Metaphorical interpretations: A critical examination

Journal of Pragmatics, 1988

This paler concesns the status of ..neh~phorical meaning (and not the mechan/es of how it is determined). Contra Black and Beardsley, the propositional content of metaphorical meaning must be distinguished from its nonpropositional content. Contra Davidson, nonliteral metaphorical meaning does exist, and contra Scarle, it is not equivalent to speaker meaning. Metaphorical meaning is better seen as the ,,alue of ,,he of a variety of interpretation operators mvdiating betw~n literal meaning and speaker meaning.

2014

Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".

The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought offers the most comprehensive collection of essays in multidisciplinary metaphor scholarship that has ever been published. These essays explore the significance of metaphor in language, thought, culture, and artistic expression. There are five main themes of the book: the roots of metaphor, metaphor understanding, metaphor in language and culture, metaphor in reasoning and feeling, and metaphor in nonverbal expression. Contributors come from a variety of academic disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, literature, education, music, and law.

DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada, 2010

Metaphor interpretation takes cognitive effort and produces some complex set of cognitive effects. Although most metaphor scholars assume that there are definitive ways for studying metaphor effort and effects, there are various methodological problems associated with specifying metaphorical meanings and the ways that people generally come to understand these meanings. My claim is that both metaphoric meaning and metaphor interpretation is fundamentally indeterminate. Nonetheless, there are a wide range of factors that shape the effort put into understanding a metaphor and the particular reffects that arise from this experience. These personal, linguistic, and socio-cultural factors are sometimes acknowledged by metaphor scholars, but we need to examine the complex ways these factors interact to systematically characterize people's metaphorical experiences.

in this document, a review of traditional definitions and theories of metaphor suggests that they err in equating metaphors with comparisons rather than merely implying comparisons. Empirical research is then reviewed, revealing serious problems, particularly in developmental research. TheSe:problems include-inadequate theories about the nature of metaphore inadequate control over.preexisting knowledge, and hasty conclusions that children cannot understand metaphors, drawn becauseein certain experimental conditions children do not select metaphorical interpretations. Related research on the comerehensien of proverbs and analogies is discussed and recommendations for future research are-made. These depend on a redefiniticn of metaphor and on adequate controls of preexisting knowledge, surface structure, and meaning. The approach suggested emphasizes the context-dependent nature-of metaphors. Finally, it is argued that, even if metaphors can be transformed into comparisons, these comparisons are themselves nonliteral and, consequently, still need to be explained. Abstract Metaphor plays a major role in our understanding of language and of the world we use language to talk about. Consequent y, theories of language comprehension and of lan uage itself are incomplete if they do not handle metaphor, and they are inadequate if tl-.ey cannot. Traditional definitions and.theories of me ,nhor are revle A. It is suggested that they err in equating metaphors ith co pari,ons rather than merely implicat ng comparsons. Empirical research is then reviewed, revealing, for the most part, serious problems, particularly in the developmental research. These problems often relate to inadequate underlying theories as t_ the nature of metaphor. Other difficulties include inadequate controls over preing knowledge, and over-has y conclusions that children cannot understand metaphors because in certain experhnental conditions they do not select metaphorical interpretations. Related research on the comprehension of proverbs and analo ies is discussed. S me recommendations for future research are made. These depend on a re-d._ inition of me aphor and the case of an inves_ gative approach which will permit adequate controls of pre-existing knowledge, surface-structure, and meaning. The approach emphasizes the context-dependent nature of me!-aphors, and takes advantage of it.

This paper aims at shedding light on some theories and views behind meaning transference in metaphor. The main motive behind handling this article is to show the complexity and pervasiveness of this linguistic device. Metaphor obscures its literal meaning while allowing a new understanding to emerge. Also, it can give concrete illustrations of objects. Most readers find abstractions alien to them that they need a concrete statement such as the one the analogy provides. In fact, metaphor is considered as a powerful device whenever one describes a new situation in terms of what has been described before.

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 2001

The linguistic concept`metaphor' has an established place in clinical as well as theoretical psychotherapy. It has been seen as analogous to or even fundamental to the analytic concept of transference. Metaphors have been thought to have a special role in enhancing therapist-patient communications. By contrast, in linguistics itself, metaphor has been relatively neglected, viewed as irrelevant and unscientific. That conventional approach to metaphor has recently been challenged by Contemporary Metaphor Theory. This new theory suggests that language depends upon a largely unconscious system of conventional metaphor. Our bodily experiences are the basis of our understanding of abstract concepts such as emotions and relationships. Novel and imaginative metaphors build upon this fundamental biological structure. The traditional approach placed metaphor, along with rhetoric and, by inference, psychodynamic thinking, at the periphery of science. Cognitive linguistic research is now showing that language is fundamentally structured by metaphorical processes, which enhances the scientific status of psychoanalysis and supports and extends the view of metaphor as at the heart of language and meaning. The butterfly's wings are becoming so heavy they touch the ground almost, they hit the hawthorn and get thrown sideways by the spray from the waterfall miles away. They no longer fold into land only fall splayed. The perceiving of what was familiar needs impossible translation. Every field rolling green has its beautiful crashed aeroplane.

Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, 2007

New Frontiers in Pragmalinguistic Studies Theoretical, Social, and Cognitive Approaches - Springer , 2025

This paper explores the role of literal meaning in the construction of metaphorical meaning, challenging traditional views of metaphor theory. First, we contrast the direct access hypothesis, in which the metaphorical meaning is understood without activating the literal meaning, with the indirect access hypothesis, which holds that the literal meaning is accessed first. We argue that this distinction concerns only the process of accessing metaphorical meaning, without clarifying the role of literal meaning in the construction of metaphors. In the second chapter, we shift the focus from the question of how we get from literal to metaphorical meaning to the more fundamental question of what role literal meaning plays in metaphor construction. We introduce the Onefoldness and Twofoldness Hypotheses to replace the dichotomy of direct and indirect access. In the third section, we examine factors that influence the relationship between literal and metaphorical meaning in shaping the meaning of the metaphor. After an overview of syntactic (Carston, 2018) and semantic (Giora, 2003) approaches that assume that the processing of metaphor is determined by intrinsic linguistic features, in the fourth section we argue for a radical contextualist approach. This approach assumes that the processing of metaphors depends on the pragmatic use of metaphors within the specific “language game” in which they are deployed and offers a dynamic perspective on how metaphorical meaning is constructed.