Introduction

I take synchronic linguistics to be the study of those aspects of human communication that are unique to natural language, no matter whether they are principled and inhere specifically in the nature of human language or are arbitrary features of particular languages. All nonliteral speech, then, including metaphor, falls outside the domain of synchronic linguistics, for nonliteral acts having nothing to do with natural language occur and parallel those that we perform by using language.

The study of metaphor, specifically, would not be a proper subject for synchronic linguistics for the reason that the basis of metaphor is a kind of indirection that is shared with nonlanguage behavior. Whatever might be unclear about the way metaphor is used and understood, I take it for granted that the underlying principles governing metaphor are of a general psychological sort and are thus not specifically linguistic. While the intellectual faculties that are involved might be prerequisites to speech, they are independent of it. The fact that a certain group of stars in the night sky reminded someone of a bull and the fact that a lion on a warrior's shield suggests that its bearer is brave are, I think, nonlinguistic instances of the same analogical urge that functions in the issuance and apprehension of metaphor.

Other figures of speech, from anacoluthon to zeugma, have counterparts in realms of behavior other than speaking, but here I am interested particularly in the nonliteral figures of speech, of which metaphor is one.