I.

THROUGH THE PEIRCEAN
TELESCOPE

METAPHOR AS SYMBOL, INDEX,
AND ICON

Definitions of metaphor vary widely and invariably excite debate. This is no surprise when we consider how much is at stake in such a definition. Metaphor is so central an element of poetry, of language, of the learning process, and of meaning itself, that we cannot define it without delimiting our views in almost every field of human inquiry. Descriptions of metaphor are bound to differ as radically as do theories of meaning and thought, as well as any and all theories to which notions about meaning and thought are central.

Nevertheless, three common elements of definition frequently recur in various descriptions of metaphor. Consider the following:

Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else. . . . A good metaphor implies the intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.

(Aristotle, Poetics, XXI, XXII)

The metaphor . . . is an assignment of a signans to a secondary signatum associated by similarity . . . with the primary signatum. (Jakobson 1971: 355)

Metaphor states an equivalence between terms taken from separate domains. . . .

(Sapir 1977: 4)

[Hypoicons] which represent the representative character of a representamen by representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors. (Peirce [italics his] CP 2.277)

To define metaphor for the purposes of this study, I am content to list (Fig. 1.1), and to elaborate upon, what might be considered the common elements from the above statements.

Figure 1.1

These seem to be the crucial elements which can be found in various forms in most definitions of metaphor since Aristotle. Indeed, the global phenomenon I have in mind when I speak of metaphor is precisely what Gumpel (1984) discards as the “traditional” and “Neo-Aristotelian” concept of metaphor. As Gumpel herself points out (82, 134), Peirce’s description of metaphor squarely aligns his notion with that of the traditional Aristotelian perspective. For purposes of her own, she chooses to reject that perspective. For the purposes of this study, on the other hand, I am entirely comfortable with the descriptive elements suggested by Peirce’s formulation, no matter how obviously “traditional” or “neo-Aristotelian” they may be. That Peirce follows Aristotle certainly should not be construed to imply that there is no additional insight to be gained from Peirce’s formulation, for when the elements of his description are considered fully in light of his Categories and his sign trichotomies, they acquire a manifold new significance for an aesthetics and semantics of metaphor.

In view of my purpose to consider metaphor in connection with Peirce’s theories, why not simply adopt Peirce’s description of metaphor above as a working definition, instead of reducing it to a paraphrase with three elements? Peirce’s wording, I believe, does offer a powerful though cryptic suggestion about genuine metaphoricity. Despite my preliminary alignment of the elements from his wording with traditional definitions, however, I believe that Peirce’s formulation should not and cannot be used as a complete definition, or even a complete Peircean definition, of metaphor. Specifically, I think his intent (at CP 2.277) was to distinguish the metaphorical icon from other kinds of icons (signs of likeness), not from all signs in general, as a global definition ought to do. By aligning the elements of Peirce’s description with other and more general definitions, I intend only to suggest that Peirce’s formulation of metaphorical iconicity proper is perfectly fitted to, and thus prefigurative of, metaphor’s other dimensions (namely, the indexical and symbolic). In chapter 2, I will offer a full argument for this reading of the passage in question. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a framework for that argument, as well as for the rest of the book, by sketching the outlines for a global definition of metaphor in the light of Peirce’s overall theory of signs.

Moreover, the simple extrapolation of these three conditions allows my definition of metaphor to be more easily aligned with Peirce’s three Categories, as well as with his most famous trichotomy of sign functions, as illustrated in figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2

The alignment illustrated suggests a number of claims, the full defense and development of which must await subsequent chapters. For the present, I will offer only a general overview of these claims with a few preliminary comments. First, figure 1.2 suggests that metaphor, because of what it is, and especially poetic metaphor, brings together in one “microcosm” all the phenomena of Peirce’s ontological “macrocosm.” Second, the alignment in figure 1.2 implies that poetic metaphor in particular represents a perfect blending of all three of Peirce’s most famous sign functions. Peirce held that all these functions must be present to some degree in any “naturally fit” or “sufficiently complete” sign (CP 2.295; NEM 4:256); poetic metaphor is an example par excellence of the complete or fit sign, I will argue, for though its ground is iconic, this icon is embedded within an exceptionally powerful interactive index endowing the metaphor with extraordinary potentials for symbolic growth. (See also Jakobson 1971: 349 on blending of sign functions.)

