Metaphor, a pervasive and almost unavoidable phenomenon in most fields of human life, has generated long and abiding scientific interest for more than two millennia. A brief overview of metaphor theories is given with a particular emphasis on differences and similarities in their treatment of production and perception of figurative language. We start from Aristotle who, by likening metaphor to an implicit simile, laid the foundations of rhetorical tradition of metaphor interpretation that dominated philosophical and linguistic treatises until early XX century. Leaving aside stylistic handling of metaphor as a pure embellishment of literary, mostly poetic pieces, we proceed with metaphor research of the XX century when scientific attention shifted from superficial linguistic manifestations of figurative thought to its deeper, i.e. cognitive, foundations. This point is illustrated by several influential theories. We discuss I.A. Richards’ Interaction Theory of Metaphor and its continuation in M. Black’s Substitution View. We go on to examine basic premises of G. Lakoff and M. Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory and its numerous modifications, all united by their emphasis on conceptual system rather than language: the Conceptual Integration Theory (the Blending Theory) by G. Fauconnier and M. Turner, the Primary Metaphor Hypothesis by J. Grady, the Categorization View of the Metaphor presented by S. Glucksberg and B. Keysar, the Career of Metaphor Hypothesis by B.F. Bowdle and D. Gentner, the Deliberate Metaphor Theory Metaphor by G. Steen. We end our overview with considering the tenets of neurolinguistic approaches to metaphor research, namely the Network Theory and its alternative, the Graded Salience Hypothesis. All of the viewpoints and methodologies discussed, while looking at metaphor from a different perspective, each contribute to a deeper understanding of this ubiquitous yet still inexplicable phenomenon of human language and thought.
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