This paper aims to extend Romanshyn's reading of van den Berg's metabletics as a process of recovering metaphoricity. Drawing upon research in contemporary cognitive linguistics, metabletics can be recast in terms of a process of re-metaphorization that requires a repeated sequence of stages. Initially a collective figuration exists in the culture as a form of negative metonymy, which serves the function of concealing a latent and taken-for-granted cultural meaning. By transforming the figuration from a form of negative metonymy to positive (...) metonymy, the metabletic method reveals how one cultural event has stood for another cultural event. In the final stage of the metabletic process, the researcher shows how the cultural event not only has stood for another cultural event, but can been understood metaphorically in terms of, or through, the other cultural event. This final step recovers the metaphoricity of the cultural meaning, which in turn frees up the possibility for creating new meanings that were previously foreclosed. (shrink)