A Ricoeur Reader:

Reflection and Imagination

Edited by Mario J. Vald4s

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto and Buffalo

Ricoeur Reader
Ploo.' 1958)'p 233 ude llvi-S tra uss, / nthtopologie structulal? (Paris: , claire J acobson aoo by rans' n!.lish translatioD: Srru curu! AnLhropology, s"loepf (Harmoodsworth: Peoguir Books' 1968)'
t

.Xf."

C."af"t,

.210-111 rd, p.23a [211] .d, p.239 I2161

rd, p.

Word, PolysemY, MetaPhor: Creativity in Language

2,ll [217]
et

id,p.2a8l2ul
\d,

ii[.,it, 's"t I'exdgese de Gendse 1' 1-2' 4a" iq Rolaod Bartbes " Extgise et herm,neanque lParis: Seuil' 1971)'pp'6'7-e' , (New York: Odyssey iirtoti.,fn" lrt o1 eoerv, trans by Philip wheelwright l;lirf iiir, r*,r a'une phitosophie
iicoeur's translation]
ess, 1951), P. 115 du stvle (Paris:

'oi"i

p.U3l2nl

colin'1e68)'p

11s

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

wifii;;"t ."-t.

"u.ti.i'iutf" "*Th;;;i";;iiit.ei., te..

t"o tn-e

to

b5gsgp!g$uR4#S

n"gulgei which we call_PolYsgmYt reirarkable feature ot woros ln

and to connect it to the focus

contained in this n

about the strategy of language. Hence the strategy of this of all First, we shall sPeak of the s,.nitn"t as the actual bearer potenthe in t-euage' Then we shall consider polysemy as the "i.utluitu iia .i.^ii"itii'";,iineo in the word. Third, wd shall co-nsider and of aiternate strategies opened by polysemy' and finally' as the metaphor describe *e shali ot ri,il pap.t. r'u"irt. considered discourse or ;i tt . tr-'iri tino or stratesv of poetic discourse' My goal will be to show that paper, that in thii

,-n. iilrt*

;il;;;a;;.

"t

o/

Word, PolJsemy, Metaphol

6,6 A fucoeur Reader

best this slrategy preserves -11:

lotentil

of creativity of the words

l1:^''.::;:; t;;*tien is"tt'e unitv orboth . t'f"'"'li'."J'loJ't'riiio.'.'iption?f

von

' r -^

the same coin two sides o[ one and the like <.me sisn ^r,ha

ot The Sentence as tt':-ll-"-Ut"

nilllt I'I:1*

-.:li.:it**,",fg'^:t:"Si'":1 :1:,,:.:iJ,lJ:'.; :t ;";' Jor thal

':''":"-:-.:.^;",nri croscu 5r r!v"'- *l
-^ ^- ^" : ii1""-i"ii."vu.ms'

-:r r^ ha finitel II lullular

Humbordts^t?l?:l:::"'i:;';1't'.

! ^-:'-t

In

:"-T:::'"::'..?i"tii?ntiti"'u' Lanr J!rr"' -' what Senss 'i'.n,,-"nt

--':,,^" ""rictu Mlhelm

nature of all the
linguistic systems

il

entities.nu'rt'"'*::"^;Ti"1r,ijiJ.'.T""r.o,ii*i."nnire..ontheone vvr"c L-.'trru necUlliilrlY navc tl-'a P'--,"1^ 1r\rr *r.. .'",iiJ::;';;Jexprcssion' vieitj,XiXl;

ffrumm#'im
ffiffiit*frT*ii*
:rte'1+f*1nm,m

;;;;ihephonemes'at":^:::: be !*l:1"^li''ll'::,'"JJ':.i.'f nutrlu\'r v! *'--or the contelrt' may

, ^*r-^. hrnd rhe sienified, i-euugt on the other nano' j;:.rriii;i i;

or all lexicar Yi11'li^l',iii", these elemenrar Y.::i':::-.'

i'n*:rx'trt''tfr1l1i;1;",11t15frfr$i','#r*t*'

principle should lead

n**o**$#fffiii;'l,fffi
tm finite lists of forms ano what sense may we speaK first entity which has..to wlll D( sentence. Our task tne ( to which contribute

rr*nqfr#iwn+rgmmnffi
unirs wirhin specifi c sls_tems:rllJ,lilil".i,o.il;yriiictic foims ot rutes \^1Inrn morohemes or sememes 1:ll1-":;;:,-;;; merelv distinctive

xrT#"tlli::"1''ruJ:siqi;q:gi:"'.Tttl',:1,:#*;

l,''"',x:';Ti1{|ffi !$rsi;;::1$,* It haPP

and disaPPears'
is actual'

j:i;:l'r.'n:r;

"tonliJ"itit" fir-,uii'iitiguugt as discourse capacity of an to '"t"ttuble As a second t'uit *" ""un to its own t?:1k':t thanks tt";f*';;; discourse of tenses the insrance personal pronouns'

****rtr*****$ifi*m i.il";;
t"'t''

,r-ttre signs soecific linguistic zun.,,onr"riatr tdon"wnet"o-'svstems of the may verbs, who of the itquitt' a speaker

dt*""'i;ii"";;;i

are properly unon,,noull

ai*Jttt"

them rrom 9tit3r se11o11rsgl,:;; itre iignifler and the Ferdinand .d9.S3"s.Pt:,t:i;:i* ,.-ior.urut.o as the dif ference beHlermsrcv-l::"il'i:';;;t;;ce o-on sienifi ed, which Louis horrowed from content This difference ano.lts expression not an tieen the itself-and siSn tttt the Stoic tradition i' oti"iJit"'*itttin Signifrer and signified - or

*"11'r'.'l#?liil!:1g".:i*:;:*'.:"f;
svstems.

