PART I: GROUNDWORK
2. Metaphor Theory
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theoretical groundwork required by our study.23 The views that I attend to are those which have earned considerable consensus from scholars of metaphor.
2. Metaphor Theory
Metaphor today continues to be regarded as a figure of speech, but something else besides. Why is metaphor singled out from other figures of speech, say, metonymy, hyperbole, or irony? The answer, I believe, can be summed up as follows:
that metaphors are more pervasive and possess more cognitive resonance than any of the other literary devices – with the exception of similes, which are, at any case, a kind of metaphor. 24 The fact that metaphors are ubiquitous and are knowledge-laden has led to its current appraisal as a figure of thought more than a figure of speech, a conceptual more than mere linguistic phenomenon.25
What exactly is a metaphor? Like other figures of speech, metaphors strike us as a “deviation” from ordinary speech. When we hear or read a metaphoric statement such as “the sun hid behind the clouds”, we understand its meaning and know too that the sentence is not to be taken literally. When we encounter a metaphor, we discern a gap between the literal and metaphorical senses of the word or words. So, for example, when Romeo says that “Juliet is the sun”26, the utter falsehood of the sentence when it is taken literally alerts us to the presence of a metaphor. In this way, it is the absurdity of the literal words that introduces us into the metaphoric process.
A general way of describing a metaphor is that it is a departure from literal speech.
Different authors refer to the hiatus caused by metaphors in varied ways. Metaphors
23 For this reason, I will have to skirt topics such as the kinds of strong theses propounded by Lakoff and Johnson on embodiment and concept formation (which seem more relevant to cognitive research and epistemology), as well as the different ways that authors classify metaphors or explain its mechanism, namely, Substitution, Comparison and Interaction Views, Primary Metaphor, Blended Metaphor and Direct-Expression Theories, and so on. Instead of aligning myself with a single author, I prefer to follow general areas of agreement. These, as shall be seen, are rich enough and meet the needs of our research. Besides, particular theories tend to be highly specialized in linguistics and beyond the student’s competence.
24 Similes are a kind of metaphor: the claim is already found in Aristotle, and contemporary scholars generally follow suit. Aristotle says that similes are a kind of metaphor, except that it announces its assertion of similarity through some introduction or with words such as like, such and as, cf. Rhetoric 3.4, 3.10, 3.11. Aristotle’s statement aside, similes do possess the metaphoric features that we shall articulate in this chapter.
25 The idea is at the heart of contemporary theory. “Metaphor has traditionally been viewed as a matter of mere language rather than primarily as a means of structuring our conceptual system and the kinds of everyday activities we perform (…) much of our conceptual system is structured by metaphor”, Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 145, 146. Lakoff and Johnson give abundant examples of fundamental metaphors engrained in English language. Common expressions such as “falling in love”
or “staying out of trouble” are examples of metaphoric expressions that hide in ordinary language.
Neither love nor trouble are physical entities, yet we speak of them as if they were a container or a path.
26 I use here a favorite example analyzed by metaphor theorists. The metaphor, of course, is from William Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 2.
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have playfully been called “a falsehood” (Davidson 1978, 42; Ortony 1979, 188), “an anomaly” (Fraser in Ortony 1979, 177; Petrie in Ortony 1979, 450), a “perversion”
(Black in Ortony 1979, 21) or “absurdity” on the literal indicating that the words are not to be taken at face value for there has been “a shift from central to marginal meaning” (Bearsley 1962, 299). Paul Ricouer alone has a variety of expressions about the outlandishness of metaphors. A metaphor, he says, is “a deviant predication”, an instance of “literal incongruence (leading to) metaphorical congruence”, or “an epoche of ordinary meaning” (Ricouer 1978, 145, 147, 151). Despite these graphic ways of distinguishing metaphor from standard language, however, authors are quick to stress that in metaphoric statements, the literal and metaphoric senses are related to and depend on each other (Stern 2002, 23, 60, 64; Searle 1979, 85-87).
Ordinarily, the literal meaning serves as the foundation for possible ways that a term can be read metaphorically. The literal is, as an author puts it, “the primary, first-order interpretation” (Camp 2006, 287) from which further, metaphoric levels of interpretation are developed. So, for example, in the sentence “Juliet is the sun”, the various ways in which being sun-like can be interpreted ultimately derive from what we know and experience about the actual sun, e.g., that it is the center around which our earth rotates, that it radiates light and heat, or that life in our planet depends on it.
