The Cream in H. P. Grice's Coffee

The Cream in Grice’s Coffee: metaphor from Greek metaphora, a transfer, a change] A figure of speech or a verbal composition in which an expression is used to denote a thing to which its literal sense does not apply. For example, “A baby is a flower” is a metaphor because “flower,” taken literally, does not describe a “baby.” If there were only literal meaning, all metaphors would be false. The best metaphors evoke a complex and productive mental response through indicating certain likenesses between what an expression literally denotes and the thing it metaphorically describes. The power of metaphors can also involve dissimilarities as well as likenesses. Starting from Aristotle, the nature and scope of metaphor has been of interest to philosophers. This interest has intensified in contemporary philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Major issues concerning metaphor include: can a metaphor itself be literally paraphrased? How clear-cut is the distinction between literal meaning and metaphorical meaning? Traditionally metaphor is regarded as a decoration of speech that does not contribute to the cognitive meaning of discourse. Others argue that metaphor contributes indispensably to the cognitive meaning of discourse, but there is no agreement over the kind of contribution it makes. Davidson claims that what is crucial to a metaphor is not a matter of meaning, but of use. In his view, a metaphor lacks meaning peculiar to itself other than literal meaning. But Nietzsche claimed that the nature of language itself is metaphorical, for it works by means of transference from one kind of reality to another. This view has been widely adopted by continental philosophers, who regard metaphor not merely as a rhetorical device or an aspect of the expressive function of language, but as one of the essential conditions of speech. They claim that as the way in which many kinds of discourse are structured, metaphor powerfully influences how we conceive things. “The study of metaphor is becoming important as it is being realised that language does not simply reflect but helps to constitute it.” Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism