Gibbs & Steen (Eds.)-Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics .pdf

METAPHOR IN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE

General Editor E. F. KONRAD KOERNER (University of Ottawa) Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

Advisory Editorial Board

Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles); Lyle Campbell (Christchurch, N.Z.) John E. Joseph (Edinburgh); Manfred krifka (Austin, Tex.) Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.) E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)

Volume I73 Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. and Gerard J. Steen (eds) Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics papers from the 5th International International Cognitive Linguistics Selected papers Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, July ïggy

METAPHOR IN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS SELECTED PAPERS FROM THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE Amsterdam, July 1997

Edited by

RAYMOND W. GIBBS, JR. California, Santa Cruz University of University of California,

GERARD }. STEEN Tilburg University Free University University Amsterdam Amsterdam

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (5th : 1997 : Amsterdam, Netherlands) Metaphor in cognitive lingusitics : selected papers from the fifth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, UI / edited by Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., Gerard J. Steen. p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 175) Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Metaphor Congresses. 2. Cognitive grammar Congresses. 3. Language and culture Congresses. I. Gibbs, Raymonc V. II. Steen, Gerard. III. Title. IV. Series: Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV. Current issues in linguistic theory ; v. I75. P30I.5.M48I58 1999 4I5"dc2i 99-I55°8 ISBN 90 272 3681 X (Eur.) / I 556I9 892 2 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP © I999 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • I070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 275I9 • Philadelphia PA I9118-0519 • USA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book contains a selection of specially revised and refereed papers originally presented at the Fifth International Conference in Cognitive Linguistics, Amsterdam 1997. The chapter by Steen was not presented at the conference, and the chapter by Grady, Oakley, and Coulson was specially commissioned for this volume. The editors wish to thank the following colleagues who acted as anonymous referees in the selection and editing process: Lynne Cameron, Herb Colston, Jennifer Hamblin, Peter Harder, Lachlan Mackenzie, Teenie Matlock, Susanne Niemeier, Jennifer O'Brien, Elena Semino, and Wilbert Spooren. Their help has been essential. The editors are also grateful to Gwen Perret of Tilburg University for her expert assistance in the preparation of the manuscript. We would also like to thank Anke de Looper of John Benjamins for her seeing the manuscript through the printing process. Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr, University of California, Santa Cruz Gerard Steen, Tilburg University and Free University Amsterdam

CONTENTS

Introduction Gerard Steen and Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr

Kant, Blumenberg, Weinrich: Some Forgotten Contributions to the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor Olaf Jäkel

Metaphorical Mappings in the Sense of Smell Iraide Ibarretxe-Antñufiano

When a Bodily Source Domain Becomes Prominent: The Joy of Counting Metaphors in the Socio-Economic Domain Frank Boers

From Linguistic to Conceptual Metaphor in Five Steps Gerard Steen

A Typology of Motivation for Conceptual Metaphor: Correlation Resemblance Joseph Grady

Blending and Metaphor Joseph Grady, Todd Oakley, and Seana Coulson

Self and Agency in Religious Discourse: Perceptual Metaphors for Knowledge at a Marian Apparition Site Victor Balaban

Taking Metaphor Out Of our Heads and Putting It Into the Cultural World Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.

Metaphor: Does It Constitute or Reflect Cultural Models? Zoltán Kövecses

Metaphors and Cultural Models as Profiles and Bases Alan Cienki

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CONTENTS

Congruence by Degree: On the Relation between Metaphor and Cultural Models Michele Emanatian Subject Index Name Index

205 219 222

INTRODUCTION

GERARD STEEN & RAYMOND W. GIBBS, JR. Tilburg University/Free University Amsterdam & University of California, SantaCruz

Metaphor in cognitive linguistics is a two-way affair: it can go from linguistic metaphor to conceptual metaphor, or from conceptual metaphor to linguistic metaphor. For instance, cognitive linguists have used the abundant and systematic presence of metaphors in language as a basis for postulating the existence of conceptual metaphors, which illustrates the move from language to thought. Thus, Lakoff & Johnson (1980:46ff.) have presented a whole series of conceptual metaphors which capture our thinking about the nature of 'ideas': IDEAS ARE FOOD IDEAS ARE PEOPLE IDEAS ARE PLANTS IDEAS ARE PRODUCTS IDEAS ARE COMMODITIES IDEAS ARE RESOURCES IDEAS ARE MONEY IDEAS ARE CUTTING INSTRUMENTS IDEAS ARE FASHIONS

These are conceptual metaphors to the extent that they are abstractions of the ideas lying behind the common usage of such expressions as the following: IDEAS ARE MONEY

Let me put in my two cents' worth. He's rich in ideas. That book is a treasure trove of ideas. He has a wealth of ideas.

Conventional linguistic metaphors reflect pervasive conceptual metaphors and are perhaps the best source for discovering these metaphoric schemes of thought. However, the very fact that there are diverging conceptual metaphors for the same concept may also be used to explain some facts about language. Thus, Gibbs compared people's responses to idiomatic phrases, such as "John blew his stack" or "John bit her head off," that arise from different conceptual metaphors for

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GERARD STEEN & RAYMOND W. GIBBS, JR.

"anger," such as ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER and ANGER IS ANIMAL BEHAVIOR. When an idiom was presented in a context that described the person's anger in metaphorical terms that matched that idiom's underlying conceptual metaphor, people judged the idiom to be more appropriate than they did for similar idioms that arose from a different conceptual metaphor. This evidence illustrates the move from conceptual metaphor to linguistic metaphor by showing how different metaphorical ways of conceptualizing the same concept (e.g., "anger") give rise to different linguistic expressions related to that concept (e.g., "blew his stack" and "bit her head off). The basic assumption behind this two-way traffic between language and thought is the idea that metaphor needs a home base. This foundation for metaphor does not lie in language as an abstract system of signs or symbols and rules or conventions; instead, metaphor is a significant part of people's everyday conceptual systems. Conceptual metaphor and its relation to linguistic expression is the central area of investigation for cognitive linguists who are interested in meta-phor. Cognitive linguists most notably adhere to two important scientific commitments: (a) a commitment to seek general principles governing all aspects of human language (the generalization commitment), and (b) a commitment to make their accounts of human language consistent with what is generally known about human cognition (the cognitive commitment) (Lakoff 1990). As a result, the cognitive linguistic study of metaphor is related to the study of other aspects of language, such as polysemy and grammaticalization, and to general aspects of cognition, such as categorization. This research program carries with it the responsibility to explain exactly in what way metaphor is partly constitutive of everyday cognition, as well as to connect these ideas about metaphorical cognition to the description and explanation of metaphor in language. However, contemporary metaphor theory in cognitive linguistics appears to rest on several questionable assumptions about the psychological processes involved in metaphor use. Cognitive linguists are, at times, ambiguous about the implications of their linguistic analyses of conceptual metaphor as psychological models. For instance, a cognitive theory of metaphor is not necessarily an adequate portrayal of what individual speakers/hearers do when they think metaphorically or understand linguistic expressions motivated by enduring conceptual metaphors in everyday speech and written texts. Not every person

INTRODUCTION

3

possesses the same conceptual metaphors to the same degree of detailed elaboration as is suggested by linguistic analyses. Linguists' explorations of conceptual metaphors and their resulting rich set of entailments are not constrained by the limitations of ordinary human performance, one reason why linguists are so proficient at detailing all the logical and pragmatic implications of different metaphors (as seen in numerous chapters in this book). However, ordinary speakers/listeners often make do with incomplete and partial representations of linguistically and culturally shared metaphorical concepts. As a result, there may be a social division of labour between ordinary speakers in a specific community: every speaker may possess a partial, yet still coherent, representation of what linguists have revealed to be a rich, complex conceptual metaphor. A complete conceptual metaphor may only emerge from examination of the communication between, or across, participants in some community. This examination yields a "supra-individual," cultural class of conceptual metaphors (Gibbs this volume). These regularities capture part of the semantic repertoire of the idealized native speaker (Steen 1994). But how real people correspond to the idealized native speaker has been an important source of tension between linguistics and psycholinguistics since the beginning of the sixties (Chomsky), and in another respect since the beginning of this century (Saussure, Voloshinov). A related issue concerns the total set of possible conceptual metaphors and its relation to the individual mind. People may only have a subset of particular metaphors for a particular target domain, but not others. For instance, someone might have the metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY, but not LOVE IS A PLANT or LOVE IS MAGIC. Such variation between people within a community may have important effects on their experience of specific linguistic expressions as conventional or new, easy or difficult, appropriate or inappropriate, and so on, and may influence people's production and comprehension of specific linguistic expressions in concomitantly varying ways. Furthermore, individual, partial representations of cultural conceptual metaphors may not always be pre-stored in their entirety in people's mental lexicons and encylopedias. Parts of these conceptual metaphors may have to be (re)constructed in different ways on different occasions. At the same time, pre-stored conceptual metaphors may not always be activated when people immediately comprehend metaphorical language. The metaphorical and literal meanings of polysemous words, for example, may possibly receive independent representations (but see Williams 1992). This may be so even though polysemous lexical items may be related to conceptual metaphors when analyzed from a diachronic perspective.

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Some of these issues have been discussed, and various psychological evidence in support of conceptual metaphor can be found in Katz, Cacciari, Gibbs, and Turner (1998). This empirical work shows that conceptual metaphors may have different effects on people's learning, conscious interpretation, and their rapid, mostly unconscious comprehension of various kinds of conventional and novel metaphoric language. An important claim of this psycholinguistic research is that very different methods must be employed to assess the potential role that conceptual metaphors may have in different aspects of language production and understanding. Nonetheless, this work still provides strong evidence that systematic patterns of metaphorical thought have an important role in ordinary linguistic behavior. Finally, children may acquire conceptual metaphors wholesale from their learning language without necessarily having to re-experience all the cultural and embodied events that originally gave rise to these conceptual metaphors, events that also help keep these alive in human conceptual systems. It is not necessary for every adult to have undergone the same set of cultural experiences motivating the bulk of conventional conceptual metaphors for these metaphors to be a significant part of people's personal conceptual and linguistic repertoires. Adults may have simply learned how to use particular words in a conventionally metaphorical fashion on suitable occasions. We raise these alternative possibilities about the cognitive status of conceptual metaphors because of frequent ambiguities in cognitive linguistics about the relation between linguistic and conceptual metaphor. Simply put, there may not be a direct mapping between linguistic metaphor and conceptual metaphor, on the one hand, and between linguistic metaphor and individual cognition, on the other. Cognitive linguists should be careful not to immediately assume that the results of their systematic examination of language necessarily implies that each individual person must have all the full-blown conceptual metaphors uncovered by linguistic analysis. In fact, this issue is a significant source of tension in the contemporary study of metaphor in cognitive science. Many cognitive psychologists are skeptical about trying to infer much about human conceptual systems from an analysis of systematic patterns in language (Murphy 1996). These psychologists argue that the great variability in people's introspections about their own mental processes makes linguistic intuitions a poor choice of methods for examining issues of mental representation (a point that some linguists now agree with—see Croft 1998). Furthermore, linguists' intuitions often differ from those of ordinary individuals who have no pre-conceived notion about the phenomenon of interest. As Sandra and Rice (1995) put it, whose mind are we trying to understand-the linguist's or the language user's? For these reasons, cognitive psychologists seek

INTRODUCTION

5

to experimentally test falsifiable hypotheses using more objective methods under controlled situations. Both of us have conducted psychological studies with this aim in mind and believe, contrary to some psychologists, perhaps, that at least certain elements of cognitive linguistics have much to contribute to understanding metaphor in language, thought, and culture (Gibbs 1994; Steen 1994). Despite these debates on the cognitive and psychological status of metaphor, the interaction between cognitive scientists and linguists has led to a growing and impressive body of research about metaphor in language and cognition, especially since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) pioneering book Metaphors We Live By. The present collection of articles represents a part of the most recent developments in metaphor studies currently carried out in relation to the framework of cognitive linguistics. There are several important trends about the study of metaphor within the chapters that follow. Perhaps the most significant to point out is that each author's work reflects different ways of adhering to the generalization commitment and/ or the cognitive commitment (noted above). For example, Frank Boers and Iraïde Ibarretxe-Antunano report their respective detailed examinations of the metaphorical character of specific target domains. These authors attempt through their systematic analyses of different linguistic expressions to show how metaphor shapes people's conceptualizations of abstract concepts. The difference between them is also important: Ibarretxe-Antunano's contribution redresses the picture of metaphorical extension in connection with the senses first presented in Sweetser (1990), and can be seen as a correction of a hypothesis. Frank Boers, on the other hand, takes the hypothesis of embodied experience underlying metaphor use as given, and tests it in a highly specific context by means of quantitative corpus analysis. In terms of trends, the former is a much more typical exercise in cognitive linguistics than the latter, and we are happy that we have been able to include both, for obviously different reasons. Another author, Joe Grady, explores systematic analyses of conventional and novel metaphorical expressions to discover deeper correlations in embodied experience that form the bedrock of many aspects of metaphorical thought. His paper is a contribution to the central concerns of the theory of conceptual metaphor, and before long it may produce interesting hypotheses for testing. In another paper, Joe Grady, Todd Oakley, and Seana Coulson propose that complex mappings in both metaphorical and certain non-metaphorical language reveal how conceptual metaphors are just part of a larger system of conceptual integration. Theirs is another theoretical contribution, which was specially commissioned for this volume: it reflects the new trend in cognitive linguistics which pays attention to all kinds of conceptual blending, and can be seen as a manifestation of the

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cognitive commitment mentioned above. If metaphor is just one specific case of conceptual blending, it becomes even less special than people have long assumed. Victor Balaban goes on to test specific hypotheses about the role of embodiment in certain abstract concepts by conducting quantitative counts of particular metaphors underlying certain religious discourse. His work can be usefully compared to the study by Boers, although Balaban's method is the one of field work rather than corpus linguistics. That field work does not preclude the use of statistical testing is another important feature of his chapter. Moreover, his work also points forward to the theme of the last group of chapters, in which conceptual metaphor is closely related to the cultural context in which it is used. From that perspective, too, it is unusual to find a statistically tested analysis of data. Ray Gibbs also employs ideas from cognitive linguistics to test hypotheses, in laboratory experiments, in order to reveal aspects of how metaphorical concepts are employed in linguistic processing. At the same time, however, he argues how this empirical work can, and cannot, reveal important aspects of culture in mind. His chapter is an effort to begin disentangling the knot between metaphor in language, the individual mind, and culture. If we have emphasized that cognitive linguistics ought to be careful about positing too direct a relation between linguistic analysis and psychological modeling, it ought to be realized that the situation is even further compounded when one takes the concrete social and cultural context into consideration. Other authors, such as Alan Cienki, Michele Emanation, and Zoltán Kövecses, continue on this theme. They attempt through their respective analyses of linguistic expressions to uncover larger cultural models, and to especially demonstrate how metaphor constrains these cultural schemes of thought. Kövecses' emphasis is relatively theoretical, addressing the relation between the literal and nonliteral emergence of metaphorical cultural models, in a debate with Quinn (1987). Cienki and Emanatian are relatively more empirical, in that they describe culturally specific conceptual metaphors for specific domains. However, their contributions also connect with more general theoretical discussions about profile and base and about congruence. Overall, these authors use different methods to achieve different kinds of generalizations about language, thought, and culture. One of the future challenges for cognitive linguistic studies of metaphor will be to explicitly acknowledge the degree of commitment to drawing generalizations about thought and culture from the systematic analysis of language. In this connection, Gerard Steen provides a detailed set of steps to increase the reliability of conceptual metaphor identification on the basis of linguistic metaphor analysis. And Olaf Jäkel argues in his chapter that certains aspects of the contemporary theory of metaphor have

INTRODUCTION

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their roots in the work of earlier philosophers and linguists. This is a proposal that reminds cognitive linguists that there is a wealth of ideas about the relation between metaphor and language and metaphor and cognition readily available, and that cognitive linguists could do worse than relate their theoretical framework to this tradition as well as explore some of these ideas empirically. Finally, the chapters in this book also differ in the extent to which the empirical work reported relates to the concerns of cognitive psychologists, philosophers, and anthropologists. Thus, the work in these chapters reflects the growing influence of cognitive linguistic ideas and research on metaphor to neighboring disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. As we note above, and as is evident in several of the chapters in this volume, especially the ones on culture, there remain real tensions between the aims and methodologies in these differing disciplines. At the very least, however, no scholarly discipline can capture significant theoretical generalizations about metaphor in language and thought without paying close attention to the continuing fruits of the cognitive linguistics tree. References

Croft, W. 1998. "Linguistic Evidence and Mental Representations". Cognitive Linguistics 9. 151-174. Gibbs, R.W., Jr. This volume. "Taking Metaphor Out Of our Heads and Putting It into the Cultural World" 1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katz, A., C. Cacciari, R.W. Gibbs, Jr., & M. Turner. 1998. Figurative Thought and Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. 1990. "The Invariance Hypothesis: Is Abstract Reason Based on Image-Schemas?" Cognitive Linguistics 1. 39-74. , & M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Murphy, G. 1996. "On Metaphoric Representations". Cognition 60. 173-204. Quinn, N. 1987. "Convergent Evidence for a Cultural Model of American Marriage". Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. by D. Holland, & N. Quinn, 173-192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sandra, D., & S. Rice. 1995. "Network Analyses of Prepositional Meaning: Mirroring Whose Mind—The Linguist's or the Language User's?" Cognitive Linguistics 6. 89-130. Steen, G.J. 1994. Understanding Metaphor in Literature: An Empirical Approach. London: Longman.

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Sweetser, E. 1990. From

Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Williams, J. 1992. "Processing Polysemous Words in Context: Evidence for Interrelated Meanings". Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 21.193-218.

KANT, BLUMENBERG, WEINRICH SOME FORGOTTEN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE COGNITIVE THEORY OF METAPHOR

OLAF JÄKEL Hamburg/Halle

The contribution to metaphor theory by Lakoff & Johnson (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987, 1993) needs to be assessed by confronting their views with some earlier approaches that they appear to have overlooked. For about threehundred years now, various mostly European philosophers and linguists have been anticipating the central tenets and findings of the cognitive theory of metaphor. The first section of this paper presents a short overview of the extensive "ancestry" of the cognitive approach. However, pointing to predecessors of the cognitive theory of metaphor is neither an end in itself nor done for the sake of historical justice alone. In particular those scholars presented in the following sections, Kant, Blumenberg, and Weinrich, could make substantial contributions and amendments to a cognitive theory of metaphor. The final section gives a summary and conclusion. 1.

Predecessors: An overview

We start then with an overview of predecessors whose contributions will not be acknowledged in detail. Most of these maintain at least the ubiquity of linguistic metaphor as well as its unidirectionality (for a comprehensive exposition and discussion of the main tenets of the cognitive theory of metaphor, see Jäkel 1997, chapter 1, which features a summary in terms of nine hypotheses in section 1.2.5.). In many cases, these tenets are accompanied by a claim of "cognitive" domains or models. My inquiry into this matter yields the following list: John Locke (1689) Essay concerning Human Understanding Giambattista Vico (1744) Principi di una scienza nuova Johann Gottfried Herder (1770) Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache

Franz Wüllner (1827) Ein Versuch

Die Bedeutung der sprachlichen Casus und Modi:

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OLAF JÄKEL

Johann Adam Hartung (1831) Ueber

die Casus, ihre Bildung und Bedeu tung, in der griechischen und lateinischen Sprache Hermann Paul (1880) Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte F. Max Müller (1888) Das Denken im Lichte der Sprache Ernst Cassirer (1923) Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Vol.I: Die Sprache

José Ortega y Gasset (1925) "Las dos grandes metáforas" Karl Bühler (1934) Sprachtheorie Jost Trier (1934) "Deutsche Bedeutungsforschung" Benjamin Lee Whorf (1939) "The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language" Arnold Gehlen (1940) Der Mensch Walter Porzig (1950) Das Wunder der Sprache Franz Dornseiff (1955) Bezeichnungswandel unseres Wortschatzes: Ein Blick in das Seelenleben der Sprechenden Nelson Goodman (1968) Languages of Art Hannah Arendt (1971) Vom Leben des Geistes. Vol.I: Das Denken J.M. Anderson (1971) The Grammar of Case: Towards a Localistic Theory G.A. Miller & P.N. Johnson-Laird (1976) Language and Perception Julian Jaynes (1976) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Every single one of these approaches would be worth of detailed exploration and could be seen in comparison with the tenets of the cognitive theory of metaphor. Thus it would be worthwhile, for example, to investigate the relationship between the localist theory of grammar and Cognitive Linguistics. Localists like Anderson (1971) and their German predecessors Wüllner (1827) and Hartung (1831) constitute a particular line of ancestors to the cognitive approach. They anticipate at least programmatically - crucial elements of the cognitive theory of metaphor, as the following passage shows: 1 Our perception proceeds in part by way of the senses, in part by means of the mind. Sensual perception is always first: therefore language serves sensual perception before it serves mental apperception. By means of the analogy of the mental and the sensual, words are later transferred to mental apperception. Like the poets, ordinary people refine language by means of metaphors. Just as there is no sensual expression which could not be transferred to mental apperception, we claim that there are no terms for mental issues which are not taken from sensual things. Thus wherever we have both sensual and metaphorical applications, we should without doubt regard the former as basic (Hartung 1831:4f.).

SOME FORGOTTEN CONTRIBUTIONS

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Probably the Americans Lakoff and Johnson, whose research is for the most part unhistorical, are not to be reproached for ignoring the works of a German scholar from the nineteenth century like Johann Adam Hartung. The same is likely to apply with regard to German linguists such as Hermann Paul (1880), Karl Bühler (1934), Jost Trier (1934), Walter Porzig (1950), and Franz Dornseiff (1955) as well as German philosophers and anthropologists like Max Müller (1888), Ernst Cassirer (1923), or Arnold Gehlen (1940). Things might look different, though, with some English "classics", of which we will pick out the two best known examples. In his 1939 essay 'The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language", the American Benjamin Lee Whorf, one of the initiators of compara tive linguistics, makes the following general claim (Whorf 1939:146 and 155): ... we can hardly refer to the simplest nonspatial situation without constant resort to physical metaphors. [...] Our metaphorical system, by naming nonspatial experiences after spatial ones, imputes to sounds, smells, tastes, emotions, and thoughts qualities like the colors, luminosities, shapes, angles, textures, and motions of spatial experience. Though Whorf is given some credit in Lakoff s & Johnson's preface (1980:xi), this is at the most aimed at his well known hypothesis concerning the role of language in structuring world view, while at other times (cf. Lakoff 1987:304ff.) he is vehemently attacked as a crass relativist. Nowhere do Lakoff and Johnson give Whorf any credit for the hypothesis quoted above, though this could be seen as anticipating the basic finding of their cognitive theory of metaphor. Still worse treatment is given to another, and much older, "ancestor" of that theory: the British philosopher John Locke is condemned by Johnson for his rejection of metaphor as a rhetorical device unsuitable for philosophical discourse (Johnson 1980:46; cf. Lakoff & Johnson 1980:190f.). What is overlooked is the fact that in the passage criticized, Locke is only concerned with the artistic trope. In the first chapter of his philosophy of language, though, as part of his Essay concerning Human Understanding from 1689, Locke explains the central "Cognitive Linguistic" tenet quite precisely: It may also lead us a little towards the Original of all our Notions and Knowledge, if we remark, how great a dependance our Words have on common sensible Ideas; and how those, which are made use of to stand for Actions and Notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and from obvious sensible Ideas are transferred to more abstruse significa tions, and made to stand for Ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses (Locke 1689:403, with his original italics and capitalization).

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Put sarcastically, Locke's only failure would be not to have addressed these "Words taken from the Operations of sensible Things, and applied to certain Modes of Thinking" (ibid.) explicitly as conceptual metaphors. 2.

KanVs concept of analogy and his "symbolical

sensualisation"

The first predecessor of the cognitive theory of metaphor to be treated more comprehensively is Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804). In his Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781/87), which forms the epistemological part of his "Critical Philosophy", Kant ascertains two roots of knowledge: conceptual understanding and sensual intuition. Only the combination of these two constituents yields real knowledge. The crucial point for us is that intuition (Anschauung) is a necessary constituent of knowledge (1781/87: B 33): "All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characteristics, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensuality, because in no other way can an object be given to us." Now there are concepts without any directly corresponding sensual intuition. Such concepts need to be "sensualised" indirectly, and according to Kant this is the cognitive function of metaphor. To appreciate the relevant passage from Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790) quoted below we need to be reminded of one thing: Kant does not have a special term metaphor, but speaks of symbols instead (for confirmation see Blumenberg 1960:l0f. and Keil 1991:226). Thus when he explains "symbolical sensualisation" (1790:§ 59), we are justified in translating "metaphorical sensualisation". And this works as follows: ... by means of an analogy (for which empirical intuitions are made use of), in which judgment does a twofold job: first, applying the concept to the object of a sensual intuition, and then applying the rule for reflecting on that intuition to a completely different object, of which the first is only the symbol [i.e. metaphor]. Thus, a monarchic state may be conceptualized as a living being if governed according to democratic laws, but as a mere machine (like a hand mill) if governed by a single absolute ruler. In both cases, though, it is conceptualized only symbolically [i.e. metaphorically]. There is no similarity between a despotic state and a hand mill, but between the rule for reflecting on either of the two and their causality. This issue has not been explained in detail, though it is worth of deeper investigation. However, we cannot dwell on this here. Our language is full of such indirect conceptualizations by means of analogy, in which the expression [...] contains merely a symbol [i.e. metaphor] for reflection. Thus the words Grund ['ground, reason'] (support, basis), abhängen ['depend'] (be held from above), woraus fließen ['flow'] (follow), Substanz ['substance'] (as Locke expresses himself: the bearer of qualities) as well as countless others


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[...] are only symbolical sensualisations. They are expressions for concepts not based on any direct intuition, but only by means of analogy with such an intuition, i.e. the transfer of reflection on some object of intuition to a completely different concept, may be one to which no intuition can ever correspond directly (Kant 1790:§ 59, with his original italics). Careful interpretation of this dense passage confirms that the philosopher, though without an explicit term metaphor, is onto what two hundred years later Lakoff and Johnson will dub conceptual metaphor. Kant speaks of analogy, construed as "the transfer of reflection on some object of intuition to a completely different concept, maybe one to which no intuition can ever correspond directly". This is the equivalent of Lakoff's and Johnson's cognitive-conceptual definition of metaphor, combined with a claim of necessity and an epistemological reason for the unidirectionality of metaphor: concepts to which no intuition corresponds directly are experientially grounded by means of analogical transfer. This can also be seen in the following quote from Kant's treatise Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren? (1786:267): "We may fashion our concepts in the most abstract, abstaining from sensuality as best we can, yet still they will be linked with images, whose true purpose is to make those concepts fit for experiential use that have not been derived from experience in the first place." The issue can be made clearer with the help of Kant's examples. To reflect on something as abstract (i.e. not open to direct intuition; for a discussion of abstractness in concepts see Jäkel 1997, especially section 1.3.3.) as the political STATE we make use of various analogies that supply indirect sensualisation or metaphorical grounding. The conceptualization of the STATE as a mere MACHINE (like a HAND MILL) focuses on different aspects than would its personification as a LIVING BEING. According to Kant, the first conceptualization highlights despotic and absolute structures of a monarchic state, while the second highlights democratic aspects. In passing as it were, yet unmistakably, the Kantian passage ascertains the ubiquity of metaphor in everyday language, with examples like "Substanz" indicating the need for a diachronic and etymological approach. What seems most commendable in the way of the theory of metaphor is Kant's statement that there is no similarity "between a despotic state and a hand mill", i.e. "objectively" between target domain and source domain, "but between the rule for reflecting on either of the two and their causality": reflection by means of conceptual metaphor only constitutes similarities in the sense of analogical relations between the elements and their functional connections in both target domain and source domain.

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This "analogy (in the qualitative sense)" (1790:§ 90), which appears quite modern in our age of cognitive science, is exemplified further in various other parts of Kant's works. Thus we conceptualize the BEAVER'S LODGE metaphorically as HUMAN ARCHITECTURE (1790:§ 90), the LEGAL RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN A COMMUNITY as MECHANICAL ATTRACTION AND REPULSION OF BODIES (1783:§ 58 and 1790:§ 90), TIME as a POINTED LINE (1781/87: B 50), or GOD'S CREATION as a WORK OF ART (1781/87: B 655, 1783:§ 57, and 1790:§ 90). The last example in particular stands for the finding that the whole realm of the metaphysical depends completely on metaphorical conceptualization. Kant (1790:§ 59) states: "Thus all our knowledge of god is only symbolical" (cf. the discussion of the necessity of metaphor in Jäkel 1997, section 1.2.4.). The explanatory function of these conceptualizations is emphasized in Kant's Prolegomena (1783:§ 58): "By means of such an analogy I can achieve a relational conceptualization of things which are utterly unknown to me." In this case, the critical philosopher, who condemns all unenlightened "dogmatic anthropomorphism" (1783:§ 57), does not have any epistemological reservations: "We ... take the liberty of a symbolical anthropomorphism" (ibid.), construing conditions in the target domain only "as if' they were like those in the source domain. To construe the world as if it were the work of a divine artist is utterly permissible as long as that artist is not hypostatised; i.e. as long as this anthropo morphic conceptualization of god remains symbolical, and in Kant this reads: metaphorical. To sum up: despite its conciseness, Kant's exposition of "symbolical sensualisation" by means of analogy anticipates the most important tenets of the cognitive theory of metaphor. 2 In addition, that approach is given an explicit epistemological grounding. That "deeper investigation" which the cognitive and linguistic phenomenon of metaphor merits according to Kant (cf. the above quoted passage 1790:§ 59) may be claimed by Lakoff and Johnson as their genuine achievement. Another predecessor can be treated here only as a sort of "appendage" to Kant: in his Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (1923), the Neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer remodels Kant's insistence on the cognitive importance of sensual intuition as constituent of knowledge to that of spatial intuition. This surfaces in the "metaphorical representation of mental properties in terms of spatial properties" (1923:150), with the ultimate motivation lying in the fundamental bodily orientation of human beings (1923:159; cf. also ibid., p. 271f., as well as Cassirer 1972:109-136; see the discussion of the direction of metaphorical transfer in Jäkel 1997, section 1.3.3.):


15

... it is our distinctive knowledge of the limbs of our body which serves as the starting point of all further orientation in space. The distinctive image of our own body, seen as a complete and structured organism, serves as a sort of model for our construal of the world as a whole. Here we have our primary level of coordination, to which we can later turn back and relate, and from which we take the vocabulary to refer linguistically to this progress. 3.

Blumenberg's philosophical

"metaphorology"

The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg (1920/1996) develops his theory of metaphor and the method of metaphorology in two extensive essays: "Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie" (1960), and "Beobachtungen an Metaphern" (1971). Some of his later books (1979a, 1989) can be seen as applications of this metaphorology. Blumenberg speaks of absolute metaphors (1960:9) in cases where we are not faced with rhetorical surplus phenomena whose expressions could be paraphrased literally without a problem. He notes that metaphors can also be "basic components of philosophical language, 'transfers' which cannot be brought back to the real, into logicality" (Blumenberg 1960:9, with his original italics). The philosopher also provides the following explanation (1960:11): "That these metaphors are called absolute means only that they resist the terminological claim of being dissolvable into literalness. It does not mean that one metaphor could not be replaced or substituted or even corrected by another more precise one." It is true that Blumenberg' s fundamental observations are concerned with the language of philosophy fixed in writing. But we will soon see that his approach cannot be confined to that special language, but applies to language in general. We also find the essential idea of our Cognitive Linguistic method of investigation in Blumenberg's exposition: "Metaphorology attempts to get at the substructure of thought, at the subsoil, the nutrient solution of systematic crystallization" (1960:11). This aim is achieved by way of collection and comparative analysis of linguistic metaphors, because (1960:64): "Just comparing metaphors ... will disclose parts of the ground structure of cognition." In that cognitive substructure we find "orientations" (1960:13) that are "'read' from quite elementary cognitive models [Modellvorstellungen], which in the shape of metaphors surface in the sphere of language." Exactly like in the cognitive theory of metaphor, linguistic metaphors are regarded as expressions and symptoms of cognitive models, systematic structures of thought that provide general orientation though they usually reside in the speakers' subconscious. Thus, even for many utterances that at first glance may appear unmetaphorical, the following applies (1960:16f.):

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OLAF JÄKEL

... on closer inspection they are clearly oriented around a metaphorical background, which we propose to call 'implicative model'. This means that metaphors in their function discussed here do not have to emerge at all in the sphere of linguistic expressions. But a context of utterances may suddenly merge in a unity of sense if we can hypothetically reconstruct the metaphorical model from which these utterances are 'read'. In addition to such

metaphorical models Blumenberg (1960:69) speaks of "background metaphors [HintergrundmetaphorikY' \ explaining this notion as "the implicit use of a metaphor" (1960:86). These background metaphors are mostly equivalent to our conceptual metaphors. As these are also found in ordinary

everyday language, the project of a systematic metaphorology gains importance outside the domain of philosophy as well: It is not only language that thinks for us, 'standing behind us' as it were in our world view. Still more compelling is the way we are determined by our supply and choice of images, 'channeled' in what we will perceive and understand. Here lies the importance of a systematic metaphorology (1960:69). Such a metaphorology can take linguistic metaphor "as a guiding line for observing our everyday world" (1979b:83). It enables the socio-historical study of those background metaphors known as cultural models in the cognitive theory of metaphor. Their function is described by Blumenberg (1960:20) as follows: Their content determines behavior by providing orientation. They give structure to our world, representing the unassessable whole of reality which can never be experienced. To the historically understanding observer they indicate those fundamental certainties, conjectures, and evaluations which regulated the attitudes, expectations, activities and inactivities, desires and disappointments, interests and indifferences of an age. Many of Blumenberg's examples look familiar, too, as they remind us of conceptual metaphors analyzed by Cognitive Linguists as well: TRUTH as LIGHT (1960:12f.) or as an ACTIVE PERSON (1960:14ff. passim); the WORLD as a LIVING BEING (1960:21), as a CLOCKWORK (1960:21f. and 70ff.), as a SHIP (1960:23), as aTHEATER (1960:21 and 1971:167f.), or as aBOOK (1960:77ff. and 1989); TIME as SPACE (1971:166f. and 1979b:81f.), HISTORY as aSTORY (1971:166 and 168), HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS as SOURCES (1971:191-195), or LIFE as a SEA VOYAGE

(1971:171-190 and 1979a). At least implicitly, these examples also confirm the


17

directionality of metaphorical transfer from concrete source domains to abstract target domains, even though an explicit unidirectionality hypothesis is missing. The fact that Blumenberg exemplifies these metaphors primarily with linguistic material taken from the classics of philosophy, science, and literature should not prevent his recognition as accomplished predecessor of the cognitive theory of metaphor. We recognize his exposition of the relationship between linguistic metaphors and cultural models as well as the analysis of their cognitive function. Moreover, even the focusing character of metaphor is known to Blumenberg, who speaks of the "phenomenon of metaphorical definition of perspective" (1960:75). One obvious difference from the cognitive approach of Lakoff and Johnson lies in the fact that Blumenberg' s analyses of metaphor are for the most part done historio-philologically. Yet this is a rather peripheral difference in the approach to the manifold of linguistic data, while there is overall and fundamental agreement in the theory of metaphor. Moreover, the philosopher himself states (1960:38) that to make the most of metaphorology, synchronic cross-sections are needed to supplement his diachronic longitudinal sections. As Cognitive Linguists and "metaphorologists" doing primarily synchronic research we would certainly be well-advised to give more attention to the diachronic dimension in our analyses of metaphor than do Lakoff and Johnson. 3 Especially in this regard, Blumenberg's approach could provide a model for the methodology of the cognitive theory of metaphor. 4.

Weinrich's linguistic theory of metaphorical "image fields"

The German linguist Harald Weinrich (*1927) unfolds his theory of metaphor in five essays published between 1958 and 1976: "Münze und Wort: Untersuchungen an einem Bildfeld" (1958), "Semantik der kühnen Metapher" (1963), "Metaphora memoriae" (1964), "Allgemeine Semantik der Metapher" (1967), and "Streit um Metaphern" (1976b). 4 Of all predecessors presented here, Weinrich's approach is the one that comes closest to the cognitive theory of metaphor, anticipating all its central tenets. 5 Because of this fact, and because the work of this scholar of Romance as well as Germanic languages and literature seems to have gone almost unnoticed in the world of English linguistics, our presentation and discussion of his approach to metaphor will be the most comprehensive. Right from the beginning of his theoretical discussion Weinrich displays his conceptual understanding of metaphor, analyzing linguistic metaphors not in isolation but situated within domains. His collection of examples (1958:278-82) such as "Prägen von Wörtern" ('coining of phrases'), "Wortschatz" ('vocabulary') or "Wortreichtum" ('abundance of words') makes it clear to a German reader what

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OLAF JÄKEL

has to be stated of every single one of these expressions (1958:282): "... this metaphor is not isolated. From the moment of its birth it is rooted in a firm image field." As will be seen in the following, the term image field (Bildfeld) is Weinrich's equivalent to our conceptual metaphor. To account for the linguistic examples quoted above, he formulates the image field WORD CURRENCY, where according to Lakoff and Johnson we would have WORDS ARE COINS or LANGUAGE AS FINANCE. The difference here is merely in notation, not in the theoretical analysis. Weinrich's notation utilizes the tendency of the German language to form the longest compound nouns without problems. In order to convey the principle of his approach, my translation is literal in most cases, even if this yields ungrammatical English compounds. In general, each of Weinrich's image fields of the type "AB" can be translated into a conceptual metaphor of the pattern "A is/as B", and vice versa. Thus a lot of the examples of image fields discussed by Weinrich will strike a familiar note: LIFE JOURNEY, WORLD THEATER, LIGHT OF REASON and MARRIAGE VEHICLE (1958:285), LOVE WAR (1963:313) as well as WAR OF WORDS (1976b:329) and many more are among those conceptual metaphors rediscovered by cognitive metaphor research. Weinrich even formulates an explicit domain hypothesis (1958:283): "What really takes place in the actual and apparently singular metaphor is the linkage of two conceptual domains." Later he provides the following explanation (1967:326): "... above the actual metaphor as a speech act, in our linguistic competence there is an image field as a virtual structure. In most cases, this image field does not need to be created, as it is known already from countless sources." Such metaphorical domains (Sinnbezirke) are then (ibid.) - following the field semantic tradition - identified as semantic fields: "Image fields ... can be construed as the connection of two semantic fields." Of these two fields, one is the image donor, the other the image recipient (1958:284), Weinrich's terminological equivalents to the source domain and target domain of the cognitive approach (for an overview of the terminological correspondences between Weinrich and Lakoff/Johnson see table 1 below). According to his own words (ibid.), Weinrich adopts these terms from Jost Trier (1934). In the example discussed above, LANGUAGE would be the image recipient field, and FINANCE the image donor field. The task Weinrich sets for the linguistic metaphorologist will also sound quite familiar to Cognitive Linguistic ears - it is the systematic investigation of image fields (1958:285f.): "Whoever wants to provide a comprehensive, substantial metaphorology will have to list them [i.e. the image fields], supply monographic descriptions of each, and explain how they are interrelated." And there is the following noteworthy restriction, which in effect reinforces the linguists' task (1958:286):


19

Is every metaphor rooted in an image field? That would be too much to claim. In fact, every word can take on metaphorical meaning, every matter can be addressed metaphorically, and imagination knows no bounds. Arbitrary, isolated metaphors are always possible. But they are rarer than some may think, and what is more important, usually they are not successful in the linguistic community. The linguistic community favors integrated metaphors, in particular (though not exclusively) for the domain of mental experience. The metaphor that is integrated within an image field has the best chance of being accepted by the linguistic community, and the masters of language know this. Again, Weinrich's exposition equals that of the cognitive theory of metaphor. Linguistic metaphors which are isolated and idiosyncratic are a theoretical possibility. But it can be predicted that only those expressions will prevail in the linguistic community that come from conceptual metaphors already in existence (cf. e.g. Lakoff & Johnson 1980:54f. passim). This point is corroborated by the results of my empirical investigation of the understanding of metaphor (cf. Jäkel 1993b and Jäkel 1997, chapter 2). The two tenets of metaphorical models and of the necessity of metaphor are also central to Weinrich's approach. First he formulates a hypothesis of the linguistic necessity, using the target domain of TIME as an example (1963:316): "We cannot refer to time without speaking metaphorically." That the ultimate reason for this linguistic finding lies in the cognitive necessity of metaphor is stated as part of Weinrich's discussion of the target domain MEMORY: "We cannot think of an object such as memory without recourse to metaphors. Metaphors, especially if they appear in consistent image fields, must be estimated as (hypothetical) cognitive models [Denkmodelle]" (Weinrich 1964:294, with my italics; cf. ibid., pp. 291-94; see also the discussion in Weinrich et al. 1968:117 passim). With this we have reached Weinrich's model hypothesis, and his metaphor based "(hypothetical) cognitive models" indisputably match Lakoff s (1987) metaphorical ICMs exactly. In the role of cognitive models, conceptual metaphors (alias "image fields") really determine our world view (1958:288): "Thus we see now that our view of the world is essentially determined by our image fields, indeed much more than by word fields." This "world making" function of metaphor is emphasized even more strongly in the following statement, which Weinrich makes against the comparison view of metaphor: "... our metaphors do not, as the old theory of metaphor claimed, mirror real or imagined similarities, but they only establish their analogies, they create their correspondences. Thus they are demiurgical instruments" (Weinrich 1963:309, with my italics; cf. also Weinrich et al. 1968:118f.). This argument, which is very similar to that of Max

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OLAF JÄKEL

Black (1977), is a graphic confirmation of the basically constructivist view which is one of the general characteristics of the cognitive theory of metaphor (see e.g. Taylor 1995:4f.; cf. Jäkel 1997, section 1.2.4.). Even the tenet of the unidirectionality of metaphorical transfer is found in the early works of Weinrich, where it concerns conceptual metaphors, or image fields. In his argument against Aristotle's claim of a general reversibility of metaphors, Weinrich (1963:315, with his original italics) focuses on ... image fields, which, being traditional and social products, as a rule are unidirectional [einsinnig]. [...] Here, tradition has favored one direction of metaphor, and with this directionality [Gerichtetheit], metaphor has unfolded into an image field, thus becoming not just a stylistic, but a linguistic reality. This "linguistic reality" of conceptual metaphor is up for investigation by modern linguistics. Weinrich's unidirectionality hypothesis is unambiguous and without need of further comment. What then is the status of conceptual metaphors or image fields? Weinrich's answer to that question can be presented in three steps. First of all, most conceptual metaphors are not a matter of the individual speaker or author. Instead, there is "a supraindividual world of images as an objective, substantial possession of metaphors within a community" (1958:277). Secondly, that community is not necessarily confined to a single language (Weinrich 1958:287, with my italics): Concrete image fields will hardly ever be common property of all mankind, nor will they belong exclusively to one single language. They belong to the linguistic world view of a whole culture. [...] There is a harmony of image fields between the individual western languages. The West is an image field community. [Das Abendland ist eine Bildfeldgemeinschaft.]

