The Nature and Process of Metaphorical Interpretation

The Nature and Process of Metaphorical Interpretation is a Division III project by Lee Morgan.

When speaking of metaphor, one often speaks of a metaphor's meaning, referring to something one infers from that metaphor. For example, from the metaphor in (1), a hearer might infer (2).

(1) John is an elephant. (2) John is large.

Does (1) mean (2)? In this paper, I respond to an argument by Lepore and Stone (2010) that metaphors don't have nonliteral meanings, and present a new argument for the position that metaphors do have nonliteral meanings, which take the form of inferences like (2). Specifically, I argue that inferences like (2) are what the speaker means by (1), based on Grice's (1957) definition of speaker meaning. Treating metaphorical inferences as what the speaker means allows me to provide a pragmatic analysis of metaphorical interpretation. In my analysis, which draws on work by Hobbs (1990) and Searle (1979), I argue that interpreting a metaphor requires the hearer to recognize what is salient, where salience is defined with regards to context and convention.

The full paper can be found below: