An implicature account of metaphorical perspective

Abstract

This paper develops an account of metaphor and its cognitive value. The motivation for this account lies in two considerations: 1) there is a problem, the proposition problem, that plagues many accounts of metaphor and its cognitive value, and 2) a recent criticism of Grice’s program and its semantic-pragmatic distinction by Lepore and Stone (2015) is grounded on the assumption that its account of metaphor is saddled with the proposition problem. Thus there is a need for an account of metaphor that explains its cognitive value without raising the proposition problem, and if successful, we also remove a criticism of Grice’s program. The proposed account of metaphor is one according to which, in uttering a metaphor, the speaker conversationally implicates a metaphorical perspective. This account of metaphor’s cognitive value is grounded in an understanding of metaphorical perspective as itself non-propositional.