This is a point that had already been made by Bréal (1900:132): "Among the old nations of Europe there exists a common fund of Metaphor [sic] which arises from a certain unity of culture." Thus, conceptual metaphors have the status of "multiversals". According to Weinrich, this is the reason why linguistic metaphors can quite often be translated without loss. And there is still a third extension of the "dominion" of conceptual metaphors that the philologist thinks possible (1976:335): "I cannot exclude that even between different cultures there may be surprisingly similar image fields, which then would give voice to certain anthropologically basic experiences of all mankind." This is the suggestion that some conceptual metaphors, instead of being just "multiversal", might even have the status of universals. This view is shared by the


21

proponents of the cognitive theory of metaphor. Probably because they do represent "certain anthropologically basic experiences of all mankind", image schemata, which underlie many metaphorical ICMs, are the most promising candidates for the status of cognitive universals (see Jäkel 1997, section 1.2.3.; cf. Johnson 1992:354 as well as Lakoff 1987:302, 312, and 336). So far we have inspected Weinrich's theoretical anticipations and parallels to the cognitive approach to metaphor, which are quite remarkable in number and degree of concurrence. In the following we will discuss two additional aspects in which the cognitive theory of metaphor might well receive inspiration or amendments from Weinrich's outline. The first point concerns the definition of metaphor. Right from the start in 1980, Lakoff and Johnson confine their definitional efforts to conceptual metaphor and thus to the cognitive-conceptual level. As regards the level of language, where lexemes are used metaphorically, they remain quite vague (for a detailed discussion see Jäkel 1997, ch. 1, in particular sections 1.2.2. and 1.3.1.). By contrast, Weinrich makes an effort to supplement his conceptual-metaphorical image fields with a definition of metaphor on the language level. In this he follows a text semantic approach, very rightly regarding linguistic metaphor as a contextual phenomenon (cf. the discussion in Jäkel 1997, section 1.3.1., whose results are in complete agreement with Weinrich's theory): A metaphor is never a simple word, but always a piece of text, however small. And do not let orthography, that eternal temptress of linguistic analysis, deceive you: Windrose ['compass rose'], though one word in written German, is a piece of text in which the element Wind provides the context for the element Rose, determining it to become metaphorical (Weinrich 1967:319). Thus by its use in a particular context, the original meaning of a lexeme is converted to a metaphorical reading. Weinrich calls this process "counterdetermination", thus gaining his definition of linguistic metaphor (1967:320): "With this concept, metaphor can be defined as a word in a counterdeterminating context." I do not mean to say that this attempt at a definition will do a lot. After all, we still have to find out in every single case what the literal meaning or ordinary determination of a lexeme is, and how exactly a particular context causes its particular counterdetermination. Yet Weinrich's proposal of a text semantic definition indicates an awareness of linguistic problems which the main proponents of the cognitive theory of metaphor sometimes seem to lack (cf. Lawler's 1983:202 review of Lakoff & Johnson 1980: "L&J [sic] do not even

OLAF JÄKEL

22

distinguish nouns from verbs, let alone selectional restrictions from idiomatic usage"). After all, there is nothing to be said against Weinrich's definition of metaphor, which is also completely compatible with the cognitive approach. The second aspect in which Weinrich could contribute to the cognitive theory of metaphor concerns the systematicity of method. Like Blumenberg (s.a.), Weinrich starts his theory of metaphor with the aim of (1958:277) "developing the outline of a methodology for metaphor research." In this connection, and exploiting two traditional terms from semantic field analysis, Weinrich (1958:284) draws the useful distinction between a "semasiological approach" and an "onomasiological approach" in the systematic investigation of metaphors. Applied to the initial example of the image field WORD CURRENCY, the semasiological approach would start from the source domain, collating all FINANCIAL metaphors. The onomasiological approach, on the other hand, would start from the target domain and investigate all metaphors for issues of LANGUAGE. These two general options, which complement one another, are also open to the metaphor researcher in the tradition of Lakoff and Johnson. And in fact, both approaches are applied within the framework of Cognitive Semantics. 6 Summary and conclusion

5.

The aim of this paper was to show that the cognitive theory of metaphor has a very presentable line of ancestors. After an overview of some possible lines of tradition that could only be sketched roughly, we presented more comprehensive portraits of three of the most distinguished ancestors of the cognitive approach. The accounts of Kant's, Blumenberg's, and Weinrich's contributions to the theory of metaphor were meant to give an idea of the extensive similarities and concurrences. The following table 1 provides a final overview of the central terminological correspondences between the cognitive approach and its most important predecessors. Kant

analogy

symbol

0

Blumenberg

background metaphor

metaphor

cognitive model 0

Weinrich

image field

metaphor

Lakoff/

conceptual metaphor

|Johnson

Table 1: The

øø 0

image donor image recipient (hypothetical) cognitive model field field metaphor. cognitive model source domain target domain expression (ICM)

central terminological correspondences between the cognitive theory of metaphor and its predecessors (0 indicates lack of corresponding term)


23

In all its conciseness, this tabular overview gives a graphic impression of one of the conclusions of this paper: Weinrich's approach represents in many aspects a European anticipation of Lakoff s and Johnson's theory of metaphor. Maybe this will lessen the originality of the cognitive approach a little. But certainly we gain more than we lose, as the central tenets of the cognitive theory of metaphor are confirmed by the fact that scholars of completely different backgrounds have reached the same or very similar results independently of each other. Thus the epistemologist Kant hits on metaphor in the course of his critical stocktaking of human understanding. Blumenberg, the historian of philosophy, discovers metaphor while reconstructing the history of central philosophical and scientific concepts. The linguist Weinrich resembles the cognitive researchers of metaphor most closely also as regards his own heuristics, with his theory of metaphor resulting from the philological-linguistic observation of everyday language. Thus it has been shown that the works of Kant, Blumenberg, and Weinrich have more to offer to the cognitive approach than mere anticipations. Their genuine contributions to methodology as well as to the epistemological framework should not be ignored by a cognitive theory of metaphor that can still be amended. Notes

1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

This and all remaining quotations from German sources are given in translation by the author. I thank Roger Böhm for drawing my attention to Wüllner (1827) and Hartung (1831). In addition, the concept of schema, which is so important for the cognitive theory of metaphor, also goes back to Kant (1781/87). See Jäkel (1997), sections 1.2.3. and 9.2. Cf. Jäkel (1997), section 1.3.2. My case study on metaphors of science (Jäkel 1996) takes up Blumenberg's impulse in the attempt to integrate a historical-diachronical investigation of metaphors into the Cognitive Linguistic paradigm. All reprinted (in revised versions) in Weinrich (1976a), Sprache in Texten. While these essays have been translated into French (Weinrich is professor of Romance languages and literature), there is no English translation whatsoever (Harald Weinrich, p.c.). It would certainly be worthwile to remedy this shortcoming for the benefit of American recipients. To this it can be added that Weinrich himself is in the German tradition of linguistic content research (Sprachinhaltforschung). Thus he adopts certain aspects of his theory of metaphor from the field semanticist Jost Trier (1934: cf. also 1931); in addition, there are influences by Franz Dornseiff (1955). See the meritorious exposition of this line of tradition by Liebert (1992:83-85 and 90-93). A full-blown theory of metaphor, though, can only be acknowl edged for Weinrich. Note that at least since his later works (cf. Weinrich 1967:325) he is also aware of Blumenberg's approach to metaphor. For an account of Cognitive Semantic research along these lines, see Jäkel (1997), section 5.1. That book also features three comprehensive case studies in "onomasiological cognitive metaphorology". See also Jäkel (1993a, 1994, 1995 and 1996) for examples of this approach.

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OLAF JÄKEL

References

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1994. "'Wirtschaftswachstum' oder 'Wir steigern das Bruttosozialprodukt: Quantitäts-Metaphern aus der Ökonomie-Domäne". Unternehmenskom munikation: Linguistische Analysen und Beschreibungen, ed. by Bungarten, Theo, 84-101. Tostedt: Attikon. 1995. "The Metaphorical Concept of Mind". Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World, ed. by John, R. Taylor, & Robert E. MacLaury, 197229. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. 1996. "Metaphorical Scenarios of Science". The Construal of Space in Language and Thought, ed. by Martin Pütz, & René Dirven, 649-678. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. 1997. Metaphern in abstrakten Diskurs-Domänen: Eine kognitiv-linguis tische Untersuchung anhand der Bereiche Geistestätigkeit, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft ['Metaphors in abstract domains of discourse: A cognitive

linguistic investigation of the domains of mental activity, economy, and science']. Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Bern etc.: Lang. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the 2 Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1990 ). Johnson, Mark. 1980. "A Philosophical Perspective on the Problems of Meta phor". Richard P. Honeck, & Robert R. Hoffman, 1980. 47-67. 1992. "Philosophical Implications of Cognitive Semantics". Cognitive Linguistics 3-4. 345-366. Kant, Immanuel. 1781. Kritik der reinen Vernunft ['Critique of pure reason']. Hamburg: Meiner (1986). 1783. Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissen schaft wird auftreten können ['Prolegomena to any future metaphysics']. Hamburg: Meiner (1976).

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1786. Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren? ['What is the meaning of: Orientation in thinking?'] Werkausgabe, Vol. 5. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (1968). 1790. Kritik der Urteilskraft ['Critique of Judgement']. Hamburg: Meiner (1990). Keil, Geert. 1991. Kritik des Naturalismus ['Critique of Naturalism']. Dissertation (ms.), Hamburg University. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. 1993. "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor". Andrew Ortony, ed. 19932. 202-251. ,& Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Lawler, John M. 1983. "Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff, & Mark Johnson." Review Article. Language 59. 201-207. Liebert, Wolf-Andreas. 1992. Metaphernbereiche der deutschen Alltagssprache: Kognitive Linguistik und die Perspektiven einer Kognitiven

Lexikographie

['Metaphorical domains of everyday German: Cognitive linguistics and the perspectives of a cognitive lexicography']. Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Bern etc.: Lang. Locke, John. 1689. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1988). Miller, George A., & Philip N. Johnson-Laird. 1976. Language and Perception. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press. Müller, F. Max. 1888. Das Denken im Lichte der Sprache [ 'Thinking viewed from a linguistic perspective']. Leipzig: Engelmann. Ortega y Gasset, José. 1925. "Die beiden großen Metaphern" [The two big metaphors']. Gesammelte Werke, Voll. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (1978). 249-265. Ortony, Andrew, ed. 1979. Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1986). , ed. 19932. Metaphor and Thought. (2nd edition, substantially revised) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paul, Hermann. 1880. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte ['Principles of the history of language']. Tübingen: Niemeyer (1975 9). Porzig, Walter. 1950. Das Wunder der Sprache: Probleme, Methoden und Ergebnisse der Sprachwissenschaft ['The miracle of language: Problems, methods, and results of linguistics']. Tübingen/Basel: Francke UTB (1993 9). Taylor, John R. 1995. "On Construing the World". John R. Taylor, & Robert E. MacLaury, 1995. 1-21.


27

, & Robert E. MacLaury, eds. 1995. Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Trier, Jost. 1931. Der deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes: Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feldes [The German vocabulary in the domain of the mind: The history of a semantic field']. Heidelberg: Winter 1934. "Deutsche Bedeutungsforschung" ['German semantic research']. Germanische Philologie: Ergebnisse und Aufgaben. Festschrift für Otto Behaghel, ed. by Alfred Götze, Wilhelm Horn, & Friedrich Maurer.

Heidelberg: Winter. 173-200. Vico, Giovanni Battista. 1744. Prinzipien einer neuen Wissenschaft über die gemeinsame Natur der Völker ['Principles of a new science of the common nature of nations']. (2 vols.) Hamburg: Meiner (1990). Weinrich, Harald. 1958. "Münze und Wort: Untersuchungen an einem Bildfeld" ['Coin and word: Investigations of an image field']. Weinrich 1976a, 276290. 1963. "Semantik der kühnen Metapher" [The semantics of bold meta phors']. Weinrich 1976a, 295-316. 1964. "Metaphora memoriae" ['Metaphors of memory']. Harald Weinrich 1976a, 291-294. 1967. "Allgemeine Semantik der Metapher" ['A comprehensive semantics of metaphor']. Harald Weinrich 1976a, 317-327. 1976a. Sprache in Texten ['Language in texts']. Stuttgart: Klett 1976b. "Streit um Metaphern" ['Contested metaphors']. Weinrich 1976a, 328-341. et al. 1968. "Die Metapher (Bochumer Diskussion)". Poetica. Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 2:1968, ed. by Karl Maurer, 100-130. München. Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1939. "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language". Whorf 1966. 134-159. 19665. Language, Thought, and Reality, ed. by John B. Carroll. Cam bridge, Mass.: MIT Press Wüllner, Franz. 1827. Die Bedeutung der sprachlichen Casus und Modi: Ein Versuch ['The meaning of linguistic cases and modes: An essay']. Münster: Coppenrathsche Buch- und Kunsthandlung.

METAPHORICAL MAPPINGS IN THE SENSE OF SMELL

IRAIDE IBARRETXE-ANTUNANO University of Edinburgh

1.

Introduction

A fundamental principle of cognitive semantics (Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, and forthcoming) is that we have no access to a reality independent of human categorization, and that the structure of reality as reflected in language is a product of the human mind. The most fundamental tenet in this model is embodiment. Human conceptual categories, the meaning of words and sentences and the meaning of linguistic structures at any level are not a set of universal abstract features or uninterpreted symbols but motivated 1 and grounded more or less directly in experience, in our bodily, physical and social / cultural experiences, because after all, "we are beings of the flesh" (Johnson 1992:347). A consequence of this primacy of general cognitive abilities is the essential role of imagination. As Johnson (1987:172) explains, the way we reason and what we can experience as meaningful are both based on structures of imagination that make our experience what it is. Metaphor is a basic imaginative cognitive mechanism. It is not a figure of speech (as it was considered by many objectivist 2 approaches) but the means by which it is possible "to ground our conceptual systems experientially and to reason in a constrained but creative fashion" (Johnson 1992:351). This view of metaphor as a largely automatic correspondence between experiential domains can be applied to the study of polysemy and semantic change. Sweetser (1990) studies the semantic changes in the field of English sense perception verbs. She claims that the paths of semantic change are one-way and lead from the external (socio-physical) domain to our internal (emotional, psychological) domain and that these two domains are linked by means of metaphor. In the case of perception verbs, the source domain is the vocabulary of physical perception, whereas the target domain is the vocabulary of external self and sensations. Thus, in the particular case of English perception verbs, Sweetser establishes the following metaphorical mappings:

IRAIDE IBARRETXE-ANTUNANO

30 VISION HEARING TASTE TOUCH SMELL

KNOWLEDGE HEED LIKES / DISLIKES FEELINGS 'DISLIKEABLE'3 FEELINGS

OBEY

In the

explanation of the structure of these metaphors of perception, Sweetser distributes these senses into two groups: the former comprises vision and hearing and the latter touch and taste. The focusing ability of vision and hearing, i.e., their ability to pick up one stimulus more or less consciously is what makes them be connected to objectivity and intellect. Subjectivity, intimacy and emotion, on the other hand, are linked to touch and taste, due to their associated entailments of physical contact with the thing sensed. Other authors have divided the senses in a similar way. Viberg (1984:148), for instance, establishes a similar dichotomy: taste and touch as opposed to hearing and smell. Sweetser does not mention where the sense of smell should be placed in her dichotomy and takes the view that this sense "has fewer and less deep metaphori cal connections with the mental domain than the other senses" (1990:43). The only two mappings she establishes are the following: - Bad smell to indicate bad character or 'dislikeable' characteristics (1)

He is a stinker (Sweetser 1990:37)

- Detection of such characteristics (2)

I smell something fishy about this deal (Sweetser 1990:37)

With only these two abstract meanings, it can be understood that Sweetser regards this sense as less salient than the rest of the senses. However, a closer look at the different meanings that these verbs can convey proves this claim to be overstated: what Kövecses (1995; in press) would call the 'metaphorical scope' 4 of the sense of smell is not weaker than that of other perception domains like sight or hearing. 2.

The sense of smell: Extended meanings

One of Sweetser's main claims is that these metaphorical mappings between different conceptual domains are not specific to one language but cross-linguistic. In order to test this statement, I have chosen three languages from different families, English, Spanish (both IE, Germanic and Romance respectively) and Basque (non-IE). The linguistic material used in this study, both meanings and examples, comes from bilingual and monolingual dictionaries (see bibliography).


31

The meanings discussed in this study do not represent a comprehensive typology of all the meanings conveyed by these verbs in each language; only those meanings5 present in all the three languages of the sample are included. Although the sense of smell in human beings is not as developed as other senses such as vision, there is a great number of verbs connected to the sense of smell in one way or another. In this study, I focus only on verbs denoting neutral perception and emission of smells. Consequently, verbs like Eng. stink and stench (as well as their cognates in the other languages, cf. Bq. ufaztu, kiraztu; Sp. apestar, are not included, despite the fact that in earlier stages of the language, they were used for indicating neutral smell (see, for instance, OE stinc). Within the physical domain of smell, it is necessary to distinguish two different kinds of smell: the emission of odours 6 and the perception of odours, and within the latter, when the subject is an active or a passive one 7. In some of the other senses this distinction is overtly expressed by the choice of a different verb. For example, in the sense of hearing, we have in English the verbs sound, listen and hear respectively. As Lehrer (1990:223) points out, in the case of smell these different kinds of smell are covered by the same polysemous lexical item smell. Apart from these physical meanings, smell verbs can have additional senses. For instance, smell can also mean 'to suspect' as in (3) and 'to guess, to sense something intuitively' as in (4): (3)

Things... wouldn't always get past the sharp-eyed QC. If a case smelt, he would smell it (OED-1973)

(4)

Mary can smell trouble a mile off (OSD)

In (3), smell is used in two different ways. The meaning of the former is what Sweetser defines as the indication of bad characteristics and it corresponds to example (1). It can be easily replaced by the verb stink. The second smell is the one that interests us, because it means 'to suspect'. (3) could be paraphrased as 'if there was something wrong in the case, the QC would suspect it'. It has been suggested to me by an anonymous referee that the second smell could be paraphrased as 'to know' instead of 'to suspect'; although it is true that there is a great deal of variability in the interpretation of this example, it is important to take into account that the information that we get when we use our sense of smell is not as reliable as that we have if we use another sense, such as vision. In (3), the QC did not know for sure that there was something wrong with the case and that is why the verb smell is used instead of see, in which cases the sentence would not offer any doubt in respect to its meaning.


32

The meaning of (4) is rather different from (3); what it says is not that Mary suspects that there is going to be trouble, but that in case there was, she would sense it, she would guess it beforehand. Although sometimes guess and suspect can be taken as synonyms, in these two examples they appear to be different. Suspect always carries a negative meaning; if we suspect something or from somebody, there are always negative connotations implied. This is not the case of guess', what is guessed might be a negative or a positive thing. Its quality is not implied by the verb itself, which by contrast only signals the fact that it is foreseen. Both meanings are not restricted to English, they are also possible in Basque. In (5), smell with the meaning 'to suspect': (5)

Sailburuaren erraz

kontuakzuzenak usain zitekeen

ez

zirela

minister. GEN account.ABS.PL right ABS.PL neg were.COMP easily smell could "It was easy to suspect that the minister's accounts were not clear" As was the case for (3), in this example the verb of smell comes to mean 'to suspect' ; we suspected that the Minister's accounts were not clear, that there was something wrong with them. This verb is always connected to negative connota tions. And (6), smell with the meaning 'to guess': (6)

Kanturako usaindu

haren zera nuen

ikusiz, mutrikuarra

zela

song.ALL.ADN he. GEN way.ABS seeing mutriku.GEN was.COMP smell TRANS: lSG.PAST "From his way of singing, I guessed he was from Mutriku" (HM) (6) might be a more illustrative example than (4) above. In (6), there are not negative connotations or bad characteristics to be discovered, but only the fact that this person was from that particular place called Mutriku. In his particular way of singing, there were some hints that make us guess where he was coming from. And finally, these same meanings in Spanish, 'to suspect' in (7) and 'to guess' in (8): (7) Me huele que ella está detrâs refl.l SG smells that she is behind "I suspect she is behind all this" (OSD)

de

todo ésto

of

all this


33

As in the previous examples in English (3) and Basque (5), there are negative connotations implied in (7). These negative characteristic are not present in (8) below: (8)

Juan

ya

se

ha

olido

la

John already refl.3SG has smelt the "(I think) John might have guessed that it's a joke" (RCD)

broma

joke

T o guess' and 'to suspect' are not the only two possible extensions in the domain of smell. Smell verbs can also mean 'to trail something' as in (9) and 'to investigate' as in (10). (9)

The dog was sniffing the ground looking for the hare

(10) The police have been sniffing around here again (RCD) In (9), the meaning of the verb of smell is still physical, whereas in (10), it is abstract. In (9), the dog was actually physically smelling the ground and following the trail (i.e. smell) left by the hare. On the other hand, in (10), the police are not using their noses to physically smell; although the same kind of action as in (9) is implied, in this latter example, it should be understood in a different manner, not in a physical but in a metaphorical way. Once again, as predicted by Sweetser, these meanings are not specific to English but also possible in Basque 'to trail something' in (11) and 'to investigate' in (12): (11) Txakurra usnaka zebilen erbiaren dog.ABS smelling was hare.GEN "The dog was sniffing around looking for the hare" (12) Bere hiltzailea izan

gauzetan zitekeela

usnaka usaindu

ibili nuen

bila

search.ABS ondoren, bera

he.GEN things.INE smelling be after murderer.ABS be could.COMP smell TRANS:lSG.PAST "After I sniffed around, I suspected he could be the murderer"

he.ABS

And also in Spanish, 'to trail something' in (13) and 'to investigate' in (14):


34

(13) El

en

busca de

the dog was smelling the ground in the hare "The dog was sniffing the ground looking for the hare"

search of

la

(14) Le

perro liebre

han

estaba

olfateando

ordenado que

el

suelo

husmee

las

cuentas

he.DAT have.3rd.PL ordered that sniff:3rd.SG.SUBJ the accounts "They have ordered him to investigate the office accounts" (HM) From the above discussion, it can be concluded that Sweetser's claim that the verbs of smell are connected to only two types of perceptual development is not correct. Not only is the metaphorical scope of these verbs larger - meanings such as 'to guess', 'to suspect' and 'to investigate' are possible- but also some of these extensions of meaning remain physical like 'to trail something'. Sweetser's analysis offers us an explanation of how concrete meanings map onto abstract metaphorical meanings, but she does not observe that some semantic extensions are not abstract but remain physical, and therefore, cannot be accounted for by means of metaphor. Another point that remains unanswered is why certain source domains - sense of smell - get mapped onto certain target domains - 'to suspect', 'to guess', 'to investigate' ; the reason for saying Mary smelt danger and not Mary touched danger.

In this chapter, I claim that the solution for these shortcomings is to be found in 'Property Selection Processes' (PSPs), i.e. the selection in the target domain of only some of those prototypical properties that characterize the physical source domain. PSPs also represent a formalization of the metonymicai character of metaphorical mappings, the so-called "used" part of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980:52; Johnson 1987:106), the fact that only part of the structure of the source domain is projected onto the target domain. 3.

The sense of smell: Property selection process

In the introduction, I presented as the most central tenet of cognitive semantics the idea of embodiment, i.e. how meaning is grounded in the nature of our bodies and perception, in our interaction with the physical, social, and cultural environment that surrounds us. The fact that concepts are grounded in our bodily experience and then elaborated by structures of imagination - metaphor - implies that if we are able to characterize the domain of experience that constitutes the source domain, then it will be possible to constrain the semantic extensions that occur in the corresponding target domain. In other words, the reason why it is


35

possible to use these verbs of smell to express other meanings - apart from the physical sense perception- must lie in the way we perceive and experience the sense of smell. Therefore, if we can provide an account of those properties that characterize the physical sense of smell (the source domain), then we can offer a motivated explanation of why these extensions of meaning are possible in this sense. These properties are to be considered as constraints for the metaphorical mappings that can take place in this conceptual domain. What follows is a typology of the properties that characterize smell perception. This type of analysis should not be confused with Componential Analysis (Katz & Fodor 1963; Katz & Postal 1964; Katz 1972). The properties listed below are not to be understood as semantic primitives, i.e. smallest basic components of meaning that are part of our psychological architecture. These properties are not considered to be innate atomic conceptual units that when combined differently form the meanings of different words, but as shorthand ways of referring to the defining properties used to describe how we perceive through the sense of smell, which is the bodily basis for the physical prototypical meaning of smell verbs. 3.1

Properties of the sense of smell

One of the basic properties of the sense of smell is that it is . In order to perceive smells, it is necessary to inhale air into our nostrils, from the outside to our inside. When we breathe, we usually inhale air into our nostrils, we take a breath and let the air come inside us, towards our lungs. Each breath passes air over our olfactory sites; when we inhale or exhale, we smell odours, these odours enter our bodies (Sekuler & Blake 1994). Unless we suffer from any kind of olfactory disorder or eventually, if we just close our nose, we are smelling all the time since we breathe all the time, but unconsciously. Studies (Badia 1995) indicate that we smell a wide variety of odours throughout every day and night of our lives, but without being aware of them at all. Only when a smell pleases, annoys, warns or brings a memory do we stop to take notice of it. Thus, this property we can represent as . A further explanation should be made in this case because - as pointed out before apart from the emission of smells which we do not study in this chapter, two kinds of smell perception must be distinguished: perception with an active subject and perception with a passive subject. These two types of perception are characterized differently in respect to this property. Thus, in the case of perception with a passive subject, smell is indeed involuntary, as we are not consciously controlling it; so, we have . Whereas in the perception with an active subject, the smell is voluntary and the property is . As we have said before, we are smelling all the time but we only become aware of it either if we lose our olfactory faculty or if we detect a new, good or

36


bad, smell. For instance, if we are in a room without any particular smell and a person starts preparing some coffee, we immediately smell the new odour, we detect that new smell, which later we recognize as coffee. After a while, we become used to the smell of coffee and no longer smell it consciously. But if somebody enters the room, that person will detect the smell of coffee straight away. This well-documented phenomenon (cf. Ahlstrom et al. 1986) is called odour adaptation, i.e. the decrease of sensitivity to an odour after a prolonged exposure to it, and some people believe it is due to the unique capability of olfactory cells to die and reproduce themselves. So, another property is . Another characteristic is that one is very rarely sure of what is smelling. That is to say, smells are difficult to identify immediately. When we use the sense of vision, for instance, if we see a dog, unless we have sight problems or we have never seen a dog before, we immediately recognize that entity as a dog. This does not happen with smell. The reason why we are never a hundred per cent sure that what we are smelling is one specific thing or another, lies in the fact that olfactory fibres individually can detect that some odorous substance is present, but they are unable to provide unequivocal information about the identity of that substance; consequently, people can smell an odour, but cannot tell what odour they are smelling (Engen 1960). Furthermore, smells are difficult to name. Aristotle already pointed out the fact that the sense of smell lacks an independent classification similar to that of other senses such as taste (sweet, bitter. ..), and in fact, the situation nowadays has not changed. There have been various attempts 8 such as Henning's (1916) Smell Prism and Schiffman's (1974) Multidimensional Scaling, but as Buck (1949:1024) remarks, "the only widespread popular distinction is that of pleasant and unpleasant smells- good and bad smells [... ] this is linguistically more important than any similar distinction, that is, of good and bad, in the case of the other senses". Otherwise, the terms used for defining a smell are taken either from other senses, primarily from taste (cf. sweet) and touch (cf. pungent, originally 'pricking') or by naming the object that emits the smell, as the smell of an apple. So, we have the property represented by . Smells are different for people: what for one person is a nice smell could be bad or simply neutral for another. Smell is also cultural (Classen et al. 1994). Our reactions to smell also vary depending on our personal and unique odour/memory association. Smells are context-dependent, that is to say, the same substance can be perceived in different ways depending on the smells that may be in the same environment; a property widely used in the art of cuisine. How familiar a person is in respect to a smell is also important. Experiments (Cain 1982) show that


37

people can become familiar, can learn smells and as a consequence, can easily identify them. That is why it can be said that smell is . The connection between smell and memory is very strong. Herz (1995) has found that memories evoked by the sense of smell are more emotional than those evoked by other senses, including sight, hearing and touch. This seems to be due to the connection between the olfactory and the limbic systems, the latter involved in emotional responses. So another property is . All these characteristics are present in physical smell perception. If we accept that semantic changes take place from the concrete domain to an abstract domain, it can be said that these characteristics are the first properties that the sense of smell had, before extending its meanings to a wider scope; therefore, we will call these characteristics 'prototypical properties' as they are the properties of the first prototypical meaning of the sense of smell 9. The prototypical properties for smell that we have identified so far are: / 3.2

Distribution of properties in the target domain: Property Selection Processes.

In the previous section, I have presented a set of six properties that characterize the sense of smell. As has been noted before, metaphorical mappings are grounded in the body and in every-day experience, therefore it follows that the metaphorical mappings in smell verbs must be grounded in these properties, because they characterize how we perceive through the sense of smell (the source domain). The independence of description of the source domain is guaranteed by the fact that these properties are based on psychological and physiological studies on the sense of smell 10. They are not simply the result of a post hoc analysis of the metaphorical mappings found in this domain (see Keysar and Bly 1995; Murphy 1996, for a discussion of this issue). It is commonly agreed among metaphor researchers that not everything from the source domain gets mapped onto the target domain. Lakoff and Johnson (1980:52) call this partial map of the structure of the source domain the 'used' part of metaphor. In the case of smell perception, which is characterized by the set of properties defined above, this statement means that not all the properties are 'used' in the target domain but only a selection of them. However, in order to

38


constrain metaphorical mappings it is not enough to say that there is a selection of the source domain, it is necessary to show exactly what it is that is partially mapped and what constraints are applied to that selection. Attempts to constrain the mapping process in metaphorical production and comprehension can be found in Lakoff's (1990; 1993) 'Invariance Principle' 11 , i.e. "metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive topology of the source domain in a way consistent with the inherent structure of the target domain" (1993: 215). The Invariance Principle is useful in order to constrain the nature of those mappings: that is to say, it is not possible to map from the source domain structure that does not preserve the inherent structure of the target domain. The only problem with this principle is that it does not show exactly what part of the source domain is the one that must be consistent with the structure of the target domain. As a solution, I propose the processes called 'Property Selection'. These processes will show not only how some of the set of properties that characterize the source domain are mapped onto the target domain, but also what properties are mapped. It is precisely by this selection of properties from the source domain in the target domain that metaphorical mappings are constrained. The properties selected in the target domain must be part of the properties identified in the source domain and no others. The number of properties from the source domain preserved in the extended meanings is not an issue, as this is not the same in each extension (see Ibarretxe-Antunano forthcoming). What is important is the fact that there is a transfer of only some properties from the source to the target domain. As these processes take place prior to metaphor, they can also account for semantic extensions that remain physical, as was the case of 'to trail something'. For example, in the case of the meanings 'to trail something' and 'to investigate' illustrated below in (15) and (16), the properties selected are and . (15) The dog was sniffing the ground looking for the hare (16) The police have been sniffing around here again (RCD) These meanings select the property because the dog in (15) and the police in (16) are trying to detect those hints that would lead them to find what they are looking for; the property is selected because this search is carried out consciously, both the dog and the police are active subjects of the action of smell. The only difference in these two sentences is that in (15) the action of smell is a physical one, where the dog is actually using its nose in order to follow the trail left by the hare, whereas in (16), the police are not smelling physically, but in a metaphorical way.


39

Therefore, my hypothesis is that from the original prototypical meaning, i.e. the six properties, through a property selection process, there is a choice of properties; this process occurs in both examples as shown in Figure 1 for (15) 'to trail something' and in Figure 2 for (16) 'to investigate'. Prototypical

►

Property Selected

physical

physical

meanings

meaning

•< internal

• /

• .

• •

• •

Figure 1: Property selection processes in (15) 'to trail something'.

However, in the case of (16) 'to investigate', a further step takes place: that of metaphor; and that is why the meaning is no longer concrete but abstract. It is important to bear in mind that the extended metaphorical meaning 'to investigate' comes from the first prototypical meaning 'to perceive by smell' and not from the extended physical meaning 'to trail something'. Otherwise it will be implied that every metaphorical meaning needs to have a physical counterpart. This is not true. For example, another of the metaphorical extensions discussed in Section 2 - 'to suspect'- does not have an extended physical meaning counterpart. Nevertheless, it can be accounted for by these property selection processes. The only difference lies in the properties selected for these meanings. The properties that can explain the extended meaning 'to suspect' are and . We do not consciously look for hints that would lead us to form a suspicion, as was the case in 'to investigate' ; we detect that something happens, but we are passive perceivers of those hints that lead us to suspect. And also works like this, because when we suspect something, all we know is that something is going on but we cannot tell for sure whether what we suspect is true or not.

IRAIDE IBARRETXE-ANTUÑANO

40

Prototypical

Property Selected

Property Selected,

physical

physical

metaphorical

meanings

meaning

abstract meaning

• / • • • •

• •

Property Selection

.

Metaphor

Figure 2: Property selection and metaphorical processes in (16)

► 'to investigate'.

One of the aims of the Property Selection model proposed in this chapter is to show which aspects of the source domain are mapped onto the target domain. There are many different theories and experimental studies that have explored what gets mapped in metaphor understanding (see Gibbs 1994: ch.5). Models such as the 'salience imbalance' (Ortony 1979) model, the 'domains interaction' (Tourangeau and Sternberg 1981; 1982) model, the 'structure mapping' model (Gentner 1983; Gentner and Clements 1988) and the 'class inclusion' model (Glucksberg and Keysar 1990) have put forward constraints on the nature of the interaction between source and target domains in metaphorical expressions. These models assume that the process of metaphor understanding depends on some novel act of mapping information from a source domain to a target domain. This assumption is a major difference with the model proposed here: our understanding of metaphor is inherently constrained by our conceptualization of experience. Despite these theoretical differences, the ideas presented by these other theories as applied to the Property Selection model may yield interesting results, but must be reserved for further research.

METAPHORICAL MAPPINGS IN THE SENSE OF SMELL 4.

41

Conclusions

In this chapter, I have shown that the metaphorical scope of the sense of smell is not weaker than that of other perception domains like hearing or vision. Apart from the two mappings proposed by Sweetser, namely the indication and detection of dislikeable characteristics, I identify other metaphorical extensions like 'to guess', 'to suspect' and 'to investigate', as well as physical semantic extensions like 'to trail something'. These meaning extensions are not restricted to one language but common in the three languages examined, namely English, Basque and Spanish, which corroborates Sweetser's claim for the cross-linguistic nature of such semantic extensions. Although I agree with the usage of metaphor as a primary cognitive function by which the structure of human experience and understanding is created and extended (Johnson 1987), these metaphorical mappings proposed by Sweetser represent neither an explanation for the reasons why these particular domains (source and target) are linked; nor an exhaustive account of all the possible extended meanings that these verbs can convey. As a solution I propose the 'property selection process', i.e. the selection of some properties from the set of prototypical properties that characterize the sense of smell. This set of properties is drawn from the physical experience that human beings have when they perceive through this sense and constitutes the bodily basis that grounds these metaphorical mappings. This selection of properties occurs in all the extended meanings of these verbs and it is only in those cases when the meaning is abstract that metaphorical processes take place. Although in this chapter, these 'property selection processes' have only been applied to the sense of smell, they can be expanded to other sense perceptions as well as to other semantic fields. For instance, the reason why the sense of vision is linked to the objective side of our mental life (Sweetser 1990:37) lies in the very nature of visual perception which is characterized by an accurate and reliable reception and manipulation of data. Therefore, instead of having as in the case of smell, this property would be in the case of vision. In short, 'property selection processes' do not only explain physical and metaphorical semantic extensions but they are also a formalization of what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) called the 'used' part of metaphor. Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Jon Altuna, Ronnie Cann, Raymond Gibbs, Susanne Schüle, Gerard Steen, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this chapter. Preparation for this article was partly supported by Grant BFl98.71 from the Basque Country Government's Department of Education, Universities and Research. The author can be contacted at [email protected] .


