Analyzing Metaphor in Discourse Workshop


Workshop Programme

Provisional program for each training day:

10.00–11.30 Workshop part 1

11.30–12.00 Coffee break

12.00–13.30 Workshop part 2

13.30–14.30 Lunch

Depending on interest, social-cultural program will be organized in the afternoons and/or evenings.


  • Metaphor identification in language: MIPVU

(Wednesday 4 January 2017)

  • Metaphor identification in thought: The five step method

(Thursday 5 January 2017)

  • Metaphor identification in communication: DMIP

(Friday 6 January 2017)

  • Analyzing metaphor in discourse: The effects of genre

(Saturday 7 January 2017)

In session 1, we will look at an overview of MIPVU (Steen, in press), a highly reliable and valid method for the identification of metaphor in language, and then apply the manual to a limited set of data (Steen et al., 2010, chapter 2; cf. Dorst et al., 2013; Dorst & Reijnierse, 2015).

In session 2, we will then relate linguistic metaphor identification by MIPVU to conceptual metaphor identification and analysis by means of the five-step method (Steen, 2009; Krennmayr 2013a, b), which reconstructs the related underlying conceptual analogies (limited cross-domain mappings) by means of a simple formalism.

In session 3, we will use the results of the previous two analyses to determine the communicative value of a metaphor in communication, as either a deliberate or non-deliberate cross-domain comparison between language users (Steen, 2011a; Reijnierse et al., submitted).

In session 4, we will relate our findings of metaphor in language use (language, thought, and communication) to their encompassing discourse context by modeling discourse as a matter of genre events involving the use of text in code in context (Steen, 2011b). We will then use genre properties of discourse to interpret and explain patterns of metaphor use in language, thought and communication.