The purpose of the current study is to explore how different types of discourse structure of a poetic text constrain the activation of conceptual metaphors in the reader's mind. The goal of the study was to contribute to the existing conceptual metaphor theory by investigating the pragmatic aspect of conceptual metaphor issue.

Conceptual analysis was utilized in order to identify the common conceptual metaphor in poetic texts of three different types of discourse structure: strengthening, new information and contradicting. Propositional analysis was used in order to establish the type of discourse structure of a poetic text. The ease of activation of the underlying conceptual metaphor in three different types of discourse was explored by means of exposing readers to poetic texts with different types of discourse structure.

The outcome of the study provided evidence that the structure of a discourse critically determines the ease of activation of conceptual metaphors by readers.