Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Lakoff and Johnson's claim that metaphor is primarily a feature of thought, not language.
Lakoff & Johnson (1980) argued that metaphor is a property of thought, not of language. We understand abstract domains (love, time, argument) by mapping them onto more concrete ones (journeys, space, war).
Metaphors of this kind are written in small caps: LOVE IS A JOURNEY. The theory predicts whole families of metaphorical expressions (we’ve come a long way, we hit a dead end, our relationship is on the rocks).
This sits at a different level from mipvu-procedure: MIPVU labels words; CMT identifies conceptual mappings. They can agree on what counts as metaphor without agreeing on what metaphor is.