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 DOI: 10.1177/096394709600500304

1996 5: 195Language and LiteratureBegona Vicente

On the semantics and pragmatics of metaphor: coming full circle  

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ARTICLE

On the semantics and pragmatics of metaphor:coming full circle

Begoña Vicente, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain

Abstract

In this article a pragmatic account of metaphor along relevance theory lines isdefended and contrasted with the Gricean approach, and also with recent proposals toaccount for the phenomenon semantically. It is argued that the context-dependence thatexplicitly communicated information exhibits is not sufficient grounds for a purelysemantic characterisation of metaphor. This requires, however, that we distinguish twolevels of analysis in utterance interpretation, in addition to the level of what isimplicated: a level of linguistic meaning and a level at which the completetruth-conditional content of the utterance (the proposition expressed) is established.Purely semantic analyses of metaphor in terms of linguistic meaning are discussed andrejected. Also, the possibility is explored that, by means of a local pragmatic processof transfer, metaphorical interpretations make a contribution at the level of theproposition expressed. This is found to be compatible with relevance theoryassumptions about utterance interpretation.

Ke3~vords: coiiievt dependence; linguistic meaning; locahglnhal pragmatic processes;metaphorical utterance; relevance; semantic llnderdeterminacy; tnitfi-cofiditioiialC0/!~/!/; weak/strong implicatures.

I Introduction

The development of pragmatics has had a formidable impact on recentassumptions about the nature of meaning and interpretation in natural languageand, inevitably, on theories of metaphor. First, as the distinction betweensentence meaning and speaker’s meaning became established, the question aroseas to where to place figurative uses of language. More recently, with the contextindependence of explicitly communicated information called into question inrelevance theory and the theoretical status of the notion of literal meaningquestioned by psychologists, more finely-grained distinctions have been felt tobe necessary for the correct characterisation of both literal and non-literal

speech. The aim of this article is to explore the extent to which metaphor may beadequately described as a semantic phenomenon in the light of these changingassumptions.

I start by looking briefly at the Gricean account of figurative language, andthen discuss the phenomenon of the context-dependence of literally interpretedsentences as possible evidence for a semantic analysis of metaphor. In the lasttwo sections, the relevance theory approach to non-literal interpretation as

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implicated meaning is presented, followed by a tentative alternative analysis interms of explicit meaning.

2 Metaphor as implicature I

Although psychologists have to a large extent abandoned semantic theories suchas Katz and Fodor’s (1963), in which the meanings of words are seen as fixedsets of features, linguists in the 1960s such as Bolinger and Weinreich werealready complaining that a semantic theory that left out any ’interpretabledeviance’ intentionally produced by speakers was inadequate as a model of theirinterpretative abilities. As speakers of the language, we have no more troubleunderstanding (2) than ( 1 ), but (2) was explicitly barred from Katz and Fodor’stheory due to the fact that the subject term violated the selectional restrictionsimposed by the verb:

1. The toddler swallowed the little toy.2. The river swallowed his car in a matter of seconds.

Proposals to endow the language system with the means to handle this kind of’semantic deviation’ are nevertheless doomed to failure. For one thing, since anysentence that is syntactically well-formed can be interpreted in some context -no matter how extravagant this may have to be - there would be no way to

produce a predictive theory. Besides, a system whose rules include rules for theviolation of its own rules ad infinitum can hardly be said to be a system at all;we would simply be moving the goal posts as we go along. Pragmatic theorysuggests a way in which this deadlock may be broken: our ability to make senseof different combinations of words in the situations in which they are producedreflects, but goes well beyond, our tacit knowledge of linguistic rules.

According to Grice (1975), in using figurative language a speakercommunicates indirectly via implicature. In the case of metaphor, he or she says- or makes as if to say - something false, while he or she implicates somerelated proposition which allegedly restores his or her claim to rationality andco-operation. This way of communicating, by apparently violating or flouting themaxims of conversation and so triggering the calculation of implicated meaning,neatly places metaphorical interpretations outside the language system and wellwithin the general domain of purposeful behaviour. Grice’s inferential account offigurative language use offered a more plausible alternative to purely semanticaccounts and had the appeal of fitting in nicely with a theory of communicationthat offered an attractive alternative to the standard code model.