'',','jin:,?,llffi J:1

xiT$:::'.:l"ffi ',""',f, :::;;;;;"d;*dhasnopraceinsemiotic

'lisel-lv.J[sjpuer',lq$*g]!Lq.ltS-!!-e{e:f-r-of rire-qleanjng'Here

" ttring' external relation Uetween'sign'ani La iont"pts - represent the itiug;t uto''j?ii" in psychotogical

word, Pol)semy,

Metaphor

69

we mear to designate something other than and more than the signified of the individual signs. It is a distinctive feature which may be identified as the predicative function. (The sentence, of course,
may be reduced to its predicate. Then we have a one-word sentence as in the imperative, but it is a sentence nevertheless inasmuch as it is a predicate.) The predicative constitution of the sentence provides it with a meaning. This meaning shouid be called the intended rather than the signified of the sentence, if we want to preserve the distinc-

--..-.'-'.''..\-''

tion between the semiotic and the semantic order. This intended is what we seek to translate when we transpose a discourse from one language into another The signified is untranslatable in principle. It cannot be transposed from one system to another since it characterizes one system in opposition to the other The intended, on the contrary is fundamentally translatable since it is the same intended unit of thought transposed from one semiotic system into another. IJt us therefore say that the intended is the semantic element in discourse. As we sha.ll see later, the intended of discourse is the focus of aJl creative process in language. But before considering the aspect of creativity and infinity which belongs to the semantic element as such, let us consider a last semantic feature of the sentence. The-iptended can be considered fromJwo di(ferent Doints of view. Itiisomet-nmgTmmaileniwirhlnl56senteit-,ileieryiesuliingf rom the connection between the terms in the predicative operation of a sentence, and at the same time a claim to express reality. To this claim is linked the possibility of truth and error in discourse. Let us call the immanent character of the meaning 'sense' and its truth claim 'reference.'Then we may say that where there is meaning there is also a question of reference, that is, a claim which can be fulfilled or which can remain null or void. As you may see, I am using the expression coined by Gottlob Frege in a very free way. This thinker called Sinn (sense) the ideal content, the objective side of the meaning, the intended as such. And he called Bedeurung (reference or denotation) the directedness ofdiscourse towards reality which it may reach or miss. With this consideration of reference the opposition between semiotic and semantic is complete. Whereas semiotic units are systems of inner dependencies, and for that reason constitute closed and finite sets, the sentence, as the first semantic unit, is related to extralinguistic reality. It is open to the world. {.low in what sense are semantic entities infinite? Disc.purse is infinite because se,utences are evglrrs, because they hate aileakei

and a hearer, because they have meaning, and because they have reference. Each of these traits has an infinite character. With the evenl comes the openness of temporality, with the speaker and hearer the depth of individual fields of experience, with meaning the limitlessness of the thinkable, and with reference the inexhaustibility ofthe world itself. On all these counts language as discoune appears as an open process of mediation between mind and world. To return ving form to both is the creative to Humboldt, thg-tru{an -5[ the sah, -af-b'etv66n-tte txpr essed and the unexpressed endlessly keeps receding. Discourse is this power ofindefinitely extendingthe battlefront of the expressed at the expense of the unexpressed.

Word and Polysemy

meaning only inasmuch as sentences have meaning. Once again I am taking meaning in its semantic sense as an intended content and as a claim to refer to something outside language. In this sense, words do not mean outside the sentence. Their intended content is a part of the whole intended content of the sentence, and they designate something inasmuch as sentences themselves refer to states of affairs. In brief, words function as meaningful entities only within the framework of the sentence. That they have partial meaning only in connection with the whole meaning of the sentence could be very easily demonstrated by showing that words have no meaning before they are used either as logical subjects of a proposition or as predicates, that is, before they serve either to identify individuals or to assert universal characteristics of these individuals. In this sense, words belong to the linguistics of the sentence, not to the linguistics of the sigrr. They are semantic entities, not semiotic entities. Of course, words are based on lexica.l entities which are undoubtedly semiotic things. But a lexical entity is not yet a word. It is only the possibility of a word. This is why a lexicai entity is defined merely

by its opposition to other lexical entities within the same system. It has nothing to do with reality. This is not the case with the word in the sentence. It bears a part of the sentence mealing and shares the