Further, the alignment of Similarity with Possibility is meant to assert that the “similarity” between the two (or more) elements of a genuine poetic metaphor is not at all the fabrication of the poet. Rather, the relation of terms in the metaphor is a linguistic actualization—a dynamic bringing into sharp existential focus—of the real and positive, albeit abstract, quality the two referents share. This “quality” takes its distinctive nature, in Peircean terms, from the nature of real possibility or potentiality, not from the merely verbal mechanism which calls attention to it. In other words, the claim is that genuine poetic metaphorical similarity is a creative discovery, not a creation, by the poet. A full defense of this claim will be offered in chapters 2 and 3.

Next, the parallel between Duality and Actuality in figure 1.2 is meant to imply, as already suggested above, that the “two-ness” or “double vision” effected by metaphor’s dual references is precisely the necessary and correct embodiment or “actualization” (in our consciousness) of their similarity. As Peirce would have it, the similarity between the things compared possesses its own independent reality before the poet brings the two things together in the metaphor; but until that moment of bringing together, our grasp of their similarity is vague at best. The metaphor’s embodiment of the shared quality in two disparate things at once presents exactly the dyadic concreteness needed to make the monadic abstraction of the metaphorical possibility forceful and actual to the consciousness. “For suppose anything,” wrote Peirce, “and there is at once the Idea of something. But this something cannot have any distinct property, unless it be opposed to something else” (MS 915: 1). Thus, though the Firstness in which the metaphorical similarity is grounded is independently real before the metaphor is constructed, it does not come into its own special “existence” (CP 6.349) in our minds until it is actualized, made concrete and precise, by the Secondness of the metaphor’s dual reference (as governed by the Thirdness of the metaphorical predication itself).

What is it about “duality of reference” which carries this actualizing power? This will be answered more fully in chapter 5, but it is important to note just here that truly metaphorical “duality” necessitates tension between the two or more terms juxtaposed in the metaphor. In other words, the two things compared must not only be similar; they must also be dramatically dissimilar. Hence the alignment with Peirce’s Category of Secondness, subsuming Actuality, which he consistently characterized as the domain of force and opposition, and as forcing its way into consciousness. Peirce wrote, “When I feel the sheriff’s hand on my shoulder, I shall begin to have a sense of actuality. Actuality is something brute. . . . We have a two-sided consciousness of effort and resistance” (CP 1.24). There could hardly be a better way of describing how a living poetic metaphor compels attention. It forces its way into our consciousness because of the dynamic tension, clash, opposition, of the two things the poet has juxtaposed in a transcending comparison. This sense of semantic tension is at least part of what Ricoeur refers to as the “event” of metaphor (1977: 98-99). “Event” is also another term with which Peirce often described the Category of Actuality (CP 1.336). The claim to be developed in chapter 5, then, and a claim often denied in pragmatic linguistic studies, is that semantic clash is an essential defining condition of poetic metaphor, for that is the condition that actualizes abstract metaphoric truth to our minds.

