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Reconstructing Metaphorical Meaning

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Abstract

Metaphorical meaning can be analyzed as triggered by an apparent communicative breach, an incongruity that leads to a default of the presumptive interpretation of a vehicle. This breach can be solved through contextual renegotiations of meaning guided by the communicative intention, or rather the presumed purpose of the metaphorical utterance. This paper addresses the problem of analyzing the complex process of reasoning underlying the reconstruction of metaphorical meaning. This process will be described as a type of abductive argument, aimed at explaining how the vehicle can best contribute to the purpose of the utterance. This type of reasoning involves the analysis of the possible predicates that can be and usually are attributed to the vehicle, and the selection of the one (or ones) that can support the implicit conclusion constituting the communicative goal of the metaphorical utterance. Metaphorical meaning, in this perspective, becomes the outcome of a complex process of meaning reconstruction aimed at providing the best explanation of the function of the vehicle within a discourse move.

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  1. «<suppositio> impropria est quando uox supponit secundum significationem alterius uocis, ex transsumptione, propter similitudinem uel ironiam aut huius modi aliam causam, ut si dicamus pratum ridere.» (Buridani Summulae de Dialectica, 4.3.1).

  2. These felicity or “meaning” (in Grice’s sense) conditions will be referred to simply as “presuppositions” in this paper, considering the dialogical or pragmatic meaning of this concept.

  3. Stern defines this type of unreasonableness as a breach to the “redundancy principle”, see Stern 2000: 128.

  4. On Stern’s account, “the meaning of a metaphor is the rule that determines its content for each context, that is, its character” (Stern 2000: 16). He substantially adapts David Kaplan’s theory of demonstratives to explain the reconstruction of metaphorical meaning and states: “The character of an expression Φ interpreted metaphorically (or Mthat(Φ)) is thus a function from the relevant set of properties P presupposed to be associated with Φ in context c” (Stern 2000: 115).

  5. We consider the presumption of the speaker’s intention as the leading presumption as a possibility of meta-dialogically reconstructing a move in cases in which a presupposition failure occurs. The utterance “I will park my Bentley and I will reach you” uttered to an interlocutor that cannot know that the speaker owns a Bentley, can be reconstructed in two different ways. The hearer can renegotiate the literal meaning as “I will park my (expensive) car” maintaining the presumed pragmatic intention (inform the hearer of his action). Otherwise, he can renegotiate the presumed intention maintaining the literal meaning, presuming that the speaker intends to avoid the responsibility of informing the hearer of an exceptional fact (he bought a Bentley). Depending on the force of the underlying presumptions, one interpretation will prevail over the other.

  6. In this sense, this account of relevance is much narrower than Sperber and Wilson’s one, where the implications yielded by an input are relevant inasmuch as they achieve cognitive effects. However, this approach can be compared with the Relevance theory one in the sense that also in this latter framework the relevance of an utterance is conceived in terms of the implicit conclusion warranted by the explicatures and the implicit premises (Sperber and Wilson 2008: 92).

  7. Stern explained the reconstruction of the meaning of the vehicle as a double process of creating and filtering of properties. The characteristics that are unsuitable to the co-text and context are excluded because inconsistent or redundant (Stern 2000: 139). For instance, “Juliet is the sun” cannot be interpreted as meaning that Juliet is the source of draughts, as it would be inconsistent with the context in which Romeo is praising her. However, nothing in the context of Shakespeare’s play would prevent “Juliet is the sun” from meaning that Juliet is blonde. Juliet is not said to have dark hair, and this interpretation would have been somehow informative.

  8. Levin (1977) analyzed this “integration” of the semantic structure of the topic with the transferred features of the vehicle, but without regarding it as aimed at fulfilling the requirements of the predicate. In this sense, the account proposed here is focused on the problem of accommodating presuppositional requirements.

  9. “Quod enim singulis partibus inest, id toti inesse necesse est” (Boethii De Topicis Differentiis, 1189A).

  10. The fact that many properties of the vehicle can be suitably attributed to the speaker’s beloved (beautiful, bright, etc.), although they are not sufficiently relevant to provide the best explanation, is part of the poetic effect of metaphor. The different possibilities leave open the explanatory possibilities, which leave freeway to several interpretations, all potentially co-existing. This non-contradictory ambiguity of meaning characterizes the poetic effect.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Fundação para a Ciência ea Tecnologia for the research grant on Argumentation, Communication and Context (PTDC/FIL–FIL/110117/2009) and the anonymous reviewers for their useful and thorough comments.

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  1. Institute of Philosophy of Language (IFL), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Edifício I&D - 4 andar, Avenida de Berna 26, 1069-061, Lisbon, Portugal

    Fabrizio Macagno & Benedetta Zavatta

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Macagno, F., Zavatta, B. Reconstructing Metaphorical Meaning. Argumentation 28, 453–488 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-014-9329-z

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