Agentive and Contextual Factors Affecting Metaphorical Cognition

According to contemporary theories of cognition, the process of metaphorical interpretation is conceived of as a 'mapping' from a source domain to a target domain. The author of this paper believes, in contrast, that this process of mapping does not take place in a vacuum, but rather is influenced by both agentive and contextual factors. By the agentive factors of metaphorical cognition, she refers mainly to an interpreter's familiarity with a metaphor, and his/her background knowledge, while by the contextual factors, she refers chiefly to the textual context, the situational context and the cultural context of a metaphor. These factors cannot be neglected, inasmuch as they are aspects of the interpreter's process of metaphorical cognition.