The two or more things so opposed and compared in poetic metaphor are not simply suspended in an equilibrium of attraction and opposition; they interact (see Richards 1936, 1938; Black 1962; Ricoeur 1977). This is basically what I mean by cross-predication as the third defining condition. The result of crosspredication is semantic growth (often on the part of both things juxtaposed, I believe); hence the alignment of cross-predication with Peirce’s Third Category (subsuming Law) in figure 1.2. Peirce consistently related Law, as an instance of Thirdness, to ideas of change and growth (see Shapiro 1983: 191-192). This growth of new meaning in poetic metaphor may take the form of a momentary conceptual expansion, by which we provisionally come to see things in a new way within the transitory world of the poem, or it may effect a permanent creation of new symbolism within the language (Shapiro and Shapiro 1976: 15-21) or within our world view (Factor 1984: 10-33). In either case, it is this marvelously creative aspect of poetic metaphor which, more than any other element of poetry, entitles the poet to the name of “maker.”

However, a further implication of aligning the cross-predicative function of poetic metaphor with Peirce’s notion of Law is that semantic growth, whether viewed as a transitory conceptual expansion or as the permanent creation of new linguistic, literary, or cognitive symbols, is guided by a general principle of natural selection. As suggested in the introduction, meaning in general is fostered and governed by a universal and teleological process of semeiosis, of which human semeiosis, in Peirce’s view, is but one example. (See also Jakobson 1971: 703.) Specifically, I will argue in chapters 2 and 7 that metaphoric growth is guided by a final cause present in its ultimate iconic typology viewed as an antecedent possibility. Though fortuitous variation plays an important part in the actualization of this possibility, the growth of poetic meaning is not within the private or purely arbitrary control of either the individual poet or the reader. As J. Norris Frederick has put it in his Peircean approach to metaphor, “Thus the foundation of the sign relationship is used, but not made, by the interpreter” (1980: 148). This notion cuts squarely across the grain of much that is fashionable in literary studies today. It will be developed and defended throughout this study as a principal theme.

On the basis of the above defining conditions, this study must exclude metonymy, simile, and explicit analogy from consideration as poetic metaphor, though all three are certainly worthy of inclusion in a more complete theory of figurative language.

I do accept Jakobson’s notion of the “metaphoric and metonymic poles” (1956: 76-82). Metonymy is predominantly a trope fashioned on a relation of contiguity, whereas metaphor is grounded in similarity (my condition 1, fig. 1.2). While demonstrating this clearly, Jakobson laments the paucity of studies on metonymy and suggests that metaphor studies may be warped by their failure to consider the metaphoric pole in relation to the metonymic pole (1956: 82): “The actual bipolarity has been artificially replaced in these studies by an amputated, unipolar scheme which, strikingly enough, coincides with one of the two aphasic patterns, namely with the contiguity disorder.”

Perhaps it is the case, then, that this book (or its author) suffers from aphasia, but that is because of its primary focus on “poetic” figures, the study of which, Jakobson himself seems to suggest, is naturally “directed chiefly toward metaphor” (82).

Metonymy also most often seems lacking in the sort of “conceptual leap” I find in poetic metaphor (condition 3). As Shapiro and Shapiro show, metonymy hinges on a mere “shift of reference” without any “modification in the sense” of the sign used figuratively (1976: 9-10). It is this “modification of sense,” in my view, which gives metaphor the status of the poet’s chief tool as a “maker” and re-maker of symbols. Of course I am prepared to admit that metonymy often underlies metaphor in the process of linguistic change, as Shapiro and Shapiro show (1976: 21, note Schema C), in the actual generation of metaphor as Eco shows (1979: chapter 2), or even more broadly in the process of cultural evolution, as Factor shows (1984: 29-33). Thus metonymy and metaphor may well belong together in the sort of broad historical study which this study does not purport to be. In no sense am I prepared to admit, however, that the interpretation of a metaphor requires recovering whatever metonymic origins it may have. Ignoring the relation between metonymy and metaphor is not tantamount to a neglect of metaphor’s own special contiguity condition (juxtaposed duality, condition 2). More of this at chapter 5.

Simile or explicit analogy, on the other hand, I will exclude because I find it somewhat lacking in tension and markedly lacking in interaction, the second and third conditions of metaphor as I am defining it. Peirce often ignored the difference between simile and metaphor in his briefest treatments of the latter term, because he was most interested in the iconic character of metaphor, as we will see in chapter 2; I believe a thorough application of his semeiotic, however, more than justifies an important distinction between metaphor and simile at the indexical and symbolic levels.

