Abstract

This paper deals with three texts by Donald Davidson's that discuss the issue of linguistic innovation from different epistemological standpoints. I show that Davidson's theory of metaphor undergoes a crucial transformation: from an early stage in which metaphor is viewed as an unintelligible and exceptional element external to language, to a later stage in which it is conceived as intrinsic to language, and thus as potentially understandable. This tracing of Davidson's development leads me to formulate an understanding of the concepts of metaphor, literalness and linguistic renovation that follows the later Davidson. According to this formulation, both metaphor and literal meaning are comprehensible, and must therefore be said to exist in a relationship of mutuality. This relationship of mutuality is language's inherent normativity: the fact that language necessarily depends both on the speaker's and hearer's commitment to the literal meaning of the words employed, and on their endorsement of the intended meaning as that which is actually meant. Without committing themselves to the literal, speaker and hearer simply cannot understand the usual reference of words; without committing themselves to the intended meaning in its necessary relation to the literal, speaker and hearer cannot understand one another on each new occasion of utterance.