ABSTRACT
From the literal point of view metaphorical statements are usually false, though we are sometimes speaking metaphorically even when what we say is literally true, e.g. ‘Marriage is not a bed of roses’. And a statement does not have to be obviously true or obviously false when taken literally to be meant metaphorically. In 1940 Churchill might have been speaking either literally or metaphorically in saying ‘I intend to write the history of the Second World War’.
