Figurative Language

Figurative Language

1. Literal and figurative usage

   • figures of speech covers various kinds of figurative as distinct from literal uses of language.
   • figurative interpretation as an explicature that involves treating one or more words as if they had meanings different from their literal ones
   • figurative usage, is the innovative creation of new words, because newlyminted words do not yet have established literal meanings.

2. Irony, presuppositions and metonymy

   • Irony
     • verbal irony consists in echoing a tacitly attributed thought or utterance with a tacitly dissociative attitude
   • Presuppositions
     • presumed-to-be-shared beliefs that are taken for granted by the speaker or writer and are expected to be used for interpreting the message
   • Metonymy
     • terms of a person or object being referred to using as the vehicle a word whose literal denotation is somehow pertinently related.

3. Metaphor

   • Words such as like or as to make a comparison explicit
     • He eats like a horse.
   • Similes are metaphors too
     • “The pursuit of absolute safety is like trying to get the bubbles out of wallpaper.”
       • The sentence in exemplifies what would traditionally be called a simile, because it is figurative and hinges on the word like.

4. The chapter has given a sketch of metaphorical understanding regarding two phases of pragmatics – explicature and implicature. Semantically, words and sentences have exacting implications. An exacting translation of an articulation in setting is an explicature that includes just strict implications. Metaphorical understanding is explicature in which at least one exacting implications are supplanted