42

Notes

1. 2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

This idea contradicts the traditional Saussurian principle of the arbitrariness of the sign. The term 'objectivism' is used by Lakoff (1987) and Johnson (1987) to refer to those theories of linguistic meaning that understand objective reality as independent from human cognition, such as Frege (1952), Montague's model-theoretical semantics (Dowty, Wall & Peters 1981; Cann 1993) and Barwise and Perry's (1983) situation semantics. After Sweetser (1990:37). "The range of the application of particular source domains to particular target domains" (Kövecses 1995:316). The main aim of this study is not to show how often or salient the meanings presented here are in each language, but just the fact that they are possible to infer; therefore, I have not included any data on frequencies. In this chapter, I focus only on the semantic extensions resulting from the perception of smells. For more information on the classification of the physical meanings of perception verbs, see Leech (1971), Rogers (1971; 1972), Kryk (1979), Viberg (1984) among others. For a complete discussion on the topic of the classification of odours, see Sekuler and Blake (1994:414-418). Gamble (1921) is a good review and critique on Henning' s method. All these ideas about prototypicality are based on Eleanor Rosch's (1978) work on categorization and prototypes. See Ibarretxe-Antunano (in preparation) for a more detailed account of these properties in perception verbs. See also Lakoff and Turner (1989:82), Brugman (1990), Turner (1987:143-148; 1990; 1991:172-182; 1996)

References

Ahlstrom, R., R. Berglund, U. Berglund, T. Lindvall, & A. Wennberg. 1986. "Impaired Odour Perception in Tank Cleaners". Scandinavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health 12. 574-581. Badia, P. 1995. "Olfactory Sensitivity in Sleep and the Effects of Fragrances on the Quality of Sleep". Compendium of Olfactory Reseach 1982 -1994, ed. by A. Gilbert. New York: Kendall and Hunt Publishers. Barwise, J., & J. Perry. 1983. Situations and Attitudes. Cambridge, Mass .: MIT Press. Brugman, C. 1990. "What is the Invariance Hypothesis?" Cognitive Linguistics 1:2.257-266. Buck, CD. 1949. A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo European Languages. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Cain, W. S. 1982. "Odour Identification by Males a ndFe males : Predictions versus Performance". Chemical Senses 7. 129-142. Cann, R. 1993. Formal Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Classen, C, D. Howes, & A. Synnott. 1994. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. London and New York: Routledge. Diccionario 3000 Hiztegia. Adorez 7. 1996. Bilbo: Bostak Bat. (HM)


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Dowty, D. R., R.E. Wall, & S. Peters. 1981. Introduction to Montague Semantics. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Engen, T. 1960. "Effects of Practice and Instruction on Olfactory Thresholds". Perceptual and Motor Skills 10. 195-198. Frege, G. 1952. "On Sense and Reference". Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. by P. Geach, & M. Black, 56-78. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gamble, E.A.M.C. 1921. "Review of Der Geruch by Hans Henning". American Journal of Psychology 32. 290-295. Gentner, D. 1983. "Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy. Cognitive Science 7. 155-170. , & c. Clements. 1988. "Evidence for Relational Selectivity in the Interpretation of Analogy and Metaphor". The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, ed. by G. Bower, vol. 22, 307-358. Orlando, Fla: Academic Press. Gibbs, R. 1994. The Poetics of the Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glucksberg, S., & B. Keysar. 1990. "Understanding Metaphorical Comparisons: Beyond Similarity". Psychological Review 97. 3-18. Herz, R. 1995. "The Emotional Distinctiveness of Odour-Evoked Memories". Compendium of Olfactory Reseach 1982 - 1994 ed. by A. Gilbert. New York: Kendall / Hunt Publishers. Henning, H. 1916. Der Geruch. Leizpig: Barth. Ibarretxe-Antunano, I. Forthcoming. "An Inside Look at the Semantic Extensions in Tactile Verbs". Proceedings of the 26th Congress of the Spanish Applied Linguistics

Association. In Preparation. Semantic Change and Polysemy in Perception Verbs: A Cross-Linguistic Study (Working Title). PhD Thesis. University of

Edinburgh. Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Reason and Imagination. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 1992. "Philosophical Implications of Cognitive Semantics". Cognitive Linguistics 3:4. 345-366. Katz, J.J. 1972. Semantic Theory. New York: Harper and Row. , & J. Fodor. 1963. "The Structure of Semantic Theory". Language 39.170210. , & P.M. Postal. 1964. An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

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Keysar, B., & B. Bly. 1995. "Intuitions of the Transparency of Idioms: Can One Keep a Secret by Spilling the Beans?" Journal of Memory and Language 34. 89-109. Kövecses, Z. 1995. "American Friendship and the Scope of Metaphor". Cognitive Linguistics 6. 4, 315-346. In Press. "The Scope of Metaphor". Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: Cognitive Approaches, (Provisional Title) ed. by A. BarcelonaSanchez. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kryk, B. 1979. "Some Remarks on the Verbs of Perception in English and Polish". Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics, ed. by J. Fisiak, vol. VIII, 113-231. Poznan and Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics. Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. 1990. "The Invariance Hypothesis: Is Abstract Reason Based on Image schemas?" Cognitive Linguistics 1:1. 39-74. 1993. "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor". Metaphor and Thought, ed. by A. Ortony, 202-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , & M . Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. , & M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. New York: Basic Books. , & M Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Leech, G. 1971. Meaning and the English Verb. London: Longman. Lehrer, A. 1990. "Polysemy, Conventionality, and the Structure of the Lexicon". Cognitive Linguistics 1:2. 207-246. Murphy, G.L. 1996. "On Metaphoric Representation". Cognition 60. 173-204. Ortony, A. 1979. "Beyond Literal Similarity". Psychological Review 86.161-180. Oxford English Dictionary. 1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (OED). Oxford Spanish Dictionary. 1994. Oxford, New York, Madrid: Oxford University Press (OSP). Richmond Compact Dictionary. 1995. Madrid: Santillana (RCD). Rogers, A. 1971. "Three Kinds of Physical Perception Verbs". CLS 7. 206-223. 1972. "Another Look at Flip Perception Verbs". CLS 8. 303-316. Rosch, E. 1978. "Principles of Categorization". Cognition and categorization, ed. by E. Rosch, & B. B. Lloyd, 1-49. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Schiffman, S. 1974. "Physiochemical Correlates of Olfactory Quality". Science 185.112-117. Sekuler, R., & R. Blake. 1994. Perception. New York: McGraw-Hill. Sweetser, E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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Tourangeau, R., & R. Sternberg. 1981. "Aptness in Metaphor". Cognitive Psychology 13. 27-55. , & R. Sternberg. 1982. "Understanding and Appreciating Metaphors". Cognition 11. 203-244. Turner, M. 1987. Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 1990. "Aspects of the Invariance Hypothesis". Cognitive Linguistics 1:2. 247-255. 1991. Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996. The Literary Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Viberg, A. 1984. "The Verbs of Perception: A typological Study". Explanations for Language Universals, ed. by B. Butterworth, B. Comrie, & O. Dahl. 123-162. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

WHEN A BODILY SOURCE DOMAIN BECOMES PROMINENT THE JOY OF COUNTING METAPHORS IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC DOMAIN

FRANK BOERS

Université Libre de Bruxelles

1.

Introduction

According to Cognitive Semantics (Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987) abstract reasoning depends largely on the use of conceptual metaphors. These conceptual metaphors can roughly be divided into two categories. The first category maps image schemas (CONTAINER, PATH, UP-DOWN, etc.) onto abstract experiential domains: THE BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR THE EMOTIONS, e.g. She was filled with hatred; TIME IS A PATH, e.g. Leave the past behind you; GOOD IS UP, e.g. Living up to high expectations; etc. One single image schema can be used to structure various abstract domains. The UP-DOWN schema, for example, is commonly used to conceive of abstract quantities (MORE IS UP, e.g., An IQ of over 150), social hierarchy (HIGH STATUS IS UP, e.g., Climbing the academic ladder), mental states (HAPPY IS UP, e.g., Cheer up!), and so on. Conversely, one single experiential domain can be conceived in terms of different image schemas. Time, for instance, is commonly conceived as aPATH(e.g., Leave the past behind you) or as an OBJECT (that moves, e.g., Time flies, or that is valuable, e.g., Time is money). The inference patterns and value judgements that are associated with the image schema are generally preserved in the metaphorical mapping onto the abstract target domain (Lakoff 1990). Since conceptual metaphors that map image schemas are motivated by everyday bodily experience, abstract thought is fundamentally 'embodied' (Johnson 1987). The second category of conceptual metaphors builds on more specific or more elaborate source domains. Abstract competition, for example, is often structured in terms of RACING (e.g., Clinton was ahead of Dole in the polls) or in terms of a FIGHT (e.g., Bush was defeated by Clinton). Again, different metaphors are usually available to conceive of an abstract phenomenon. The human mind, for instance, is commonly understood as an EDIFICE, a piece of MACHINERY, a COMPUTER, an ORGANISM, and so on (e.g., Roediger 1980). As each metaphor maps its proper inference patterns, they may guide one's reasoning about abstract phenomena (Gentner & Gentner 1983).

FRANK BOERS

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2.

Parameters of variation

If abstract thought is largely metaphorical, and if different metaphorical perspectives on a single domain exist, then we may wonder whether different communities conceive of certain abstract phenomena differently because of the conceptual metaphors that are most readily available according to cultural or linguistic conventions (Lakoff 1987:295). Since bodily experience is pretty much alike across the globe, image schemas are likely to be universal, and their associated conceptual metaphors will probably be shared by many different cultures. THE BODYISA CONTAINER FOR THE EMOTIONS metaphor, for example, can be found in languages as remote as English, Hungarian, Chinese and Japanese (Kövecses 1995). Nevertheless, cultures may differ by virtue of the more specific imagery that is often added to the general image schema. For instance, while English takes the body as a whole as the CONTAINER for anger (the latter being conceived as a hot fluid), other languages may show a preference for locating this emotion in specific parts of the body, like the head in Hungarian, or the stomach in Japanese (Kövecses 1995). PATH metaphors (e.g., Is this article leading anywhere?) abound in both English and French, but (probably due to historical reasons) the additional imagery in English is more often that of ships and sailing (Boers &Demecheleer 1997). When various metaphors are available to structure a single abstract domain, they may have different degrees of popularity or conventionality. In other words, a given metaphor may be more typical of the discourse of one community than that of another. One way of measuring the degree of popularity or conventionality of a certain metaphor in a community is counting its frequency of occurrence. Using this frequency principle may point to different preferences of image-schema based metaphors, even at the level of closely related languages or language varieties. For instance, the TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT metaphor appears to be more common in British than American English (Boers 1996). Cross-cultural variation is likely to be more pronounced when metaphors of the second category are concerned, i.e. metaphors that build on more specific or elaborate source domains. Corpus-based studies of socio-economic discourse indicate, for example, that HEALTH metaphors (e.g., The market cure), are more productive in English than in Dutch. GARDENING metaphors (e.g., Pruning costs) are more frequent in English than in French, where FOOD metaphors (e.g., Gobbling up small companies) are more common (Boers & Demecheleer 1997). These observations are not confined to linguistic communities. Metaphorical models and their relative popularity may also vary across communities defined in ideological terms. ARCHITECTURAL metaphors, for instance, are especially typical of the discourse of free-masons (Rigotti 1995). In the socio-economic domain, FITNESS metaphors (e.g., Slimming down) and RACING metaphors (e.g., Staying

WHEN A BODILY SOURCE DOMAIN BECOMES PROMINENT

49

appear to be more common in freemarketeer rhetoric than in socialist oriented discourse (Boers 1997a). The range of available conceptual metaphors is also subject to change over time. Metaphors of the human mind, for example, tend to draw analogies from developments in the domain of technology. Over time, as new machines have been invented, their characteristics have often been selected to metaphorically structure and describe mental processes (Draaisma 1995). In fact, most scientific revolu tions correspond to novel metaphorical perspectives on a given subject (Johnson 1987:129; Miller 1995). The popularity of existing metaphors may grow or decline over time, along with scientific evolution (Gentner & Grudin 1985) or along with ideological changes (Rigotti 1995). An example of the latter can also be found in socio-economic discourse about the notion of social security (welfare). Up to the early nineties, the standard metaphor for social security used to be a shelter or a cover ( Living under the umbrella of the welfare state). As the influence of free-market ideology has grown, that metaphor has been replaced by the image of the safety net, which feeds different inference patterns (Boers 1997a). To sum up, variation with respect to the relative popularity of conceptual metaphors occurs along multiple parameters. In the following section we shall take a closer look at yet another type of variation over time. ahead of the competition)

3.

The HEALTH metaphor: A case of seasonal

adjustment?

Various metaphors are usually available to conceive a single abstract domain. In general, the likelihood of a given source domain being used for metaphorical mapping may be enhanced when it becomes more salient in everyday experience. Although bodily experience is probably the most basic source domain for metaphor, people's awareness of their bodies may vary as well. One circumstance under which the awareness of one's bodily functioning is enhanced is when it starts malfunctioning, i.e. when one gets ill. When a range of source domains, including the bodily source domain, is available for the metaphorical conception of a certain abstract target domain, are we then more likely to 'choose' the bodily source domain when it becomes more salient in our everyday experience? Weather conditions, along with a variety of other factors, can affect one's health, and weather conditions usually cause most hardship in winter (at least in the northern hemisphere). From experience and observation we know that illnesses like colds, bronchitis, laryngitis, influenza, pneumonia, etc. occur most often in wintertime. If people are more often confronted with health problems in winter, then they may also be more likely to use this bodily experience as a source domain for metaphorical mapping in that season. The abstract domain we shall be looking at to test this hypothesis is socio-economics again.

50

FRANK BOERS

Evidently, the HEALTH metaphor is just one of many conceptual metaphors that are used to structure economic phenomena and policies. Other source domains include WARFARE (e.g., Invading foreign markets), RACING (e.g., Lagging behind in economic development), MACHINERY (e.g., The exchange rate mechanism) and GARDENING (e.g., Pruning costs). Each maps its own inference patterns and associated value judgements. Experimental research has shown that exposure to these metaphors can indeed have a profound effect on people's reasoning about socio-economic issues (Boers 1997b). So, could one's reasoning about economic processes and policies be guided more often by the HEALTH metaphor in winter than in the other seasons? In order to try and answer this question, we systematically counted the instances of the HEALTH metaphor in the "leaders" (i.e., the editorials) of all the weekly issues of The Economist over a ten-year period, from April 1986 to March 1996. In these articles, the editors of The Economist give their analysis of and opinion about a variety of political and economic topics. Only articles that clearly dealt with economic subjects were selected (usually 3 articles per issue). This yielded a total sample of about 1,137,000 words. The instances of the HEALTH metaphor in our sample show a wide lexical variety : thriving industries, Vibrant enterprises, Economic paralysis, A crippling strike, Sclerotic industries, Arthritic markets, A healthy economic climate, Healthy companies, Sickly firms, Symptoms of a corporate disease, A chronic deficit, Diagnosing a shortage, A financial haemorrhage, Anaemic industries, The right economic remedy, Prescribing the best economic medicine, The market cure, A financial injection, Surgery that costs jobs, Amputating unprofitable departments, Economic recovery, Economic revival, Subsidies become a palliative, and so on. When the instantiations consisted of several words (e.g., Prescribing the right cure), then these were counted as single occurrences, unless they stretched over

clause boundaries. Some instances in the sample were 'creative' (e.g., Arthritic labour markets), while others were highly conventional (e.g., A healthy economy). Within the set of conventional expressions, some were clear instances of the HEALTH metaphor (e.g., The market cure), while some others were vague or ambiguous (e.g., Economic recovery, Economic remedy). Sometimes the context clearly pointed to the source domain of health, but in a number of cases the association with health was hard to determine with any certainty. In those cases, a distinction was made between 'clear' instances and 'vague or ambiguous' ones. To make this distinction the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary was referred to. The entries in Cobuild are organized on the basis of a frequency principle, with the most common usage of a lexical item mentioned first. When the dictionary explanation of this first sense mentioned the domain of physical health, then its


51

figurative use in the sample was taken as a 'clear' instance of the HEALTH meta phor (e.g., cure). Otherwise, for instance when only the second entry mentioned physical health (e.g., remedy), the items were counted as 'vague or ambiguous'. The quantitative data were analyzed twice: once for the 'clear' instances only, and a second time for all the counted instances, including the 'vague or ambiguous' ones. It needs to be acknowledged at this point that the adoption of a frequency principle to make such a distinction does not necessarily reflect the intuitions (or semantic priming effects) at the level of individual language users. The frequency principle can be taken as valid only with respect to trends in a linguistic community as a whole. The inherent limitation of corpus-based research is that it offers no clear evidence of what actually goes on in an individual language user's mind. This calls for complementary experimental research. Nevertheless, the corpus-based analysis may suffice for the present purposes, especially since the quantitative data concerning the 'clear' instances and those concerning the 'ambiguous and vague' ones turned out to be mutually supportive. Figures 1 and 2 represent the average frequency of occurrence of the HEALTH metaphor per month over stretches of 1,000 words. Frequencies are clearly highest from December to March. The average in that period for the 'clear' instances is 1.12, compared to an average of 0.60 for the other months (including the 'vague or ambiguous' category, the ratio is 1.74 versus 1.09, respectively). 22 out of 40 winter months show a frequency of 'clear' instances of over 1.00 per 1,000 words. For the other months this ratio is only 7 out of 80. (A chi-square test yields a significance level of p < 0.001.)

Figure 1: Average frequencies per 1,000 words per month : "clear" instances only

52

FRANK BOERS

Figure 2: Average frequencies per 1,000 words per month : all instances

Figures 3 and 4 trace the average frequency of occurrence of the HEALTH metaphor over the ten-year period, contrasting December-March with April-November. While the charts show varying degrees of popularity of the HEALTH metaphor over time in general, they clearly show a systematic pattern with the highest peaks in winter times. Only one year (1987) appears to deviate from that pattern. This, however, is due to an unusually high number of instances in April 1987. Coincidentally, that month happened to be unusually cold (according to the weather reports we consulted). In fact, both November and April occasionally show high frequencies of occurrence of the HEALTH metaphor. Since both these months are adjacent to winter, this need not undermine our hypothesis, however.

Figure 3: Average frequencies per 1,000 words per period: "clear" instances only


53

Figure 4: Average frequencies per 1,000 words per period: all instances

A more flexible approach to tracing fluctuations in relative frequencies is shown in figures 5 and 6. If we allow for this kind of flexibility in the analysis, the cyclic trend shows up even more.

Figure 5: Average frequencies per 1,000 words per period (alternative): "clear" instances only

In short, the quantitative data drawn from our corpus corroborate the hypothesis: the domain of physical health is more likely to be used for metaphorical mapping in winter, i.e. as it tends to become more salient in people's everyday experience. One might argue against the above interpretation of the data by referring to the specific rhetorical nature of the discourse analyzed. The editorials of The Economist constitute argumentative discourse, abounding with rhetorical devices such as the deliberate use of metaphor. In a fair number of articles, the authors are clearly using metaphors consciously and creatively. They may decide to choose HEALTH metaphors especially frequently in winter, simply because of their

54

FRANK BOERS

intuition that readers may be more susceptible to them in that period. This line of argument suggests that the authors are not influenced by a growing awareness of their own bodily existence. Nonetheless, the influence would still exist, albeit indirectly, due to the observed (or assumed) growing prominence of the domain of physical health within the community as a whole.

Figure 6: Average frequencies per 1,000 words per period (alternative): all instances

The relatively low frequency of HEALTH metaphors in summer time could also be the result of a general trend of 'poor' metaphor use in this period. After all, summer tends to be a slack period for politics and journalism in general. Under that explanation, however, one would expect the frequency of other conceptual metaphors to be relatively low in summer time, too. In order to examine this possibility, we reconsidered part of our sample (from December 1994 to January 1996, i.e. approximately 110,000 words) and we counted two other common metaphors: WARFARE and RACING. The average frequency of occurrence of the WARFARE metaphor per 1,000 words was 1.54, with an average of 1.33 in winter and a slightly higher average of 1.76 in summer. The RACING metaphor occurred on average 0.41 times per 1,000 words, with a relatively low frequency of 0.33 in winter and a slightly higher frequency of 0.44 in summer. In short, the distribution over time of these metaphors does not at all show the same seasonal fluctuations as those noted for the HEALTH metaphor. Hence, the additional exercise does not give any evidence of a general pattern of 'poor' metaphor use in summer time. Socio-economic issues belong to the realm of the abstract throughout the year and so it is not surprising that their conception requires the use of metaphor throughout the year as well.

WHEN A BODILY SOURCE DOMAIN BECOMES PROMINENT 4.

55

Conclusion

It has been argued in this paper that, in general, a source domain is more likely to be used for metaphorical mapping as it becomes more salient in everyday experience. This increase or decrease of salience may also be noted for the source domain of the human body. One circumstance under which the body becomes more salient (i.e., when the awareness of one's bodily existence is enhanced) is when it starts malfunctioning, like in cases of illness. Since many common illnesses are related to bad weather conditions, this type of growing bodily awareness will occur most typically in winter (in the northern hemisphere). Our corpus-based quantitative analysis of 10 years of opinion articles in The Economist reveals that the authors' use of the HEALTH metaphor, rather than other available conceptual metaphors, is indeed especially frequent in winter times. If - as suggested by experimental research - these metaphors guide people's abstract reasoning, then the observed seasonal fluctuation may be taken as indirect evidence of the connection between bodily experience and abstract thought. References

Boers, Frank. 1996. Spatial Prepositions and Metaphor: A Cognitive Semantic Journey along the UP-DOWN and the FRONT-BACK dimensions. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 1997a. "Health, Fitness and Mobility in a Free-Market Ideology". Voices of Power: Co-operation and Conflict in English Language and Literatures,

ed. by Jean-Pierre van Noppen, & Mark Maufort, 89-96. Liège: Language and Literature. 1997b. "No Pain, No Gain in a Free-Market Rhetoric: A Test for Cognitive Semantics?" Metaphor & Symbol 12. 231-241. , & Murielle Demecheleer. 1997. "A Few Metaphorical Models in (Western) Economic Discourse". Discourse and Perspective in Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Wolf-Andreas Liebert, Gisela Redeker, & Linda Waugh, 115-129. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Draaisma, Douwe. 1995. De Metaforenmachine : Een Geschiedenis van het Geheugen. (The Metaphor Machine: A History of Memory). Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij. Gentner, Dedre,, & D. Gentner. 1983. "Flowing Water or Teeming Crowds: Mental Models of Electricity". Mental Models, ed. by Dedre Gentner, & A. Stevens, 99-129, Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. , & Jonathan Grudin. 1985. "The Evolution of Mental Metaphors in Psychology: A 90-year Retrospective". American Psychologist 40. 181-192. Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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Kövecses, Zoltan. 1995. "The Container Metaphor of Anger in English, Chinese, Japanese and Hungarian". From a Metaphorical Point of View: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Cognitive Content of Metaphor, ed. by Zdravdo Radman, 117-147, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 1990. "The Invariance Hypothesis: Is Abstract Reasoning Based on ImageSchemas?" Cognitive Linguistics 1. 5-38. Miller, Arthur I. 1995. Imagery and Metaphor: The Cognitive Science Con nection, ed. by Zdravko Radman, 1995. 199-224. Rigotti, Francesca. 1995. The House as Metaphor, ed. by Zdravko Radman, 419446. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Roediger, Henry L. 1980. "Memory Metaphors in Cognitive Psychology". Memory & Cognition 8. 231-246.

FROM LINGUISTIC TO CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR IN FIVE STEPS

GERARD STEEN Tilburg University and Free University Amsterdam

How does the cognitive linguist get from linguistic metaphor to conceptual metaphor? Is there a procedure for the determination of conceptual metaphor when metaphorical language has been encountered? These are the questions that are addressed in this chapter, which aims to build a bridge between linguistic and conceptual metaphor by proposing a series of five analytical steps. Together they may form the beginning of a procedure for conceptual metaphor identification in discourse. The procedure is meant to constrain the relation between linguistic and conceptual metaphor. It has sometimes remained an act of faith that particular metaphors in language reflect particular metaphors in thought. This does not mean that there is no linguistic support for the existence of conceptual metaphors. And indeed, there are many clear cases in which the name of a particular conceptual metaphor is used in a linguistic expression, as can be demonstrated by a brief glance at the by now classic list of references Lakoff & Johnson (1980), Johnson (1987),Lakoff (1987),Turner(1987), Lakoff & Turner (1989), and Lakoff (1993). However, these clear cases serve the purpose of demonstration; they have not been systematically and exhaustively collected from large stretches of discourse, but they have been selected for their persuasive power. Now that the theory of conceptual metaphor has been firmly established as one important component of a general theory of metaphor, providing one of the main inspirations to cognitive linguistics as a general approach to language, it is time to reverse the perspective. Thence the question arises how stretches of discourse can be said to express particular conceptual metaphors as opposed to others, and this is a difficult issue. It presupposes a generally accepted procedure of deriving conceptual metaphors from linguistic metaphors encountered in on-going discourse, and that is currently not available. Most readers will be familiar with some of the examples of metaphorical correspondences between conceptual domains such as the following:

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THE LOVE-AS-A-JOURNEY MAPPING The lovers correspond to travelers. The love relationship corresponds to the vehicle. The lovers' common goals correspond to their common destinations one the journey. Difficulties in the relationship correspond to impediments to travel. (Lakoff, 1993:207) But from the present perspective, these are at best the output of the last step of the envisaged procedure, and this would probably only hold in ideal cases. What I am interested in is to explicate the assumptions that lead linguists to arrive at such conceptual mappings in departing from metaphorical expressions in discourse. This chapter is a logical reconstruction of these assumptions in an attempt to reach agreement about the steps that are inevitable when one goes from linguistic to conceptual metaphor identification. It is noteworthy that this explication can be related to a number of theoretical issues which were previously discussed in the seventies, before the advent of conceptual metaphor theory as we now know it (Cohen & Margalith, 1972; Van Dijk, 1975; Reinhart, 1976; Cohen 1993; Miller 1993). In retrospect, most of these references can be seen as attempts to make the jump from linguistic to conceptual metaphor in one way or another, but they failed to do so in an optimal manner because of the lack of a well-developed conceptual theory of metaphor. The time is now ripe to return to these issues in order to put conceptual metaphor theory on a firmer linguistic footing. It is ironic that cognitive linguists are going out of their way to show that linguistic metaphor is fundamentally conceptual, but that in doing so, they have neglected the method for showing how they get from linguistic metaphor to conceptual metaphor in the first place. My recourse to these sources has one consequence which may be misleading and which has to be circumvented from the beginning. Some or most of the examples discussed by theorists in the seventies were not of the conventional kind that have since become popular in the literature. In present-day terms they might be seen as one-shot and often poetic metaphors rather than systematic conceptual metaphors. Moreover, I do not address the question whether my illustrations of metaphor are actually found in other expressions of a similar kind, which is the generally accepted approach to establishing conceptual metaphors in cognitive linguistics. These may be surprising features of a chapter titled "From linguistic to conceptual metaphor in five steps." However, I believe that they are actually immaterial to the purpose of this particular contribution, which is to reconstruct how the linguist gets from linguistic metaphor to conceptual metaphor. For methodologically speaking, the linguist has no a priori knowledge whether a


59

particular expression is to be counted as a one-shot metaphor or as a systematic metaphor: he or she first has to identify metaphorical expressions and determine what the conceptual nature of the metaphorical expression in question is. Only once this has been achieved, can the metaphorical concept be examined as to its possible relation(s) with other metaphorical concepts, which then leads to a decision about one-shot conceptual metaphoricity versus systematic conceptual metaphoricity. Such a comparison across metaphors presupposes that the other metaphorical concepts have also been collected from discourse analysis in the same fashion. What I am focusing on, then, is the procedure for collecting such metaphorical concepts with the purpose of examining their systematic relations. If one insists on regarding as conceptual metaphors only those metaphors which are systematic (as opposed to one-shot metaphors), which I do not, then a sixth step will have to be added to the procedure, saying that the output of the first five steps is to be compared across large numbers of metaphors in order to establish more or less systematic groups of metaphorical concepts, labeling the largest systematic groups as conceptual metaphors. I have to add one more caveat from the beginning. I wish to emphasize that I am dealing with metaphor analysis, not metaphor understanding. Metaphor analysis is a task for the linguist who wishes to describe and explain the structure and function of language. Metaphor understanding is a cognitive process which is the object of investigation of psycholinguists and discourse psychologist s who are conducting behavioral research. This chapter does not deal with behavior. This does not mean that it cannot make use of theories of metaphor understanding for the identification of specific stages in the analytical procedure; on the contrary, it would be odd if there were no connection between understanding and analysis. However, metaphor analysis is a goal- and norm-related activity in the pursuit of data collection. It is the intentional technical identification of conceptual metaphors from metaphorical language in discourse. This chapter is concerned with a logical reconstruction of the discrete steps involved in that activity. The logical reconstruction may then be transformed into a procedure for practical use in linguistic research. From the perspective of the cognitive linguist, who is interested in the analysis of discourse and the way it reflects concepts and cognition, it is essential that there is such a procedure for relating linguistic metaphor to conceptual metaphor in a reliable fashion. Ultimately, the cognitive linguist has to begin with stretches of discourse and determine which linguistic expressions are metaphorical and related to which conceptual metaphors, and this is no trivial matter. However, such a procedure is also important for constructing the link between cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics, in which precise descriptions of literal and nonliteral materials are needed for the development of well-controlled linguistic stimulus materials. Manipulating texts and expressions

60

GERARD STEEN

with a view to activating particular conceptual metaphors requires the same solid foundation in linguistic methodology. 1.

Metaphor focus

identification

The first step of the procedure involves the identification of metaphorical expressions in discourse. This naturally involves the theoretically thorny issue of the definition of metaphor itself. As it is the purpose of this contribution to present a procedure for conceptual metaphor identification, which in itself more or less presupposes that we know what a metaphor is, I will cut a long story short and make the following assumption. It seems best to adopt the most widely accepted definition of metaphor that is currently available, the Lakoffian one of metaphor as a set of correspondences between two conceptual domains, with linguistic metaphor deriving from conceptual structures. The presence of two domains is intended to capture the fact that we are dealing with nonliteral similarities between entities and relations at some level of the analysis, which rules out other types of mappings like metonymies. The first step consists of identifying metaphorical expressions in discourse, and we now need to become more precise about the nature of this operation. For it is not true that identifying metaphorical expressions is tantamount to identifying linguistic metaphors. I will now show that when expressions are identified as metaphorical, it is the focus of the metaphor that we are dealing with, and this is only one part of the complete metaphor. In effect, it depends on a number of factors what one will call the complete metaphor in the first place. This observa tion needs to be explained with reference to a number of familiar but sometimes elusive concepts in metaphor theory. One of the more interesting discussions in this respect is Reinhart (1976), who has aligned some of the classic theories of metaphor such as Richards (1936), Beardsley (1958), and Black (1962). The main point of interest at present is best introduced by comparing the following metaphors, discussed by Reinhart (1976): (1)

I have seen the mermaids riding seawards on the waves (T.S. Eliot, The love song

(2)

The royal court is going to hunt

of J. Alfred Prufrock')

As an aside, the actual line from Eliot does not contain 'the mermaids' but 'them', but Reinhart has explicated the anaphoric pronoun for expository purposes. Reinhart explains that the focus of the metaphor in (1) is riding on. The focus of the metaphor in (2), which is about 'lions stalking their prey' (1976:391, fn. 8), is the royal court. Together, (1) and (2) illustrate that the focus is the


61

linguistic expression used nonliterally in the discourse. This means that the focus expression activates a concept which cannot be literally applied to the referents in the world evoked by the text. The concept RIDING-ON cannot be literally applied to the relation projected between the entities referred to by MERMAIDS and WAVES, and the concept ROYAL COURT cannot be literally applied to the entity referred to by LIONS. It will be noted that referents can be entities, relations, and attributes in some situation evoked by the discourse. The twin concept related to focus is frame, which I will define, with Reinhart and others, as the immediate linguistic environment of the metaphor focus. In (1), the frame is waves, according to Reinhart (1976:385). However, Reinhart does not explicate the linguistic frame of (2). This is probably because (2) is a special class of metaphor: the focus is not non-literal in relation to the rest of the linguistic expression, is going to hunt; there is no semantic tension between focus and frame. The kind of metaphor exemplified by (2) is purposefully left aside in Reinhart's attempt at ordering the theoretical concepts for the analysis of metaphor. As we shall see below, a cognitive linguistic approach which includes linguistic and conceptual as well as other discourse aspects of analysis is better equipped to handle these issues. There are some important issues in Reinhart's discussion of focus and frame, as well as of other notions like tenor and vehicle, and some of them will return later. But our present concern is the first step in the conceptual metaphor identification procedure. It may now be appreciated more fully that the first step is largely concerned with metaphor focus identification, not linguistic metaphor identification as a whole. The reason is this. Many metaphor foci may be related to a literally used concept which is explicitly expressed in the metaphor frame, as in the case of (1); however, there is also a good number of metaphor foci located in metaphor frames without a linguistic expression of the literal concept of the metaphor, as in (2). When both literal and nonliteral concept are present in the frame, it is possible to identify a complete linguistic metaphor in the first step of the analysis. However, when the literal concept is not expressed in the frame, the linguistic metaphor cannot be identified in the first step; then it is only the focus that is identified in the first step. These are implicit metaphors (Steen 1999) and they need explication through propositional analysis, which clarifies to which concept the nonliteral concept expressed by the focus is applied. For instance, words like scene, shit, heat, and so on are often used metaphorically without the literal concept to which they are applied being expressed explicitly in the discourse. As it is the metaphor focus that can be identified throughout all classes of metaphor in the first step, this is why step 1 of the procedure is called metaphor focus identification.

62 2.

GERARD STEEN Metaphorical idea identification

Now that we have a metaphor focus as a result of step 1, the question arises to what other kind of element the focus applies. As a matter of principle it cannot be the linguistic frame, as the linguistic frame merely provides a linguistic background in which the focus is a nonliteral expression which may or may not stand out as the case may be. In other words, the focus is not a focus on account of its relation to the linguistic frame, as we have observed, for it may even exhibit a literal relation to the frame, as was shown by (2). What does make a focus into a focus is the fact that it expresses a concept which is to be related to another concept to which it cannot be applied in a literal fashion: 'riding on' cannot be literally applied to 'mermaids' doing something to 'waves', and 'the royal court' cannot be literally applied to 'lions'. The other, literal, concept has been variously referred to as the tenor or the topic or the principal subject of the metaphor, but I will call it the literal part of the metaphorical idea. As not all literal parts of metaphors are explicitly expressed in discourse, as is the case for (2), they sometimes have to be inferred. This is why metaphor identification is a matter of concepts, propositions, and reference. As these are general aspects of discourse analysis which are not limited to metaphor, and propositional analysis was specially designed to cater for them, it is now time to turn to propositional analysis. Propositional analysis was developed independ ently of the study of metaphor and also aims to bridge the gap between discourse and conceptualization (see the contributions to Britton & Black, 1985; in particular Bovair & Kieras, 1985). Consider the following propositional analysis of (1), a personal, notational variant of mine of the technique used by Bovair & Kieras (1985): (3)

I have seen the mermaids riding seawards on the waves P1 (SEE I P2) P 2 (RIDE-ON MERMAIDS WAVES) P3 (DIRECTION P2 SEAWARDS)

This analysis of (1) is maximally consistent with the one of Reinhart (1976), even though I can see that at least one other analysis is possible, namely one in which P2 merely consists of (RIDE MERMAIDS) and an additional P4 is needed to capture that (ON P2 WAVES). However, since this difference is immaterial to my argument, I will not unnecessarily increase the complexity of the exposition and leave this point aside. Irrelevant details aside, (3) is a linearly and hierarchically ordered list of propositions, each consisting of a predicate and one or more arguments. The list captures the meaning of (1) as a series of minimal idea units, or propositions, and


63

presents the structural relations between the concepts contained by the idea units. All of this is relatively uncontroversial in discourse psychology (Britton & Black 1985; Perfetti & Britt 1995; but cf. Garnham 1996). The metaphorical idea that is present in T.S. Eliot's line is found in proposition P2. The nonliteral part of the metaphorical proposition is the concept RIDE-ON, which functions as a predicate, and it can be seen to apply to two other concepts, MERMAIDS and WAVES. They are conceptualizations of the literal referents in the projected text world about which something is said in a metaphori cal manner, namely that they are in a relation of the one 'riding on' the other. This relation could also have been conceptualized in a literal manner, for instance by means of FLOATING, which would have yielded a literal expression. This is also accounted for by Reinhart's definition of focus: Given a metaphorical expression Fi[Ei] Ei is the focus if it is possible to substitute E i for Ei, so that Fi[E j] is a literal expression and Fi[E j] is similar in meaning to Fi[Ei]. (1976:391) Whereas RIDING-ON does not refer literally to the presumed relation between the entities of mermaids and waves in the projected textworld, FLOATING does and produces a similar meaning. The conceptual basis of this approach is clarified by considering the other metaphor and its propositional analysis: (4)

The royal court is going to hunt P1 (REF COURT LIONS) P2 (HUNT COURT) P3 (MOD COURT ROYAL)

The crucial proposition is P1, where it is clarified that one concept in S2, COURT, refers to another concept, LIONS, which is available from the previous (or following) discourse, be it co-text or context. This explicit and immediate form of reference assignment between arguments is standard procedure in Bovair & Kieras' (1985) method of propositionalization, and is aimed at ensuring referential coherence between concepts in consecutive sentences, especially when different expressions are used about the same entities in a projected text world. Of course this is precisely what is needed to solve the problem of cases like (2) for the theory of metaphor: in order to be able to interpret the main idea unit P2 correctly, it is first necessary to clarify potentially confusing elements such as 'court' when there is no literal entity of that kind in the projected text world. This is the function of P1, which thereby automatically identifies a complete metaphor: it relates the

64

GERARD STEEN

nonliteral concept COURT to the literal concept it is supposed to apply to, LIONS, by mea m eans ns of the th e speci s pecially ally designed desi gned predic pre dicate ate 'REF' , and and reveals that the metaphor m etaphor of (2) is P1. All of these observations are intended to capture the propositional structure of the language: they are not meant to be read as claims about compre hension or other forms of processing. Propositional metaphor analysis can apply to all kinds of metaphors. It also lays bare how metaphors can differ from each other with respect to important dimensions dimensio ns of conceptual structure. For instance, Miller (1993:387) discusses dis cusses the committee. I did not find metaphor a watchdog committee. find it coincidental coincid ental that he presented present ed the metaphor in precisely this form, and ran an automatic Microconcord search of the th e Times corpus of approximately 1,000,000 words coming with that program. There were 10 occurrences of watchdog all metaphorical metaphori cal in watchdog in all, and they were all the above sense. What is interesting is the formal formal variation between the instances. ins tances. There was one case of of Miller's Mill er's structure, a watchdog organisation. It exemplifies an explicit metaphor, because it contains both the literal literal and the nonliteral concept of the underlying proposit ion. It is also a reduced metaphor, in that the linguistic structure is not equivalent to a proposition itself, but is a nominal phrase. (A full version of this metaphor would be something like: the committee is a watchdog, which is not likely to be found in genuine discourse, as is shown by the results of this search.) The metaphor is also simple, in that there is no additional material attached to the nonliteral concept itself. This should be contrasted to the following class: the National River Authority, the new watchdog for the water industry, and the Audit Commission, the local authority financial watchdog. In the latter case, the concept WATCHDOG is modified by additional concepts, such as NEW, turning the metaphorical focus into a complex structure needing more than one proposi tion. Another class of metaphor may be illustrated by a national watchdog and an independent watchdog', these are implicit metaphors, because the literal concept to which WATCHDOG is applied is not expressed in the text; and they are complex metaphors, because WATCHDOG does not stand by itself. Half of the ten watchdog metaphors were of this kind. The only example of an implicit and simple metaphor was found in a headline: watchdog may be too fierce; contextual assumptions assumpti ons about the use of of words in headlines apparently apparently have relaxed the need for adding information to the nonliterally used concept WATCHDOG which was exemplified by all of the other cases. Propositional analysis is hence a valuable tool in metaphor classification and raises consequential questions for interpreta tion and processing (Steen to appear). Propositi Propo sitional onal metaphor analysis also clarifies some interesting interes ting aspects of the previ pre viou ouss discus dis cussio sionn of Reinha Rei nhart rt (1976) (19 76).. In accordan acco rdance ce with Reinha Rei nhart rt and the th e theorists she discusses, the use of propositional analysis emphasizes that the nature of metaphor is conceptual and that the analyst can only access it through


65

the idea unit of the proposition rather than some rank of linguistic form, be it the word, the phrase, the clause, or the sentence. The complete metaphor is only identified when the appropriate literal and nonliteral concepts in the proposition have been identitied. Metaphor identification, identification, even linguistic metaphor identifica tion, is fundamentally a matter of conceptual analysis. It deals with the concepts referred to by the words and is at the core of a functional approach to language. What is more, the complete metaphor is not always always expressed as a complete metaphor in the surface of the discourse: there are metaphors which are only signalled by means of their focus expression, and their literal part has to be inferred by means of propositionalization (implicit metaphors). Propositional metaphor analysis hence also throws into relief the nature as well as the limited role of the notion of frame: frames are nothing but the immediate linguistic environment of the focus and hence do not always help in setting off the focus as a nonliteral expression, expr ession, as in (2). Frames have to receive a semantic and pragmatic p ragmatic interpretation in terms of reference and intentions before metaphorical idea identification can succeed, and this requires going beyond the surface of the frame: metaphorical idea identification (step 2) has to follow after metaphor focus identificati identi fication on (step 1). If many linguists were still uncomfortabl uncomf ortablee with wit h such an approach in the seventies, the advent of discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, and related functional studies of language use is now alleviating this problem. Propositional Propositio nal analysis also raises raises an interesting question about the scope of (1), the frame is riding X, which the frame: frame: in Reinhart' Reinh art' s analysis of (1), whi ch in effec effectt is the next grammatical gr ammatical level up in comparison to the focus focus (the waves). However, as is shown by the propositional analysis, other reaches of the frame may be imagined as well, ranging from the clause through the utterance to the sentence: (5)

a. b. c. d. e.

riding on the waves riding seawards seawards on the waves the mermaids riding on on the waves the mermaids mermaids riding seawards seawards on on the waves waves I saw saw the mermaids mermaids riding seaward seawardss on the waves waves

This is no mere terminological or technical matter, for for it determines whether one says that (1) contains the metaphor 'riding on the waves' or, for instance, 'mermaids riding on the waves'. I would prefer the metaphorical proposition as the indicator of the complete metaphor, as it embodies the turning point between language and conceptualization, as we shall see in a moment. What is important to point out here is that such decisions have effects on the coding and counting of metaphors of varying linguistic structures in corpus analysis, precise operational

66

GERARD STEEN

data. This is precisely one definitions being required for the reliable annotation of data. of the issues that a procedure for metaphor identification needs to resolve. 3.

