Abstract

Traditionally disregarded as deviant and even ungrammatical sentences, conflictual complex meanings enjoy the epistemological privilege to shed light on both grammar and figurative language. In the field of grammar, the observation of conceptual conflicts makes it possible to dissociate the formal and conceptual factors of the ideation of complex meanings, and thus makes visible the twofold nature of grammar and linguistic coding. In the field of figurative language, the study of conflictual instances achieves a twofold aim: it readmits living metaphors, heirs of a more than bi-millennial tradition, to the mainstream of linguistic description, and highlights some relevant differences that are smoothed out by the observation of conventional instances - namely, the difference between oxymoron, metonymy and metaphor on the one hand, and between conventional and living figures on the other.