ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which semioticians have problematized two key distinctions: between the literal and the figurative and between denotation and connotation. Literalism involves treating the meanings of messages as limited to their explicit factual, informational, or propositional content. The conventions of figurative language constitute a rhetorical code, which is part of the reality maintenance system of a culture or sub-culture. It is a code that relates ostensibly to how things are represented rather than to what is represented. While the most closely-related and obvious conceptual alignment of the literal–metaphorical opposition is with denotation– connotation, it is also part of a much larger system of associations, such as with plain–fancy, black-and-white–colourful, truth–falsehood, objective–subjective, rational–emotional, and masculine–feminine. While metaphor is based on apparent unrelatedness, metonymy is a function that involves using one concept to stand for another which is directly related to it or closely associated with it in some way.
