A comparison of two theories of metaphor

"The paramount significance of metaphor as a creative force in language has always been recognised, and many extravagant claims have been made on its behalf." – S. Ullmann(1)

"The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimiliars." - Aristotle

Metaphor is a subject approached by literary critics, philosophers, theologians, art historians and psychologists. No longer is it relegated to a mere rhetorical device as some thinkers consider it a concept central to human understanding. Where the philosophical problem of meaning is concerned, some philosophers may object that the study of metaphor is an issue with which we cannot yet concern ourselves; simpler problems have yet to be adequately explained. It would be valid to reply that piecemeal attempts to understand language are worthwhile without a full systematic understanding of other "basic" issues. The problem of metaphor can be approached and explored on a variety of levels. Due to the necessary limitations of this essay many alternatives and deeper issues will have to be ignored. Comparing antagonistic thinkers should provide an interesting overview of some main issues. Donald Davidson and Max Black are two thinkers that will provide a good case study.

The Interaction theory of meaning

Black builds his famous theory of metaphor on the ruins of two older theories. He observes that to call a sentence metaphorical is to say something about meaning, not its orthography, phonetic pattern or grammatical form.(2) Amongst Black’s initial claims are that there are no clear rules for metaphorical use, nor proper criteria for recognition of metaphor. He then goes on to examine why metaphor is not a substitute for the literal, that it is not improper, nor is it an abbreviation or catachresis. (The latter notion is an interestingly conservative view regarding metaphor and language in general. This notion that one can misuse words is wholly ignorant of the fluctuating meanings of language and how word-use changes over time.) This, the substitution theory, attributes no real significance to metaphor; it is mere decoration at best, entertaining, challenging and diverting. It holds that metaphorical statements can be easily paraphrased and add no new meaning to sentences. It regards "the entire sentence that is the locus of the metaphor as replacing some set of literal sentences".(3) Yet it seems almost self-evident from the fact that metaphor can be an object of such intense and complex scrutiny that this view is wrong.

Black then examines the comparison theory, the view which holds that metaphor is an elaborate paraphrase or a condensed or elliptical simile.(4) This theory is a more sophisticated version of the former where metaphor is a mere replacement. Here, the metaphor is a carefully constructed complement of words. But if metaphor is this kind of vague, approximate synonym then what kind of new information could it render? Is there much difference here between a formal comparison and a metaphor? Black thinks not. The comparison theory is too simplistic; metaphor is not mere abbreviation or juxtaposition.(5) At best only trite and uninteresting metaphors could be explained by these theories.

The interaction theory is Black’s solution to these briefly outlined difficulties. Interaction explains metaphor as an intercourse of thoughts, a transaction between contexts.(6) A metaphorical sentence is constituted of a "frame" (the literal words) and the "focus" (the word/s which obtains a new meaning). The focus word is extensionally meaningful, which means an awareness of the old meaning is necessary to grasp any new meaning. These extensional connections of meaning between words are drawn to our attention by "filtering". This process of "filtering" is the interaction between the principle subject and the subsidiary subject/s (which are part of the focus). The latter suppresses and organises certain details of the former and emphasises others. Black recognises that it is difficult to generalise about extensions of meaning and that metaphor may involve several subordinate metaphors in its implications. His example, "Man is a wolf" will elucidate these issues. "Man" is the principle subject and "wolf" is the (sole) subsidiary, both of these are the focus and "is a" is the frame. "Man is a wolf" implies through filtering: "Man is a hunter", "Man is cunning", and "Man is a pack animal" (as well as others).

The connection of similarities and of certain characteristics between the old and new meaning is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of metaphorical understanding. The metaphorical implication of "Man is a pack animal" may be considered a further subordinate metaphor (the former two cases are quite literal). Here one would need to know what a wolf is to understand the usual zoological and anthropomorphic characteristics associated with it. We would also need to know what a human is so that we would not draw conclusions like "Man runs on all fours". So, from our understanding of the focal terms we can imaginatively filter. The success of filtering depends on the skill of the writer/speaker and the imaginative input/semantic knowledge of the listener/reader. This filtering is a necessary condition for metaphorical operation. However, Black is aware of a "lack of clarification of what it means to say that in a metaphor one thing is thought of (or viewed) as another thing."(7)

