The importance of the phenomena of figurative thinking, I suggest, should not be looked for in its pervasiveness, but in the fact that it may have a kind of transcendental role. Figurative thinking, this is my suggestion, has the power to make us reflect about the modes of contact our minds make with reality. It has a role in allowing us to make the reality we live it a home for our minds—to make reality thinkable. This is what Wittgenstein once called “our real need.”
Going by indirections is part of the mystery of figurative expressions. It is both what gives them an air of dissonance, and what allows them to have an inspiring effect on us: The figurative expression has the power to create a kind of gap between mind and world, to make the mind become unhinged as it were—at least for a little while—and thus allows us to contemplate and explore—perhaps playfully perhaps urgently—the forms and modes of contact our minds make with reality: the ways in which reality becomes thinkable.
I take it that this is one thing that may make capable speakers opt for figurative and metaphorical expressions: This is one of the things we do with language—that speakers may want to do, and do intentionally: explore the connection between mind and world, and the categories that make it possible.
If, and to the extent that, the categories with which we capture reality may be problematized—if for instance, these categories may fail to support our ability to communicate ourselves, to convey our experiences—then it may become a task for us to think about the ways in which we make sense of reality, and to make contact with it with our mind. Someone who sees that, experiences that, may want to communicate that to others—perhaps share it with them, perhaps remind them of their vulnerability. To the extent that we may have such linguistic intentions, we need linguistic tools that can be used for prodding: for setting people off their linguistic balance, or for luring them out of balance, or for showing them that they are out of balance. Figurative language has the power to do that.