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Lecture 4: Metaphor, Discourse analysis, Activity Theory |
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Martinovski, biljana@ling.gu.se,
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METAPHOR
General Comparison
Interactivity Forms of metaphor Steps
General
In this course we will discuss two ways of analyzing
metaphors:
- from speech-act theory's viewpoint,
- and from cognitive semantics' viewpoint.
Searle's paper "Metaphor" (1982) exemplifies
the first approach
and Lakoff's work (1980) - the second one.
BACKGROUND AND CRITICISM
Here I will discuss only the speech-act theory analysis
of metaphor. Although Searle's article is published after the
publication of Lakoff's book in which a new approach to theory
was introduced, Searle is not discussing it as a background of
his study. Thus the background of metaphor studies of Searle's
article consist of two major types of theories:
Searle's general position and criticism is directed
against the assumption that there is literal meaning (corresponding
to sentence meaning) and non-literal (which could be figurative)
meaning (or speaker's meaning) and that there is a crucial difference
between these two. This assumption has been and in fact still
is the most vital point in metaphor theories or in style analysis
or in rhetorics. However, today, with the advances of pragmatic
inquiry, discourse analysis of genuine empirical material, and
mainly with the experimental cognitivistic approach to metaphor
production and comprehension the centrality of this assumption
has been pushed aside.
Searle's position on this basic matter is that there
is only sentence/word meaning. The only distinction he keeps is
that between the speaker's utterance meaning and the actual (literal)
meaning of a word or a sentence. Thus metaphorical meaning corresponds
to speaker's utterance meaning.
Here we have to keep in mind that, within the pragmatic
framework, its is the sentential meaning which is objected to
truth conditional analysis; utterances can be successful or not
also according to shared contextual and factual background knowledge.
Of major importance for Searle's theory of metaphor
is the distinction between the analysis of the meaning of an utterance
and the analysis of the speaker's production operations and the
hearer's understanding operations and strategies. In fact, this
methodological distinction helps to sort out philosophical discussion
of the truth relevance of metaphorical expressions and the psycholinguistic
and cognitivistic approaches to the matter and their respective
assumptions.
My analysis of these theories presented here will
be independent of Searle's.
The comparison theories arise from Aristotle's classical
theory
of metaphorical meaning. Within this framework metaphor
is defined as implicit or indirect comparison. There are reductive
and non-reductive simile theories of metaphor. The reductive theories
reduce metaphor to simile and then conflate simile and literal
comparison. They involve the following claims:
1. Simile and metaphor play the same linguistic role:
they make comparisons.
2. Any metaphor can be paraphrased as an identity
or predication.
3. For any metaphor of the form "A is B"
there is a function from that metaphor to a simile.
4. The simile that result from 3 can be explained
in literal terms.
The questions that one can put here are:
1. Is it really true that one can paraphrase any
metaphor as an identity or a predication?
2. Is it really possible to explain the resulting
similes in literal terms?
3. What is the psycholinguistic status of the metaphorization
process?
Black (1962) attempts to explain how metaphors get
their special figurative meaning and for Davidson the literal
semantic meaning of the simile is the basic pragmatic meaning
of the metaphor e.g. simile and metaphor play the same pragmatic
role.
Take claim 3: It means that the addition of "like"
is trivial.
Juliet is not the sun/ Juliet is the sun
Juliet is not like the sun/ Juliet is like the sun
The metaphor or even a literal interpretation of
a sentence of the form "A is a B" entails A's inclusion
in the set of B's, while in the case of the simile ("A is
like a B") it does not. The "like" weakens the
semantic commitment of the original sentence, which means that
the addition of the "like" is not trivial.
The naive-realism's simile theories imply distribution
of shared properties: thus we can say that "warm" is
a shared property for Juliet and the sun. But how are the following
predications related:
Juliet is warm.
The sun is warm.
That kind of analysis of metaphor by simile leads
us to more metaphors.
And even if we apply the semantic marker for the
simile we will get not very satisfactory results:
The sun is like warm.
The sun is like something warm.
The first will not do but the second uses a quantificational
term to get the sentence in the right form but it weakens the
sentence - waters down the assertational commitment of the purely
predicative metaphor- and makes the understanding of the metaphor
even more difficult - opens too many extensions.
The comparison of properties in a simile implies
that the comparison is between (in the easiest case) physical
objects. But if one of the objects does not exist. Consider Eliot's
simile:"He laughed like an irresponsible foetus."
