Metaphor: From Fixedness and Selection to Differentiation and Creation

Abstract

By and large, most models of metaphor entertained in contemporary cognitive literature assume that metaphor is a relationship between two given entities whose attributes are defined prior to the relationship established between them. The metaphoric sense is produced through the selection of a subset of these attributes. In this paper I take issue with this view. My discussion is couched in the consideration of four basic cognitive assumptions: (1) the fixedness assumption, (2) the selectional assumption, (3) an assumption about the primacy of constituents over wholes, and (4) an assumption about meaning and interpretation. Against these assumptions I consider metaphors taken from literary texts, the semantics of non-metaphoric linguistic expressions, judgments of similarity, synesthesia, and patterns in both child development and the evolution of culture. An outline for an alternative view of metaphor is then presented, which is couched in the broader context of nonrepresentational psychology. In addition, the functional significance of metaphor is discussed and a pluralistic perspective on metaphor is proposed. Words have a soul. Most readers, and even writers, demand only that they should have a sense. One has to find that soul, which appears in the contact of words with other words. Guy de Maupassant The poet's task [is to] dislocate words into meaning. T. S. Eliot Poetics Today 13:4 (Winter 1992). Copyright ( 1992 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/92/$2.50. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.118 on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 05:50:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 660 Poetics Today 13:4