Metaphor from the perspective of literary semantics

Abstract

The interpretation of orthodox semantics appears to be driven by two assumptions. One, that meaning is a relation between language and the world as a physical given and, two. that this relation is ruled by the definitional syntax of a dictionary. I suggest that both assumtions are misguided. The first assumption is flawed because it begs the question of the interpretive and hence significatory nature of our grasp of the world; the second, because dictionary entries are not so much definitions as records of meanings as social practice. Neither the empiricist tradition which undermines the problematic of mediation in the notion of 'world' nor the formal and hence homosemiotic trust in meaning as definition provide a sound footing for semantics. The paper offers an intersemiotic and heterosemiotic alternative, with metaphor being used as a complex meaning event well suited to demonstrate the force of this two-pronged interpretation.