Metaphors are not just something extra we use when we’re feeling poetic or at a loss for le mot juste, they are all over our minds, texts and conversations. Just like conjunctions, tenses or words. And just like anything else, they can be used for good or ill, on purpose or without conscious regard. Their meanings can be exposed, explored and exorcised. They can be brought from the dead by fresh perspectives or trodden into the ground by frequent use. They may bring us into the very heights of ecstasy or they may pass by unnoticed. They elluminate and obscure, lead and mislead, bring life and death. They can be too constrained or they can be taken too far. They can be wrong and they can be right. And they can be hacked.
Hacking metaphors means taking them apart seeing how they work and putting them back together in a creative and useful way. People hack metaphors all the time without realizing what they’re doing and often getting into trouble by not recognizing that this is what they’re doing. Paying a bit more attention to how metaphors work and how they can be made work differently may make their hacking an easier process.
Oh, and …
Metaphor doesn’t really exist as a separate clearly delineated concept. It is really only one expression of a more general cognitive faculty I call conceptual framing. Depending on who you ask, it is different from or the same as simile, analogy, allegory and closely related or in opposition to metonymy, synechdoche, irony, and a host of other tropes. On this site, these distinctions don’t matter. All of the above rely on the same conceptual structures and metaphor is just as good a label as any for them. Sort of a metaphor, really…