Metaphorical content as what is said

Most pragmatic theorists of metaphor classify the metaphorical content of metaphors such as “Margaret Thatcher is a bulldozer” as what is implicated (rather than as what is said). However, metaphorical content cannot be classified as what is implicated because it is not consistent with the proposition of which it is supposed to be an implicature. That is, because Margaret Thatcher cannot be both a pushy person and a machine, metaphorical content cannot be an implicature of the literal content. Furthermore, in metaphor the speaker has a commitment to the metaphorical content instead of to the literal content, not in addition to it. Hence metaphorical content must be “what is said.”

► Metaphorical content should be classified as “what is said.”
► “What is said” is the content to which the speaker becomes committed in saying what they say in that context.
► Argument against metaphorical content as an implicature: inconsistency, speech reporting, falsifiability and psycholinguistics.
► Metaphor as reconceptualization.