“That’s the Metaphor You’re Going for?” Deliberate Metaphor and Humor

This paper aims at discussing the function of deliberate metaphors in humorous narratives due to the similarities in mechanisms underlying both elements of language. This corpus-based analysis has shown the relation between deliberate metaphors and elements of the knowledge resources of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The study has revealed that if deliberate metaphors are part of humorous narratives, they are more likely to be the source of the funniness rather than the transit system which conveys the metaphors themselves. With this in mind, it is possible to assess the extent to which deliberate metaphors contribute to humor.