Objects of Metaphor phần 1 ppt

Chapter 1 sets out toshow that there is indeed room for a new account of metaphor, and Chapter 2 introduces a central idea used in thataccount—an idea teased out of certain once-debated

Objects of Metaphor

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Objects of Metaphor

Samuel Guttenplan

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Contents

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The only reasonable response to the philosophical literature on metaphor is one of despair This is not because whatone finds there is bad; far from it Though I don't think that anyone is quite right about metaphor, very few writers aresimply wrong Nor is the despair grounded on the sheer volume of the literature and its almost exponential increase inrecent years To be sure, if you thought you could get some gripon it in a weekend, a week, or even a month, theimpossibility of this might well depress you But of course such volume is also a sign of health in an area of

investigation It is certainly not a reasonable ground for desperation.

What justifiably brings one low in confronting this literature is neither its quality nor its scale, but rather the sense that,even though so many sensible things have been said about metaphor, it seems impossible to see how they might formany sort of single, coherent picture It is as if a lot of very clever people, confronted with a huge jigsaw puzzle, all set towork in different places Pieces, often many, are fitted together, and if you watch them being assembled, it is easyenough to share the satisfaction that comes from each additional piece snapping into place But if you stand back to try

to get some sense of the whole, what you see are only small sections, jagged in outline, which do not suggest that theythemselves fit together

What makes all the difference to the assembly of a jigsaw puzzle is what, in any actual case, is provided on the box thepieces came in: a drawing of the finished picture In life, and here this means in our dealing with the philosophicalproblem of metaphor, there is no such picture So, what we have to do is somehow fit pieces together, without forcingthose that form only an ‘almost’ perfect fit, while at the same time sketching for ourselves at least an outline of thewhole In some areas of philosophy, one has the feeling (perhaps wrongly) that the sketch has been done, even if thepieces haven't yet been assembled; in others we have only part of that sketch But, as the opening remark suggests, mysense is that we are in worse shape with respect to metaphor: we have many assembled sections and no real idea ofhow the whole ought to look As you might expect from the use of the jigsaw metaphor, it is my aim in this book toprovide the missing picture, but as you must also realize I do not think this is straightforward

Given that philosophy is not a jigsaw puzzle in which we start with a drawing on the box, it would be wrong to thinkthat one could provide a philosophical sketch of what needs to be done independently of trying to do it So whatfollows will not be an attempt to stand to one side while offering advice about how philosophical sections of themetaphor puzzle should be joined up That just wouldn't work Rather, I shall offer a philosophical account ofmetaphor which,

though in many ways radically different from others, can highlight and absorb their best features.

This is of course an ambitious undertaking, and I admit to having had many doubts about the likelihood of its success.But I feel that I have had no choice but to persevere Believing as I think anyone should that what is missing is aperspective on the whole—the drawing on the box—and that this can only come by providing an account into whichother accounts, or at least their best features, can be fitted, a certain degree of risk-taking seemed in order Risks hereare of two kinds On the one hand, convinced though I am that my rather different account can draw the others into asingle coherent picture, its very differentness might be too radical It might well lead to head-scratching puzzlementrather than to assent And, on the other hand, in trying to fulfil the broader aim of gaining perspective on discussions

of metaphor via my own account—going, as it were, for the bird's-eye-view—there are bound to be ways in which theaccount I offer might be thought under-specified, and thereby under-defended

My strategy for coping with the first of these risks is a mixture of gradualism and minimalism Chapter 1 sets out toshow that there is indeed room for a new account of metaphor, and Chapter 2 introduces a central idea used in thataccount—an idea teased out of certain once-debated and now generally dormant worries about reference and, moreparticularly, predication The phenomenon of metaphor will not itself figure in this discussion, the aim of which will be

a certain liberation and enlargement of the role we typically associate with predicates But my conception of predicationwill be crucial to everything I come to say about metaphor, so, while at first this chapter might seem a detour intophilosophical logic, it will prove anything but that.1