There are a number of problems, however, with this approach. While Grice’saccount, involving the computation and rejection of a literal meaning, suggeststhat metaphorical utterances should take longer to process, experimentalevidence shows that given adequate contextual support, metaphorical utterances

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do not take longer to process than non-metaphorical ones (see Gibbs 1984,Oriony,’Schallert, Reynolds and Antos 1978, Inhoff, Lima and Carroll 1984,Glucksberg, Gildea & Bookin, 1982, Keysar 1989). But if hearers have tocompute the literal meaning of the sentence, reject it as false or inappropriate,and then find another interpretation for it, these demands on processing shouldmake themselves felt somehow. Besides, as Wilson and Sperber (1981) point out,Grice’s account leads to inconsistencies within his overall theory, since in thecase of figurative uses what is said has to be replaced by the implicature ratherthan be added to it, as is characteristic of other implicatures. It is not obvious,then, how the speaker’s behaviour can be reconciled with the assumptions ofco-operation and rationality (see also Wilson 1995). It is also too vague, in that

no clues are given as to how the implicated proposition is computed, other thanby appealing to resemblance between objects, (but see Stroik 1988, for anattempt to make Grice’s brief account more explicit). It is basically a substitutiveapproach crucially dependent on the perception of anomaly, as in classicalrhetoric. These difficulties, together with an increasing theoretical awareness thatinterpreting utterances literally is an active construction process, provide groundsfor reconsidering semantic accounts of metaphor. One important source of thedynamism of the process of understanding speech lies in the semanticunderdeterminacy of natural languages. This is discussed next as possibleevidence for an explanation of metaphorical uses along semantic lines.

3 Semantic underdeterminacy and the context-dependence of literalinterpretations

Our knowledge of linguistic rules does not provide us with fully-fledgedrepresentations of states of affairs in the world. The output of the grammar of anatural language is an incomplete or ,mderdetermined semantic representationwhich has to be brought up to full propositionality by the selection ofinformation from the context. In the last few years a lot of attention has been

given to determining in what respects linguistic knowledge underspecifies thecontent of utterances. The problem is that the phenomenon has proved sopervasive as to call into question the context-free nature of the meaningintuitions of speakers. Because theories of metaphor are inextricably linked totheories of meaning, it is worth exploring the consequences for the former offully acknowledging the phenomenon of the semantic underdeterminacy of thelanguage system.

The most obvious expression of underdeterminacy is found in sentencescontaining indexical elements whose semantic representations include variablesfor which values have to be assigned in context. Thus, unless reference isassigned to both the personal pronoun and to the simple past tense, (3) will fallshort of describing a situation in the world that we can evaluate for truth orfalsity:

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3. He came.i

Sometimes the presence of variables in the semantic representation of a sentenceis not obvious because there may be no element in the utterance to which thevariable corresponds as, for example, in the case of genitive locutions andgradable adjectives. In (4) below, the speaker might be talking about the storythat Mary read / heard / invented / told / experienced, etc.:

4. Mary’s story is gruesome.

The meaning of this construction - ’the story that bears relation x to Mary’ -leaves unspecified the relation between the two terms, which can only becompleted using a particular context. Similarly, cases such as (5), quoted inRecanati (forthcoming), (6), adapted from Cohen ( 1986), and (7), due to Cohen(1979), also involve ’hidden variables’ for which values have to be found incontext. The verbs in (5-6) contribute mostly aspectual information on activitieswhich are yet to be specified:

5. He finished the book.

6. Most students here drop geography in their final year.7. He is unsatisfactory.

Did he finish reading, writing, decorating, binding, printing, reviewing, etc. thebook? Similarly, do students drop attending, studying, or paying fees forgeography? As for the adjective in (7), it clearly needs some qualification of thepurpose for which, or the way in which, the subject is unsatisfactory.