If we know who "he" is how can we know
what or who the irresponsible foetus is?
So the naive-realist version of the simile theory
cannot handle similes containing non-denoting expressions.
Failure to refer is not the mark of the figurative',
any more than falseness is.
On the other hand, simile is not the same as literal
comparison, because
neither the inferences the latter licences nor the
justification it requires involve figurative discourse in any
way ("a bicycle is like a tricycle").
The definition of metaphor as simile without a semantic
marker (without the verb "like") and the simile as a
comparison with marker is circular and not informative to me.
The movement from metaphor to simile as I have showed earlier
is not the same as from trope to non-trope or from figurative
to literal discourse. The reduction from simile to literal comparison
is something unclear in the simile theories of metaphor.
Claim 2- Is it really true that all metaphors can
be reduced to predicates or identities? If they cannot then claim
3 gets even weaker.
Even if every assertion can be put into the form
"A is B" it is not true that any metaphor can.
1. Not every metaphor is an assertion.
2. And even if a metaphor is an assertion we cannot
always get the right terms into the A and B positions./
In order to analyse that claim it is convenient to
classify the material we are working with.
One can distinguish
between 6 types of metaphor (cf. Tirrell and Levin), :
a. simple identities (A is B)
b. pure predications (Juliet is warm)
c. sortal predications( A is a B)
d. substitution metaphors (pity this busy monster,
manunkind- )
e. noun-function metaphor (The B of A)- a cloak
of silence
f. verb-functional metaphor (The A Xes)- when the
green woods laugh with the voice of joy.
The problems for claim 1 are e. and f. Transformation
of the noun-functional metaphor ("The countless gold of a
merry heart, The rubies and pearles of a loving eye") to
simile involve quantifiers - "whatever a loving eye has that
is like rubies and pearles" - we get generality but loose
accuracy and informativeness.
Consider an example of hyperbolic verb-functional
metaphor introduced on radio in a sportcasting program:
"When Sandy Koufax was young he could throw
a strawberry through a locomotive."
We can quantify over people or over action. What
is wrong here is that the simile theory complicates things, it
sends us to look for properties shared between SK and some nonexistent
someone. The quantification stage is better to be skipped if we
want to understand what SK would have to be like in order to have
such a capacity - "frightfully fast arm and a keen eye".
She is a birch.
Searle's criticism of the 'interactive' approach
to metaphor are the following:
IT's statement: There
is no step 2 (computation of possible values of R) because R is
specifiable only with regard to the Subject and the Predicate,
thus association between P and R did not exist prior to the juxtaposition
of S and P. That is, different combinations of S and P create
new Rs.
Sreale's position: Different
Ss restrict the range of possible Rs generated by P because different
Rs can be true of different Ss.
IT's assumption: All metaphor
uses occur in sentence context of literal uses of expressions.
Searle's argument: The
above claim is not true in the case of mixed metaphors.
IT's assumption: Metaphor
meaning is a result of interaction between elements of the sentence.
Searle's argument: However,
if one changes the subject but keep the same Predicate in metaphors
such as Juliet is the sun or She is a birch the metaphor
is still the same.
IT's assumption: Metaphorical
utterances depend on the context.
Searle's argument: The
above statement is true also of literal utterances and thus not
a feature distinguishing between metaphorical and literal expressions.
Comprehension steps
According to Searle there are three major steps in comprehension of metaphors
which i will formulate as rules:
1. Determine whether you need to seek for metaphorical interpretion.
2. Apply the principles for computing the possible values of R having in mind P.
3. Having in mind S apply the principles restricting the range of R's values
Metaphorical relations between P and R:
similarity: physical and functional
However, the basic cognitive process behind both the production and the
comprehension of metaphors (non the less also of synecdoche and metonymy which are kinds of
metaphor according to Searle) is an inference, namely, abduction,
which may be compared with the other two forms of valid inference:
p(A)
(Vx)p(x) -> q(x)
(Vx)p(x) -> q(x) "This kind of reasoning is very often called adopting a hypothesis for the sake of
its explanation of the known facts." (Ch.S.Peirce, Lecture Two, 1898).
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Let us take the type of metaphors discussed by Searle:
which are likely to be intended by the speaker.
contingency
analogy
part-whole
container-contained
cultural believes
association (not clear what is meant by that)
induction
q(A)
______
(Vx)p(x) -> q(x)
deduction
p(A)
______
q(A)
adbuction
q(A)
______
p(A)