That metaphor is a deviation from standard language, however, is not what is distinctive about it as a linguistic phenomenon. Other figures of speech too involve some form of digression from ordinary speech. For example, the hyperbolic expression “I told you a million times!”, or the ironic statement “where are all the pens when you need one?” are also emphatic and novel manners of expression.
There is more that distinguishes a metaphor and elevates it from other literary devices.
One thing that is characteristic of metaphor – without being exclusive to it – is that it plays on similarities. When Romeo uses the “sun” as a metaphor for Juliet, he expresses a perceived similarity between the sun and his beloved maiden. The similarity obviously need not be based on physical form or appearance. In all likelihood, Juliet did not have a ballooning figure, nor did her hair stand out in all directions like the rays of the sun. Very often, common features or attributes – or parallel relationships, in the case of analogies – are what ground the criteria of similarity that metaphors are based on (Ortony 1979, 186; Miller in Ortony 1979, 224, Steen 2009, 57). In the case of Juliet and the sun, for example, the shared predication could be that they are both – at least from the point of view of Romeo – all-important and central to existence, stunning as well. There are, however, some important notes to be made about metaphors being grounded on similarity.
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In the first place, scholars of metaphor speak about “exemplification”, a concept crucial to the comprehension and effects of a metaphor (Ortony 1979, 93; Stern 2000, 153).27 When a metaphor likens A to B, it directs us at first instance to a pool of shared predicates between A and B. Sometimes, in the process of trying to interpret a metaphoric utterance rightly, the receptor would need to analyze or inquire further before locating the point – or points – of similarity intended by the speaker from the pool of possible similarities (e.g., “to be like a baby” could mean very different things, positive and negative alike: that one is cute, or pudgy, or cries easily, or is innocent, or is vulnerable, and so on). Metaphors, however, turn out more readily comprehensible – attractive and memorable as well – in the measure that the attribute intended by the speaker is a quality exemplified by the source term. “Juliet is the sun” is a good example of an exemplification metaphor since the sun does exemplify how lovers tend to regard their beloved: important and central, a powerful source of good feelings (like the light and warmth of a sunshine). In other words, metaphors do not merely state that two objects are alike, e.g., Juliet and the sun.
Usually, one of the two terms serves to exemplify something which the author of the metaphor wishes to point out about the other. The exemplified feature or features ordinarily consist in something salient, normal, or stereotypical about the term used metaphorically.28
A second point about the similarity involved in metaphor is that it comes with, or actually rests on, a stark dissimilarity, between the two terms. The fact is interesting because it is part of what makes metaphors “surprising”: that it brings into a relation of similarity two objects that we are otherwise unaccustomed to grouping together. Juliet and the sun, a boy and a plant, for example, belong to entirely different classes of things. Meanwhile, calling a grown up a baby can also be startling because even though adult and infants belong to the same category of humans, they are usually thought of as opposites in view of age. This “relating as similar things which are dissimilar” reminds us of how Aristotle explained metaphors as a transfer of names (or predications) across genus and species (Poetics 21). He likewise held the disparity between terms brought together in a metaphor to be at least part of the reason why metaphors are exciting as riddles29, and that good
27 Max Black speaks of metaphor “emphasis” and “focus” instead of exemplification and exemplified features. His idea is basically the same though. He writes, “a metaphorical utterance is emphatic, in my intended sense, to the degree that its producer will allow no variation upon or substitute for the words used – and especially not for (…) the ‘focus,’ the salient word or expression, whose occurrence in the literal frame invests the utterance with metaphorical force”, Black in Ortony 1979, 26, original italics.
28 See Stern’s discussion about what grounds our knowledge of metaphors in Stern 2000, 112.
29 “For metaphor is a kind of enigma, so that it is clear that the transference is clever”, Rhetoric 3.2 1405b5.
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metaphors do not draw obvious similarities but have us discern subtle semblances between things that are far apart.30 Echoing Aristotle, modern writers also speak of metaphor’s “trick in likeness and unlikeness” (Sparshott 1974, 83), or “mystery (…) of perversely asserting something to be what it is plainly known not to be” (Black in Ortony 1979, 21).
