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Allusions we live by

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 ALLUSIONS WE LIVE BY

Introduction
The readers who recognize the above chapter title as an allusion to the famous book by
Lakoff and Johnson1 will expect parallels between the following description of allusion and
the abovementioned book; doing so, they already have an understanding of what allusion is
and what it is for, with intended emphasis on the marked indefinite an. Someone who just
knows about the book but has not read it may guess that allusion might be deemed here as a
form of metaphor or (wrongly) suspect me of the ambition to compete with the extremely
successful scholars. Whoever is familiar with the contents of the work by Lakoff and Johnson
may expect that (1) allusion is claimed here to occur in language as frequently as metaphor
does, mostly without being recognized as such, or (2) to be based on shifting features between
different domains. 2 How the allusion included in the title is meant here will be explained later
but this is due solely to the fact that allusion is the topic to be discussed in this chapter and not
– as it is the case on other occasions – just a tool that has been applied in order to present
another topic. It belongs to the essence of allusion that the task to ‘decode’ it is left to the
recipient alone. Actually, the act of decoding is tantamount to interpreting, which justifies – as
will be argued below – approaching it from the viewpoint of interpretation theory.
This chapter aims, in the first place, to discuss a variety of understandings of the term
allusion as well as the difficulties and controversies aroused by the unambiguity of this
notion. Besides, a classification of allusions will be suggested, based on the interconnections
between author, recipient and wording. We shall claim that most linguistic utterances can be
deemed as allusions in certain circumstances, since allusion is a functional recipient-
dependent application of language, and not a characteristic of language itself. 3 This implies
that allusion can be sometimes ‘decoded’ even where it has not been ‘encoded’ at all.
To start with, we shall look at a selection of definitions of allusion available from online
dictionaries and thematic websites in order to pinpoint the major indicated characteristics of
allusion as such. They will be, later on, confronted with the common sense intuitive
understanding, in order to elaborate a conciliatory concept. This enterprise results from
unsatisfactory contents of prevailing definitions, which is likely to be connected to the general
difficulty to define phenomena precisely – a topic that will not be discussed here at length.
According to some English online dictionaries and other websites, allusion can be viewed
as:

(1) ‘an implied or indirect reference, especially in literature’,4

(2) ‘an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an
indirect or passing reference’, 5
(3) ‘something that is said or written that refers to or mentions another person or subject
in an indirect way (= alludes to it)’,6

1
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
2
In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is explained as mapping from one domain into another. This takes place in
human thinking, where the source domain (concrete) is linked to the target domain (abstract) and the latter is
described with the use of the same expressions as the former.
3
As rightly observed by S. Przybyszewski, the lexeme allusion cannot be found as an entry in dictionaries of
linguistic terminology.
4
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/allusion
5
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/allusion
6
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/allusion
 (4) ‘a passing reference: oblique or obscure mention’, 7
(5) ‘something that is said or written that is intended to make you think of a particular
thing or person’,8
(6) ‘a reference to something supposed to be known, but not explicitly mentioned; a
covert indication; indirect reference; a hint’, 9
(7) ‘a figure of speech whereby the author refers to a subject matter such as a place, event,
or literary work by way of a passing reference. It is up to the reader to make a
connection to the subject being mentioned’, 10
(8) ‘figure of explication using a brief or casual reference to a famous person, historical
event, place, or work of art. It is important to stress that the referent of an allusion be
generally well-known’.11

