405. Metaphorical Meaning

We generally expect the texts we read to be closely tied to the world we live in. We expect this because we most often use language to describe particular objects, people, or events and the practical relationships between them. Unless we’re told otherwise, we expect the writing we encounter to function in the same way.

Certain contexts automatically cause us to think about words differently. This is what happens when we read a poem. We don’t expect poems to supply us with ordinary facts about the world because we know poems tend to be about something other than the literal meanings of their words. We’re primed to think metaphorically, so we engage with the text in this way. If a poem takes certain liberties in its use of language, we do not immediately declare it wrong and move on to something else. We allow for this freedom of meaning as part of the metaphorical game that we play when we read and write poetry.

But a text that is more conceptual or theoretical doesn’t tend to be read in this way. Here, we interpret concepts as abstractions of our world and we expect them to refer to real entities in the same way as our day-to-day language points to objects or people. As the concepts we encounter become more and more general, we start to think that they describe a metaphysical world that lies behind the physical world of ordinary experience. But really all that is happening is that the text is using language in the same metaphorical mode as poetry.

Abstract concepts do not refer to entities that actually exist somewhere. They are rather metaphors for facets of our experience of existence. To merely accept what the words literally say is to miss out on the broader possibility of metaphorical meaning. To allow for this possibility we need to read theoretical texts just as we read poems. We must allow them to take liberties with language that do not make ordinary sense, and thus permit them to show us something beyond language but still firmly rooted in our experience.