More interesting for our purposes, we find that in yet other cases of semanticunderdeterminacy no variables are involved, but comprehenders have beenshown to ’narrow down’ or complete the descriptive content of general terms, inthe process of understanding literally sentences such as (8-10):

8. A fish attacked the swimmer.

9. The thief took the jewels.10. The jeweller took the jewels.

Examples like (8-10) have often been used by psychologists in experimentsdesigned to question the validity of semantic feature and semantic networkmodels of language comprehension. In recall tests, subjects typically rememberhaving read ’the shark attacked the swimmer’ instead of (8) (see Anderson et al.1976, quoted in Johnson-Laird 1981). This is not, however, how we interpret thesubject term in ’The fish was delicious’. Similarly, ’took’ becomes ’stole’ in (9),but not in (10) (see Ruhl 1987). We also find that even in the case ofnon-general terms, such as the subject nominals in (11-12), the contextdetermines what information is accessed. Because the terms here are sufficientlyspecific, there is no instantiation by hyponyms, and variability appears in thesuperordinate information accessed. Thus, it has been shown experimentally that

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the superset ’appliance’ acts as an effective recall cue for ( 11 ) but not for (12),whereas 4fumiture’ prompts recall of { 12) but not of (II) (cf. Anderson andOrtony 1975):

11. Televisions need expert repairmen.12. Televisions look nice in family rooms.

Barsalou (1987: 122-3) quotes similar examples: ’ &dquo;floats&dquo; is typically inactivewhen people construct concepts for &dquo;basketball&dquo;, except in situations involvingwater. Upon hearing that someone used a &dquo;basketball&dquo; for a life preserver,&dquo;floats&dquo; becomes activated’. It may be argued, however, that these examples donot constitute cases of meaning underdeterminacy because ’television’ and’basketball’ have a sufficiently determined semantics. This is an illusion, however.Natural kind and artifact terms are notoriously difficult to pin down in terms ofinherent, context-free features and, in fact, only partial, rather than full defin-itions can be given for the vast majority of the words of a language. (SeeAitchison 1994 for an overview of the theoretical problems of defining words.)This does not mean that we do not know what, say, a lion is; it means that our

knowledge of what it is involves information well outside our purely linguisticknowledge. Both the phenomenon of instantiation for general terms and theaccessing of different superordinate information for specific terms are a naturalconsequence of the lack of full definitions for these words: if the semantics of

the language underdetermines their content, addressees depend on easilyaccessible contexts to complete the representations, even if they are not alwaysaware of it.

The point of this, by no means complete, survey of cases of semanticunderdeterminacy is to question our notion of what is literal. What the examplesillustrate is that one and the same word makes different contributions to theoverall interpretation of a sentence taken literally. I have assumed, rather thanshown, that accounting for this phenomenon in terms of a speaker’s meaningwould not be adequate. Intuitively, the kinds of operations that result ininformation being conversationally implicated do not apply here; they certainlydo not strike one as being cases of saying one thing and meaning something else.

Notice that the alleged implicatures would entail the sentences from whichthey are derived, thus giving rise to widespread redundancy in our interpretationprocesses. (See Carston 1988, Recanati 1989, 1993, Sag 1981, and Searle 1978for further arguments against treating the interpretations given for (3-12) asimplicatures.)

Then why call what is going on here a pragmatic phenomenon and not asemantic one, especially since I have chosen to speak of the literal interpretationof these sentences? Might it not be possible to propose an explanation ofmetaphor that does not resort to the indirect recovery of implicatures, as sometheoreticians have done? After all, are (13-16) below so different from the kindsof examples already discussed?

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13. John opened the door/ the letter/ the box/ the can.’14. Life opened all doors for her.15. Mary opened her heart to her friend.16. Vaguely life leaks away.

Cohen (1986) thinks they are not. For him, the type of example we have seen in(3-12) above illustrates the process of semantic interaction which ’can also beattributed a role in the generation of metaphorical meaning’( 1986: 229). Thedifference between metaphorical and non-metaphorical interpretations wouldmerely be one of degree, with ’... the indisputably literal and the indisputablymetaphorical (as) just opposite poles of a continuum within the indefinitelycreative potential of natural language’ (1986: 229). Metaphor would then be arather extreme form of the ’semantic refining or shaping’ which also appears innon-metaphorical uses, as we have just seen. In his view, metaphor can only be apragmatic phenomenon if we assume, unrealistically, an ’insulationist semantics’,i.e., a semantics in which meanings are invariably fixed before entering theprocess of semantic composition of the sentence, and where any variation, nomatter how slight, has to be accounted for pragmatically, via implicature (seealso Cohen and Margalit 1972 and Cohen 1979.)

Further support for this view could come from prototype theories of meaningwhich argue on the basis of experimental evidence that meaning in naturallanguage is extremely flexible and, in fact, irremediably fuzzy, rather than stableand systematizable. In this view, the common intuition that metaphoricalstatements are used to make true or false assertions, just like any other sentence,can easily be accommodated. We would also get rid of the stigma of deviationand would have the support of those psychologists like Gibbs (1984, 1994) whohave expressed serious doubts that literal meaning is anything more than atheoretical illusion. So yes, why not call metaphor a semantic matter?

There are, in fact, two related issues here. First, the fact that literalinterpretations can be shown to be context-dependent does not automaticallymake the interpretation of metaphorical utterances a semantic matter; rather, itshows that literal interpretations are, in part, pragmatically determined. Second,given the evidence of the context-dependence of the interpretations we saw forexamples (3-12), the question about a possible semantic analysis of metaphorcan only be a question about its real-world or truth conditional contem, notabout its linguistic meaning. The latter, as described at the beginning of thissection, consists of incomplete, abstract and genuinely context-freerepresentations not consciously available to speakers, while the former is theresult of the interaction between the natural language properties of expressions(their linguistic meaning) and easily accessible non-linguistic contexts. It is thereal-world content of expressions that the meaning intuitions of speakers tend tobe about. (On this distinction see Sperber and Wilson 1995, and also Ruhl 1987,Recanati 1989, 1993, Kempson 1988a, Blakemore 1987.) So the question isreally whether we can propose an analysis that can take us from the

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underdeterminacy of semantic representations to metaphorical interpretations, aspart of the real-world or truth-conditional content of utterances. This issue isaddressed in the next section.

4 Metaphor and the proposition expressed I

One major obstacle facing Cohen’s proposal to handle the examples ofnon-literal utterances in (14-16) along the same lines as the examples ofsemantic underdeterminacy in (3-10) can be seen from the following semanticintuitions: while in (3-10) the proposed interpretations entail the sentences fromwhich they are derived, this is not the case in (14-16) or in metaphorical usesgenerally. Thus, while it must be true that if the thief stole the jewels, then hetook them, and if a shark attacked the swimmer, then a fish must have attackedthe swimmer, it is not the case that life can open doors, or that people can opentheir hearts (and survive). This explains the claim that metaphors typicallyinvolve sortal incorrectness at the conceptual level, and so, sentential falsity. Theinterpretation of metaphorically intended utterances typically requires thisbroadening of the extension of the concepts used, and this distinguishes themfrom the cases of enriched literal interpretations such as those in (3--10).

It would seem preferable to accept a theory that explains how differentinterpretations are given to one and the same string of words without the need tochange our intuitions about basic meaning relations such as entailment. In fact,relevance theory provides an account of metaphorical interpretation based on thederivation of implicated assumptions which puts metaphorical and literalinterpretations on an equal footing in processing terms. This allows it to accountfor the experimental results cited by psychologists without having to appeal toany form of anomaly or deviance (pace Gibbs 1994). This is achieved in thetheory by retaining a context-free notion of linguistic mealling separate fromillte/pretatioll and dropping the presumption of literalness, the latter beingreplaced by the presumption of relevance (see Sperber and Wilson 1990: 143).

5 Metaphor as implicature 11

Within relevance theory the requirement that the utterance of every declarativesentence be taken as committing the speaker to its truth is seen as far too strongand so has to be weakened in two ways: first, by allowing for the possibility thatthe speaker is expressing a proposition he or she attributes to someone else as,for example, in reported speech, the attribution of thoughts to others and irony,and, second, by accepting that speakers often express utterances that merelyresemble the thoughts they wish to communicate.