/u A Krcoeur

Reader

Word, PolYsemY, MetaPhor

IL

things' it referential function of the whole discourse' It is about then spricht' Sprache When noints to thinss. it represents things. of reality' iuords tnemsel-ues co-operate in the shaping no* ptepared to consider out second theme' the polysemy topic to ot *oJt. e, I'saiil in my introduction' I relate this specific is one t"orc of my paper in the followingway' lf metaphor itt. of ais'coune which exploils the -creativity.of lan"i-ti"'tt.^,"g!"i mav ask about the kind of challenge which this teads ir;;",.gy;il.r1" come to grips with. It is this question which of-natural phenomenon. tn" to-'fo"u, on polysemy-as the crucial in the f'abric of i-g*g.t -Ot" ist aUoui ttre ptace of the word. itself we can now word' the of lanlua[e. Having done the required analysis polysemY. consider -'p.r**i""'i, readilv defined as the property of words in natural tatte;ige of hauing more thal one meaning' As Stephan Ullmann ouilliin rtit pti, ciples of Semantics' polysemy means one name with I*.iuii.nr.r. rr'tis feature is a universal feature of words in natural i-nuu*.t. Before considering the challenge which resultsJrom this its functional character' Before all -n-riitiiiu" trait, let us describe language satisfies the most polysemic a other Dossible advantages, I mean economy' A language, natural elementary requiremenl of a i.ii.on *tti"tt *ould be based on the opposite principle of total univocity of all its elements, that is to say, on the principle of only one sense foi one natne, would be inflnite if it were destined to convey iio. ona person to another the richness of concrete and qualitative exoeriencb. It would even be doubly infinite because of the limitless varietv of each individual sphere of experience and because of the innumerable plurality of individual perspectives on the world' This first functional trait has for its counterpart a second feature which we shall call the sensibility to context. Thanks to the contextual use, language based on polysemy may draw practically innumer' able meanings from the Rnite set of lexical entities codined by the dictionary. We shall see in a moment how ordinary Ianguage proceeds us say in general to make ihis procedure appropriate to its ends. terms that polysemic language is characterized by its sensibility to the context. By context we mean not only the linguistic environment of the actual words, but the speaker's and the hearer's behaviour, the situation common to both, and finatly the horizon of reality surrounding the speech situation. Furthermore, the context is already implied in

the partial values enumerthe very definition of the words Each of ,lc.l hv lhe dictionarv represents a potentiai use in a typical context tJ."iih.'J-a ctasiifled bv lexicotogv' The..sqm of

;;idil"u'.;
i;;;;;;;"r.

ril-.. !."*a ;;;;;.;;;;.

lrt

l,

ln an these notential uses in potential contexts is what we call the meaning of the word This is an improper sense 'u.itui" But ttt. f.*i"al entities are not yet words in rhe strong sense' meanthe,partral since ini, *uy of speaking is not wholly improper ir"-. niu word suninarize previous r'ses wNch have been clasified a *"'.sponding contexts' In this sense, a polysemic language ",iltOlng iri"""?uaLyo"tdrmined"not only h its use, but in its very mnstituiion' language' economy Such are the t*o functional traits ofa polysemic at-the level of the dependence at ifre ie"ef of the code, contextual forshzdows the noveltv and ;";;;g;. Thl; Jidectics of economy will be unfolded which dialecics of finite means and infinite use use of make we which consider the various strategies by concrete place.in.the itt"i. potyr..i" traits. This dialectic takes t v which we decode a qiven message and which we may call ^..',-".s simplest i",.-r.iition in the most geniral sense of the word' The be rn.ir'ug. ion""ved by the means of natural language tras to ioi"-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 situation' rnterpretation ;A;;;? against the background of a glven we use all the available which in iiri, utoia sense is a piocess by contextual determinants to grasp the actual meaning of a given message 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 by the same name. His sense may have been still broader than ours because it seems that language has to be interpreted not only be' cause words are the symbols of states of mind, and written signs of oral signs, but because discoutse is fundamentally the interpretation of reality. We shall retum to this still broader sense of interpretation Let us therefore call interpretation the at the end of this paper. -based on polysemic words. It is interpretation messages of decoding which we shall now consider. various strategies which calls for the of a challenge, a threat Because Why this diversity of strategies? This cha.llenge is interpretation. which is implied in all processes of the threat of ambiguity or of equivocity which appears to be the permanent counterpart of polysemy or, so to speak, the price to pay

;;;;

72 A Ricoeur Reader

Word, Pollsemy, Metaphor

73

for a polysemic language But let us be accurate' Ambiguity or the s"am"e thing as polysemy' Polysemy is a feature of "o, of dis' ""ui"&iriit *liJt, i"'".tur senses for one-name. Ambiguity is a. feature iou.r.,inut ii to say, of the stretch of speech longer-than or equal tostring of in" t.tit."*. e.biguity or equivocity means that for oneWhereas it' interpreting *ay of one *&Oi *" rtu". -it" itt* notuirmv is t nott d phenomenon, ambiguity may be a pathologicaJ we must triiio-inon. I say imay be' because, as we shaJ| see' rlepossibi/guities' ambi \ii iiililii i"tti ti i ty oi ni guv signi fi cant irv-it u nnir;o"N anbiguity. Thai will be the case with poelic iuinuun.. But ambiguity Jemains a case of dysfunction each time 'ttraiitrE
situation of"disiourse requires only one interpretation for time that ieasons wtricir will be proper to each type of strategy' Each to eliminate clue gives no sufficient the Dresent stretch of'disiourse uneouivocitY in interpretation. then misunderstanding becomes is a Schleiermacher said' there ;;;;;;i;1 ano is Frieoricrr D.E' untt"t*"r"rit.ir task where there is misunderstanding and when proceeds from the rectification of misunderstandiirg' derstanding --i" ilte ptZi"oing remarks I used gqPvlal1ambiqlrltY' Td misuntfieie dersranding as synonym ous termll I n o rdEik5-Tislinlursn-

