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Literal and metaphorical meaning: in search of a lost distinction

In recent years the distinction between literal/non-literal truth and meaning has come under attack. On a traditional conception, figurative uses are ones in which the meaning expressed deviates from the literal meaning. But recent work on lexical modulation and polysemy shows that meaning deviation is ubiquitous, even in cases of literal use. In this paper we argue that the literal-figurative distinction should be preserved and not eliminated. Even if utterance literalness does not pull its weight in a theory of language processing, the distinction between literal and figurative is practically and theoretically important. We show that one can give up the idea that there is a standing meaning that is expressed in utterances that are literally true but keep the core of the folk-theoretic notion of the literal/non-literal distinction. Our claim is that literal uses of a word are made with the intention to conform to an established practice of use, while metaphorical uses do not so conform, but depend on this pre-existing practice. We show that our account can deal with data that are problematic for other theories.