The meaning(lessness) of metaphor

For Davidson, metaphorical meaning is literal and to treat metaphor as having additional "hidden" meaning is to mystify it; this is the "central mistake". This is because all language requires "inventive construction and inventive construal" not just metaphor.(8) Davidson agrees with Black that not all metaphors can be paraphrased. Metaphor is a "legitimate device" required in various and diverse disciplines.(9) Metaphor is meaningful in a literal sense because of its reliance on the ordinary meaning of words and sentences. This device "makes us attend to some likeness, often a novel or surprising likeness, between two or more things", but these things are still literal.(10) This is because metaphor always depends on its original meanings, "metaphor’s mean what the words in their most literal interpretation mean, and nothing more."(11) The notion of extensional meanings implies a whole new (literal) meaning, which would be the death of the metaphor. Davidson says why: "What has been left out is any appeal to the original meaning of the words."(12) Davidson also claims that metaphor cannot be explained as ambiguity or double meaning because other literary devices make use of this, like word play and punning. His consideration of the similarities between metaphorical theories and Frege’s ideas shows that metaphorical meaning implies a whole new meaning when words are in a metaphorical context, and so again the metaphor is killed. These criticisms are unfair to Black though; his interaction theory incorporates the original meaning along with the new extensional meaning through the necessary requirement of understanding the original meaning for filtering to actually work.

This short synopsis of what Davidson says about metaphor elucidates some of his main points. The most interesting thing he has to say is about metaphor and poetical juxtaposition. The poem Davidson sites by Eliot shows how the reader’s/listener’s attention can be directed to similarities without the need for metaphor or simile,(13) yet no theories regarding this kind of poetic device seem needful (or possible).(14) One might push Davidson further than this and take more examples of similarly confusing types of device from literature, like William S. Burroughs or Ezra Pound. Does Burroughs’ cut-up method require theory? How do we explain the new meanings that arise from words and sentences juxtaposed and intermingled in strange, often random or disorienting ways? Was Burroughs trying to push language and meaning to its limits, or destroy it, or re-invent it? How are new meanings achieved through these methods? Are we to dismiss Burroughs as a Dadaist pulling random words out of a hat? How are we to understand this poem/metaphor by Pound?:

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough."(15)

These questions must remain rhetorical but ought to make clear that certain literary devices are by no means clear or simple and that metaphor, if it is literal, may not always be understood. It is unclear how Pound’s metaphor could be taken literally or indeed what meaning could be gleaned if it were. Still, according to Davidson this is what we do. But taking metaphor literally (that is, rejecting the idea of hidden meaning) not only requires an understanding of what the metaphor is drawing our attention to, but also requires a unified response, which metaphors like this will not receive. Yet Davidson is convincing when he compares metaphors to falsehood and lies. "Absurdity or contradiction in a metaphorical sentence guarantees we won’t believe it and invites us, under proper circumstances, to take the sentence metaphorically."(16) For Davidson these absurdities are still literal uses of the word without hidden meaning. Black makes similar observations about how we recognise metaphor, "such ‘absurdity’ and ‘falsity’ are of their essence: in their absence, we should have no metaphor but merely a literal utterance" but draws different conclusions as to the meaningfulness of these absurdities.(17)

Replies to Davidson and Further Issues

Quine notes the importance of metaphor despite Davidson’s attack against it. Its use is vital not only to poetry and prose, but also to science, philosophy and theology.(18) Metaphors are a useful technique for indirect communication of certain types of meaning, like mystical experience and "God talk".(19) Quine’s view of metaphorical meaning as creative extension through analogy is very similar to Black’s. It is evident that both thinkers consider language to be more than literalistic and direct and for Quine metaphor is a symptom of the necessary growths and changes in language. Indeed he speculates that metaphorical meaning and analogy are necessary to language acquisition. "We generalise our application of the expression by degrees of subjective resemblance of occasions, until we discover from other people’s behaviour that we have pushed analogy too far and exceeded the established usage… we have forged a metaphor at each succeeding application of that early word or phrase."(20)

Harries’s Wittgensteinian approach to metaphor throws up interesting challenges to Davidson. She sites Wittgenstein’s approach to sentence-meaning and concludes that when a sentence cannot be replaced by any other it is because "sense and sound are so essentially intertwined that such separations are impossible without doing violence to what has been said or written."(21) She also points out that in medieval, Renaissance and baroque art/literature, metaphor presupposes two distinct semantic domains, so clearly in these cases, metaphor is explained by meaning, not, as Davidson claims, by use.(22) Finally, Harries claims in kind with Black that the many uses of metaphor will not allow for general theories like Davidson’s.

