The use of figurative language can be found in all kinds of texts but the manner it is used differs. This piece of work deals with the frequency of the use of metaphors in general and the distribution of its three subcategories - new, conventional and dead metaphors - in articles from a broadsheet paper and a tabloid. Ten articles, five from The New York Times and five from the New York Daily News, were analyzed and scrutinized for metaphors. The analysis and the categorisation of the metaphors point towards that there should be a higher frequency of metaphors in the broadsheet paper and that the distribution of the subkinds is the same in the two papers. However, results state that there is a great range of variation in the frequency of the metaphor in the individual tabloid articles compared to the broadsheet articles. This point to the conclusion that none of the two papers can be said to generally contain a higher frequency of metaphor compared to the other, simply because with tabloids there is no norm to compare with.

Some researchers that work with metaphor theory claim that metaphors and figurative language are understood and processed just as easily as literal language. However, as this thesis will explore in detail, other research indicates that such is not always the case. That is, if the category of metaphor is further subcategorized into conventional and non-conventional metaphor, the scope will change because of the fact that it is possible to argue that non-conventionalized metaphors require a more conscious path of processing. In order to explain this alternative path, there are two primary approaches to language processing worth introducing: implicit and explicit. These approaches vary in required attention and speed of processing. With regards to conscious effort, these approaches are rather similar to the way in which we process conventionalized and non-conventionalized metaphors. Conventional metaphors are processed more quickly and easily than non-conventional ones. Hence, the claim that all metaphors are similarly processed may not always be true. Furthermore, an individual’s level of proficiency presumably correlates with speed in language processing. However, if non-conventional metaphor requires a more deliberate path of processing, this thesis assumes that the processing of this type of metaphor will be relatively unaffected by proficiency level, thus causing informants to process them in similar manners. In this thesis, 24 non-native speakers (NNS), categorized into intermediate proficient and advanced proficient, and seven native speakers (NS) were tested with an RT-test on subjective metaphor comprehension. Results were compared using mean response times and standard deviations, as well as looking at correlations and coefficient of variation. The results showed a distinct difference in processing speed with conventional metaphors being processed significantly faster. Moreover, the findings indicate that conventional metaphor processing speed seems to be predicted by proficiency, whilst non-conventional processing speed is not. The RT differences remained relatively consistent in both conventional and non-conventional metaphor processing, but when taking correlations, variance and coefficient of variation into consideration, the findings indicate that these other factors help level out the differences in non-conventional metaphor processing in more subtle ways than simply by RT’s.

This study explores the use of war metaphors, more specifically metaphors centred on the verb, in modern French newspaper prose from three principal angles.  The first part of the analysis shows that the verbs of war used are metaphorical rather than concrete. However, the vast majority of the metaphors stem from only five verbs, namely attaquer, affronter, combattre, défendre and lutter.  The second part of the analysis focuses on these five verbs and their metaphorical uses. It is shown that it is the semantic role of patient that separates a metaphorical use from a concrete use. A classification of the patients according to semantic fields reveals that each of the five verbs shows a distinct preference for a certain type of patient and the verbs also differ in whether their patients have negative or positive connotations. This creates an image of five verbs, each of which is conventionalised in a certain linguistic context.  The final chapter of the analysis investigates war metaphors from a textual perspective, analysing their usage according to three parameters: position, function and target domains. The position that is the most susceptible to war metaphors is the initial position. The textual functions of metaphors are divided into one semantic and three pragmatic functions. The semantic function structures the theme of an article in terms of war, construing an antagonism by means of elaborating or extending a conventional metaphor. The pragmatic functions considered are argumentative, descriptive and expressive. In the articles studied, war metaphors have mostly a descriptive or argumentative function. Finally, the target domains and their interconnections with the source domain WAR are considered, showing that the war metaphors are linked to power or the lack thereof. The metaphor often describes the person in power, but the case can be reversed with the metaphor describing the powerless resisting or fighting the person in power.