What is it about?
This chapter delves into one of the most fundamental cognitive abilities: judging similarity. It argues that our capacity to see resemblances is central to how we structure and use language. The analysis begins by drawing a crucial distinction between two types of resemblance. Linguistic resemblance deals with similarities between actual things, events, or situations in the world (e.g., “Her smile was sunshine,” comparing two entities). Metalinguistic resemblance deals with similarities between utterances or ways of speaking, which is the domain of “echoing” someone’s words to mock or allude to them (e.g., ironically repeating “Nice job!” after a failure). For linguistic resemblance, the chapter breaks it down further into different kinds, such as simple attribute-based similarity and more complex structural similarity. A key focus is on “high-level” resemblance, which constrains how we connect experiences and is crucial for understanding complex metaphors and synesthesia. The chapter then explores how both types of resemblance underpin figurative language like irony, hyperbole, and understatement, showing that recognizing similarity is the first step to inferring the deeper meaning behind an echoic remark.
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Why is it important?
This work is important because it provides a comprehensive and systematic framework for understanding the foundational role of resemblance across all of figurative language. By clearly distinguishing between linguistic (world-based) and metalinguistic (language-based) resemblance, it resolves theoretical confusion and offers a clearer map for analyzing everything from metaphor to parody. Its detailed taxonomy of linguistic resemblance –especially its focus on high-level and structural similarity– provides a more nuanced alternative to theories that overly rely on simple correlation or attribute-matching. Furthermore, by firmly establishing metalinguistic resemblance as the prerequisite for echoic phenomena like irony, it bridges the gap between our basic cognitive skill of comparing things and our sophisticated ability to use language to critique and mock. This unified account is a significant step toward a more elegant, cognitive-grounded theory of figurative thought.
Perspectives
Writing this chapter was an endeavor to return to first principles. It felt essential to properly define and categorize the basic cognitive operation of “resemblance,” which is so often taken for granted in linguistic analysis. Drawing the clear line between what we are talking about (linguistic resemblance) and how we are talking about it (metalinguistic resemblance) was a pivotal step in bringing clarity to the mechanisms behind figurative language. I found it particularly intellectually satisfying to demonstrate how this single, fundamental cognitive capacity (seeing likeness) is the common thread running through such diverse phenomena as poetic metaphor, synesthetic experiences, and sarcastic mockery. This work reinforces the view that powerful linguistic theories are built by carefully tracing complex expressions back to the simple, elegant operations of the human mind
Professor Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza
University of La Rioja
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Linguistic and metalinguistic resemblance, November 2022, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/ftl.17.01rui.
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