METAPHOR
المؤلف:
John Field
المصدر:
Psycholinguistics
الجزء والصفحة:
P178
2025-09-16
292
METAPHOR
Research has considered how we recognise that a statement is metaphorical rather than literal. A traditional view envisages three stages: forming a literal interpretation of the utterance; relating that interpretation to the immediate context and to world knowledge; then seeking a non-literal interpretation. The second stage has been related to Grice’s (1975) maxim of quality: ‘Do not say anything which you know to be false’. If the utterance is false in literal terms, then a metaphorical meaning must be intended.
Against the three-stage view, there is evidence that subjects take longer to reject as ‘false’ a statement that is potentially metaphorical (Some desks are junkyards) than one which is not (Some desks are roads). This suggests that they cannot resist the metaphorical association, and raises questions about whether the second stage actually occurs. Some commentators claim that clearly contextualised metaphors do not take longer to understand than comparable literal statements, and argue for a single-stage process, with literal and metaphorical statements processed in the same way.
One theory traces parallels between metaphorical and class inclusion statements. The statement My dog is an animal relates an example to a category whose characteristics we understand. The statement Rambo is an animal can thus be processed in a similar way. Like many class-inclusion statements, metaphors appear to be highly context-dependent. In these examples, different attributes of time bomb are foregrounded (or instantiated) depending on the context:
Cigarettes are time bombs.
b. Human beings are time bombs.
See also: Figurative language
Further reading: Cacciari and Glucksberg (1994); Stevenson (1993: 148–55)
الاكثر قراءة في Linguistics fields
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