Description

Analytic philosophy of language has been largely devoted to the study of literal meaning, or what is said. However, we know that often times we are able to convey something over and above this literal meaning, giving us an implied meaning. For example, we can take the sentence “the cops are around the corner” and interpret this literally. The conventions of the language lead us to understand the meaning: that the cops really are around the corner. On the other hand, we are also able to say, “the cops are around the corner” to mean something over and above this literal meaning. Imagine that you are in a very dangerous situation and you say ‘the cops are around the corner” in order to alert your friend that you are safe. Or, imagine that you are at a college party and things are getting a little out of hand. When someone says “the cops are around the corner” they send a warning to all of the less than sober partygoers. When examining these meanings, the literal and implied, we encounter a problem: what do we do with metaphors? For example, take “Juliet is the sun”. If meant to be taken literally, it would be absurd! We do not mean to say that Juliet is a giant ball of gas floating around in the universe, but what do we mean to say and how does a metaphor like this one even work? Within my presentation, I will review three of the standard views on metaphor: the comparison view, interaction view, and the pragmatic view. Unfortunately, it seems that all of these standard views fall short and do not provide an adequate theory to determine what metaphorical meaning is. With this in mind, I will introduce the possibility that maybe there isn’t any distinct metaphorical meaning, and if there is, we may not be able to explain exactly what it is.

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Free Energy Mapping of Glycolonitrile Co-Oligomerization

Analytic philosophy of language has been largely devoted to the study of literal meaning, or what is said. However, we know that often times we are able to convey something over and above this literal meaning, giving us an implied meaning. For example, we can take the sentence “the cops are around the corner” and interpret this literally. The conventions of the language lead us to understand the meaning: that the cops really are around the corner. On the other hand, we are also able to say, “the cops are around the corner” to mean something over and above this literal meaning. Imagine that you are in a very dangerous situation and you say ‘the cops are around the corner” in order to alert your friend that you are safe. Or, imagine that you are at a college party and things are getting a little out of hand. When someone says “the cops are around the corner” they send a warning to all of the less than sober partygoers. When examining these meanings, the literal and implied, we encounter a problem: what do we do with metaphors? For example, take “Juliet is the sun”. If meant to be taken literally, it would be absurd! We do not mean to say that Juliet is a giant ball of gas floating around in the universe, but what do we mean to say and how does a metaphor like this one even work? Within my presentation, I will review three of the standard views on metaphor: the comparison view, interaction view, and the pragmatic view. Unfortunately, it seems that all of these standard views fall short and do not provide an adequate theory to determine what metaphorical meaning is. With this in mind, I will introduce the possibility that maybe there isn’t any distinct metaphorical meaning, and if there is, we may not be able to explain exactly what it is.

 

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