In this article the issue of the "primacy" of one of the terms of the literal sense/metaphorical sense dichotomy is discussed. Beginning with a brief historical account, a few relevant points are considered to articulate the theme, and a thesis about the functioning of the metaphor is examined, from the viewpoint of French discourse analysis. From this perspective, we believe that a variety of phenomena converge to produce metaphors, which leads to the possibility of the dilution of the dichotomy. Thus, metaphors originate from the circulation of linguistic-discursive contents among the discursive formations, here understood as instances of formation/repetition/transformation of knowledge elements -components of a memory of discourses -, a knowledge that is constantly reconfigured and that is lead to incorporate elements produced outside of a given formation, thus producin g varied meaning effects.
discourse; metaphor; discursive formation; meaning effect