ffih-apscallambiguitythechaIacter-ofthediscourSe equivocity the

itreiiui

open.O to several interpletations; and call. nio"." of interpretation hesitating between these interpretations' l,tiiunoetstanOing would be the effect of both ambiguity and of communication' Lquivocity -tu.n on theintersubjective process iritt. u.t-ce of advantagis and disadvantages of a polysemic lansuase. On the one hand, it satisfies the principle of economy' *nftit is tne basic principle for all kinds of languages,.at the same of dme that it allows the contextuat game to draw an infinite variety other the on But' structure' economic meaningfut effects from this work of hand. iidelivers language to the precarious and haphazard and equivocity' arnbiguity, of int.$t.tution -d tlierJfore to thi risks misundentanding. Polysemy and the Strategies of Language

pretending that these are the only possible solutions' By ordinary language I mean that use of natural languages (English, French, German, and so on) whose aim is communication and whose means are a tactic of polysemy reduction' By communication I mean the attempt to convey information from speaker to hearer concerning the concrete situations of everyday life which are differently experienced by the individual members of the speech community. A iertain amount of univocity is reached by specific means reouirins a minimal technicity in the use of words which I call the reductio"n of polysemy. This tactic relies mainly on the clever use of the context\ iffect on the individual terms of discourse' This reductive action of contexts is easy to understand. The use of language is governed not only by syntaitic rules of grammaticality' but also by ie-antic rules olsense compossibility. In order to make sense tos!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 is exciudid, or, rather, repressed, by the process of mutugl selection exerted by the sentence as a whole and by the context of discourse on its parts.'If the sentence is not enough to screen the convenient con'te*tual values, the topic will help to eliminate the unwanted meaning under the controi of the whole speech siluation' Finally it is the funition of the exchange of questions and answers within the dialogue or conversation to allow the hearer to check the semantic choic"e of the speaker and to allow the speaker to verify that the messase has been correctly decoded by the hearer' The speaker\ uttera.ices must provide the hearer\ interpretation with some specific clues or guidelines for this screening of polysemy' Such is the"way in which ordinary language succeeds to a certain extent in reducing the initial polysemy of the words and in making relatively univoc-al statemenas with polysemic words. But if this strategy is enough in everyday life, it does.not radically. exclude potysJmy. lt can-not claim more than to reduce it. The threat of 'misunOerstanOing, as we too well knoq is not fundamentally dispelled. Very oftei a long speech, if not a whole book, is not enough io insure understanding and agreement. Misunderstanding finally
prevails.

kt

of meeting the of them: ordithree consider I shall ct afGnge ot.itunderstanding. without poetic language, and ou.y tu"ngu.g., scientific language,
us now introduce the various strategies capable

This ultimate failure of ordinary language to meet the challenge of misunderstanding explains why a quite different strategy had to be

74 A Ricoeur Reader

Word, Pollsemy, Metaphor

75

introduced, a strategy which would no longer aim at reducing pollsemy, but at eradicatingit. This strategy is that ofscientific language. In the following analysis I shall not speak of scientific language in general but only from the point of view of the therapy of misunderstanding, and therefore in mnnection with the tIeatrnent of ambiguity. From this limited point ofview, scientific language may be defined by the defensive measures it takes against ambiguity. I will mention only the most striking of them. As a fint step, scientific language only pushes farther a procedure rooted in ordinary language, that of definition. As is well known, language is constructed in such a way that it is always possible to designate an element of our lexical code by means of other elements belonging to the same code. It is possible in principle to say that a bachelor is an unmarried man. Thanks to this reflective action of language, we expand our vocabulary and control the meaning of our words. Scientific language pushes this definatory procedure farther by renning it with the help of classificatory and taxonomic measures. The second step is to introduce technical terms into our vocabulary which satisfy a specific rule, that of denoting only quantitative entities, 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 our dictionaries are replaced by mathematical symbols, that is to say, by signs which can be read but not vocally uttered. The link with natural language is broken. Scientific language henceforth is beyond the boundary line which divides artificial language from natural language. Finally, at a stage corresponding to ar advalced degree of formalization, the meaning of all the formulas and all the laws of a formal system is govemed by a set of axioms which assign each elementary meaning iis place in the theory and prescribe the rules for reading the whole symbolism. Of course there is still room for interpretation in the sense that a formal system has still to be applied to a diversity of empirical domains of experience, but this interpretation is itself governed by new rules of translation which exclude a1l ambiguity' -These rules of translation and the prescription which they imply take place of contextual interpretation in ordinary discourse. Therethe forithe constitution of formal systems and the rules for interpreting