Sperber and Wilson (1985/6) argue here that ’loose’ uses and ’rough’approximations are far more frequent in speech than strictly literal uses and

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constitute evidence that a presumption of literalness is unrealistic and distortiveof the process of communication. Consider ( 17-22) below:

17. The floor was covered with papers.18. We paid £100 for that meal!19. I spent the summer in Vitoria.20. Mary was alone in the world.21. I’m penniless.22. We suffocated in Seville.

On most occasions of the use of these sentences, the propositions they expresswill be false, and so the speaker will not be seen as committing him-/herself totheir truth; thus, in cases in which nothing hinges on the fact that, say, the floorwas not completely covered with papers, the meal cost us £9$, I left the citylimits of Vitoria for a few hours now and then in the course of the summer

period, human-kind has not been wiped off the face of the earth but for Mary, I

do have some money, and we did not die from the heat in Seville, the speakerwill not be perceived as violating any maxim of truthfulness in uttering (17-22).In relevance theory terms the propositions expressed by these utterances are notcommunicated. They do however have a role to play in interpretation: they arevery efficient vehicles for communicating sets of true assumptions which thespeaker does hold as true and is interested in communicating. They are usedwhen the following conditions apply:

i. There is a set of assumptions {IJ which the speaker wants tocommunicate.

ii. f 1) are all quite easily derivable as logical and contextual implications ofa proposition Q.

iii. Q has other implications whose truth the speaker does not want tocommit him-/herself to.

iv. As long as s/he can trust the hearer to select those logical and contextualimplications that s/he intends to convey and disregard the rest, s/he willbe communicating maximally efficiently in choosing to express thesimple proposition Q, rather than spell out the set of assumptions s/hewanted to communicate. (See Sperber and Wilson 1995: 233-234 for amore detailed description of these conditions. For the definition ofcontextual implication, ibid.: 107-108.)

Thus, given an utterance of (19) in the context provided by (23-26), assumptionssuch as those in (27-29) would be easily derivable:

19. I spent the summer in Vitoria.23. The speaker lives in Vitoria.24. People who spend their summers in the town where they live cannot be

said to have real holidays.

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25. If’people do not have a holiday it is because they cannot afford one.26. People who do not have a holiday need to get away for a while.

etc...

27. The speaker did not have a real holiday.28. The speaker could not afford a holiday.29. The speaker needs to get away for a while.

. etc...

At no point in the interpretation process is the assumption that the speaker neverleft the city limits of Vitoria during the summer period selected and rejected; thesame applies to other logical and contextual implications that would be derivedon a strictly literal interpretation but whose derivation is inhibited when theutterance is being interpreted ’loosely’. Interpretation is therefore not delayed inany way by the fact that the proposition expressed by the utterance is false.Communication has proceeded as it should because the expectation that theutterance gives rise to of an adequate range of contextual effects for nounnecessary processing effort - an expectation of relevance - is satisfied: thehearer can derive the assumptions the speaker intended him/her to derive in amaximally economical way.

This is, in essence, all the theoretical apparatus that relevance theory requiresto account for metaphorical utterances. Just as any other ostensive stimulus,metaphorical utterances come with a guarantee that they are the least costlymeans of communicating the intended effects. As before, the hearer does notstart the interpretation process with the assumption that there is identity betweenthe proposition expressed by an utterance and the thought it is used tocommunicate. Rather, the hearer starts to search for the intended effects thatsatisfy the effort expended from the onset of the interpretation process. In thissearch, the utterance is treated by the hearer as evidence for the intentions of thespeaker, rather than as a strictly faithful representation of his/her thoughts or atrue representation of a state of affairs. Thus, the hearer of (16) does not assumethat the speaker believes that life is a liquid that passes through a crack in anobject, or even consider the truth of such a statement.

In this respect, it is interesting to contrast, as Jackendoff and Aaron (1991) do,W. H. Auden’s line from ’As I walked out one evening’ in (16), with (30) fromthe Hebrew Scriptures:

16. Vaguely life leaks away.30. For the life of a being is in the blood.

Given the ancient Hebrew belief system, (30) has to be interpreted ascommunicating the proposition it expresses - that the life of a being is in theblood - along with all its logical and contextual implications. For example, ifyou take away some of a being’s blood, you take away some life from them, orif you eat animal blood, you eat the life of that animal. Auden’s line, in contrast,

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is metaphorically interpreted because the proposition expressed, along with someimplications that follow from it, are not communicated, for example, that life is aliquid, that it takes the shape of the container that holds it, or that it canevaporate or freeze solid. Selective exploration of the encyclopedic entries for’life’ and ’leaks’ will result in the derivation of assumptions such as that lifepasses slowly and almost unnoticed, that it can be wasted, that efforts can bemade to prevent it, etc. But is this what the poet wanted to communicate?

