ENUNCIADO DEL PROBLEMA

The second theory I will explore is Emma Borg’s theory of metaphor.5 Borg suggests a figurative interpretation functionf, which takes the literal meaning of the uttered sentence p, the conceptual framework α, and the contextual input c as arguments and gives the set of metaphorical interpretations:

fc< p, α, c >={pc₁, ..., pc_n}

The basic picture in which this function plays its role is as follows: A hearer processes the literal sentence with the aid of his conceptual framework and determines the possible interpretation set. He then reduces this set to the contextually relevant interpretations. The conceptual framework parameter, here, does a similar job to the one association sequences do in my phrasal implicature theory of metaphor. Borg makes a distinction between two types of conceptual framework. One is personal: every speaker of a language has his or her own conceptual framework. The second is an abstracted common framework which is shared by most of the speakers of a given language. These two bring about two different interpretation sets: Borg calls the first “Personal Interpretations (PI)” and the second “Metaphorical Interpretations (MI)”. Everyone might arrive at personal (idiosyncratic) interpretations, but they should not be called metaphorical; metaphorical interpretations should not be private but

5_{Although she rejects pragmatic approach to metaphor, the commonalities her account have}

commonly accessible (Borg 2001, pp.237-40).

One concern with the view so far is about the limitation of Borg’s suggested notion of conceptual framework. I doubt that this abstracted conceptual framework can explain examples such as “I can’t believe you have Alexed the book”, which I discussed in Section 4.1.6 above, and other similar cases. In these examples, it is hard to claim that a common conceptual framework that is shared by most of the speakers of a language will be helpful. Borg seems to need a more fine-grained notion of conceptual framework.

I will now continue with a more important problem. Borg claims that metaphor- ical meaning is autonomous:

I want to claim that, although it is not wrong to come to entertain any member of MI in response to a metaphorical use of a sentence, some members of MI may be more appropriate than others. The hearer who interprets Romeo’s utterance of “Juliet is the sun” as meaning that Juliet is a burning oppressor has not failed to understand the metaphor, though the interpretation she has settled upon is far from being the most appropriate in the context. It is in this sense that the user of metaphor has less recourse than the user of non-metaphorical language: a speaker may reject what purports to be a report of what she literally said as mistaken, but in the case of metaphor, where the putative report makes use of a member of MI, though not one the speaker had intended, she can object that the report is not appropriate, but cannot simply reject it as incorrect. This is just one aspect of the autonomy of metaphorical interpretation; another surfaces in the fact that p* counts as a correct metaphorical interpretation of a sentence, s, just in case there is an open path from s to p* in the cognitive framework of some proper part of members of the linguistic community.6 (Borg 2001, pp.240-1)

I strongly disagree with this claim. If metaphor is a meaning form, or at least has a communicative value, we cannot separate it from the speaker’s communicative intentions. Meaning, whether it is semantic meaning or speaker’s meaning, is a metaphysical phenomenon. It is fixed when the utterance is made. On the other hand, interpretation is an epistemological issue. The hearer’s aim is to access what was meant by the sentence or by the speaker, and he can fail or succeed in doing this. However, the hearer’s success or failure does not affect the determination of

6_{What she understands from “metaphorical interpretation” is metaphorical meaning; elsewhere}

the meaning.7

A simple example might illustrate this idea. Suppose a teacher sees a note on the board of a lecture theatre saying “This module is a picnic”. The teacher might arrive at an interpretation upon seeing the sentence and imagining a context, but this should be a tentative one. She cannot be sure what “this module” and the metaphorical phrase “picnic” mean. She might be curious and pursue what was meant by the utterance. Suppose further that she finds the utterer and learns the intended meanings, but these meanings go against her initial interpretation. In this situation, what would the teacher say? Would she say “my interpretation was inappropriate” but not false or “my interpretation was incorrect (or false)”. For the phrase “this module”, she would surely say the latter. How about the metaphorical phrase? I think the latter also sounds more natural for that. In this sense, metaphorical language does not seem different from literal language. If this objection is plausible, we should reject Borg’s first remark on the autonomy of metaphorical meaning. The second remark is even less acceptable. From Borg’s suggestion it follows that a metaphorical utterance expresses unintended meanings. In other words, when meaning is in question, does appropriateness entail correctness? Imagine a context in which it is appropriate to assume that the pronoun “she” in “she is smart” might refer to ten different people. Does this mean that there are ten propositions expressed by this sentence, even if the speaker and the hearer are not aware nine of them? If it does not, why would we assume something similar for metaphorical meaning?8

To conclude, although I have sympathy for Borg’s general understanding of how metaphor functions, I disagree with her remarks on the autonomy of metaphorical meaning. Another essential difference between my approach and her is that her approach is clausal but mine is phrasal. The figurative function she postulates takes the literal meaning of the metaphorical sentence/clause as a whole, which makes her account a clausal one.