them in.relation to empirical fields constitute the ultimate procedure directed by scientific language against ambiguity. At this point we might be tempred to reformulate the whole fabric of our language according to the procedures which we just defined. Does it not seem reasonable to construct a /dn gue bien iaite ruled,by the principle of a one-to-one relation between signs and entities, of one meaning for each word, and to extend this artificial language to ethical and political problems, and why not even to conveisation? This dream of a radica.l and complete reformulation of the whole of

our language haunted philosophers like Leibniz, conceiving

his

characteristica universalrs, Russell,writing the Prr'nc ipia Mathernitica, and Wittgenstein, in his Tracrarns, stating the rules ofa language which would be the exact picture of the structure of facts. But there are fundamental reasons for thinking that this project must fail. Ordinary language and artificial language not only betong to two irreducible strategies, but have different aims. The theme ol

ordinary language is communication, and its f,eld of application is reality as it is differently experienced by the individuai members of the speech community. Strictly speaking, however, communication is not the aim of a scientific language. When we read a scientific paper, we are not in the position of an individual member of the speech community just invoked. All readers are, in a sense, one and the same mind, and the purpose of discourse is not to build a bridge between two spheres of experience, but to insure the identity of meaning from the beginning to the end of an argument. This is why there are no contextual variations of meaning in a langue bien faite. The meaning is contextually neutral, or, if you prefer, insensible to the context, because the main purpose of this language is that the meaning remain the same all through the arguments. This continual sameness of the meaning is secured by the one-to-one relation between name and sense and by the indifference to the context. Thus I should say that the aim of a scientific language is not communication, but argumentation. It follows that there is something irreducible in ordinary language. The vadability of meanings, their displaceability, and their sensibility to the context are the condition for creativity and confer possibilities of indennite invention in both poetic and scientific activity. Here indeterminateness and creativity appear to be completely solidary. This is why langues biens failes are, at best, insular languages. The conclusion could be, as Roman Jakobson

76 A Ricoeur Reader
says, that both mathematical and ordinary languages are required,

Word, Pollsemy, Metaphor

77

and that each of them has to be considered as the netalanguage required for the structural analysis of the other.
Metaphor and Polysemy

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

t. Therefore

metaphor.

ro-treGffi

In this last part of my paper-I want to,consider-fne-t-aphor wit[in the -is with rei limits of my present concern.-flfi ect io ciEaiiiiiy "fn in previous language, and continuity with my remarks about polysemy. In other words, I shall treat metaphor as a creative use of polysemy and in that way as a specific strategy of language. Instead of reducing or suppressing polysemy, metaphor uses polysemy as a means to preserve polysemy and to make it work in a most effective way. For what purpose? We shail resewe the answer for the end of
this essay.

The decisive step in the direction we are now taking has been indicated by writers such as I.A. Richards, Max Black, Colin Tlrbayne, Monroe Beardsley, Douglas Berggren, and others who departed from the tradition of rhetoric for which metaphor conveyed 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 new perspective. For traditional rhetoric, metaphorwas one ofthe figures of speech called tropes because they proceeded from a deviating use of the meaning of words. Tropes therefore affected just tlie names and the giving of names. Instead of giving their proper narnes to cerlain things, or facts, or experiences, the writer chooses to use the name of something else by extending the meaning of this foreign name. The task of rhetoric thus is to classify the different figures according to the kind of deviation which generated them. Metaphor was traditionally classiRed as a trope by resemblance or by analogy. This treatment of metaphor by rhetoric has been chalacterized by Richards and his followers as a substitution theory. The decisive factor is that the borrowed word taken with its deviating use is substituted for a potential proper name which is absent in the context, but which could be used in the same place. The writer chooses not to use the convenient word in its proper sense and to replace it with another word which seems to be more pleasant. To understand the metaphor, then, is to restitute the term which has been substituted. It is easy to understand that these two

, it provides a garment to cover the nudity of common usage. Such is the train of presuppositions implied in 4_rhqtorical treatment of metaphor. Berween the sraning-point, iliat meltphoFis:n accident in the process of naming, and the conclusion, that metaphor is merely decorative and intended to please, the road is continuous and the turning-point is constituted by the action ofsubstitution. The weakness of this model is obvious. It is impossible on its basis to give an account of the difference between a bad metaphor, like the leg of a chair, and a novel metaphor, like the poetic vene, ,La teffe est bleue comme une orange,'or,time is a beggar.' The aspect of semantic novelty which, I believe, is the fundamental problem of metaphor remains unexpla.ined in a substitution theory which covers both cases. Furthermore, the theory is unable to explain the process itself by which the meaning of a word is extended beyond iis common use. What Beardsley called the .metaphorical twist' remains an enign-ra. This is why rhetoric contented itself with classifying the figures of speech, being unable to generate them .The reason why rhetoric could not give an account of the process which generates metaphor is that it limited its description to the words, and more precisely, to the name. As we shall se-e, the metaphorical pr@ess occurs at another level, at the level of the sentence and of discourse as a whole. This is why rhetoric could only identify the_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 of Rhetoric starts from his rgmark that words alone cannot be metaphoric. They are metaphoric only in the context of a sentence. More prec-isely, only a sthtement, an entire proposition, can be metaphorical. 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 a substitution theory Witlin.this new..framework, some new features appear which had

