Reflection and Imagination

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A Ricoeur Reader:Reflection and Imagination

Edited by Mario J. Vald4s


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Ricoeur Readert ude llvi-S tra uss, / nthtopologie structulal? (Paris: Ploo.' 1958)'p 233 ,n!.lish translatioD: Srru curu! AnLhropology, rans' by claire J acobson aoo.Xf." C."af"t, s"loepf (Harmoodsworth: Peoguir Books' 1968)'.210-111rd, p.23a [211].d, p.239 I2161rd, p. 2,ll [217]id,p.2a8l2ul\d, p.U3l2nl" 'oi"i ii[.,it, 's"t I'exdgese de Gendse 1' 1-2' 4a" iq Rolaod Bartbes et, Extgise et herm,neanque lParis: Seuil' 1971)'pp'6'7-e'iirtoti.,fn" lrt o1 eoerv, trans by Philip wheelwright (New York: Odysseyess, 1951), P. 115l;lirf iiir, r*,r a'une phitosophie du stvle (Paris: A colin'1e68)'p 11siicoeur's translation]

Word, PolysemY, MetaPhor:Creativity in Language

This paper is about the creative aspects of language' However we.""'^"Lio platitudes about this formidable topic' A helpful sugges---ii#-i#ffi;".-uv u" touno' I think' in ihe fddous aphorism-orwifii;;"t f;muoroi*ttiitt describes language as an infinitg-qpe 'ot-nnli" ."-t. Looking foi a striking illustr-ation of-this ccihtrait' I'.,ianrd:it:in ioi"e receni interpretations of metaplor which departiior ttt. traditional interpretition ot rhetoric Anq:tgit to-be nqtan-ornament of larguage or a stylistic decoration'{t{lla semanrlc-'n ";;;b " :' an "..ig" n-.. o f m e an i n g' I n o rde r. to"ift ?oduce-t h i s.i'n"**" i',rr,i;lf,,1tririt might be fruittuIto present it asan alternative,d;;;idft"urse, disinct from and oppos.ed.!9 o,theJ :lllecies'"u.ti.i'iutf" titore of ordinary Ianguage ard scientific language'"*Th;;;i";;iiit.ei., te.. t"o tn-e to b5gsgp!g$uR4#S

contained in this n and to connect it to the focusHence the strategy of this about the strategy of language.,.nitn"t as the actual bearer of allFirst, we shall sPeak of the s

"i.utluitu in t-euage' Then we shall consider polysemy as the poten-iia .i.^ii"itii'";,iineo in the word. Third, wd shall co-nsider the,-n. of aiternate strategies opened by polysemy' and finally' andiilrt* r'u"irt. "t ot ri,il pap.t. *e shali describe metaphor as the;il;;;a;;. ;i tt . tr-'iri tino or stratesv or discourse consideredin thii paper, that of poetic discourse' My goal will be to show that

n"gulgei which we call_PolYsgmYtreirarkable feature ot woros ln


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6,6 A fucoeur Readerthis slrategy preserves best -11: lotentil creativity of the words

ofWord, PolJsemy, Metaphol o /

' r -^ ^r,ha


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we mear to designate something other than and more than thesignified of the individual signs. It is a distinctive feature which maybe identified as the predicative function. (The sentence, of course,may be reduced to its predicate. Then we have a one-word sentenceas in the imperative, but it is a sentence nevertheless inasmuch as it isa predicate.) The predicative constitution of the sentence provides itwith a meaning. This meaning shouid be called the intended ratherthan the signified of the sentence, if we want to preserve the distinc-tion between the semiotic and the semantic order. This intended iswhat we seek to translate when we transpose a discourse from onelanguage into another The signified is untranslatable in principle. Itcannot be transposed from one system to another since it character-izes one system in opposition to the other The intended, on thecontrary is fundamentally translatable since it is the same intendedunit of thought transposed from one semiotic system into another.IJt us therefore say that the intended is the semantic element indiscourse. As we sha.ll see later, the intended of discourse is the focusof aJl creative process in language. But before considering the aspectof creativity and infinity which belongs to the semantic element assuch, let us consider a last semantic feature of the sentence.The-iptended can be considered fromJwo di(ferent Doints of view.Itiisomet-nmgTmmaileniwirhlnl56senteit-,ileieryiesuliingf romthe connection between the terms in the predicative operation of asentence, and at the same time a claim to express reality. To this claimis linked the possibility of truth and error in discourse. Let us call theimmanent character of the meaning 'sense' and its truth claim 'refer-ence.'Then we may say that where there is meaning there is also aquestion of reference, that is, a claim which can be fulfilled or whichcan remain null or void. As you may see, I am using the expressioncoined by Gottlob Frege in a very free way. This thinker called Sinn(sense) the ideal content, the objective side of the meaning, theintended as such. And he called Bedeurung (reference or denota-tion) the directedness ofdiscourse towards reality which it may reachor miss. With this consideration of reference the opposition betweensemiotic and semantic is complete. Whereas semiotic units are sys-tems of inner dependencies, and for that reason constitute closedand finite sets, the sentence, as the first semantic unit, is related toextralinguistic reality. It is open to the world.{.low in what sense are semantic entities infinite? Disc.purse isinfinite because se,utences are evglrrs, because they hate aileakei--..-.'-'.''..\-''

