As we saw in chapter 1, the cognitive linguistic view of metaphors consists of several components. For convenience, here they are again:

1. Source domain

2. Target domain

3. Experiential basis

4. Neural structures corresponding to (1) and (2) in the brain

5. Relationships between the source and the target

6. Metaphorical linguistic expressions

7. Mappings

8. Entailments

9. Blends

10. Nonlinguistic realizations

11. Cultural models

We can conceive of these components as aspects of metaphor.

In previous chapters, we have already seen how some of these aspects are involved in metaphor variation. I dealt with the experiential basis of metaphor in chapters 2 and 3, and with the relationship of source and target in chapter 4, where I discussed the notions of range of target and scope of source. I will say more about the experiential basis of metaphor in later chapters (especially in chapter 10) and will treat the other two issues (i.e., range of target, scope of source) only briefly here. Moreover, some of the aspects of metaphor are such robust parts of the issue of variation that they require treatment in separate chapters. For this reason, I will discuss the linguistic expression of metaphor (in chapter 7), the nonlinguistic realization of metaphor (in chapter 8), cultural models (in chapter 9), and conceptual integration (or blending) (in chapter 11) in separate chapters.

At this point, the question for us is: Which of these aspects are involved in metaphor variation, and how? The answer is simple: all of them. The main goal of the present chapter is to demonstrate by means of a few examples how the various aspects of metaphor participate in variation.