Using the framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris‐Black 2004), this paper analyzes metaphorical production at an analog research campus—the Mars Desert Research Station. This analogy to the potential reality of human existence on Mars offers an opportunity to study language use as speakers “make sense” of their experiences in a simulated physical and social unknown. This process is key to understanding how metaphor functions to “wor(l)d‐build” by facilitating the cognitive processes that bridge human imagination and emergent reality. This research demonstrates that metaphor is not always about physical experience, but can be shaped by imagination. Subtle shifts in conceptions and expression, such as those prevalent in this study, are symptomatic of larger processes of knowing and potentially inhibiting knowledge about experience.

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