Nonliteral comparison

identification

The output of step 2 is a proposition in which we have a nonliterally used concept (expressed by the linguistic focus identified in step 1) that is related to one on e or more literally used concepts identified in step 2 which evoke the relevant literal referent(s). The literally used concept(s) may be explicitly expressed in the frame frame or may have been inferred by the analyst from co-text or context. The input of step 3 is hence a metaphorical idea in the form of a proposition with literal and nonliteral concepts. We have assumed that metaphors are sets of correspondences between conceptual domains in which nonliteral similarity or comparison plays a pivotal role. Therefore we need to work from the metaphorical proposition towards a conceptual representation of the mapping between the two conceptual domains involved. The next step in our procedure is hence to begin to set up the compara tive structure that is implicit in the nonliteral mapping between domains for for every conceptual metaphor. There is an excellent source for this objective in Miller (1993), who (1993), who presents a sophisticated view of the comparison theory and has been unjustly neglected in conceptual metaphor theory. The essential point of Miller's contribution is that '[R]econstruction of the implied comparison compa rison is a critical step step in understanding underst anding a metaphor' metap hor' (1993:381). (1993:38 1). That metaphors imply comparisons is shown by the postulation of conceptual meta me taph phor orss like li ke LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LI LIFE IS A GAME, and an d so on. on . Meta Me taph phor orss in discourse hence require 'reconstructing the conceptual basis of the comparison' (1993:382) in order to be interpreted. This statement begs some fundamental questions question s about on-line o n-line comprehension comprehensi on behavior, but it certainly certainly holds true for for the off-line off-line analysis of the relation between linguistic and conceptual metaphor, with which we are concerned here. When an author uses a metaphor, Miller (1993:384-5) says, 'The claim is [... [...]] that he had a general concept—resemblance, comparison, comparis on, analogy--t an alogy--that hat we are trying to appreciate. Such concepts have a structure, structure, and S1 S1 makes that structure explicit.' S1 is the general form of all comparison statements, and encompasses nonliteral and metaphorical comparison statements: (6)

Sl.SIM[F(x), G(y)]

This is a conceptual analysis of similarity and comparison, as Miller repeatedly emphasizes (1993:377; 381; 382; 385; 389). Miller shows that it allows for an analysis of metaphorical propositions as nonliteral analogies with conceptual

FROM LINGUISTIC TO CONCEPTUA CONCEPTUAL L METAPHO METAPHOR R IN FIVE STEPS

67

elements left out, and he proposes three specific rewrite rules which transform metaphorical propositions into nonliteral comparisons. That is also why he requires propositional analysis as providing the input for his analysis of the underlying comparisons (1993:375-6): metaphorical idea identification (step 2) has to precede nonliteral comparison identification identification (step 3). Let us examine how ho w this works in practice. The metaphorical proposition of (1), (RIDE-ON MERMAIDS WAVES), may be rewritten as a nonliteral comparison with the following structure: ( 7)

(RIDE-ON MERMAIDS MERMAIDS WAVES) -> ( 3 F ) (By,y (y,y')]}

') { S S I M [ F ( M E R M A I D S , WAVES),

RIDE-ON

A paraphrase of this formal notation of the conceptual structure of the implied comparison would be the following: there is an activity (or relation) F and two entities y and y ' such that there is a similarity between betwe en mermaids merm aids and waves ' doing F ' on the one hand and y riding on y' on the other. The input of the rule is the output of our step 2, while the output of the rule is the automatic product of Miller's rewrite rules. Miller adds, 'The first step in interpreting [such a] a] comparison would be to find appropriate values for the missing terms' (1993:384). This will be our step 4, nonlit no nliteral eral analogy identification. identification . To jump ju mp ahead, in the present case cas e we may fall fall back bac k on the th e analysis analy sis suggeste sugg estedd by Reinha Rei nhart rt (1976: (19 76:388 388-90 -90): ): (8)

(RIDE-ON MERMAIDS MERMAIDS WAVES) WAVES) → SIM[FL0AT(MERMAIDS, WAVES), RIDE-ON (JOCKEY, HORSE)]

Filling in the missing terms in this manner will be step 4 of the procedure, and fleshing out the resulting analogy into a full-blown nonliteral mapping, step 5. For now, we have to concentrate on step 3, identifying the underlying comparison. The derivation of the comparison statements from the metaphorical propos pro posititio ions ns created creat ed by step 2 is highly hig hly mechan mec hanica ical.l. Miller Mil ler introd int roduce ucess three thr ee general rules which automatically create comparison statements from proposi tional input, for three classes of metaphors: nominal, verbal, and sentential. (Actually Miller uses the term 'predicati 'pred icative', ve', but to the linguist this is misleading, for the nominal part of a metaphor like 'Man is a wolf' is also used predicatively.) The rules are as follows: (9)

68

GERARD STEEN

Although the structure of the comparison statements is complete, not all of the concepts of the comparisons are known: the unknown ones are thematized, as it were, by the two existential propositions preceding the comparison structures. For instance, in the nominal metaphor 'Man is a wolf, also discussed by Miller (1993:382), the underlying comparison suggests that there is a property of men such that it is similar to some other property of wolves. It is the task of step 4, nonliteral analogy identification, to attend to these unexpressed properties and fill them in at the appropriate slots of the incomplete comparison statement generated by rule M l. However, the derivation of the incomplete nonliteral comparison statements themselves is much less interpretive, for it follows from the analysis of a stretch of discourse as containing a metaphorical proposition of a particular type, nominal, verbal, or sentential. 4.

Nonliteral analogy identification

The fourth step handles the reconstruction of the complete nonliteral comparison statement by inferring the implied concepts for the empty slots. Miller calls this the reconstruction of the comparison, but I would like to call this nonliteral analogy identification. It would serve well to suggest what step 4 adds to the previous steps of (1) metaphor focus identification, (2) metaphorical idea identification, and (3) nonliteral comparison identification: by filling in the empty slots of the comparative structure produced by step 3, the incomplete nonliteral comparison statement is turned into a full-blown nonliteral analogy in step 4. If step 3 turns complete propositions into comparisons between two incomplete propositions by means of rules Ml through M3, step 4 fills out each of these incomplete propositions into complete ones. Nonliteral analogy identification (step 4) has to follow after nonliteral comparison identification (step 3). The term nonliteral analogy identification also suggests that the aim of the entire undertaking is still to obtain reliable analyses of metaphorical language. Our frame of research is the kind of claim that a particular stretch of language is an expression of a specific conceptual metaphor, and if such claims are to be upheld, we need to be able to support them with reliable identification procedures at every stage of the analysis. In other words, the step from incomplete nonliteral comparison statements to complete nonliteral analogies is supposed to be one of identification, in which interpretation is to be kept under firm control: we are to pick out the underlying analogy that may plausibly be conjectured to play a guiding role in interpreting the incomplete comparative structure produced in step 3. In this connection it may be disheartening to find Miller issuing the warning that 'there can be no uniquely correct comparison statement' (1993:384). Somewhat later, he writes, '[T]he search for suitable values to convert [an incomplete comparison statement to a nonliteral analogy, GS] is, strictly speaking,


69

a matter of interpretation' (1993:384). But Miller is right, and, what is more, there is no contradiction between these warnings and our undertaking. Even if our goal is one of analysis and identification, it will be good to remember that there are objective limitations imposed on our pursuit and that interpretation needs to be kept on the leash. It is fortunately possible to say a little more about the actual procedure of nonliteral analogy identification. For this purpose it is useful to return to Reinhart (1976), whose main point was to introduce a distinction between focus and vehicle identification and interpretation as two distinct aspects of understanding metaphor. These two aspects may now be put to use in the identification of the nonliteral analogy. I will begin with focus interpretation, but this does not mean that this reflects the actual order of proceeding. Let us examine another of Reinhart's examples. She discusses another metaphor from T.S. Eliot's 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', reproduced under (10): (10) The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes Reinhart offers the following analysis of the focus: In this metaphor, the focus is rubs its back upon, since we can substitute another expression for it, e.g. touches, swirls against, or comes up against, to yield a literal expression, such as The yellowfog that touches the window panes. (1976:391) Let us examine how this analysis fares in our procedure and how it can be inserted into step 4. If we follow Reinhart in identifying the focus as she does, we rediscover this in the following list of propositions produced by step 2: (11) The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes P1 (RUB FOG BACK) P2 (UPON Pl PANES) P3 (MOD PANES WINDOW)

If we combine all of these propositions and take 'rub its back upon' as a complex verbal group used in a nonliteral fashion, we need Miller's rule M2 to create the following incomplete comparison statement as step 3: (12) Rub back upon (fog, window panes) -> (E3F) (Ey,y') {SIM [F(fog, window panes), rub back(y,v')]}

70

GERARD STEEN

To fill this in, as part of step 4, we require the operation of Reinhart's focus interpretation. It is nothing but the search for the predicate F which is needed to cement the relation between the fog and the window panes in the first incomplete proposition of the comparison. The choice of 'touch' by Reinhart is one possible option (although it is metaphorical, too). This would fill out the empty slot on the literal side of the equation quoted as (12). Reinhart comments: Focus-interpetation assigns a reading to the focus expression which is a matter of selecting those properties associated with the focus expression which are relevant to the context. Thus among the properties of rubbing one's back, the properties of physical contact and of being in movement are consistent with the context of Eliot's metaphor, hence they can be selected. This procedure provides a rough understanding of what the metaphor is about, or what the actual situation which is being depicted is (the fog swirling against the window panes), and how it ties in with the wider context of the metaphor. (1976:391-2) Focus interpretation produces a partial but basic understanding of the metaphor. In Miller's terms, it deals with 'the cast of characters in the reader's concept of the text' (1993:382). Note the comparable referential style in Reinhart's passage, when she uses 'what the metaphor is about, or what the actual situation which is being depicted is.' However, the focus interpretation of back rubbing can only take place if it is also at least partly interpreted as rubbing one's back (see Reinhart's selection of 'the properties of physical contact and of being in movement' in the above quotation). In other words, the second incomplete proposition of (12) also has to be part of the equation. This is the beginning of vehicle identification. And to construct the full set of conceptual correspondences between the two conceptual domains involved in the metaphor, the second incomplete proposition of (12) leads us into a relatively independent consideration of the source domain. The second incomplete proposition needs to be fleshed out itself, too, primarily by filling in the empty slots of the arguments relating to rubbing one's back. This is not just the beginning but nothing less than Reinhart's vehicle identification. Reinhart's definition of the notion of vehicle squarely falls within our operation of filling in the missing terms of the nonliteral side of the analogy: The vehicle is the frame F j[ ] in which the occurrence of E j results in a literal expression, F j[Ei], where F j[Ei] is not similar in meaning to F i[Ei]. (1976:391)


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Reinhart's vehicle is hence identical to the second existential proposition of the incomplete comparison statement quoted above, (Ey,y'): we need to find a frame consisting of two literal entities which may be related to each other by means of the function 'rub its back upon' so that they form one coherent state of affairs. The resulting proposition is supposed to be similar in a nonliteral fashion to the fog touching the window panes. Reinhart suggests that 'cat' would be a good candidate for the vehicle thus defined, and the poetic context of the line in question provides corroboratory evidence. There are again many aspects which would deserve further treatment. However, let us conclude this section by pointing out that there is an important difference between the two aspects of step 4. Focus interpretation is usually more richly constrained by the context of the metaphor, in that it involves the construction of a literal proposition against the background of the topic and content of the previous discourse (see Reinhart's remarks above, and compare Miller 1993:394). Vehicle identification does not have this rich contextual constaint-it has to activate prototypical or default knowledge about the source domain. Miller writes: 'usually it is sufficient to take as y whatever the most generic argument G is conventionally predicated of (1993:393). Indeed, part of the difficulty of vehicle identification is precisely that there may be more than one source domain which can be involved in the interpretation of second completed proposition (cf. Vosniadou and Ortony 1989). This is clearly not the case for focus interpretation, in which the conceptual domain is identical to or part of the conceptual domain of the stretch of discourse in which the metaphor is located. Another crucial aspect is the relation between the two sides of the analogy. Part of the meaning of y may have to be filtered out by its lack of relevance to the literal topic of the metaphor and the discourse. However, many possible assumptions about the source domain can usually be maintained with varying degrees of strength in the context of the target domain: a range of possible values for the empty slots is usually possible, that is, compatible with the textual world, which makes it rather difficult to hit upon the best vehicle for the eventual analogy. That focus interpretation and vehicle identification thus exert a mutual influence on each other when one attempts to align the two parts of the analogy is self-evident and the cornerstone of the interaction theory (cf. Miller 1993:394 and Reinhart 1976:389). This does make step 4 highly dependent on the specifics of every particular metaphor. 5.

Nonliteral mapping

identification

The last step in the procedure is to identify the complete nonliteral mapping. This is done by filling out the conceptual structure of the two sides of the nonliteral analogy, the source and the target domain. Other concepts and the

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relations between them are to be listed for each domain, and their interdomain relations are to be projected. Some of these additions may be motivated semantically whereas others are based on our knowledge of the world in particular domains (cf. Miller 1993:382 andReinhart 1976:388). The result of this operation is a conceptual network from which the analyst may derive sets of correspon dences such as those illustrated at the beginning of this chapter (Lakoff 1993:207). The transition from analogies to mappings is not given much principled attention by Reinhart and Miller: they seem to relegate it to the domain of interpretation about which they do not offer systematic observations. It is a theme which, to my knowledge, has not been discussed by Lakoff either, except in a negative fashion, as in (1993:210): 'Mappings should not be thought of as processes, or as algorithms that mechanically take source domain inputs and produce target domain outputs.' One of the more prolific writers in this area, however, is Dedre Gentner (1982; 1983; 1989; Gentner & Jeziorski 1993), who has done experimental research on behavior as well as AI modeling of knowledge structures. She has listed six principles of analogical reasoning which may be used to constrain the production of mappings from analogies. However, Gentner (personal communication) has also admitted that the technical analysis of such mappings is still basically an art. I cannot escape the impression that another alternative in this area, Turner and Fauconnier's (1995) conceptual blending theory, fares no better. Thus the question arises how step 5 of the procedure may be better constrained. And indeed, asking this question invites reviewing the other steps and inspecting the relation between step 5 and step 4 in particular. For identifying the analogy in step 4 seems to require at least a partial identification of the nonliteral mapping, which is step 5, in order for the proposed analogy to be plausible. To take this further, it might be suggested that identifying the analogy is a kind of summary or abstraction of the nonliteral mapping identified in step 5, and this could lead to the query why step 4 and 5 are not reversed. In other words, one might also entertain an order in which the incomplete comparison statements of step 3 are first fleshed out into conceptual domains with conceptual correspon dences and are only afterwards condensed, as it were, into neat explicit analogies. However, to raise the question is to answer it. For one needs a kind of searchlight in the construction of the conceptual domains and their relations, which involves a kind of propositional interpretation of the implied comparison. Step 4 provides such a provisional interpretation in the form of an analogy, and this analogy acts as a target for the construction of the more complex mapping (or mappings, if you follow conceptual blending theory). There is hence a special relation between steps 4 and 5, in which step 4 provides a tentative analogy which is rejected or retained depending on the success of the ensuing step 5. This does


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not happen anywhere between steps 1 and 4. Step 4 is crucial, because that is where interpretation comes in, albeit as tightly controlled by the aims discussed above as possible, and step 5 acts as a verification of step 4 in spelling out its consequences in a more complex and explicit manner. It is clear that the last two steps of the procedure form the weakest parts of the chain, with step 5 being the weakest of all. Future research will have to concentrate on strengthening these stages of the analysis. Otherwise, the gap between metaphorical language and conceptual metaphor may never be bridged in a reliable fashion. I will now move on to a brief illustration of the complete sequence of steps. 6.

Conclusion

I have suggested that the identification of conceptual metaphor in discourse requires five steps: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

metaphor focus identification metaphorical idea identification nonliteral comparison identification nonliteral analogy identification nonliteral mapping identification

These steps are all called identification, because they give an answer to the question 'What is ...?' The first three questions are easiest to answer: what is the metaphor focus, what is the metaphorical proposition, and what is the metaphori cal comparison? Question 4 is more difficult to handle, because it involves filling in empty slots in an analogy on the basis of focus interpretation and vehicle identification in mutual interaction. However, context and default language use, respectively, act as guides to provide an answer to question 4. The answer to this question has to be seen as a searchlight for constructing a nonliteral mapping, which then has to be checked against the discourse regarding its approp riateness. This step is the least reliable step in the procedure, while it is essential in order to arrive at metaphors as sets of conceptual correspondences. Let us return to the watchdog metaphor discussed above. Identifying the focus of the metaphor involved checking that the word watchdog was not used in its literal sense, referring to an animal guarding some property or people. This was not difficult on account of the accompanying information which explicitly signalled that the watchdog was The National River Authority' or 'the local authority financial watchdog'. Such explicit lexical signals make focus identifica tion an easy task, but they are often unnecessary given the overt contrast between the domains of the metaphor focus and the topic of the text.

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The identification of the metaphorical proposition is not problematic either. It involves constructing the proposition (BE ORGANISATION WATCHDOG) or some variant thereof. As was shown above, there is some additional conceptual variation between the individual cases of the metaphor. The identification of the nonliteral comparison is done by feeding the proposition into rule M l. This yields the paraphrase "Some property of a committee is like some property of a watchdog." Identifying the nonliteral analogy next concerns the finding of the properties left open in the nonliteral comparison. I will begin with vehicle interpretation for the sake of showing that there is no predetermined order between the two aspects. Taking the canonical values of what watchdogs usually do, we can suggest that the relevant property is 'guarding property or people'. The property of the committees in question is similar, in that they have to guard the public interest in the economic domain. One case has the following additional information: 'To protect the interests of non-Treasury use of economic data'. Fleshing out the analogy into a complete mapping involves listing attributes of both committees and watchdogs and attempting to match them. The following provisional list may be entertained: THE COMMITTEE-AS-WATCHDOG MAPPING

The committee corresponds to the watchdog. The organizational domain corresponds to the yard. The interest or activity at risk corresponds to the property. Malpractice corresponds to trespassing. Monitoring corresponds to watching. Warning the public corresponds to barking. Other aspects can be included, and the list may be adjusted according to context. As I have acknowledged at the beginning of this paper, there may be another step, which is to compare the analysis of one metaphor with those of others. This would be the last step in determining whether a metaphor is part of a systemati cally organized set of metaphorical concepts (conventional conceptual metaphors) or not. In our case, the analysis would not be dramatically different for every case of the ten instances of the watchdog metaphor, and we might come to the conclusion that the metaphor is relatively conventional, depending on other frequencies. There are many other issues which have also had to be left aside. For instance, etymological and sociolinguistically restricted metaphor may pose special problems in step 1. Implicit, reduced, complex, multiple, extended, and mixed metaphors provide special challenges to steps 2 and 3 (Steen 1999 and to


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appear). Differences between nominal, verbal, and sentential metaphor may cause different situations for step 4. And so on. These and other issues are on the agenda for future research. One specific item is the testing of the reliability of the various steps: specialist informants may be given tasks to carry out steps 1 through 5, either separately or in a row, with diverging sets of materials in order to reveal more specific difficulties of applying the procedure to real discourse data. The general conclusion, however, is that we have offered a logical reconstruction of the analytical process, and that it holds a promise for practical use as a descriptive tool in semantics. Again, the procedure does not pretend to model the comprehension process. Moreover, as was suggested above, some steps in the analysis make greater interpretative jumps than others, and this is where cognitive linguists should be aware of alternative explanations of their data and their beliefs in conceptual metaphors. It is hoped that the procedure can pinpoint some of the more risky moments of analysis and that it can help in recording experiences in negotiating these moments. Author's note

I wish to thank Ray Gibbs, Rachel Giora, Lachlan Mackenzie, and Wilbert Spooren for their acute observations and comments on an earlier version of this paper. References

Beardsley, M. 1958. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovonovich. Black, M. 1962. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Bovair, S., & D.E. Kieras. 1985. "A Guide to Propositional Analysis for Research on Technical Prose". Britton & Black 1985. 315-362. Britton, B.K., & J.B. Black, ed. 1985. Understanding Expository Text. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cohen, L. J. 1993. 'The Semantics of Metaphor". Metaphor and Thought, second edition, ed. by A. Ortony, 58-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -, & A. Margalith. 1972. "The Role of Inductive Reasoning in the Interpreta tion of Metaphor". Semantics of Natural Language, ed. by D. Davidson, & G. Harman, 722-744. Dordrecht: Reidel. Dijk, T.A. van. 1975. "Formal Semantics of metaphorical Discourse". Poetics 4. 173-198. Garnham, A. 1996. "Discourse Comprehension Models". Computational Psycholinguistics: AI and Connectionist Models of Human Language Processing ed. by T. Dijkstra, & K. de Smedt, 221-244. London: Taylor &

Francis.

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Gentner, D. 1982. "Are Scientific Analogies Metaphors?" Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives, ed. by D. Miall, 106-132. Brighton: Harvester. 1983. "Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy". Cognitive Science 7. 155-170. 1989. "The Mechanisms of Analogical Learning". Similarity and Analogical Reasoning ed. by S. Vosniadou, & A. Ortony, 199-241. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , & M. Jeziorski. 1993. "The Shift from Metaphor to Analogy in Western Science". Metaphor and Thought, second edition, ed. by A. Ortony, 447480. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about The Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1993. "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. Metaphor and Thought, second edition, ed. by A. Ortony, 202-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , & M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , & M. Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, G.A. 1993. "Images and Models, Similes and Metaphors". Metaphor and Thought, second edition, ed. by A. Ortony, 357-400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perfetti, CA., & M.A. Britt. 1995. "Where Do Propositions Come From?" Discourse Comprehension: Essays in Honor of Walter Kintsch, ed. by C.A. Weaver, HI, S. Mannes, & C.A. Fletcher, 11-34. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Reinhart, T. 1976. "On Understanding Poetic Metaphor". Poetics 5. 383-402. Richards, I.A. 1936. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. London: Oxford University Press. Steen, G.J. 1999. "Metaphor and Discourse: Towards a Linguistic Checklist for Metaphor Analysis". Researching and Applying Metaphor, ed. by L. Cameron, & G. Low, 81-104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. To appear. "Analyzing Metaphor in Literature: With Examples from William Wordsworth's 'I wandered Lonely as aCloud'". Poetics Today 20. Turner, M. 1987. Death Is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , & G. Fauconnier. 1995. "Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression". Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10. 183-204.


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Vosniadou, S., & A. Ortony. 1989. "Similarity and Analogical Reasoning: A Synthesis". Similarity and Analogical Reasoning, ed. by S. Vosniadou, & A. Ortony, 1-17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A TYPOLOGY OF MOTIVATION FOR CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR CORRELATION VS. RESEMBLANCE1

JOSEPH. E. GRADY George Mason University

1.

Conceptual metaphors and experiential

motivation

One of the most basic principles of the theory of metaphor outlined by Lakoff & Johnson in Metaphors we live by (1980) is that there are conventional metaphoric associations, or mappings, between some concepts, but not between others. For instance, emotional unresponsiveness is mapped onto coldness in the domain of temperatures, but not onto warmth, and not onto any number of properties in other domains, such as width, monetary value, or innateness. So, for instance, we say that an unsympathetic person has a cold and unfeeling demeanor, but not a wide and unfeeling demeanor or a precious and unfeeling demeanor. (1)

a. b. c. d.

He has a very cold and unfeeling demeanor. ? He has a very warm and unfeeling demeanor. ? He has a very wide and unfeeling demeanor. ? He has a very precious and unfeeling demeanor.

Unlike la, examples l b-d are difficult to interpret as statements about an individual's temperament. Speaking more generally, it is often the case that a given pairing of concepts invokes no conventional or easily determined meta phoric mapping. The following example from Mark Turner's Reading Minds (1991:154) illustrates this point. (2)

? The moon is a monkey wrench.

Although we could probably find a way to impose meaning on this statement (as Turner does), the interpretation would hardly be predictable, and would demand a good deal of creativity. If there is one set of figurative correspondences which is conventional, and is manifested in numerous linguistic expressions, and another set of pairings which do not have this status, then cognitive linguists should be concerned with

JOSEPH GRADY

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finding the principles which cause some metaphors to be in the conceptual repertoire, and others not to be. Unless this distinction is arbitrary, it should be possible to account for it. Table 1 lists some examples of conventional metaphors, which underlie various linguistic examples, and also some unconventional pairings of concepts, which are difficult to make sense of. Conventional

Unconventional

NORMAL IS STRAIGHT SIGNIFICANT IS LARGE PLEASING IS TASTY DIFFICULT IS HEAVY

NORMAL IS LARGE SIGNIFICANT IS TASTY PLEASING IS HEAVY DIFFICULT IS STRAIGHT

Table 1 : Conventional and unconventional metaphoric pairings There are various kinds of evidence which show that the distinction is not entirely arbitrary - that is, not simply a matter of historical accident. For instance, the recurrence of the same metaphoric patterns across broad samples of unrelated languages argues against the view that the conventionality of particular metaphors is arbitrary. The examples in (3) illustrate one such pattern: (3)

Zulu Hawaiian Turkish Malay Russian

-khulu nui büyük besar krupnij

"big; important" "big; important" "big; important" "big; important" "big; important"

In each of these languages, a term which literally refers to physical size may also refer metaphorically to degree of importance. This is a conceptualization with very wide cross-linguistic distribution. If there is a principle behind the conventionalization of certain metaphors, that principle must logically be due to either something about the human organism - for instance, the metaphoric correspondences are innate and hardwired into our cerebral structure - or the patterns must arise from something about our experi ences, or possibly both. Presumably, even a cause which lies in the realm of our experiences must relate in some way to the structures of our brains and bodies, since these structures constrain our experiences so definitively. The recurrence of particular metaphorical patterns across cultures is so striking that any experiences which could give rise to these metaphors must be fundamental to human life in

A TYPOLOGY OF MOTIVATION FOR CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR

81

general, rather than based on any particular, local, culturally bound types of experience. Metaphor researchers such as Lakoff, Johnson, Sweetser, Turner, Gibbs and Brugman have been unanimous in invoking the principle of 'experiential motivation' rather than arguing that metaphors are arbitrary or innate. This position contrasts sharply with other theories of metaphor. A striking statement of an opposing viewpoint is Searle's argument that coldness "just is" associated with being unemotional: (4)

I think the only answer to the question, "what is the relation between cold things and unemotional people that would justify the use of 'cold' as a metaphor for lack of emotion?" is simply that as a matter of perceptions, sensibilities, and linguistic practices, people find the notion of coldness associated in their minds with lack of emotion. The notion of being cold just is associated with being unemotional. (Searle, 1979:267)

Searle appears to dismiss the enterprise of trying to find motivations for metaphors, and even the idea that there is any principled reason why some metaphorical conceptualizations arise and make sense to us while others do not. By contrast, I cite the following passage from Lakoff & Johnson (1980) as a concise statement of the position on experiential motivation within the theory of conceptual metaphor: "We feel that no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis ..." (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:19). The typical example of experiential motivation referred to in conceptual metaphor literature is the grounding for MORE IS UP (e.g., "Drunk driving arrests are up this year"). In this case, the motivation is a straightforward correlation between the two concepts: as objects or substances accumulate in greater quantities, their level often rises - consider for instance the top of a stack or the level of fluid in a container. 2.

Death is a thief

Many other metaphors cited in the literature, however, are much harder to account for in terms of such simple correlations as the one between quantity and vertical elevation. This observation has been one of the motivations for the development of the theory of 'primary metaphors ', which holds that certain basic, low-level metaphorical correspondences have a privileged status, and are the bases for other metaphorical expressions and conceptualizations (Grady et al. 1996; Grady 1997a, etc.) 2. These basic conceptual associations, which are excellent predictors of how and whether linguistic data may be interpreted, are also the

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metaphors which are most clearly grounded in aspects of our experience (Grady 1997b). As an example of a metaphor which is not primary in this sense, consider DEATH IS A THIEF, discussed by Mark Turner in Reading Minds. (5)

[D]eath robbed him of his life. (Turner 1991:174)

This metaphor, unlike MORE IS UP, is not based on any common aspect of our experience. There is certainly no recurring scene we all experience involving both death and a thief. In fact, many of us who understand the metaphor may have no direct experience whatsoever with thieves, and even our indirect experience of them, e.g. in books and films, would not motivate a tight association between thieves and death - they are most closely associated with stealing, not murder. An additional fact which will be relevant to us about this metaphor is that the sentences and expressions which it appears to motivate are extremely similar to expressions about target concepts other than death. In fact, anything which we greatly appreciate - such as our own experiences of hope, happiness, comfort, etc. - can be metaphorically "robbed" from us, just as life can. Whatever causes us to metaphorically lose these valued elements of our experience can be cast as a thief: (6)

a. All hope and comfort have been robbed from me in this awful place. b. He broke her heart and stole her happiness.

In each of these cases it seems that the thief as an entire person is not relevant instead it is merely the thief as the entity responsible for our loss that figures in the mapping. For this reason, expressions like the following are very difficult to interpret. (7)

a. ? Worry has robbed me of my piece of mind, and he [i.e. Worry] is tall. b. ? A lifetime of poverty has robbed her of her hopes and dreams, and it [i.e. the lifetime of poverty] is fatigued.

Clearly, the metaphorical conceptualization of these situations which allows us to speak of "thieves" and "robbing" does not involve a rich understanding of the thief as an individual with physical characteristics, feelings, and so forth. Of course we are capable of enriching our figurative image of Death-as-Thief with any degree of detail, including his physical appearance; but the conventional mapping does not include such elements. 3 In the simpler, conventional mapping the thief is merely the agent of loss. Note that primary metaphors like DIFFICULT IS HEAVY and PLEASING IS TASTY do not involve this sort of very partial


83

projection. In these cases virtually any lexical item which refers to the source concept can refer metaphorically to the target concept, yielding an expression which is interpretable according to the given conceptual pattern even if it is lexically unconventional - a delicious idea, a succulent idea, a weighty task, a tenton task. That is, while these mappings are very schematic, they are relatively exhaustive within their limited range. As 7 illustrates, the same cannot be said of DEATH IS A THIEF. Since the mapping between thieves and agents of unwanted change is so selective, or to put it more strongly, so narrowly restricted, we are better justified in stating the mapping at the level of the projections which actually occur. From the considerations above we can conclude that possession is the key metaphorical concept here - abstract entities which we value are understood as prized possessions, and whatever causes us to lose those things fits into this conceptualization as a thief, or other individual who takes away from us what we hold dear. The expressions mapping valued experiences onto possessions need not refer to thieves, however, as we see in 8: (8)

a. My most precious possession is my health. b. I still treasure those memories.

Thus the linguistic evidence suggests that a metaphor along the lines of VALUED ASPECTS OFEXPERIENCE ARE PRECIOUS POSSESSIONS lies behind the conceptualiza tion of death as a thief. This less specific mapping is also much easier to account for than DEATH IS A THIEF in terms of a plausible, direct association between the source and target concepts. There are strong, recurrent correlations between physical and emotional aspects of our experience as we interact with objects. For instance, we may feel a strong sense of pleasure when we acquire certain objects, satisfaction as we hold them, and loss or grief when they are taken away. As long as life, hope, happiness, and the love of others are appreciated on an emotional level they can be construed as metaphorical treasures, vulnerable to theft by metaphorical thieves. Contrast this more schematic metaphor with DEATH IS A THIEF: it would be unsatisfying (and, as we have seen, unnecessary) to invoke our few experiences with actual thieves as motivations for the metaphor, especially since so little of those experiences is relevant to the expressions. Fear, for instance, might be a typical reaction to an encounter with a thief, but does not figure in expressions like 6 and 7. The recurring experience types mentioned above, however, are plausible motivations for the VALUED OBJECTS METAPHOR, and instances of what have been termed 'primary scenes' (see Grady 1997 and Grady & Johnson, to appear).

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The types of interactions with objects which ultimately motivate the conceptualization of death as a thief occur in all sorts of settings and transcend particular experiential frames such as restaurant dining or highway driving - the precious object could be a wedding ring, a pen we like to write with, a favorite book, a photograph, a seashell, a toy, etc. And, like other types of experience which appear to underlie conventional metaphoric mappings, our experiences with valued objects correlate some aspect of our perception of or interaction with the world with some aspect of our cognitive response to the world. Other such experience types include lifting a heavy object and experiencing strain, tasting a sweet object and experiencing pleasure, judging an object to be flawed due to irregularities in its shape, and paying particular attention to a larger object

(because of its potentially greater significance as an obstacle, threat, reward, etc.). These are recurring experiences which plausibly motivate the conventional metaphors listed in Table 1. Experiences with valued objects constitute plausible bases for a metaphor like VALUED ASPECTS OF EXPERIENCE ARE PRECIOUS POSSESSIONS since they

involve tight, recurring correlations between the emotional and physical dimensions of our interactions with possessions. (9)

Experience types which motivate VALUED ASPECTS OF EXPERIENCE ARE PRECIOUS POSSESSIONS a. Gaining a possession and feeling happy b. Holding a possession and feeling content c. Losing a possession and feeling sad

This basic metaphor, in turn, licenses more particular conceptualizations such as DEATH IS A THIEF. The reason I have taken the time to discuss this particular case is that it illustrates the more general principle that specific or complex metaphors, or ones which have been elaborated with rich detail, often owe their existence to mappings at a more fundamental level, and this is where we should look for experiential motivation. 3.

Experiential correlation as a motivation for primary

metaphors

When we investigate the apparent experiential bases of a number of primary metaphors we find that the experiences which could plausibly give rise to them are similar in scale and structure to the experience types just discussed. Namely, a recurring 'primary scene', which can be characterized at a very local and schematic level, involves a tight correlation between two dimensions of experience - typically with one more directly related to sensory input than the


85

other. Typical of these scenes is that they are elements of universal human experience - basic sensori-motor, emotional and cognitive experiences which do not depend on the particulars of culture. Some other metaphors at the primary level include: (10)

[CAUSAL] ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL [PART-WHOLE] STRUCTURE STRONG DESIRE IS HUNGER ACHIEVING A PURPOSE IS REACHING A DESTINATION

ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE (e.g., "Our monitoring system has unraveled over the past week"), which involves a mapping between physical partwhole structure and the logical and causal relationships which we refer to very generally as organization, is plausibly accounted for in terms of a correlation between physical interaction with complex objects and the formation of cognitive representations of their causal structure. For instance, our experience of table legs includes both perceptual information about shape and conceptual information, informed by our understanding of gravity, regarding their causal role in supporting tabletops. As motivation for STRONG DESIRE IS HUNGER - e.g., "Our team is very hungry for a victory" - we can point to the correlation between the physical sensation of hunger and the focused conscious desire (for food) which accompa nies it. Finally, ACHIEVING A PURPOSE IS REACHING A DESTINATION appears to be based on the correlation between arriving at physical landmarks and achieving purposes (see Johnson 1987 for a discussion of this metaphor and its basis in experience.) The kinds of motivations I have just mentioned sound strikingly like metonymic relationships between aspects of experienced scenes (which could be represented in schema theory by close network links between schemas embedded within larger scenarios). In fact primary metaphors and their motivations should be especially fertile material for research on the relationship between metaphor and metonymy. A number of researchers (e.g., Goossens 1995) have explored this relationship and pointed out that the two often appear to be closely related, or even hard to distinguish, both in the kinds of conceptual relationships they comprise and especially in the kinds of situational relationships that motivate them. While it is clearly metaphoric to cast difficulty as heaviness in cases where no physical burdens or physical weights are relevant, the origins of the conceptual association between the physical assessment of weight and the affective experience of exertion certainly bear comparison to the type of frame-internal relations typical of metonymy. Chris Johnson and I have argued (Grady & Johnson 1998; Grady & Johnson to appear) that the characterization of the primary scenes which underlie primary

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metaphors can also help account for other aspects of language, including the organization of basic semantic fields and patterns in children's acquisition of semantic and grammatical forms. For instance, there is evidence to suggest that children acquire the Instrumental sense of with later than other senses, and that this pattern is due to the relative complexity of the semantics of Instrumentality. In particular, Instrumentality cannot be defined with respect to an individual primary scene - unlike the Accompaniment sense of with, for instance, which may refer simply to co-location with another person (as in, "He's with Paul"). Instead, Instrumentality must involve at least possession plus the performance of a particular action. The possible role of primary scenes in motivating acquisition patterns is a fascinating topic in itself, but not one we can explore here. The title of this paper refers to a typology of motivations for conceptual metaphors, and the cases we have considered so far fall into a category which I will call 'correlation metaphors'. As we have seen, each case, when examined at the appropriate level of locality and specificity, involves a correlation between distinct dimensions of experience. Metaphors at this level, which arise from primary scenes, are characterized by a number of interesting features; in the present context I will mention only one of these. Much of the recent literature on conceptual metaphor has suggested that target concepts are abstract in the sense of being sophisticated or complex intellectual constructs - e.g., "Conceptual metaphors arise when we try to understand difficult, complex, abstract, or less delineated concepts, such as love, in terms of familiar ideas, such as different kinds of nutrients" (Gibbs 1994:6). I have found instead that the target concepts of primary metaphors refer to basic cognitive processes, and are typically no more sophisticated or distant from our direct experience than corresponding source concepts. For instance, the metaphor MORE IS UP has as its target the concept of quantity, which we judge instantaneously in many situations. If quantity is judged instantly and perceived as a simple, scalar parameter, then it is not a complex concept (whatever the complexities of the neural mechanisms needed to calculate it, or of giving it a satisfactory definition). The primary metaphor DESIRE IS HUNGER maps hunger onto desire, a basic cognitive-emotional state which again we do not conceive as having a complex internal structure, and which we need no help to recognize or understand. In a similar manner the other primary metaphors mentioned in (10) refer to fundamental sorts of cognitive experience, such as the (in many cases automatic and unconscious) inference that some events are causally connected with others, and the immediate feeling of satisfaction (probably the result of hormonal activity) when we have achieved a simple goal. If there is an advantage to be gained from entertaining metaphorical conceptualizations of some of the simplest elements of conscious experience, one


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possibility is that we are more efficient at the conscious manipulation of images i.e. mental representations of sensori-motor experience, not necessarily visual than at dealing with such notions as Quantity or Desire per se. Even though the ability to attend to and judge quantity and the tendency to experience desire seem to be fundamental aspects of cognitive function, these functions may take place at a level of cognition whose operation is not directly accessible to consciousness. In order to manipulate them at the conscious level it may be necessary to tie these elements of mental experience to specific sensory images. This idea fits well with findings about basic level categorization, for instance - the types of concepts which people find easiest to store, describe, and name. 4.

