The aim of this article is to summarize, through the analysis of the main theoretical sources, the development of two ways to interpret metaphor. They might be called: 1) the formalist vision, centered on description of features of metaphor, its formal structure and its functions in a text or a discourse; and 2) the pragmatic and cognitive vision that offers an understanding of metaphor in the communicative situation showing its role as one of the basic chains of the human thought.