As can be seen, one of the common denominators of the above definitions is the reference
character of allusion, which entails – as clearly pointed out in (8) – a referent: a text-external
element that is – as explicitly indicated in (3) alluded to. Indirectness is included in all of
them, too, although from (5) and (8) it can be only deduced. These two characteristics
correspond to the common understanding of allusion, as illustrated through a questionnaire
and supported by common sense. Only half of the quoted explications (2, 4, 7 and 8) claim
that allusion is a passing mention. Our general experience with the use of language reveals
that usually it is the case indeed: An interesting observation is made in (7), where allusion is
described as a figure of speech: This implies that it should not be understood in its literal
meaning. It is worthy of consideration whether being a figure of speech entails a property
different from referentiality and indirectness which can be attributed to allusion. A
controversial remark can be found in (1), where literature has been highlighted as a very
special realm of allusion. The fact is, though, that it is allusions in literature that has attracted
most interest of researchers, both as the source and application area of allusion. Nonetheless it
seems unjustified to locate allusion within literature in the first place, since it is also well-
known to, understood and often used by the people who do not usually read.
Wolff points to the trigger-function of certain linguistic devices that do not appeal to the
recipient by its own sound and semantic content but call up another and thus involve the
person’s knowledge obtained elsewhere which interacts with the actual text:

The perceptual stimuli are not the only elements carrying the meaning of the utterance or the text.
Quite often, they simply function as a kind of releasing or triggering device, i.e. they activate linguistic
or world knowledge structures already present, which are then brought into play during the process of
meaning construction. Stimulus- or data-driven processing interacts with knowledge- or concept-
driven processing. (Wolff, 1994: 217)

Allusion seems to perfectly match this description. Moreover, the trigger-role is its
essence, so that the expression becomes just plain and literal if the trigger should fail to work.
Ritva Leppihalme, who discusses allusion as a culture-bound element and, as such, as a
translator’s problem, bases her investigation on English-speaking literature in Finnish
translation. Her notion of allusion is limited to what she labels (after Nord, 1991) as in-text: a
tiny text incorporated in another text, with the function to recall its original environment. In
my research, literary texts will not be taken into account at all. But Leppihalme’s division of

7
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/allusion
8
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/allusion
9
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=allusion
10
http://literary-devices.com/content/allusion
11
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/figures/allusion.htm
allusions into (1) those with a proper name and (2) those with a key-phrase, as confirmed and
illustrated by literary examples, will be taken into consideration as text-type-independent. .
Paul Lennon, the author of the book Allusions in the Press (2004), declares to be
investigating echoic allusions as defined by Leppihalme (1997), who sees them as such if a
short stretch of discourse is recognised by the reader as deliberate play on a piece of well-
known composed language or name so as to convey implicit meaning (qt. in Lennon, 2004: 2).
Leppihalme herself, who refers to Mayer (1968), speaks in this context of preformed language
(1997: 3), i.e. some pre-existing, established wording that poses a part of a work by an author
and is borrowed and re-used by someone else in new circumstances. It must be added that the
new use of the wording in question is different from both plagiarism and indicated quotation.
Moreover, the original wording can but does not have to be quoted in order to be applied as an
allusion; it might be employed in a slightly or significantly modified version, too. The notion
of ‘employing’ has not been used here by accident; on the contrary, one is tempted to say that
the new language user employs a pre-existing wording in the sense of ‘giving work’ to it and
rewarding it by completing the work. The work is tantamount to the function, the reward for
the wording is its reestablishment in the communicative circulation.
Referring to Leppihalme’s notion of echoic allusion, Lennon claims that allusion ‘is
characterized by an echo orchestrated but the writer so that understanding involves a setting
off of one unit of language in preesentia (the alluding unit) against another in absentia (the
target).The echo can be achieved either by means of verbatim reproduction or adaptation of
the original language’ (ibid.). Certainly, in his research, the scholar investigates only text-to-
text allusions and does not include non-linguistic points of reference.
Minna Ruokonen (2010), who analyses allusions in selected detective novels in Finnish
translations, presents a classification that allows a crucial distinction between the allusions
that cannot and those that can be understood (in their message) without identifying the
referent – which depends on the context 12 of use. Her point of departure is the above-
mentioned phenomenon of a cultural bump, as described by Leppihalme, and she concludes
that it is not bound to occur, even if the recipient is not familiar with the source of allusion:

