Metafora i semantičko-pragmatički interfejs

Abstract

Within the recent linguistic studies dealing with metaphoric expressions cognitively oriented approaches dominate -cognitive linguistics and cognitive pragmatics. This paper aims at attempting to place metaphoric expressions in the center of semantics/pragmatics interface, i.e. intermediate phenomenon. Hence, the focus will be placed on impliciture (impliciture approach) and explicature (Relevance Theory) as the relevant notions for the intermediate phenomenon, developed within the two dominant post-Gricean approaches to communication. We will inevitably draw parallels and differences, both between the two mentioned approaches, and, sporadically and where necessary, with Grice’s inferential pragmatics and cognitive-linguistic approaches. It is clear that metaphors as linguistic phenomenon do not fall on the implicit side of the communication, and the way they contribute to impliciture or explicature will depend on various factors, mostly on the frequency of use of the expression in question, hence how it is stored in the communicator’s memory. Cognitive linguistics and what is called conceptual metaphor within this approach presents a valuable tool for identifying certain tendencies of the human cognition when it comes to cross-domain mapping, categorization and perspectivization.