The Life and Death of a Metaphor, or the Metaphysics of Metaphor

Abstract

This paper addresses two issues: (1) what it is for a metaphor to be either alive or dead and (2) what a metaphor must be in order to be either alive or dead. Both issues, in turn, bear on the contemporary debate whether metaphor is a pragmatic or semantic phenomenon and on the dispute between Contextualists and Literalists. In the first part of the paper, I survey examples of what I take to be live metaphors and dead metaphors in order to establish that there is a phenomenon here to be explained. I then propose an explanation of metaphorical vitality (and by im-plication of metaphorical death) in terms of the dependence of the interpretation of a metaphor on a family or network of expres-sions specific to its context of utterance. I then argue that only a Literalist account of metaphor — one that posits metaphorical ex-pressions (a la Stern (2000))— and not Contextualist and Gricean approaches can accommodate this explanation. Finally, I discuss some objections to my Literalist account and sketch an explana-tion of types to counter Platonistic objections to my metaphorical expression types. Metaphors have lives. They are born on the occasion of their first ut-terance or inscription. Their progenitors are their literal vehicles and the speakers who use them. 1 Some have lives no longer than it takes to utter them, others are stillborn, and many, like the mass of human-ity, live undistinguished lives that are soon forgotten. Some, however,