78 A Ricoeur Reader been previously overlooked and which allow us to recoglize the informative character ofmetaphor as opposed to its mere dicorative character for rhetoric. For me, the remgnition of this informative character is the nucleus of the whole discussion since it implies and reveals the creative dimension of metaphoric statements. This recognition proceeds from an anaJysis which underlines two complementary features of the metaphorical statement,, a negative and a positivc trait. On the one hand, the strategy of discourse put into action in metaphor relies on the purposive creation of a semantic discrepancy in the sentence. For a literal interpretation the metaphorical itatement brea-ks down. Monroe Beardsley goes so far as to say that the privileged procedure of metaphor is self-contradiction. The function of metaphor is to make sense with nonsense, to transform a selfcontradictory statement into a significant self-contradiction. In more general terms, we could say that a metaphorical statement proceeds from the violation of semantic rules which determine appropriateness in the application of predicates. In the terms of a French critic, Jean Cohen, in S tructure du langage podtique,metaphor relies on the violation of semantic pertinence. It consists in the reduction of semantic impertinence generated by the violation of semantic rules through the imposition of a deviation of another kind at the level of the word. Metaphor in this way appears as the solution of an enigma. What appears as the deviation in the meaning of the word, as the metaphorical twist, is the positive counterpart of the initial deviation from semantic pertinence. It is a deviating use of words responding to the deviating way of predicating attributes to things. This analysis of the negative side of the metaphorical process already allows us to acknowledge its creative dimension. But what about the positive character of metaphor? Or, to put it in another way, how do we make sense with nonsense? We spoke of the intuitive grasp of resernblances. Was it not Aristotle who said that .to have command of metaphor is to have an eye for similarities'? There is something true in this thesis. The creative moment of metaphor is concentrated on this grasping of resemblance, in the perception of analogies. But a metaphysics of imagination, which we migtrt be tempted to draw from the tradition of Romanticism, could destroy the benefits of the previous analysis if applied inaccurately. The problem is a semantic one, not a psychological one. How do we make sense with self-contradictory statements? In invoking imagination,

Word, Pollsemy,

Meraphor

7g

we lose sight of the decisive factor that, in novel metaphors, the similarity is itself the fruit of metaphor. We now see a similarity that nobody had ever noticed before. The difficulty therefore is to understand. that-we see similarity by construing it, that the visionary grasping of resemblance is, at the same time, a verbal invention. The iconic element has therefore to be included in the predicative pro_ cess itself. This is why the most effective analysis of metaphor concems the construction which accompaaies the vision. Even if it is true that there is something irreducible in the grasping of similarities as a kind of.sudden insight, the only progress that can be achieved by an epistemology 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 of the connotative values attached to our words are applied in a new way to the principal subject. By connotative values we mean, with Max Black, the 'system of associated commonplaces' which enlarge the mealing of our words, adding cultural and emotional dimensions to the literal values codified by our dictionaries. Of course there are no metaphors in a lexicon, but beyond the lexicon there is what A,ristotle called the topoi,the cultural treasure of meanings. The art of metaphor is to apply a part ofthis treasure to new subjects, to use it as a screen which not only selects, but which bringi forth new aspects in the principal subject. In this way, even trivial metaphors have an informative value. The case of novel metaphor is more difficult to treat. The new fact is that the solution of the enigma raised by the tension or the semantic clash on which the metaphor is built no longer relies on the existenc of a previous system of associated commonplaces, on a range of connotative values which would be already at our disposa.l. The novel metaphor creates a new semantic situation. We can no longer speak of connotative meanings waiting for our use. We may only sp_eak of properties which have not yet been brought to lan_ guage. Here lies precisely the difference between novel and trivial metaphor. We do not merely apply already existing connotations, we create a new framework of connotation which exists only in the actual act of predication. In other words, a novel metaphor does not merely actualize a potential connotation, it creates it. It is a semantic innovation, an emergent meaning. From these metaphors we may

80 A Ricoeur Reader
see that no paraphrase can exhaust them. They are untranslatable. They say what they say, and what they say cannot be said in another way. We are now as far as possible from the ornamental interpretation from which we started. From these remarks derives the role of likeness in the construction

