Portraying Analogy

Abstract

The attention of philosophers. linguists and literary theorists has been converging on the diverse and intriguing phenomena of analogy of meaning:the different though related meanings of the same word, running from simple equivocation to paronymy, metaphor and figurative language. So far, however, their attempts at explanation have been piecemeal and inconclusive and no new and comprehensive theory of analogy has emerged. This is what James Ross offers here. In the first full treatment of the subject since the fifteenth century, he argues that analogy is a systematic and universal feature of natural languages, with identifiable and law-like characteristics which explain how the meanings of words in a sentence are interdependent. Throughout he contrasts his with classical and medieval views.

Pre-Modern and Modern Male Circumcision Rites among the Tharaka of Eastern Kenya

“…Kirimo swallowing according to Ross (1982), was a 'craft-bound discourse' whose goal was to equip the prospective warriors to defeat their enemy when need arose. The closest experience of kirimo for women and children was noted on the eve of this day when it was expected to make its way to the appointed special venue.…”

Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and religious language. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. Pp. x + 191.

“…"The categories of univocal, equivocal, and analogical are different in kind from that of metaphor" (66), Saskice writes, without mention of my claim to show quite the opposite (Ross 1982), not only on this point but on almost every major point to which she commits herself about the linguistic phenomena of metaphor, about the cognitive process of thinking metaphorically, and, further, about analogy and meaning differentiation in general. For one thing, she approves Richard's "interanimation" notion of metaphor without an account of how that happens, and holds "metaphor is a form of language use with a unity of subjectmatter and which yet draws on two (or more) sets of associations, and does so, characteristically, by involving the consideration of a model or models" (49).…”