Metaphor Making and Processing

2. Framework

This paper offers a view of metaphor which draws on two frameworks, namely, a cognitive or "experiential" component (developed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) and Lakoff & Turner (1989)), and a pragmatic component (initiated by Austin (1962), Grice (1975) and Searle (1969)). The experiential component is a synthesis of objectivism and subjectivism, borrowing reason from objectivism, which includes "categorisation, entailment, and inference." In our experience, "categories are not homogeneous," and "have fuzzy boundaries" (Ungerer & Schmid, 1996: 38). For us a canary, a parrot, and an ostrich are all bkds by entailment because they share essential features such äs flying, having feathers and wings, laying eggs, etc. even though there are peripheral features that they do not share. But a bira 6 is used, at least occasionally, to refer metaphorically (or polysemously) to a pretty girl by inference.

From subjectivism, however, it selects Imagination, which involves "seeing one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing." On this view, metaphor is "imagined rationality" (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 193). What enables us to draw upon previous experience is the fact that "in every act of categorization we are more or less consciously referring to one or several cognitive models that we have stored," which we can use to talk about our new experiences (Ungerer & Schmid, 1995: 49). Roughly, a cognitive conception of metaphorizing grounds our views of various phenomena into our world of experience with people, objects, and events, by conceptualising the most abstract phenomena in terms of the most intelligible. Cognitive linguists call this transfer "mapping" from a source cognitive model to a target domain, which means that "metaphor operates between domains" (Sweetser, 1990: 19). According to this model, the Dead Metaphor Theory dies away, Brought to you by | Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Authenticated Download Date | 7/5/15 9:27 PM since it is precisely these so-called dead metaphors that constitute the basis of our conceptual System. Lakoff & Turner (1989: 129) claim that the metaphors "that are most alive and most deeply entrenched, efficient, and powerful are those that are so automatic äs to be unconscious and effortless."

The pragmatic component, on the other hand, draws upon Speech Act Theory, the best known version of pragmatics. On this model, "a theory of language is part of a general theory of action" (Searle, 1969: 17), since "there is something which is at the moment of uttering being done by the person uttering" (Austin, 1962: 60). One of the views of pragmatics defines the latter äs "much concerned precisely with such mechanisms whereby a Speaker can mean more than, or something quite different from, what he actually said, by inventively exploiting communicative conventions" (Levinson, 1983: 26-7). The relevance of such a conception of pragmatics to metaphor processing does not need demonstrating since metaphorizing is a case of exploitation of communicative resources available for Speakers. Obviously, owing to the richness of their resources, the cognitive-pragmatic frame has more to offer for a study of metaphor than linguistic rules and principles. One of the most important combinations between cognitive and pragmatic phenomena is reflected in the co-extensive duality imagination-rationality.

A Matter of Imagination and Rationality

In the history of Western thought, reason has always been equated with knowledge. Imagination, on the other hand, has aroused mixed feelings of acceptance or outright rejection. Hume, for instance, argues that "[nothing is more dangerous to reason than flights of the Imagination." 7 Recall, however, that the definition of metaphor offered by Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 193) is "imqgnative rationality" 8 2.1. Imagination Just äs possessing language constitutes our humanness, Imagination is a property of the human species. Kant desotibes it äs "a blind but indispensable function of the soul without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever." Along this line of thought, Ricoeur (1974: 110) suggests that it "should be treated äs a dimension of language," since it is at the origin of "emerging meanings." Moreover, stressing its power, Mac Cormac (1985: 176) argues that "the Imagination can convert almost any combination of words into a meaningful expression." The role of Imagination in metaphor making and processing is central. Imagination projects itself onto the structure of language to make metaphorizing possible. Because of this, it has been highlighted by many a Student of metaphor. Davidson (1980: 239), for Brought to you by | Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Authenticated Download Date | 7/5/15 9:27 PM instance, claims that metaphor is "brought off by the imaginative employment of words and sentences." On the other hand, Ricoeur (1979: 146) points out imagination's functions of seeing, picturing, and suspending in a theory of metaphor. The "seeing" role is crucial to metaphor making. It is "this abitity to produce new kinds by assimilation and to produce them not above the differences, äs in the concept, but in spite of and through the differences."

Basically, Imagination seeks fresh relations between entities formerly seen äs distinct In other words, it is a creative process, whereby an area of intersection is postulated between a source domain (SD) and a target domain (TD). Accordingly, in the making phase, metaphor is not constructed on preexisting similarities or inherent properties, but, äs Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 215) argue , on "similarities [which] arise äs a result of conceptual metaphors." 9 Similarly, Glucksberg & Keysar (1990: 11) explain that "the similarity that is thereby perceived among category members is thus a product of that categorisation, not an antecedent of it. That is, the categorisation produces the similarity, not the other way round." To exemplify, one fresh similarity is created between an inanimate entity and an animate one, when Madame Grandier is described äs "looking out of a window at remorseless mountains," 10 which were responsible for her husband's death. The conception of mountains äs humans likely to commit crimes and have no remorse about them has been at the origin of an ontological metaphor, where mountains are personified and assigned a negative attribute to downgrade them and show apathy towards them. During processing, Imagination is basic in reconstructing the intended relation between mountains (SD) and remorse (TD) which is created by this metaphorical utterance.

However, it is not always the case that metaphor is a function of similarity. Searle (1983: 149), for instance, argues that "it just seems to be a fact about our mental capacities that we are able to Interpret certain sorts of metaphor without the application of any underlying c rules' or 'principles' other than the sheer ability to make certain associations." He mentions spatial metaphor for temporal duration (e.g. "the hours crawled by"), temperature metaphors for emotional states (e.g. "warm welcome," "cool reception," "lukewarm friendship," "heated argument," and "hot love affair"), and taste metaphors for personality traits (e.g. "sweet person," "sour disposition," and "bitter personality"). In short, Imagination is responsible for creating similarity, association, and even dissimilarity äs a ground for metaphor. But Imagination alone is not enough to account for metaphor; it needs to be balanced by rationality.

Rationality

Rationality may be regarded äs a check to unrestrained Imagination. In other Brought to you by | Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Authenticated Download Date | 7/5/15 9:27 PM words, it is there to ensure that only a reasonable amount of Imagination is invested in the creation of metaphor. If not for rationality, no boundary would exist between, for instance, Science-fiction, fantasy, dreamwork, and metaphor. In restraining Imagination, rationality lays the foundation for possible processing. Kasher (1976: 210) argues that linguistic communication is steeped in a ^ationali^ation Pnndpk y namely that, "[t]here is no reason to assume that the Speaker is not a rational agent; his ends and his beliefs regarding his state, in the context of utterance supply the justification of his behavior." The assumption that the maker of a metaphor is being rational provides the first step in a heuristics of processing. Basically, the assumption about the maker's rationality entails his/her cooperativeness vis-a-vis the receiver. If (s)he is co-operative, then (s)he can't be trying to lie or convey falsehood. Thus, on hearing "Bureaucracy drives a paper clip through man's soul," 11 we assume that the maker of this utterance could not be trying to mislead us or talking nonsense simply because we take them to be rational agents, trying to communicate co-operatively. It is precisely this presumption of rationality that makes us seriously engage in processing. As may have become clear from previous evidence, this coextensive pak of imaginationrationality is an exemplar of the bidimensional nature of metaphor making and processing, without which no metaphorizing is possible. However, there is a sense in which metaphor may run the risk of being called a Statement, which would be detrimental to its function in discourse. To remedy this, appeal will be made to a Speech act Status for it.

A Matter of Statement or Speech Act

In spite of the element of rationality to restrain Imagination, metaphor might run the risk of being processed äs a nonserious thought instantiation. To cope with this, provisions have to be made to ensure that its purposefulness is not destroyed by classifying it äs a Statement subject to truth and falsity. Instead, a Speech act Status for it will be proposed.