While the foundational work of Chapters 1 and 2 displays a necessarily defensive gradualism, the exposition of my ownaccount of metaphor in Chapter 3 will be starkly minimalist Using only a limited number and range of examples, theaim is to present and defend my account of metaphor with the fewest possible distractions In this way, aside fromreducing the risk of being misunderstood, it will be easiest to display its connections to other accounts In particular,the minimalist presentation of my own account will show how it manages to assimilate many merits of these otheraccounts, while at the same time avoiding their defects And this in turn will justify my claim that my account can serve

as the picture on the metaphor puzzle box

Minimalism seems the best way to display the potential of my account for giving us needed perspective, but it courtsthe second sort of risk mentioned above, the risk that the account, developed only with a few simple examples, will bethought unable to handle a realistically wider range of metaphors and metaphor phenomena In the long Chapter 4, Iaddress this worry head-on, by showing how the unadorned account of Chapter 3 accommodates complexity andrichness in metaphor, and by describing how the account manages to encompass a wide variety of other

1 In an effort to keepthe reader onside, I do offer a sketch of at least the main outlines of my account at the end of Ch 1.

phenomena of metaphor Under this second head, I have in mind well-discussed phenomena such as dead metaphor,idiom, and simile, as well as certain less discussed ones including mixed metaphor, visual metaphor, and the figurativegenerally My hope is that when the materials of Chapter 4 are added to the minimalist account in Chapter 3, you willappreciate how my account manages to organize the philosophical literature on metaphor, while at the same timetelling a satisfyingly detailed story about the phenomenon of metaphor itself.2Finally, in Chapter 5, I shall consolidatethese different aims by explicitly considering the relation of my account to some relatively recent philosophical work onmetaphor.

So far I have been careful to say that my interest is in philosophical accounts of the phenomenon of metaphor, though I

have said nothing about what such an account is like, or why it is the best place to start Nor have I said anything aboutwhat counts as the phenomenon of metaphor Both the things that I have said, and those that I haven't, require furthercomment

Not that much needs to be said about the reason for choosing to start with a philosophical account of metaphor.

Philosophers who write about metaphor might not have the subtlety of those who approach the subject from a literarypoint of view, nor offer the promise that psychology does of explaining metaphor's entanglement in our cognitiveeconomy, but these latter studies depend upon, though do not provide, an account of how metaphor fits into the study

of linguistic meaning generally Yet whatever else it is, metaphor is a phenomenon of meaning, and philosophy oflanguage has as its central aim describing, clarifying, and perhaps explaining this notion Since I think that unless weunderstand metaphor's relation to meaning in general, we have not yet understood it, there can be no doubt about mychoice of starting point There is, though, a complication

Given the centrality of meaning to the philosophy of language, and the fact that metaphor is a phenomenon ofmeaning, you would expect metaphor to be just as much a concern to meaning theorists as meaning is a concern totheorists of metaphor However, reasonable though it seems, this expectation is not borne out Though things seem to

be changing, it is not unusual to find anthologies and introductory monographs in the philosophy of language which

do not so much as mention the ‘M’-word.3This calls for an explanation Indeed, given my insistence on philosophy asthe right place to begin the study of metaphor, it is somewhat embarrassing to have to admit that philosophersconcerned with meaning have

2 Much of the detailed work of Ch 4 should stand on its own: even if you don't accept my account of metaphor, what I say in this chapter should be of interest.

3 Look for ‘metaphor’ in the index of a number of introductory texts and you will see what I mean Note too that any recent change is by and

large due to the somewhat belated interest shown in Davidson's essay (1984a, published first in 1980) ‘What Metaphors Mean’ Without

denigrating the contribution that Davidson has made to the study of metaphor, it is unfortunate that his article has been the main, and sometimes the only, focus of interest This is because it is all too easy to take away from that essay the idea that metaphor need not be prominent on the agenda of philosophy of language This is of course a view, one that I shall consider in this book But, with the imprimatur of Davidson himself, many have treated it, not as the first, but as the last word on metaphor.

