Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique

Nuessel, Frank

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.056pmid: N/A

This special issue of Semiotica , titled Perspectives on Metaphor , presents a series of papers on this timely subject. The call for papers for this issue was issued in fall of 2004 with a final submission date of fall of 2005, a date which coincides with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of George Lako and Mark Johnson's (1980) landmark work Metaphors We Live By . Thus, it is no surprise that this work is cited in several of the essays in this volume. That volume reinvigorated scholarly research on metaphor as evidenced by the fact that there now exist several volumes that consist entirely of annotated citations of studies of metaphor (Noppen et al. 1985; Noppen and Hols 1990; Knop et al. 2005), as well as Shibles' (1971) earlier and now classic annotated bibliography.

Deely, John

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.057pmid: N/A

This article examines the status of human language as constituting one system of signs among others, with a particular aim to establish the sense in which the classical distinction between ‘literal’ and ‘metaphorical’ ought best to be understood in the context of semiotics today.

Petrilli, Susan

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.058pmid: N/A

Metaphor is founded in the logic of otherness and excess and involves a movement of displacement that leads sense outside the sphere of the same, the commonplace, plain meaning. The processes of metaphorization activate interpretive trajectories in the sign network that may be distant from each other, and favor the migration of sense through interpretive and translative processes among signs. Associations and interconnections are created in the sign network on the basis of similarity understood à la Peirce in terms of affinity and attraction. Such associations are not only of the analogical type but also of the homological. Metaphor is structural to the acquisition of knowledge, to inferential procedure; it is the place where sense is generated in human language systems. The capacity for metaphor is specifically human and is connected with the human primary modeling device, the human capacity for creativity, innovation, the play of musement.

Merrell, Floyd

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.059pmid: N/A

We are all to a greater or lesser degree creative, and metaphor making is one of the most common channels along which the creative process flows. Three general theories of metaphor — comparison, substitution, and interaction — and three theories of creativity — mechanicism, organicism, and contextualism or holism — surface in the following pages. Peirce's categories delineating the semiosic process, his concept of signs incessantly becoming other signs, and his insight regarding abduction, are brought to bear on these theories of metaphor and creativity, leading to the conclusion that both theories are a matter of overdetermined Firstness becoming under-determined Thirdness through nonlinear, emergent interdependent, interrelated interaction between signs and their makers and takers.

Fisher, Harwood

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.060pmid: N/A

How do you describe the ‘nature of metaphor’? Two dilemmas block your path. The first occurs when you encounter the metaphor's status as ‘real’ in the face of its mere symbolic reference to objects. A second dilemma occurs when you look inward to describe the origin of metaphor. Although this look focuses the inner self as originator, it also reveals a mind-boggling question. How does your look inward relate to that of others? Resolution 1: A logical level analysis of metaphor reveals similarities of the forms of thought, which point to the ‘real’ nature of inner experience. Resolution 2: ‘Metaphorizing’ requires a logic of the imaginary — a set of forms, which accommodate an exchange of originating by ‘dramatist’ and ‘audience.’ The major assumptions are these: To describe the nature of metaphor requires a look inward from which to see formal similarities and origins. A focus on formal cause provides a robust account of how a thinker originates a metaphor. The regularities constraining the thinker looking inward are the same for other persons looking inward. These regularities are classifiable in terms of semiotic and logical phenomena by which parallel thinking is communicative and to some extent collaborative.

Danesi, Marcel

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.061pmid: N/A

Research on metaphor in the last few decades has made it obvious that it is a fundamental form of communication and cognition. The models and theories that have emerged, especially conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), hint at the sensory basis of metaphorization. However, CMT still lacks a ‘sensory-based framework’ for explaining how concrete forms of reasoning are transformed metaphorically to produce abstractions known within CMT as idealized cognitive models. This paper discusses one possible framework, developed from previous work in this area, called ‘sense-implication,’ so that it can be used as a means to conduct future work on the relation between metaphor and cognition.

Sørensen, Bent; Thellefsen, Torkild

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.062pmid: N/A

We investigate how C. S. Peirce's theory of metaphor can provide us with an insight into concept formation. It is interesting that Peirce does not write much about the metaphor; still his suggestion that the basic mechanism of metaphor is that of parallelism is very interesting. This seems to suggest that metaphor is important to Peirce however, not as a poetical adornment but as a special branch of abduction and as a basic esthetic element that pushes science forward towards the esthetic ideal: growth in concrete reasonableness.

Hausman, Carl

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.063pmid: N/A

My thesis is that the most prominent theories of metaphor in the Anglo-American tradition have not sufficiently taken into account the idea that some metaphors may create insights. More attention needs to be given to dissimilarities in metaphorical expressions and to the constraints that contribute to the expressions and interpretations of metaphors. I offer brief expositions and critiques of the views of Max Black, John Searle, Donald Davidson, and Monroe Beardsley. With this in mind, I try to expand my interactionist view of metaphorical reference in terms of the dissonances and dissimilarities that have been recognized as one of the marks of metaphors. Expanding on Monroe Beardsley's idea of Metaphorical Twist, I argue that what some metaphors create are new complexes of related connotations. The interactions among the connotations constrain interpretive processes, and interpretation encounters an aspect of independent objectivity. The objectivity is experienced in the negative suggestions some connotations have and the vectoral direction these suggestions have in nudging the interpretation to completion. The resulting complexes, then, are metaphorical insights, and they contribute to evolution in language and the realities referred to by language.

Ponzio, Augusto

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.064pmid: N/A

This paper is part of ongoing research on metaphor conducted from a semiotic perspective, implementing, in particular, theoretical instruments as developed by Charles S. Peirce. According to Peirce, metaphor is a type of icon and, like all signs, is part of an interpretive route. The specific object of analysis is metaphor as studied by Giambattista Vico, who recovers the connection between verbal language and the senses, that is, the body. In his studies he refers to Aristotle, Galen, as well as to other philosophers. According to Vico metaphor is a fundamental and primal instrument of thought, a concept developed by Du Marsais and Rousseau. Particularly important is the Vichian concept of poetic logic.

Nöth, Winfried

doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.065pmid: N/A

Yuri Lotman describes metaphors and culture as semiospheres or ‘semiotic spaces.’ This account of metaphors is self-referential insofar as it is itself expressed in the form of a metaphor. Moreover, according to Lotman, cultures in general are self-referential systems insofar as they tend to define themselves and evince isomorphic semiotic spaces at mutually inclusive levels and metalevels. Lotman describes semiospheres on the basis of dualisms, levels, stratifications, and spatial opposites that exemplify the Tartu semiotician's theory of the duality of the discreteness of semiotic spaces and their verbal representations versus the continuity of physical space and of pictorial representation.