This work is devoted to the study of the processes of conceptualization of reality and linguistic ways of expressing its state. The central place in the work occupied by the conceptual (cognitive) metaphor, which expresses the reality of the picture of the world, and related to it. The research carried out on the material of the English language. The relevance of the study is due to the prevalence of the cognitive metaphor in modern English-language discourse as a popular means of linguistic creativity. The relatively limited number of studies of the cognitive metaphor and, in particular, its subspecies - malaphor, which is a hybrid of two or more idiomatic expressions, in which there is a change or addition of the values of the components constituting malaphor, as well as the ambiguity of the interpretation of the cognitive metaphor indicates the need for special studies of this phenomenon. In addition, it seems necessary to study the possibility of identifying some patterns of mental processes based on the material of cognitive metaphor.The object of the research is monomodal and multimodal cognitive metaphors, which are occasional or purposefully created formations that constantly replenish the vocabulary of modern English. The aim of the work is to study the linguo-cognitive mechanisms of the formation of the meaning of metaphors in the process of interaction of their constituent initial components and to identify the functions of metaphors in the process of conceptualizing reality in modern discourse in English.