1. What is a Statement?

Traditionally, a Statement is one of the functions of language, and part of the trichotomy statement/question/order, which are grammaticalised äs the affirmative, the interrogative, and the imperative respectively. Making a Statement commits the speaker/writer to laws of logic. It, for instance, commits him/her to the truth of it, and to an intentional state Lyons (1981: 190) calls "epistemic commitment," i.e. the fact that "subsequent Statements ... must be consistent with the belief diät it is true." Bergmann (1991: 487) claims that using a metaphor is making an assertion, arguing that metaphor-as-Brought to you by | Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Authenticated Download Date | 7/5/15 9:27 PM assertion enables us to process it with no reference to its literal counte art. Two objections could be raised against such a view. First, to consider metaphor a Statement is to equate it with an intentional communication of falsity. If an assertion is assigned the value TRUE or FALSE, therefore metaphor should automatically be regarded äs untrue both semantically and conversationally, which is missing the whole point about its communicative import. Intuitively, makers of metaphor do not intend their metaphors to be regarded äs Statements of untruth or even äs nonserious attempts on their part to communicate. As Loewenberg (1975: 232) suggests, "metaphorical utterances are not used to make truth claims;" rather, they are intended äs a "proposal m" (or a metaphorical proposal), offering a different conception of the world and reality. As a way out of the assertion's hook, Mac Cormac (1985: 170) argues that the locutionary force of asserting becomes an illocutionary force of suggesting only on the basis of recognising that the maker of metaphor is not speaking literally. In other words, asserting becomes suggesting with metaphorizing, since the latter is not a function of truth and falsity, but a function of ^nfelidties" (Austin, 1962: 14).

Second, the view of metaphor-as-assertion entails that what is asserted can be falsified in the real world. This conception is counterintuitive, since it is in the nature of metaphorizing to offer descriptions/views that tend, at least theoretically, to bring changes to the world, manipulate it, and even contradict it. In other words, while a true Statement is coincident with reality, metaphor is different from reality äs it imaginatively transcends it. In Harries's (1979: 78) words, "metaphors become weapons directed against reality, Instruments to break the referentiality of language, to deliver language from its ontological function..." One such deliverance came from Alice 12 in the form of a request for pretence when she addressed her nurse äs follows: "Do let's pretend that I am a hungry hyaena, and you are a bone." This pretence has the effect of suspending reality and proposing an imagined substitute instead, and nobody can invalidate Alice's address by saying that it is false. In short, metaphor should not be regarded äs a Statement; it invites a Speech act investigation.

2. What is a Speech Act?

Traditionally, the sentence is said to be the minimal unit of linguistic communication. Searle (1969: 16-17), however, claims that "the unit of linguistic communication" is the Speech act, i.e. "the production or issuance of a sentence token under certain conditions." For him, "a theory of language is part of a theory of action," and speaking a language is "performing Speech acts" in accordance with "certain rules for the use of linguistic elements." Austin (1962: 94), on the other hand, argues that the performance of a Speech act necessarily involves other acts, namely, a locutionary act (Searle calls it an Brought to you by | Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Authenticated Download Date | 7/5/15 9:27 PM utterance act), an illocutionary act (Searle's propositional act or the act of reference and predication), and a perlocutionary act.

Applications of pragmatic theory to metaphor are too many to review here. However, some of the salient ones will be briefly considered. For instance, Grice (1975) applies bis own maxims of conversation to metaphor, and argues that it is a case of maxim (of quality) flouting. Searle (1979) studies it äs a case where utterance meaning and sentence meaning diverge. Mack (1975) applies Austin's Felicity Conditions to metaphor, arguing that it is a case of conjoining an assertion and a presupposition. investigates metaphor in terms of the kinds of illocutionary acts it is used to perform, linking linguistic forms to pragmatic functions. Finally, Huttar (1980: 400) applies Searle's Speech act categories (utterance act, propositional act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act) to metaphor.

Following MacCormac (1985: 175), in this paper the use of metaphorical utterances is named "metaphorizing." 13 The acts we perform in metaphorizing are:

(i) Locutionary act: suggesting a particular state of affairs. (ii)Illocutionary act: stimulating emotions, producing perplexity, destroying complacency in the use of language. (iii) Perlocutionary act: creating a sense of intimacy in view of changing the others' beliefs.

