Abstract

Engaging contemporary notions of metaphor and drawing on his past work on the subject, Josef Stern presents a theory of metaphor which is based both on context and semantics. Over the past two decades philosophers of language, linguists, and cognitive scientists have generally believed that metaphor is external to the general conceptions of semantics and grammar. Moreover, metaphor is understood in its pragmatic sense, that is, as having its nature defined by its employment and various uses in language as opposed to the content and character present in the meaning of metaphor. Stern sets as his goal a challenge of such readings of metaphor. Dialoguing with and challenging eminent thinkers on the subject of metaphor, including Donald Davidson and David Kaplan, Stern competently sketches his vision of metaphorical meaning which underlies a speaker-hearer’s capacity to interpret a metaphor by “drawing on a deep analogy between demonstratives, indexicals and metaphors.” His engaging views raise interesting questions and give much food for thought. Issues addressed include: the literal paraphrasability of metaphors vis-à-vis cognition, the roles of exemplification and similarity in metaphorical interpretation, dead metaphors, the pictorial character of metaphors, and the relation between metaphors and the literal.