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In response to two recent publications about Deliberate Metaphor Theory (DMT) in this journal, I argue that DMT advances metaphor studies into a period with new and exciting research challenges and possibilities for application between various disciplines. I will first spell out my basic assumptions about eleven core concepts in all verbal metaphor research. Then I will present the main tenets of DMT about the difference between deliberate and non-deliberate metaphor. Finally I will briefly discuss which urgent issues still need to be addressed.

As research into the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) intensifies, questions on the implications of the findings for English Language Teaching (ELT) are increasingly being raised. In this regard, research on misunderstanding in ELF has much to offer ELT practitioners. Awareness of what causes misunderstanding means that learners can be trained to take relevant measures to avoid the triggers that contribute to the problem. Among these, ambiguity has been identified as a major source of ELF misunderstanding. This article investigates further the role of ambiguity in triggering misunderstanding and examines some of the practices speakers employ to increase the explicitness of what they say. Based on conversation analytic procedures, speakers were found to enhance the clarity of their talk through the use of a parenthetical remark that provides illustration, description, definition, and comparison of similarity or dissimilarity. Learning activities that provide learners with opportunities to use the aforementioned can contribute to developing in learners the ability to communicate effectively in lingua franca settings.

Pragmatic presupposition is analyzed as grounded on an implicit reasoning process based on a set of presumptions, which can define cultural differences. The basic condition for presupposing a proposition is represented as a reasoning criterion, namely reasonableness. Presuppositions, on this view, need to be reasonable, namely they need to be the reasonable conclusions of an underlying presumptive reasoning, which does not or may not contain contradictions with other presumptions. Presumptions are in turn analyzed considering their nature and their hierarchy, namely their subject matter and their possible contextual backing, which eliminates some of their possible defaults. This analysis of presupposition brings to light the relationship between misunderstandings deriving from presuppositional failures and the underlying system of presumptions. This approach is applied to the investigation of communicative issues within the medical context, and more precisely doctor-patient communication in diabetes cases.

This paper probes into authentic CMC business complaints and disagreements by offering a discourse-pragmatic analysis of complaint negotiation e-mails written by French- and German-language customers. The analysis focuses on an identification and description of complaint and disagreement strategies, and on the presence of internal and external modifiers. Our data, gathered ethnographically at the sales department of a Belgian multinational, shows how the customer’s discourse evolves from more neutral, problem-oriented, routinized formulations in first complaints towards more confrontational, person-oriented, ad hoc formulations in disagreement e-mails as reactions to complaint refusals. This discursive change goes hand in hand with an increase in the use of direct speech act realizations and upgraders. As it appears, in the course of the complaint negotiation, face-threat to the speaker outweighs consideration of the addressee’s face needs. The most notable cross-cultural difference we found between German- and French-speaking customers is a more explicit style in German and a more confrontational style in French, with cross-cultural differences gaining weight at the expense of international communicative norms in less routinized messages. Finally, the results of our study urge us to reassess concepts of directness, and on a societal level, they serve to promote intercultural awareness in business contexts.

One recent trend in metaphor studies is to deny the possibility that most verbal metaphors really convey metaphoric meanings via cross-domain mappings. Instead, only a small number of verbal metaphors, those presumably produced “deliberately” and “consciously,” ever alert listeners or readers to draw cross-domain inferences. Xu, Zhang, and Wu (2016. Enlarging the scope of metaphor studies. Intercultural Pragmatics 13. 439–447) describe several ways in which this “deliberate metaphor theory” may extend contemporary metaphor research. Our reply notes that this perspective is completely contradicted by cognitive linguistic and cognitive science empirical findings, and, ironically, ignores both communication and consciousness in its efforts to provide a new, improved theory of metaphor. We argue that the new alternative is a regressive attempt to take metaphor studies back to the stone ages of scholarship in which only certain verbal metaphors really reflect true metaphoric thinking.