word, Pol)semy, Metaphor 69and a hearer, because they have meaning, and because they havereference. Each of these traits has an infinite character. With theevenl comes the openness of temporality, with the speaker andhearer the depth of individual fields of experience, with meaning thelimitlessness of the thinkable, and with reference the inexhaustibilityofthe world itself. On all these counts language as discoune appearsas an open process of mediation between mind and world. To returnto Humboldt, is the creativethg-tru{an-5[ the sah,-af-b'etv66n-tte txpressed and the unexpressed endlessly keepsreceding. Discourse is this power ofindefinitely extendingthe battle-front of the expressed at the expense of the unexpressed.Word and Polysemy

meaning only inasmuch as sentences have meaning. Once again I amtaking meaning in its semantic sense as an intended content and as aclaim to refer to something outside language. In this sense, words donot mean outside the sentence. Their intended content is a part ofthe whole intended content of the sentence, and they designatesomething inasmuch as sentences themselves refer to states of af-fairs. In brief, words function as meaningful entities only within theframework of the sentence. That they have partial meaning only inconnection with the whole meaning of the sentence could be veryeasily demonstrated by showing that words have no meaning beforethey are used either as logical subjects of a proposition or as predi-cates, that is, before they serve either to identify individuals or toassert universal characteristics of these individuals. In this sense,words belong to the linguistics of the sentence, not to the linguisticsof the sigrr. They are semantic entities, not semiotic entities.Of course, words are based on lexica.l entities which are undoubt-edly semiotic things. But a lexical entity is not yet a word. It is onlythe possibility of a word. This is why a lexicai entity is defined merelyby its opposition to other lexical entities within the same system. Ithas nothing to do with reality. This is not the case with the word in thesentence. It bears a part of the sentence mealing and shares the

ving form to both


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ILWord, PolYsemY, MetaPhor/u A Krcoeur Readerreferential function of the whole discourse' It is about things' itnoints to thinss. it represents things. When Sprache spricht' theniuords tnemsel-ues co-operate in the shaping of reality'ril-.. no* ptepared to consider out second theme' the polysemyot *oJt. e, I'saiil in my introduction' I relate this specific topic toitt. !."*a t"orc of my paper in the followingway' lf metaphor is one"i-ti"'tt.^,"g!"i

of ais'coune which exploils the -creativity.of lan-;;;;;.;;;;. mav ask about the kind of challenge which thisir;;",.gy;il.r1" come to grips with. It is this question which teadstn" to-'fo"u, on polysemy-as the crucial phenomenon. of-naturali-g*g.t -Ot" ist aUoui ttre ptace of the word. itself in the f'abric oflanlua[e. Having done the required analysis of the word' we can nowconsider polysemY.-'p.r**i""'i, readilv defined as the property of words in naturaltatte;ige of hauing more thal one meaning' As Stephan Ullmannouilliin rtit pti, ciples of Semantics' polysemy means one name withI*.iuii.nr.r. rr'tis feature is a universal feature of words in naturali-nuu*.t. Before considering the challenge which resultsJrom this-n-riitiiiu" trait, let us describe its functional character' Before allother Dossible advantages, a polysemic language satisfies the mostelementary requiremenl of a natural language, I mean economy' Ai.ii.on *tti"tt *ould be based on the opposite principle of totalunivocity of all its elements, that is to say, on the principle of only onesense foi one natne, would be inflnite if it were destined to conveyiio. ona person to another the richness of concrete and qualitativeexoeriencb. It would even be doubly infinite because of the limitlessvarietv of each individual sphere of experience and because of theinnumerable plurality of individual perspectives on the world'This first functional trait has for its counterpart a second featurewhich we shall call the sensibility to context. Thanks to the contex-tual use, language based on polysemy may draw practically innumer'able meanings from the Rnite set of lexical entities codined by thedictionary. We shall see in a moment how ordinary Ianguage proceedsto make ihis procedure appropriate to its ends. lrt us say in generalterms that polysemic language is characterized by its sensibility tothe context.By context we mean not only the linguistic environment of theactual words, but the speaker's and the hearer's behaviour, the situa-tion common to both, and finatly the horizon of reality surroundingthe speech situation. Furthermore, the context is already implied in

