Metaphor understanding and accessing conceptual schema: Reply to Gibbs (1992).

Gibbs (1992) argued that metaphoric expressions may reflect preexisting conventional metaphoric mappings in long-term memory. The class-inclusion model, in contrast, focuses on conceptual structures that are constructed and accessible in working memory during metaphor comprehension. The authors agree that prestored metaphoric mappings may be available, but they may not be accessible and hence not used in any given context. The authors point out problems in identifying those metaphorical mappings that may be relevant to a given metaphoric expression and suggest that conceptual metaphors may not be identifiable until after a metaphor has been interpreted