An allusive interpretation is possible only when an allusion is culturally familiar to a readership. The
possibility for a pseudo-allusive interpretation occurs when a culturally unfamiliar allusion is
stylistically or formally marked but still coherent in the literal or metaphorical sense even without
knowledge about its referent. A culturally unfamiliar but co-textually coherent allusion without any
formal markers is likely to be interpreted non-allusively, while an unfamiliar and co-textually
incoherent allusion involves the risk of a culture bump. (2010: 12–13)

Stacy Magedanz, whose paper depicts allusion as a literary form illustrated through Eliot’s
famous poem Waste Land as well as through the movie Moulin Rouge directed by Luhrmann,
makes two observations I would like to adopt and elaborate on a description of allusion in
general. Firstly, she stresses ‘a dependence upon outside sources for sense and significance’.
Secondly, she maintains that ‘the allusive form allows the creation of a unique dialogue
between artist and audience’ (2006: 1). As regards the first observation, it is vital for my
purposes that the scholar uses a rather wide term sources rather than other texts (even if she
means the latter) since it is not always linguistic material an allusion refers to.
Wolfram Wilss (1989: 48; translation mine) maintains that ‘the point of departure for
allusion is a wording that belongs to the common possession of language which is reproduced

12
The author uses the term co-text in the meaning of what is usually labelled as context in order to avoid
confusion since the notion of context is applied in her work to designate trans-textual situational links.
in an individual use of language in syntactically invariable, lexically variable way’. 13 This
definition restricts allusion to reproductive, modified variants of previously established
wording and rules out clandestine references to non-linguistic phenomena.

Suggested classification

As mentioned before, in order to be decoded, allusion needs to be recognized as such by

the recipient in an act of interpretation; thus, it makes sense to try to approach it with a theory
of interpretation that proved to be successful elsewhere. 14 Umberto Eco (1979) proposed his
conciliatory triad of interpretation perspectives that he labelled intention of author (intentio
auctoris), intention of reader (intentio lectoris) and intention of work (intentio operis). The
attributive conciliatory can be ascribed to this concept because it helps to mitigate the dispute
about the presumptive priority of respective factors in interpretation. I consider Eco’s model
applicable to allusion-focused research, too, therefore worthy of more detailed presentation
here.
(1) The concept of the author’s intention (commonly known as the plain question of what
the author ‘wanted to say’) does not need any further explanation; it must be stressed, though,
that the author’s intention in Eco’s concept might be easily misunderstood and confused with
the author’s own declarations (if any) or an authoritative conclusion of a critic (whoever it
might be and whatever their conclusions might be derived from). Moreover, a discrepancy
between the author’s declared intention (even if available) and what Ingarden calls ‘the world
depicted’ in the work is not rare; in other words, what the author claims to have wanted to
‘say’, i.e. depict, differs from what the readers’ understanding of the message might be.
However, in most cases, the authors do not comment on their own works so that the
reader/interpreter must rely on his or her own encounter with the text. Even a hermeneutical
approach to interpretation, inclusive of a proper study of the author’s life and historical/social
background does not yield any definite insight in his or her real intentions, the location of
which is and will always remain the person’s mind.
(2) The reader’s intention is meant as the way in which the recipient understands a given
text and includes it in their system of knowledge; this might be, and frequently is, the same as
or similar to the author’s intention but also, and not less frequently, very different from it. The
differences between the author’s and the reader’s intentions result – in terms of Gadamer’s
concept of the fusion of horizons – from the fact that two people’s horizons 15 can overlap
partially only (Gadamer, 1960). The way in which a particular reader understands a given text
is connected to his or her life experience, knowledge, intelligence etc. that technically could
be investigated and determined like the author’s background in the hermeneutic approach, if
one cared to carry out such research.
(3) The intention of the text labels the whole interpretative potential of its wording that is
emancipated from its producer as well as of any actual reader. Thanks to this aspect the text
may be reinterpreted, also from a temporal and spatial distance, which justifies and

