Belief Modelling, Intentionality and Perlocution in Metaphor Comprehension

The view that metaphor plays a fundamental structural role in organizing our conceptual systems, rather than serving a deviant rhetorical effect, is now generally accepted. Indeed, this idea drives many recent computational models (Weiner , 1984; Martin, 1990; Way, 1991;Veale & Keane, 1992a, 1992b). However, these analyses are based on the de-contextualised "contents" of the metaphor and ignore the communicative context in which it is uttered. Additionally, Davidson (1979) has warned against confusing the content of a metaphor with the intended effect of a metaphor. In his view, metaphor is not a carrier of meaning, but a recipe from which meaning is constructed. The real meaning of a metaphor lies in the changes it makes to belief structures of the hearer/reader.