8/22/13 OUTLINE
FIGURES OF SPEECH
•  Gricean model of figures of speech
•  Tough question
•  Sperber & Wilson suggested answer
•  Problems
GO FIGURE, LONDON 2013
•  The correct (roughly Davidsonian)
model
3
STEPHEN SCHIFFER 1 8/22/13 THE GRICEAN MODEL
GRICEAN MODEL (2)
a.  Speaker-meaning
b.  Expression-meaning
• 
•  What S means in “uttering” x σ: <A, Ψ>
•  ‘Is she amusing?’: <?, xf is amusing at tu>
•  ‘She’s amusing.’: <⊦, xf is amusing at tu>
•  supervenes on intentions with which S uttered
x
•  not determined even in part by meaning of x
(or whether x has meaning)
c.  Saying/speaking literally
4
•  Role of x
5
•  S said p in uttering σ = S meant p in uttering σ &
p “fits” the meaning of σ
•  S spoke literally in uttering assertoric sentence σ
= for some p, S said p in uttering σ
2 8/22/13 GRICEAN MODEL (3)
GRICEAN MODEL (4)
d.  Implicature
Mistakes to be avoided
“Grice tended to take for granted … that when
someone uses language to communicate, she is
presumed to express her meaning literally. It can
then be assumed by default that the literal
linguistic meaning of the utterance is … the explicit
part of her meaning (Grice’s what is said), with only
the implicit part (Grice’s implicatures) left to be
inferred”
•  S “implicated” p in uttering σ ≈ S meant
but didn’t say p in uttering σ
•  Any proposition that can be meant can in
principle be said
•  Must have truth conditions
•  Proposition that colorless green ideas sleep
furiously is false
—Sperber & Wilson, “A Deflationary Account of Metaphors”
•  Needn’t be “paraphrasable”
7
6
3 8/22/13 GRICEAN MODEL (5)
GRICEAN MODEL (5)
BUT
e.  Figures of speech are ways of
generating implicatures
•  No “presumption” or “norm” of literalness
8
•  For Gricean, ALL speaker-meaning is
inferred
9
•  Irony: ‘Jane is a fine friend’
•  Metaphor: ‘You are the cream in my
coffee’
•  Meiosis: ‘He was a little intoxicated’
•  Hyperbole: ‘He has to walk around in the
shower to get wet’
•  Meaning of sentence almost never what’s
said
4 8/22/13 GRICEAN MODEL (6)
TOUGH QUESTION
f.  Corollaries
How does model apply to “The Fog”?
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
10
•  Whatever proposition S means when
speaking figuratively could in principle be
said
11
•  No such thing as “figurative meaning” of
expression type
•  No proposition is per se a “figurative
meaning”
5 8/22/13 ANSWER?
ANSWER? (2)
… suggested by Sperber & Wilson’s “A Deflationary Account of
Metaphor”
•  Definition of weakly-meaning satisfied if H
believes that the author of Daniel Deronda
was a woman, even if S never heard of
Daniel Deronda
•  S weakly means p in uttering σ ≈ for some class of
propositions K, S M-intends H to consider some
proposition or propositions of kind K, where any K
proposition is as good as any other
•  Mistake to speak of “weakly intending” here
E.g. in uttering ‘George Eliot was a woman’ S intends
there to be a concept C such that
1)  C entails that GE was a 19th Century English novelist
2)  H believes that C was a woman
•  But can read definition as stipulative
13
•  S w-implicates p in uttering x ≈ in uttering x
S w-means p but doesn’t w-say p
12
• 
6 8/22/13 ANSWER? (3)
ANSWER? (4)
For any concept C of any property φ
such that φ is (i) suggested by ‘on
little feet’ & (ii) possibly shared by
cat movements and fog movements,
the poet in writing ‘The fog comes/
on little cat feet’ w-implicated that
the fog comes in way C
Applies also to “poetic effects” achieved
in literal use of language
On a leafless bough
A crow is perched—
The autumn dusk.
15
14
•  That’s what make sentence a metaphor
7 8/22/13 PROBLEMS
PROBLEMS (2)
Consider
c.  While poets intend their figures of speech to
resonate affectively with their readers, there isn’t
even a particular vague response they’re going for
in all readers
•  “Its edges foam'd with amethyst and rose,/Withers once more
the old blue flower of day…” (AE, “The Great Breath”) • 
a.  We have no sense of any propositions ascribing properties to
rooks or days that Auden or AE w-mean 16
b.  “Poetic effects” are gestalt affective responses, and there are
no properties such that the “poetic effects” these figures
might have on us can be identified with thinking of rooks or
days having those properties
Sometimes poet’s just hoping there’s something—
anything!—in their words to resonate
Hope is the thing with feathers
That tickles imploring souls,
And sings the words forgotten
in desolate lascivious bowls (Emile Dickinson, “Hope”)
17
•  “… the rooks in the college garden/Like agile babies still
speak the language of feeling…” (W. H. Auden, “Oxford”)
8 8/22/13 PROBLEMS (3)
THE CORRECT MODEL
d.  Likewise for Sandburg’s poem and
Bashō’s haiku: w-implicating has
nothing to do with the effectiveness
of good figures of speech
… is more or less what Davidson proposed in
“What Metaphors Mean” (1978)
“When I die, I want to die like my grandfather did:
peacefully in his sleep—not screaming hysterically
like the passengers in the car he was driving.”
•  One telling this joke might be doing so to
implicate some proposition, but that has
nothing to do with the joke qua joke
19
18
9 8/22/13 CORRECT MODEL (2)
CORRECT MODEL (3)
•  The words that express the joke have no meaning
other than their literal meaning in the language
•  There might be propositions one has to grasp to get
a joke, but they aren’t propositions implicated or
expressed by the joke
•  And there’s no proposition such that the joke
consists in the teller’s implicating that proposition
Heisenberg went for a drive and got stopped by a traffic cop.
The cop asked, "Do you know how fast you were going?"
Heisenberg replied, "No, but I know where I am." •  To understand a joke is to “get” it, or know what
there is that one’s supposed to get about it
21
•  Jokes aren’t “paraphrasable” because
understanding them doesn’t consist in implicated
propositions one could even try to express in other
words
Not “getting” a joke = not seeing what’s supposed to be
funny about it; it’s not failing to realize that the teller
meant some proposition
20
• 
10 8/22/13 CORRECT MODEL (4)
REMAINING QUESTIONS
•  Same is true, mutatis mutandis, of
effective figures of speech
•  How can we precisely characterize
affective responses to good figures of
speech?
•  How do metaphors et al work to
achieve those responses?
•  Sometimes “getting” a figure of speech =
“getting” the joke contained in it
"Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in
love. I'd stepped in it a few times."
(Rita Rudner)
•  Analogous questions re jokes
22
23
•  Not clearly questions for philosophers
to answer
•  Not all “figures of speech” equal as regards
the correct model
11 8/22/13 FINAL REMARKS
FINAL REMARKS (2)
… based on “Workshop Overview”
Bearing of figures of speech on
Q. on semantics/pragmatics distinction
—is type of meaning figures of
speech have a matter of “saying” or
“implicating”
Bearing of figures of speech on
Q. semantics of propositional-attitude
reports?
A.  None, subject to small qualification
24
25
A.  None—they don’t have “meaning” in
relevant respect
•  “Modes of presentation”
12