Black’s direct reply to Davidson is a clever tactic of showing how Davidson relies on metaphor himself, his notion of "the dreamwork", and in doing so supplies a cognitive content along with it. His list of assertions concerning Davidson’s initial metaphor and how these assertions could then be applied to any other metaphor is too long to reproduce here, but they make some convincing claims concerning metaphorical meaning.(23) In reply to Davidson’s thoughts concerning the similarities between metaphor and simile, Black replies that simile can, like metaphor, be figurative. "Thinking of a similarity as a literal statement of mutual resemblance between two things will fail to explain why many similes are not immediately reversible."(24) Furthermore, Davidson’s equation of metaphor to simile is wrongheaded. To say "A is B" is not to say, "A is like B".(25) Black claims that Davidson must assimilate metaphor into mere hyperbole if it has no cognitive content and this means that Davidson’s view collapses into the comparison view, a view Black has successfully criticised earlier. Davidson does give simile and metaphor more thought than this though,(26) but his admission that it is difficult to find a corresponding simile to a good metaphor implies that some sort of aesthetic criteria must be employed to do this. Davidson’s re-phrasal of Woolf’s metaphor into simile is less elegant and thought provoking than her metaphor which points to further implications as to the inviolability and cognitive value of metaphor and the possibility of non-literal meanings in those metaphors that cannot be "unpacked" in this way. Like Davidson, Black is well alert to the creative literary uses of metaphor, one must be aware that "in a poem, or a piece of sustained prose, the writer can establish a novel pattern of implications for the literal uses of the key expressions, prior to using them as vehicles for his metaphors… metaphors can be supported by specially constructed systems of implications…".(27) This implies a more complex understanding of metaphor and the need for a wider speaker/writer context when metaphor is being examined.

Black also denies Davidson’s claim that metaphors acquire a totally new meaning. The question is "whether the metaphor maker is attaching an altered sense to the words he is using in context."(28) But Black’s rejection of metaphors inducing any permanent change to the standard meaning of words only holds insofar as "live" metaphors are concerned; "dead" metaphors most certainly change the meaning of words through their collapse into literal meaning (take Davidson’s example of "burnt up"). On the issue of meaning, both Harries and Black accuse Davidson of using the term "meaning" (and indeed "truth" and "cognitive-content") in too strict and literal a sense.(29) Though the term "meaning" is ambiguous it is evident that "the notion of meaning involved in (metaphorical) statements (is) very different from the privileged notion treated of in a theory of meaning concerned to explain how we understand one another on the basis of our words."(30) Cooper defends Davidson’s apparently restrictive use of the term because "metaphorical meaning" cannot refer to a theory of meaning which:

"(P)rovides a rationale for talking of meaning in the first place… the criticism is unfair if it accuses Davidson of an arbitrary, prejudiced preference for a single sense of the term, for his is a reasoned desire to preserve a notion, at least in the context of clear theorising, so that it may perform the explanatory role in the absence of which no concept of meaning would have been required in the theory of linguistic understanding at all."(31)

The final criticisms Black makes of Davidson are similar to the claims made by Harries and Quine and his old initial starting point in "Models and Metaphors". Black agrees with Davidson that there is no way to determine how metaphors are interpreted, as this is the whole idea. "Live" metaphors are open to a variety of meanings through interpretation, but this does not make them devoid of meaning. He also agrees that positing these interpretations does not explain how words work metaphorically, but that the variety illustrates how extended meaning works. Finally Davidson’s insistence on the uses of paraphrasing is rejected as a loss in actual meaning because "a metaphor leaves a good deal to be supplied at the reader’s discretion. To say something with suggestive indefiniteness is not to say nothing."(32) Cooper also supports this claim of the inadequacy of paraphrase because "the interest of the metaphor resides in the interpretative challenge they present. No paraphrase can present the very same challenge",(33) though this sounds dangerously like substitution theory. It seems that though Davidson’s theory is inadequate, Black still does not reach any firm conclusions as to what a metaphor is; indeed metaphor appears to repel systematic definitions. For him, metaphor is a term best used when we feel a phrase structured by focus and frame to be rich/suggestive/persuasive. Though some metaphors could be paraphrased, the best cannot be without loss of cognitive content: "there are powerful and irreplaceable uses of metaphor…"(34)

Only tentative conclusions can be drawn from this brief examination of metaphor. It is clear that we use metaphor because "we can… conceptual boundaries not being rigid, but elastic and permeable; and because we often need to do so…language being insufficient…"(35) It also seem clear that metaphor is by necessity embedded in culture. All of the theorists above recognise this need (for example we need to understand a particular cultures anthropomorphic views on wolf and stereotypes of men to appreciate Black’s example) but Cooper offers us a more interesting and rather perplexing (indeed, bizarre) thought here. It appears that metaphors have traditions or genres of usage across cultures. For us moods can be blue or grey, hearts can be black, bellies can be yellow, we can be tickled pink, green with envy, red with anger and have a brown study. We have a language tradition of using colour terms non-literally. This may seem odd to another culture that lacks such a genre, which could have an alternative tradition of producing/receiving mathematical formulas metaphorically. "Maybe the shapes formed by the numerals… suggest images to them or prompt speculations…" Here "3+79=94" might easily be considered a metaphor.(36) It is evident that metaphor relies on imaginative input, which is culturally shaped. Little else could be asserted so forcefully about metaphor. The necessity of metaphor and the relationship between metaphor, imagination and culture is explicit when we consider some of the most influential (and conflicting) metaphors that have changed the course of Western History:

"Jesus is the Lamb of God"

"Religion is the opiate of the people"

"The American Dream"

"Property is theft"

If metaphor is meaningful it is in the way it can incite cultures and individuals to change. Metaphors are of necessity cultural and perhaps can only be studied through a cultural lens. They are certainly a most curious literary device that will continue to prompt thought.