For an instance of metaphorizing such äs, "Ambulance attendants rush victims through the doors of bankruptcy," 14 (i) the locutionary act suggests equating hospitals with bankruptcy; (ii) the illocutionary act seeks to produce perplexity in the interactant by breaking the complacent barriers between hospitals and bankruptcy; and (iii) the perlocutionary act depends on the hearer's cultural experience with, and associations between, hospitals and bankruptcy. If his/her cultural experience happens to be coincident with that of the user of metaphorizing, intimacy obtains fully. However, if the two experiences are somewhat in conflict, creating an intimate bond is harder to attain. Clearly, this assertion-speech act duality is crucial to the processing of metaphorizing. If taken äs an assertion, metaphor will be self-defeating, in that the interactants will not start the imaginative act of reconstructing the utterance äs an instance of metaphorizing, i.e. äs "imaginative rationality." But before reconstructing it, Mey (1993: 64-5) claims, "[t]he task of pragmatics is to 'deconstruct' the metaphor, to unload the c loaded weapon' of language" in order to defeat its "uncritical acceptance," which constitutes a danger on the passive user. However, what actually ascertains this Status for metaphor is its reliance, like any other linguistic occurrence, on the conventional resources of language, and extralinguistic factors such äs Intention.

A matter of Convention and Intention

For metaphor to be made, the non-assertive, imaginative, and rational dimensions of metaphorizing need to be complemented. The pair conventionintention is not metaphor-specific; language is pardy governed by social convention, and language use is explained by intentional states users are assumed to possess in using language. Metaphorizing creates its own CONTEXTUAL CONFIGURATIONS and intentional states, the absence of which makes metaphor infelicitous.

l. Convention and Metaphor

It has been claimed that metaphorizing occurs "unmarked" within GENRES and PRE-CODED LANGUAGE PROCESSES, which function äs conventional procedures. GENRES include poetry, fables, parables, fairy tales, children's stories, advertisements, myths, dreams, etc. PRE-CODED LANGUAGE PROCESSES involve Synaesthesia, Personification, and Animalization. The use of metaphorizing within such procedures requires for its happiness those particular procedures to be used by the right person in the right context (Mack, 1975). However, it is dubious that these genres are metaphor-specific. Everyday language and prose literature are also a fertile hunting ground for metaphor.

My claim, however, is that metaphorizing does not make use of any linguistic resources other than the conventional syntactic forms employed in any other non-metaphorical use of language. Metaphorizing could be said to create its own CONTEXTUAL CONFIGURATIONS (Halliday & Hasan, 1989: 55), i.e. the possible combinations between field of discourse (i.e. what the text is about), tenor of discourse (i.e. participants in the text), and mode of discourse (i.e. the role played by language äs a medium in favouring process sharing or disfavouring it). For instance, metaphorizing in a fairy tale (field) requires a parent or an educator and a child (tenor) for telling (mode) it at bedtime or any other convenient time. The procedure must be executed in füll, in that the metaphor maker should construct one that is a Suggestion to share with a processor, who would accept to calculate it äs such. The Intention that the maker of metaphorizing is not asserting anything, lying, or joking should be clear to the interactant, who accepts to take it äs a serious attempt on the part of the user to change his belief s and attitudes. However, there is more to metaphorizing than the notion of convention.

2. Intention and Metapher

The notion of Intention in meaning is highly controversial. For instance, Grice (1990: 76) offers an intentional view of meaning, which is formulated äs, "A meant something by x" is (roughly) equivalent to "A intended the utterance of to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this Intention." Reacting to Grice's account of meaning, Searle (1969: 45-47) argues that "meaning is more than a matter of intention, it is also at least sometimes a matter of convention." He also claims that "the characteristic intended effect of meaning is understanding." On the other hand, Austin (1962:105) righdy acknowledges the importance of intention, but makes reservations äs to its occurrence, namely that, "(i) when the Speaker intends to produce an effect it may nevertheless not occur, and (ii) when he does not intend to produce it or intends not to produce it it may nevertheless occur." Grice (1975: 45-46) offers an ostensive-inferential model of communication in which metaphor processing could well be accommodated. This rational model draws on a view of meaning which locates it in a recognition by participants in conversation of one's intentions. The major assumption of this theory is a COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE which participants are expected to abide by, namely, "Make your conversational contribution such äs is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or dkection of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." Realising the COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE are conversational MAXIMS and their sub-maxims. According to Grice, metaphorizing is a case of flouting of the maxim of QUALITY. i.e. "a categorial falsity." But this is not the most original thing about his view. Assuming the COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE, incoherence, which is born out of the impossibility of reconciliating what is said (i.e. the conventional meaning of the surface linguistic form) with the context (both linguistic and extralinguistic), gives rise to a "Conversational Implicature," i.e. to an intention to implicate something different from what is said.

