Metáfora y Discurso Literario

Abstract

In the third chaprer of their book More than Cool Reason (1989). Lakoff and Turner claim that, given a previous derailed reading of a text that makes use of metaphorical expressions, it is possible to derive a second metaphorical reading based on the global meaning of the text, independent of its particular linguistic expressions. Their aim is to demonstrate that metaphors are nor "a matter of words", bur that they are conceptual. The present article does not question the conceptual nature of metaphors, but maintains that interpretations are never free from words. A text consists of multiple components: structural, semantic, cognitive, and pragmatic, which are interdependent, interactive, and mutually influent. Al1 these components play an active pan in the construction of the textual macro structure and in the process of interpretation. The article revises Lakoff and Turner's analysis of a poem by William Carlos William and shows that al1 the global metaphorical interpretations which are proposed by the authors are based on micro structural features implicitly or explicitly contained in the expression of the poem.