Resemblance

metaphors

Despite the value of experiential correlation in accounting for many basic metaphors, not all metaphors are plausibly motivated in this way. 4.1

"Achilles is a lion "

Consider a statement like "Achilles is a lion," a classic example of a type cited regularly in philosophical and psychological studies of metaphor. It is difficult to imagine how the conceptualization underlying this statement could arise from recurring correlations in experience. Most obviously, many of us who might use and understand such an expression have no personal experience with lions. But even if we allow for the importance of indirect experience in forming schemas, e.g. learning about lions by reading about them, it is still problematic to identify correlation as a motivating factor for the metaphor. For a start, it would be difficult to name any concepts that are correlated here, in a way that could give rise to the metaphor. Is bravery correlated with "lionhood"? If so, what content does the concept of lionhood contain? Presum ably, it includes all the information in our shared schema for lions (cf. Lakoff & Turner 89:195), including their appearance, the fact that they live in prides, the fact that they sleep much of the day, and so forth. None of these features, however, is relevant to the metaphorical lionization of Achilles (or any other courageous person). For this reason, not to mention the fact that courageousness is part of the lion schema itself, it is awkward to speak of a correlation between courage and "lionhood," or between courage and any other particular features of the lion schema, which could be the motivation for the metaphor BRAVE PEOPLE ARE LIONS. To understand even more clearly that correlation is not a direct motivation for this metaphor, let's review the kinds of correlation which form the basis for metaphors like MORE IS UP and PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS. In each of these cases, two quite distinct concepts are cognitively linked because they are tightly

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correlated in certain recurring types of experience. Vertical elevation varies directly with quantity in many situations, though our means of judging these two parameters are very different. (We can judge quantity in the absence of vertical elevation, and vice versa.) We often experience a sense of gratification as a consequence of arriving at a particular spatial location, but our means of determining location and our emotional capacity for feeling gratification are distinct, too, of course. Notice, by the way, that there are many times when we move through space to a new location but do not feel this same sense. For instance, on some occasions I might accidentally move to the wrong location, or I might be pushed to a place I had no intention of going. In these cases, the distinction between arriving at a spatial location and achieving a purpose is plain. There is no way to analyze the conceptual correspondence underlying "Achilles is a lion" as an association of this sort, between fundamentally distinct concepts which are correlated in some type of experience. Consider "Brave people are lions," "Acting courageously is acting like a lion," "Courage is the instinctive fearlessness of a lion," etc. No matter how we phrase the metaphor, it seems, the cues that prompt us to attribute bravery (and which relate to some aspect of perceived behavior) are the same for the people and the lions. The simplest explanation for the metaphor is that, in some sense, brave people and lions are perceived to resemble one another. 4.2

The 'similarity theory' vs. the 'resemblance hypothesis'

In their discussion of "Achilles is a lion" Lakoff & Turner note that the courage of a lion is itself a metaphorical projection from a human character trait onto an aspect of the lion's instinctive behavior. If so, does this observation defeat the suggestion that lions and brave people bear a perceived resemblance? Not at all. Lakoff & Turner's discussion of the "Great Chain Metaphor" offers important insights into why the statement is taken as referring to Achilles' character, rather than his hair color or gait, for instance, but does not address the question of why the association between people and lions would arise in the first place, which is the issue we are considering here. Why do we project human bravery onto aspects of lions' instinctive behavior, and vice versa, rather than associating brave people with chickens or goldfish, for instance? The most plausible explanation is that w e perceive something in common between stereotypical lions, whatever the basis for this schema, and brave people. Lions and courageous people both (appear to) confront dangerous opponents without fear. For centuries, various scholars who have treated the phenomenon of metaphor - including Aristotle, in the Poetics - have suggested that metaphors are basically expressions of the similarity between two concepts. Recent researchers in the cognitive linguistic tradition have argued compellingly against this 'simila-


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rity theory' of metaphor (e.g. Lakoff & Turner 1989:198). Simply put, there is often no literal similarity to point to between concepts which are associated by metaphor. For instance, it is difficult to see how a metaphor like HAPPY IS UP (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), as in "She is in high spirits," could be based on an objective similarity between mood and vertical elevation. Nor is coldness "simi lar" to lack of emotion, as Searle acknowledged. Yet these concepts are metapho rically equated. In short, the similarity theory fails for a number of important cases (and in particular, for metaphors based on correlation). Because of this controversy, I emphasize that I am not advocating the discredited similarity theory, which may at this point be a straw man in any case. My proposal does not depend on any literal similarity between brave people and lions. It seems inevitable, though, to conclude that the metaphorical association between them - involving projection in whichever direction - is most plausibly based on the perception of common aspects in their behavior. I will call this proposition the 'resemblance hypothesis,' in order to distinguish it from the similarity theory, and to highlight the role of our perceptions and representational schemas, as opposed to facts about the world. There is some precedent within conceptual metaphor theory for allowing that there can be a sort of metaphorical association based on (the perception of) shared features. Lakoff & Turner (1989:90) described the phenomenon of 'image metaphors', offering as an example the mapping of a woman's waist onto an hourglass, made possible "by virtue of their common shape". In Lakoff & Turner's view, this kind of metaphor has a special status, since conceptual structure and inferences are not mapped from one domain to another. Instead the source and target of the metaphor share some feature in a single perceptual domain, such as color or shape. Since features of lions other than their alleged courage are not projected onto brave people - e.g., there is nothing about a brave person which corresponds to the lion's tawny coat, or to its habit of sleeping most of the day we might point out that here too there is a very limited correspondence, which we might even hesitate to call a mapping. "Achilles is a lion" is obviously not an image metaphor, since it makes no claims about Achilles' physical form, but it may reflect a type of very limited conceptual projection, in the same way that image metaphors do. As we have seen, the correlation metaphors considered in previous sections are best accounted for in terms of co-occurrence, rather than resemblance. For instance, achieving an objective and arriving at a location do not share a feature which makes them suitable as a source-target pair; neither do quantity and elevation. (In both cases we might say that there actually is a shared feature: punctual aspect in the first case and scalar structure in the second, but while these aspects of "superschematic" shared structure are probably necessary for the

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formation of metaphoric connections, they are not sufficient motivations for the respective pairings. If they were, then any punctual experience, such as breaking a dish or blowing out a candle, should stand metaphorically for achieving an objective, and any scalar phenomenon, such as the blueness of the sky or pitch of an acoustic signal, should serve as a source concept for quantity.) Resemblance is not the basis for the sorts of entrenched mappings which prompted the development of conceptual metaphor theory. If it is the basis for the conceptual ization underlying "Achilles is a lion," then this is a reason to consider this metaphor different in kind from those which are derived from recurring correlations in experience. 4.3

A network model

There is a simple network model which helps illustrate the difference between resemblance and correlation metaphors. If we think of metaphors as patterns of association within activation networks then primary metaphors could be characterized as links between distinct concepts, perhaps based on numerous experiences where the concepts are tightly correlated and therefore simultaneously activated. This pattern is schematized in figure 1.

Figure 1: Schematic network representation of a correlation-based metaphor

The concepts PILE, QUANTITY and ELEVATION are used as examples. Lower nodes represent features of objects at higher nodes. The node at the top of the figure represents the concept of a pile - a conceptualization in which quantity and vertical dimension are correlated. The dashed line represents the association which is the basis of the metaphor MORE IS UP.4 A metaphor like "Achilles is a lion," on the other hand, would have a different kind of representation. In figure 2 the circled section represents overlapping activation - in this case, activation of the notion of courage. The dashed line represents the association between lions and brave people, based on the feature shared by their respective schemas.

A TYPOLOGY OF MOTIVATION FOR CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR LION

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BRAVE PERSON

Figure 2: Schematic representation of a simple resemblance metaphor We can draw no such diagram for MORE IS UP or ACHIEVING AN OBJECTIVE IS ARRIVING. These concepts do not share a feature which motivates the mapping between them; they are instead linked by co-occurrence (as in figure 1). If a certain configuration can represent one metaphor but not another, this suggests that there is a substantive difference between the two metaphor types. 5.

'GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC' metaphors

There is one more type of relationship between concepts, besides correlation and resemblance, which might motivate a metaphoric association between them. In More than cool reason, Lakoff & Turner (1989:162) state that, "There exists a single generic-level metaphor, GENERIC IS SPECIFIC, which maps a single specific-level schema onto an indefinitely large number of parallel specific-level schemas that all have the same generic-level structure as the source domain schema." They illustrate the pattern with discussions of several Asian proverbs, including "Blind blames the ditch." The situation depicted in the proverb, they propose, instantiates a more general schema, in which a person blames his own mistakes on circumstances he should have anticipated. We understand the meaning of the proverb by recognizing the relationship between the particular scenario and the more generic schema. (The metaphorical correspondence between vision and understanding is also evident here, of course, and Lakoff & Turner point out that these proverbs often rely on conventional mappings as well as the GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC structure.) We probably do not want to treat GENERIC IS SPECIFIC as a metaphor per se, if we would like to reserve the term for particular figurative pairings of concepts. Nonetheless, it is worth considering whether this type of metaphorical pattern might add to the typology we have developed so far: there may be metaphors based on the 'isa' relationship, instantiation. Other cases where the source concept appears to be a specific instance of the more generic target concept include RISK-

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TAKING IS GAMBLING ("A career change is a high-stakes gamble") and CO OPERATIVE ACTIVITY IS MUSICAL HARMONIZING ("There's been harmony in the family lately, thank goodness"). Any discussion of categories and instantiations in the context of a metaphor study must call to mind Glucksberg & Keysar's position (e.g. 1993:408) that "metaphors are class inclusion assertions." Glucksberg & Keysar's analysis of statements like "my job is a jail" holds, in part, that the source term (or vehicle) refers to a broad category of objects - in this case, any "involuntary, unpleasant, confining, punishing, unrewarding situation" (1993:414). Glucksberg, Keysar, Lakoff and Turner would probably all agree that the specific concept jail may stand (metaphorically) for the generic category of involuntary, unpleasant, confining, punishing, unrewarding situations, that ditch may stand for threatening circumstances, and, more generally, that prototypical cases often stand metaphori cally for generic categories. 5 Returning to the question of whether we must add a new category to our typology, note first that it is difficult to make a clear distinction between GENERICIS-SPECIFIC metaphors and metaphors of the resemblance type. For example, if "Achilles is a lion" is motivated by perceived resemblance between the behavi or of a brave man called Achilles and the stereotypical behavior of a lion, then we might argue that the lion stands for the more generic category of brave things i.e. that Achilles and the lion share a generic-level representation, along the lines of "COURAGEOUS BEINGS." (Equivalently, one could argue that the behavior of courageous people and lions are instances of a more general schema for courageous behavior.) On either analysis a particular entity is mapped onto another entity with which it shares salient perceived features, and therefore, an identical representa tion at a higher level of generality. Figure 3 sketches this situation. (Here, lower nodes represent instances of categories at higher nodes.)


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The lines represent association between concepts and show that this association can be traced along either of two routes in both cases - either a direct association or an association by way of a shared underspecified, or generic, representation. In essence, then, the existence of Lakoff & Turner's GENERIC-IS-SPECIFTC pattern is evidence against a strong "anti-abstractionist" position: the generic scenario is an abstraction over a range of more particular cases, which are easy to map onto one another precisely because of this shared structure. (This structure also foreshadows the 'generic space' in Fauconnier & Turner's theory of 'conceptual blending'.) While the correlation cases do not appear to involve abstraction - and have provided compelling evidence against a strong abstractionist position - the resemblance cases and GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC cases arguably do. The cases considered so far suggest a fairly neat distinction between correlation metaphors on one hand and resemblance or GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC metaphors on the other. The distinction seems to be challenged, though, when we consider that supporting a heavy burden is an instance of enduring a difficult situation, arriving at a destination is an instance of achieving a purpose, being hungry is an instance of experiencing desire, and so forth. In other words, the primary, correlation-based metaphors discussed in earlier sections might somehow be analyzable as GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC metaphors. And since we have seen that GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC metaphors can be construed as resemblance metaphors, perhaps the primary metaphors should after all be accounted for based on shared aspects of schemas. For instance, enduring a family crisis resembles supporting a heavy weight in that both provoke feelings of stress and displeasure. An important day resembles a large object in that both tend to command our attention. Does the typology actually collapse to a single category? No, there is still a basis for preserving the distinctions. First, we will briefly review the relationship between GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC and resemblance metaphors. Once again, simple diagrams help clarify the argument. In each case the arrow points from source to target:

Figure 4a: Risk-taking is gambling (Generic-is-specific)

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Figure 4b: Achilles is a lion (Resemblance)

In figure 4a, the GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC case (RISK-TAKING IS GAMBLING), the source is a specific instance of the target, a generic schema. 6 The resemblance metaphor structure represented in figure 4b ("Achilles is a lion") is very similar except that here the target is taken to be a specific instance of the generic schema; a different instance serves as the source. Cases a and b are fundamentally similar, and differ only with respect to which levels of specificity are highlighted. We can show that they are variants by considering hypothetical metaphors like "COURAGEOUS BEINGS ARE LIONS" a nd "MAKING A RISKY CAREER MOVE IS GAMBLING," which would look like GENERIC IS SPECIFIC and resemblance metaphors, respectively.

Figure 4c: Size is importance (Correlation)

A correlation metaphor (IMPORTANCE IS SIZE), as represented in 4c, looks somewhat different. Here there is a particular feature of the source concept, not itself the basis for a resemblance link, which is relevant to the metaphorical mapping. In cases a and b there is no particular feature of the source image which is conventionally associated with the target concept. We have seen, for instance, that lions' appearance and sleep habits are not conventionally mapped onto courageous people. While we could try to treat case "c " the same way as "Achilles is a lion" - i.e. by identifying the metaphor as "An important day is a large object" and arguing that it is based on the shared feature important (i.e. "commands our attention"), as in figure 4d,

Figure 4d:

"An important day is a large object"


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we would be missing an important observation: there is more than one aspect of our understanding of large objects that is relevant to this conceptualization, and in fact the relationship between two of these aspects - physical size and subjective importance - constitutes a pairing with special significance, one that enters our conceptual repertoire as a projection pattern that may serve as the basis for more elaborate mappings. In sum, "GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC" and "resemblance" do appear to be alternative ways of construing what is essentially the same conceptual relation ship, differentiated from each other only with respect to which link is profiled, to borrow a term from Cognitive Grammar. Correlation metaphors, on the other hand, involve salient relationships between aspects of single concepts, of a kind not evident in the other sorts of metaphor. These relationships derive from correlations within the recurring experience types that give content to those concepts. 6.

Comparison between the types of metaphor

Considering the evidence, we now have two distinct classes of metaphors the resemblance class, including GENERIC-IS-SPECMC metaphors, on the one hand and the correlation-based metaphors, including primary metaphors, on the other. This is not an elaborate typology, but it is one which involves some critical distinctions. In addition to what has been said above, there are a number of other significant ways in which these two classes of metaphors appear to differ. 6.1

Directionality

Some resemblance metaphors appear to violate the principle of unidirectionality that is usually attributed to conceptual metaphors. For instance, consider the hypothetical statements, "Einstein is the modern Pythagoras" and "Pythagoras was the Einstein of his age," intended as comments about comparable intellectual achievement. 7 Another metaphor which appears to be based on resemblance is DEATH IS SLEEP, as in Hamlet's "to sleep perchance to dream." (We could argue, by the way, that this correspondence is based on a shared genericlevel schema involving inactivity.) This metaphor, too, works in reverse, as in the expression "dead to the world," said of someone who is asleep or unconscious. Metaphors of the GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC type also seem to be symmetrical, allowing projection in either direction, as we would expect from Lakoff & Turner's description. We might respond "Blind blames the ditch" when a hasty person blames an injury on a hammer instead of his own carelessness, and we can also imagine using a hypothetical proverb like "Hasty blames the hammer" when a person falls into a ditch. Either instance may serve as source to the other's target. In this important respect, then, both resemblance and GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC

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metaphors are like image metaphors, which work equally well in either direction: a woman's waist can be an "hourglass;" an hourglass can have a slender "waist." Of course all these cases involve the projection of subtly different conceptual material depending on direction - e.g., an hourglass may be "feminized" when its narrow portion is called a waist - but for our purposes it is sufficient to note that a salient shared feature leads to the possibility of projection in either direction, which is not the case where metaphors based on correlation are concerned. Difficulty may not stand metaphorically for simple physical weight, and so forth. 6.2

Ontology

Correlation metaphors and resemblance metaphors make different demands on the objects which serve as source and target. Resemblance metaphors may involve correspondences between concepts of the same type, whereas correlation metaphors link concepts of different types. For instance, weight and difficulty are two concepts linked in the primary metaphor DIFFICULTIES ARE BURDENS (e.g., "Caring for an elderly relative places a heavy burden on a family"). The phenomenon of physical weight is recognized and judged by cognitive faculties very distinct from those which underlie the notion of difficulty - i.e. exertion, discomfort, stress, etc. The same principle applies to the correspon-dences between quantity and vertical elevation, between similarity and proximity, between logical organization and physical part-whole structure, etc. In each of these cases, the linked concepts are fundamentally distinct in the way they are perceived and understood. In fact, it is typical of the source and target concepts of primary metaphors that they are characterized by very distinct properties. For instance, source concepts tend to involve sensory content whereas target concepts involve our cognitive responses to sensory input (see Grady 1997.) Resemblance metaphors, on the other hand, may involve objects of identical or nearly identical types, as we have seen. One state of inactivity is mapped onto another; one type of physical mishap is mapped onto another, one intelligent person is mapped onto another, etc. 6.3

Conventionality

Because the human imagination is boundless in its capacity to impose resemblance on disparate objects, resemblance metaphors would appear to be nearly unconstrained. The moon and a monkey wrench surely do have something in common, at least in the way we perceive them. (As Turner points out, 1991:154, both "can expand and contract".) Our ability to perceive resemblance, of course, is constrained by the cognitive mechanisms of perception, possibly in cluding the structuring role of the "image schema." (See, e.g., Johnson 1987, Lakoff 1987, Turner 1991). Nonetheless, this constraint still leaves open a nearly


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infinite range of potential pairings of concepts and images which somehow remind us of each other. The same is true of GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC metaphors, which may involve links between, as Lakoff & Turner put it, "an indefinitely large number of parallel specific-level schemas." Correlation-based metaphors, on the other hand reflect specific, recurring experience types, and are therefore much more constrained. This is especially clear when we look at primary metaphors, which have direct experiential motivation. Similarity, for instance, corresponds metaphorically to Proximity, and not to other sorts of spatial relations. The same associations arise in language after language apparently because the experience types which motivate them are so basic that they characterize human life in all times and places - and these associations fall into well-defined sets of patterns. 7.

Conclusion

Debate about the nature of metaphor has been sharp and long-running in several different scholarly traditions. Part of the reason may be that researchers have pointed to objects of different kinds in support of their own preferred definitions. If we make a distinction between these types many of the controversial issues about metaphor might be resolved. Supporters of versions of the similarity theory, i.e. researchers who refer to shared features and structural analogy as the basis for metaphor, would have to acknowledge that there are metaphors which are not based on resemblance or perceived resemblance - the correlation metaphors. Conceptual metaphor theorists, who are used to arguing that similarity is not the basis for metaphors, might allow that there is a class of linguistic and conceptual phenomena which is motivated by the perception of a resemblance between distinct objects, a resemblance which would, of course, have to be described in terms of cognitive mechanisms of perception and categorization. Other claims about metaphors - besides the extent to which similarity plays a role in motivating them - also fall out from the two positions, and might be resolved by recognizing a taxonomy. For instance, the traditional understanding of metaphor as an exceptional, creative product of imagination may have resulted from a focus on metaphors of a particular type. Many of the metaphors which have appeared in traditional philosophical discussions of metaphor have fallen into the class of resemblance metaphors. If the resemblance hypothesis is correct, then many expressions like "Achilles is a lion" or "Man is a wolf," which appear over and over in these discussions, are based on perceived parallelism between their source and target concepts - or to put it another way, the perception that there is a superordinate category which includes both concepts. I propose that the relatively unconstrained nature of resemblance and GENERIC-IS-SPECIFIC metaphors underlies various scholarly claims that metaphor is ungoverned by rules

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or principles, and that it is a tool for adding originality and color to texts (to be used with abandon or with caution depending on the authority one consults). The finite list of conventional, highly-motivated associations proposed by scholars like Lakoff & Johnson, on the other hand, might be associated with metaphors based on correlation. Scholars such as Lakoff & Turner have already opened the door to the classification of metaphors based on distinct properties. Their proposals regarding the "GENERIC IS SPECIFIC metaphor" and image metaphors, for instance, suggest that metaphors can involve quite different sorts of cognitive mechanisms and structures. The taxonomy I have suggested here follows up on proposals like those. I argue that we can refine our sense of the different types of metaphor further by carefully considering the motivations for these metaphors. When we do, we arrive at a classification which seems to explain some of the long-standing disagreements about the nature of metaphor. While it might prove to be the case that not all metaphors fall neatly into one or the other of the categories I suggest, the prototypical cases, and the differences between them, are clear, and the distinctions should help guide our continuing research into the nature of metaphorical thought and language. Notes

1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

I would like to thank the editors of this volume for their questions, comments and suggestions, which have been particularly helpful in the preparation of this paper. Primary metaphors are the same as 'primitive metaphors' (Grady et al. 1996). For a discussion of how schematic, conventional metaphors are elaborated in given instances, see Grady et al. (this volume). In the very crude representations in this section I ignore a number of important issues perhaps chief among them, directionality, which is certainly a feature of primary metaphors. Glucksberg & Keysar are primarily interested in the nature of metaphorical statements of the form "A is B," - including such issues as sentence ordering - which is not my focus here. Note that many basic patterns of metaphorical conceptualization show up in other sorts of linguistic contexts - e.g. "They have extracted some new information from the photograph," where the source term is a verb referring to a metaphorical action. Looked at another way, the diagram represents the fact that the target, risk-taking, is an aspect or feature of the source scenario, gambling. These statements might not strike some readers as metaphorical, but certainly strike others as being so. Glucksberg & Keysar (1993:421) refer to the statement "Xiao-Dong [a Chinese actor] is a Bela Lugosi" as a metaphor. The question here is one of degree of metaphoricity, and individuals differ regarding where the line ought to be drawn between metaphors per se and other sorts of reference.


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References

Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. 1994.

The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glucksberg, Sam, & Boaz Keysar. 1993. "How Metaphors Work.". Metaphor and Thought, 2d edition, ed. by A. Ortony, 401-424. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Goossens, L. 1995. "Metaphtonymy: The Interaction of Metaphor and Metonymy in Figurative Expressions for Linguistic Action". By Word of Mouth: Metaphor, Metonymy and Linguistic Action in Cognitive Perspective, ed. by Louis Goossens, Paul Pauwels, Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, Anne-Marie SimonVandenbergen, & Johan Vanparys, 159-174. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Grady, Joseph. 1997a. Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. dissertation. 1997b. "THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS Revisited". Cognitive Linguistics 8. 267-290. 1998. "The Conduit Metaphor Revisited: Reassessing Metaphors for Communication". Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language II, ed. by J.-P. Koenig, 205-218. Stanford: CSLL , & Sarah Taub, Pamela Morgan. 1996. "Primitive and Compound Metaphors". Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language, ed. by A. Goldberg, 177-187. Stanford: CSLI , & Christopher Johnson. To appear. "Converging Evidence for the Notions of Primary Scene and Subscene". Proceedings of the twenty-third annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley: BLS. Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George. 1993. "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor". Metaphor and Thought, 2d edition, ed. by A. Ortony, 202-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , & Mark Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Searle, John R. 1979. "Metaphor". Expression and Meaning. 76-116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Mark. 1991. Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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1987. Death is the Mother of Beauty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

BLENDING AND METAPHOR

JOSEPH E. GRADY, TODD OAKLEY & SEANA COULSON George Mason University, Case Western Reserve University & University of Arizona

1.

Introduction

The framework sometimes referred to as 'conceptual metaphor theory', with its origins in Lakoff & Johnson (1980), is one of the central areas of research in the more general field of cognitive linguistics. Within this field, the notions of 'source domains' and 'target domains', 'invariance', 'mappings', and so forth have become a common, though not universal, vocabulary for discussing the linguistic and conceptual phenomena of metaphor. The findings and principles of this framework have been applied in numerous studies, both within and outside of the field of linguistics. A more recent framework, proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (1996,1998) seeks to explain much of the same linguistic data, and also to unify the analysis of metaphor with the analysis of a variety of other linguistic and conceptual phenomena. This framework - referred to variously as the theory of 'blending', 'conceptual blending', and 'conceptual integration' - shares many aspects of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). For instance, both approaches treat metaphor as a conceptual rather than a purely linguistic phenomenon; both involve systematic projection of language, imagery and inferential structure between conceptual domains; both propose constraints on this projection; and so forth. However, there are also important differences between the approaches: CMT posits relationships between pairs of mental representations, while blending theory (BT) allows for more than two; CMT has defined metaphor as a strictly directional phenomenon, while BT has not; and, whereas CMT analyses are typically concerned with entrenched conceptual relationships (and the ways in which they may be elaborated), BT research often focuses on novel conceptualizations which may be short-lived. In this article we explore the relationship between BT, CMT and the phenomena they address, arguing that the two approaches are complementary. In particular, the cross-domain relationships which have been identified by CMT researchers shape and constrain the more complex process of conceptual blending. The nature of this relationship has relevance for anyone interested in the

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conceptual analysis of language and, more broadly, for anyone interested in conceptual structure. We begin with an overview of the BT framework, focusing on similarities and differences with the CMT framework. 2.

2.1

Blending theory and conceptual metaphor theory Domains vs. mental spaces

In the CMT framework, metaphors are analyzed as stable and systematic relationships between two conceptual ' domains'. In a metaphorical expression like (1)

The committee has kept me in the dark about this matter.

language and conceptual structure from the 'source' domain of vision is used to depict a situation in the 'target' domain of knowledge and understanding. Particular elements of the source and target domains are picked out through a combination of the source language used ("in the dark") and the relevant conceptual metaphor, a 'mapping' - presumably stored as a knowledge structure in long-term memory - which tells us how elements in the two domains line up with each other. In this metaphor, knowledge structures which concern seeing have been put into correspondence with structures concerning knowledge and awareness. Because the mapping is principled, ignorance is associated with darkness as well as other conditions which preclude sight. In fact, thanks to the general mapping between visual perception and intellectual activity, nearly any concept related to the experience of vision is likely to have a clear counterpart in the realm of knowledge and ideas. We easily understand a novel sentence like "You'd need an electron microscope to find the point of this article" - and the conceptual metaphor is the mechanism by which we interpret such references. 1 In BT, by contrast, the basic unit of cognitive organization is not the domain but the 'mental space' (Fauconnier 1994 [1985]), a partial and temporary representational structure which speakers construct when thinking or talking about a perceived, imagined, past, present, or future situation. Mental spaces (or, 'spaces', for short) are not equivalent to domains, but, rather, they depend on them: spaces represent particular scenarios which are structured by given domains. For instance, a BT account of example 1 would involve a space in which the agent is standing in the dark. While this representation appeals to our knowledge of visual experience, the recruited structure is only a small subset of knowledge of that domain. In short, a mental space is a short-term construct informed by the more general and more stable knowledge structures associated with a particular domain.


2.2

103

Two domains vs. four spaces

While CMT analyses involve mappings between precisely two conceptual structures, BT typically makes use of a four-space model. These spaces include two 'input' spaces (which, in a metaphorical case, are associated with the source and target of CMT), plus a 'generic' space, representing conceptual structure that is shared by both inputs, and the 'blend' space, where material from the inputs combines and interacts. A BT account of example 1 would include the following spaces: an input space drawing on the domain of vision, in which a person (A) is surrounded by darkness; another input space, drawing on the domain of intellectual activity, in which a committee has withheld information from an individual (A'); a mapping between these spaces, specifying that A and A' are to be taken as one and the same person, that the person's inability to see corresponds to unawareness, and so forth; a generic space containing the shared material the two inputs have in common (roughly, 'a person who has no access to a particular stimulus'); and the blended space, in which a committee is causing an individual to remain in the dark. Note that in the 4-space model material is projected from both the source and target spaces to the blend. This arrangement contrasts with the simple, unidirectional projection posited by CMT, in which mappings are from source to target. 2.3

Emergent structure

One of the chief motivations for BT, according to proponents, is that the four-space model can account for phenomena that are not explicitly addressed by mechanisms of the two-domain model. Consider, for example, the well-worn metaphor (2)

This surgeon is a butcher.

intended as a damning statement about an incompetent practitioner (Veale 1996). Initially, the metaphor may seem to be explainable in terms of direct projection from the source domain of butchery to the target domain of surgery, guided by a series of fixed counterpart mappings: "butcher" onto "surgeon"; "animal" (cow) maps onto "human being"; "commodity" onto "patient"; "cleaver" onto "scalpel"; and so forth. This analysis of the cross-domain relationships, however, cannot by itself explain a crucial element of the statement's meaning: the surgeon is incompetent. A butcher, though less prestigious than a surgeon, is typically competent at what he does and may be highly respected. The notion of incompe tence is not being projected from source to target.

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Discussions in the CMT tradition have touched on some related points. Lakoff & Turner (1989:79), for instance, ask, in the course of discussing personifications of death, "why is the reaper grim?" After all, real reapers are not necessarily grim, any more than butchers are necessarily incompetent. Their answer, in part, is that "[t]he way we feel about the appearance and character of the personification must correspond to the way we feel about the event." This is an intuitively satisfying explanation for the reaper's grimness, but, as Lakoff & Turner point out, there are independent reasons why death is personified as a reaper in the first place, including a metaphorical conceptualization of the human lifecycle as the lifecycle of a plant. We cannot apply the same logic to the case of the incompetent butcher: why would we select a butcher as an appropriate source image for a surgeon, and how would that selection (in itself, without requiring us to specify "a bad butcher" or the like) communicate the notion of incompetence? The intuitive answer is that the selection of the source image, and the interpreta tion of the sentence, depend partly on contrasts between surgeons and butchers; this is a factor which the mechanisms of CMT cannot cope with directly. The BT model accounts for the inference of incompetence as follows. First, the blend inherits some structure from each of the inputs (in accordance with constraining principles, discussed below). From the target input space, structured by the domain of SURGERY, it inherits such elements as the identity of a particular person being operated on (i.e. the speaker), the identity of another individual who is performing the operation, and perhaps details of the operating room setting. From the source input space, which draws on the domain of BUTCHERY, it inherits the role "butcher" and associated activities. The two input spaces share some structure, represented in the generic space, in which a person uses a sharp instrument to perform a procedure on some other being. In figure 1, solid lines represent the cross-space correspondences that constitute the mapping between the input spaces, dotted lines represent projections between spaces, and the dashed line between the Surgeon role in Input 1 and the Butcher role in the blend represents the fact that the butcher in the blend is associated with the surgeon in the target space (see the discussion of 'fusion with accommodation' in section 5.1). Besides inheriting partial structure from each input space, the blend develops 'emergent' content of its own, which results from the juxtaposition of elements from the inputs. In particular, the BUTCHERY space projects a means-end relationship incompatible with the means-end relationship in the SURGERY space.


Figure 1 : Conceptual integration network: surgeon as butcher

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In butchery, the goal of the procedure is to kill the animal and then sever its flesh from its bones. By contrast, the default goal in surgery is to heal the patient. In the blended space, the means of BUTCHERY have been combined with the ends, the individuals and the surgical context of the SURGERY space. The incongruity of the butcher's means with the surgeon's ends leads to the central inference that the butcher is incompetent (see the box within the blended space in figure 1). This emergent property of the blend cannot be captured so explicitly within a CMTstyle analysis focusing on correspondences and projections from source to target. 2.4

On-line processing and entrenchment

Imagine we were observing a young, apprentice butcher at work, taking too much time and being too tentative as he cut up a piece of meat. Someone might comment, (3)

He's not a butcher, he's a surgeon.

In context, this sentence could be intended and understood as a negative evaluation of the butcher's competence. Casting him as a surgeon highlights the incongruity between his methods and those appropriate to a butcher. Since the blend is probably novel at the time it is uttered, this example illustrates the conception of blending as an on-line, real-time process that creates new meaning through the juxtaposition of familiar material. A sentence like 2 probably draws on conventional associations with the word butcher, and the blending analysis may really be an account of the historical derivation of such usages, rather than of the on-line processing a hearer might use today. But sentence 3, which depends on a very similar conceptual integration network, calls more strongly for explanation in terms of real-time processing by means of a cognitive structure like the one represented in the blending diagrams. Whereas CMT has been primarily concerned with identifying regular, conventional patterns of metaphorical conceptualization (and explaining motivated extensions of these conventional structures), BT has often explicitly addressed itself to novel and unique examples which do not arise from entrenched cross-domain relationships. Since we encounter so many novel blends - e.g. in cartoons, jokes, newly coined terms, terms we apply in unusual ways, etc. - and since we create and understand them so effortlessly, such examples suggest that the processes used to generate and interpret blends are well-developed, basic elements of our cognitive machinery.


2.5

107

Basic processes of blending

As conceived within BT, blending involves three basic processes 'composition', 'completion', and 'elaboration'. Composition, the most straightfor ward process, refers to the projection of content from each of the inputs into the blended space. Sometimes this process involves the 'fusion' of elements from the inputs, as when the blend contains only a single individual who is associated with the butcher from one space and the surgeon from the other. The representations resulting from the composition process may or may not be realistic. For instance, it is not plausible that a butcher would be allowed to operate on a surgery patient, but nonetheless we easily construct and manipulate such a blended image. Completion is the filling out of a pattern in the blend, evoked when structure projected from the input spaces matches information in long-term memory. For example, when we mentally project a butcher into an operating room, we end up introducing the notion of incompetence and/or malice into the scene as well, in order to make sense of the scene. We complete our understanding of the scenario by introducing a new feature of the person, prompted by the juxtaposition of elements from the inputs. The idea of destructive, inappropriate action calls to mind the notion of an incompetent and/or malicious person. In this way, the completion process is often a source of emergent content in the blend. Finally, elaboration is the simulated mental performance of the event in the blend, which we may continue indefinitely. For instance, we might proceed from the image of a butcher carving a patient to the even more grotesque image of a butcher packaging the patient's tissue as cold cuts. Once the connections to long term knowledge about operations and butchery have been made, we are able to imagine scenarios which unfold along various possible trajectories. At each of these stages there is the potential for emergence of new content, not available from either of the input spaces. New juxtapositions, new frames, new features all arise when we combine elements from distinct mental spaces. These bits of emergent structure (cf. Hofstadter's notion of "slippage") are chief diagnostics for the occurrence of blending. 2 2.6

Optimality principles of BT

Fauconnier and Turner (1998) lay out five "optimality principles" of conceptual blending, constraints under which blends work most effectively. These are: Integration: The scenario in the blended space should be a well-integrated scene.

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Tight connections between the blend and the inputs should be maintained, so that an event in one of the input spaces, for instance, is construed as implying a corresponding event in the blend. Unpacking: It should be easy to reconstruct the inputs and the network of connections, given the blend. Topology: Elements in the blend should participate in the same sorts of relations as their counterparts in the inputs. Good Reason: If an element appears in the blend, it should have meaning.

Web:

An additional principle, leading to some of the fanciful imagery encountered in blends, is referred to as Metonymic Tightening: relationships between elements from the same input should become as close as possible within the blend. For instance, Western images of personified Death often depict the figure as a skeleton, thus closely associating the event of death with an object that, in our more literal understandings, is indirectly but saliently associated with it. There is tension among some of these principles, and so each blend satisfies them to varying degrees. 3 Next, we move to a more detailed discussion of a particular metaphoric blend. 3.

The ship of state

This sentence taken from a piece of political commentary illustrates the common conceptualization of a nation or society as a ship: (4)

With Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader, and Gingrich at the helm in the House, the list to the Right could destabilize the entire Ship of State. 4

Before examining the details of this particular blend, let us look at the conven tional mapping it builds upon. As it is used in popular discourse, the Nation-asShip metaphor includes at least the following cross-domain correspondences: Nation National policies/actions Determining national policies/actions National success/improvement National failures/problems Circumstances affecting the nation (e.g. on the political or economic levels)

Ship Ship's course Steering the ship Forward motion of the ship Sailing mishaps (e.g., foundering) Sea conditions


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Consider the following attested instance of the metaphor: (5)

Without the consent of our fellow citizens, we lose our moral authority to steer the ship of state.5

The metaphorical correspondences underlying example 5 reflect the conventional mapping described above, with the ship's course standing for the nation's policies, and determining the ship's course (steering it) corresponding to determining the nation's policies. The next example evokes a richer scenario. (6)

The [Sri Lankan] ship of state needs to radically alter course; weather the stormy seas ahead and enter safe harbor. 6

Here we have the image of a harbor in addition to the more standard notion of sea conditions. The harbor stands presumably for stable political and economic circumstances. While the Nation-as-Ship is a conventional conceptualization, it is also related to more fundamental metaphorical mappings, such as ACTION IS SELFPROPELLED MOTION, COURSES OF ACTION ARE PATHS, TIME IS MOTION, A SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP IS PHYSICAL PROXIMITY (e.g., within a single sailing vessel), CIRCUMSTANCES ARE WEATHER, STATES ARE LOCATIONS and SO forth. All these conventional metaphors help motivate the framing of a nation and its history as a ship plying the seas. The idea that simple metaphors interact to yield more elaborate conceptualizations has been discussed by researchers working in the CMT framework. (See, for instance, Lakoff & Turner's 1989 discussion of 'composite' metaphors, and Grady's 1997 more explicit analysis of the 'unifica tion' or 'binding' of metaphors.) The blending framework offers a neat way of representing this complex interaction of concepts and links, since it explicitly allows for multiple spaces and multiple iterations of the integration process. One blend may be the input for another. More significantly, the blending framework here offers a way of accounting for those elements of the Nation-as-ship image that have no specific counterparts in the target space of nations and politics. For instance, ships have very particular shapes and are made of particular materials. These important aspects of ships have no conventional counterparts in the target domain of nations, but they figure nonetheless in any metaphorical projection of the ship frame. We simply cannot conceive of ships without evoking some aspects of their physical character. Within the blending framework, we can account for this fact in terms of pattern completion: once we have evoked, by means of more basic metaphors, the image of a large container holding many people, or of a society moving forward

11 0


through space, and/or the idea that political events are partially determined by the (metaphorical) weather, these images may match, and call up, stored representa tions of a ship, and then all other elements of the ship domain are immediately available for recruitment (i.e. they are 'primed'). The ship image in the blend integrates a number of metaphorical understandings of society. Once it is evoked, it may become as elaborate as our imaginations will allow, and like any other conceptualization it has the potential to become conventional. The Lott and Gingrich example in 4 provides a clear example of how metaphoric expressions may recruit more mappings than those between a single source and target domain. For instance, this example introduces the notion of right-hand directionality (i.e. starboard, in the context of a ship), which is independent of the Nations-as-Ships metaphor. The standard association between right-left polarity and conservative-liberal alignments is clearly not based on the ship model, as it is frequently encountered in contexts where there is no ship imagery. Furthermore, 4 suggests that the presence of two individuals will predictably cause a ship to list dangerously to one side. While we can imagine a complicated scenario in which their actions could lead to such an outcome - e.g. their handling of very heavy cargo, or their steering and handling of the sails in particular wind conditions - the sentence implies a simpler and more direct causal connection than this. This causal structure appears not to be projected from the source domain of ships, but from target domain logic, in which the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House inevitably have a considerable, direct influence on national policies and the overall political orientation of government. Blending theory suggests that selective projection from the two input spaces yields an image which is inconsistent with our understanding of the source space - two people whose presence is likely to cause a ship to list to one side - but that the web of underlying connections allow us to draw inferences from the blend nonetheless. When we encounter sentence 4, we easily infer that the strong shift towards conservatism may lead to political instability.7 4.

Metaphors as inputs to blending

If conceptual metaphor theory is primarily concerned with well-established metaphoric associations between concepts, and blending theory focuses on the ability to combine elements from familiar conceptualizations into new and meaningful ones, then conceptual metaphors are among the stable structures available for exploitation by the blending process. As we have just seen in the ship-of-state examples, conventional metaphors feed the blending process by establishing links between elements in distinct domains and spaces. In this section we explore this relationship in a bit more detail.


4.1

111

Types of counterpart connection

The network of connections which ultimately constitutes a blend depends first on the establishment of links between the input spaces (Fauconnier &Turner 1998). These counterpart relations guide the construction of the blend. Cross-space counterparts may be related to each other in a variety of ways. For instance, in the case of an individual "kept in the dark" by a committee (see Section 2), the counterpart relationship between the person (in one input) who is in darkness and the person (in the other input) who is kept uninformed is based on Identity. The same individual is represented in each input space, and these two representations are, quite naturally, linked, in a way that helps guide the construction and interpretation of the blend. Other types of counterpart relationship across mental spaces include the connection between a role and a value - e.g., the connection between "Jocasta" and "Oedipus' mother," discussed by Fauconnier (1994 [1985]) - and the connection between an entity and a representation of the entity, such as a man and his portrait. Similarity and Analogy are relations which play obvious roles in many conceptual integration networks, including ones we call metaphorical blends. For instance, surgeons and butchers share the generic structure of a person wielding a sharp object to cut flesh. Conventional metaphors can also provide the counterpart mappings to launch blends. For instance, the metaphorical association between nations and ships is thoroughly conventional, and forms part of many people's conceptual repertoires. What started out (undoubtedly) as some individual's creative, on-line, conceptual achievement has become a shared, entrenched conceptualization, presumably because the blend proved successful for some purpose, therefore arose again, and through repeated experience became conventional. As a result, the metaphorical mapping between the nation and the ship, the nation's history and the ship's course over the sea, and so forth, is now stored in memory and provides a trigger that allows conceptual blending to proceed, including the kinds of creative conceptual manipulation we examined in the last section. Of course for a conventional metaphoric blend to have arisen in the first place, it must, itself, be based on some kind of counterpart mapping. This is an area where CMT, and the associated body of work accumulated over the past eighteen years, informs the blending framework. Numerous principles regarding the kinds of concepts which become associated by conventional metaphor have been uncovered and described, including patterns in the relationship between the image-schematic structure of source and target ('Invariance', Brugman 1990; Lakoff 1990; Turner 1991), the relationships holding among different mappings, the kinds of content that may be associated with source and target 8, and the ways in which source and target may or may not be similar.

