meaning of her words. As an example, let us take the case where I ask a close friend
of mine what she means when she says of Jane, who I know lives next-door:“Jane
is a student at the school where I am teaching.”In response to my question, my
friend may well respond, with some surprise:“What doyoumean by the question?
You don’t know who Jane is?”Or considering that I am not a native English
speaker, she may try to explain the words“student”or“school”or some aspect of
her expression that may have caused my trouble in understanding her words.
According to Cavell, what my friend is trying to do for me, in such a scenario, is
precisely toexplainthe meaning of her words; here what is at stake is theliteral
meaning of the words. So, if my friend can explain things to methisway in
response to my question, she can be said to know what she means by her words.
We can imagine another context in which I ask another friend of mine what she
means when she says:“Juliet is the sun to Romeo.”Unlike the earlier case, thefirst
response of my friend is not likely to be one of surprise; for what is at stake here is
themetaphoricalmeaning of the words. According to Cavell, what is expected
from the speaker in this case isnotthat she explain the words by, say, offering
dictionary-type definitions of them, but rather that sheparaphrasethe expression;
for in metaphorical expressions“meaning is bound up in the very words they [the
expressions] employ”(Cavell 1976 , p. 78). Thus, my friend might say:“To Romeo
Juliet is the warmth of his world, his day begins with her, and so on. This is why
Juliet is the sun to Romeo.”If she cannot provide some kind of answer along these
lines for me, we can say she does not know what she means by the words she has
said. An interesting point that Cavell makes in regard to the metaphorical expres-
sion of words is that to understand a metaphor, or to be able to give its paraphrase,
we need to understand the ordinary meanings of the wordsfirst,and thenwe are
able to see that the words are not there being used in their ordinary sense; we are
now invited to look for the meanings of the wordsimaginatively. What is unique
about the function of metaphor as an expressive form of words is that it opens up
the meanings of words in a more or less indefinite way, so that the words can mean
as much as the speaker can imagine. Thus, Cavell says,“metaphors are para-
phrasable”(Cavell 1976 , p. 79).^7
In the light of this, then, we can say that it is neither theliteralnor the
metaphoricalmeanings of the words that ordinary language philosophers are
concerned with in asking the speaker what she means by her words; for philoso-
phers are interested in the case in which the speaker does not know what she means,
(^7) Some people are very good at explaining what they mean by their words, putting their thoughts
another way, perhaps referring to a range of similar or identical thoughts that have been expressed
by others, depending upon who the listeners are. These good explainers are those who are quick to
notice what prevents the listeners from understanding the meaning of their words, whether this is
their presuppositions, their prejudices and so forth. Butto explainwhat I mean by my words is
basically toreproducetheliteralmeaning of the words; nothing is to be added to the original
meaning of them. On the other hand, in the case of metaphor, in giving the paraphrase, we arefree
to createmeaning in an indefinite way. According to Cavell, this is the very attraction of metaphor
as a form of expression, even if there is always the danger of over-reading (Cavell 1976 , p. 79).
5 A Role of Doing Philosophy in a Humanistic Approach to Teacher... 75