Accounts of metaphors can be distinguished on the basis of whether or not they propose that metaphors are interpreted through a specific interpretation process, different from the one used in non metaphorical utterances. Accounts that defend such a specifi c interpretation process are discontinuity (or discontinuous ) accounts, while accounts that reject the notion of an interpretation process specific to metaphors are continuity (or continuous ) accounts. In the present paper, I shall mainly be interested in a specific continuity account, the account originally given of metaphor in Relevance Theory (see Sperber & Wilson 1995), as well as its recent modifications as proposed by Carston.