generally neglected this phenomenon.4 Conveniently, in giving this explanation, it will become clearer what aphilosophical account of metaphor involves, and I will be able to say something about the nature of the phenomenon

of metaphor itself

The place to begin is with some frank talk The phenomenon of metaphor has mainly been a nuisance to philosophers

of language It is a thorn in the side of those whose aim is to give a smooth and comprehensive account of the notion

of meaning And this true whether the approach to meaning takes the route of truth conditions, intentions, information theory, model theory, or any of the other current competing paradigms Nobody adopting one

communication-or other of these views even considers the possibility that metaphcommunication-or could be the starting point from which we reachout to the meanings of non-metaphorical words and sentences And, though it wouldn't be denied that somewheresomething ought to be said about metaphor, it tends either not to be said, or said late and only in passing

Why is metaphor seen as a nuisance? Any systematic account of the meanings of words and constructions in naturallanguage—and such accounts are the favoured candidates in contemporary philosophy of language—requires thatthere be some dependable link between word and meaning, or between grammatical construction and contribution tomeaning The problem with metaphor is that it seems to flout this requirement, and thereby threatens the systematicity

of any account of meaning For example, if we begin by assuming, say, that the word ‘door’ makes a reasonablyuniform contribution to sentences in which it occurs, we will find this assumption upset by examples such as: ‘Themillennial fact for Hope is a large blank door that has slammed against her life’ (Updike 2002: 6) In this recognizablymetaphorical sentence, the dictionary meaning of ‘door’ as a ‘hinged or sliding barrier of wood or other rigid materialfor closing the entrance to a building, room, carriage, safe, oven &c.’ plays little or no part

No part? Well, there are theorists of metaphor who insist that this cannot be right, and who maintain that the unrulybehaviour of words in metaphors can be brought under control by complicating the story we tell about meaning Onviews of this kind, there will be a route from something like the dictionary definition of ‘door’ to a more complexcontribution this word makes to the meaning of sentences in which it occurs, a route that will take in the Updikesentence And there are others who, not wanting to complicate the basic story about word and grammatical meaning,seek some alternative home for metaphor, such as speakers' meaning, where metaphor's power to seduce words fromthe straight and narrow will not be a problem

So, on the one hand, metaphor makes a nuisance of itself in respect of our theorizing about meaning, and, on the otherhand, there are philosophical accounts of metaphor which suggest ways to cope I will consider the latter in more detail

in Chapter 1, but, whatever we come to say about them, you would have expected these

4 Note that I am not here denying that there is a great deal written about metaphor by philosophers The point is simply that metaphor tends not to have the place within the philosophy of language that one might expect it to have.

ways of coping to figure in the literature on meaning; after all, they seem to be contributions to meaning theory itself.Yet, as noted above, philosophers of language aiming to give an account of meaning pretty much ignore these efforts.The reason for this is often only implicit, but what it comes down to is essentially a scepticism about whether thephenomenon of metaphor is a genuine kind with an underlying nature I was once given the following friendly warningabout getting too involved with metaphor: ‘Surely, metaphor is a rag-bag category that is best handled on the fly Youcan't think that there is anything interesting to say about it from the point of view of theory.’5 And unreasonablethough I think such a view is, I can certainly understand why it is held.

Traditionally, metaphor was regarded as one of the so-called ‘tropes’—ways in which linguistic items are ‘turned’ orundergo conversion, so that they come to fulfil some role other than their original one Thus, in saying that Achilles is

a lion, the word ‘lion’ would have been regarded as having been turned from its usual role: whereas it is typically thename of the feline kind, it comes to have a different predicative function in respect of Achilles As a trope, metaphortraditionally took its place in a list which included irony, meiosis, litotes, hyperbole, metonym, synecdoche, catachresis,parable, allegory, etc.—a list which seems dizzyingly extendable by anyone with the determination to make ever finerdistinctions More recently, and perhaps because the tradition of adding to the list of tropes has lost its charm,

‘metaphor’ (or, more commonly, the adjectival ‘metaphorical’ or adverbial ‘metaphorically’) turns upas a way ofreferring to tropes generally An examiner claiming to have read an ‘uncountable’ number of identical examinationanswers is held to have spoken metaphorically, as if this adverb correctly covers the case that we can also describe ashyperbole More liberal still is a current practice of using ‘metaphor’ pretty much interchangeably with ‘figurative’ and