We have stated that the similarity that grounds metaphors usually function through exemplification, and that the similarity is introduced in the background of a blatant dissimilarity. A third and perhaps more interesting point which we have brushed on earlier is that while metaphors involve similarity, they are seldom statements of similarity. Taking it from Romeo, when he says that “Juliet is the sun”, although he is attending to a similarity between the two, in fact he is not so much saying that “Juliet is like the sun” as asserting that Juliet, like the sun, is… (e.g., important, central, a source of joy and delight, and so on). In other words, that two things are similar is not the point of a metaphor. Similarity is only a gateway to what it is that the metaphor ultimately means to convey about the target realm. It invites us to examine why ontologically distinct realities are cast together as similars. F.E.
Sparshott illustrates the matter by furnishing an example: “Achilles in battle is like a fish in water (…) To see what is meant by speaking of Achilles as a fish we need to know not the alleged fact that he is a fish but the ways in which he really is like one”
(Sparshott 1974, 82). Another important author in the field, John Searle, offers a helpful explanation about the role that similarity plays in metaphor. Accordingly, the observed similarity on its own does not constitute the meaning of the metaphor but is instrumental to the production (the originator perceiving a likeness between things and expressing it) and comprehension (the receiver discerning which attributes are shared between the two) of the metaphor (Searle 1979, 88). We will touch on this again when we discuss metaphor as perspective later in the chapter.
In recap, metaphor makes us notice some similarity, one that is unnoticed yet proves striking once attended to. Although based on some likeness between things, it is rarely a simple statement of similarity but asserts something more about its theme. Further, metaphors show great versatility in the sense of being useful for both poetry and prose.31 The nuance in present-day appreciation of metaphor, however, is the idea that it pervades every realm of verbal communication in a way that no other figure of speech does. Metaphor, as current research explains it, is not just about language use but involves and makes manifest latent patterns of human cognition. This introduces us now to a more modern and technical definition of metaphor used today.
30 Rhetoric 3.11 1412a11.
31 Cf. Rhetoric 3.2.
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As we saw earlier, metaphors link two terms in a relationship of likeness, and it does so in such a way that one term enlightens us about the other. There is, in other words, a movement from the more familiar to the less familiar. Lakoff refers to this characteristic of metaphors as a “directionality” from a concrete field to a more abstract one, usually designated as source and target domains, respectively (Lakoff &
Johnson 1980, 112). In the examples of metaphoric expressions given above, sun, baby and plant are the concrete, source domains whose exemplary features are used to enlighten us about the subjects they are likened to. Metaphors in this way are technically defined as a mapping between conceptual domains of meaning motivated by similarity (Hiraga, 2005, 25; Steen 2009, 57), typically between a concrete and an abstract domain.32
By defining metaphor as a mapping across domains, modern scholars open a new way of understanding the phenomenon, a view rich in semantic and cognitive implications about how metaphors can be a key to decoding underlying mental structures in the human mind. The thesis of metaphoric mapping in a way answers fundamental questions about metaphor, in particular, why we use metaphors, how metaphors work, and what knowledge we gain by comprehending a metaphor.33 If we accept that metaphors are knowledge-laden, we need to ask further whether we learn something new, or are simply made to focus differently on something that we in fact already know? Non-cognitive theories of metaphor aside34, scholars of metaphor give different answers to the question. Donald Davidson, who has written a highly-debated article on the issue, denies that metaphors “convey ideas” or hold any “special meaning” apart from what literal reading yields. Metaphors do enable us to acquire a new aspect of things, or give some poetic intimation, but these to him constitute neither knowledge nor meaning and are, to be sure, “not propositional” in nature. He concludes, therefore, that we must “give up the idea that metaphors carry a message, content, or meaning apart from the literal; those who think thus actually (only mean) the effects metaphor have on us” (Davidson 1978, 40-45).35
32 This is a common definition in available literature on metaphor. Lakoff and his team believe that metaphor mappings correspond with neural mappings in the brain. Other authors recognize that some mapping indeed occurs in metaphoric thinking (e.g., predicates matching), but find Lakoff’s conclusion debatable. He can be credited, however, for drawing attention to its ubiquity in speech and for digging into its possible implications on human cognition, particularly in concept formation.