the very definition of the words Each of the partial values enumer-,lc.l hv lhe dictionarv represents a potentiai use in a typical context;;idil"u'.; tJ."iih.'J-a ctasiifled bv lexicotogv' The..sqm ofthese notential uses in potential contexts is what we call ln ani;;;;;;;"r. the meaning of the word This is an improper sense'u.itui" ttt. f.*i"al entities are not yet words in rhe strong sense' Butini, *uy of speaking is not wholly improper since the,partral mean-ir"-. niu word suninarize previous r'ses wNch have been clasified",iltOlng a *"'.sponding contexts' In this sense, a polysemic languageiri"""?uaLyo"tdrmined"not only h its use, but in its very mnstituiion'Such are the t*o functional traits ofa polysemic language' economyat ifre ie"ef of the code, contextual dependence at-the level of the;";;;g;. Thl; Jidectics of economy and noveltv forshzdows thedialecics of finite means and infinite use which will be unfolded;;;; consider the various strategies by which we make use ofitt"i. potyr..i" traits. This dialectic takes place.in.the concrete^..',-".s t v which we decode a qiven message and which we may calli",.-r.iition in the most geniral sense of the word' The simplestrn.ir'ug. ion""ved by the means of natural language tras to beioi"-i.t"a U""iuse ajl the words are polysemic and tale their actual;e-ari*g from the conneclion with a given context and a given;A;;;? against the background of a glven situation' rnterpretationin iiri, utoia sense is a piocess by which we use all the availablecontextual determinants to grasp the actual meaning of a givenmessage in a given situation.It wis alreidy in this broad sense, or maybe an even broader sense,that Aristotle used the word lrermeneiz, that is to say interptetation,in the second treatise of the Organonwhichits editors have called bythe same name. His sense may have been still broader than oursbecause it seems that language has to be interpreted not only be'cause words are the symbols of states of mind, and written signs oforal signs, but because discoutse is fundamentally the interpretationof reality. We shall retum to this still broader sense of interpretationat the end of this paper. Let us therefore call interpretation thedecoding of messages -based on polysemic words. It is interpretationwhich calls for the various strategies which we shall now consider.Why this diversity of strategies? Because of a challenge, a threatwhich is implied in all processes of interpretation. This cha.llenge isthe threat of ambiguity or of equivocity which appears to be thepermanent counterpart of polysemy or, so to speak, the price to pay

l,


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72 A Ricoeur Readerfor a polysemic language But let us be accurate' Ambiguity or""ui"&iriit "o, the s"am"e thing as polysemy' Polysemy is a feature of*liJt, i"'".tur senses for one-name. Ambiguity is a. feature of dis'iou.r.,inut ii to say, of the stretch of speech longer-than or equal to-in" t.tit."*. e.biguity or equivocity means that for one string of*&Oi *" rtu". -it" itt* one *ay of interpreting it' Whereasnotuirmv is t nott d phenomenon, ambiguity may be a pathologicaJtriiio-inon. I say imay be' because, as we shaJ| see' we must\ii iiililii i"tti ti i ty oi niguv signi ficant ambi guities' rlepossibi/-irv-it u nnir;o"N anbiguity. Thai will be the case with poeliciuinuun.. But ambiguity Jemains a case of dysfunction each time'ttraiitrE situation of"disiourse requires only one interpretation for

ieasons wtricir will be proper to each type of strategy' Each time thatthe Dresent stretch of'disiourse gives no sufficient clue to eliminateeouivocitY in interpretation. then misunderstanding becomes un-;;;;;;i;1 ano is Frieoricrr D.E' Schleiermacher said' there is att"t*"r"rit.ir task where there is misunderstanding and when un-derstanding proceeds from the rectification of misunderstandiirg'--i"

ilte ptZi"oing remarks I used gqPvlal1ambiqlrltY' Td misun-dersranding as synonym ous termll I n o rdEik5-Tislinlursn- tfieieffih-apscallambiguitythechaIacter-ofthediscourSeitreiiui open.O to several interpletations; and call. equivocity thenio"." of interpretation hesitating between these interpretations'l,tiiunoetstanOing would be the effect of both ambiguity andLquivocity on theintersubjective process of communication'-tu.n iritt. u.t-ce of advantagis and disadvantages of a polysemiclansuase. On the one hand, it satisfies the principle of economy'*nftit is tne basic principle for all kinds of languages,.at the samedme that it allows the contextuat game to draw an infinite variety ofmeaningfut effects from this economic structure' But' on the otherhand. iidelivers language to the precarious and haphazard work ofint.$t.tution -d tlierJfore to thi risks of arnbiguity, equivocity' andmisundentanding.Polysemy and the Strategies of Languagekt us now introduce the various strategies capable of meeting thect afGnge ot.itunderstanding. I shall consider three of them: ordi-ou.y tu"ngu.g., scientific language, and poetic language, without

Word, Pollsemy, Metaphor 73pretending that these are the only possible solutions-' By ordinary language I mean that use of natural languages (Eng-lish, French, German, and so on) whose aim is communication andwhose means are a tactic of polysemy reduction' By communicationI mean the attempt to convey information from speaker to hearerconcerning the concrete situations of everyday life which are differ-ently experienced by the individual members of the speech commu-nity. A iertain amount of univocity is reached by specific meansreouirins a minimal technicity in the use of words which I call thereductio"n of polysemy. This tactic relies mainly on the clever use ofthe context\ iffect on the individual terms of discourse' This reduc-tive action of contexts is easy to understand. The use of language isgoverned not only by syntaitic rules of grammaticality' but also byie-antic rules olsense compossibility. In order to make sense to-s!ther. words must have a mutual appropriateness, a semantic perti-"nence. fnis rute of semantic pertinence requiles that whenwe speak,o"1v u putt of the semantic fleld of a word is used. The remainder isexciudid, or, rather, repressed, by the process of mutugl selectionexerted by the sentence as a whole and by the context of discourse onits parts.'If the sentence is not enough to screen the convenientcon'te*tual values, the topic will help to eliminate the unwantedmeaning under the controi of the whole speech siluation' Finally it isthe funition of the exchange of questions and answers within thedialogue or conversation to allow the hearer to check the semanticchoic"e of the speaker and to allow the speaker to verify that themessase has been correctly decoded by the hearer' The speaker\uttera.ices must provide the hearer\ interpretation with some spe-cific clues or guidelines for this screening of polysemy' -Such is the"way in which ordinary language succeeds to a certainextent in reducing the initial polysemy of the words and in makingrelatively univoc-al statemenas with polysemic words. But if thisstrategy is enough in everyday life, it does.not radically. excludepotysJmy. lt can-not claim more than to reduce it. The threat of'misunOerstanOing, as we too well knoq is not fundamentally dis-pelled. Very oftei a long speech, if not a whole book, is not enoughio insure understanding and agreement. Misunderstanding finallyprevails.This ultimate failure of ordinary language to meet the challenge ofmisunderstanding explains why a quite different strategy had to be


