Metáfora é... : uma abordagem metateórica da metáfora

Abstract

Considering the diversity of theories available on the treatment of metaphor, we have two methodological options of study: either we approach it under the foundations of one area and analyze the object from the constructed properties within the scope of the approach; or we construct an interface repackaging, in which we put into play complex properties that delimit a third object built on the borderlines of disciplines in dialogue (CAMPOS, 2007). In the study that we propose, we illustrate this second approach, putting into dialogue the foundations of Linguistics, especially Pragmatics - via Grice's Theory of Implicatures (1967; 1975) and via Relevance Theory, by Sperber and Wilson (1986; 2008) and Wilson and Sperber, (2012) - and Psicolinguistics (GLUCKSBERG et al., 2007; BOWDLE and GENTNER, 2005), on the one hand; and, on the other, Neuroscience, through a qualitative meta-analysis constructed by the study of twenty fMRI experiments, from which the circuitry of the neurological processing of the metaphor is described. In this meta-analysis, we have tried to elucidate the nature of the theoretical approach and its implications in the design of the experiments and in the results achieved, in order to collect elements to compose the meta-theoretical approach of the interface that we proposed. In a second moment, then, we elevate the properties constructed in the scope of each area to the condition of meta-theoretical properties of the metaphor, with the purpose of putting into dialogue theories with distinct granularity and of proposing an alternative to the mapping problem (POEPPEL, 2012) resulting from a study of this nature. We thus have constructed a third, more complex object by deepening the descriptive and explanatory potential of the treatment given to the metaphor. Therefore, we see that, from an interface approach, two consequences emerge: the first, epistemological, because we contribute in the debate about the properties of the metaphor theories in interface, from whose dialogue the revitalization of the foundations in dialogue results; the second, theoretical, because we also contribute to the debate about the properties of the metaphor itself. The proposed interface emphasizes the potential of such approaches by extending possibilities for new treatments of different objects of linguistic research, including the metaphor itself.