33 That is, we use metaphors (why) to speak about things which are farther and more difficult to express, (how) by associating them with matters closer to our experience, (what metaphoric comprehension results in) which in turn enables us to better understand or conceptualize remote realities.
34 In choosing to write my dissertation on this topic, I obviously place myself in a cognitivist stand.
Such view offers more fecund theories about the phenomenon of metaphor. Besides, studies available today indicate that non-cognitive appraisals espoused by former logical positivists and romanticists are no longer tenable.
35 Davidson represents the “direct-expression view” of metaphor. Anne Bezuidenhout defends
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Despite the above, Davidson is still regarded as a cognitivist because he allows cognitive value to metaphor, albeit conflating it with what the words mean literally.
Most authors, however, are uneasy with Davidson’s view. In what follows, I give a rundown of alternative ways that scholars articulate knowledge by metaphor. The different ways by which these authors defend cognitivism are worth quoting and, besides, will be useful for our analysis of the archery metaphor in the succeeding chapters.
An early answer, in response to Davidson, is from Paul Ricouer. Divining that behind the debate about the cognitive value of metaphor is the issue of what constitutes knowledge – or, more accurately, standards of knowledge – Ricoeur affirms that metaphors do “provide untranslatable information and (…) yield some true insight about reality”; it is such insight that constitutes the cognitive content of metaphor (Ricouer 1978, 143, 153). Max Black echoes Ricouer by explaining that when a metaphor makes us see A as B, the concepts used lead to a discovery as implications are drawn from the insight on similarity or analogy. Black goes a step further saying that metaphors at times even “generate new knowledge and insight by changing relationships between the things designated” (Black in Ortony 1979, 33-37).
“Strong” metaphors are able to do so because, in the end, they do not just offer isolated ideas but an insight into an entire structure, in the manner that non-verbal research tools like charts and diagrams convey facts through figurative representation. Black’s words are worth transcribing:
Metaphors sometimes function as cognitive instruments through which their users can achieve novel views of a domain of reference (…) Such recognition of what might be called the representational aspect of a strong metaphor can be accommodated by recalling other familiar devices for representing ‘how things are’ that cannot be assimilated to ‘statements of fact’. Charts and maps, graphs and pictorial diagrams and ‘realistic’ paintings, and above all models, are familiar cognitive devices for showing ‘how things are’. (…) Metaphors (thus) convey, in indispensable fashion, insight into the systems to which they refer. (Black in Ortony 1979, 40-41)
While Black seems to concede to Davidson that what metaphors convey are non-propositional, Reimer points out that although the metaphorical meaning beyond the literal is difficult to paraphrase, in fact it is possible to translate at least part of it in propositional terms (Reimer 1996, 19). Petrie, from the perspective of an
Davidson’s approach and develops it by treating metaphor as a matter of language use (pragmatics) rather than meaning (semantics). Searle also treats metaphor as a pragmatic phenomenon but takes a stronger cognitivist stand by recognizing a defined level of metaphoric meaning different from the literal. Metaphors are vested with two levels of meaning: it says that “S is P, but means S is R”, Searle 1979, 85-87.
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educator, articulates the cognitive content of metaphor as a “transfer of understanding” from the originator of the metaphor to its hearer (Petrie in Ortony 1979, 439). Eva Kittay dedicates an entire volume to defending the cognitive power of metaphor. She points out that models (which are, at the bottom, “extended metaphors”) are indispensable even in hardcore sciences. These scientific models may not be literally true, but they are nonetheless “useful representations of the phenomena which led to theoretic conceptions and new empirical discoveries”
(Kittay 1987, 7).
Still another author, Richard Moran, locates the cognitive content of metaphor in “what its speaker’s belief guides us to”. Moran’s idea is complex but worth probing into. While agreeing with Davidson that a metaphor’s effects must not be confused with its content, Moran explores the “effects” of a metaphor and finds that these too
Still another author, Richard Moran, locates the cognitive content of metaphor in “what its speaker’s belief guides us to”. Moran’s idea is complex but worth probing into. While agreeing with Davidson that a metaphor’s effects must not be confused with its content, Moran explores the “effects” of a metaphor and finds that these too