At any rate, there is good reason for making the distinction. In the reading of a simile or explicit analogy, there is only a rather provisional and accommodative interpretation of a literally translatable similarity condition. As I have already suggested, the search for such a condition is also an important part of metaphor interpretation. However, as Tanya Reinhart has shown in her splendid study of “focus interpretation” versus “vehicle interpretation” (1976: 383-402), experienced readers of poetic metaphor do much more than “translate” the “focus,” that is, look for literal similarities; they also pay careful attention to the “vehicle,” which I believe involves the semantic and aesthetic consequences of tension and interaction between the object, the figural sign, and the interpretant. Of course, especially novel similes and explicit analogies may also invite appreciation of the “code” as well as an understanding of the iconic “message”; but to the extent that they do create an aesthetic interest, they often direct it toward the speaker’s cleverness or state of mind; the self-consciously provisional way in which such similes and analogies present themselves to us as tropes encourages that deflection of interest from the poetic vision to the poet. Conversely, metaphor is more than a clever way of saying that A is “like” B, or that A “is to” B as C “is to” D. In an important sense, as Kenneth Burke has put it, metaphor compels us to see (not just say) A as B (1945: 503-504). Poetic metaphor is the discovery of a real though transcending connection, not merely the concoction of a provisional and transparent juxtaposition, and it is a discovery which compels us to admit two truths in one: the truth of the literal similarity (focus) and the accuracy of the figural vehicle.

The alignment in figure 1.2 also indicates a blending of sign functions. Poetic metaphor involves the balanced use of all three signs in Peirce’s most famous trichotomy: the Symbol, the Index, and the Icon. A symbol stands for its object mainly by virtue of law, which includes, but is not limited to, largely arbitrary convention (CP 2.292-302, 307); an index represents its object by means of some spatial or causal connection to it, as for example smoke is a sign (mainly an index) of fire (CP 2.248, 285-287); an icon signifies its object because it resembles it in some way, as a photograph is (principally) an icon of the thing depicted in the picture (CP 2.276, 279).

All verbal metaphor uses symbols, because most words stand for their objects (physical or merely mental) by linguistic convention. The reader of a metaphor must of course be aware of the referents (in objective reality or in shared cultural experience) assigned by such convention to the words of the metaphor in order to understand it. In addition, many poetic metaphors depend upon the special context or inter-textuality of literature or of a particular genre or tradition in literature; such metaphors may expect the reader to know the special referents of words as assigned by literary convention. While these considerations seem obvious, the semantic features attached to words by both linguistic and literary convention interact in some interesting ways in poetic metaphor’s crosspredicative function, by which new configurations of symbolic meaning come into being and grow in poetry, in literature, in the language, and in human cultural development (chapter 7).

Less obvious is metaphor’s general indexical function. Factor (1984) has ably described it in Peircean terms. This indexical component of metaphor is, in part at least, its clash of dissimilars (hence the alignment with Duality and Actuality in figure 1.2). Like a red flag, another Peircean example of the Index, the semantic shock of a novel metaphor is what brings it into the foreground of perception. Or we might say that the figural tension of the metaphor is the indexical “smoke” which “points” (the first function of any index) to the metaphorical “fire.”