‘non-literal’ Thus, we find comments like: ‘Some metaphors scarcely deserve the name … If I tell you not to cross thepath of someone who is prickly, steaming, or up in arms, you understand my language, for all its figurative nature, asimmediately and certainly as if I had chosen more literal ways of expressing myself.’6 While this liberal usage of

‘metaphor’ is convenient, it certainly doesn't instil confidence in the idea of metaphor as a unitary phenomenon with anunderlying nature, a phenomenon robust enough to still be around when, as one will say, nature has been carved at thejoints So, as merely one among the many different kinds of trope, metaphor does not seem interesting enough todemand serious theoretical attention But when thought of in the liberal way—especially when ‘metaphorical’ is used asmore or less equivalent to ‘figurative’ and ‘non-literal’—it is difficult to imagine a defence against the charge of being arag-bag category of no theoretical interest

My account of metaphor aims to answer this charge On the one hand, the account suggests that metaphor is in fact atheoretically unified, robust phenomenon which, though it casts light on notions like non-literality and the figurative, isnot

5 It is unfair to attribute sentiments conveyed in emails, but I can say that this was from a prominent philosopher of language.

6 Blackburn 1984: 172 The context of the remark is not important, just the easy slide between ‘metaphor’, ‘figurative’ and ‘[non-]literal’.

interchangeable with them On the other hand, while allowing that metaphor is a member, and not the head, of thetrope family, the account will provide ample reason for thinking of metaphor as crucial to our understanding ofmeaning In so far as I can convince you of these things, the neglect of metaphor in theorizing about meaning shouldcome to seem negligent.

The list of things that I am promising is, I realize, formidable: a philosophical account of metaphor which manages tointegrate other such accounts, or at least to absorb what is best in them; a justification of the idea that a philosophicalaccount is the right place to begin the study of metaphor; a defence of the robustness of metaphor as a theoreticalkind, crucial to the study of meaning; a way of distinguishing metaphor from other members of the trope family, aswell as from the merely figurative and non-literal; and finally, an account which is powerful and flexible enough toaccommodate the syntactic and semantic richness and diversity we expect of metaphor However, long as the list is,there is one more thing which is in many ways the most important, even though it will not occupy much of the book.When I began to write upmy hunches about metaphor—hunches which I had as long ago as 1980—I had thoughtthat metaphor would occupy only part of the book, and that there would be room left for a couple of chapters on what

I saw as consequences of the account well outside the arena of metaphor Moreover, it felt to me that the overall value

of any contribution I was hoping to make depended on these consequences Perhaps this was because I hadunreflectively absorbed the prejudice mentioned earlier, which sees metaphor as at most an interesting feature oflanguage, and not as central to meaning But what seems more likely is that the material planned for thesechapters—material on the supposed priority of thought over language, the course of human language development,and the debate about the linguistic abilities of non-human animals—simply struck me as exciting Whatever theexplanation, the development and defence of my account took up more space than I had originally thought, and thechapters on discussions of consequences that were planned have left only a shadow of themselves in the Epilogue Thereason that I mention this here, before I even get started, is partly that it might help to justify the space I devote inChapter 2 to what I think of as predicate liberation—an idea fundamental to extending my account of metaphor tothese other issues More importantly, suggesting here the larger context from which this book developed mightdiscourage you from approaching it with the prejudice about metaphor described above Metaphor is of course aspecialist topic within the philosophy of language, but, as I hope you will come to see, it is not only that

1 Clearing a Space

by the accounts typified in my classification (There will be a certain lightness of touch in these arguments, since themission is more that of surveying than mining.)

Demonstrating in this way the need for yet another account of metaphor is perhaps a good enough reason for thework of this chapter, but there is more to it than that The account of metaphor I shall offer in the next chapters is notsimply a revision of one or other existing account, and its very novelty could work against it By exploring the failings

of other accounts in some detail, I intend to create, not just a space for a new account, but a space of a particularshape The hope is that you will be predisposed to see the virtues of my account when you notice how nicely it fits intothis space

1.2 Classication

A philosophical account of metaphor is a sort of balancing act It is an attempt to balance some preferred theory of themeanings of words and constructions in a language—let me just call them ‘expressions’—with the demand that weexplain in a plausible way what is going on when someone uses some such expression