To answer this question one further issue has to be taken into account. Theintended effects of an utterance need not be equally clearly delineated in thespeaker’s mind; vague communication, when intended and recognized as such, isa form of successful communication. In fact, the success of our exchangessometimes depends on the recovery of one or two very precise assumptions; atother times, the intended effects constitute a wide range of weak assumptions,the recovery of which depends on the exploration of several expansions of theinitial context. At other times, the correct interpretation of an utterance requiresthe recovery of both highly determinate implicatures as well as a less specific setof assumptions. In (19) above, the speaker strongly communicates that s/he spentthe summer in the town where s/he lives, but communicates the assumptions in(27-29) much less strongly, at least given the initial context in (23).

Metaphorical utterances vary a lot in the type of effects they produce,although they typically exploit the vaguer effects of communication. Clich6d orconventional cases tend to communicate one or two assumptions very stronglywhile very creative cases leave the comprehender a great deal of freedom toderive implications which s/he cannot be certain the speaker specificallyintended. In all cases it is in the interaction with the context - which may be

relatively rich or poor - that we can talk about intended effects. Becauseconversation is typically a rapid interchange between speakers and soexploration of context superficial, the richest metaphors tend to occur in poems,when the reader is not normally pressed for time and is invited to dwell onwords and lines, go back and forth and bring his/her own personal experiences tobear on the interpretation process. The interpretation of each line provides amaximally accessible context for the interpretation of the lines that follow, whichcan then be extended and more implications derived, in a process of recreationwhich can continue indefinitely. Thus, the immediate context for Auden’s line,given in (31), sets up a very accessible context for the interpretation of themetaphor along the lines suggested above:

31. In headaches and in worries16. Vaguely life leaks away.

The more creative the meaphor, the wider the array of implications weaklycommunicated. This would take care, on the one hand, of the intuition that

metaphors are open-ended and rich; on the other hand, intuitions concerning thetruth of metaphorical utterances would derive from the fact that some of the

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assumptions are often very strongly communicated, as we have seen above.What we have then is a continuum of possible cases, with literal

interpretations and the interpretations for very creative metaphors as the twoends of the continuum. The assumption in relevance theory is that this sortingthrough the intended implications of the utterance is always happening, with theresult that some utterances will have been literally interpreted and othersnon-literally. No pre-existing expectations as to the literalness or otherwise ofutterances play any role in interpretation.

6 Metaphor and the proposition expressed 11

In an article on the nature of non-literal interpretation, Recanati (forthcoming)sets out to dismantle the sequential model without dispensing with the notion ofliteral meaning or the asymmetric dependence of non-literal uses on literalspeech. Although his account is not couched in relevance theoretic terms, he putsthe emphasis on the fact that literal and non-literal interpretations of sentencesexhibit contextual dependence. His proposal differs in that non-literalinterpretations can be seen as resulting from a local pragmatic process oftransfer from the meaning of a constituent in the utterance to a contextuallymore accessible candidate, which then enters the process of semanticcomposition of the overall meaning of the utterance. Local pragmatic processesdiffer from global processes precisely in that they operate at the constituent leveland contribute to determining the proposition expressed, whereas globalprocesses operate at a second stage, once the propositional content of theutterance has been determined. The derivation of conversational implicatures isthe most characteristic global process, while reference assignment, enrichmentand the rest of the elaborations on the content of expressions that we saw insection 3 constitute examples of local pragmatic processes. (For a slightlydifferent view, see Bach 1987, 1994.) Recanati (1993: 263) describes transferprocesses, as invoIving ‘... an already available constituent which is mappedinto another one which replaces it’ at the propositional level, and may involvesynecdoche or analogy. A transfer process starts with the literal meaning of theconstituent which is replaced by an alternative candidate. How does this happen?

