Metaforaksi

Metaforaksi is a term used in linguistics and cultural studies to describe a mode of discourse in which metaphorical frames are transferred across contexts and domains. It denotes the deliberate use of figurative patterns in new linguistic or social settings to organize meaning, reasoning, and action.

Its etymology is recent and debated; the word is a portmanteau created by scholars to capture meta- (beyond, across) and a suffix signaling action or arrangement. Metaforaksi has appeared mainly in European cognitive-linguistic and rhetorical literatures since the 2010s.

Core ideas include cross-domain mapping, pattern re-use, and audience-adapted deployment. A single metaphoric frame may be extended from literature into politics, science, and media, producing new inferences. The practice can also be described as a meta-metaphor—a metaphor about metaphor.

Applications include literary analysis, where a journey metaphor migrates to describe life courses; political rhetoric, where business or market metaphors are repurposed for policy debates; and science communication, where everyday metaphors help explain abstract concepts. For example, describing the genome as an instruction manual can reflect metaforaksi.

Reception is mixed: some scholars view metaforaksi as a useful category for tracing cross-context metaphor transfer, while others argue it overlaps existing theories of metaphor and framing. Research methods comprise corpus analysis, discourse analysis, and experimental pragmatics to study interpretation and persuasion.

See also: metaphor; conceptual metaphor; framing; discourse analysis.