PART I: GROUNDWORK
4. The Schematicity of Metaphor
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paints a thousand words”.41 In the succeeding section, I shall delve into the aspectival function of metaphor which will bring us further into the cognitive content, structure and ramifications of metaphor.
4. The Schematicity of Metaphor
While metaphors abound in poetry, attention to abundant examples of novel and conventional metaphors in day-to-day conversations and prose writing has led to interesting findings of still untold implications in metaphor research. One prominent observation is that metaphoric expressions afford a more integrated way of speaking about things. Instead of merely giving a single idea, it offers a perspective way of thinking on a subject. This phenomenon is, of course, tied to the pictorial aspect of metaphor already discussed above, the fact that images can display in an instant what discursive language would need more time and words to explain, at times even vainly. The various ways that authors describe the phenomenon is worth noting:
each is an attempt to articulate the “bulk transfer of ideas” that come with a single metaphoric expression.
Josef Stern articulates perspectival thinking in metaphoric thought as the projection of a schema or structure42 from source to target fields. So, for example,
“Juliet is the sun” attaches to Juliet the network of ideas, associations and implications from the way we think of – and experience – the sun: something central, all-important, dazzling, radiating light and heat, etc. A good metaphor in this way can offer not only an attractive but also unified, organized and macroscopic way of thinking on the subject (Stern 2000, 284). Max Black refers to the same phenomenon as an “insight into a system” (Black in Ortony 1979, 41), another author, a “surrender to a verbal constellation” (Moran 1989, 112), and still another, the adoption of a “semantic model” (Miller in Ortony 1979, 206). Searle, meanwhile, uses an alternative and equally useful substitute word for schematicity, that is,
“systematicity”, or the “shared system of principles to compute R (given that a metaphor says S is P but means S is R)” (Searle 1979, 105). Examination of the schematic character of metaphor brings us to appreciate in full scale the amusing potential of metaphors to say much about a subject in a stroke of a few words. What does metaphoric schematicity consist in?
We mentioned that an iconic or pictorial element is present in metaphoric thinking43, and that this element generates a perspective way of thinking of
41 Verse from a popular love song which found its way into academic discussion of metaphor, via Davidson (1978).
42 Or network, model, paradigm, or gestalt: authors use different terms to describe conceptual structures latent in metaphor.
43 The pictorial element of a metaphor need not be a mental picture (Ricouer 1978, 154), nor
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something (Stern 2000, 289; Stern 2001, 217). We now wish to explore this with more detail. To begin with, a typical metaphoric utterance “A is B” calls in a range of predicates associated with A and B as we are brought to consider the different ways that A and B are alike. We scan the predicates associated with both terms guided, among other things, by features of “B” which are (1) exemplary or salient about it, (2) applicable to “A” and, (3) likely to be consonant with the speaker’s views. This process of mapping or matching predicates between fields “A” and “B” shows the intentionality behind metaphor, that we use it to focus on an aspect of a remote reality that is exemplified by something more tangible or closer to experience. Hence, salient features of “B” which may be applicable to “A” naturally come forward as predicate candidates for what the author may wish to highlight about “A” through the metaphor. The sun, for example, has many attributes (spherical, yellow-orange, gaseous, etc.) among which some stand out as exemplary features – for us on earth, that is – e.g., centrality, brightness, being high above, and so on. Now, depending on whether “A” stands for the Juliet of Romeo or Plato’s Being in the Myth of the Cave, an entire way of thinking of “A” is generated when the sun-schema is applied to Juliet or the One. Herein is Stern’s idea, echoed in various scholarly research, that metaphors “commit us to a global, complex way of seeing than any single belief: to think of ‘A’ in terms of the whole schema to which that metaphor belongs” (Stern 2001, 217).
