Sprache und Metapher in der Konzeption historischer Semiotik und psychologischer Ökologie

Abstract

In 1764 the philosopher and natural scientist Johann Heinrich Lambert described metaphor as an indispensable and constitutive element of any sophisticated language. Furthermore he emphasized a communicative function: communication and understanding of abstract matters depend on the use of metaphors in speaking and writing, which helps to avoid a superfluous “verbal battle” (Semiotik, §§ 342-344). Thus Lambert refers his distinction of the “corporal world” and the “intellectual world” implying the difference of “outer perception” or the perception of concrete things and “inner perceptions”, which induces the idea of abstract and unvisible things. The problems of communication under these circumstances of inner and outer perceptions are being discussed further since. The relations of psyche and environment (Willy Hellpach), inner and outer experience (Max Scheler, Hellmuth Plessner) are explored in the conceptions of a psychologically committed ecology and in philosophical anthropology. The succeding reflection of conditions, opportunities and limits of verbal understanding replaces the speaker focussing perspective of expression by an analysis of the dimension of appeal concentrating on the hearer. The metaphor is here considered from the viewpoint of its function as guarantee of understanding (Gerold Ungeheuer). This is the historical and systematical background of this paper, which considers social and cultural aspects as environment of verbal behavior and verbal acting.