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Importantly, there is a class of entrenched metaphors which are not based on similarity or analogy, and which are therefore unlike the metaphoric counter part relations which arise on-line. (7)

a. These two colors are not particularly close [i.e. similar]. b. His sunny smile lit up the room. c. Tomorrow is a big day for this organization.

These sentences are illustrations, respectively, of the following conventional metaphors: SIMILARITY IS PROXIMITY, HAPPINESS IS BRIGHTNESS, IMPORTANCE IS

SIZE (all known by various names in the conceptual metaphor literature). There is no obvious sense in which the concepts paired in these metaphors are similar or analogous to one another. Each is scalar in some sense, but this is not sufficient motivation for the particular pairings evidenced here. (Consider the fact that Brightness may not stand for Similarity, and so forth.) Instead these metaphors are most plausibly explained as entrenched conceptual associations arising from recurring correlations in experience. Just as the recurring correlation between quantity and height (e.g. of a pile) motivates the metaphor MORE IS UP (as in, "Crime figures have soared"), these metaphors are motivated by recurrent types of episodes which bring together particular dimensions of experience. For instance, brightness is correlated with warmth and increased visibility, both of which trigger contentment (cf. HAPPINESS IS BRIGHTNESS). Lakoff & Johnson (1980) argued convincingly that various metaphors relating "UP" to other concepts could not be based on objective similarity or shared features, and the same holds in the cases mentioned here. They are not based on similarity or analogy, but must instead be based on experiential correlation. Metaphors like SIMILARITY IS PROXIMITY, HAPPINESS IS BRIGHTNESS, a nd IMPORTANCE IS SIZE are 'primary metaphors' (see Grady et al. 1996; Grady 1997;

Lakoff & Johnson in press), a special class of entrenched associations, based on neither similarity nor analogy. They seem to constitute a distinct sort of counter part connection on which blends may be based. 4.2

Complex metaphorical blends

Since blending is an opportunistic process of on-line space-building, any conceptualization that starts out as a primary metaphor, or other simple conceptual association, is susceptible to being elaborated. The source concept of any basic metaphor can trigger the construction of a richer image. If difficulty is understood as heaviness - due to a correlation between, on the one hand, our sensory judgment of mass and, on the other, affective states associated with exertion - then we can talk about tons of work. If a cheery disposition is metaphorically associated with


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bright light, then we understand what a thousand-kilowatt smile must be like (given some additional input from our knowledge of electricity). If the experience of moving forward is correlated with an affective state telling us we are about to achieve some purpose, then the Ship of State makes headway as the nation works to accomplish its objectives. The Nation-as-Ship example also illustrates the way in which multiple simple metaphors can be relevant within a single complex blend. The ship's forward motion is understood in terms of a conventional metaphorical association with goals more generally. The notion of "safe harbor," as in example 7, derives from a metaphorical understanding of circumstances as locations and surround ings. While the image of a "lookout" is not a conventional part of the Nation-asShip blend, it can easily be incorporated, and linked to a target domain notion of anticipating future events (i.e. foresight), based on a metaphorical association between vision and thought (cf. KNOWING IS SEEING). The metaphorical right-left orientation of political parties is another conventional counterpart connection which can be recruited to enrich the blend, as we have seen. The role of basic metaphors in complex blends illustrates an important principle about the relationship between metaphor and blending: it is particular connections within an entire conceptual integration network which we regard as metaphoric. For instance, it is, in a way, misleading to refer to the Lott-Gingrich example, or the cognitive representation that motivates the words, as "a meta phor." Within the conceptual complex that underlies the sentence there are several distinct metaphoric connections - e.g. nation/ship, conservative/right - and the blend as a whole does not represent the systematic mapping of one domain onto another. Furthermore, metaphoric blends may contain figurative links that are not, themselves, metaphoric. For instance, when we personify death as a skeleton carrying a sickle, we are dealing with a metaphorical image, but one which has been elaborated via the addition of details which do not derive from a metaphoric mapping. The relationship between skeletons and death is not metaphorical but metonymic; skeletons figure literally in scenarios involving death. In accordance with the principle of Metonymic Tightening (see Section 2), the skeleton becomes even more closely associated with Death in the blend than it is in the source input. In short, conventional metaphoric relationships may be the starting points for the process of creating complex conceptual blends. And identifying a metaphoric relationship holding between source and target elements is sometimes only the starting point for analyzing a blend.

114 5.

JOSEPH GRADY, TODD OAKLEY & SEANA COULSON What makes a blend metaphoric

Given that many of the blending examples discussed in the BT literature are not metaphoric, it is helpful to understand what characterizes metaphoric blends and distinguishes them from others. As we have seen, some blends depend on counterpart relations dictated by conventional metaphoric associations, such as the one between nations and ships. There are other aspects of blends, though - relating to their structure, their content, and the linguistic and conceptual setting in which they appear - that make them seem metaphoric to us. 5.1

Fusion with accommodation

In a metaphoric blend, prominent counterparts from the input spaces project to a single element in the blended space - they are 'fused'. A single element in the blend corresponds to an element in each of the input spaces. A ship in the blend is linked to a ship in the source space and a nation in the target, a surgeon is linked to both a surgeon and a butcher, and so forth. Intuitively speaking, the point of metaphors is precisely that one thing is depicted as or equated with another. In the blending framework this means a single element in the blended space has links to each of the input spaces. By contrast, in other sorts of blends these counterparts may project to distinct elements in the blended space. For example, Fauconnier & Turner (1998, and elsewhere) have discussed the following passage, in which a modern philosopher describes his "debates" with Kant - i.e. his musings over particular topics, in relation to Kant's views of the same topics: (8)

I claim that reason is a self-developing capacity. Kant disagrees with me on this point. He says it's innate, but I answer that that's begging the question, to which he counters, in Critique of Pure Reason, that only innate ideas have power. But I say to that, what about neuronal group selection? He gives no answer.

The sentences arise from a blended conceptualization in which the two philoso phers are imaginatively juxtaposed with each other and engage in conversation about particular issues. In this blend, which strikes us as fictive but not metaphori cal, the philosophers who correspond to each other in the two input spaces (and are therefore connected by an Analogy link) are not, in fact, fused in the blended space. Instead, they retain their individual identities, and the nature of their interaction is the focus of the blend. While the philosophers are projected as distinct participants, other aspects of these input spaces are fused in the blend. For example, the languages of the philosophers are fused into a single language (not necessarily specified), the


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historical gap between them is collapsed, the geographical settings are also merged, and so forth. Thus fusion alone does not identify metaphors. Another sort of non-metaphorical fusion occurs in 'framing', a variety of conceptual integration which operates by the same basic principles outlined above (Fauconnier & Turner 1998). In framing we identify a particular entity with a slot in a more general conceptual frame. For instance, the statement, "Carl is a bachelor" depends on the following conceptual operation: a particular unmarried man we know ("Carl") is associated with our cultural model of bachelors, which in turn is informed by our models of marriage and so forth (see Fillmore 1982). Our knowledge of Carl and of the BACHELOR frame represent the input spaces for a conceptual integration. In the blend, Carl is fused with the frame role "bachelor." This example, like framing examples in general, does not strike us as metaphorical, since it represents a particular variety of fusion: the elements which are counterparts in the cross-space mapping are combined by composition in the blend. While all blends are selective in that they only draw on some of our knowledge of the input domains, framing involves counterparts which are essentially compatible, such that information about each serves to specify the fused element in the blend. Metaphorical blends, on the other hand, involve a different kind of fusion, in which certain very salient aspects of input domain structure are prohibited from entering the blend, and in which some salient structure in the blended space is prevented from floating back to the inputs. That is, there is information from one of the inputs (the target) that must be ignored in the blend: nations do not move across the sea, ignorance is not literally associated with darkness, etc. An important feature of metaphorical fusion of counterparts, then, is that it involves overriding, and therefore not projecting, salient aspects of our knowledge of the target. This sort of asymmetrical projection occurs in any case where the organizing frame in the blend is projected from one input at the expense of the other, e.g. the ship frame in the Nation-as-Ship cases. The fact that source and target must be incompatible in some sense relates to an old claim about metaphor, which can be considered here in a new light. Philosophers (e.g. Davidson, Grice, Searle) have argued that listeners are cued to interpret a particular reference as metaphorical by anomalies of meaning. On this view, when we hear a statement such as "Inflation soared," the impossibil ity of the event is our cue that the statement is intended metaphorically. Arguing against this claim, Keysar (1989) has shown that subjects are able to interpret a statement like "Paul is a magician" as a metaphorical reference to Paul's abilities as an accountant, even when Paul is actually a magician by trade. In other words, the recognition of metaphor does not depend on surface anomalies of meaning. In the blending framework the notion of anomaly can be defined with greater subtlety

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and specificity: the network of conceptual connections which comprises the meaning of the utterance includes a counterpart relation between entities which we know to be incompatible in some important sense. (In Paul's case the counterpart relation is an analogical connection between skillful bookkeeping and the supernatural manipulation of matter). Whether or not this fact is relevant to on-line processing of metaphorical language - still a controversial question among philosophers and psycholinguists - part of what defines metaphors is that they involve (temporary) suppression of critical knowledge of a given conceptual domain, and therefore are not compatible with our understanding of reality. We refer to this particular phenomenon, in which structure from one fused element is blocked, as 'accommodation': the target material yields to the source material, which is explicitly represented in the blend. Knowing whether the fusion of elements from two inputs involves accommodation depends crucially on how specifically those elements are construed. Consider the issue of language in the Debate-with-Kant example in 8. We do not feel it is metaphoric to report the debate as though it happened in English, even though Kant was a German speaker. This is almost certainly because the details of the languages are not at issue in any part of this conceptual network, and so we might say that each input simply contains the generic notion Language. For the purposes of this blend we are not 'construing' (in the sense of Langacker 1987) the languages of the philosophers as, specifically, English and German. To highlight the importance of construal in this case, consider that it is easy to create a context in which a mapping between German and English does feel metaphorical, or at least more metaphorical than in the Kant blend. Imagine reading a philosophy essay written in dense, convoluted English, perhaps overly influenced by translations of Heidegger, and exclaiming, "This isn't English, it's German!". Here we have a blend based on the same pairing of counterparts, and yet this case is metaphorical where the previous one is not. This is because in the Bad Essay case we are interested in the particulars of the languages and their differences, while in the Kant case we are only interested at the level of unspeci fied "Language," as a means of communication and medium of debate. That is, one construal profiles features of English and German while the other profiles entities at a more schematic level. In the Kant case, the active representations in the input spaces do not include particulars about language, and so there is no conflicting information to resolve or accommodate. The Bad Essay example, though, does have fusion with accommodation, because it represents a construal at a different level of schematicity; consequently, it is felt to be (more) metaphori cal.


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Our discussion of fusion with accommodation echoes, in new terms, various discussions of metaphor as a phenomenon of "category extension," or "class inclusion," and is compatible with psycholinguistic results showing that subjects are more apt to see metaphor in cases where there is greater semantic distance between elements. The CMT principle that source and target come from different "domains" is also in the same spirit as our more general statement that metaphors involve the fusion of saliently distinct elements from two inputs. Note, though, that metaphoric counterparts do not obligatorily come from different conceptual domains or frames. For instance, a modern philosopher might come out of a colleague's office and mutter, "I've just spent the afternoon debating with Immanuel Kant!" 10 Here "Kant" and his modern counterpart are understood in terms of the same frames and domains, yet the statement would strike some as metaphorical. Finally, note that if metaphor depends on salient differences between the relevant concepts, this implies that there are degrees of metaphoricity. Many researchers have suggested this (e.g., Fauconnier & Turner 1998), and the examples here offer further support. While some utterances are prototypically metaphoric and others prototypically nonmetaphoric, there seems to be no hard and fast distinction between these categories. 5.2

Directionality and asymmetric topicality

Another important feature of metaphoric blends is that their input spaces do not have equal status as topics. In the non-metaphorical Debate-with-Kant blend, both philosophers, along with their positions, are the focus of attention. It is the interaction between the two, and a consideration of their relative merits, that motivate the blend. In other words, each of the inputs has high topicality. A given inference may relate to one more than the other, but both are held up to scrutiny and comparison by means of the blend, and the blend's function is to give us a means of examining the relationship between the two. Metaphors, by contrast, are distinguished by asymmetric topicality. One of the inputs is topical and the other provides a means of re-framing the first for some conceptual or communicative purpose; these are, respectively, the target and source inputs of the metaphor. For instance, in the Nation-as-ship blend, the nation is the actual topic of interest, the target space; when we use the blend we are interested in conceptualizing, picturing, or describing aspects of the nation, not in understanding more about ships. Similarly, "My surgeon is a butcher" is a (damning) statement about a surgeon, not a butcher. Coulson (1997) has pointed out that some metaphorical blends allow us to project inferences in more than one direction. In a joke about the "Menendez Brothers [Computer] Virus," the blend establishes a (darkly) humorous connection

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between actions of the virus and alleged actions of human agents. Erik and Lyle Menendez, two brothers in their twenties, killed their parents and subsequently inherited their substantial wealth. At their widely-publicized trial, the brothers argued that they had been the victims of long-term abuse, and that the killings had therefore been a form of self-defense, although their parents were unarmed at the time. According to the joke, the virus "eliminates your files, takes the disk space they previously occupied, and then claims it was a victim of physical and sexual abuse on the part of the files it erased" (Coulson 1997:252). While the joke uses details of the criminal case to explain the virus, which is in this sense the target input of the blend, it also invites inferences about the brothers. Because the criminal case was controversial, one of the effects of the joke is to support a particular view, namely that the Menendez brothers were guilty of murder, and that the defense they offered was absurd. Given that the same network of connections is used to make inferences about the brothers and about the virus, this example is an apparent exception to the principle that metaphors involve asymmetric topicality: a single conceptual integration network - which feels metaphorical and involves fusion (with accommodation) between profiled participants - allows inferences in either direction, and invites us to focus on aspects of each input. However, the Menendez Brothers Virus blend operates on distinct levels (and possibly in distinct stages) and different directionality is associated with each. An initial understanding of the virus depends on successfully mapping the description of human actions onto the domain of computer operations and files. Understanding the implications about the criminal case is a separate process which involves unpacking one of the input spaces on which the joke is based. (To put it another way, this process involves retrieval of presuppositions, guided by the connections in the network.) Topicality is asymmetrical during each of these processes. Moreover, topicality is not the only factor determining the directionality of metaphor. A metaphoric blend which recruits conventional mappings inherits the directionality of those mappings, as the Nation-as-ship blend inherits the directionality of metaphors for change, time, society, political orientation, etc. and maps source concepts onto all these target concepts. Furthermore, there is a long tradition of describing the greater concreteness of metaphoric sources as opposed to targets. Topicality probably correlates with these other factors in that certain kinds of topics are more likely to evoke metaphoric counterparts, which in turn are likely to be relatively rich in sensory content.


5.3

119

Metaphors vs. counterfactuals: The role of linguistic context

Like metaphors, counterfactuals involve counterpart relations between entities that are construed as essentially different. Consider this hypothetical example, spoken by a senior professor to a junior colleague: (9)

If I were you I'd be working on finishing my book.

Like metaphors, the conceptual blend underlying this sentence involves counterparts, construed as crucially different, which are fused in the blended space; a single entity there corresponds to a different person in each of the inputs. The hypothetical professor does not (and could not) have all the properties of both input professors; it is their differences which motivate the blend. Specifically, the professor in the blend is in the situation of the junior professor, who must publish a book in order to be tenured, but has the attitudes and priorities of the senior professor. If this blend includes fusion of distinct entities, why does it not strike us as metaphorical? It is likely that one of the factors is the perceived degree of difference between the counterparts. As we mentioned earlier, and as many previous works on metaphor have noted using various terminology, the perceived difference between two entities is an important determinant of how metaphorical an association between them may seem. A sentence starting with "If I were a cloud" strikes us as more figurative than one starting with "If I were you." A sentence starting with "If I were Napoleon" probably falls in between. This relative scale is plausibly based on the degree of perceived category difference, at the relevant level of abstraction, between the "I" element and the counterpart in each case. Another factor, though, is the construction of the sentences themselves. The rhetorical force - i.e. the profiling effects - of counterfactual statements may run contrary to those we associate with metaphor. A sentence starting with "If I were a cloud" may strike us as less metaphoric than one starting with "I am a cloud," since the counterfactual specifically negates the proposition that the two entities can be equated in some sense. That is, while both sentences may be interpreted based on the same network of conceptual links and projections, the profiling may be different in the two cases, such that one is more consistent with our prototype of metaphors. Metaphors typically assert counterpart connections without drawing explicit attention to incongruities between the connected entities. The above concerns suggest that metaphor is not a sharply delineated phenome non, and underscore the need for a framework like BT which can account for the mapping operations that underlie central and peripheral cases alike.

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6.

JOSEPH GRADY, TODD OAKLEY & SEANA COULSON Conclusion

Differences between conceptual metaphor theory and blending theory, such as the distinct nature of directionality in the two frameworks, have led some researchers to treat them as competing theories (e.g. Coulson 1996). Alternatively, one might consider the two approaches to be incommensurable. After all, CMT addresses recurring patterns in figurative language, while BT seems to focus on the particulars of individual cases. And the phenomena accounted for by CMT consist of stable knowledge structures represented in long-term memory, while BT seeks to model the dynamic evolution of speakers' on-line representations. In this paper we have taken neither of these positions. Rather, we propose that because they tackle different aspects of metaphoric conceptualization, the two frameworks are largely complementary. The conventional conceptual pairings and one-way mappings studied within CMT are inputs to and constraints on the kinds of dynamic conceptual networks posited within BT. If we establish that the findings of CMT and BT are consistent, the potential rewards are significant, since this allows us to unify two streams of research into a more general and comprehensive treatment of linguistic and conceptual phenomena. BT researchers have argued that the same principles which speakers use to understand metaphor operate similarly across a wide range of nonmetaphorical phenomena. The generality of conceptual blending theory derives in part from its roots in mental space theory which treats metaphor as a special case of indirect reference. As our examples illustrate, metaphoric and non-metaphoric conceptual izations alike rely on selective projection from two or more input spaces into a blended space, the establishment of cross-space mappings, structuring the blended space via processes of composition, completion, and elaboration, and subsequent projection of structure from the blended space to the inputs. By treating all sorts of mappings as formally identical at a certain level we can understand the transfer of structure in metaphor as fundamentally similar to the transfer of structure in non-metaphoric instances. Among the non-metaphoric types of linguistic structure which can be treated in a blending framework are counterfactuals and conditionals. A number of researchers working within the framework of conceptual blending have addressed its implications for how people reason about events which could have happened, but did not (e.g. Fauconnier 1997; Oakley 1995, 1998; Turner 1996). The tools of blending theory, including the cline between identity, similarity, and analogy links, have also proven useful in explaining the variety of complex concept combinations coded for by modified noun phrases. For example, blending theory has been used to explore issues of concept combination in seemingly simple cases like "red pencil" (Turner & Fauconnier 1995; Sweetser in prep.), more exotic


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cases like "land yacht" and "dolphin-safe tuna" (Turner & Fauconnier 1995), and privative constructions such as "alleged affair" and "fake gun" (Coulson & Fauconnier in press). Conceptual metaphor theory has often emphasized the role played by metaphors in structuring abstract concepts with cognitive models projected from more concrete source domains. With its additional machinery for recruiting knowledge structures, blending theory has also proven to be powerful in explaining how abstract concepts can be understood with the help of blended models. Although blended models are not always plausible - cf. the debate between Kant and a modern philosopher - blends can promote integrated construals that help us reason about abstract phenomena. Accordingly, a number of researchers have demonstrated the importance of particular blends in the invention of mathematical concepts (Fauconnier & Turner 1998; Lakoff & Nunez in press) and proofs (Robert 1998). Moreover, Maglio & Matlock (1998) demonstrate the roles of distinct conceptual blends as experts and novices interact with Web browsers. Blending theory has also been taken up by literary theorists interested in the cognitive underpinnings of verbal creativity. For example, Brandt (in press) shows how integration networks can be used to represent the complex flow of inferences and imagery in the poetry of Baudelaire. Turner (1996) shows how the machinery of conceptual blending operates in a wide range of literary genres from simple parables, to the imagery in Dante's Inferno, to Shakespearean drama. More surprising, perhaps, is the suggestion that the very same integrative mechanisms underlie the most banal aspects of language processing (Turner & Fauconnier 1995; Mandelblit 1997). Sweetser (in prep.) demonstrates the ubiquity of blending phenomena and shows how its processes are used to combine the semantic properties of grammatical constructions with the lexical semantics of the words used in their instantiations. Similarly, Fauconnier & Turner (1996) have suggested that integrative mechanisms of blending are needed to understand particular instances of the caused-motion construction such as "He sneezed the napkin off the table" (cf. Goldberg 1996). In arguing that conceptual metaphor theory and blending theory provide largely complementary formalisms, we have suggested that many of the differences between them reflect their motivation in different aspects of the same data. While the metaphor theorist strives to capture generalizations across a broad range of metaphoric expressions, the blending theorist typically focuses on the particulars of individual examples. Because it is useful to separate entrenched associations in long-term memory from the on-line processes that recruit them, we have argued that the former issue is the province of metaphor theory, and the latter, the province of blending theory. Consequently, metaphor theory will

12 2


continue to address such questions as which concepts are conventionally associated with each other, how and why such conventional associations arise, and how cross-domain mappings are structured. As argued above, such issues are central to the question of how metaphoric blends arise, and may have important implications for the quasi-metaphoric blending in other sorts of examples. To be sure, a full understanding of the conceptual feats that underlie the examples considered above will require both a rich theory of metaphor and a fully specified model of conceptual blending. Notes

1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

Grady (1997) has argued that conceptual domains are often too general as units of analysis for conceptual metaphors, and that many mappings are better described as associations between particular source and target concepts, belonging to distinct domains. Both approaches treat metaphors as relationships between established, long-term knowledge structures. This is not to say that emergent structure is a necessary feature of conceptual blends : some blends are truth-functionally compositional. However, it is the frequent need to account for emergent structure that motivates BT. See Gentner (1983) for another approach to constraining and optimizing cross-domain mappings. Gentner's framework applies to relations between (what BT treats as) input spaces to a blend. From Carol R. Campbell, "Cave Man Bill And The Doleful State of American Politics," published by The Written Word, an on-line journal of economic, political and social commentary. Bruce E. Johnson, "Making a difference," Federal Executive Institute Alumni Association Newsletter President's Report, April 1997, No. 225. From "Two years of PA [the People's Alliance] : the state of the Nation," Editorial in "The Sunday Times [of Sri Lanka] on the Web" Aug. 18, 1996. While a reference to the ship's course (rather than to listing) might have been more conventional in this context, the fact that we easily interpret the sentence demands that we account for it as it stands. In the BT framework it does not matter whether such an improbable image results from deliberate innovation or the accidental "mixing" of metaphors. See, e.g., Grady's (1997) discussion of primary metaphors, in which source concepts have "image content" while target concepts have "response content." For more on the contrast between resemblance metaphors and correlation metaphors, see Grady (this volume). This statement will strike some readers, but not others, as metaphorical. The dividing line between metaphor and other sorts of figurative reference is not sharply drawn or universally agreed upon.

References

Brandt, Per Aage. 1998. "Cats in space".

Acta Linguistica.


123

Brugman, Claudia. 1990. "What Is the Invariance Hypothesis?". Cognitive Linguistics 1. 257-266. Coulson, Seana. 1996. "The Menendez Brothers Virus: Analogical Mapping in Blended Spaces." Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language, ed. by Adele Goldberg. 67-83. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI. , & Gilles Fauconnier. 1998 in press. "Fake Guns and Stone Lions: Conceptual Blending and Privative Adjectives". Cognition and Function in Language, ed. by Daniel Jurafsky, Laura Michaelis, & Barbara Fox. Stanford, CA: CSLI. 1997. "Semantic Leaps: The Role of Frame-Shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning Construction".Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California, San Diego. Fauconnier, Gilles. 1994 [1985]. Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construc tion in Natural Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. , & Mark Turner. 1996. "Blending as a Central Process of Grammar". Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language, ed. by Adele Goldberg. 183-203. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI. & Mark Turner. 1998. "Conceptual Integration Networks". Cognitive , Science 22. 133-187. Fillmore, Charles. J. 1982. "Frame Semantics". Linguistics in the Morning Calm. 111-137, The Linguistic Society of Korea. Seoul, South Korea: Hanshin Publishing Co. Gentner, Dedre. 1983. "Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Ana logy". Cognitive Science 7. 155-170. Goldberg, Adele E. ed. 1996. Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI. Grady, Joseph, Sarah Taub,, & Pamela Morgan. 1996. "Primitive and Compound Metaphors". Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language, ed. by Adele Goldberg, 177-187. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI. 1997. "Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes". Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California, Berkeley. This volume. "A Typology of Motivation for Conceptual Metaphor: Correlation vs. Resemblance". Keysar, B. 1989. "On the Functional Equivalence of Literal and Metaphorical Interpretations in Discourse". Journal of Memory and Language 28. 375385. Lakoff, George,, & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press.

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1990. "The Invariance Hypothesis: Is abstract Reason Based on Image Schemas?" Cognitive Linguistics 1. 39-74. , & Rafael Nunez. In press. "The Metaphorical Structure of Mathematics: Sketching Out Cognitive Foundations for a Mind-Based Mathematics". Mathematical Reasoning: Analogies, Metaphors, and Images, ed. by Lyn English. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Maglio, P.P., & T. Matlock, 1998. "Metaphors We Surf the Web By". Workshop on Personalized and Social Information Space, Stockholm, Sweden. Mandelblit, N. 1997. "Grammatical Blending: Creative and Schematic Aspects in Sentence Processing and Translation". Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California, San Diego. Oakley, Todd. 1995. "Presence: The Conceptual Basis of Rhetorical Effect". Ph.D. Dissertation.University of Maryland. 1998. "Conceptual Blending, Narrative Discourse, and Rhetoric". Cognitive Linguistics 9. 321-360. Robert, Adrian. 1998. "Blending in the Interpretation of Mathematical Proofs". Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language II, ed. by Jean-Pierre Koenig. 337-350. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI. Sweeter, Eve. In preparation. "Mental Spaces and Cognitive Linguistics: A Cognitively Realistic Approach to Compositionality". Turner, Mark. 1991. Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press. 1996a. "Conceptual Blending and Counterfactual Argument in the Social and Behavioral Sciences". Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics, ed. by Philip Tetclock, & Andrew Belkin. 291-295. Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press. 1996b. The Literary Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. , & Gilles Fauconnier. 1995. "Conceptual Integration and Formal Expres sion". Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10:183-203. Veale, Tony. 1996. "Pastiche". Unpublished manuscript.

SELF AND AGENCY IN RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE PERCEPTUAL METAPHORS FOR KNOWLEDGE AT A MARIAN APPARITION SITE

VICTOR BALABAN Emory University

"My dear children of America, are you listening? Are your ears closed or open? Are your hearts closed or open?" the Virgin Mary to Nancy Fowler, October 13, 1991

1.

Introduction

This is a study of how perceptual metaphors for knowledge can be used by English speakers as part of a pragmatic strategy to reduce the speaker's own agency in the events described. In this case the narratives are accounts of miraculous signs recounted by pilgrims at a Marian apparition site. The hypothesis tested was that many features of the discourse used in pilgrims' narratives are manifestations of an underlying conflict of establishing the authenticity of a religious experience. It was proposed that pilgrims are under pragmatic pressures to reduce their agency in the events described, in order to attribute divine authority to those experiences, and that one linguistic manifestation of this pressure would be pilgrims' increased use of non-visual metaphors for knowledge, as a way to emphasize a passive relationship to the supernatural. This was tested by comparing pilgrims' use of visual and non-visual metaphors for knowledge in their discourse. It was found that pilgrims consis tently used more non-visual than visual metaphors for knowledge, but that they did so in different contexts of communications with different demand characteris tics: when discussing religious events, in secular narratives, and in un-elicited narratives communicated among fellow believers. These results could support the hypothesis that pilgrims routinely reduce their own agency by use of non-visual perceptual metaphors, but alternate explanations cannot be ruled out until this study is replicated on a control group of "mainstream" Americans.

126 2.

VICTOR BALABAN Pilgrims'

narratives

In 1989 Nancy Fowler began having visions of the Virgin Mary. Since that time, her home in Conyers, Georgia has become one of the largest and longest lived Marian Apparition sites in the United States (Balaban 1996a, 1996b, in press). As many as 80, 000 people gather on the 13th of every month to hear Ms. Fowler relate a message for the United States from the Virgin. Pilgrims visit and observe devotions such as taking Holy Water from a Holy Well, leaving petitions and prayers in baskets in the Apparition Room, and taking pictures of the sun to look for signs of Jesus and Mary in the images. Pilgrims come to Conyers for healing, to give thanks, or to reaffirm their faith; but whatever the explanation given, the implicit reason is almost always to directly experience for themselves some of the graces of Mary. After Sunday prayer meetings pilgrims in Conyers will mill around on the Holy Hill and tell each other their stories. Although the events are told informally, they are by no means unimportant. Actually seeing or hearing the Virgin Mary is considered to be a rare privilege that only a very few are ever granted. Most pilgrims experience a host of traditional signs and confirmations of Mary's presence such as seeing the sun moving in the sky, seeing the appearance of Mary in miraculous photographs, seeing rosary beads changing to gold, or smelling the scent of roses. Other events might include healings, conversions or other life changes. The common thread among these narratives is that they are all stories of encounters with the divine in one form or another. For both the narrators and the audience, these signs testify to the continual presence of Mary and confirmation of the fact that She does intervene in the lives of the faithful, particularly at these holy places. In the process, these divine encounters are transformed from private experiences into meaningful social rituals (Zimdars-Swartz 1991). Telling the story allows believers to both celebrate and reaffirm this transformation in their lives (Stromberg 1992). The narratives that the Conyers pilgrims tell have many features in common with a narrative genre that has been well documented: conversion narratives. Conversion narratives describe the experience of how the presence of the divine entered an individual's life and transformed them, usually in context of how they became a believer. Stromberg (1992) analyzed a series of Evangelical Christian conversion narratives and concluded that these narratives can be understood as a form of ritual performance where the narrator can express and come to terms with contradictory aims. In a conversion narrative, the believer can either fulfill a purpose in their relationship to God that might be forbidden in other contexts; or else attribute unacknowledged aims to God, so that God does what the believer cannot or should not do. In this way, believers can invoke conflicts in their lives and accommodate discordant or otherwise disturbing thoughts and actions by

SELF AGENCY IN RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE

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reframing them in the canonical language of Evangelical Christianity. Once these undesirable elements are attributed to an outside entity, there are no inconsisten cies any more and the dilemma is solved. In a simple sense, the supernatural agent does what the person cannot or feels they should not do or feel. The difficulty for the pilgrims in Conyers lies in that fact that the secular culture of the United States does not accept the reality of apparitions (Stromberg 1992). The popular assumption is that people who have experiences similar to those described in conversion narratives are either mistaken or possibly even unstable. Although many clinical studies have found that hallucinations and illusions often occur in non-psychotic individuals (see e.g. Bliss & Clark 1962), the folk model is such that any reported vision or supernatural encounter can be considered a sign of instability. As members of the wider culture of the United States, the pilgrims believe this too. (This is, of course, in no way meant to suggest that any of the people who have religious experiences in Conyers are hallucinating, only that in American society describing such an experience has a high probability of being interpreted as such.) Therefore, when telling their religious narratives, pilgrims are negotiating between two very different belief systems. One is within the local culture of the Apparition Site, where it is acceptable to attribute thoughts and actions to an outside agent; and the second is in the wider, secular culture where this way of thinking can be considered a sign of loss of control. This can be thought of as an attempt to negotiate between two contradictory cultural models. 3.

Cultural models

Recent work in cognitive anthropology has led to a growing recognition of the role of cultural models, cognitive schemata that are shared by a cultural group (D'Andrade 1990). It has been argued by cognitive anthropologists that much of our everyday social life is mediated by these cultural models which organize experience, create expectations, motivate behavior, and provide a framework for people to remember, describe and reconstruct events (see e.g. D'Andrade 1990; D'Andrade and Strauss 1992; Dougherty 1985; Holland and Quinn 1987). Multiple models of social experiences are clearly possible, and many competing and contradictory values can coexist in the same cultural systems (see e.g. Geertz 1983; R. Rosaldo 1989; Shore 1996; Sperber 1985). For example, Quinn (1985, 1987) has illustrated the presence of multiple cultural models in her analysis of American cultural models of marriage. In these studies, narratives of subject's accounts of their marriages are analyzed, and different underlying metaphors of marriage are identified. These metaphors reflect an underlying cultural model of marriage and in turn seem to be based on four abstract schemas: RELATION i.e. marriage is something between two people,

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VICTOR BALABAN

CONTAINER i.e. we

sailed into the marriage, TRAJECTORY i.e. that was a turning point in our marriage, and ENTITY i.e. marriage is an institution. Quinn shows

how each model highlights different aspects of the experience of marriage, and different speakers may use different schemas. Discussing marriage in terms of one metaphor as opposed to another presumably has important consequences for whether a couple thinks of their relationship as something that can be "fixed" or as a trip that has "come to an end". When pilgrims to Conyers attempt to explain apparently supernatural experiences, which model of self and agency a speaker chooses has crucial consequences for how the narrator is perceived. The difficulty has to do with fundamentally different models of agency and intentionality that are implied by the two different models. In order to describe an experience of the supernatural, a speaker must invoke a specific model of self, a model that allows people to have thoughts and experiences that are attributable to an outside agent. The pilgrims to Conyers are, nonetheless, perfectly aware that secular culture operates under a different model of self, and that invoking a more passive model may bring with it the implication that the speaker may be mistaken or unstable. Describing a supernatural experience is thus not a simple process, but a negotiation between different, mutually inconsistent, cultural models of self and agency. Only if pilgrims can be positive that their experiences are divinely inspired can they be justified in identifying their experiences as the works of an intentional divinity. The way this conflict is manifested is through pragmatic pressures on the pilgrims to justify the authenticity of their experiences. The premise of this study is that the language used in pilgrims ' narratives will reflect this ongoing process of negotiation, as personal experiences are made to fit pre-existing schemas. Many scholars have described this process, which Zimdars-Swartz (1991:19) calls "the transformation of private experience to public meaning"; Obeyesekere (1981:50) calls "the conventionalization of personal symbols"; Slater (1990:109) calls "the exteriorization of private experience"; and Shore (1996) discusses in terms of the relationship between shared social models and more individual cognitive models. For the pilgrims to Conyers, recounting a religious experience creates a particular social reality (Rappaport 1977), and a particular identity (Stromberg 1992). The way this is accomplished is through language. 4.

Language and agency

One of the key insights of recent work in cognitive linguistics is that language is grounded systematically in cognition. According to this view, grammatical regularities do not arise in language as a result of the application of formal rules. Instead, it is proposed that the use of various linguistic devices are


129

organized around clusters of related notions such as agency, control, volition and animacy (e.g. Comrie 1981; DeLancey 1984; Givon 1979, 1984; Hopper and Thompson 1980, 1994; Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1991, 1994; Slobin 1981, 1985). In this view, grammar is shaped by all the factors - cognitive, social, interactive and cultural - that are involved in how language is used. Regular patterns of grammatical usage arise as a result of strategies that speakers use in negotiating what they want to communicate to listeners. Contrary to many earlier views of language, this means that the relationship between grammar and semantics is quite flexible, and implies that one needs to understand the demands of particular communicative interactions in order to understand how the event is being grammaticalized. In the case of a conversion narrative, narrators are attempting to express unacknowledged, inconsistent or unacceptable thoughts and/or actions into an acceptable form (Stromberg 1992). The key to understanding this sort of discourse is the central dynamic of attributing discordant thoughts and feelings to an external, divine agent. Many theorists have noted the importance of the speakers' lessening agency as a central element of ritual discourse. Geertz (1973) discussed this in terms of anonymization in ritual; and Levi-Strauss (1969:18) wrote that myth is "a message that, properly speaking, is coming from nowhere". Hymes (1972:49) and Labov (1972:353) discuss the depersonalizing aspect of communi cation and ritual through the use of formulaic speech; and Dubois (1986:330) writes "the first step in establishing authority for ritual speech is to make it appear to be of a personal origin, or at least to approach this". Studies of the language used in evangelical Christian groups confirm these theorists' assertions. Coleman (1980) found that "born-again" Evangelical Christians systematically avoided using transitive sentences with first-person subjects as a way to avoid portraying themselves as volitional agents. She characterized evangelical language as an effort to conceal the nature of the narrator's actions and the speaker's role in them. Szuchewycz (1994) found that participants in a Charismatic Catholic prayer meeting used linguistic constructions that reduced their agency by attributing divine authority and authorship to their own speech acts. Harding (1987) also found that the rhetorical devices used in Baptist conversion narratives functioned to redescribe personal experiences in divine terms. The prototypical model that underlies the notion of agenthood in American society is that of a responsible, in-control human who intentionally performs an action (Croft 1994; Langacker 1991). Bates and MacWhinney (1982:217) suggested that prototypical agents are physical entities which have features such as "animacy", "intention", "cause", and "human". Van Oosten (1985:213) studied a large corpus of English conversations and concludes that the central characteris-

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VICTOR BALABAN

tics of a prototypical agent are that it has the primary responsibility for the action that occurs in the sentence, and that it is intentional. DeLancey (1984), using examples from English, Newari and Hare, further agues that different languages emphasize different aspects of these attributes of agentivity. DeLancey found that the general tendency in English is to equate the source of an utterance with the speaker. This is at odds with the interpretation sought by the pilgrims, which is to locate the source as being outside the speaker. This makes the narrator a non-prototypical agent and has the effect of making most intentional agents human since only humans are generally presumed to have intentionality (Van Oosten 1985; Langacker 1991). In purely linguistic terms, there should be no difficulty for an English speaker to attribute thoughts and feelings to an outside agent. There are a variety of linguistic devices that can be used to mark speakers as atypical (non-volitional) agents. However, in the case of the pilgrims to Conyers, there is a complication: the kind of non-prototypical agent they are trying to convey, one that attributes thoughts and feelings to an outside agent, is the prototype for another category of agent, the category of mentally or emotionally unstable agents. Thoughts or actions that are inconsistent or contradictory are considered troubling in American society. These notions of agency map on to conceptions of mental health and illness in American culture, where there are folk-beliefs that people are agents with coherent intentions. Many symptoms of emotional or mental illness do have the quality of having been produced without the individual having had any intent of doing so. Symptoms such as unintentional movements, memory lapses, compulsive thoughts and behaviors, overly intense or labile emotional states, all have the quality of being "ego-alien" (Stromberg 1992). Therefore, the pilgrims find themselves in a bind. They are motivated to tell their religious narratives to as many people as possible in order to give witness to the glory of God, but in so doing they risk reinforcing the stereotype of religious devotees as being unstable. On the other hand, if pilgrims portray themselves as more typical agents, they run the risk of having their experiences interpreted as ordinary events. This is an insoluble dilemma. One way for pilgrims to negotiate this impasse is to try to construct their accounts in such a way that not only is the authenticity of a reported apparition established, but it is also distinguished from other possible explanations of the same phenomena i.e. hallucination, coincidence, etc. This can be accomplished by presenting the thoughts and feelings in such a way that they had to have come from an external agent, but at the same time to use a variety of linguistic devices to mark the source and reliability of knowledge. To summarize, it is hypothesized that the pilgrims in Conyers need to assert that their thoughts or feelings come from an outside agent, but at the same time make clear the speaker's control over his/her own mind. The way this can be done


131

is to employ linguistic devices that shift the speaker to a non-volitional role; and at the same time use other devices that either mark the source and reliability of the speaker's knowledge, or else highlight the reliability of the speaker themselves. In this way, the conflict can be negotiated. It is hypothesized that one linguistic manifestation of this pressure will be pilgrims' use of non-visual metaphors for knowledge, as a way to emphasize the passive relationship to the divine that pilgrims are attempting to convey in their narratives. 5.