There is another conception of "Intentionality" developed by Searle (1983: 9-10), according to which in the performance of Speech acts language users have "intentional states" in order for the Speech acts to be felicitous. The list of verbs that could be used for intentional states is fairly long, but for the purposes of this paper only three of them are judged to be relevant äs intentional states for metaphorizing, namely:

(i) believe: the user of metaphorizing has the belief that (s)he is suggesting (and not asserting) a state of affaks; (ii) desire: the user of metaphorizing has the desire to share(i) with the interactant; and Brought to you by | Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Authenticated Download Date | 7/5/15 9:27 PM (iii) intend: the user of metaphorizing intends the interactant to recognise (i) and (ii), i.e. to calculate metaphorizing äs such. Mac Cormac (1985: 176) argues that "metaphorizing must produce the recognition in the hearer of an intentionality in the author that the language be meaningful." This recognition is facilitated by the "rationalization principle." (i) and (ii) above constitute the sincerity conditions of metaphorizing, while (iii) is its condition of success or satisfaction.

The problem of metaphor processing is part and parcel of the theory of communication. Working within such a frame, Sperber & Wilson (1995: 24) argue that "communication involves the publication and recognition of intentions." Metaphorizing should be no exception to this rule. But how is it possible to make one's intentions of metaphorizing recognised by an interactant? Adopting Sperber & Wilson's (1995: 50) view, I will consider metaphorizing äs a case of "ostensive behaviour," i.e. behaviour "intended to attract ... attention to some phenomenon," for which "recognising the intention behind the ostention is necessary for efficient Information processing." Metaphor does not leave interactants indifferent to it; it will always draw attention to itself. Assuming the "principle of relevance," metaphorizing must carry with it its own intention to make something manifest. Just how metaphorizing is an ostention is determined when interactants engage in inferencing. But, since metaphorizing is a matter of convention and intention, how can metaphor, then, be worked out by jointiy using the linguistic conventions of language and makers' intentions? This could be answered by reference to Searle's duality between sentence meaning and Speaker meaning.

A matter of Speaker Meaning or Sentence Meaning

In The Labotm of Hercules^ Poirot, addressing his assistant Georges, says, referring to gossip, which was ruining, in a case he was trying to resolve, the career of Dr Oldfield, who was strongly suspected of having murdered his wife, "[a]nd the purpose of our journey is to destroy a monster with nine heads." Surprised, Georges replied quite naively, "Really, sir?" Sensing that Georges put it into his head that they were going to kill a real monster, Pokot hastened to correct him by saying, "I did not refer to a flesh and blood animal, Georges," which made Georges apologise with, "I misunderstood you, sk."

This short interchange between Poirot and Georges deserves dwelling upon. When Georges took a monster with nine heads to refer literally to a real monster, he was duly corrected since he missed Pokot's intended meaning Brought to you by | Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Authenticated Download Date | 7/5/15 9:27 PM and reference displacement. The significance of Poirot's added remark is that metaphor could not be taken at face value, and interpreted äs if the words making it up referred directly to their usual referents in the real world. Metaphor by definition disturbs the language's System of reference by extending or transcending, äs Reddy (1969: 247) suggests, "the limits of referentiality." Given enough contextual data, the receiver of a metaphorical utterance should be willing to work it out äs such, because metaphor is not something given on the surface of discourse but something that requires effort to be recognised äs one and calculated accordingly. In Searle's terminology, metaphor is a case where Speaker meaning and sentence meaning come apart by virtue of the fact that "often we mean more than we actually say" (Searle, 1969: 19). This distinction between sentence meaning and Speaker meaning is interesting because they stand for conventional meaning and nonconventional or intended meaning respectively. Commenting on this distinction, Searle (1979: 92-93) argues that metaphor is "a special case, that is, of the problem of how it is possible to say one thing and mean something eise, where one succeeds in communicating what one means even though both the Speaker and the hearer know that the meanings of the words uttered by the Speaker do not exactly and literally express what the Speaker meant," and that "metaphorical meaning is always speaker's utterance meaning."

