Metaphor in academic discourse - understanding texts and subjectiveness of linguistic analysis

A research on metaphors found in academic discourse implies the necessity of the development of metaphor identification criteria. Metaphor cannot be discussed adequately without understanding its connections with a wider text material, and this fact leads to a deeper problem - subjectiveness of linguistic/discourse analysis. Academic discourse, taken as a material of the research, is considered to be lacking figurative expressions, however, metaphors in this type of text often occur. The identification of an expression as metaphoric reveals itself as a problem of understanding the text. Arguing that academic texts in any given case contain metaphors, we mean that there is an expression which, in our opinion, is a metaphorical entity. However, when studying academic texts, it is quite difficult to define a metaphoric expression, which means there is a problem of understanding the metaphor. The specifics of text material, such asstyle, affect the identification of metaphors occurring within...