Metaphor and common ground
Abstract
Integrating metaphors into pragmatic theory remains a challenge. Grice argued that the tenor of a metaphor is an implicated proposition while Contextualists have argued that it belongs in ‘what is said’ or the Explicature. I show that the contextualist arguments are inconclusive and they leave the role of the vehicle undefined. Moreover, neither the Gricean nor the Contextualist analyses can account for the most highlighted feature of metaphors: their indeterminacy; we cannot be sure as to what a speaker meant with a metaphor, but communication can proceed, nonetheless. I propose that we move away from binary models of communication (based on what is said/what is implicated) and instead approach the problem from the perspective provided by Common Ground, with special attention paid to the different updates in the discourse models of speakers and hearers that take place when an utterance is shared.
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