Perceptual metaphors for knowledge

Cognitive linguists propose that language use reflects inherently metaphori cal understanding of many areas of experience. Metaphor, in this view, is not just a linguistic device, but a central organizing factor in language and cognition (Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Metaphor, in cognitive linguistic theories, is characterized as a process where one experiential domain is conceptualized in terms of another (Taylor 1989; Sweetser 1990). Briefly, cognitive linguists propose that language use reflects inherently metaphorical understanding of many areas of experience (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Johnson 1987; Sweetser 1990). Metaphors are systematic interrelations of multiple expressions which map one relatively stable 'domain' on to another. The basic process is that a concrete domain (the source domain) is mapped on to a more abstract domain (the target domain). An example which will be described in more detail later is the fact that the target domain of "knowledge" is often understood in terms of the source domain of "vision" i.e. Your logic is crystal clear.

Many cognitive linguists have noted that the same terms that pertain to sensory perception are also used metaphorically to indicate specific aspects of thought or knowledge (e.g. Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Johnson 1987; Sweetser 1990, 1995). For instance, verbs that refer to vision (i.e. I see) are used to refer to knowing or understanding (i.e. I see what you mean). Sweetser (1990, 1995), argues that a coherent and structured system of metaphors underlies and motivates the tendency to use vocabulary from peoples' external (social and physical) domains when discussing internal (psychological and emotional) domains. Perceptual metaphors are motivated by folk models of different perceptual abilities. For example, vision is considered to be the most objective and verifiable sense and is generally considered to be peoples' primary source of objective information about the world. Target domains of vision verbs commonly develop abstract senses of mental activity and intellect, either knowledge or mental 'vision'. The source domain for this is generally considered to be the greater channeling and focusing ability that vision affords. One can visually "pick out"

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and attend to specific items amid many other stimuli. Examples of this would include not only obvious uses such as I see what you mean, but more abstract uses such as In my view or His argument threw up a smoke screen. In all these cases visual terms refer not to actual visual perception, but to understanding or knowledge. Furthermore, the limited domain of vision and the ability to monitor give rise to metaphors of control. Matlock (1989) argues that an underlying KNOWING IS SEEING model motivates the use of visual perceptual metaphors for knowledge. The KNOWING IS SEEING metaphor is highly conventionalized and is found in most Indo-Euro pean languages (Matlock 1989; Sweetser 1990). KNOWING IS SEEING is an example of the broader MIND AS BODY metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Sweetser 1990) where the internal self is pervasively understood in terms of the bodily external self, and hence is described by means of vocabulary drawn from the physical domain. Matlock (1989) asks why vision is used as a source domain to structure knowledge, rather than hearing or any other sensory system. She explains this by noting that vision is associated with more certain and direct knowledge, while other senses are more associated with indirect or inferred knowledge. In simpler terms, seeing is believing. Different sensory verbs, with different source domains, can also be used as metaphors for knowledge (see table 1 for examples). Taste and touch require physical contact, and distance is connected with objectivity and intellect, closeness with subjectivity, intimacy and emotion. Therefore metaphors of taste and touch usually have deeper emotional connotations. Taste generally has deep links to internal self, e.g. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, and touch maps on to emotional sensations, e.g. I was so touched by your letter. Smell has few metaphorical connections to mental domains, but can still be used, e.g. I smell an opportunity here. In the auditory domain, it is more difficult to localize a sound than to visually focus on an object; therefore hearing is often connected with the communicative aspects of understanding rather than with cognition in general. Since hearing is the primary mode for understanding language, and hence for influencing people, either intellectually or emotionally, verbs of hearing often come to mean "to be receptive", "to heed" or "to obey". An example of this would be the general acceptance communicated by I hear you or You 're coming in loud and clear as opposed to the more active I see what you mean (Sweetser 1990:42). Since pilgrims are under pragmatic pressures to reduce their agency in the events described, it is possible to hypothesize about what perceptual metaphors for knowledge could be used to convey reduced agency. Vision, as noted above, tends to be connected with the intellect and uses the active monitoring and focusing abilities that visual perception affords as a source domain. Metaphors based on vision, therefore, presume an active agent in the world. Such an active


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agent would be inconsistent with the more passive, receptive relationship to the divine that pilgrims are seeking to convey. A more passive agent might be conveyed by metaphors based on other sensory modalities. It is therefore hypothesized that pilgrims to Conyers will use non-visual metaphors for knowledge more than visual metaphors as a way to portray themselves as passive recipients of divine experiences by reducing their agency in the events described. 6. 6.1

Method Participants and materials

A total of 191 narratives were collected from pilgrims in Conyers, Georgia; and from the Apparitions-List (APAR-L). The face-to-face narratives consisted of 17 tape recorded testimonies collected from pilgrims in Conyers between October 1996 and March 1997. When conducting face-to-face interviews, I explained to all participants that I am respectful of their beliefs, I am not Catholic (I am Jewish) and I am a graduate student in psychology. All 17 participants then answered an open-ended question "Is there any testimony you would like to share?" Of those participants, 14 also agreed to tell of a secular experience. The prompt question used was "How did you meet you husband/wife?" Pilot studies showed that pilgrims did in fact describe how they met their spouses in non-reli gious terms, in that none mentioned God or any other supernatural agent being involved. Taped interviews were transcribed verbatim. The on-line narratives were 55 un-elicited e-mail messages from the APAR-L electronic mailing list (a forum for believers to discuss their experiences with Mary), and 5 on-line testimonies sent to the author in response to requests for testimonies posted to the same list. 6.2

Coding and analyses

The collected narratives were divided into four groups: 1) Face-to-Face Religious Narratives, 2) Face-to-Face Secular Narratives, 3) Un-Elicited On-line Religious Narratives, and 4) Elicited On-line Religious Narratives. Each group of narratives was analyzed for each instance of the use of perceptual metaphors for knowledge. Perceptual metaphors were operationalized as any use of perceptual vocabulary to indicate knowledge. Eight different modalities of perceptual metaphor were coded for: 1) visual, 2) auditory, 3) olfactory, 4) taste, 5) tactile, 6) unspecified, 7) non-perceptual, biological metaphors (metaphors for knowledge that have some aspect of human physiology other than perceptual systems as a source domain); and 8) non-biological metaphors that use mechanical or other non-biological source domains (see table 1 for examples). The mean frequency of use of Non-Visual metaphors was also

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coded for, with Non-Visual metaphors being defined as all the different types of perceptual metaphors, except Visual, added together. Two metaphors were excluded from the analysis: the visual metaphor contained in the expression let' s see, and the tactile metaphors contained in expressions of emotion such as I felt sad. Both usages were considered to be so highly conventionalized that they probably do not provide any indication of pilgrims underlying conceptual models. The mean frequency of use of each type of metaphor was then expressed as a proportion of the total number of metaphors used per subject Four group comparisons were conducted: a) religious vs. secular experi ences, b) elicited vs. non-elicited accounts, c) face-to-face vs. on-line narratives, and d) and perceptual metaphors vs. perceptual vocabulary. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the four groups of narratives differed signifi cantly in length, F (1, 3 )=36.97, p<.001. The longest narratives were the Elicited, On-Line narratives (M = 287.4 propositions), followed by the Face-to-Face Religious narratives (M = 166.53), the On-Line Un-Elicited narratives (M = 42.07), and the shortest were the Face-to-Face Secular narratives (M = 25.5). A comparison ofjust the Face-to-Face narratives showed that the religious narratives were significantly longer than secular narratives, t (13)= 4.25, p<.001. 7.

Results and discussion

The main hypothesis tested in this study was that pilgrims would use more non-visual metaphors than visual metaphors for knowledge in their religious testimonies as a way to reduce their own agency in the events they described. Overall pilgrims used metaphors in 5.9% of their propositions. The most common metaphors were Non-Biological metaphors such as: it's starting to compute, or the doorway is starting to creep open in my brain, or l am so grateful to Godfor the gifts He's given me or I feel as if I haven't got the direct line to god yet. Pilgrims also used a great many tactile metaphors when describing their religious experiences. Examples include: I feel as though I was truly physically touched by Our Blessed Mother's broken Heart, or Ifelt gripped by the Spirit, or My life was touched on that day, or the Lord started really knocking me over the head. In addition there were many Biological metaphors used that were Non-Perceptual, including: it was the Blessed Mother's way of giving the boys a kiss on the cheek, or I knew it in my heart, or my whole brain was going back and forth, doubt, worry, or my spiritual growth took root 14 years ago. There were very few auditory metaphors used, although there were a few: and [the Lord] said "Wake up!", or the ears perked up, or For the longest time I felt that God was calling me to something. Although the majority of pilgrims' metaphors for knowledge were Non-Visual, there were many Visual metaphors used as well: it


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dawned on me, or Jesus showed me the way, or He was showing me little truths of the faith. There were no Olfactory or Taste metaphors used by any of the

pilgrims. A 4(narrative type) x2(visual vs. non-visual metaphors) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to test whether the frequency of use of visual and non-visual perceptual metaphors for knowledge differed among groups. No significant effects of group were found on the frequency of use of either visual or non-visual perceptual metaphors. Pilgrims used more non-visual {M =.91) than visual metaphors (M =.09) for knowledge, F (1, 90) = 2.86, p<.01. There was no interaction effect, indicating that in all four groups of narratives this pattern holds, as can be seen in figure 1.

There are several factors in addition to the desire to reduce speaker agency that might affect how speakers use perceptual metaphors for knowledge. Since the main purpose of this study is to test how the pragmatic pressures of recounting a religious experience are manifested in discourse it is necessary to have control groups, in order to assess how pilgrims' use of metaphors is changed in different contexts of communication when they are not under those pressures. Four group comparisons were conducted: a) religious vs. secular experiences, b) elicited vs. non-elicited accounts, c) and face-to-face and on-line narratives, and d) metaphori-

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cal vs. non-metaphorical perceptual vocabulary. Each of these comparisons is explained in more detail below. 7.1

Religious vs. secular experiences

When describing secular events, pilgrims are presumably under less pressure to reduce their own agency or assert the source of their knowledge. It could therefore be hypothesized that when discussing secular experiences, pilgrims would show a different pattern than when recounting religious events and use more visual metaphors than non-visual metaphors for knowledge. This was tested by comparing the use of metaphors in the Face-to-Face Religious and Secular narratives. Pilgrims used significantly more non-visual (M =.84) than visual (M =.1) metaphors for knowledge, t (16) = 10.83, p<.001. When recounting a secular experience, pilgrims did not use significantly more non-visual (M =.35) than visual (M = 0) metaphors for knowledge. This might indicate that pilgrims' use of more non-visual than visual perceptual metaphors for knowledge in their discourse is limited to the context of recounting a supernatural experience. However, the fact that pilgrims used exclusively non-visual metaphors for knowledge in the Secular narratives suggests that this pattern is not limited to religious discourse and that a larger sample might have shown significant differences. 7.2

Elicited vs. non-elicited accounts

One unavoidable confound of collecting interviews at Conyers is that the pilgrims are recounting their experiences to a non-believer (the author) and so may be speaking in ways that reflect the demand characteristics of the interview situation. This was tested by collecting pilgrims' accounts of their religious experiences gathered from the archives of the Apparitions List (APAR-L), an electronic mailing list program devoted to distributing the Virgin's messages on-line. These On-Line accounts, unlike the Face-to-Face Religious narratives, were not elicited and presumably were written to be shared with a group of fellow believers. Elicited and Un-Elicited interviews were then compared to assess whether or not there are differences in the use of perceptual metaphors for knowledge in response to the interview situation. If the task of explaining supernatural events to a non-believer forces subjects to use discourse strategies that convince the listener of the genuineness of their experiences, then it would be hypothesized that the Un-Elicited religious narratives would not show the same pattern of metaphor use as the Elicited narratives.


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This hypothesis was not supported. As in the Elicited narratives, there were significantly more non-visual (M =.63) than visual (M =.07) metaphors for knowledge in the Un-Elicted narratives, t (54)=-7.64, p<.001. Therefore pilgrims' use of more non-visual than visual perceptual metaphors for knowledge in their religious narratives was not simply the result of demand characteristics of speaking to a non-believer. 7.3

Face-to-Face vs. on-line narratives

The Un-Elicited narratives in the previous analysis are communicated On-Line and therefore might not have been directly comparable to the oral Face-to-Face narratives (see e.g. Jones 1995; Spears and Lea 1992). As a way of compensating for this, on-line testimonies were elicited from members of APAR-L, providing a final control, a group of Elicited On-Line narratives. There were significantly more non-visual (M =.94) than visual (M =.06) metaphors, in pilgrims' Elicited On-line Religious Narratives, t (4)= 11.89,p<.001. Therefore pilgrims' use of more non-visual than visual perceptual metaphors in their un-elicited narratives is not just a function of their being communicated on-line. 7.4

Metaphorical vs. non-metaphorical perceptual vocabulary

One final alternative explanation for any observed pattern of use of perceptual metaphors that must be ruled out is the possibility that pilgrims might simply be reporting more non-visual than visual experiences. Pilgrims' use of perceptual metaphors might not be related to the context of communication, but simply reflect the patterns of use of non-metaphorical perceptual vocabulary overall. Therefore the use of non-metaphorical perceptual vocabulary in the narratives was also analyzed. Non-metaphorical perceptual vocabulary was operationalized as any use of perceptual vocabulary to indicate direct sensory experience. Six different modalities of perceptual vocabulary were coded for: 1) visual, 2) auditory, 3) olfactory, 4) taste, 5) tactile, and 6) unspecified. The mean frequency of use of each type of perceptual vocabulary was then expressed as a proportion of the total amount of perceptual vocabulary used per subject. A 4 (narrative type) x2 (visual vs. non-visual perceptual vocabulary) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to test whether the frequency of use of non-metaphorical visual and non-visual perceptual vocabulary differed between groups. In contrast to the pilgrims' use of metaphors, main effects of group were found on the frequency of use of both visual (F (1, 3)= 2.80, p<.05) and non-visual (F (1,3)= 5.55, p<.01) perceptual vocabulary, as well as an interaction effect (F (12)= 19.05, p<.001). Also in contrast to their pattern of use of metaphors, pilgrims used

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more visual (M =.45) than non-visual (M =.21) non-metaphorical perceptual vocabulary, F (1, 90) = 1.78, P<05. Pilgrims used more visual than non-visual non-metaphorical vocabulary in their Un-Elicted On-Line narratives (visual M =.50, non-visual M =.15, t (54) = -3.93. p<.001). There was no significant difference in their use of visual and non-visual perceptual vocabulary in Face-to-Face Religious Narratives (visual M =.46, non-visual M =.48), when recounting a Secular experience (visual M=.14, non-visual M=.07), or in their Elicited On-line Religious Narratives, (visual M =.64, non-visual M =.36) (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Non-metaphorical perceptual vocabulary

The pattern of pilgrims' use of non-metaphorical perceptual vocabulary therefore is very different than their use of perceptual metaphors for knowledge, so it seems that pilgrims' use of metaphors does not simply reflect patterns of use of perceptual vocabulary overall. 8.

Conclusion

Pilgrims to the Marian Apparition site in Conyers, Georgia used more non-perceptual than perceptual metaphors for knowledge in their religious narratives. These results are consistent with the initial hypothesis that pilgrims are


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attempting to reduce their own agency by use of non-visual perceptual metaphors when describing their religious experiences. However, they consistently used more non-visual than visual metaphors across a range of conditions with different demand characteristics: when telling of a secular experience, in un-elicited accounts, and on the Internet. There are at least three different hypotheses that could explain these results. First, it might be the case that all Americans habitually use more non-visual than visual metaphors for knowledge in all areas of discourse. If this were the case, then these results would indicate that pilgrims simply do not use perceptual metaphors for knowledge to reduce their agency. A related explanation could be that meeting one's spouse is perceived by Americans as embodying a similar loss of control as a religious experience. This would mean that pilgrims are using perceptual metaphors to reduce their agency, and that they do so in the same way that Americans do in other situations where there is a loss of control involved. A third explanation might be that pilgrims consistently attempt to present themselves as non-volitional agents in all areas of discourse, something similar to what Coleman (1980) calls a "worldviewlect". This explanation would be supported if it were to be found that mainstream Americans do not use the same kinds of metaphors when discussing how they met their spouses, although such a study has not yet been done. Without a control group of "mainstream" Americans discussing similar events, there is no way to eliminate any of these hypotheses at this time. There are several factors in particular that need to be explored in more depth. The first is the fact that the Face-to-Face Secular narratives are so much shorter than the Face-to-Face Religious narratives. The fact that these secular narratives are so brief suggests that the demand characteristics of the interview situation, with the secular questions being presented as an informal follow-up to the requested testimony, may have affected how the pilgrim constructed their replies. If so, these secular accounts may not be a reflection of how pilgrims might talk about their marriages in other contexts. A far larger question that remains to be addressed is how representative the pilgrims' discourse styles are of members of American society. These results highlight the need for a control group of "mainstream" Americans. It is entirely possible that most members of American society use predominantly non-visual metaphors when describing how they met their spouses. If this were the case, then the discourse style used by the pilgrims in Conyers might not necessarily be a reflection of any religious influence. Another important element that needs to be better understood is the role of creative vs. conventionalized metaphors (see Gibbs 1994 for a review). Although highly conventionalized metaphors such as lef s see and I feel were not included

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in this analysis, pilgrims' use of metaphors ranged from the conventionalized, e.g. I heard the call, or My whole life was straightened out, to some extremely creative metaphors, e.g. I was helped along by a drive-by shooting of grace from the Holy Spirit! or, It was like all the poison was coming out of my body. It is not clear at this point if more conventionalized or more creative metaphors are used in different contexts or for different functions. Finally, studies such as this one can help shed light on a fundamental theoretical disagreement about the nature of metaphor. Theorists such as Johnson (1987), Lakoff (1987) and Sweetser (1990) have argued that basic level metaphors structure our understanding of the world and that underlying metaphors motivate subsequent language use. Other theorists, notably Quinn (1987, 1991), Strauss and Quinn (1998) argue the opposite, that the point a speaker wants to make motivates the metaphor they choose. In this view, the results of this study could be interpreted as reflecting widely shared cultural models instead of underlying cognitive models. At this point there would be no way to distinguish whether the patterns of metaphor usage by the Conyers pilgrims reflects something about the nature of vision itself or whether this is an example of a very widely used cultural model. It would be interesting to see what perceptual metaphors for knowledge are used in non-Indo-European languages, and perhaps even more importantly, what perceptual metaphors for knowledge one finds in deaf ASL signers where language reception is primarily visual and not auditory. However, I feel that the methodology being developed in this study could provide a way to begin to test which metaphorical usages are more contextually motivated, and which others are so consistently and widely used that they might be considered to be universal. These preliminary results, while suggestive, are not conclusive. They do, however, show how quantitative and ethnographic methodologies can be fruitfully combined to study the role of metaphor in cognitive linguistics. Analyzing how linguistic devices are used in different contexts of naturally occurring discourse within a specific local culture can help to delineate the cognitive, social, pragmatic and cultural factors that influence the forms which narratives can take, which in turn can lead to a better understanding of exactly how language is grounded in cognition.

SELF AGENCY IN RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE MODALITY

NONMETAPHORICAL PERCEPTUAL VOCABULARY

PERCEPTUAL METAPHORS F O R KNOWLEDGE

VISUAL

I saw the

sun move. I watched it happen.

I saw that I was sinner.

AUDITORY

I heard the thunder. I listened to them speak.

I hear and obey. You're coming in loud and clear.

OLFACTORY

I smelled roses.

I smell an opportunity. The deal just stinks.

TASTE

The wine tasted sweet.

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The meaning was clear.

The experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

TACTILE

I touched my rosary. I felt a hug land on me.

I was touched. It was like Jesus hitting me over the head.

UNSPECIFIED

I sensed someone was near. I experienced something.

I could tell things were changing. I have noticed that my faith has increased.

BIOLOGICAL NON-P ERCEP TUAL

NA

I knew it in my heart.

NON -BIOL OGICA L

NA

The doors in my mind open ed. The wheels in my head start ed to turn

Table 1: Examples of Metaphorical and Non-Metaphorical Perceptual Vocabulary References

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TAKING METAPHOR OUT OF OUR HEADS AND PUTTING IT INTO THE CULTURAL WORLD

RAYMOND W. GIBBS, JR. University of California, Santa Cruz

Is metaphor linguistic, conceptual, or both? Despite centuries of widespread belief that metaphor is a special linguistic, rhetorical device, much research in cognitive linguistics over the past twenty years has demonstrated that metaphor is not merely a figure of speech, but is a specific mental mapping that influences a good deal of how people think, reason, and imagine in everyday life (Johnson 1987, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff & Turner 1989; Sweetser 1990; Turner 1991). A significant claim of this work is that many concepts, especially abstract ones, are structured and mentally represented in terms of metaphor. This claim is empirically supported by different research looking at systematic patterns of conventional expressions, novel usages, and historical shifts in word meanings, as well as work looking at the importance of metaphor in grammatical forms. A good deal of empirical evidence from cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics has demonstrated the psychological validity of many of the ideas about conceptual metaphor from cognitive linguistics (Gibbs 1994). For instance, various psycholinguistic evidence supports the idea that metaphors such as ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER are really conceptual and not, more simply, generalizations of linguistic meaning. These include studies that have looked at people's mental imagery for idioms (Gibbs & O'Brien 1990), people's con text-sensitive use of idioms (Nayak & Gibbs 1990; Gibbs & Nayak 1991) and euphemistic phrases (Pfaff, Gibbs, & Johnson 1997), people's folk understanding of how the source domains in conceptual metaphors constrain what idioms (Gibbs 1992) and proverbs mean (Gibbs, Strom, & Spivey-Knowlton 1997), people's use of conceptual metaphors in organizing information in text processing (Allbritton, McKoon, & Gerrig 1995), and people's use of conceptual metaphors in drawing inferences when reading poetic metaphors (Gibbs & Nascimento 1996). These psycholinguistic findings support the hypothesis that different kinds of metaphoric thought partly explain why many metaphors and idioms have the meanings they do for contemporary speakers.

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RAYMOND W. GIBBS, JR.

The claim that pre-existing conceptual metaphors influence all aspects of how people understand idiomatic and conventional language has been criticized by scholars interested in immediate metaphor and idiom comprehension (Glucksberg & Keysar 1990; Glucksberg, Brown, & McGlone 1993; Kreuz & Graesser 1991 ; McGlone 1996). But even more recent research on on-line idiom processing shows that people appear to quickly activate underlying conceptual metaphors when reading idiomatic phrases arising from these same metaphors (Gibbs, Bogdonovich, Sykes, & Barr 1997). In general, there is quite a bit of empirical evidence from both cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology consistent with the idea that many of our cognitive models (e.g., ICMs) for abstract concepts are inherently structured via metaphor (as well as metonymy and related cognitive material). My aim in this chapter is to explore exactly what it means to say that metaphor is conceptual. Most cognitive scientists supportive of the conceptual view of metaphor tacitly, and sometimes explicitly, assume that conventional metaphorical mappings must be internally represented in the individual minds of language users. I want to examine this assumption and suggest that cognitive linguists and cognitive psychologists, like myself, should think about metaphor and its relation to thought as cognitive webs that extend beyond individual minds and are spread out into the cultural world. There are two parts to this message. First, our understanding of what is conceptual about metaphor involves significant aspects of cultural experience, some of which is even intimately related to our embodied behavior. Under this view, there need not be a rigid distinction between cultural and conceptual metaphor. Second, public, cultural representations of conceptual metaphors have an indispensable cognitive function that allows people to carry less of a mental burden during everyday thought and language use. This possibility suggests that important parts of metaphoric thought and language are as much part of the cultural world as they are internalized mental entities in our heads. 1.

Metaphoric representations and embodied experience

What is the best way to think about metaphorical concepts? For the most part, cognitive linguists and myself have tended to assume that conventional metaphorical mappings pre-exist as independent entities in long-term memory. For instance, the systematic pattern of conventional expressions for the abstract concept of love and love relationship (e.g., We got off to a great start, My marriage is on the rocks, We are at a turning point, We are making great strides in our relationship) reflect an underlying conceptual metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY

that exists as one of several different ways that the concept of love is represented in long-term memory.

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There are at least two possible ways that metaphor might structure conceptual representations (Murphy 1996). The strong view proposes that many concepts are not understood via their own representations but by metaphorical connections to knowledge in different domains. For instance, people do not have an independent, non-metaphorical concept for love, but have a concept for love that is closely connected via metaphorical links to other, truly independent, concepts such as that of journeys. The weak view proposes that people have well-developed, independent concepts, but these are often metaphorically linked to other concepts with similar structure. Thus, people have a distinct, non-meta phorical concept for love, but this concept has well-established connections to distinct concepts from different domains of experience, like journeys, which are structured similarly in that both source and target domain concepts share similar underlying attributes or relations. The empirical evidence from cognitive psychology is presently unable to distinguish between the strong and weak views of metaphoric representation (see Murphy 1996 for criticism of the strong view). I think it fair to say that cognitive linguistic research also does not provide a firm basis for distinguishing between these two possibilities, although some cognitive linguists tend to argue for a strong view (e.g., Johnson 1987; Kövecses 1991). Both the strong and weak views presuppose, nonetheless, that metaphors are conceptual in the sense that metaphor plays a major role in people's mental representations of many, particularly abstract, concepts. One question that linguists and psychologists have debated concerns why certain conceptual metaphors, but not others, are used by people in speaking about abstract concepts. There is a large body of work in cognitive linguistics suggesting that much metaphorical thinking arises from recurring patterns of embodied experience (Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987, 1990). For example, central to our understanding of the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CON TAINER, which gives rise to expressions such as blew your stack, hit the ceiling, make my blood boil, is the embodied experience of containment. People have strong kinesthetic experiences of bodily containment ranging from situations in which bodies are in and out of containers (e.g., bathtubs, beds, rooms, houses) to experiences of bodies as containers in which substances enter and exit. An important part of bodily containment is the experience of our bodies being filled with liquids including stomach fluids, blood, and sweat. Under stress, people experience the feeling of their bodily fluids becoming heated. These various, recurring bodily experiences give rise to the development of an experiential gestalt, called an image schema, for CONTAINMENT (Johnson 1987).

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Image schemas cover a wide range of experiential structures that are pervasive in experience, have internal structure, and can be metaphorically elaborated to provide for our understanding of more abstract domains (Gibbs & Colston 1995; Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987). Our CONTAINMENT schema, for instance, is metaphorically elaborated to explain some of the complex ways that we structure single abstract concepts. For instance, the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER takes the image schema for containment as part of its source domain and maps this image-schematic structure onto anger, which gives rise to a number of interesting entailments. Thus, people know that when the intensity of anger increases, the fluid in the container rises (e.g., His pent-up anger welled up inside of him), people know that intense heat produces steam and creates pressure on the container (e.g., Bill is getting hot under the collar, Jim 's just blowing off steam, and He was bursting with anger), and people know that when the pressure of the container becomes too high, the container explodes (e.g., She blew up at me). There are several studies from cognitive psychology that support the idea that people's embodied experiences gives rise to their metaphorical structuring of abstract concepts, which, in turn, constrains speakers' use and understanding of language. Let me briefly describe two such research projects. I will then suggest that some of my conclusions from this research paint too narrow a view of metaphor in ordinary cognition. Following this, I outline an alternative view about metaphor in thought, one that does not rely exclusively on the assumption that for metaphors to be "conceptual," they must only be part of people's internal mental representations. One research project in psycholinguistics on the embodied nature of language focuses on how people use and understand idiomatic phrases (Gibbs 1992). The traditional view of idiomaticity assumes that expression such as blow your stack, flip your lid and hit the ceiling are "giant lexical items" whose meanings result from "dead" metaphors. But cognitive linguistic research (Lakoff 1987) and psycholinguistics studies (Gibbs 1994) demonstrate that idioms are not simple, "dead" metaphors, but actually retain a good deal of their metaphoricity because they arise from metaphorical mappings between dissimilar source and target domains. For example, the figurative meanings of blow your stack, flip your lid, and hit the ceiling are specifically linked to two independently existing elements in our conceptual system - MIND IS A CONTAINER and ANGER IS HEAT IN A PRESSURIZED CONTAINER. One set of psycholinguistic studies examined how people's intuitions of the bodily experience of containment, and several other image schemas, which serve as the source domains for several important conceptual metaphors, underlie speakers' use and understanding of idioms. These studies were designed to show


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that the specific entailments of idioms reflect the source to target domain mappings of their underlying conceptual metaphors (Gibbs 1992). Most importantly, these metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive topology of these embodied, image-schematic source domains. Participants in a first study were questioned about their understanding of events corresponding to particular bodily experiences that were viewed as motivating specific source domains in conceptual metaphors (e.g., the experience of one's body as a container filled with fluid). For instance, participants were asked to imagine the embodied experience of a sealed container filled with fluid, and then they were asked something about causation (e.g., What would cause the container to explode?), intentionality (e.g., Does the container explode on purpose or does it explode through no volition of its own?), and manner (e.g., Does the explosion of the container occur in a gentle or a violent manner?). Overall, the participants were remarkably consistent in their responses to the various questions. To give one example, people responded that the cause of a sealed container exploding its contents out is the internal pressure caused by the increase in the heat of the fluid inside the container. They also reported that this explosion is unintentional because containers and fluid have no intentional agency, and that the explosion occurs in a violent manner. These brief responses provide a rough, nonlinguistic profile of people's understanding of a particular source domain concept (i.e., heated fluid in the bodily container). These profiles are rough approximations of what cognitive linguistics and others refer to as the image-schematic structures of the source domains (Gibbs & Colston 1995; Lakoff 1990; Turner 1991, 1996). These different image schematic profiles about certain abstract concepts allowed me to predict something about people's understanding of idioms. My idea was that people's intuitions about various source domains map onto their conceptualizations of different target domains in very predictable ways. For instance, people's understanding of anger should partly be structured by their folk concept for heated fluid in the bodily container as described above. Several studies showed this to be true (Gibbs 1992). Not surprisingly, when people understand anger idioms, such as blow your stack, flip your lid, or hit the ceiling, they inferred that the cause of anger is internal pressure, that the expression of anger is unintentional, and is done in an abrupt violent manner. People do not draw these same inferences about causation, intentionality, and manner when comprehending literal paraphrases of idioms, such as get very angry. More interesting, though, is that people's intuitions about various source domains map onto their conceptualizations of different target domains in very predictable ways. For instance, several later experiments showed that people find idioms to be more appropriate and easier to understand when they are seen in

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discourse contexts that are consistent with the various entailments of these phrases. Thus, people find it easy to process the idiomatic phrase blow your stack when this was read in a context that accurately described the cause of the person's anger as being due to internal pressure, where the expression of anger was unintentional and violent (all entailments that are consistent with the entailments of the source to target domain mappings of heated fluid in a container onto anger). But readers took significantly longer to read blow your stack when any of these entailments were contradicted in the preceding story context. These psycholinguistic findings provide additional evidence that people's metaphorical concepts underlie their understanding of what idioms mean in written texts. Moreover, they provide significant experimental evidence that people's intuitions about their embodied experiences can predict something about their use and understanding of idioms, expressions that are partly motivated by bodily based conceptual metaphors. A different series of experiments demonstrates that people appear to compute or access metaphorical representations during their immediate under standing of idioms like blew his stack (Gibbs, Bogdonovich, Sykes, & Barr 1997). In these studies, participants read stories ending with idioms and then quickly gave lexical decision responses to visually presented letter-strings that reflected either something about the conceptual metaphors underlying these idioms (e.g., "heat" for ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER having just read John blew his stack) or letter-strings that were unrelated to these conceptual metaphors (e.g., "lead"). There were two important findings from this study. First, people were faster to make these lexical decision responses to the related metaphor targets (i.e., "heat") having just read idioms than they were to either literal paraphrases of idioms (e.g., "John got very angry") or control phrases (e.g., phrases still appropriate to the context such as "John saw many dents"). Second, people were faster in recognizing related metaphorical targets than unrelated ones having read idioms, but not literal paraphrases or control phrases. This pattern of results suggests that people are immediately computing or accessing at least something related to the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER when they read idioms. In another experiment, participants were faster to make lexical decision responses to metaphor targets (e.g., "heat") having read an idiom motivated by a similar conceptual metaphor (e.g., John blew his stack) than an idiom with roughly the same figurative meaning but motivated by a different conceptual metaphor (e.g., John bit her head off, which is motivated by the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS ANIMAL BEHAVIOR). Again, it appears that people compute or access the relevant conceptual metaphor for an idiom during some aspect of their processing of these phrases.


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It is important to be careful in interpreting the results of psycholinguistic studies like those just described. Thus, the Gibbs et al. (1997) data should only be understood as showing that people quickly see a tight association between their understanding of certain idioms and particular conceptual metaphors. These results do not necessarily imply that people actually compute or access conceptual metaphors when they are actively processing the meanings of idioms in real-time. Nor do these data tell us whether people must compute or access an idiom's underlying conceptual metaphor in order to interpret what that idiom figuratively means. For instance, the fact that reading John blew his stack primes people's understanding of the concept heat from ANGER IS HEATED FLUID INA CONTAINER does not imply that reader must access the conceptual metaphor to comprehend the figurative meaning of the idiom. Furthermore, the Gibbs et al. (1997) findings do not tell us whether people actively construct metaphoric representations (i.e., the conceptual metaphor) when understanding idioms or whether people merely access in an associative manner pre-existing conceptual metaphors when processing certain idioms. When people read an idiomatic expression like John blew his stack they may very well quickly access the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER given that this metaphor is so closely tied to the idiom, even if the metaphor is not needed to actually understand what the idiom means in discourse. People may not actually compute from scratch a source (HEATED FLUID FN A CONTAINER) to target (ANGER) domain mapping, and draw the complex set of inferences associated with the conceptual metaphor, during ordinary understanding of conventional language. Finally, the fact that conceptual metaphors may be active during some part of idiom understanding does not mean that people are activating embodied image schemas. Thus, in understanding John blew his stack, readers do not necessarily activate or re-experience specific image schemas such as CONTAINMENT as part of their interpreting the figurative meaning of the idiom. I offer these comments about the Gibbs et al. (1997) findings to urge that cognitive linguists and others do not overinterpret the results of experimental data from psycholinguistics. There is clearly a need for more detailed studies to better understand some of the intricacies in the relationship between conceptual metaphors and linguistic expressions. Part of this work, as I now argue, demands consideration of the cultural contexts in which conceptual metaphors arise and support particular uses of language. 2.

What's missing from the psycholinguistic

evidence

My thinking about the role of conceptual metaphor in people's use and understanding of language has mostly embraced an individualistic view of cognition. Much of my empirical research (e.g., Gibbs 1992; Gibbs et al. 1997) on

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the embodied nature of metaphorical thought and language use generally assumes that people create embodied, metaphorical representations from their phenomenological experiences of the body and their sensori-motor interactions with the physical world. People's metaphorical understanding of certain abstract concepts are intimately tied to image schemas that partly arise from recurring bodily experiences. People clearly also learn about conceptual metaphors from their experience with language. Yet I interpreted my data as supporting the idea that people have independent mental representations for abstract concepts, such as anger, that are structured by metaphorical mappings constrained by the image schematic structure of the source domain (i.e., heated fluid in a container). These complex metaphoric representations are encoded as part of people's internal, long-term memory systems. I still believe that this characterization of metaphorical concepts is partly accurate as a psychological theory of human conceptual systems. But metaphor can still be cognitive yet not simply encoded as an internal mental representation. Many scholars argue that theories of cognition should stop maintaining the idea that cognitive structures are necessarily "in the head," and instead should acknowledge that they are dynamic systems of "structural couplings" which model how people interact with the world, including different linguistic environments. The traditional view of cognition assumes that representations are exclusively in the mind (e.g., propositions, schemas, productions, mental images, connectionist networks). External representations (e.g., real-world objects, situations, codified aspects of language) are seen to, at best, have only a peripheral role in cognitive behavior. Yet a variety of cognitive scientists now question the need for elaborate mental machinery in explaining the genesis of human lin guistic and nonlinguistic behavior, especially the well-known belief that there are internal mental representations with computational processes that operate upon them (see Clark 1996; Hutchins 1995; Shannon 1993; Thelen & Smith 1994). Several branches of psychology have adopted this perspective on cognition. The socio/cultural approach maintains that it is the continuous internalization of the information and structure from the environment and the externalization of internal representations into the environment (e.g., "off-loading") that produce high-level psychological functions (Leontiev 1981; Luria 1976; Vygotsky 1978, 1986). The situational cognition approach argues that the activities of individuals are situated in the social and physical contexts around them and knowledge can be considered as a relation between the individual and the situation (Greeno 1989; Suchman 1987). Many of these scholars argue that theories of cognition should not continue to maintain that cognitive structures are necessarily "in the head," but should recognize how "wide" or "distributed" cognition is, in the sense of being spread out into the world (Hutchins 1995; Wilson 1994).


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Under this "wide" or "distributed" view, cognition is what happens when the body meets the world. One cannot talk about, or study, cognition apart from our specific embodied interactions with the cultural world (and this includes the physical world which is not separate from the cultural one in the important sense that what we see as meaningful in the physical world is highly constrained by our cultural beliefs and values). Scholars cannot, and should not assume, that mind, body, and culture can somehow be independently portioned out of human behavior as it is only appropriate to study particular "interactions" between thought, language, and culture, respectively. Theories of human conceptual systems should be inherently cultural in that the cognition which occurs when the body meets the world is inextricably culturally-based. What is missing from the psycholinguistic work, and from aspects of the work on metaphor in cognitive linguistics, is an explicit acknowledgment of culture and its important, perhaps defining, role in shaping embodiment and, consequently, metaphorical thought. In particular, certain cultural representations of metaphor enable people to "off-load" some aspects of conceptual metaphor out into the cultural world such that people need not rely exclusively on internal mental representations when solving problems, making decisions, using language, and so forth. 3.

The cultural basis for embodied metaphor

Over the past ten years, several linguists and anthropologists have persuasively argued that the systematic presence of metaphor in linguistic expressions reflects not just the operation of individual mental structures, but the workings of different cultural models (cf. Csordas 1994; Emanation 1995, this volume; Fernandez 1993; Holland & Quinn 1987; Kövecses this volume). Cultural models are intersubjectively shared cultural schemas that function to interpret experience and guide action in a wide variety of domains including events, institutions, and physical and mental objects. To take an early, and still influential model, Lakoff and Kövecses' (1987) cultural model for "anger" shows how metaphor structures not only how individuals within a language community might conceptualize of their various anger experiences, but also how metaphor shapes the cultural knowledge that individuals share, to some degree or another, in a particular cultural community. Kövecses (in press) has gone on to show how metaphor motivates many different cultural models. For instance, according to Kövecses, an emotion concept like "love" is best viewed as being constituted by a large number of cognitive models centered around a small number (or just one) prototypical model(s). The conceptual contents of various cognitive models, especially the prototypical ones, are structured by metaphors, metonymies, and "related concepts."

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Both cognitive and cultural models are to some extent similar in that each is assumed to provide the substrate for various linguistic and nonlinguistic behaviors. That is, cultural models are not epiphenomenal, but are presumed to do real work for individuals and collective communities in shaping what people believe, how they act, and how they speak about the world and their own experiences. What is the relationship between metaphor's role in structuring cognitive models and in shaping cultural models? Should culture be located externally to the individual, as the products of prior human activity, or should it be located internally as part of knowledge and beliefs? Both views have support in anthropology (D'Andrade 1995). A cognitive model for some complex concept, like for anger, might be more limited than the cultural model, which perhaps reflects a widespread model of cognition distributed across members of a speech community. For example, the emphasis within cognitive linguistics on conceptual systems underlying the speech of idealized native speakers may better be viewed as capturing something about the supra-individual, or social/cultural, basis for metaphor rather than anything about the psychology of individual speakers (Steen 1994). Psychologists and linguists should be very careful not to assume that (a) cognitive models must be explicitly represented in people's heads, and (b) that conceptual metaphors, as a significant part of these cognitive models, are only represented as internal mental structures. One implication of the "wide" or "distributed" view of cognition is that even image schemas, which arise from recurring embodied experiences, and which often serve as the source domains for conceptual metaphors, might very well have a strong cultural component to them, especially in terms of which aspects of embodied experience are viewed as particularly salient and meaningful in people's lives. Anthropologists have in recent years spent considerable effort looking at the role of embodiment in culture, and have in several cases shown how embodied experience itself is culturally constituted (Csordas 1994; Strathern 1996). As Quinn (1991) pointed out, many of our embodied experiences are rooted in social-cultural contexts. For instance, the notion of CONTAINMENT (identified as an image schema in the cognitive linguistics literature) is based on one's own bodily experience of things going in and out of the body, and of our bodygoing in and out of containers. But containment is not just a sensori-motor act, but an event full of anticipation, sometimes surprise, sometimes fear, sometimes joy, each of which are shaped by the presence of other objects and people that we interact with. Image schemas are not therefore simply given by the body but constructed out of culturally governed interactions. One dramatic demonstration of culture's role in shaping elementary body sensations and experience is seen in the work on the permeable boundaries of the Hindu body-self (Bharati 1985).

