Abstract
This paper argues first that, contrary to what one would expect, metaphorical interpretations of utterances pass two of Cappelan and Lepore’s Minimalist tests for semantic context-sensitivity. I then propose how, in light of that result, one might analyze metaphors on the model of indexicals and demonstratives, expressions that (even) Minimalists agree are semantically context-dependent. This analysis builds on David Kaplan’s semantics for demonstratives and refines an earlier proposal in (Stern, Metaphor in context, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000). In the course of this argument, I also discuss some new examples of linguistic phenomena that motivate a semantic structure underlying metaphorical interpretation, phenomena I argue that neither Minimalists nor Contextualists can explain.
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Notes
This is close to the medieval sense of the term ‘literal’ according to which literal meaning is that of the word as opposed the (so-called spiritual) meaning that is a property primarily of the referent or thing signified by the word. See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Q1 A10.
Diedre Wilson, unpublished lecture, 2007.
This conception of semantic content has deep Davidsonian roots which, surprisingly, go unexplored by HE.
In addition, there is the literal meaning of a sentence: the compositionally determined meaning of the sentence as a function of the meanings of all its articulated parts. I do not discuss this notion of sentence-literality in this paper.
Cf. Camp (2007) for further discussion of indirect discourse reports of metaphors on HE’s account.
In cases like this, Reimer (Forthcoming) argues that the reporter is directly quoting the subject.
See Camp (2007) who argues that our judgments that metaphor is semantically context-sensitive are much clearer when we use ‘claim’ rather than ‘say’ as the reporting verb.
After writing and delivering this paper I learned of Marga Reimer (forthcoming) where she also argues that metaphors pass HE’s Inter-Contextual Disquotational Indirect Report Test for semantic context-sensitivity. (I wish to thank Reimer for sharing her paper with me.)
Here I follow HE in stating this test using verb phrases (presumably because they have in mind Contextualists who claim that verbs like ‘know’ are context-dependent), but their own best examples employ singular indexicals.
The following example is contrived but mimics HE’s example.
Nat Hansen (p.c.) observes that HE don’t think that Travis-style 2000 changes in content block Indirect reports. For example:
C1: Romeo: “Juliet’s coat is green” [green on the outside, with a red lining]
C2: Nat: “Romeo said that Juliet’s coat is green” [has a green lining]
They’d say that C2 is true, because Romeo did say that her coat is green. But if that is the case, then they would also reply that the report ‘Romeo said that Juliet is the sun’ is true (full stop). C2 might not capture the content of Romeo’s metaphor, but it gets what he said right. But this is only, as I said above, in the direct-discourse sense of ‘said,’ by playing on mention of ‘is green.’ If Tom challenged Nat’s report of Romeo by citing another utterance of Romeo’s that the lining is red, Nat could not defend himself by referring back to C1.
Similarly, if metaphors like ‘is a gorilla’ do not pass the second (collective description) test (and therefore are semantically context-sensitive), why do Travis cases seem to pass the test?
D1: Lake Michigan is blue [as seen from Lake Shore Drive]
D2: Gatorade ‘Frost’ is blue [in the bottle]
D3: So Lake Michigan and Gatorade ‘Frost’ are both blue
D3 should not follow, because the sense of ‘blue’ in D1 is not that Lake Michigan looks blue in the bottle and the sense of ‘blue in D2 is not as seen from Lake Shore Drive. Hence HE ought to concede that ‘blue’ is also semantically context-sensitive.
In these utterances, (and in the C utterances as well) it is arguable that the predicate does not change meanings or contents at all: green is green and blue is blue. It is the subject nounphrases in the strings that admit multiple (ambiguous) readings, ‘Lake Michigan’ is short for its appearance which is necessarily from (an unstated) perspective, and “Gatorade ‘Frost’” is elliptic for “Gatorade ‘Frost’ in the bottle.” (Likewise, ‘Juliet’s coat’ can elliptically mean either the outside of her coat or its lining.) These kinds of half-elliptic nounphrases are standard and pose no problem for semantics.
In addition to Davidson, the same objection applies to Griceans who distinguish what is said from what is meant by the metaphor, and also to Recanati’s 2004 contextualist account. See Stern (2006). So, Minimalists are in good company, though they may not be happy with their newfound bedfellows.
The literal content of a metaphorically interpreted utterance, or the lack of one, may, however, enter into identification of an utterance as a metaphor, i.e., the recognition that an utterances is to be interpreted metaphorically, or (in the terminology I shall later introduce) that the token in question is to be typed as a metaphorical expression. But the task of identification is entirely distinct from that of interpretation. On this, see Stern (2000, pp. 2–7).
There has been relatively little discussion of HE’s Metaphysics argument; one exception is Taylor (2007).
See Reimer (forthcoming).
