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.53).5 “Could” rather than “does,” since what features belong to the actual move made is a matter of speculation, given that White has been unable to trace the source of the example (The Structure of Metaphor , Oxford, Blackwell, 1996, p.316 n17).6 That at any rate seems to be the point of White’s repeatedly emphasizing (pp.38, 42) that we do not typically provide a version of the insight in “boring prose” (as he puts it at one point) in order to grasp it, or that we travesty what goes on if we insist that we must do so, and it is a point he must rely upon if he is to assert, as he does, of the fact that, whereas Bronstein is concerned to communicate what could also be said, Wittgenstein is concerned with what could not, that “it is hard to see why that should make a difference” (p.44).7 Charles Forker, ed., King Richard II , London, Arden Shakespeare, 2005, II.iii.87–89.8 The example is an instance of anthimeria, in which a term of one grammatical category is coined or “derived” from one of a different grammatical category, most often, as here, a verb from a noun.Such instances abound in Shakespeare: see Forker, King Richard II , 2005, p.89 and p.299, for further examples.9 Or compare Clement Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud, describing (on BBC radio’s Just a Minute ) his experience of being “out-grandfathered” by the grandson of Winston Churchill on a visit to China, which suggests another sense in which a term for a relation might be given a new and derivative use as a verb.10 Richard II , II.iii.115–118: “And noble uncle, I beseech your grace, / Look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye./ You are my father, for methinks in you / I see old Gaunt alive.” (In fact, Bolingbroke uncles the Duke twice in reply (see also l.106).)11 What is right is the suggestion that the communication of the insight does not depend on the truth of Bronstein’s remark—as White says, in what could be taken to be a rather revealing comment, the move Bj10 may well have been “an outright blunder” (p.41)—but this is obviously a far cry from the claim that the remark is simply empty nonsense.12 It is worth noting the extraordinary amount of weight that the Bronstein example has to bear in White’s account even with this claim, since, as White acknowledges, it is “virtually impossible to prove that a particular figure is nonsense if taken literally,” the Bronstein example being in White’s view the exception that “demonstrably has no literal meaning” (The Structure of Metaphor , p.219).13 White, The Structure of Metaphor : example (1) is raised briefly on p.31 as part of White’s discussion of metaphor; example (2), the Bronstein case, is discussed there on pp.218–220 in extending White’s conclusions to the figurative in general; example (3) is not discussed there, but the phenomenon of anthimeria is, on pp.220–224 (see especially also pp.317–318, n21).14 A dummy name functions as a place-holder with a “natural and appropriate” meaning (SM , p.78): here, for instance, in the example that follows, the name of any hard-to-construe text would do in place of the Iliad.White’s claim ultimately will be that it does not matter if the place-holder, the dummy name, really does pick out such an example (here, of a hard-to-construe text) or not: we can treat the original phrase in the metaphorical sentence as itself functioning as a dummy name, and so we can see the metaphorical sentence itself as permitting two different readings along the lines of a primary and secondary sentence, and hence as a kind of “duck–rabbit” sentence (SM , pp.111–117).15 Example (1) is introduced as an instance of the “rich and striking effects” of bifurcation.16 And even where it does have a literal meaning, White’s claim is that that literal meaning plays no role in the production of the metaphorical effect (SM , p.226).17 These two points are the burdens of chapters 10 and 11, respectively, of The Structure of Metaphor.18 It is here that White originally deploys his Bronstein example, example (2) above, as an instance of a figurative use of language that “demonstrably has no literal meaning”, and it is in this context too that White discusses the phenomenon of anthimeria (SM , pp.220–224).White’s argument with respect to the latter in effect takes the form of a dilemma: if such examples are not nonsense, then either they employ meanings unique to those particular sentences (in which case, such meanings cannot play any explanatory role in an account of the phenomenon itself, or of how we are able to understand such sentences) or they involve giving the words new literal meanings (in which case, we will be unable to explain the “creative power” of such sentences) (SM , pp.317–318, n21).It is not clear what White would want to say of a case such as “Trieste is no Vienna”: whether he would treat it an instance of nonsense, or as a word having acquired a new, literal meaning, as he thinks is the case with the use of “trialled” as a verb but not with the use of “strangered” as a verb [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]