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Metaphors: What is Said or What is Implicated?
ESTHER ROMERO AND BELÉN SORIA
Abstract:
A variety of theorists have recently argued against the explanation of metaphor
as particularized conversational implicature. Although we agree with them in defending
that the result of metaphorical interpretation, the metaphorical meaning, is involved in
what is said, we do not believe that the arguments they have given against the proposal of
metaphor as an implicature were conclusive. Indeed, many theorists still defend a
conception of metaphor as implicature. In this context, the main aim of this paper
appears: to develop a theory on metaphor as implicature that solves the main criticisms to
the identification and interpretation criteria in classical theory of metaphor as implicature
in order to defend not only that this theory on metaphor is compatible with the proposal
that metaphorical meanings form part of what is said but also that viewing metaphorical
meaning as part of a propositional content leads to a view on which it possesses the
properties that are usually attributed to what is said.
Financial support for this research, which has been carried out in the project ‘Phrasal Pragmatics’ (HUM 2006-
08418), has been provided by Spanish Ministry of Science and Education (DGICYT) and European Funds
(FEDER). This paper has benefited from comments in the Lisbon ECAP-V Conference (2005), the 15
th
Annual
Meeting of the ESSP (2007) in Geneva, and the Riga Conference on Metaphor (2007).
Addresses for correspondence:
Esther Romero, Departamento de Filosofía I, Facultad de Psicología, Campus
de Cartuja, Granada, 18071, España. Belén Soria, Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana, Facultad de
Filosofía y Letras, Campus de Cartuja, Granada, 18071, España.
Emails:
eromero@ugr.es
and
bsoria@ugr.es
1
 1. Introduction: Theories of Metaphorical Meaning
We believe that a theory of metaphor must be able to account for its peculiarities.
Specifically, what we think is distinctive about metaphor is that it involves a specific human
ability: analogical reasoning. Regardless of whether metaphorical utterances are sentential or
non-sentential, referential or non-referential, negative or affirmative, etc.: in all cases,
metaphor involves a type of analogy. Analogical reasoning, in metaphor, involves using
knowledge about something that is not connected to the subject under scrutiny to give us
information about the matter we are really interested in. A theory of the interpretive process
for metaphorical utterances must specify how this analogy, the very essence of metaphor,
takes form. Furthermore, it must specify how, in the metaphorical interpretation,
metaphorical meanings appear.
Having said this, here we will not go into details of the process used to interpret
metaphor, rather we will provide arguments to show that the result of metaphorical
interpretation, the metaphorical meaning, is more naturally located in what is said than in
what is implicated. Our interest in defending this proposal stems from the fact that, if we take
into account the current theories of metaphorical meaning, we do not find agreement about
what the status of metaphorical meaning is, even if an identical metaphorical process were
defended.
Generally, it has been held that metaphorical content depends on the emergence of
metaphorical meanings, meanings that make this content itself special. Nevertheless, there are
philosophers that, following Davidson’s (1978) proposal, maintain that there are no
metaphorical meanings, no matter what characteristics might be attributed to them.
Proposals that argue for the existence of metaphorical meanings maintain that there is
some process of metaphorical interpretation that changes the meaning of some part of the
metaphorical bearer,
1
resulting in a metaphorical meaning different from the literal meaning
of that part. These proposals can be classified in terms of the role that is played by this
meaning in the propositional content that is communicated; metaphorical meaning can be
considered either as an ingredient of what is implicated or of what is said. According to the
first position, the speaker makes as if to say one thing in order to mean another. According to
the second, the speaker means what she metaphorically says.
When metaphorical meaning is understood as part of the content that is
implicated
by
the metaphor, the pragmatic process of interpretation is always considered to be an inferential
one. In the metaphorical utterance, words do not change their meanings to take on different
meanings that contribute to what is said. Words do not obtain a semantic value different from
the one they usually have; rather, what is meant has a content distinct from the proposition
literally expressed by the utterance, a content that results from pragmatic inferences which
depend on a pragmatic principle. The principle is normally taken to be either some version of
the Cooperative Principle or the Relevance Principle. When some version of the Cooperative
Principle is involved, different authors resort to different mechanisms to explain how the
inferential process reaches metaphorical implicature or how metaphorical implicature is
calculated: resemblance for Grice (1975), some heuristic principle for Searle (1979), or a
process of interaction for Kittay (1987). In general, we could say that the authors that have
1
A metaphorical bearer is understood as an utterance (or an expression in some theories) that is identified as
metaphorical in natural language and that conveys a metaphorical content. Nowadays it is usual to distinguish
between metaphorical bearer and metaphorical vehicle and the latter is reserved for the word or words used
metaphorically in a metaphorical bearer.
2
defended literalism in what is said have also argued for metaphor as implicature.
