The ethnopragmatics and semantics of ‘active metaphors’

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues that ‘active metaphors’ can be sharply distinguished from other metaphorical phenomena due to their reliance on ‘metalexical awareness’, detectable by linguistic tests as well as by intuition. Far from being a natural function of the human mind or a universal of rational communication, I contend that active metaphorizing is a culture-specific speech practice which demands explication within an ethnopragmatic perspective. I propose an ethnopragmatic script (a kind of specialized cultural script) for active metaphorizing in English, and dramatize its culture-specificity by ethnopragmatic case studies of Pitjantjatjara (central Australia) and Malay. Finally, in relation to English active metaphors, I try to demonstrate that expository metaphors have determinable meanings which can be stated as extended reductive paraphrases. The analytical framework is the natural semantic metalanguage theory [C. Goddard, A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and Universal Grammar—Theory and Empirical Findings, 2 vols., John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2002; A. Wierzbicka, Semantics: Primes and Universals, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996a], and the associated theory of cultural scripts.