTON, 2010b). These moves generate new problems and thus we argue that metaphorical interpretation can be better explained resorting to metaphorical ad hoc concepts that result from a partial mapping from one conceptual domain into another (ROMERO; SORIA, 2005).

In this article, we assess some of the empirical work available in relation to anomaly in novel metaphor. This revision allows us to argue that the results of reaction time experiments do not provide, as many theorists have argued (Gibbs and Gerrig 1989; Keysar and Glucksberg 1992), evidence against any version of anomaly; at most they can be used against anomaly as categorial falsity. In addition, we assess the argument against anomaly based on the results of reaction time experiments to show that it is unsound. Thus, we show that contextual abnormality, a sub-propositional version of anomaly (Romero and Soria 1997/1998), cannot be rejected as one of the necessary identification conditions of novel metaphor. Furthermore, contextual abnormality is supported by the results of recent empirical studies on metaphor processing designed by neuropsychologists to test hypotheses related specifically with anomaly in novel metaphor (Tatter et al. 2002; Ahrens et al. 2007).