The Difficulties of Paraphrasing

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The Difficulty of Paraphrase is the Dogma of Metaphor* Mark Phelan UNC/Chapel Hill Consider the metaphor, ‘Music is the universal language.’ What would be a successful paraphrase of this sentence? How difficult might it be to formulate one? Might it be easier to paraphrase an analogous literal sentence—‘French is the language of Quebec,’ for example? Many philosophers have contended that it is generally more difficult to paraphrase metaphors than it is to paraphrase literal sentences.[1] A number of arguments regarding one aspect of metaphor or another have been built on this assumption of the greater difficulty of paraphrasing metaphors. In this paper I survey the philosophical literature with an eye to revealing what specifically theorists have had in mind when they claim an asymmetry in difficulty of paraphrase between the metaphorical and the literal. I examine the evidence theorists have offered to support the claim that it is more difficult to paraphrase metaphors, and reveal some widespread weaknesses of this evidence. Bearing in mind the weaknesses I have uncovered, I offer evidence against the view that it is more difficult to paraphrase metaphors than it is to paraphrase literal sentences. Finally, I discuss what the demise of the difficulty assumption portends for the metaphor debate. 1. The ‘Difficulty Assumption’ In philosophical debates, the difficulty of paraphrasing (the metaphorical meanings of) metaphorical sentences is often accepted.[2] Among the theorists who have endorsed this assumption, in one form or another, are Max Black (1954), Donald Davidson (1978), John Searle (1979a), Merrie Bergmann (1982), Richard Moran (1989), Marga Reimer (2001), and Samuel Guttenplan (2005). But to what uses do they put the assumption? And what exactly do theorists have in mind when they make this claim? What counts as a

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