2
The
outstanding exception is Stern (2006) since he calls himself ‘literalist’ but considers that
metaphorical meanings belong to what is said. When Relevance Principle is involved, as
illustrated by Sperber and Wilson (1986/95) in Early Relevance Theory (ERT), the inferential
process is guided by this principle and results in the loosening of a concept where one or
more features of this concept are dropped in the process of arriving at the intended
interpretation.
Opposed to the view of metaphorical meaning as part of an implicated content, it has
been maintained that metaphorical meaning is part of what is said. On this view, with a
metaphor the speaker means what she metaphorically says. Thus what is said is not always
what is literally said. Supposedly, to argue that what is said is not always what is literally said
is automatically to become a contextualist, at least in the following sense:
According to contextualism, the contrast between what the speaker means and what
she literally says is illusory, and the notion of ‘what a sentence says’ incoherent. What
is said (the truth-conditional content of the utterance) is nothing but an aspect of
speaker’s meaning. That is not to deny that there
is
a legitimate contrast to be drawn
between what the speaker says and what he or she merely implies. (Recanati, 2004, p.
4).
Admittedly, for the contextualist what is said by the speaker is not always literally said. The
most obvious position in favour of what is non-literally said is the defence of the legitimacy
of what is metaphorically said, but this is not sufficient to be a contextualist. Indeed, it does
not seem plausible for contextualism to defend, as classical rhetoricians did, that some words
have, in addition to their literal meaning, a metaphorical linguistic meaning which can
coincide with the literal meaning of some other word, where this latter meaning is involved in
what is metaphorically said; on this view, the interpretation of a metaphor merely requires a
process of disambiguation between these two fixed meanings. Instead, the contextualist
maintains that what is said is not always literally said because contextual information intrudes
what is said. Because disambiguation is a process where the context only serves to choose
among options that are already established, the proposal of classical rhetoric would not be
acceptable to contextualists. In addition, the classical rhetoric proposal, which is a type of
substitution view, was rejected long ago because, as Black (1954) showed, it reduces the
metaphorical contribution to an ornamental value or a case of catachresis, thereby denying the
cognitive value of metaphor.
The rejection of this substitution view gives rise to proposals intended to account for
the production of metaphorical meaning in a way that does justice to metaphor’s cognitive
value. On such a view the content that the metaphorical vehicle contributes to the proposition
metaphorically expressed differs from any of its linguistic meanings and from any of the
literal contents that the expression might fix. The metaphorical meaning does not coincide
with the conventional meaning of some other word either. Contextual factors will always be
present in the elaboration of metaphorical
meaning and the contextual intrusion is determined
2
In literalism the sentence linguistic meaning, understood as a compositional meaning that results from the
combination of the conventional meaning of sentence terms, is closely related to what is said by an utterance of
the sentence. Their differences depend on the contextual information that is involved in the latter, taking into
account that, in general, pragmatic contributions demanded by the linguistic meaning itself are kept to a
minimum. So, the pragmatic contribution needed to interpret metaphor intervenes in an implicature and not in
what is said. Authors such as Stanley (2005) argue for this proposal.
3
by the mechanism responsible for its production. However, within this approach we can
distinguish, not only several different explanations of the mechanism responsible for the
production of metaphorical meaning, but also several different views about how the
interpretive process is triggered: either as something indispensable for the expression of
propositional content or as something dispensable. This distinction is relevant because only
when the metaphorical process is considered dispensable (optional) can the proposal be
classified as contextualist.
Contrary to what one might think, it is not easy to draw the distinction between
mandatory and optional demands for contextual information. Indeed, there are at least two
distinct senses of ‘mandatory’. On the one hand, from a linguistic point of view, a process or
its result is mandatory (mandatory
L
) when it is, as Recanati (2004, p. 98) says, ‘required in
virtue of a linguistic convention governing the use of a particular construction (or class of
constructions).’ On the other hand, from a truth-conditional point of view, an interpretation
process or its result is mandatory (mandatory
T
) when it is necessary for a propositional
content to be generated in the interpretation of an utterance (Recanati, 2004, p. 62).
Sometimes, a process is mandatory in both senses, as when pronouns are involved.
Sometimes, the interpretation process is mandatory
L
but not mandatory
T
, as in the process
required for recovering the conventional implicature of ‘but’.
3
In other occasions, the process
is mandatory
T
but not mandatory
L
, as in the process required to interpret incomplete definite
descriptions (Romero and Soria, forthcoming). To avoid the presupposition failure associated
with the incomplete definite description and thus a failure to express a proposition (Glanzberg,
2005), a mandatory
T
pragmatic process is triggered. Finally, there are processes that are not
mandatory in any of these senses, as in the cases of free enrichment of the circumstances of
evaluation (Recanati, 2004, pp. 115-30).
