Metaphors in linguistics

Metaphor, as a subject of research, has enjoyed great popularity among philosophers, stylists and linguists in ancient times as well as in modern days. Different approaches have been taken to explore into the nature of metaphor and accordingly varying results emerge through researchers¡¯ constant efforts. This paper, though of little length, is a venture to take a snapshot at the developments of metaphor study

Study of metaphor in view of rhetoric continued its way through the long history, and today it is still a puzzling subject in modern rhetoric and stylistics. In addition, this approach, given its deep-rooted influence over the past two thousand years or more, may be the most popular among non-researchers since metaphor, as it were, has been traditionally viewed as a figure of speech involving a meaning transference from a word¡¯s literal meaning in rhetorical theory, and so is defined in most dictionaries.
This model, however, is out of vogue among today¡¯s linguist...