Three Constitutive Conditions of the Revealing Metaphor

Abstract

This article aims to show the conditions under which a revealing metaphor becomes valid and hermeneutically significant, based on the two terms that are placed in comparative balance. If the interpretation that deserves to be attached to a revealing metaphor highlights its meaning and instruments it, then the double process of adapting the common attribute of the two terms to the object of insertion can be revealed starting from this interpretation as well. We identify hence three conditions for a genuine creation of the metaphor: 1) the suitability of the host-object structure to the features of the common attribute; 2) the pre-existence of an attributive equivalent in the host-object; 3) the existence of an insertion perspective (as a possibility of equivalence). Discovering semantic bridges among contrasting linguistic entities passes through the filter of this threefold conditional package and lays the grounds for a possible methodology of terminological selection and then of metaphorical construction.

Keywords

• migration
• labor force
• implications
• individual
• family
• society
• integration
• exclusion.