Theoria 67 (1):7-23 (
2001)
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Abstract
I first show why Davidson was wrong to maintain that there is no such thing as metaphorical meaning, that which paraphrases strive to capture. I then sketch a conception of metaphors as utterances in contexts, and suggest how such utterances can acquire metaphorical meanings despite there being no semantic rules for the projection of such meanings. I next urge the essentiality of a metaphor's verbal formulation to its being the metaphor it is, and I conclude with some reflections on common and uncommon metaphors, and on the difficulty of finding strings of words resistant to metaphorical construal.