Pragmatics of Metaphor: a Full Circle

Abstract

In this paper we explore the pragmatic treatment of metaphoric expressions since the very onset of pragmatics as a linguistic discipline. We shall firstly present the Gricean approach – the implicature analysis, long since abandoned but still relevant in recent cognitive-inferential studies. Following the modified implicature analysis, the two current approaches will be explored – explicature analysis and modified explicature analysis. However, special attention will be dedicated to those aspects of the theory that treat certain metaphoric expressions of special poetic nature as contributing to the implicit content only. This approach seems to indicate that pragmatics has made a full circle to the implicature analysis, at least when extended literary metaphors are in question.