Word, Pollsemy,

Metaphor

g1

of good metaphors. There is indeed something paradoxical and circular in the way in which a good metaphor is produced. Likeness is the guideline of the process which constructs it as likeness. Metaphor is a unitive process which produces a kind of assimilation between remote ideas. As such, it is the object of the kind of insight to which Aristotle pointed when he said that 'while the proper use of a.ll those various poetic devices is important, by far the greatest thing for a poet is to be master of metaphor. Such mastery is the one thing that cannot be learned from others. It is the mark ofgenius (euphuia),fot to be good at metaphor is to be intuitively aware of hidden resemblaaces.'1 But at the same time rhis assim,ation between remote ideas is a discutsive preess which we express by new metaphors like that of a screen or a fi|ter, by which we designate the way in which the predicate selects an d organizes some features ofthe principal subject. . This paradox is not only a psychological paradox, like that which Gestalt psychology describes under the title of insight when it shows that each change in a structure, each transition from one structure to another, occurs as a sudden intuition in which the new structure emerges from the collapse of the previous one. This paradox is a semantic paradox, a paradox linked to the reallocation ofpredicates. Nelson Goodman describes the metaphor as.:Jhe reassignment of a label,'and he says that this reassignment takes the form of an affair between a predicate which has a past and an object which yields while protesting. This paradox of protesting arrd yielding is another metaphor about metaphor. It speaks of the paradox between insight and construction, between genius tind calculus. Moreover, this paradox is a logical paradox. By this I mean that the paradox is not only between insight and construction, but about the essence of likeness as a relation. Likeness is itself a compound relation which coffelates sameness and difference. To see sameness in the difference is the genius ofmetaphor.lt was not by accident that Aristotle spoke of the 'similar' as the 'same' perceived in things which are 'remote.' Likeness is the key word gf metaplg !g!e!-sr,in-

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. In metaphor, sarneness works in spite of difference. This specific feature explains the kinship between metaphor and riddle. This_ conspicuous trait has been seen in one way or another by several authors. Ruth Herschberger speaks of .a liieness of unlike things able to reconcile opposites andcontaining tension., Dougias Berggren sees.'the indispensable principle for integrating dive"rse phenomena without sacrincing divenity,in the meiaphor. And in The Myth of Metaplror, Turbayne correctly co.par.s *hat happens in metaphor to what Gilbert Ryle called a category mista-ke, thii is, a mislocation of names and of predicates. Instead ofgiving the name of the species to the genus. of the genus to rhe speciei, or 6f tire speOes to.another species, metaphor merely blurs ihe conceptual boundaries of the terms considered. . Could we not say therefore that the dynamics of metaphor consists in confusing the established logical boundaries for the sake ofdetecting new similarities which previous categorization prevented our noticing? In other words, the power of metaphor would be to break through previous categorization and to establish new logical boundaries on the ruins of the preceding ones. If we take thiJlast remark seriously, we may wish to draw the ultimate consequence and say that the dynamics of thought which breaks through pievious categorization is the same as the one which generated tl ilassifications:In other.words, the ngure of speech which we classily as metaphor would be at the origin ofall semantic fields, since to contemplate the similar or the same - and we know now that the similar is also the same.- is to grasp the genus, but not yet as genus; to grasp the same in the difference, and not yet as above or -beside thl difference. To grasp the kinship in any semantic field is the work of the metaphoric process at large. We are now allowed to speak of metaphoric process in so general away because the so-called metaphor, th-e metaphor as trope or as a figure, as it is defined by rhetoric, presents th-e same process, butJnder the paradoxicai structure of sameness in spite of difference. This is why we may say from the likeness at wbrk in metaphor 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 we
__ryleftg1gryl,ess

"

82 A Ricoeur Reader
can best get hold of something fresh, for 'when Homer calls old age stubble, Iie teaches and informs us through the genus, for both have lost their bloom.' These remarks may allow us to do justice to the iconic element of

Word, Pollsemy,

Metaphor

83

analysis of polysemy. It is essential to the structure of metaphor that the old and the new are present tcgether in the metaphorical twist. The kind of tension which we described at the level of the sentence,

the metaphor. This factor has been carefully left aside.because it introduces psychotogical considerations alien to a mere linguistic or semantic eiplanatio;. But is the pictorial, the ngurative,so obviously alien to semantic consideration? Once more let us follow the preceding analysis of the paradoxical structure of likeness, that is, the innerlonfliit between salneness and difference in the process of metaphor. Does not imagination have something to do with this which connict? An old prejudice-stemming from Hume, according to a giving from us sLops. an image is the'reiidue of an impression, by VLisled ourelv iemantic description of imagery and imagination itris prejudice, we look at imagery in connection- with the sensory iierOi-iigttt, riearing, touch, and so on. But if we follow Kant rather ttr-* frutfi., i ..an ihe theory of schematism and that of p(oductive imasination. we have to lookat imagination as the place of nascent rn"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 metaphor ral way' In ir notftirJ"f." titin grasping of similarities in a preconcept abstract of presentation pop"i* i".rnr, figu"rative t-trinting is the presenis a concrete ideas and their concrete appearance But what of a te^aching tuiio. oiun uurtract idea; if not the learning and the To tft-t, to the interplay between sameness and difference? we not ""t"i ir" ti"Oloitif otophv of imigination is badly needed' C-ould imagination is the emergence of conceptual ittt.til.v between sameness and difference? this emergence may Metapn"or wouii be the plaCe in discourse where in conflict lf metaare be detected because sameness and difference it overtly be treated as a figure of speech' it is because and difference 5r"*"['i" itt. i"rtn of a .o"nnitt between sameness oI all construction the in work at iiJ'""Ti"!it'tinrii,'iiiou.ttry the n"f ar,lftu, ii. ,ft. Unif'tlp which brings individuals.under tbts process rute of "a logical class. Metaphor helps us.to detect level of at.the. ft.uut. lr- iorfs against prJvious categorization reveal to older itt.totii. lt cleverlf bypasies given cat;gori.es in unnoticed similarities in the field of our experience' *e wiff now relate this analysis of metaphor io our preuous

