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Figurative Language - Anthony M. Paul
Figurative Language - Anthony M. Paul
Anthony M. Paul
I. DEFINITIONS
not more literal than the words’ ordinary senses, even though they
are more specific.
If a sense clearly satisfies A-C with respect to the other senses in
which the word might be used, then unquestionably it is a highly
literal sense; if it clearly does not, then unquestionably it is non
literal. Otherwise, its degree of literalness may be uncertain. This
uncertainty results not, I think, from the failure of A-C to capture
some essential principle of literalness; rather, it results from the
fact that the concept is too vague to avoid undecidable borderline
cases and too complex to allow, in every case, a decision as to
which of two senses is the more literal. Literalness, on the standard
concept, is scaled from the highly literal toward the clearly non
literal, and there does not seem to be any principle by which the
standard concept could usefully be made sharper.
Figurative utterances (that is, utterances containing expressions
used in figurative senses) form a subclass of the non-literal utterances
which adjoins the class of literal utterances. What this means for
the literal-figurative distinction is that it is a vague one with a fairly
wide range of borderline cases for which a decision between ex
tended literal and figurative could hardly be more than arbitrary.
This does not, of course, mean that the literal-figurative distinction
is a meaningless one, for there are clear examples on each side and
any utterance which is clearly on one side is clearly not on the other.
As is the case with many linguistic concepts, statements about
what is literal in the language as a whole only summarize the idio
lects of the speakers of the language. To say that a sense is literal
or non-literal is to say that it is so for most speakers or for the most
competent and sensitive speakers. There can, of course, be varia
tions among idiolects. For example, if, other things being equal,
sense x has a higher relative frequency than sense y in one speaker’s
experience, while for another it is the reverse, then the relative
literalness of the two senses is opposite in the two idiolects.
Let us conclude this section on literal and figurative with a brief
discussion of simile. It is sometimes disputed whether similes are
figurative, like metaphors, or literal, like straightforward com
parisons. My own view is that they are more figurative than literal,
though not much more so. What is important is not choosing the
right classification for similes but realizing that whichever way they
are classified most of them are near the literal-figurative borderline.
A simile is typically defined as “ a figure of speech comparing two
essentially unlike things and often introduced by like or as." A
ANTHONY M. PAUL 233
III. INTELLIGIBILITY
Alston’s second point (see page 227 above) is that figurative language
must be “ intelligible to a fairly sensitive person with a command of
the language.” Before considering intelligibility in more detail, let
us notice that this point is hardly ever made in the standard
definitions of “figurative” or of the several tropes, and that it is one
on which there could quite naturally be disagreement. It might, for
instance, be objected that intelligibility is a criterion only for good
or poetically valuable figurative language, so that there could be
utterances or utterance types that are figurative even though un
intelligible.
The problem with this view is that it obliterates the worthwhile
distinction between figurative language and language which is just
plain unintelligible, for if some unintelligible language is regarded
as figurative there is no way of distinguishing it from unintelligible
language which is non-figurative. Appeal to the standard definitions
of the individual tropes will not do for this purpose, because they
are far too broad. For example, since almost every thing is similar
to almost every other thing in some respect or other, virtually any
unintelligible utterance of the proper grammatical form could, on
the standard definitions of metaphor, be construed as a metaphor.
If this is allowed, if the figurative-unintelligible distinction is re
moved, then the idiot and the aphasiac are simply bad poets. Degree
of intelligibility is not necessarily one of the factors that determines
whether a metaphor or other figure is good or bad.