  • (1) S. Ullmann – "Semantics – An Introduction to the Science of Meaning", p212
  • (2) M. Black - "Models and Metaphors", p27
  • (3) ibid., p31
  • (4) ibid., p35
  • (5) This is something Davidson points out: "First, if metaphors are elliptical similes, they say explicitly what similes say, for ellipsis is a form of abbreviation, not of paraphrase or indirection." in "What Metaphors Mean" (in "Inquires into Truth and Interpretation"), p254
  • (6) M. Black - "Models and Metaphors", p38
  • (7) M. Black - "How Metaphor’s Work: A Reply to Donald Davidson" (in Sheldon, ed.), p192
  • (8) D. Davidson – "What Metaphors Mean" (in "Inquires into Truth and Interpretation"), p245
  • (9) ibid., p246
  • (10) ibid., p247
  • (11) ibid., p245
  • (12) ibid., p249
  • (13) In support of Davidson, another alternative poem called "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed provides a good, different example:- To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday, /We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning, /We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day, /To-day we have the naming of parts. Japonica/Glistens like coral in all the neighbouring gardens, /And to-day we have the naming of parts.

    This is the lower sling swivel. And this /Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see, /When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel, /Which in your case you have not got. The branches /Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures, /Which in our case we have not got.

    This is the safety-catch, which is always released /With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me /See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy /If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms /Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see /Any of them using their finger.

    And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this /Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it /Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this /Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards /The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers: /They call it easing the Spring.

    They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy /If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt, /And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance, /Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom /Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards, /For to-day we have naming of parts.

  • (14) Davidson – op cit., p261
  • (15) E. Pound – "In a Station of the Metro" (in "Persone – the shorter poems"), p111
  • (16) Davidson – op cit., p258
  • (17) M. Black - "More about Metaphor". p434
  • (18) W. V. Quine – "A Postscript on Metaphor" (in Sheldon, ed.), p159. To be fair, this is a point Davidson acknowledges himself.
  • (19) Aquinas’ writings on analogy shed more light on this notion.
  • (20) ibid., p160
  • (21) K. Harries – "The Many Uses of Metaphor" (in Sheldon, ed.), p167
  • (22) ibid., p169
  • (23) See pages 182 to 184 in Black’s "How Metaphor’s Work: A Reply to Donald Davidson" (in Sheldon, ed.).
  • (24) M. Black - "How Metaphor’s Work: A Reply to Donald Davidson" (in Sheldon, ed.), p186
  • (25) ibid., p189. Consider the difference between "metaphor is the dreamwork of language" and "metaphor is like the dreamwork of language".
  • (26) Davidson – op cit., p253-255
  • (27) M. Black - "Models and Metaphors", p43. In "More about Metaphor", p438 he calls this a "metaphor-theme".
  • (28) ibid., p44
  • (29) K. Harries – op cit., p170 and M. Black – op cit., p187. In fact, Black defines (perhaps restrictively?) the notion of meaning in "More about Metaphor", p437. So surely Davidson is allowed to define it (restrictively) too?
  • (30) D. E. Cooper – "Metaphor", p88
  • (31) ibid., p107
  • (32) M. Black – "How Metaphor’s Work: A Reply to Donald Davidson", p191-2
  • (33) D. E. Cooper – "Metaphor", p71
  • (34) M. Black - "Models and Metaphors", p236
  • (35) M. Black - "More about Metaphor", p448
  • (36) Cooper – op cit., p115-116

    Bibliography

    Black, M. – "Models and Metaphors" (Cornell University Press 1962)

    Black, M. – "More about Metaphor" (Dialectica 31)

    Cooper, D. E. – "Metaphor" (Blackwell 1986)

    Davidson, D. – "Inquires into Truth and Interpretation" (Oxford University Press 1986)

    Flint, E. L. and Flint, M. K. – "Poetry in Perspective" (University of London Press 1963)

    Pound, E. – "Persone – the shorter poems" (New Directions 1971)

    Sheldon, S. (ed.) – "On Metaphor" (University of Chicago Press 1981)

    Ullmann, S. – "Semantics – An Introduction to the Science of Meaning" (Blackwell 1962)

My Writings:

Regularly Updated Pages:

Links: