This article examines a series of issues involved in identifying metaphors in texts. Metaphor identification is, in turn, a fundamental part of the more complex issue of how to relate linguistic metaphors in texts to the conceptual metaphors of cognitive metaphor theory. In section 1 we list a number of general issues involved in metaphor identification. In sections 2 and 3 we examine two short fictional extracts from novels written in the 1990s (one from popular fiction and one from serious fiction), relating our detailed analyses to the general questions raised at the beginning of the article. We thus raise and exemplify a series of issues which do not have easy resolutions but which must be grasped (a) if a corpus-based approach to metaphor is to become a reality and (b) if the relations between conceptual and linguistic metaphors are to be fully understood. Interestingly, this attempt to be extremely detailed and systematic in turn leads us to comment on differences in aesthetic effects between the use of metaphors in the two extracts examined.