La métaphore revisitée : Le processus métaphorique selon la «neurosémantique épistémique» de Maurice Toussaint (1936-2010)

Abstract

Maurice Toussaint’s commitment against the principle of the arbitrary nature of the sign – a questioning that is coming back into light – still seems poorly understood or even totally ignored, even if it led to the late publication of his book in 1983. The same can be said about his original linguistic theory, epistemic neurosemantics, which is derived – and at the same time stands apart – from the most classic tenets of Guillaume’s psychomecanics of language. Stimulated by research on semantic forms, it deals, among other topics, with the metaphor in dynamic and rather innovative terms, in so far as it considers it as the initial product of the meaning generating process and not as one of its late and derivative semantic outputs.
This is the line of thinking that is presented here, together with the echoes that can be found in other approaches of verbal meaning. It will no doubt contribute to the ongoing debate.