Very briefly, when interpreting an utterance, the literal meaning of anindividual constituent as it is processed on-line is accessed first but processed inparallel with other possible candidates for the semantic value of the constituent.When a non-literal competing candidate receives multiple activation fromdifferent constituents in the sentence or outside it, it becomes more accessible tothe interpreter and ends up as the value that the original constituent beingprocessed contributes to the interpretation of the utterance. It is then thispragmatically elaborated proposition, including the transferred constituent, thatplays a part in determining the implicatures of the utterance, not the literalproposition. Let us see how his proposal works with an example of metonymy.

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Mary always goes to her hairdresser to get some highlights. As she comes in thehairdresser tells her assistant:

32. Here comes my highlights.

As in relevance theory, in Recanati’s model the assistant does not first constructa literal interpretation to the effect that some highlights are coming into the shop,reject it as patently false, and then look around for an adequate alternativeinterpretation. Instead, both the situational context and the fact that by the timethe processor gets to ’highlights’ the verb ’comes’ has already been processedmake ’customer who always gets highlights’, or simply ’Mary’, more accessiblethan ’highlighted hair’. So, even if the literal meaning of the constituent isaccessed first, it loses out to the more highly activated value, which is thenretained, with no absurd proposition entertained at any time in the interpretationprocess. Whereas in relevance theory metaphorical interpretations are implicatedand the literal proposition is not communicated, in Recanati’s account themetaphorical constituent ends up as part of the proposition expressed by theutterance. Although his account may strike one as closer to the position ofmeaning maximalists such as Cohen or Gibbs, Recanati is not prepared to giveup a notion of literal meaning and places non-literal interpretation firmly withinthe domain of pragmatics. In fact, his approach is very much in line with thecurrent trend to meaning minimalism which, in its most extreme form, reducesthe autonomy of semantics to ’the principles of composition’, with the meaningsof the terms combined taken to be pragmatically derived (see Sag 1981,Kempson 1988b).

Interestingly, this is the analysis predicted for referential uses of metaphoricalexpressions within relevance theory, since reference has to be assigned along thelines intended by the speaker if the proposition expressed is to be complete(truth-evaluable). In fact, both accounts are functionally equivalent and thedifferences may well be reducible to theory-internal factors. (See alsoPilkington’s 1994 discussion on the explicature view of metaphor.) It is notobvious, however, how Recanati would handle the examples of ’loose’ and’rough’ uses that we saw in (17-22) and also how he would accommodateinterpretative uses of language in his model, both issues satisfactorily explainedin relevance theory.

7 Conclusion

Much of the confusion surrounding the view that the ability to producemetaphorical utterances is part of the linguistic competence of speakers stemsfrom the fact that the term semantic is made to cover both ‘... features ofsentence grammar, and also features pertaining to truth and reference, even whenthese go beyond sentence grammar’ (see Bach 1994: 133). In this respect,

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pragmatics - and in particular relevance theory - has gone a long way towardsclarifying the relationship between natural language, communication andcognition.

In the spirit of relevance theory, the approach taken in this article is that thewhole cognitive mechanism is involved in the process of utterance interpretation,and in this respect metaphorical utterances have no privileged status over literalutterances. This is in marked contrast to standard cognitive approaches tometaphor which single it out as more revealing of the properties of the humanmind than other forms of language use, no doubt in an effort to rehabilitate itfrom its downtrodden past. However, the view presented here is that both literaland non-literal uses are linguistic and cognitive phenomena to exactly the sameextent: both involve knowledge of the rules of language, both depend on theadequate selection of non-linguistic information, and both involve the inferentialoperations of the general cognitive mechanism. Thus, metaphoricalinterpretations are (linguistic) semantic phenomena only to the extent that theyinvolve decoding linguistic structures and so accessing the semantic properties ofthe constituents involved. Even if, as Recanati (forthcoming) proposes,metaphoric interpretations may, on occasion, enter the process of composition ofthe propositional content of the utterance, their computation remains to a largeextent inferential, and therefore, pragmatic.

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