Metaphor and Communication

To what extent do communicative principles constrain the comprehension of simple metaphors? We argue that the comprehension of metaphor depends on communicative principles in exactly the same way that literal comprehension depends on them. We support our claims with our experimental findings that indicate equivalent processing for literal and metaphorical language. We then outline our theory of metaphor comprehension, which accounts for a variety of metaphoric phenomena and explains why people use metaphors. People can reliably distinguish between literal and figurative language and can easily identify a literal use of an expression, as opposed to idiomatic, metaphorical, ironic, and other figurative uses. How is this done? Standard theories of language suggest that people use different processes when they interpret an expression as literal or as figurative and that this difference is the basis for the distinction. In this paper we will focus on the literal/metaphorical distinction and will start by arguing against the notion that the interpretative processes of metaBoaz Keysar is grateful to Herbert H. Clark and Stanford University for help and support, and Sam Glucksberg thanks the National Science Foundation for Grant BNS-8819657, and the Public Health Service for Grant HD25826-01, to Princeton University. Thanks to William Cohen and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Poetics Today 13:4 (Winter 1992). Copyright ? 1992 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/92/$2.50. This content downloaded from 128.135.84.70 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 20:46:46 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 634 Poetics Today 13:4 phor differ from those of literal language. But first we will consider the role of communication principles in the understanding of literal and metaphorical expressions. One of the major unresolved questions in the study of language is to what extent communicative principles guide the understanding of language. This question will be present in the background throughout our discussion, but we will not attempt to answer it. We would, however, challenge the common belief that communicative principles are more crucial to the understanding of non-literal than of literal language. We suggest that, to the extent that communicative principles are crucial for metaphor comprehension, they are equally important for literal-language understanding. First, we will discuss the general question: Should principles of communication be part of a theory of language understanding? We will consider two approaches that provide contradictory answers to this question. One approach assumes that communication is irrelevant to a theory of language, the other that communication is crucial for understanding language. We will then show that despite this disagreement, these two views share a number of basic assumptions. Both approaches assume that the understanding of literal language differs in important respects from the way in which metaphorical language is understood. The implicit area of consensus between these diametrically opposed approaches is their agreement that communicative principles underlie the understanding of figurative, but not of literal, language. We will argue against this pervasive idea and suggest that the same basic operations underlie people's understanding of both literal and figurative language. On the one hand, we will show that those aspects of comprehension that are not constrained by communication principles are shared by literal and metaphorical language; on the other hand, we will argue that, when communicative principles are used, they are used similarly in both metaphorical and literal language. We will then propose a model of metaphor understanding and conclude with a discussion of the different communicative functions that literal and metaphorical language may serve. Language and Communication: Two Traditions Language may serve a variety of functions, but it is generally agreed that language is predominantly a tool for communication. Language may be used to describe states of affairs and to express thoughts and emotions; it may be used to manipulate people, to convince, to beg, to demand, and so on. All of these functions of language must assume a communicative context and must be constrained by the rules of communication. In order to be understood, speakers and writers implicitly observe such rules even when they "only" make assertions This content downloaded from 128.135.84.70 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 20:46:46 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Keysar and Glucksberg * Communication 635 or provide descriptions and even when no clear target audience is present. Listeners do their part by observing the same principles and assuming that speakers do so as well. This is a sketchy description of the cooperation that occurs between people when they are engaged in communication (Grice 1975). It does not necessarily tell us how the cognitive system operates in order to achieve such cooperation. One of the goals of cognitive science is to discover precisely those processes that underlie our use of language and to explain how they eventually afford communicative interaction. Paradigms of linguistic research vary in terms of how central communication processes are to their theories. At one pole is the tradition in which communicative principles are assumed to be irrelevant to the study of language, such as formal theoretical linguistics, as exemplified by Noam Chomsky. In his Russell Lectures, Chomsky puts it succinctly: "Though consideration of intended effects avoids some problems, it seems to me that no matter how fully elaborated, it will at best provide an analysis of successful communication, but not of meaning or of the use of language, which need not involve communication or even the attempt to communicate" (Chomsky 1971: 19). This basic assumption has been part of all standard grammatical theories influenced by Chomsky's research program, regardless of whether their main concern is with the syntactic or the semantic aspects of language (cf. Lyons 1977). At the other end of the continuum, standard pragmatic theories assume that in order to understand the way language works one must consider communicative principles, as exemplified by H. P. Grice's influential work on meaning and on the rules of conversation. Grice (1975) argued that the very act of using language raises expectations of cooperation between speakers and listeners. Listeners expect speakers to be clear, truthful, informative, and relevant. These expectations guide every process of interpretation, regardless of whether the speaker fulfills them or appears to be violating them. When Joel asks his roommate, Jim, what the date is and Jim answers, Today is September 3d, (1) he is probably following the rules of conversation by being truthful, relevant, and so on. But if Jim says the same thing (1) without being asked about the date, he is flouting the rules of conversation. Joel may then infer that Jim wants to remind him that their rent check is overdue. In this way the very same expectations are exploited to convey the implied meaning of the utterance (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 37). Even though the standard grammatical and pragmatic approaches are diametrically opposed on most issues, they share two basic assumptions about non-literal language. First, both assume the priority of the This content downloaded from 128.135.84.70 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 20:46:46 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 636 Poetics Today 13:4 literal. When, for example, a metaphorical sentence is encountered in discourse, its literal interpretation is always apprehended before any figurative interpretations are considered. Second, they both assume that a metaphorical interpretation is sought only after some anomaly, semantic deviance, or pragmatic rule violation has occurred. For standard semantic theories, semantic anomaly triggers a search for nonliteral meanings. For standard pragmatic theories, apparent violations of discourse rules or rules of conversation trigger the search for nonliteral meanings. The assumption of the priority of the literal, then, is central to both types of theories. Standard semantic theories, which ignore communication, take it for granted that a literal interpretation is always the first step in the comprehension process. This assumption simplifies many aspects of those theories, but it complicates their accounts of metaphorical interpretation. For example, to explain how people understand such sentences as a fisherman is a spider (2) these theories may need to postulate special, non-literal processing mechanisms. One way to resolve the problem is simply to avoid it. Donald Davidson (1979 [1978]), for example, argues that a semantic account of this sentence is simply that the literal meaning is false because a fisherman is not a spider. He suggests that any "meaning" beyond this, such as a possibly metaphorical one, is irrelevant to semantic analysis. A more traditional solution to the problem, however, does go beyond the initial literal analysis. Samuel Levin (1977) provides an elaborate theory of the semantic analysis of metaphor, again assuming that the initial interpretation of the sentence is always literal. A literal analysis initially yields semantic deviance for such sentences as (2) because several selection restrictions are violated. For example, fisherman has the feature "human," whereas spider does not. Such violations, according to Levin, are the crucial triggers whose activation leads to solving the comprehension problem. The violations trigger rules that adjust selection restrictions by changing certain features, resolving the anomaly, and ultimately yielding a metaphorical meaning. In this way, solely by semantic means, such as deviance and construing rules, and without any reference to aspects of communication, does this appro