If a word can represent in a sentence any other word in the
category of things or concepts to which it belongs or the whole of that
category (metonymy), and if a word can represent anything that in anyway can be
analogically similar to it (metaphor), or can be arbitrarily substituted for
any other word (code), there isn’t anything any word can’t mean. At every
level, from individual word up to narrative this holds true: phrase, clause,
story, each can be metonymic or metaphoric or coded. Coded narrative we call
allegory. It’s easy to see why a poststructuralist would consider literal
meaning at best one possible effect among many and not one that is necessarily
essential or indeed that has necessarily any part in particular instances of
language. In coded utterances literal meanings can be particularly distracting,
can function as noise if perceived at all. (To say it has no necessary part is
not to say it is ever not potentially present.)