The process of metaphorical interpretation cannot always be mandatory
L
since there is
no need to consider lexical items in a particular construction as requiring a metaphorical
meaning, as it happens in a metaphorical utterance of ‘My cat is on the mat’ to refer to an
infant.
4
But, if the process of metaphorical interpretation is required in order to obtain a
propositional content, then the metaphorical process is mandatory
T
. This position is
compatible with a literalist account of what is said and could be attributed to Stern (2006).
For him, the metaphorical interpretation depends on a mandatory
T
process which recovers a
deictic operator that triggers a mandatory
L
interpretive process which is itself context-
dependant.
The operator semantically demands contextual information. Stern’s literalist
position posits a richer underlying linguistic representation whose meaning will determine the
truth-conditions of each metaphorical utterance in context. In Romero and Soria (2007), we
also argue for a mandatory
T
process, although we claim that it results in a transfer which is
achieved by a mapping and not by a deictic operator. Our differences with Stern lie in our
views about the particular metaphorical mechanism rather than in the mandatory
T
character
of this mechanism.
5
If Stern and we are right, then the minimal proposition expressed by a
metaphorical utterance must be non-literal. This means abandoning the assumption that the
input to what is implicated is always what is literally said. Nevertheless, it does not entail
3
The meaning of ‘but’ sets up a slot to be contextually filled and when it is saturated (mandatory
L
), it
determines non-truth-conditional aspects of the utterance meaning (non-mandatory
T
).
4
For a metaphorical utterance of this sentence, see example (3) below. The process of metaphorical
interpretation would be mandatory
L
for a metaphorical utterance of ‘The sky is crying’.
5
If, for us, what makes a process obligatory or optional depends on the way in which it is triggered, then the
same process, against what Recanati (2004) maintains, can be obligatory or optional. The obligatory or optional
character of a pragmatic process is extrinsic to the process itself.
4
embracing contextualism. Contextualists about metaphor hold that neither the process nor its
result are mandatory in any sense. The process either results in an optional
LT
ad hoc
concept,
as Wilson and Carston (2006) in Current Relevance Theory (CRT) would argue, or it is itself
an optional
LT
process of modulation, in the case of Recanati. A summary of our classification
can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1.Theories of metaphorical meaning
No metaphorical meanings: Davidson
What is
implicated
Grice: resemblance
Searle: heuristic principles
Kittay: interaction
Relevance Principle: Sperber and Wilson (in ERT)
Cooperative
Principle
Metaphorical
Meaning
= a metaphorical linguistic meaning (Classical rhetoric)
What is
said
-an operator that triggers a mandatory
L
process (saturation): Stern
-transfer: Romero and Soria
≠ any of the
linguistic
meanings
Mandatory
T
- an
ad hoc
concept: Wilson and Carston
(in CRT)
- modulation: Recanati
Optional
LT
This brief presentation of the accounts on metaphor that represent the different
proposals that may appear in a classification of theories of metaphorical meaning, one
articulated on the basis of the central discussion of whether metaphorical meaning is involved
in what is implicated or in what is said by an utterance, permits us to show that both positions
are currently defended.
Still, although the theory of metaphor as implicature has been attacked from its very
beginning, the theorists of metaphor as implicature do not abandon their proposal because
they understand that these attacks can be resisted.
6
As we have seen, many reputed authors
nowadays still consider metaphor as implicature while a growing group of equally reputed
ones argue for metaphor as part of what is said. We argue for the latter position but we take
the other proposal seriously and find that, for the sake of the argument, we need to explain
what theory can best account for metaphor as implicature. To do this, we will see first, in the
next section, the Gricean proposal of metaphor as implicature and will enumerate the
problems that have been attributed to it. Then, we will see, in section 3, how the theorist of
implicature might escape from these criticisms. This leads to a new explanation on metaphor
within the theory of implicature. Nevertheless, this will not be the end of the story because
the measures that implicature theorists have to adopt to solve the problems typically
attributed to it lead to a proposal that is compatible also with the one in favour of what is
metaphorically said. Thus we will move, in section 4, to the arguments which allow choosing
6
Camp (2006) has claimed that the arguments that have been recently elaborated against the explanation of
metaphor as particularized conversational implicature are also not conclusive. She considers four criteria for
distinguishing what is said from what is merely meant that, according to contextualists, support classifying
metaphor in what is said and argues that when rightly understood, these criteria do not support this claim. This
has left a space, according to her, for defending the conception of metaphor as implicature. Nevertheless, we
argue in this paper that this space is not justified. When we get an explanation on metaphor within the theory of
implicature that solves the problems traditionally attributed to metaphor as implicature, we obtain a proposal
that is also compatible with a theory of what is metaphorically said. As metaphorical contents described in this
way have the characteristic features of what is said, they are more naturally located in what is metaphorically
said.
5
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