It would be spurious, however, to argue that metaphor is exclusively a case of Speaker meaning, and sentence meaning has got nothing to do with it. Rather, äs Searle (1979: 100) himself points out, "the main problem of metaphor is to explain how Speaker meaning and sentence meaning are different and how they are, nevertheless, related." Sentence or word meaning is the starting point or the Springboard that both triggers a metaphorical reading, and helps work it out by providing avenues along which salient attributes associated with word meaning in the source domain are applied to the target domain. Davidson (1980: 242) offers a better characterisation of the coextensiveness of the literal/word meaning, which is located in the speaker/hearer's mind and deactivated in the context, and the figurative/Speaker meaning, which is activated in the context. He proposes that we could "imagine the literal meaning äs latent, something that we are aware of, that can work on us without working in the context, while the figurative meaning carries the direct load." But how does metaphorizing relate to the outside world? Does it affect it or is it affected by the world? 6. A matter of World-to-Words or Words-to-World Fit Searle (1983: 166) (i) assertives, where we teil our hearers (truly or falsely) how things are; (ii) dinctiveSy where we try to get them to do things; (iii) commissives, where we commit ourselves to doing things; (iv) declarations, where we bring about changes in the world with our utterances; and (v) expressives, where we express our feelings and attitudes.

It is interesting to note that though metaphorizing is, like most of what we do with words, radier world-changing than world-preserving, it is none of Searle's illocutionary categories.

Generally, the relation language entertains with the world is bidirectional. There are situations where the words match the outside world or the inner world of our feelings and emotions. In this case, language is said to be coincident with reality (objective and subjective), and judgements are, therefore, truth-motivated. Assertives and expressives exemplify this kind of use of language, and are said to have a "words-to-world direction of fit;" therefore, they are world-preserving. On the other hand, there are other cases where words seek to bring changes to objective reality, and the fit with the world is not dependent on truth claims but it is a function of the satisfaction of acts in the world. Such cases include directives, commissives, and declarations, which are said to have "a world-to-words direction of fit" (Vanderveken, 1990: 28), hence their world-changing dimension.

Without being any of Searle's illocutionary categories, metaphorizing, however, äs Cavell (19: 495) suggests, "functions to change not so much what we believe äs what we see," and äs such it is a case of world-to-words fit on a par with directives and commissives. Following Loewenberg (1975: 233), it will be reiterated that metaphorizing is best seen äs a "proposal m" to change the world, or äs Alice suggests in Through the Ijooking Glass, a kind of "let's pretend that" with a view to transforming the world by evading it. In Harries (1979: 78) terms, "metaphor no longer has its telos in reality,", and "it still invites us to take leave from familiär reality." Ricoeur (1979: 150), on the other hand, suggests that "... a metaphor may be seen äs a model for changing our way of looking at things, of perceiving the world."

Let us consider the metaphorical utterance, "Nuclear power plants leech the wounds of a sick economy. 16 Changing the hearer's beliefs about nuclear plants from miracle remedies to economic sickness to phoney panaceas is its perlocutionary force, which is facilitated by (i) the use of the obsolete verb, leech, to suggest ironically the incapacity of leeches to do any good without causing side-effects, and (ii) the association made between the kind of eure expected for a given economy and the debilitating connotation carried through the use of leech (Mac Cormac, 1985: 172). The outcome of these Brought to you by | Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Authenticated Download Date | 7/5/15 9:27 PM associations and connotations intends to point out the danger of nuclear plants to our society. Clearly, beside trying to change the world by influencing the beliefs of interactants, metaphorizing depends for calculating intended meaning on a source richer than simply word entries in a dictionary.

A matter of Dictionary or Encyclopaedic Knowledge

The view of metaphor äs pertaining to dictionary or encyclopaedia is reminiscent of the age-old distinction between a semantics and a pragmatics of metaphor. If we admit that, following Groenendijk & Stokhof (1978: 51), a theory of meaning should consist of a semantic and a pragmatic component, "where semantics is a theory of truth, pragmatics is a theory of correctness," quite obviously the study of metaphor should be within pragmatic theory. Eco (1983: 229) rejects a semantics (i.e. dictionary view) of metaphor, for dictionaries only give conceptual meanings, and argues for an encyclopaedic conception, which takes the form of "a polydimensional network of properties, in which some properties are the interpretants of others" (243).

Since metaphorizing breaks the barriers of referentiality in language, it is not really from dictionary knowledge (i.e. conceptual literal meaning) that "metaphor is calculated, but from a complete understanding, an enriched sort of meaning with all the pragmatic gaps filled in" (Morgan, 1979: 139). In other words, the kind of knowledge required is encyclopaedic. In an exchange with Lady Carmichael, Poirot addressed her saying, "I emulate my great predecessor Hercules. One of the labours of Hercules was the taming of the wild horses of Diomedes," to which she retorted, "Don't teil me you came here to train horses." But he replied, "The horses, Madam, are symbolic. They were the wild horses who ate human flesh." 17 Poirot's metaphor is instructive since it teaches Lady Carmichael intertextual knowledge of mythology she did not know, otherwise she would not have taken his words literally. This lady is shown to be blatantiy lacking in two kinds of knowledge: (i) mythological knowledge (intertextual knowledge of an encyclopaedic kind) relating to Diomedes's sending his mares to devour passers-by, and (ii) awareness that Poirot, through analogising, is exploiting mythology to build an instance of metaphorizing for her to process. In this connection, Eco (1984: 270) claims that "for too long it has been thought that in order to understand metaphors it is necessary to know the code (or the encyclopaedia). The truth is that the metaphor is the tool that permits us to understand the encyclopaedia better. This is the knowledge that the metaphor stakes out for us." This is precisely the encyclopaedic knowledge that Poirot's metaphor carries with it to Lady Carmichael.

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Concluding note

We are drawn to the conclusion that metaphor is first and foremost an instance of language use that cannot be dealt with in alethic terms because it is not liable to the same truth-conditional judgements äs assertions. It is, thus, a Speech act of "metaphorizing" on a par with Searle's Speech act categories. Its illocutionary Force should count äs a proposal or a Suggestion, making interactants share the proposal or Suggestion; its perlocutionary Force has to do with acting upon their beliefs, feelings, and knowledge. Metaphor is beyond compare, for the battery of disciplines it brings into action, the images it calls to mind, the associations it compels us to enter into, the amount of shared knowledge it presupposes, and the meanings it conjures up. As an Instrument of thought, metaphor is at the heart of most of our conceptions of the world and our daily transactions with others. As a case of duality of meaning, metaphorizing requires the Implementation of a complex of coextensive and exclusive pairs of dualities for its making and processing. There are constitutive pairs of dualities such äs imagination-rationality (coextensive), assertion-Speech act (exclusive), Speaker meaning-sentence meaning (exclusive), and world-to-words fit-words-to-world fit (exclusive). There are, on the other hand, interpretative pairs that are crucial for its processing such äs imagination-rationality, convention-intention (coextensive), dictionary-encyclopaedia (exclusive). The fact that there is overlap between constitutive and interpretative pairs could be explained by the requirements of metaphor making and processing.

It is by no means my Intention to claim that the pairs selected in this paper to exemplify the bidimensional nature of metaphorizing are exhaustive. On the contrary, the richness of metaphor, represented by its inexhaustible nature, will determine other potential dualities for discussion or investigation. Some of these may include pairings such äs, competence-performance, syntaxsemantics, langue-parole, paradigmatic-syntagmatic, linguistic-non-linguistic, etc. It is my hope that fiirther studies of other features of metaphorizing, adopting a similar or different perspective, will shed more light on this perplexing dimension of language. In short, the view of metaphor that has been developed in this paper regards it äs a non-assertive "imaginative rationality" which seeks to change the world by influencing the beliefs of interactants. To work it out, interactants have to engage in an inferential encyclopaedic search to arrive at the makers' meaning (or Intention) via the assumption that (s)he is observing the relevance and rationality principles.

University of Tunis I Timisia

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