Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a strict connection between the negativity of language such as it was exposed by Ferdinand de Saussure and the possibility of the metaphor. We will try to reverse the common point of view that situates the metaphor inside an established language as one of its figures by showing that it is not language that generates the metaphor but the metaphor that generates language. Following in the definition of the metaphor the guiding lines of two crucial linguistic phenomena, deviation and substitution, we will prove that all language that respects the condition of its negativity is originally metaphorical.