CHAPTER 27

Metaphor

27.1 Figurative Language

The figurative use oflanguage is fundamental to everyday speech and writing. It is so common that we often overlook the fact that we are indulging in figurative speech when we say things such as 'He was burning with rage', 'She dropped a hint', 'I am late, I must fly', 'Things are getting on top of me'. In fact, without the figurative use of language it is a dull, lifeless and much less useful means of communication. Good and original figures of speech make writing into literature, and make it possible for someone confronting a completely new experience to communicate his/her experience to others. In such circumstances it is sometimes necessary to invent a new term, but a new term requires defmition before it can be understood by others. The figurative use oflanguage, however, draws upon our common experience to illuminate a novel experience, or condense into a single phrase a description that would otherwise take a whole paragraph.

When someone coins a new phrase or description for something it is art. When it is adopted by many others it becomes cliche. When it is used by everyone it becomes part of the standard usage and the words concerned have adopted new standard meanings. That is how language grows and adapts to circumstances, as it must.

The ease with which humans deal with figurative phrases which have never been heard or read before suggests that the mechanism of understanding is well adapted for the task. It is not a question of calling up some seldom-used procedure to deal with a statement which has defied conventional interpretation. The process of understanding proceeds smoothly, as though the mechanism for dealing with figurative speech is the normal way of dealing with any form of speech.

We conclude that any mechanism which deals with ordinary usage but cannot deal with figurative speech cannot be handling language in the way humans do it.

27.2 Metaphor

In section 25.3 we suggested how the role of an object might be represented as part of its meaning. In this representation many entities appeared, and the object itself (which is the subject or target of the definition) was identified by a special marker ('*'). We called this 'the salient feature' of the representation. The salient feature need not in fact be an object, but could be an action, a movement, or a causal connection.

The representational scheme is only a suggestion, one of many possible schemes. We would argue, however, that the notion of a definition containing representations of far more than the subject of definition itself is very important, and would be a feature common to any successful representational scheme.

Therefore if one uses a word in a statement, it brings with it a great deal of information which is built into the representation of the complete statement. We might consider them to be 'supporting cast' by analogy with a stage play, while the salient features are the 'star performers'. Now ifl have just seen a new play, and I wish to describe it to someone who has not seen it, I may, to save a lot of talk, describe it in terms of other plays which we have both seen. If the new play is concerned with a boardroom struggle for power in a commercial company I might describe one character as 'a Hamlet character' and another as 'a Macbeth character', meaning that the first dithered and dithered until opportunities had passed, while the second rushed impetuously into action on the advice of his wife. The new play, however, has no princes or kings and no murders. In using this means of description I am making use of the listener's knowledge of the two plays Hamlet and Macbeth. I know that the listener knows that there are no princes or kings or murders in the new play, and so he can assume that the comparison must make reference to some other feature of the plays. We are referring to the non-salient features of the representations.

The representation of the word 'sea' must have the substance 'water' as its salient feature. In the phrase 'a sea of troubles', however, we do not imply that someone is suffering from burst pipes. The reference is being made to the non­salient aspect of 'sea', which is its extensiveness. In the phrase 'dropped a hint' we are making reference to the aspects of the representation of 'dropped' which relate to the way 'dropping' something will leave it to become the possession of someone else if they are sufficiently observant. 'I must fly' makes reference to the speed of flying as a means of travel.

We conclude that metaphor is the use of language which makes reference to non-salient features of the semantic representations of words and ignores the salient features.

Since, in any given representation, all features are present, it would not then be surprising that human understanding of metaphor should proceed smoothly, since it would involve only an extension of the pattern-matching procedures used in normal circumstances. When we encounter a phrase such as 'a stone man' the word 'man' provides a generic representation of the concept 'man'. The word 'stone' provides a generic representation of something (unspecified) which is made of stone (see section 25.6). The properties of this unspecified object are that it is rigid, heavy, unyielding and not alive. The unspecified something is then unified with the entity specified in the representation of 'man' , and the additional properties provided by 'stone' are forced upon those of 'man'. Where there is a contradiction (alive/not alive) those of 'stone' will prevail.

We have therefore made use of the meaning of 'man' but have deleted one of the most important aspects of that representation. A man can scarcely be thought of as a man if he is not alive, and yet here we are with a non-alive man derIDed easily and conveniently by use of the phrase 'stone man'.

'Stone man' is not usually considered to be a metaphorical use of language. The argument is that it makes use of exactly the same mechanism we have suggested for dealing with metaphor, and if this is accepted we have successfully brought the processing of metaphor into the normal interpretation of language.