Metaphor

This book provides a comprehensive philosophical theory explicating the cognitive contribution of metaphor. Metaphor effects a transference of meaning, not between two terms, but between two structured domains of content, or "semantic fields". Semantic fields, construed as necessary to a theory of word-meaning, provide the contrastive and affinitive relations that govern a term's literal use. In a metaphoric use, these relations are projected into a second domain which is thereby reordered with significant cognitive effects. The book is a detailed revision and refinement of "the semantic theory of metaphor". Taking into account pragmatic considerations and recent linguistic and psychological studies, the author forges a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning. She illustrates her thesis with systematic analyses of metaphors found in literature, philosophy, science, and everyday language.

'it offers a sustained polemic for a conception of meaning, in terms of Semantic Field theory...one might think of its capacity to deal with the vexed question of metaphor as one reason why this sort of theory deserves more popularity than perhaps it presently enjoys' British Journal of Aesthetics `Detailed and sophisticated ... I regard Kittay's work on metaphor as state-of-the-art ... Philosophically oriented students of metaphor will welcome this book.' Canadian Philosophical Reviews, 'Kittay's book is scholarly and enlightening.' Times Literary Supplement