We come to understand from the above that metaphor comprehension is not a sheer matter of enumerating features of A and B, no matter how exhaustive a list we may produce. Instead of an extensive and unstructured pool of predicates, a schema is contributed by the source field which arranges predicates into a more or less coherent or consistent whole, with lights and shadows cast among predicates, as well as a network of dormant associations and possible inferences. Let us take this statement apart. We have seen that the utterance of a single metaphor calls into mind a series of attributes about A and B, usually mostly about B in the frequent case that A is a less known reality. The metaphoric use of B as a model for thinking of A naturally leads to the highlighting of predicates which are possible points of similarity between A and B. By the same stroke, predicates considered irrelevant to the comparison are cast aside. Thus, the same sun metaphor will differ in what it highlights and conceals among sun-predicates depending on whether the scheme is projected onto Romeo’s Juliet or Plato’s Being. If “A” were Juliet, sun features such as centrality, warmth and brightness may come to the fore, and if it were Plato’s Being,
photographic (Miller in Ortony 1979, 204), nor even an image (Moran 1989, 112). Hiraga suggests describing it as “iconic”, icons being more abstract and conventional in varying degrees compared to images and diagrams, see Hiraga 2005, 30-31.
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dazzle and inapproachability or transcendence may become more significant for denoting the “One”. The matter is important and will be tackled again when we discuss metaphor interpretation. I anticipate mentioning, however, that the chiaroscuro of metaphor will be extremely relevant in comparing the archery metaphor in the Analects and in the Nicomachean Ethics. It shows that even when the source domain is the same, what derivative metaphors convey will vary enormously according to the features which the author wants to emphasize about the theme. We shall see that in the Analects and the Nicomachean Ethics, figurative expressions drawing from archery have different themes and different focus features.
Apart from predicates being cast in lights and shadows, relevant predicates are, as we have said, further differentiated or narrowed down to features of the metaphoric concept which it exemplifies or are salient about it: it is precisely this feature (or features) that is used to formulate an aspect of “A” which the author contemplates and directs our mind to through the metaphor. There are several interesting notes to be made about the issue of exemplarity. First is to explain what it is. We said earlier that exemplary features refer to what is salient, typical, normal, or even stereotypical about the concept.44 It is the characteristic that falls into focus about term B when it is used to describe A. At times, it may coincide with what is expressed in the formal definition of the word, as with Aristotle’s use of archery metaphor in discussing moral virtue as a mean. It is more often the case, however, that neither the formal definition nor the standard semantic meaning is what counts as exemplary or salient about the thing. It seems, instead, that exemplary features derive from the shared knowledge, manner of thinking or experience of things in a given culture or linguistic community, or more broadly still, from common human experience of living and moving about in the same physical world.45 So, for example, in the various ways that sun is used as a metaphor, the scientific, empirical fact that it is a hot ball of gas dims in importance to our experiential knowledge of it as something that shines above us and gives us light and warmth – sun features which are often highlighted in its metaphoric use.
Exemplarity or saliency, then, is not a matter of bare facts or dictionary meaning.
44 Most metaphors, including the ones we have cited, are exemplification metaphors. Metaphors which are not so will usually lack force and efficacy, and may require further explanation or investigation before they make sense.
45 Modern study of metaphor does seem to have important bearing on the issue of embodied knowledge. The “centrality of the body in structuring experience” and concept formation is a core thesis in Lakoff & Johnson 1980. Their study has been followed by authors who test the thesis in the light of metaphor from non-English languages. For metaphor studies whose database include specimens from modern Chinese, see Yu 1998, and Liu 2002. One important corrective raised by authors after Lakoff and Johnson is the important role of culture alongside bodily experience in the configuration of human understanding and behavior. Consult Naomi Quinn’s rejoinder to Lakoff and Johnson in Quinn 1991.
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It is even more surprising yet true to note that exemplified features need not be true either for a metaphor to work or its assertion to be true. Familiar metaphoric expressions such as “to sweat like a pig”46 (when pigs do not have sweat glands) or
“beautiful as a nymph” (when nymphs do not exist) work well and are, in fact, readily understood despite their incongruence with actual reality, an incongruence which both metaphor authors and receptors may be aware of. Interestingly, what primarily determines exemplarity or saliency is what is shared or publicly accessible (Stern 2000, 107). Among other things, the fact points us to the role of imagination in metaphor cognition, be it in image construction, in calling to mind stored experience in our memory, in picturing the various ways that A and B are alike, or in sympathetic projection.47 On this point, perhaps I may be allowed the digression of saying that theories on embodied knowledge sometimes come on too strong by insisting that higher levels of thinking boil down to inferences from sensory experience. We can grant that more of our physicality is involved in metaphoric thinking48, yet the creation and comprehension of metaphors themselves can be grounded on realities neither physically nor personally experienced. Metaphors – including strong, effective ones – are not always drawn from direct bodily experience but can be constructed from imagined experience, from speculation, from inherited cultural psyche, and so on.49
At this point, we wish to explore further where exemplarity derives from. The question is of maximum importance since it leads us to a feature of metaphor which is crucial for its interpretation, that as a linguistic expression it possesses a high-degree of context-dependence. If, as we have said, the exemplarity or saliency highlighted by metaphoric terms do not necessarily coincide with standard, factual meaning, neither at times from what is actually true, how then do we arrive at them when we successfully understand a metaphoric statement? We saw that imagination plays a role, an imagination that is not exactly one of “free-play” but is influenced
46 Although pigs do not sweat, pigs nonetheless exemplify filthiness and grime, the feeling we get when we are soaked in perspiration. The metaphor is, hence, effective.
47 For an exploration of the role of imagination in metaphoric thinking, consult Ricoeur 1978.
48 That is, in our perception of the features of the world, in the pictorial element, in the activation of the imagination, or in the affective resonance of particularly powerful metaphors.
49 For example, “writing a thesis is a herculean task” – the metaphor works well. Even though none of us have carried the world on our back or performed similar other feats told of Hercules, we can perfectly imagine how daunting and laborious these must be. Along this line, Wierzbicka’s expresses discontent with the sweeping necessity which Lakoff & Johnson make out of certain metaphors. The latter claims that orientational and ontological metaphors (e.g., “love is a journey”) are “necessary for even attempting to deal rationally with our experiences (…) These are so natural and so pervasive in our thought that they are usually taken as self-evident, direct descriptions of mental phenomena”
Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 26, 28. Wierzbicka’s rejoinder is interesting to note: people can have a clear concept of love without experience of journey, that mental experiences are given to us more directly than physical ones, and our inner world is more familiar and more accessible than the external world.
Hence, we can know love without mediation of journey metaphor, see Wierzbicka 1986, 292.
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and channeled by the surrounding context of the metaphoric utterance. We identify a statement as a metaphoric one when we discern that it conveys something that diverges from the literal and is beside the standard semantic meaning of the word.
We reach at present what we might call the “ramifications” of a metaphor. We know by now that utterance of a metaphor yields not only isolated information (e.g., “Juliet is my beloved”) but a perspective (“Juliet to me is as the sun”). This perspective, in turn, consists in a network of ideas about our knowledge, beliefs and experiences about the words comprising the metaphoric expression as well as the speaker. Just focusing on the term used metaphorically, the network of ideas activated about the sun go beyond the ordinary, literal, semantic content of the word. The string of ideas evoked by the sun derive from the extra-linguistic context of the word, that is,
“things that lurk in the background, even if not articulated” or “meaning that is not included in what is said” (Camp 2006, 289, 307). The extra-linguistic context of a metaphoric expression includes – or can further extend – to a host of things:
subjective experiences, beliefs, intuitions, assumptions, presumptions, associations, implications and even inferences that arise and develop in a linguistic community or culture which are relevant to the concept used metaphorically and the term that is joined to it in similarity.
The production and comprehension of metaphors involve such scale of peripheral knowledge. Depending on the level of interpretation that we hope to achieve, matters belonging to the extra-linguistic context such as relevant information about the author of the metaphor and his historical, cultural and lexical milieu all count as significant factors in accounting for the uttered metaphor.50 In examining the archery metaphor, for example, pertinent data about the authors and practices and beliefs surrounding archery will be particularly necessary considering how far removed we are from them and probably have little knowledge or experience of archery ourselves to relate meaningfully with the metaphor. Returning to the subject, peripheral knowledge or contextual information is not what the semantic content of the words themselves yield but other ideas besides that may be implied by or associated with it by the community that uses the metaphor. Hence, it is not immediately inferred or directly accessible by a cursory reading of a
50 Context dependence is, of course, not exclusive to metaphor: it is also displayed by other modes of expression and speech parts such as indexicals, for which reason Stern argues for the indexical nature of metaphors, see Stern 2000, 88-92. To a more limited extent, literal expressions too are context-dependent, and deciphering their pragmatic meaning precisely attends to this aspect.