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74 A Ricoeur Readerintroduced, a strategy which would no longer aim at reducingpollsemy, but at eradicatingit. This strategy is that ofscientific language.In the following analysis I shall not speak of scientific language ingeneral but only from the point of view of the therapy of misunder-standing, and therefore in mnnection with the tIeatrnent of ambiguity.From this limited point ofview, scientific language may be defined bythe defensive measures it takes against ambiguity. I will mention onlythe most striking of them.As a fint step, scientific language only pushes farther a procedurerooted in ordinary language, that of definition. As is well known,language is constructed in such a way that it is always possible todesignate an element of our lexical code by means of other elementsbelonging to the same code. It is possible in principle to say that abachelor is an unmarried man. Thanks to this reflective action oflanguage, we expand our vocabulary and control the meaning of ourwords. Scientific language pushes this definatory procedure fartherby renning it with the help of classificatory and taxonomic measures.The second step is to introduce technical terms into our vocabu-lary which satisfy a specific rule, that of denoting only quantitativeentities, to the exclusion of the qualitative aspect of out expedence.Some previous words borrowed from ordinary .language such as'strearn,' 'mass,' 'speed,' may be retained, but they are reformulated

and redefined according to the requirements of a rn ath-esis wtiversalis.At a further stage of abstraction, words similar to those of ourdictionaries are replaced by mathematical symbols, that is to say, bysigns which can be read but not vocally uttered. The link with naturallanguage is broken. Scientific language henceforth is beyond theboundary line which divides artificial language from natural language.Finally, at a stage corresponding to ar advalced degree of formal-ization, the meaning of all the formulas and all the laws of a formalsystem is govemed by a set of axioms which assign each elementarymeaning iis place in the theory and prescribe the rules for reading thewhole symbolism. Of course there is still room for interpretation inthe sense that a formal system has still to be applied to a diversity ofempirical domains of experience, but this interpretation is itselfgoverned by new rules of translation which exclude a1l ambiguity'-These rules of translation and the prescription which they imply takethe place of contextual interpretation in ordinary discourse. There-forithe constitution of formal systems and the rules for interpreting

Word, Pollsemy, Metaphorthem in.relation to empirical fields constitute the ultimate proceduredirected by scientific language against ambiguity.At this point we might be tempred to reformulate the whole fabricof our language according to the procedures which we just defined.Does it not seem reasonable to construct a /dn gue bien iaite ruled,bythe principle of a one-to-one relation between signs and entities, ofone meaning for each word, and to extend this artificial language toethical and political problems, and why not even to conveisation?This dream of a radica.l and complete reformulation of the whole ofour language haunted philosophers like Leibniz, conceiving hischaracteristica universalrs, Russell,writing the Prr'nc ipia Mathernitica,and Wittgenstein, in his Tracrarns, stating the rules ofa language whichwould be the exact picture of the structure of facts.But there are fundamental reasons for thinking that this projectmust fail. Ordinary language and artificial language not only betongto two irreducible strategies, but have different aims. The theme olordinary language is communication, and its f,eld of application isreality as it is differently experienced by the individuai members ofthe speech community. Strictly speaking, however, communication isnot the aim of a scientific language. When we read a scientific paper,we are not in the position of an individual member of the speechcommunity just invoked. All readers are, in a sense, one and thesame mind, and the purpose of discourse is not to build a bridgebetween two spheres of experience, but to insure the identity ofmeaning from the beginning to the end of an argument. This is whythere are no contextual variations of meaning in a langue bien faite.The meaning is contextually neutral, or, if you prefer, insensible tothe context, because the main purpose of this language is that themeaning remain the same all through the arguments. This continualsameness of the meaning is secured by the one-to-one relation be-tween name and sense and by the indifference to the context. Thus Ishould say that the aim of a scientific language is not communication,but argumentation. It follows that there is something irreducible inordinary language. The vadability of meanings, their displaceability,and their sensibility to the context are the condition for creativityand confer possibilities of indennite invention in both poetic andscientific activity. Here indeterminateness and creativity appear tobe completely solidary. This is why langues biens failes are, at best,insular languages. The conclusion could be, as Roman Jakobson

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76 A Ricoeur Readersays, that both mathematical and ordinary languages are required,and that each of them has to be considered as the netalanguagerequired for the structural analysis of the other.

Metaphor and PolysemyIn this last part of my paper-I want to,consider-fne-t-aphor wit[in thelimits of my present concern.-flfi -is with rei ect io ciEaiiiiiy "fnlanguage, and in continuity with my previous remarks aboutpolysemy. In other words, I shall treat metaphor as a creative use ofpolysemy and in that way as a specific strategy of language. Insteadof reducing or suppressing polysemy, metaphor uses polysemy as ameans to preserve polysemy and to make it work in a most effectiveway. For what purpose? We shail resewe the answer for the end ofthis essay.The decisive step in the direction we are now taking has beenindicated by writers such as I.A. Richards, Max Black, ColinTlrbayne, Monroe Beardsley, Douglas Berggren, and others whodeparted from the tradition of rhetoric for which metaphor con-veyed no information qrl! apge-ale_dge-Isly_Aa-slyu.Lti!*o_rnamen t,_whose function it was to pGase. They could break with thJslradition-@blemof metaphorfrom aquite newperspective. For traditional rhetoric, metaphorwas one ofthe figuresof speech called tropes because they proceeded from a deviating useof the meaning of words. Tropes therefore affected just tlie namesand the giving of names. Instead of giving their proper narnes tocerlain things, or facts, or experiences, the writer chooses to use thename of something else by extending the meaning of this foreignname. The task of rhetoric thus is to classify the different figuresaccording to the kind of deviation which generated them. Metaphorwas traditionally classiRed as a trope by resemblance or by analogy.This treatment of metaphor by rhetoric has been chalacterized byRichards and his followers as a substitution theory. The decisivefactor is that the borrowed word taken with its deviating use issubstituted for a potential proper name which is absent in the con-text, but which could be used in the same place. The writer choosesnot to use the convenient word in its proper sense and to replace itwith another word which seems to be more pleasant.To understand the metaphor, then, is to restitute the term whichhas been substituted. It is easy to understand that these two

Word, Pollsemy, Metaphor

garment to cover the nudity of common usage.

77t. Thereforemetaphor.

, it provides aSuch is the train of presuppositions implied in 4_rhqtorical treat-ment of metaphor. Berween the sraning-point, iliat meltphoFis:naccident in the process of naming, and the conclusion, that metaphoris merely decorative and intended to please, the road is continuousand the turning-point is constituted by the action ofsubstitution. Theweakness of this model is obvious. It is impossible on its basis to givean account of the difference between a bad metaphor, like the leg ofa chair, and a novel metaphor, like the poetic vene, ,La teffe estbleue comme une orange,'or,time is a beggar.' The aspect ofsemantic novelty which, I believe, is the fundamental problem ofmetaphor remains unexpla.ined in a substitution theory which coversboth cases. Furthermore, the theory is unable to explain the processitself by which the meaning of a word is extended beyond iis com-mon use. What Beardsley called the .metaphorical twist' remains anenign-ra. This is why rhetoric contented itself with classifying thefigures of speech, being unable to generate them

.The reason why rhetoric could not give an account of the processwhich generates metaphor is that it limited its description to thewords, and more precisely, to the name. As we shall se-e, the meta-phorical pr@ess occurs at another level, at the level of the sentenceand of discourse as a whole. This is why rhetoric could only identifythe_effects of the process on the word, the lexical impact, so to speal,and classify the metaphor among other figures such as metonymy,synecdoche, irony, and so on.The new approach initiated by I.A. Richards in his phitosophy ofRhetoric starts from his rgmark that words alone cannot be meta-phoric. They are metaphoric only in the context of a sentence. Moreprec-isely, only a sthtement, an entire proposition, can be metaphori-cal. In Richards's terms, metaphor has to pose a tenor and a vehicle.It is a unity of both. It proceeds from the tension between these two.poles. Inthis sense, we may oppose a tension theory ofmetaphor to asubstitution theoryWitlin.this new..framework, some new features appear which had

operations - substitution and restitution _ are equi\il is possible to give an exhaustive paraphrase df aFrom these presuppositions, it f-i4iq rm arion-tt reaches nottring. ro-treGffimere decorative device. It has no informative value: it


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78 A Ricoeur Readerbeen previously overlooked and which allow us to recoglize theinformative character ofmetaphor as opposed to its mere dicorativecharacter for rhetoric. For me, the remgnition of this informativecharacter is the nucleus of the whole discussion since it implies andreveals the creative dimension of metaphoric statements.This recognition proceeds from an anaJysis which underlines twocomplementary features of the metaphorical statement,, a negativeand a positivc trait.On the one hand, the strategy of discourse put into action inmetaphor relies on the purposive creation of a semantic discrepancyin the sentence. For a literal interpretation the metaphorical itate-ment brea-ks down. Monroe Beardsley goes so far as to say that theprivileged procedure of metaphor is self-contradiction. The functionof metaphor is to make sense with nonsense, to transform a self-contradictory statement into a significant self-contradiction. In moregeneral terms, we could say that a metaphorical statement proceedsfrom the violation of semantic rules which determine appropriate-ness in the application of predicates. In the terms of a French critic,Jean Cohen, in S tructure du langage podtique,metaphor relies on theviolation of semantic pertinence. It consists in the reduction ofsemantic impertinence generated by the violation of semantic rulesthrough the imposition of a deviation of another kind at the level ofthe word. Metaphor in this way appears as the solution of an enigma.What appears as the deviation in the meaning of the word, as themetaphorical twist, is the positive counterpart of the initial deviationfrom semantic pertinence. It is a deviating use of words respondingto the deviating way of predicating attributes to things.This analysis of the negative side of the metaphorical processalready allows us to acknowledge its creative dimension. But whatabout the positive character of metaphor? Or, to put it in anotherway, how do we make sense with nonsense? We spoke of the intuitivegrasp of resernblances. Was it not Aristotle who said that .to havecommand of metaphor is to have an eye for similarities'? There issomething true in this thesis. The creative moment of metaphor isconcentrated on this grasping of resemblance, in the perception ofanalogies. But a metaphysics of imagination, which we migtrt betempted to draw from the tradition of Romanticism, could destroythe benefits of the previous analysis if applied inaccurately. Theproblem is a semantic one, not a psychological one. How do we makesense with self-contradictory statements? In invoking imagination,

Word, Pollsemy, Meraphor 7gwe lose sight of the decisive factor that, in novel metaphors, thesimilarity is itself the fruit of metaphor. We now see a similarity thatnobody had ever noticed before. The difficulty therefore is to under-stand. that-we see similarity by construing it, that the visionarygrasping of resemblance is, at the same time, a verbal invention. Theiconic element has therefore to be included in the predicative pro_cess itself.

This is why the most effective analysis of metaphor concems theconstruction which accompaaies the vision. Even if it is true thatthere is something irreducible in the grasping of similarities as a kindof.sudden insight, the only progress that can be achieved by anepistemology of metaphor concems the discursive and not the i;tui_tive process involved in the creation ofmeaning. 'The case of trivial metaphor is the easiest to treat. Metaphors like'man is a wolf proceed from a kind of predication in whicir some ofthe connotative values attached to our words are applied in a newway to the principal subject. By connotative values we mean, withMax Black, the 'system of associated commonplaces' which enlargethe mealing of our words, adding cultural and emotional dimensionsto the literal values codified by our dictionaries. Of course there areno metaphors in a lexicon, but beyond the lexicon there is whatA,ristotle called the topoi,the cultural treasure of meanings. The artof metaphor is to apply a part ofthis treasure to new subjects, to useit as a screen which not only selects, but which bringi forth newaspects in the principal subject. In this way, even trivial metaphorshave an informative value.The case of novel metaphor is more difficult to treat. The new factis that the solution of the enigma raised by the tension or thesemantic clash on which the metaphor is built no longer relies on theexistenc of a previous system of associated commonplaces, on arange of connotative values which would be already at our disposa.l.The novel metaphor creates a new semantic situation. We can nolonger speak of connotative meanings waiting for our use. We mayonly sp_eak of properties which have not yet been brought to lan_guage. Here lies precisely the difference between novel and trivialmetaphor. We do not merely apply already existing connotations, wecreate a new framework of connotation which exists only in theactual act of predication. In other words, a novel metaphor does notmerely actualize a potential connotation, it creates it. It is a semanticinnovation, an emergent meaning. From these metaphors we may


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80 A Ricoeur Readersee that no paraphrase can exhaust them. They are untranslatable.They say what they say, and what they say cannot be said in anotherway.We are now as far as possible from the ornamental interpretationfrom which we started.From these remarks derives the role of likeness in the constructionof good metaphors. There is indeed something paradoxical andcircular in the way in which a good metaphor is produced. Likeness isthe guideline of the process which constructs it as likeness. Metaphoris a unitive process which produces a kind of assimilation betweenremote ideas. As such, it is the object of the kind of insight to whichAristotle pointed when he said that 'while the proper use of a.ll thosevarious poetic devices is important, by far the greatest thing for apoet is to be master of metaphor. Such mastery is the one thing thatcannot be learned from others. It is the mark ofgenius (euphuia),fotto be good at metaphor is to be intuitively aware of hidden resem-blaaces.'1 But at the same time rhis assim,ation between remoteideas is a discutsive preess which we express by new metaphors likethat of a screen or a fi|ter, by which we designate the way in which thepredicate selects an d organizes some features ofthe principal subject.. This paradox is not only a psychological paradox, like that whichGestalt psychology describes under the title of insight when it showsthat each change in a structure, each transition from one structure toanother, occurs as a sudden intuition in which the new structureemerges from the collapse of the previous one. This paradox is asemantic paradox, a paradox linked to the reallocation ofpredicates.Nelson Goodman describes the metaphor as.:Jhe reassignment of alabel,'and he says that this reassignment takes the form of an affairbetween a predicate which has a past and an object which yieldswhile protesting. This paradox of protesting arrd yielding is another

metaphor about metaphor. It speaks of the paradox between insightand construction, between genius tind calculus.Moreover, this paradox is a logical paradox. By this I mean that theparadox is not only between insight and construction, but about theessence of likeness as a relation. Likeness is itself a compoundrelation which coffelates sameness and difference. To see samenessin the difference is the genius ofmetaphor.lt was not by accident thatAristotle spoke of the 'similar' as the 'same' perceived in things

