So, to begin. Meaning in speech or writing, of whatever sort, begins with intention: To lie or speak truth, to persuade or dissuade, to expose or conceal, to respond or initiate, to inquire or answer, to explain or dissemble--and anterior to all these motives lies one essential, irreducible pre-condition, which I call Good Faith or Bad Faith and which I understand to be variable according to the inclination of the speaker or writer, and whichever, I believe it to be immediately, intuitively evident (in the same way that we "read" personalities and characters in "faces") to the hearer or reader of Good Faith--and essentially unknowable to the hearer or reader of Bad Faith. It is in this context that the implicitly metaphysical, poetic or quasi-poetic, rhetorical figure of metaphor is to be understood: For all mental phenomena, and indeed the mind itself, are only discussable or understandable as metaphor, or in the extended metaphor known as allegory. This insight I owe to C.S. Lewis (analysis of the Roman de la Rose).