第十届全国语用学研讨会大会主题发言摘要

Metaphors are simply a range of cases at one end of a continuum that includes literal, loose and hyperbolic interpretations. Metaphorical interpretations are arrived at in exactly the same way as these other interpretations. There is no mechanism specific to metaphor, no interesting generalization that applies only to them. In other terms, linguistic metaphors are not a natural kind, and “metaphor” is not a theoretically important notion in the study of verbal communication. I argue for this deflationary thesis by outlining the general mechanism that governs the interpretation of all utterances.