Word, Pollsemy, Metaphor g1__ryleftg1gryl,ess ild differenc are " ixed,-but re_maln opposed. I he tenslon is not only between tenor and vehio-=e]--*betfle-En f6cus d'd frame, but in the relation itself, in the copula. Inmetaphor, sarneness works in spite of difference. This specific fea-ture explains the kinship between metaphor and riddle.This_ conspicuous trait has been seen in one way or another byseveral authors. Ruth Herschberger speaks of .a liieness of unlike

things able to reconcile opposites andcontaining tension., DougiasBerggren sees.'the indispensable principle for integrating dive"rsephenomena without sacrincing divenity,in the meiaphor. And inThe Myth of Metaplror, Turbayne correctly co.par.s *hat happensin metaphor to what Gilbert Ryle called a category mista-ke, thii is, amislocation of names and of predicates. Instead ofgiving the name ofthe species to the genus. of the genus to rhe speciei, or 6f tire speOesto.another species, metaphor merely blurs ihe conceptual bound-aries of the terms considered.. Could we not say therefore that the dynamics of metaphor consistsin confusing the established logical boundaries for the sake ofdetect-ing new similarities which previous categorization prevented ournoticing? In other words, the power of metaphor would be to breakthrough previous categorization and to establish new logical bound-aries on the ruins of the preceding ones. If we take thiJlast remarkseriously, we may wish to draw the ultimate consequence and saythat the dynamics of thought which breaks through pievious catego-rization is the same as the one which generated tl ilassifications:Inother.words, the ngure of speech which we classily as metaphorwould be at the origin ofall semantic fields, since to contemplate thesimilar or the same - and we know now that the similar is also thesame.- is to grasp the genus, but not yet as genus; to grasp the same inthe difference, and not yet as above or -beside thl difference. Tograsp the kinship in any semantic field is the work of the metaphoricprocess at large. We are now allowed to speak of metaphoric processin so general away because the so-called metaphor, th-e metaphor astrope or as a figure, as it is defined by rhetoric, presents th-e sameprocess, butJnder the paradoxicai structure of sameness in spite ofdifference. This is why we may say from the likeness at wbrk inmetaphor what we say about the genus as it is grasped in logica|thought. We may say that we learn from it, that iiteaihes us some_thing. Aristotle once more observes that it is from metaphor that wehich are 'remote.' Likeness is the key word gf metaplg !g!e!-sr,in-


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82 A Ricoeur Readercan best get hold of something fresh, for 'when Homer calls old agestubble, Iie teaches and informs us through the genus, for both havelost their bloom.'These remarks may allow us to do justice to the iconic element ofthe metaphor. This factor has been carefully left aside.because itintroduces psychotogical considerations alien to a mere linguistic orsemantic eiplanatio;. But is the pictorial, the ngurative,so obviouslyalien to semantic consideration? Once more let us follow the pre-ceding analysis of the paradoxical structure of likeness, that is, theinnerlonfliit between salneness and difference in the process ofmetaphor. Does not imagination have something to do with thisconnict? An old prejudice-stemming from Hume, according to whichan image is the'reiidue of an impression, sLops. us from giving aourelv iemantic description of imagery and imagination VLisled byitris prejudice, we look at imagery in connection- with the sensoryiierOi-iigttt, riearing, touch, and so on. But if we follow Kant ratherttr-* frutfi., i ..an ihe theory of schematism and that of p(oductiveimasination. we have to lookat imagination as the place of nascentrn"ulting, and categories, rather than as the place of fading impres'sions."In-a similar way, we should have to say that the iconic in metaphorir notftirJ"f." titin grasping of similarities in a preconcept ral way' Inpop"i* i".rnr, figu"rative t-trinting is the presentation of abstractideas and their concrete appearance But what is a concrete presen-tuiio. oiun uurtract idea; if not the learning and the te^aching of a""t"i tft-t, to the interplay between sameness and difference? Toir" ti"Oloitif otophv of imigination is badly needed' C-ould we not;;'";;;;;ililihat imagination is the emergence of conceptual;#il ffi;;'irt. ittt.til.v between sameness and difference?Metapn"or wouii be the plaCe in discourse where this emergence maybe detected because sameness and difference are in conflict lf meta-;;;; be treated as a figure of speech' it is because it overtly5r"*"['i" itt. i"rtn of a .o"nnitt between sameness and differenceiiJ'""Ti"!it'tinrii,'iiiou.ttry at work in the construction oI all*.it,f " n"f ar,lftu, ii. ,ft. Unif'tlp which brings individuals.under therute of a logical class. Metaphor helps us.to detect tbts processft.uut. lr- iorfs against prJvious categorization at.the. level ofitt.totii. lt cleverlf bypasies given cat;gori.es in older to revealunnoticed similarities in the field of our experience'*e wiff now relate this analysis of metaphor io our preuous

Word, Pollsemy, Metaphor 83analysis of polysemy. It is essential to the structure of metaphor thatthe old and the new are present tcgether in the metaphorical twist.The kind of tension which we described at the level of the sentence,and even within the copula itself, now dwells in the words them-..selves. When we receive a metaphorical statement as meaningful, weperceive both the literal meaning which is bound by the semanticincongruity and the new meaning which males sense in the prese[tcontext. Metaphor is a clear case where polysemy is presewed in-stead ofbeing screened. Two lines of interpretation are opened at thesame time and several readings are ailowed together and put intotension. This effect has been compared to stereoscopic vision. Sev-eral layers of meaning are noticed and recogrized in the thickness ofthe text.This first relation between metaphor and polysemy is not the onlyone. We have treated it as a synchronistic phenomenon, but it is alsoa diachronic.one. If we consider the long history of a metaphor, wemay say that it passes from the state of novelty to that of faded ordeid metaphor.-At the flrst stage metaphor does not belo_ng to thelexicon. It exists only in discourse, in the present and actual instanceof discourse. But as soon as it is received by a speech community, ittends to be used in the same way as the literal meanings alreadyclassified by our dictionaries. At the last stage, when the. tensionbetween litLral aad metaphorical sense is no longer perceived, wemay say that the metaphoiical sense has become-a part of the literalsense.'ihen it is merely added to the previous polysemyof the word'In this way we may say that metaphor is the procedure by which weextend polYSemY.In this way we come to the following hypothesis' If metaphorextends polyiemy, is not polysemy the results of previous metaphor?But now metaphor is no longer a rhetorical device' no lgnger-uBut now metaphor is no longer a rhetorical de!'lce' no l9nge!'ttm bY which we grasp krnshrp' I\

