DMT is a relatively new theory that still needs a lot of work, testing, and growth. Here you can determine which future challenges are most urgent for you for increasing DMT’s depth, reach, and validity.

• from analytical to other types of evidence: the bulk of the evidence for DMT at this moment is based on language analysis (including corpus analysis), mostly guided by the original 3D model; what DMT needs is more evidence from observational research of behaviour in interaction, experimental and biological research of cognitive processes in the lab, and computational research simulating metaphor processing.
• from metaphor to forms of metaphor: most research in DMT examines a limited number of forms of metaphor, and does not systematically compare the wide range of forms of metaphor that can be distinguished in practice; since this formal variation displays great functional and distributional variation, and is related to substantial differences in processing, this is a topic that needs careful attention.
• from language use to other levels of cognition, most importantly the level of discourse: the state of the art of metaphor research is determined by the focus on metaphor in language use and how this is constrained by aspects of discourse events (the use of text in code in context by conventions of genre), but metaphor can also work as a discourse element (defined in this way) itself–think of extended metaphor, parable, allegory, and so on. DMT’s agenda calls for more work on such discursive forms of metaphor.
• from local analogy to other cognitive processes in comprehension and understanding, in particular the role of cross-domain mappings: DMT has focused on comprehension by analogy, at the expense of more complex processes of understanding by cross-domain mapping. This is an urgent topic for research if DMT wants to make a genuine connection with Conceptual Metaphor Theory.
• from comprehension to other activities: the evidence recruited for DMT is largely based on comprehension research, as is typical for most metaphor research; DMT’s agenda calls for more work on the more expansive form of metaphor processing labelled understanding, as well as other activities such as metaphor production and metaphor use in interaction.
• from fast to slow thinking: one main tenet of DMT is the claim that metaphor can be slowed down; new research is needed to discover how fast thinking by metaphor differs from slow thinking by metaphor, and when it is used for which purpose.
• from a propositional model to a computational model for comprehension: the method adopted by DMT in Slowing Metaphor Down is an elaboration of an older method and is based on propositional analysis; this is one step removed from building a complete computational model which can begin to simulate metaphor comprehension for experimental purposes, and the development of such a model would be a huge step forward.