That which actually “fires” the metaphor is the poet’s introduction of an icon. I will take the Peircean Icon in metaphor to be roughly analogous to I. A. Richards’s “vehicle” (1936: 89-138). In the simplest metaphors involving only dual referents, the icon is the “figurative” one which the poet has brought in (via word-symbols which stand for the referents) as a comparison to the other referent, the literal topic of the metaphor. For instance, in Pascal’s metaphor “Man is a thinking reed,” the word man symbolizes humanity, the literal topic, tenor, or object (what the metaphor is about), and the word reed of course symbolizes our notion of reeds, the figural icon (the referent imaginatively compared to man). It is important to notice that the semantic tension of metaphor (its index) arises most directly from the introduction of an icon into the metaphorical complex Though I am oversimplifying the matter somewhat to do so, here I will borrow Max Black’s notion of “focus” and “frame” (1962: 27-28). The “frame” is roughly the proposition itself without the word or words used figuratively; for instance, the frame of Pascal’s metaphor would be “Man is a thinking [______].” Note that there is nothing particularly odd or novel or attention-getting about this frame; it is only when the word reed is brought in that we feel any semantic tension. This tension causes us to “focus,” as a first step of interpretation, upon our notion of reeds, the icon. Thus I believe that the poetic metaphorical index is limited to that special kind of index Peirce talked about as “an index which forces something to be an icon . . . or which forces us to regard it as an icon” (NEM 4: 242). Further, the only kind of reliable metaphoric index is the kind that is caused by the presence, in the frame, of an icon (though not by anything in the icon by itself), as smoke is a reliable index of fire because it is caused by the presence of fire. Another way of putting it is that meaningful metaphorical tension is that kind of index which contains an icon, as a photograph reliably “points” to the object represented by its iconic image.

The importance of this observation is simple. If, in the presence of semantic tension, we cannot—with any confidence—locate an icon (or icons) whose presence in the frame seems to be a focus of the tension among the metaphor’s referents, then we cannot proceed confidently with interpretation. This describes precisely a condition of “false metaphor” or simple anomaly. Imagine, for instance, that an absurdist “poet” wrote a one-word “metaphor” like “Squircle!” whose morphemic structure was understood to be square + circle Given this linguistic information about the word, we would understand the conventional symbolic referents of the two morphemes (a circle and a square); we would further recognize as existing between them a state of semantic tension, very much like that of a metaphorical index, inviting us to look for a figurative interpretation. In the case of “Squircle!,” however, this “looking for an interpretation” would apparently do no good, because (among other reasons) we cannot reliably locate any icon—is it the circle, or is it the square? We cannot distinguish the literal topic from the figural vehicle. Thus we cannot tell what is being talked about or what figurative assertion is being made about it. The same may be said for all pseudo-metaphorical statements such as the now famous “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” which have all the linguistic marks of poetic metaphor (violation of selectional restriction and of strict lexical subcategorization, as per Chomsky, 1957 and 1965) but which lack the proper semeiotic marks of genuine metaphor (an index pointing clearly to an icon).

I must note, however, that all linguistic anomalies can be metaphors, of a sort, given a “rescuing context”; for this reason, every case of semantic tension should be regarded, initially at least, as a possible metaphoric index. But my point is that semantic tension does not exist in a good poetic metaphor for its own sake; if that tension does not point us to something we can identify as an icon (or iconic complex), we find it difficult if not impossible to interpret even the indexical sign. If the tension is to be granted this status as indexical sign, it must of course “indicate” something, must “point” reliably at something. At what does it point, and how does it point? Those are the crucial questions. Does it point at everything and nothing (or worse, at itself or its maker) by turning in all directions in empty semantic space, like one of those “pointing fingers” cut from tin and dangling from a wire in a pop-art mobile? Or does it point, for example, like the index of an artful photograph, at some clearly identifiable icon that it contains (see CP 4.447; NEM 4:242)? True, the metaphorical icon need not be a simple picture or image; as I will show in chapters 2 and 3, the icon-object relation might be quite abstract. Here I only wish to emphasize that the poetic index is typically “cooperative” in helping us to locate an icon of some sort to build our interpretation upon. Poets generally do not resort to shocking juxtapositions just to get our attention; they use the metaphoric index to direct our attention to a genuine iconic relationship which we might otherwise have missed. Further, as we will see in chapters 5 and 6, poets use the patterns of indexical tension in complex metaphor to shape our perception of iconic truth. They shock us for the sake of truth, shock us with a linguistic “lie” that contains a semeiotic truth, with an apparent impossibility that subsumes—and requires that we sharpen our vision of—possibility.

