ABSTRACT
The linguistic tradition since J. J. Katz and J. A. Fodor has been to treat metaphor as a deviant phenomenon to be either ignored or incorporated into linguistic theory via “special” rules. The context experienced by an individual hearing a word or metaphor can be thought of as having properties that afford—what these properties and affordances will be depend entirely on what that individual experiences upon hearing the word or metaphor. Metaphors can also be thought of in terms of the commonality of the contexts they produce. Some metaphors will strongly suggest certain highly salient properties that will be incorporated in the experienced contexts of most subjects. Metaphors that are easy to interpret generate contexts that have a large number of characteristics, when the contexts of a large number of individuals are combined—from the outside observer’s point of view, in other words.