-We are now prepared to answer th.e decisive question: what is thelunction of metaphor? By this queition we are sent back to theiirrtew underlvine the use of metaphor. If ordinary language aims atio.rn"tini"atioti by'cleverly reducing ambigirity, and if scienti.flc lan'nuin" uirn, ut univocity in argumentation by suppressing equivocity'iuttii ir tft. finaliry of metap-horical language? Our concep.t of .like*1ness as thc tensjo!-!9tyc-9n-La$esss and difference iniOllqs thtil a I-*.F--


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84 A Ricoeur Reader- discoyrse Which makesg;g qf metarrbnr has th eextr^crriinarv poweC:-ofr.edescribing ,edttI..fti. ir, I b"li.*-merapnonc'trsfzrfeme n t.-2rfftlslte[ilsiEEi-crion of the metaphor appears clearly when webnng metaphor and models together, as Max Black does in Modelsand Memphon, and as Mary Hesse does in Modeh and Analogies inScience. The function of a model is to describe an unknown thiig or a

lesser-known thing in terms of a better-known thing thanks to asimilarity of structure. Two things have therefore to be-considered ina model. On the one hand, it is a fiction, that is, it is a way of makingan object easier to handle. On the other hand, this fiction is aheuristic fiction inasmuch as we may transfer the description ofthis better-known object to the field to be described on the basis ofapartial isomorphism.This concept of heuristic fiction may be extended from the theoryof models in science to the theory of poetry. In his Poetics, Aristotlepaved the way for a generalization of metaphor conceived as heuris-tic fiction by linking metaphor as a rhetorical trait to the mainoperation of poetry which is the bui.lding of amythos,of afable. Theinvention of the fable in tragedy is the creative act of poetry pat ex-cellence.T\is creative act gives its title to the work, PoeficJ, that is tosay, creative fiction. Therefore if we say that the function of poetry isto imitate nature, we must not forget that this rn irnsir is not a copy-ing ofreality, but a redescription in light ofa heuristic fiction. Thankslo tragedy, we are prepared to look at human beings in a new waylecause human action is redescribed as greater, nobler, than actualife is. Thanks to this disclosure of the depth structure of human life)y poetry we may say once more with Aristotle that poetry is closero philosophy than to history History remains caught in anecdotes,roetry reaches the essence of things.What we just said about tragedy, what must be said about poeticiarrative, can be said also of lyrics, aithough at first sight lyricalroetry has no reference. l:nguage constitutes a world of its own. Inhe terms ofJatobson, the poetic dimension of language emphasizeshe message as such at the expense of the reference to the context.iound and sense tend to make a solid object, a closed totality. But ifiti true that lyrical poetry suspends all didactic references and evenbolishes the world, can we not say that this epochi of reference inhe terms of the descriptions a.lready given by ordinary language isre negative condition for the disclosure of new aspects of rgality

Word, Polysemy, Metaphor g5which could not have been said in a more direct way? If this is true,we can say tha^t poetic language has a mimetic function inasmuch as itls a neunstlc.flctron preparing a redescription of reality. lf it is truetnal poetry gives no information in terms of empirical knowledge, itmay change oyr way of looking at things, a change which is no lessreal than empirical knowledge. What islhanged 5'y poetic languageis our -way of dwelling in the world. From pdetry *! ."".iu" u n"*way ofbeing in the world, oforientating ourielvejin this world. Evenif we say with Northrop Frye that poet'ic discourse gives articulationonly to our moods, it is also true that moods as welias feelings havean ontological bearing. 1h.ou*h feeling we find ourselves ilreadylocated in the world. In this way, by artidulating a mood, each poemprojects a new way of dwelling. It opens up a ne-w way of 6eing fbr us.. If this analysis is sound, we should have to say that mEtaphorshatters not only the previous structures of our language, but also theprevious structures of what we call reality. When wi ask whethermetaphorical language reaches reality, we presuppose that we al-ready know what reality is. But if we assume that metaphor rede_scribes reality, we must then assume that this reality, as redescribed,is itself novel reality. My conclusion is that the strategy of discourseimplied in metaphorical language is neither to improve communica-tion nor to insure univocity in argumentation, but to shatter and toincrease our sense of reality by shattedng and increasing our lan-guage. The strategy of metaphor is heuristic fiction for the sake ofredescribing reality.

sis of both lanpuage and rcaiity.Notel Aristotle, ?le u4 rt of Poetry,tra.ns.by Philip Wheelwright (New l1ork: OdysseyPress, 1951), p.317

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