Coseriu on metaphor

This article examines Eugenio Coseriu’s approach to metaphor in natural language. We first review occasional observations on metaphor scattered throughout Coseriu’s scholarly work, in texts spanning from the 1960s to the end of his life. These observations can be broadly classified into three categories. Into the first one fall references to metaphorical instances of habitualized language use (“discours répété’), which often have complex linguistic and cultural histories. The second category is made up of dispersed remarks on the various elements and levels of the structure of a metaphor from a linguistic point of view. Of particular importance are the comments that metaphors are “usages” rather than language-specific “functions” (i.e. signifieds). A metaphor presupposes the bilateral signified-signifier relation, but does not alter the signified of the linguistic sign. A metaphor can moreover arise from the mere discrepancy between a paradigmatic and a syntagmatic relation, and although metaphors must not to be confused with ordinary lexical neutralization, they can produce what Coseriu calls “metaphorical neutralization”. The third category gathers observations on the role of metaphor in shaping (linguistic and trans-linguistic) “meaning” across various domains of culture (art, science, philosophy, religion). Notably instructive are Coseriu’s concise remarks on the metaphorical use of elements from previous semantic layers (language-specific procedures and functions, as well as contexts of speaking) to produce text-specific sense values, and on the constitutive function of metaphors in poetic texts (broadly construed).  To conclude the article, we zoom in on Coseriu’s single major study on metaphor, “La creación metafórica en el lenguaje” (Coseriu 1956). The significance of this study lies in the fact that metaphor, or better still: metaphorical creation, is explicitly conceptualized before the background of Coseriu’s general theory of language. While anticipating a ”cognitive” perspective on language and metaphor, Coseriu’s account goes beyond current approaches in that metaphor, like language overall, is conceived as an ongoing, dynamic and ever-changing activity (enérgeia) in which metaphors are as common as they are constitutive.