In restricting figurative language to the intelligible, Alston
implies that there are strings which are intrinsically unintelligible,
that is, strings which could not under normal circumstances be
used to say anything intelligible. This is obviously true of highly
agrammatical strings, but Alston seems to believe that there are
ANTHONY M. PAUL 235
IV. STIPULATION
V. DERIVATION
expressions are derived from their literal uses one must take account
not only of the characteristics of objects, situations, etc., but also
of the meanings of words and phrases. An expression may not
simply “ specify” something; it may also emphasize certain of the
referent’s aspects or certain of the speaker’s attitudes toward it, as
the term “fink” emphasizes the strikebreaker’s imputed treacherous
character. It may even be that this aspect-emphasizing element is
the dominant component of the expression’s meaning, so that
figurative uses of the expression would be more likely to trade on
it than on other characteristics of things to which the expression
literally refers. In this fashion the word “ fink” has lately (if my ear
serves me correctly) come by means of metaphorical extension to
mean “ traitor” in a general sense not at all restricted to activities
similar to strikebreaking.
My point is that if, as Alston says, figurative uses are derived
from established uses, then the relations on which the derivation is
based can range over the meanings of expressions as well as the
properties of things. (Conversely, of course, the relations must
range over the properties of things as well as the meanings of ex
pressions. Understanding a figurative utterance often requires
knowledge beyond simple knowledge of the meanings of words and
phrases.) A figurative utterance is a non-literal utterance which a
hearer or reader is able to understand because he knows what the
expressions used non-literally in the utterance literally mean or
denote. Knowing this he is able to conceive or is reminded of
related, derivative senses of the non-literal components, given which
the utterance can be appropriately understood.
The question now arises, on what sorts of relation can figurative
derivation be based? In general, as I have suggested, the answer is,
any relation by itself sufficient to render what is said non-literally
intelligible; that is, any relation such that a non-literal use based
on it would be intelligible even in the absence of stipulative meaning
clues. Clearly, then, familiar and direct relations are more likely to
support figurative language than are strange and intricate ones.
A survey of the major tropes indicates the range of figurative
relations. Metaphor can be based on similarity but also, as Aristotle
remarks, on analogy. Metonymy is based on association or sugges
tion. And synecdoche is a sort of open-ended trope which can be
based on any of a number of relations such as cause-effect,
container-contained, genus-species, part-whole, material-product,
etc.
246 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
VI. SUMMARY
NOTES
I An earlier version of this paper, entitled “What Is Figurative Language?”
was read at the annual meeting of the Western Division of the American
Philosophical Association in St. Louis on May 3rd, 1968.
* “Current Issues in Linguistic Theory” in The Structure o f Language,
edited by J. A. Fodor and J. J. Katz (Prentice-Hall, Inc.; Englewood Cliffs,
N.J., 1964), p. 50.
* The semantic theory proposed by Katz and Fodor, for example, cannot
handle figurative language because its “semantic markers” and “selection
restrictions” preclude figurative extensions of meaning. See "The Structure of
a Semantic Theory” in Fodor and Katz, op. cit.
4 Gustav Stern, for example, devotes a good portion of his diachronic
study, Meaning and Change o f Meaning (Indiana University Press; Blooming
ton, 1965), to the figures of speech.
* See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, excerpted in Basic Writings o f
Saint Thomas Aquinas, edited by Anton Pegis (Random House; New York,
1945), vol. 1, p. 15; Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (Yale University Press;
New Haven, 1952), p. 179; Frederick Ferré, “ Models, Metaphors, and Reli
gion,” Soundings, vol. 51, no. 3 (1968), p. 332.
* See Mary Hesse, “The Explanatory Function of Metaphor,” Proceedings
o f the 1964 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy o f
Science, edited by Y. Bar-Hillel (North Holland Publishing Co.; Amsterdam,
1965), pp. 249-259.
7 Philosophy o f Language (Prentice-Hall, Inc.; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
1964), p. 97.
* Ibid., p. 102.
* Webster's New World Dictionary, College Edition (The World Publishing
Co.; Cleveland, 1957), p. 855.
10 Poetic Diction (Faber & Gwyer; London, 1928), pp. 73, 81.
II “Ordinary Language,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 62 (1953), p. 169.
** “The Uses of ‘Use"' (University Microfilms; Ann Arbor, 1960), p. 82.
11 “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Child
hood.” Quoted by Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics (Harcourt, Brace A World
Inc.; New York, 1958), p. 137.
14 Alston, Philosophy o f Language, pp. 97-99.
11 By Roman Jakobson in “Boas’ View of Grammatical Meaning,” The
American Anthropologist, vol. 61 (1959), p. 143.
14 These points may seem to commit me to the curious view that what we
regard as the great figures of poetry may not really be figurative at all, since
their authors may have meant them literally, or have been mistaken, or... etc.
What I am claiming is that a poet is not writing figuratively unless the conditions
I specify are met. Whether what he writes is most appropriately Interpreted
figuratively is a different question. Where the intention of the author is unknown
or is irrelevant, as in interpreting poetry according to some theories, a figurative
utterance is one which is most appropriately interpreted as figurative; that is,
one for which a figurative interpretation is most appropriate to the context.
17 It might be argued by analogy to homonymity that this point follows
trivially from the fact that if a speaker were to use the phonemic string “ Morning
opes her golden gates” meaning “Two plus two equals four” be would be
uttering a different string. That is, just as one word cannot have two radically
different senses because such cases are homonymity rather than polysemy, so
one string cannot have radically different meanings. Therefore, phonetic-
orthographically identical utterances having entirely different intended meanings
must be utterances of different strings. My present thesis is stronger than this.
248 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
For each phonetic-orthographic string there are many meanings it could not
be used to express. What a string can be used to express may, of course, vary
from time to time with the evolution of our language and conceptual scheme.
18 It has been argued (for example, by Paul Ziff on the occasion mentioned
in note 1) that whether a certain string has a certain meaning is a matter not of
agreement among speakers but of the (in Ziff's view, transformational) structure
of the string. This view overlooks the fact that in linguistics agreement among
speakers, called informants, is the primary evidence. Whatever is idiosyncratic
in an informant's report is not among the data for a description of his language.
One purpose of a structural analysis is to facilitate prediction and explanation
of speakers’ intuitions about their language. If speakers agree that a certain
string does not admit of a reading ascribed to it by such an analysis, or vice
versa, the analysis is falsified.
M A word used stipulatively is used non-literally because of considerations
like those adduced in section II and the peculiarity of the supposition that
anything could at any time become a literal sense of any expression. A defender
of Alston's position might reject code or stipulative utterances as counter
examples on the ground that they are uses in established senses, the senses
having been established by stipulation. This is a misleading use of “established
sense," which connotes establishment through acceptance by a linguistic
community, not establishment through idiosyncratic fiat. Someone who relies
on this move still owes some hint, which Alston does not offer, at the particular
differences between figurative use and stipulative use.
It should be noted that the difference between stipulative and literal use is
as much a matter of degree as are the other differences we have been considering.
A new term or a new sense which is introduced and at first used stipulatively
may, if it gains acceptance, become literal. But there is, of course, no precise
point at which it changes status.
20 This point may seem to overlook the fact that, as in malapropism, an
utterance sometimes contains a linguistic mistake yet retains its intelligibility.
Thus, the following might be argued. When Mrs. Malaprop says that she wants
her daughter to be a veritable progeny of learning the audience understands
her to mean “ prodigy.” Therefore, there can be intelligible, non-literal utterances
in which neither stipulation nor derivation plays a part.
My own view is that a malapropism is best construed as a mispronunciation
which happens to correspond to another word, not as a misuse. In the example,
then, “progeny” is not used non-literally because it is not used at all. If someone
insists that malapropism is misuse, then it can be regarded as being intelligible
because of derivation, though the derivation is phonetic rather than semantic.
The hearer understands “progeny” in the appropriate way because he perceives
the similarity between its sound and the sound of the word appropriate to the
context. Thus construed, malapropism is akin to the phonetic figures disavowed
at the outset of this paper.
41 Alston, Philosophy o f Language, p. 97.
** Ibid., p. 98, paraphrased by Alston from Paul Henle, “ Metaphor” in
Henle, editor, Language, Thought, and Culture (The University of Michigan
Press; Ann Arbor, 1958), pp. 177-179.
*® A similar criticism is made by Monroe Beardsley in “The Metaphorical
Twist,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 22, pp. 294-297.