# Methods of Annotating and Identifying Metaphors in the Field of Natural Language Processing
## 3 Annotating Metaphors
### Annotating Linguistic Metaphors  
The best-known and most frequently used procedures of annotating linguistic metaphors are Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) [15] and Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam (MIPVU) [16]. These deal with the recognition of linguistic metaphors in discourse at the level of words, i.e., lexical units. It should be noted that both procedures were primarily developed with the aim of using the texts (corpus) annotated by them for the purpose of further research in the field of social sciences and the humanities, which is why the needs and specifics of annotating metaphors in natural language processing were not taken into account. Figure 1 shows the flow of both procedures, as well as how they overlap, while below a brief overview and comparison of both procedures is given. The MIP method is the predecessor of the MIPVU, which is its upgraded version. The MIP was developed by the Pragglejaz group (The name of the group is a series of initial letters of the names of the researchers who participated in the research and development of the procedure) and as the authors state, the aim of the procedure is to determine for each lexical unit in the discourse whether its use in a certain context can be described as metaphorical [15]. Furthermore, it is stated that the procedure has a maximalist rather than a minimalist approach, whereby a large number of words could be considered a metaphor, taking into account their use in a certain context. The MIP method consists of three (seemingly) simple steps [15]:  
1. Read the whole text or transcript to understand what it is about. 2. Decide about the boundaries of words. 3. Establish the contextual meaning of the examined word. 1. Determine the basic meaning of the word (most concrete, human-oriented and specific). 2. Decide whether the basic meaning of the word is sufficiently distinct from the contextual meaning. 3. Decide whether the contextual meaning of the word can be related to the more basic meaning by some form of similarity. The MIP primarily identifies the indirect use of words (simply put, it is only decided whether a word is a metaphor or not), but the MIPVU adds steps aimed at \"capturing\" direct and implicit metaphors. As indicated by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [17], the need to annotate direct and implicit metaphors arose in the course of their research, which began with the application of MIP on a corpus composed of texts from four registers from the BNC Baby corpus (The corpus is available at [[http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpus/babyinfo.html](http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpus/babyinfo.html)]([http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpus/babyinfo.html](http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpus/babyinfo.html)); last accessed on 11 February 2023)--conversation, fiction, academic texts and newspaper articles. The MIPVU procedure is as follows [16]:  
1. Find metaphor-related words (MRWs) by examining the text on a word-by-word basis. 2. When a word is used indirectly and that use may potentially be explained by some form of cross-domain mapping from a more basic meaning of that word, mark the word as metaphorically used (MRW). 3. When a word is used directly and its use may potentially be explained by some form of cross-domain mapping to a more basic referent or topic in the text, mark the word as direct metaphor (MRW, direct). 4. When words are used for the purpose of lexico-grammatical substitution, such as third person personal pronouns, or when ellipsis occurs where words may be seen as missing, as in some forms of co-ordination, and when a direct or indirect meaning is conveyed by those substitutions or ellipses that may potentially be explained by some form of cross-domain mapping from a more basic meaning, referent, or topic, insert a code for implicit metaphor (MRW, implicit). 5. When a word functions as a signal that a cross-domain mapping may be at play, mark it as a metaphor flag (MFlag). 6. When a word is a new-formation coined, examine the distinct words that are its independent parts according to steps 2 through 5.