Abstract

This chapter has three aims: to offer a comprehensive and transparent tripartite classification of philosophical accounts of metaphor; to consider three truths about metaphor which cannot be jointly accommodated by familiar accounts in this classification, for example, those of Black, Searle and Davidson; to carve out a space for a further account which fits the classificatory scheme but which does accommodate these features of metaphor. The truths concern: the aptness of metaphor for assertion and truth, the inappropriateness of paraphrase of metaphor, and what is called the transparency of the understanding of metaphor. There is a brief description of the view offered in subsequent chapters, suggesting that it fills a void left by other accounts.