The idea that metaphors are interpreted, not as isolated expressions, but in units of families and networks of expressions has become an important theme in metaphor research in recent years. Goodman (1976) should get credit for first seeing this, but Lakoff and Johnson (1980, Gentner (1982), Tirrell (1989), White (1996), Stern (2000), and Camp 2008 all develop the idea, each in different ways.
One caveat: not every metaphorical interpretation depends directly on a literal vehicle. In “We will do better in our philosophical analysis if we keep a foot near to the brakes of common sense before we roar ambitiously forward.” Wilson (2006, p. 12), we have an example of a metaphorical interpretation ‘of’ a prior metaphorical use/interpretation, not directly of a purely literal application.
It is not obvious that Contextualists share this assumption; see, e.g., the discussion of Travis’ examples in Récanati (2004, p. 149, n. 46).
I.e., any expression that admits a metaphorical interpretation. Although the matter requires more research, there may well be linguistic constraints on which expressions or on which syntactic positions allow metaphorical interpretation. For preliminary thoughts, see Stern (1983) and Glanzberg (2008).
Cf. King (2001). Notice that much worse than (23a/b) is the mixed metaphorical/literal interpretation of
(23c) Every romantic astronaut remembers that first sun he gazed upon.
which cannot be interpreted to be true just in case Jim the astronaut remembers the sun of Uranus he first saw; Bill the astronaut, Mary, the woman without whom he cannot live, and so on.
See Stern (2000, pp. 108, 221, 293–294). Although the m-associated presuppositions for exemplificational metaphors involve properties presupposed to be exemplified by the referent of the literal vehicle, which property is exemplified also depends on how the referent is (qualitatively) presented by the literal vehicle (Stern 2000, p. 155).
This is not a vacuous qualification; see above no. 21.
Wearing objects that the proposal overgenerates for “sentences that do not have any obvious metaphorical reading, such as ‘Juliet is tidy.’” (317) In fact, however, it is easy to imagine contexts in which ‘Juliet’ is being used metaphorically to refer to, say, Cathy, contexts in which we have been praising her peerlessness and the fact that she is the center of the speaker’s world. We can also imagine a context in which we are evaluating, say, musical compositions, Bill’s, Tom’s, and Juliet’s. I say: “John there is a mess, Bill too convoluted, but Juliet is tidy.”
R. Gibbs, personal communication; cf. also Gibbs and Tendahl (2006).
Liz Camp (p.c.) raised the question whether (26), with its quantifer, violates the Actual Context Constraint or requires multiple different metaphorical interpretations for ‘bent over.’ I think not, since (26) does not itself assert any particular metaphorical interpretation in its context; instead it quantifies over one (or more). That is, (ignoring details about the plural ‘we’) on one reading (26) states:
-
(26.1)
In any context c, there is some way or another of being metaphorically ‘bent over’ such that we (fixed in c) are all that way (in c).
On another (less likely reading, although it would be preferable if we substituted ‘each’ for ‘all’ in (26)) it states,
-
(26.2)
In any context c, for every individual in c who belongs to the extension of ‘we’ fixed in c, there is some way or another of being metaphorically ‘bent over’ such that she is that way (in c).
In either case, “being ‘bent over’ metaphorically one way or another” is a property that the “we” or its members possess. On neither reading is there a problem for my account. (Cf. Stern 2006, pp. 276–277).
-
(26.1)
(29) should be distinguished from the string
-
(29.1)
Metaphorically speaking, ‘Juliet,’ metaphorically speaking, ‘is the sun.’ which corresponds to
-
(29.2)
Mthat[‘Juliet’] Mthat[‘is the sun.’]
in which there occur multiple metaphors. It is possible that (29) is one of those artifactually generated strings that we do not in fact ever recognize as a metaphorical interpretation of (4). However, there are metaphors whose units are whole sentences, for example, ‘White is white and black is black’ for which a structure like (29) would be appropriate.
-
(29.1)
There are other uses of ‘literally’ that are not hyperbolic but deflationary; they signal that an expression that one might think is metaphorical is in fact literal. Thus in a review of an exhibition of the distinguished conceptual artist Stephanie Brooks, entitled “Downtime,” the reviewer proposes that the title expresses (metaphorically) the idea that all the pieces in the show express “hypnotic tranquility.” When questioned about the title, Brooks answers: “Quite literally,” she says, “I make my art in my downtime from caring for my children.”
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Acknowledgements
This paper was presented to the Baltic States Philosophy Conference “A Figure of Speech,” Riga, Latvia, at Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris, and at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I am especially indebted to participants and especially Nat Hansen, Liz Camp, Robyn Carston, and Francois Recanati for their comments. I also want to thank the American Council of Learned Societies for fellowship support in 2007–2008 while this paper was first composed.
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Stern, J. Metaphor and minimalism. Philos Stud 153, 273–298 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9486-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9486-3