Metaphorical Communication

Abstract

Saussure (1966) defined a chain of events that starts in the mind of the speaker and ends in the mind of the listener. This chain of events occurs in the production and interpretation of metaphorical as well as literal language. Speakers produce utterances by speaking or writing; listeners interpret utterances by hearing or reading. Here are the steps involved in the production and interpretation of metaphorical utterances: (1) the speaker is thinking about some target field; (2) the speaker performs analogical access and thereby retrieves one or more source fields; (3) the speaker chooses one of the source fields and performs analogical mapping and transference to produce the analogy (S, T, f_M); (4) the speaker tests the resultant system of metaphors for truth; (5) if the system is sufficiently truthful to satisfy conversational norms, the speaker uses metaphor generation rules to produce metaphorical utterances — such generation may take much care, especially in written texts; (6) the listener hears or reads the metaphorical utterances; (7) the listener recognizes some semantic deviance (which may be explicitly announced) and begins to analyze the utterance as figurative, in this case, as metaphorical; (8) the listener resolves the utterance into a seed analogy that is a substructure of (S, T, f_M); (9) the listener extends the seed analogy into the full (S, T, f_M) by analogical access, mapping, and transference; (10) the listener constructs an initial evaluation of the truth of the resultant system of metaphors.