语料库研究显示，概念隐喻中只有4.36%被交际者真正用作隐喻。为了解释这一现象，学者提出了刻意性隐喻理论，在语言维度和概念维度的基础上引入隐喻的交际维度，并提出了隐喻的刻意性机制，是隐喻研究值得关注的新动向。该理论在刻意性隐喻的界定、刻意性的识别、隐喻心理加工和研究方法等方面还面临很多问题，本文尝试集中对四方面的问题和挑战进行梳理分析，并对将来发展趋势做出展望，旨在促进交际维度刻意性隐喻研究的融合与深入。

The analysis of a 190,000-word-unit corpus (VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus) by Pragglejaz Group revealed that 13.3% of all words are metaphorical, with only 4.36% of these metaphorical words used as metaphors. In previous studies, much attention has been paid to the linguistic and conceptual dimensions of metaphor. With the communicative dimension of metaphor is attracting more and more scholarly attention, Deliberate Metaphor Theory (DMT) is proposed. In this theory, only deliberately used metaphors are interpreted metaphorically by the addressee. DMT, by introducing the notion of ‘deliberateness’, can enlarge the scope of metaphor. The paper points out the major challenges facing DMT and future developments, hoping to bring more attention to this new line of metaphor research.