;;'";;;;;ililihat ;;;;

;#il ffi;;'irt.

and even within the copula itself, now dwells in the words them-.. selves. When we receive a metaphorical statement as meaningful, we perceive both the literal meaning which is bound by the semantic incongruity and the new meaning which males sense in the prese[t context. Metaphor is a clear case where polysemy is presewed instead ofbeing screened. Two lines of interpretation are opened at the same time and several readings are ailowed together and put into tension. This effect has been compared to stereoscopic vision. Several layers of meaning are noticed and recogrized in the thickness of the text. This first relation between metaphor and polysemy is not the only one. We have treated it as a synchronistic phenomenon, but it is also a diachronic.one. If we consider the long history of a metaphor, we may say that it passes from the state of novelty to that of faded or deid metaphor.-At the flrst stage metaphor does not belo_ng to the lexicon. It exists only in discourse, in the present and actual instance of discourse. But as soon as it is received by a speech community, it tends to be used in the same way as the literal meanings already classified by our dictionaries. At the last stage, when the. tension between litLral aad metaphorical sense is no longer perceived, we may say that the metaphoiical sense has become-a part of the literal sense.'ihen it is merely added to the previous polysemyof the word' In this way we may say that metaphor is the procedure by which we extend polYSemY. In this way we come to the following hypothesis' If metaphor extends polyiemy, is not polysemy the results of previous metaphor? lgnger-u device' no l9nge!'t But now metaphor is no longer a rhetorical de!'lce' bY which we grasp krnshrp' I

tm

\
lunction of metaphor? By this queition we are sent back to -We iirrtew underlvine the use of metaphor. If ordinary language aims at
are now prepared to answer th.e decisive question: what is the

*.it,f

the

io.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*1 iniOllqs thtil a I ness as thc tensjo!-!9tyc-9n-La$esss and difference
-*.F--

84 A Ricoeur Reader

Word, Polysemy,
th

Metaphor

g5

discoyrse Which makesg;g qf metarrbnr has

-ofr.edescribing

,edttI..fti.

*-merapnonc'trsfzrfeme n t.

ir, I

b"li.

eextr^crriinarv poweC:
when we

appears clearly -2rfftlslte[ilsiEEi-crion bnng metaphor and models together, as Max Black
does

of the metaphor

partial isomorphism. This concept of heuristic fiction may be extended from the theory of models in science to the theory of poetry. In his Poetics, Aristotle paved the way for a generalization of metaphor conceived as heuristic fiction by linking metaphor as a rhetorical trait to the main operation of poetry which is the bui.lding of amythos,of afable. The invention of the fable in tragedy is the creative act of poetry pat excellence.T\is creative act gives its title to the work, PoeficJ, that is to say, creative fiction. Therefore if we say that the function of poetry is to imitate nature, we must not forget that this rn irnsir is not a copying ofreality, but a redescription in light ofa heuristic fiction. Thanks lo tragedy, we are prepared to look at human beings in a new way lecause human action is redescribed as greater, nobler, than actual ife is. Thanks to this disclosure of the depth structure of human life )y poetry we may say once more with Aristotle that poetry is closer o 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 poetic iarrative, can be said also of lyrics, aithough at first sight lyrical roetry has no reference. l:nguage constitutes a world of its own. In he terms ofJatobson, the poetic dimension of language emphasizes he 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 ifit i true that lyrical poetry suspends all didactic references and even bolishes the world, can we not say that this epochi of reference in he terms of the descriptions a.lready given by ordinary language is re negative condition for the disclosure of new aspects of rgality

in Models and Memphon, and as Mary Hesse does in Modeh and Analogies in Science. 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 a similarity of structure. Two things have therefore to be-considered in a model. On the one hand, it is a fiction, that is, it is a way of making an object easier to handle. On the other hand, this fiction is a heuristic fiction inasmuch as we may transfer the description of this better-known object to the field to be described on the basis ofa

which 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 it ls a neunstlc.flctron preparing a redescription of reality. lf it is true tnal poetry gives no information in terms of empirical knowledge, it may change oyr way of looking at things, a change which is no less real than empirical knowledge. What islhanged 5'y poetic language is our of dwelling in the world. From pdetry *! ."".iu" u n"* -way way ofbeing in the world, oforientating ourielvejin this world. Even if we say with Northrop Frye that poet'ic discourse gives articulation only to our moods, it is also true that moods as welias feelings have an ontological bearing. 1h.ou*h feeling we find ourselves ilready located in the world. In this way, by artidulating a mood, each poem projects 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 mEtaphor . shatters not only the previous structures of our language, but also the previous structures of what we call reality. When wi ask whether metaphorical language reaches reality, we presuppose that we already 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 discourse implied in metaphorical language is neither to improve communication nor to insure univocity in argumentation, but to shatter and to increase our sense of reality by shattedng and increasing our language. The strategy of metaphor is heuristic fiction for the sake of redescribing reality. sis of both lanpuage and rcaiity. Note

Aristotle, ?le

u4

rt of Poetry,tra.ns.by Philip Wheelwright (New l1ork: Odyssey

Press, 1951), p.317