| This is a study of the force of metaphor in language behavior. It proposes that language usages, ranging from the scientific to the schizophrenic, can be understood and ordered in terms of two basic and opposing principles: the literal and the metaphorical.;"Metaphoricity" is examined as a pervasive presence in all language behavior, and is defined, in the classical sense, as the unifying force which intuits likenesses and creates transferences. The metaphorical is rooted in the ambiguous, connotative, associational nature of language--the literal is rooted in the univocal, denotational, rational nature of language.;This work presents a continuum of usages: the scientific; the expositional; the common, everyday language closest to living experience; the poetic, the schizophrenic.;Metaphoricity is traced from its most dominant and disruptive in the language of schizophrenia, to its more modulated power in the poetic. The mid-range of the continuum--the common, everyday language--exhibits the tensions between the metaphorical and the literal most explicitly. Metaphoricity wanes in the language of exposition as the literal becomes more dominant and, finally, in scientific usage (i.e. mathematical and computer) all metaphorical tendencies are suppressed in favor of precise univocality.;All language behavior embodies two opposing tendencies; a pull toward the literal-discursive-rational and an alternate pull toward the metaphorical-associational-analogical. The distinctive character of the differing usages flows from the configuration resulting from the dominance of one of these pulls.;Greatest attention is given to "common everyday usage closest to living experience". Metaphoricity in both overt and hidden form is explored. Overt metaphoricity is expressed through slang and street language, trade lingo and new technology vocabulary, folk language, idiom and proverb, advertising and other persuasions. A special section is devoted to "Hidden Metaphoricity" which explores the presence of unnoticed puns, double entendre, and word play woven, almost imperceptibly, into ordinary utterance. Such non-deliberate associations attest to the pull toward metaphoricity inherent in language behavior.;The beginning of this work discusses the Chomskian paradigm in its relation to the psychological study of language, and the difficulty of a theory which cannot address language behavior and surface structure or the variety of usages which mark living language. It points to the burgeoning interest in metaphor as promising more fruitful possibilities for psychological study.;The final portion speculates on explanation of language behavior and looks to Ernest Cassirer's work on the symbolic nature of the human mind. Cassirer's insight that language contains two entirely different symbolizing modes (what he has called 'the form of discursive logic' and the form of 'creative imagination') relates to the distinctions being made between the literal and the metaphorical. Freud's work is considered, but from an unconventional point of view, suggesting that his work has more to tell about language than he ever dreamed and provides tools with which to identify metaphoricity in language. |
