The Semantics Of Metaphor In The Game Theoretic Semantics With At Least Two Coordination Equilibria

The objective of this paper is to present a new dimension of Game Theoretic Semantics (GTS) using the idea of the coordination problem game to explain the semantics of metaphor. A metaphorical expression1 such as ‘man is a wolf’ is a contradictory statement that insists all objects in the set of ‘man’ also falls under ‘wolf’. The study of metaphorical expression should be on intentions of such contradictory language use, their intended effect, and the conditions to lead to the effects. This is the tradition of Rhetoric since Aristotle. It may be natural to characterize this approach as pragmatic in the tradition of the late 20th century paradigm of linguistics, which is the trichotomy of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. However the pragmatic approach cannot explain what Richards (1936) called ‘tension’ between two thoughts in a metaphorical expression. GTS has been devel1 In this paper, I say ‘metaphorical expression’ rather than ‘metaphor’. ‘Metaphor’ is commonly used as a topic, but it is used at word level in traditional rhetoric and at sentence level after Black. Also, ‘metaphor’ is used for both metaphorical expression and a kind of trope. So I use ‘metaphorical expression’ to refer linguistic expression which is commonly called ‘metaphor’. oped as a possible substitute to the Tarskian truth conditional semantics. This paper explores a new possibility of GTS in the coordination problem game introduced by Lewis (1961) for a semantics, which admits the plurality of meanings.