Metaphors, however, are less likely to be comprehended at all, even abstractly, without some knowledge of context. The better the knowledge of the context, the closer we are to interpret the metaphor correctly. To use an example given above, some information about the author of the metaphor, e.g., whether it is Romeo or a jealous rival of Juliet, proves crucial for deciphering what the sun metaphor exemplifies. Only then too can we be said to have understood the metaphor.
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metaphoric statement but requires exposure to matters beyond it. Alternative expressions by which authors articulate peripheral knowledge are helpful. The extra-linguistic context of a metaphor refer to the “general store of knowledge and belief not given in the text” (Miller in Ortony 1979, 209-211), “a whole network of beliefs” (Moran 1989, 112), “presuppositions and beliefs not in the language proper”
(Stern 2000, 13), the background, factual assumptions that are not part of the literal meaning, or not found in the sentence semantic (Searle 1979, 79-80, 84), or, finally, a range of beliefs apart from the literal or standard dictionary meaning (Black 1962, 40-43). It also includes “features of the world” that we have become familiar with in day-to-day living (Stern 2000,113), conventional attitude about something (Ortony 1979, 191), as well as “associated implications” (Black in Ortony 1979,28). For all this, Stern, fittingly, I think, uses phrases inspired by the Aristotelian concept of endoxa51 when he refers to contextual knowledge surrounding metaphoric images or utterances as “shared doxastic background” or “socially shared way of thinking”
(Stern 2000, 121, 131-132).52 As we can see, peripheral knowledge is broad and reconfigures with culture and age. Within Confucian traditions, for example, there are perceivable changes in usages of archery metaphor from the Analects, to the Mencius, to Neo-Confucian schools. Even if it is not directly given by what is said, peripheral knowledge is often activated spontaneously and instantaneously, most especially when speaker and receptor move in the same cultural environment.
However, when the metaphor is perhaps too personal or far removed from its origin, as in the case of the ancient texts that we wish to study in succeeding chapters, then greater study is required to recover or reconstruct, as far as we are able, the context that can “bring metaphoricity back to life” (Stern 2000, 306,312).53 Some metaphors do require such process for their proper and in-depth comprehension, and the case is especially so with those found in texts belonging to a distant land and era.
To explain further by way of illustration, we can go back to the basic pattern of a metaphoric statement. When we say that “A is B”, there is implied a set of knowledge and beliefs attaching to both A and B, but principally to “B” as source term whose features are crucial for framing “A” and highlighting some aspect of “A”. Take the case
51 That is, widely held opinions of things. They may include hearsay and may not have yet been subject to critical examination. All the same, they furnish a good starting point for scientific thinking and philosophical reflection. Aristotle characteristically uses endoxic beliefs in such manner in his various treatises.
52 Stories and legends that form part of cultural legacies are part of background knowledge. Think, for instance, of “apple” and metaphoric expressions that derive from it, such as “the big apple” (New York) and “the apple of one’s eyes”. Homer’s story of the apple of Paris or the biblical account of the temptation of Adam and Eve – at least in the way that it is told or depicted in paintings – give the metaphor a spark.
53 As Stern points out, the “extra-linguistic” context of a metaphor need not be instantaneously or effortlessly recoverable for it to be relevant to exegesis, Stern 2002, 107.
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of Plato’s Myth of the Cave54, a summary understanding of Platonic thought coupled with our direct, tangible and personal experience of the sun suffice to make the
of Plato’s Myth of the Cave54, a summary understanding of Platonic thought coupled with our direct, tangible and personal experience of the sun suffice to make the