13
In the German original: der Ausgangspunkt einer Anspielung ist eine zum allgemeinen Sprachbesitz
gehörende Formulierung, die im individuellen Sprachgebrauch syntaktisch invariant, lexikalisch variant
reproduziert wird.
14
Within literary interpretation in the first place.
15
A person’s horizon is a historical dimension; it encompasses the totality of a given individual’s knowledge,
beliefs, habits, preferences etc. which are a product of historically and socially conditioned external influences. It
should be added that some personal factors of psychological nature play an important role as well(although
Gadamer does not take them into consideration). This seems interesting against the background of the concept of
personal/intimate allusion as described below.
encourages new readings and interpretations of established works of literature that have been
discussed many times before.
It seems that Eco’s concept can be applied to allusion as a text 16 that has a producer
(author) and recipient (possibly the reader). Therefore, the following classification of
allusions can be suggested. It employs the term memory unit to denote its major criterion, i.e.
an element of the contents stored in the memory:
(1) intended vs unintended allusion
An intended allusion can be stated whenever the text producer is aware of creating – in
his or her text – a link to a memory unit of the audience and chooses to do so. A memory unit
can be a piece of another text – it is the case when a quotation or a paraphrase is used – but
also the knowledge of/about some facts or artefacts. Needless to say, the intended allusion
corresponds to Eco’s intentio auctoris.
An unintended allusion can be observed whenever the text producer is not aware of
creating a link to a memory unit of his or her audience. This may happen by pure accident
(slip of the tongue, typing error) or the lack of knowledge or attention on the text producer’s
side.17 Since it has not been intended as an allusion by the speaker/writer but very well
recognized as such by the audience, the wording can be qualified as corresponding to Eco’s
intentio lectoris.
(2) overt vs covert allusion
An overt allusion is a clear reference to a vivid collective memory unit and appears on the
text surface. For example, a speaker who refers to the transsexual Polish MP Anna Grodzka as
Mr Grodzka makes an overt allusion to her sexual identity. Such an overt allusion is mostly
intended and then it corresponds to Eco’s intentio auctoris; but its unintended occurrence is
possible, too, in which case it is a counterpart of intentio operis.
A covert allusion does not appear on the text surface and can be only deduced as such
from the actual wording by implication. For example, if someone declares that a person with
criminal past should not run for an office, s/he will probably be alluding to a concrete
candidate but it cannot be proved since the speaker may claim to have presented his or her
general opinion. It is vital to note that in the case of a covert allusion the speaker has the
option to withdraw and deny their intention, even if the latter is obvious in a given situation.
A covert allusion corresponds to Eco’s intentio operis.
(3) bound vs open allusion
A bound allusion is a reference to a factual/historical memory unit and can be proved. In
Poland, any mention of candelabre (Pol. żyrandol) in connection with a political office will
be interpreted as an allusion to Donald Tusk’s description of the president’s limited
competences during the presidential campaign in 2010. A bound allusion has often the form
of a proper name, reference to a fact, quotation or a paraphrase of somebody’s well known
utterance. It is usually intended, and as such it corresponds to Eco’s intentio auctoris. For
example: the person who reminded the president of the city of Słupsk, Poland, that he would
not have the freedom to proclaim his very liberal opinions in the times of the former regime
because the action ‘Hiacynt’ would have stopped him, was clearly alluding to the police

