Metaphor Making and Processing

Abstract

The paper is divided into sections, each studying a pair of dualities. The justification for dealing with metaphor in these terms could not be found in the nature of metaphor itself which has been claimed to be no different from any other kind of duality of meaning, such as ambiguity, irony, and indirect speech acts. The first section will be devoted to dealing with the review of the massive literature about metaphor and the framework. The second section includes the pair imagination-rationality, which is at the heart of metaphor making and processing. The third pair, assertion-speach act, investigates the logical status of metaphor, and argues that metaphor cannot be approached in terms of true claims. The fourth couple, convention-intention, seeks to draw a line between what is conventional and what is intentional in metaphor. The fifth, speaker meaning-sentence meaning, exploits the traditional distinction between literal and figurative meaning to show the continuum between the two. The sixth section, world-to-words fit words-to-world fit, investigates the kind of relation metaphor entertains with the world. The last section, dictionary-encyclopedic knowledge, shows the amount of knowledge required both in metaphor making and processing