To conclude, the following steps are a “slow motion” summary of the interdependent blending of Peirce’s sign functions in poetic metaphor as I conceive it. (Items in italics and quotation marks also appear in the schema of figure 1.3 below.)

1. The Symbols (word signs) of the metaphor refer to dual or more objects in disparate semantic domains. The Immediate Interpretant (“I_im”) of this Sign/Object/Object relation is therefore a sense of semantic tension (“~”) obtaining from the clash of the disparate objects. In figure 1.3, this step is represented in the uppermost triangle, linguistic interpretation 1.

2. The reader forms an Indexical Hypothesis that the semantic tension is meaningful—namely, that the tension is a Sign, specifically an Index, indicating some further Object. (In figure 1.3, this Indexical Hypothesis is formalized as “I_im = ~ = Sign: Index”) The Indexical Hypothesis need not be conscious or formal, of course; it is simply the feeling—or the suspicion—that one has come upon a metaphor.

3. For reasons discussed above, the only reliable Object of a metaphorical Index is an Icon. Therefore, the reader begins to test the Indexical Hypothesis by searching for an icon among the metaphor’s referents. If no icon can be isolated, or if the metaphor’s referents cannot be assigned the roles of icon and object, then the Indexical Hypothesis is denied. Any further interpretation, in this event, must be totally subjective.

4. If, however, an icon is found, the reader may proceed to interpret the icon in relation to its object, the literal topic. This is what Reinhart calls focus interpretation; it is represented in the bottom triangle (2) of figure 1.3. If focus interpretation is successful, the result is at least one Dynamic Interpretant (“I_D1”), the discovery of a literal similarity as the ground of the sign. (Of course there may be more than one such Dynamic Interpretant.)

5. Successful focus interpretation (step 4 above) now confirms the Indexical Hypothesis (formed in step 2). Thus confirmed as a genuine Sign having a reliable Object, the Index must now be interpreted in its own right (to be argued in chapter 5). This is what Reinhart calls vehicle interpretation; in figure 1.3, it is schematized in the medial triangle (3). The result of successful vehicle interpretation is a second Dynamic Interpretant (“I_D2”), an aesthetic sense of figural displacement (chapters 5 and 6).

6. Balanced application of focus and vehicle interpretation leads to semantic growth, the far right triangle (4) in figure 1.3. Specifically, figural displacement (“I_D2”) becomes a [S]ign in itself, whose [O]bject is literal similarity (“I_D1”), and whose Final Interpretant (“I_F”) is metaphoric truth This is the ideal state of understanding how Iconic Possibility is only what it is in poetic metaphor by virtue of its embodiment in an evolving figural paradox (Indexical Impossibility). The notion (to be developed in chapters 5 and 6) is that the Index of semantic tension acquires, in complex poetic metaphor, an iconic force of its own, and that this force shapes and re-shapes our perception of the (literal) similarity between the original icon and its object. The implications of this notion for a theory of diachronic linguistic and conceptual growth are explored in chapter 7.

Figure 1.3

One further note on figure 1.3: The use of triangles is not intended to imply that the Peircean triadic relation (Sign, Object, and Interpretant) is reducible in actual semeiosis to the dyads of Sign/Object, Sign/Interpretant, and Object/Interpretant. Peirce clearly demonstrated that genuine triadic relations are not reducible to any combination of dyads or monads (see Ketner 1986); and, as far as I know, Peirce never used a triangle to configure the S-O-I relation. I use the triangles, instead of Peirce’s favored form of existential graphs, for the sake of clearly isolating what I view as discrete and teleological but irreducible levels or “moments” of metaphorical semeiosis.