16
Certainly, not all allusions are texts; some of them, like gestures (imitation) or sounds (tunes), have non-
linguistic character and as such they are not included in the present analysis.
17
Let us examine an example. In anglo-saxon bibliographies it is a prevailing norm to use just the initials of
quoted authors instead of their full first names, with the consequence that it is not clear to the reader whether the
person in question is a man or a woman. Therefore, the scholar who quote after someone else, sometimes apply
the personal ‘he’ when referring to a woman (actually, not really the other way round), although an accidental
mistake cannot be excluded either. Fact is that it happened to me some time ago to use the masculine personal
pronoun when referring to the outstanding scholar of international reputation Katarina Reiß. Although it
definitely happened due to the lack of concentration, the consequences were devastating: The reviewer
questioned my competence, accused me of thinking ‘that Katarina Reiß was a man’ and rejected the paper.
activities with the cryptonym ‘Hiacynt’ from 1985–87.18 The rare but possible cases of
unintended bound allusions remind of Eco’s intentio operis.
An open allusion is general enough to allow for various concretizations. For example,
when the Polish opposition leader speaks of the dangers the country is facing from the side of
the Ukrainian conflict and elsewhere, the latter can be interpreted as an allusion to the ruling
party that he has been attacking unceasingly; but it also can be interpreted in many other
ways. If intended, a covert allusion corresponds to Eco’s intentio auctoris; if unintended, it
can be compared with intentio lectoris.
(4) common vs intimate allusion
A common allusion makes use of collective memory units and can be recognized as such
by a model recipient. It is usually intended and in this respect corresponding to intentio
auctoris that coincides with the intentio lectoris.
An intimate allusion applies to a private memory unit. It is unintended and can be
captured as allusion by selected individuals only, usually due to their guilt or bad conscience.
For example, an observation about the unacceptability of plagiarism in academic writing
meant as a general standard may be understood as an allusion by a member of the audience
who is aware of having committed it and fears that the speaker might just have discovered it.
Intimate allusion is a derivative of intentio lectoris.

Concluding remarks

Allusion as such requires a common idea or picture in the text on the one hand and in the
human mind on the other hand. It is usually created in the speaker’s mind with the purpose to
evoke a particular association but it also might be created in the recipient’s mind only, when
the wording used by the speaker activates his or her memory unit by accident. And here we
arrive at the conclusion that might seem to be suggested in the title of this chapter. Although
there is no reason to claim that allusions prevail in linguistic communication, it can be stated
that many utterances might, in some circumstances, be understood as allusions, especially
intimate ones. An allusion works best, though, if it is intended, overt, bound and common.
The situational context as well as the background of the speaker and the audience allow an
assumption as regards its qualification. At the same time, though, it belongs to the nature of
any allusion that there is a margin left for the speaker to possibly deny his or her intention and
ascribe the message conveyed to intentio operis as the potential of any text to inspire and
ignite human thinking in an autonomous way, independent from its producer.

References

Eco, U. 1979. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of the Text. Indiana:
Indiana University Press.
Gadamer, H. G. 1960. Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Lennon, P. 2004. Allusions in the Press. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Leppihalme, R. 1997. Cultural Bumps: An Empirical Approach to the Translation of
Allusions. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

18
The president of Słupsk is a declared gay. Within the action ‘Hiacynt’ (Engl. Hyacinth) the police were
invigilating and collecting data of homosexual people. Source: http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/szczecin/slupskie-
srodowiska-katolickie-domagaja-sie-przywrocenia-tradycji-zwiazanej-z-janem/5c15le, accessed on 22.04.2015.
 Magedanz, S. 2006. ‘The Waste Land and Moulin Rouge’. Orbis Litterarum 61.2: 160–179.
Przybyszewski, S. 2008. ‘Semantyczna i syntaktyczna analiza leksemu aluzja’. In: M. Biolik
and I. Kosek, eds. Prace językoznawcze X. Olsztyn: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-
Mazurskiego, pp.187–200.
Ruoukonen, M. 2010. Cultural and Textual Properties in the Translation and Interpretation
of Allusions: An Analysis of Allusions in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Detective Novels in the 1940s
and 1980s. Turku: University of Turku.
Wills, W. 1989. Anspielungen: Zur Manifestation von Kreativität und Routine in der
Sprachverwendung. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Wolff, D. 1994. ‘Importance of procedural knowledge in second language production,
comprehension and learning’. In: G. Bartelt, ed. The Dynamics of Language Process: Essays
in Honor of Hans W. Dechert. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, pp. 213–227.

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