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The bodily experiences that form the source domains for conceptual metaphors are themselves complex social and cultural constructions (Kirmayer 1992). Anthropologists have demonstrated in a variety of cultural settings how many elementary embodied experiences are shaped by local cultural knowledge and practice (cf. Csordas 1994). People instill cultural meaning to bodily proces pro cesses ses such as breathi brea thing, ng, blushi blu shing, ng, menstru mens truatio ation, n, birth, birth , sex, crying cryin g and laughing, and value the products of the body (e.g., blood, semen, sweat, tears, feces, urine, and saliva) differently in changing cultural contexts. More complex bodily bod ily experie exp eriences nces ranging rang ing from nerves nerve s (Low 1994), to rape (Winkler (Win kler 1994), to pain pai n and torture tort ure (Jackso (J acksonn 1994; Scheper-Hugh Scheper -Hughss & Lock 1987), to name nam e just ju st a few, have been studied by anthropologists to explore the linkages between embodi ment, metaphor, and cultural meaning. These studies demand that cognitive linguists and others acknowledge that embodied metaphor arises not from within the body alone, and is then represented in the minds of individuals, but emerges from bodily interactions that are to a large extent defined by the cultural world. Taking this idea seriously raises the possibility that the results of Gibbs (1994) and Gibbs et al. (1997) may not simply reflect the guiding presence of conceptual metaphors in experimental participants' heads as much as the fact that people peo ple quickl qui cklyy see connecti conn ections ons between betw een idioms idio ms and certain culturall cult urally-sh y-shared ared metaphors of thought. Although I interpreted my findings as supporting the idea that embodied metaphor plays a major role in both thought and language, this work did not explicitly acknowledge that social and cultural constructions of experience fundamentally shape embodied metaphor. For instance, metaphorical thought thoug ht about anger might indeed be structured in terms of embodied embodi ed experiences experie nces of autonomic autonom ic arousal and cardiovascular response (i.e., anger is heated fluid under un der pressu pre ssure re within wit hin the bodily bodi ly containe cont ainer). r). But our embodied embo died experien expe rience ce of anger is also understood underst ood in terms of social situations in which there is an an offending offending event and offender and some attempt, usually, to seek retribution (Lazarus 1991). Our social/cultural social/cul tural interpretation interpretat ion of an an event (i.e., its appraisal) shapes how our bodies bodi es experience exper ience emotions emot ions.. Thus, Thu s, wide-spread conceptual metaphors, metaph ors, such as AN ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER, are shaped by specific social/cultural knowledge as well as, if not more so than, bodily experiences per se. To make this idea more concrete, imagine a very simple scenario of a passerb pas serbyy kicki k icking ng you in the leg as you sit on a park bench. bench . You feel great physical phys ical pain pai n as a result resu lt of this injury. But in what cases will wi ll you experien expe rience ce anger an ger and how h ow might migh t you conceptualize conceptual ize this emotion? My claim is that you do not feel feel angry simply because of the physical event of someone else kicking you in the leg. Moreover, Moreo ver, you do not metaphorically metaphorical ly conceptualize conceptu alize of the anger experienced experien ced here h ere simply because becau se your body feels feels heated and under pressure. pressur e. Instead, you you feel feel angry precisel prec iselyy becaus bec ausee you evaluate eval uate or apprais a ppraisee the t he action of someo s omeone ne kicking kick ing you in

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the leg as a particular particul ar kind of social behavior, such as that the person intentionally intent ionally wishes to t o do you harm and attempts to achieve this goal by purposely kicking kickin g you in the leg. When you appraise a person doing something somet hing intentionally intentio nally to harm you, you may, depending on the situation and your past history, conceptualize this angry feeling in metaphorical terms. For instance, you may believe that the other pers pe rson on's's intent int ention ional al actions acti ons put you under unde r some pressure pres sure that you feel quite qui te viscerally with your body in such as way as to think of the event as ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN AN (EMBODIED) CONTAINER. In other situations, however, you may feel physical pain but not experience any anger because you appraise the pers pe rson on's's act as compl co mpletel etelyy uninten uni ntentio tional nal,, perhaps perh aps due to your carelessl carel esslyy sticking stic king your leg out on the walkway. What defines each of these situations, and your embodied reactions to them, is your cultural interpretation of the event and the motivations, or reasons, for the other person's behavior towards you (never mind the important cultural influences that subtly shape your conceptualization of the very idea of your body as a container). Under this view, it makes little sense to think of embodiment, and the metaphors that arise from it, apart from the very specific cultural evaluations we unconsciously make for our actions, the actions of others, and the world around us. Recognizing that what is cognitive (and embodied) is inherently cultural should be a fundamental part of how we do our work as cognitive psychologists, linguist ling uists, s, and anthropologis anthrop ologists. ts. There might be far far fewer fewer differences differences between cognitive and cultural models than often suggested by cognitive linguistics and anthropologists. Some of the debates over whether metaphor is constitutive of cultural models (e.g., Kövecses and others- see Gibbs 1994) or whether metaphor only reflects non-metaphorical cultural models (e.g., Quinn 1992) tend to disappear if we embrace the possibility that all cognition is embodied in cultural situations. 4.

Metaphor as external representations

The inseparability of mind, body, and world, and of cognitive and cultural models, points to the important idea that metaphor is an emergent property of body-w bod y-worl orldd interac int eractio tions, ns, rather than arising purely purel y from the heads hea ds of indivi ind ividual dual peopl peo ple. e. We need not talk of meta m etaphor phor as only onl y part of our o ur ment m ental al represen repr esentat tation ionss for concepts (e.g., anger), or as expressed by language (e.g., She bursted with anger). Metaphor is a kind of tool that arises from body-world interactions which we can "re-experience" in an embodied way, and is not simply accessed from long-term memory, in different ways in different real-world situations. As Kirmayer (1992:335) phrased it: "metaphors are tools for working with experi ence."


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When Whe n I talk of moving mov ing metaphor met aphor "out into the world" I am thinking think ing of metaphor as a kind of tool, available as a "public representation" for all to use when needed, without wi thout having havin g to explicitly encode all conceptual metaphors met aphors as part of our internal mental representations. To give an idea of what it means to "off-load" metaphor metap hor into int o the world as a tool, first first consider the following. Most Mo st of us have the ability to do long-division long-divi sion arithmetic, but we can best do this when we we employ paper and pencil so as to reduce memory limitations and so forth in doing the calculations. Paper and pencils exists as tools "out in the world" for us to use to be smarter and have less of a burden to maintain complex machinery in our heads. But doing arithmetic with pencil and paper is not necessarily the same as doing it in one's head. The medium one uses affects performance. For example, Asian children are taught arithmetic using an abacus takes considerable skill and practi pra ctice. ce. Yet studies studi es of middle mid dle to late-grade late- grade school children child ren shown that Asian Asi an children perform mental arithmetic as if they were calculating on an abacus, making the same kinds of mistakes when actually using an abacus (e.g., losing track of 5s). Similarly, American children do mental arithmetic as if they were calculating using pencil and paper, making the same kinds of mistakes one makes in such calculations (e.g., mistakes in borrowing) (Stigler 1984). These examples demonstrate the significant interaction between internal and external representa tions in cognitive behavior. They also illustrate the difficulty in assuming that internal representations are not influenced by real-world, cultural representations. Thus, one might incorrectly conclude that a child's mistakes in doing mental arithmetic are solely due to errors in internal cognitive processes and neglect the important influence that interactions with public representations (e.g., pencil and paper, pap er, abacus aba cuses, es, etc) have on the very formation formati on of internal inter nal mental ment al represen repr esenta ta tions. This problem is similar to assuming, for instance, that the development of conceptual metaphors arise only from internal representations and not from peop pe ople le's's embodi emb odied, ed, cultural cultu ral interacti inte ractions ons with the real-worl real- world. d. Many metaphors are "off-loaded" into the cultural world to enable people to better solve problems, make decisions, and perform skilled action in the exact same way that having paper and pencil and abacuses allows us to do complex arithmetic. Anthropologists often describe metaphorical symbols or events that guide people's culturally appropriate behavior. For instance, Ohnuki-Tierney (1992) explores the role that the monkey has as a "playful trope" in Japanese culture, while Colby (1992) demonstrates the importance of the Japanese tea ceremony in providing metaphorical coherence to some aspects of Japanese life. In both cases, cas es, the external symbols, symbo ls, which illustrate the interplay of metaphor metaph or and metonymy, serve as a kind of tool or scaffolding for culturally appropriate behavi beh avior, or, and greatly reduce reduc e the need for individu indi viduals als to structure stru cture experi exp erience ence purely pur ely from their thei r own internal inter nal metaphor meta phorical ical abilities. abili ties.

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An important way that people are able to "off-load" their conceptual metaphors into the cultural world is through their continued interactions with source domains that help motivate culturally appropriate metaphors. For instance, IS HEATED FLUID IN A CO the th e met m etap apho horr ANGER IS CONTAINER is cult cu ltura urallllyy inst in stant antia iate tedd as part par t of our inter i nteracti actions ons with all sorts so rts of container cont ainerss in which wh ich fluid is heated hea ted or put pu t under pressure. Various cultural representations of this in art (e.g., paintings, cartoon characters with steam blowing out of their ears and the top of their heads), in the behavior of real-life pots and kettles all correlate with aspects of embodied experience to make the metaphorical concept ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER an appropriate way of thinking and behaving when angry. In other situations, our interactions with real and symbolic animals helps instantiate the IS ANIMAL wider cognitive web that makes up the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS BEHAVIOR (e.g., jump down his throat, bite his head off). Thus, our continual interaction intera ction with wit h real-world source sou rce domains domai ns reduces the need to represent represen t different different conceptual metaphors in a purely internalized manner. It is interesting to note that examination of therapeutic discourse reveals just jus t how often people talk about their emotional experiences in metaphorical terms based bas ed on their intera in teracti ctions ons with wi th real-wor real -world ld objects objec ts that tha t take on symbolic symbol ic character chara cter.. The psychologist Milton Erickson describes many such cases (Haley 1973). For example, Erickson reported one case involving a couple in therapy because of conflicts over their sexual relations. Erickson chose one aspect of their life that was analogous to sexual relations and he asked the couple to talk about this experienc exper iencee to see how it might relate to their problem. Erickson specifically talked to the couple about having dinner together to draw them out about their individual prefere pre ference nces. s. Thus Th us,, the wife liked appetizers appet izers before dinner, dinne r, while whi le the th e husban hus bandd preferred prefe rred to get right rig ht into int o the main course cour se of meat and potato pot atoes. es. The wife wi fe liked lik ed to to have a leisurely dinner, while the husband preferred eating quickly. By having the couple work to have a dinner that was enjoyable to both of them, Erickson encouraged the couple to approach their sexual relations in a more satisfactory manner. The point here is that the metaphor HAVING SEXUAL RELATIONS IS SHARING A MEAL is not just something that exists as a private, internalized metaphor in the minds of the husband and wife. Instead, the metaphor has a publ pu blic ic,, cultur cul tural al face that enables enabl es the couple coup le to t o experi exp erience ence,, and re-exp re- experi erienc ence, e, the metaphor as embodied action out in the world and not just in their heads. Eric Er icks kson on's 's analysis, and therapy, illustrates why, for instance, insta nce, the conceptual conceptu al ANGER R IS HEATED HEATED FLUID FLUID IN A CO metaphor ANGE CONTAINER partly par tly emerge eme rgess from peop pe ople le's's interaction with well-known cultural repertoires. Various experimental work, in fact, shows that an emotion such as anger is prototypically understood to be compose com posedd of a sequence sequen ce of events beginning beginnin g with a set of "antecedent "antece dent condi c onditio tions" ns",, a set of "behavioral responses", and a set of "self-control procedures" (Shaver,


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Swartz, Kirson, & O'Connor 1987). The temporal organization of many emotions like anger is reflected in the language used to express those emotions (Lakoff 1987). Thus, English has different idioms fitting each of the three stages for our concept of anger. The antecedent conditions (Stage 1) for anger concern a sudden loss of power, status, or respect, ideas exemplified by idioms such as eat humble pie, kick in the teeth, and swallow one's pride. The behavioral conditions (Stage 2) for anger concern people's behavioral responses to the emotion, an idea best reflected in idioms such as getting red in the face, getting hot under the collar, or blowing your stack. The self-control procedures (Stage 3) concern an individual's efforts to maintain composure, an idea that is best reflected in idiomatic phrases such as keep your cool, or hold your temper. People's different metaphorical understandings of anger, including ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER, is as much a part of their participating in culturally appropriate repertoires as it is caused by full-blown metaphoric representations in their heads. This suggests the critical point that for a representa tion to be "conceptual" it need not only be part of our private mental apparatus. Thus, by adopting a specific cultural identity in being angry at a particular time, an individual takes advantage of the cultural narrative of being angry with its conventional ways of acting in a series of steps (i.e., the anger script). This series of culturally-defined activities (e.g., antecedent conditions, behavioral conditions, and self-control procedures) provide a structure that is metaphorically analogous to what happens when people think about or experience fluid in containers that are heated or put under pressure. It is difficult, then, to separate the conceptual metaphor from the cultural contexts from which it arises. People can rely on interpersonal scripts for behaving when angry, or even when they wish to act as if they are angry, rather than simply generating anger behaviors based on an internal, metaphorical representation in their heads. Many emotion theorists now embrace these social/cultural, "out of one's head," ways of describing emotion concepts and behavior as an alternative to viewing emotion concepts as purely private, mental phenomena (Parkinson 1994). Consider another example of the public side of metaphor. Imagine that you encounter a situation where you must estimate the time it will take to complete a particular task. Cognitive linguistic analyses have shown that there are several metaphorical ways of structuring the vague, abstract concept of time, most notably by thinking of time in terms of space (Alverson 1994; Lakoff & Johnson 1980). There are many cultural tools for thinking about time in terms of space. We have all sorts of concrete conventional ways, for instance, of mapping past, present, and future, before and after, sooner and later onto left and right, up and down, clockwise and counterclockwise. Monday is to the left of Tuesday for most of us,

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and four o-clock is tucked under three o'clock on the right hand side of every day and night. Our spatialization of time extends to science where familiar systems of diagrams have been developed to display different kinds of information. We think of profits, or the temperature, or the loudness of a stereo, rising up from the left to the right with the passage of time. We use our sense of space to see the passage of time (usually from left to right in standard convention, except in evolutionary diagrams, in which earlier eras are often shown at the bottom, with today at the top). Our ability to imagine these diagrams is parasitic on our ability to draw and see them, off-loading them at least temporarily into the external, cultural world. Within the modern world, we constantly bump up against other public representations of metaphor, such as in pictorial advertisements, artworks, media images, and a wide range of tools and products (see Forceville 1996; Kennedy 1982; Kennedy et al. 1993). For example, metaphor is used by designers of computer software, interfaces, and display formats to help attune people to aspects of the environment that support skilled action. Research shows, for instance, that visual displays in aircraft often employ metaphoric signs. Thus, seeing a flight path as a highway not only direct flights accurately in forward and lateral directions, it also indicates optimal altitude by suggesting that the pilot not fly into the solid surface depicted on the highway (Dent-Reed, Klein, and Eggleston 1994). The ranges of electromagnetic radar are viewed as surfaces. In another display, safe areas for flight close to the terrain are depicted as ponds of varying depths. In both the "radar are solid surfaces" metaphor and the "flights paths are highway" metaphor, the affordances (Gibson 1979) of the object used metaphorically in the depiction (the solid surface or highway) are the same as the affordances in the natural situation. Solid surfaces do not afford flying through and radar is to be avoided; highways afford smooth and accurate forward motion in a vehicle and the flight path is the best path forward in the aircraft. Such invariance of affordances across types of vehicles seem critical for a successful pictorial metaphor in displays that guide action. A wonderful place to find metaphors as public representations is in the world of computers and the World Wide Web. Consider some of your own experiences in using computers. Computer uses constantly engage in metaphorical actions such as surfing, navigating, traveling through webs, manipulating objects on a desktop, selecting options off of menus, creating different windows, dragging, dropping, point-and-clicking, and inhabiting on-line communities. Interface designers have moved beyond the two-dimensional desktop metaphor and created more embodied digital environments such as town squares, shopping malls, personal assistants, living rooms that users may interact with other people, use and develop different program and products, and connect with other computer services. New programs appear as objects in rooms. When you install a spread-


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sheet on your hard-drive, an adorable obsolete mechanical calculator appears on your shelf space. We intuitively understand these fictional devices as different metaphors, most of which have explicit iconic representations that we can see and manipulate. In the fast-changing world of computers, these public metaphoric representations have an increasingly indispensable cognitive function. 5.

Implications for empirical research

My claim that conceptual metaphors are as much social and cultural as "inside" the heads of individuals has several implications for empirical research on metaphor in thought and language. Consider the Gibbs (1994) studies showing that patterns of embodied experience serve as the source domains for conceptual metaphors underlying people's understanding of idioms. Adopting a "distributed" view of cognition would force scholars, like myself, to examine not just people's individual physical conceptions of, for example, the behavior of fluid in the bodily container. Instead, scholars should look extensively at people's social/cultural experiences of embodied containment, such as what causes people to move in and out of containers, how the escape of fluids from different containers is socially understood, how people's experiences of containment shapes interpersonal relationships and their own sense of identity/autonomy. Moreover, looking at how people interact in particular cultural situations and with specific concrete objects is essential toward seeing how ordinary metaphors are spread out between body and culture. By systematically assessing people's intuitions of their social/cultural experiences of containment, one may discern more about what motivates metaphorical concepts for emotions, and other knowledge domains, which in turn may provide deeper insights into the context-sensitive meanings of linguistic expressions. This strategy of seeking links between embodied action and cultural experience is not typical of research in cognitive psychology, especially given the bias of cognitive science toward viewing what is cognitive as mental constructs in the heads of individuals. Nonetheless, certain aspects of what is cognitive about metaphor, and other things, may be inextricably linked to social/cultural experience. 6.

Conclusion

The vast majority of the discussion about conceptual metaphor in cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology has implicitly assumed that for something to be conceptual, it must be explicitly mentally represented in the minds of individual people. Even those scholars who have emphasized the importance of human embodiment in language and thought, especially in motivating metaphor's important role in thinking, still view conceptual metaphors in terms of what is inside of people's heads.

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My aim in this paper has been to urge cognitive linguists and others to adopt a distributed perspective on what it means for something to be "conceptual" and to recognize that cognition arises, and is continually re-experienced, when the body interacts with the cultural world. In saying this, I do not want to suggest that culture is somehow just objectively given out in the world, because the body creates the cultural world as much as culture defines embodied experience. At the same time, my claim that some aspects of conceptual metaphor are "off-loaded" does not mean that people never have abstract, metaphorical concepts in their individual minds. The main point is that our use of metaphors to structure concepts, such as anger or time, is strongly shaped by (a) how we culturally conceptualize of situations, like getting angry and sensing time, and (b) by our interactions with social/cultural artifacts around us. Under this view, metaphor is as much a species of perceptually guided adaptive action in a particular cultural situation as it is a specific language device or some internally represented structure in the mind of individuals. My plea that cognitive scientists move metaphor out of our heads and into the embodied and public world in this way does not make metaphor any less cognitive than if we had long lists of metaphors nicely encoded in our heads. All this move attempts to do is acknowledge the culturally embodied nature of what is cognitive and to suggest that there is much less of a difference between what is cognitive and what is cultural than perhaps many of us have been traditionally led to believe. One possibility for further exploration is that we can continue to talk about a human agent as being locked within the envelope of skin and skull, but that beliefs, knowledge, and many other mental states, including all that is metaphori cally structured, now depend on physical vehicles that can at times be spread out to include certain aspects of the local cultural environment. This picture preserves the idea of a human being as the combination of body and biological brain; allowing us to sometimes speak of the individual as occasionally manipulating and structuring external resources (including public representations of metaphor) to extend and off-load his or her own problem-solving activities. At the same time, this view acknowledges that in "reaching out" to the world we often create wider cognitive and computational webs. Thus, the cognitive models we create surely extend beyond the individual. Understanding these "cognitive webs" will require the application of tools and concepts of cognitive science to include larger, hybrid entities comprising brains, bodies, and a variety of cultural systems (see Clark 1996). References

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METAPHOR DOES IT CONSTITUTE OR REFLECT CULTURAL MODELS?

ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES There are two notions that have become extremely influential in recent decades in attempts to describe and characterize the human conceptual system: cultural model and metaphor. Psychologists, anthropologists, and linguists have made extensive use of the notion of cultural model under a variety of different names (see, e.g., Holland and Quinn 1987; Lakoff 1987). The main idea on which the notion is based is that we have a coherent organization of any kind of human experience. However, cultural models are not only all-pervasive, they are also utilized in all kinds of cognitive processes, such as reasoning. Equally important is the notion of metaphor. As was shown by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphor is pervasive in language and it structures much of our thought. Given these obviously highly important notions, it is legitimate to ask: what is the relationship between metaphor and cultural models? Cultural models exist both for concrete and abstract concepts. Clearly, the issue of the nature of the relationship between cultural model and metaphor can only arise in the case of cultural models for abstract concepts. Our concepts for chairs, balls, water, rock, forks, dogs, etc. do not require metaphorical understanding (at least in our everyday conceptual system and for ordinary purposes). Some scholars claim that cultural models even for abstract concepts exist without prior metaphorical understanding, that is, we have a primary literal understanding of them (e.g., Quinn 1991). Others, however, claim that cultural models for abstract concepts are inherently metaphorical, that is, they are constituted by metaphor (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff and Kövecses 1987). Thus, the more specific issue I will raise in this paper is the following: does metaphor constitute or merely reflect cultural models? Since metaphors are ordinarily used in connection with cultural models that structure abstract concepts, the issue really becomes: do metaphors constitute abstract concepts (as structured by cultural models) or do they simply reflect them? Several answers are theoretically possible to this question. One can say (1) that abstract concepts emerge literally, without any metaphors constituting them; (2) that abstract concepts emerge literally from basic human (physical-bodily or cultural) preconceptual experiences, still without any metaphors constituting them;

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ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES

(3) that abstract concepts emerge metaphorically, with the help of concrete concepts constituting them; (4) that abstract concepts emerge metaphorically, the metaphors having some additional physical-cultural basis. Possibilities ( 1 ) and (2) can be regarded as cases of what can be termed the 'literal emergence view,' while (3) and (4) as cases of what can be termed the 'metaphorical emergence view.' These possibilities can be represented diagrammatically as follows: (l)

(2)

METAPHORS

METAPHORS

ABSTRACT CONCEPT

ABSTRACT CONCEPT

BASIC EXPERIENCE Figure 1 : Literal

emergence

(4)

(3)

ABSTRACT CONCEPT

BSTRACT CONCEPT

~7K

BASIC EXPERIENCE

CONCRETE CONCEPT

Figure 2: Metaphorical

CONCRETE CONCEPT

emergence

METAPHOR: DOES IT CONSTITUTE OR REFLECT CULTURAL MODELS? 169

In the remainder of the paper I will examine these four possibilities and ask whether they are viable accounts of the relationship between conceptual meta phors and abstract concepts as structured by cultural models. 1.

Literal emergence (1)

According to the view of literal emergence (1), we assume that a new abstract concept, or cultural model, arises as a new configuration of content and structure (i.e., concept, or cultural model) independently of more concrete configurations of content and structure. That is, meaningful elements for abstract concepts are assembled into a new whole without being derived from well established and more concrete ones. Let us take an example of what this process of emergence might involve in the case of an abstract concept. Consider such specific abstract concepts as company, society, government, theory, mind, political system, economy, people, history, human relationships, language, etc. All these specific concepts can be subsumed under the generic heading of complex systems. The specific concepts represent cases in which we have a variety of parts that interact in complex ways. The concept of complex systems (or organizations) is an abstract and superordinate one. In talking about the abstract concepts that it subsumes, we use language such as the following: we talk about a society's ills, an ailing company or economy, heads of states, the heart of a culture, building a solid relationship, laying the foundations of modern science, constructing scientific knowledge, someone's career being in ruins, setting in motion the legal machinery, the workings of the mind, sowing the seeds of freedom in a country, a budding romance, cultivating a relationship, a blossoming economy, and a nation, language, or civilization that once flowered. These ways of talking about complex systems, or organizations, suggest that we think of them as having the following properties: they can be in an appropriate or inappropriate condition (ills, ailing) they have a structure (head, heart) they can be created (build, construct) they can be lasting (solid, in ruins) they can function (work(ings), machinery) they can develop (sow seeds, bud, blossom, flower) Unlike the linguistic examples given, we take these properties to be literal, rather than metaphorical. Given each of these properties, we possess a great deal of additional knowledge about abstract systems in general. For example, given the

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property "they can develop," we have additional detailed knowledge such as the following: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

You prepare the development of an abstract complex system. You create and start the abstract complex system. The system has initial stages of development. The system goes through a number of stages. The complex system may develop appropriately or inappropriately. You take care of the complex system to insure its appropriate development. The complex system reaches its best stage in the course of its development. The complex system produces certain benefits. The system begins to decline and eventually it ceases to exist.

The more detailed knowledge is also taken to be literal, rather than metaphorical. This conceptualization shows up in language in a variety of ways. The language appears to be literal again. Thus, we often talk about companies developing, the appropriate or inappropriate development of a society, a civilization or theory reaching its peak and then declining, the benefits that a political or economic system can yield, and so on. Not all the complex systems mentioned above have all these properties associated with them, but many such concepts are associated with most of them. How did this particular conception of abstract complex systems emerge? We could say that it emerged literally and that these are literal features of the concept. The big question is if this particular assembly of these assumed literal features has come about independently of more concrete concept(s). If we say that it has come about independently of them, then we have a concept that is pretty much arbitrary in its content and structure; it is "ungrounded" and "unnatural." We have no way of accounting for why this particular content and structure was assembled for what we would now consider the concept of COMPLEX SYSTEMS. (I will continue the analysis of the notion of COMPLEX SYSTEMS in section 3.) However, this arbitrary but literal assembly of content and structure could be taken to be the basis for the selection of metaphor(s). Thus, on the view of Literal Emergence (1), it could be suggested that this (partial) preexisting literal cultural model serves as a basis that determines the selection of particular metaphor(s), such as the metaphor COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS. In this view, the literalness of a concept goes together with conceptual "unnaturalness," or "arbitrariness" in the creation of the concept. In general, on the Literal Emergence (1) account of the relationship between abstract concepts and metaphor very little that is systematic can be said about why we have the abstract concepts with their particular assembly of content and structure. But perhaps no one would want to claim that abstract concepts emerge


in a completely arbitrary way. As we saw in the introduction, there seem to be three ways of accounting for the non-arbitrary emergence of abstract concepts. These are the options to which I now turn. 2.

Literal emergence (2)

The Literal Emergence (2) view shares with Literal Emergence (1) the idea that metaphors reflect a pre-existing literal cultural model, but adds to it the idea that the literal cultural models emerge directly (i.e., without metaphor) from some preconceptual experience. We can conceive of the Literal Emergence (2) view as an improved version of the Literal Emergence (1) view in which the obvious weakness of ungroundedness characterizing Literal Emergence (1) is remedied. I will describe this view in more detail below, when I discuss Quinn's work on American marriage. 2.1

Marriage

Quinn (1991) suggests that, contrary to a claim made by Lakoff and Kövecses (1987), metaphor simply reflects cultural models. In contrast, Lakoff and Kövecses claim that metaphors largely constitute the cultural model, or naive understanding of anger, as based on their study of American English. Implicit in Quinn's claim that metaphors simply reflect preexisting cultural models are two very important further claims: one is that abstract concepts can be understood in a literal way and the other is that the core of culture consists of literally understood cultural models (for both concrete and abstract concepts). The first claim arises from the fact that Quinn's generalization is based on the examination of such abstract concepts as anger and marriage. Quinn suggests that concepts such as marriage are understood literally by people. The concept of marriage is one of several other concepts indicating human relationships. Furthermore, she seems to think that anger, a prototypical emotion concept, can also be literally understood. Both concepts of human relationships and emotions are prime examples of abstract concepts. Indeed, Quinn (1991:64-65) makes a more general claim about abstract concepts: "while I certainly agree that metaphors play some role in the way we comprehend and draw inferences about abstract concepts, I take issue with the claim that they or the schemas on which they are said to be founded actually constitute the concepts." A little earlier in the paper she states: "I will be arguing that metaphors, far from constituting understanding, are ordinarily selected to fit a preexisting and culturally shared model" (1991:60; my emphasis). This is a general claim about the nature of the human conceptual system. My discussion will focus on this particular issue. I will have nothing to say about the second assumption; namely, that the core of culture consists of literally understood

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cultural models. As regards this claim, I refer the reader to Bradd Shore's work (Shore 1996), who claims, contrary to Quinn, that even the most basic notions of a culture may be metaphorically constituted. Gibbs (1994) provides additional criticism of Quinn's challenge. On Quinn's view, the American conception of marriage can be characterized by a set of expectations: marriage is expected to be shared, mutually beneficial, and lasting (1991:67). She points out, furthermore: that this particular constellation of expectations derives from the mapping of our cultural conception of love onto the institution of marriage and the consequent structuring of marital expectations in terms of the motivational structure of love. Because people want to be with the person they love, they want and expect marriage to be shared; because they want to fulfill the loved person's needs and have their own needs fulfilled by that person, they want and expect marriage to be beneficial to both spouses in the sense of mutually fulfilling; and because they do not want to lose the person they love, but want that person to go on loving them forever, people want and expect their marriages to be lasting. (Quinn 1991:67) In this view, marriage takes over several properties of love, which then come to define it. The question of course becomes: where does the abstract concept of love come from? Does it emerge literally or metaphorically? Quinn's answer is straightforward. It emerges literally from certain basic experiences, and then these experiences will structure marriage. The particular basic experiences that Quinn suggests the American conception of love and marriage derives from involve early infantile experiences between baby and the first caretaker. Here is the relevant passage: I speculate that the motivational constellation that is part of our understand ing of love and that provides marriage with its structure itself makes sense in psychoanalytic terms. Psychoanalysts since Freud, who characterized adult love as a "re-finding" of infantile love for the first caretaker, have theorized about the relation between the two. My claim is that Americans' distinctive conception of marriage takes the particular shape it does and has the force it does for us because of the cultural model of love mapped onto marriage and, thus, indirectly because of an infantile experience that Americans have shared and that underpins our conception of adult love. (1991:67) In other words, the picture that Quinn paints of the emergence of the concept of marriage is subtler than the one depicted in the diagram Literal Emergence (2) and can be given as Literal Emergence (2a):


MARRIAGE LOVE

|

INFANTILE EXPERIENCE BETWEEN BABY AND FIRST CARETAKER

Figure 3 : Literal Emergence (2a)

However, the point remains: no metaphor is needed for abstract concepts to emerge. The expectational structure of marriage derives from the motivational structure of love, which in turn derives from the basic infantile experience between baby and first caretaker. Quinn, then, goes on to say that marriage has some additional aspects. In her own words again: "The remainder of the cultural model of marriage reflected in the metaphors for marital compatibility, difficulty, effort, success or failure, and risk, derives from a contradiction that arises inevitably between the expectations of mutual benefit and that of lastingness" (1991:67). She argues further that in voluntary relationships, if one's needs are not fulfilled one is free to leave the relationship. However, marriage is special in this respect: it is supposed to last. She adds: "a variety of situations can initiate a felt contradiction between the expectation of marital fulfillment and that of a lasting marriage." If we characterize the essence of marriage, as Quinn does, as a set of expectations that can be viewed as being literal, Quinn's major claim stands: the core of the concept of marriage is literal, hence metaphors do not play a constitutive role in its understanding. More generally, abstract concepts such as marriage can exist without metaphors constituting them. This analysis would support the Literal Emergence (2) view. However, I believe that the analysis is incomplete and problematic. The problem is that we cannot take the expectational structure of marriage to be literal. Notice that Quinn's claim is that it is the motivational structure of love (i.e., that we want to be with the person we love, we want mutual need fulfillment, and we

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want love to be lasting) that provides the expectational structure of marriage. What Quinn does not say is how the concept of love itself is structured over and above its motivational structure. We should, therefore, first ask what love is before we discuss its expectational structure. And, ultimately, the question we have to face is whether the structure of the concept of love itself is derivable from the basic infantile experiences that Quinn mentions. Can the concept of love emerge literally from these basic experiences? My answer is that the basic infantile experiences play an important role in the emergence of the concept but are not sufficient for its detailed characterization. The insufficiency comes from the fact that the infantile experiences lack the detailed content and structure that characterize the concept of love in adults. (Details will be provided in section 4.) In other words, the metaphorical source domain has structure and content that is additional to that found in the basic experience. To take another example of a similar situation, the bodily-physiological experiences associated with anger cannot be said to define the content and structure of the concept of anger. For that, we need conceptual metaphors (such as ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER). With the help of basic experiences alone and without such conceptual metaphors it is difficult to see how abstract concepts can emerge and, in emerging, how they can acquire the detailed content and structure that they have. Nevertheless, the basic experiences do play an important function in this process; namely, they can be seen as motivating and constraining the conceptual metaphors that can eventually provide the necessary content and structure of abstract concepts. I will claim in section 4 that in general abstract concepts can emerge from basic experiences through the mediation of metaphor only. 3.

Metaphorical emergence (3)

It will be recalled from the introduction that in this view abstract concepts emerge from concrete ones via conceptual metaphor. Let us now consider how this Metaphorical Emergence view would work for the concept of COMPLEX SYSTEMS that we briefly looked at in section 1. The particular metaphor that could be suggested as producing the generic concept of abstract complex systems is COMPLEX ABSTRACT SYSTEMS ARE COMPLEX PHYSICAL OBJECTS (including the HUMAN BODY, BUILDINGS, MACHINES,

and PLANTS); in the conception under consideration (i.e., given as the properties 1-9 in section 1), the specific source domain would be PLANTS. The COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS metaphor is based on a small number of basic, constituent mappings, including the following: a) b)

the plant is the complex system parts of the plant are parts of the complex system

METAPHOR: DOES IT CONSTITUTE OR REFLECT CULTURAL MODELS? 175 c)

the biological growth of the plant is the abstract non-biological development of the complex system

We can illustrate these mappings with such metaphorical sentences as these: (1) (2)

Please turn to the local branch of the organization. She has grown a lot as a scholar lately.

Sentence (1) demonstrates mappings (a) and (b), whereas sentence (2) is a linguistic manifestation of mappings (a) and (c). The part of a plant can include several things, for example a specialization in some discipline, as shown in sentence (3) below: (3)

Laser equipment is expensive but it can be used in many branches of surgery.

This sentence comes from Cobuild English Guides 7: Metaphor, which is a dictionary of English metaphors for learners of English as a foreign language. The series is based on "the Bank of English," a huge corpus of everyday English. Indeed, in my characterization of the COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS metaphor below, I will rely exclusively on this source of information. As is well known in the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor, in some cases of metaphor we have a great deal of rich knowledge about the elements in the source, and consequently, we can make use of this knowledge in the comprehen sion of the target. Two such pieces of knowledge include the following: when plants grow, they become physically bigger, and plants are sometimes cut or primed, which results in a smaller size. Now it seems that speakers of English make use of this additional information in understanding certain features of complex systems. We can represent these metaphorical entailments as submeta phors Of COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS as follows: A COMPLEX SYSTEM BECOMING LARGER IS A PLANT GROWING BIGGER

-

Only now, 21 years since he established his distinctive women's range, is he branching out into men's clothing.

REDU CIN G COMPLEX SYSTEMS IS MAKING PLANTS SMALLER (PRUNING, CUTTING) They selectively pruned the workforce. Government and educational bureaucracies can and should be ruthlessly pruned.

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The features of complex systems in question in these cases are (1) complex systems becoming larger and (2) the reduction of complex systems. Additional rich knowledge concerning plants is utilized to capture these features. However, most of the metaphorical entailments that derive from the PLANT metaphor in relation to complex systems have to do with mapping (c) above: biological growth in the source corresponding to some abstract development in the target. As will be seen, a huge amount of detailed knowledge is carried over from plants to complex systems relative to this mapping. Here are the ones that stand out on the basis of the Cobuild Metaphor Dictionary: PREPARING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPLEX SYSTEM IS PREPARING THE GROWING OF A PLANT The work will prepare the ground for future development. These two chapters prepare the ground for the critical argument that

-

follows. Now they have signed agreements that lay the ground for a huge growth in trade and co-operation. Their positions had not changed but they had laid the ground for working together and that was very encouraging.

TO START OR CREATE A COMPLEX SYSTEM IS TO SOW A PLANT

-

A seed of doubt may have been planted in your minds. He had the skill to plant the seed in Jennifer's mind that her problem was not so important. The emphasis must now be on sowing the seeds of such a movement. ...debate that sowed the seeds of the welfare state.

THE INITIAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMEN T ARE THE BEGINNINGS OF GROWTH Typically the first green shoots of recovery herald an increase in bankruptcy. There would, he added, be no green shoots of economic recovery until

-

interest rates came down. In this way, problems that can lead to depression and even illness can

be

nipped in the bud. -

-

They will run a workshop for budding authors on how to make, write and illustrate their own books. He is not particularly serious about his budding recording career. Our budding romance was over. Another equally outstanding design was germinating at Bristol. The new phase in the relationship between father and son had germinated on the long drive from Toronto.

METAPHOR: DOES IT CONSTITUTE OR REFLECT CULTURAL MODELS? 177 -

The book is an account of the experienced through a full career.

germination and fruition

of ideas as

TO MAINTAIN OR TAKE CARE OF A COMPLEX SYSTEM IS TO CULTIVATE A PLANT He always cultivated friendships with the ruling class. ...technical universities which boast well-organized courses and carefully cultivated links with industry. He may have cultivated this image to distinguish himself from his younger brother. This will make it more difficult to weed out people unsuitable for the profession. The police may need to establish ways of weeding out lazy and inefficient officers. Those in the motor trade who ignore women customers deserve to be weeded out.

-

The worst material was never shown. It was companies themselves.

weeded out by

the television

THE SUCCESSFUL OR APPROPRIATE DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPLEX SYSTEM IS THE HEALTHY GROWTH OF A PLANT Exports flourished, earning Taiwan huge foreign currency reserves. His career is flourishing again.

-

As the king refused to educate the public, ignorance and prejudice flourished.

-

...the ruins of a once flourishing civilization.

TH E UNSUCCESSFUL OR INAPPROPRIATE DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPLEX SYSTEM IS THE UNHEALTHY GROWTH OF A PLANT

-

The center parties have achieved spectacular by-election results in the past, only to see their support wither again in general elections. They had been innocent sweethearts at a German University but their romance withered when they came back to England. I could see her happiness withering. The changes are likely to cause severe disruption for all the countries as the old system withers away. The union, which was once the most powerful in the country, has shrivelled under his leadership. The sympathy made something in him shrivel, shrink away. It was the kind of rain that shrivels the hopes of holidaymakers. He visibly wilted under pressure.

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The look the president gave the reporter made that experienced journalist wilt before his eyes.

THE BEST STAGE IN THE PROGRESS OR DEVELOPMENT OF SOMETHING IS THE FLOWERING OF A PLANT The relationship blossomed. They decided to live together the following

-

year. It was not until he joined her for a skiing holiday that their romance blossomed.

-

-

-

She had studied, worked, traveled and blossomed into an attractive intelligent young woman. His business blossomed when the railway put his establishment within reach of the big city. As her career blossomed, she kept her personal and professional lives totally separated. ... a blossoming, diverse economy. Greta is very much enjoying having the baby. She is blooming. Their friendship flowered at a time when he was a widower and perhaps felt lonely in his personal life. ...the nation that had briefly flowered after 1918. They remembered her as she'd been in the flower of their friendship. I feel I can still do it even though I am no longer in the flower of my youth. This was in the seventeenth century when modern science was in its first flowering.

THE BENEFICIAL CONSEQUENCES OF A PROCESS ARE THE FRUITS OR THE CROP OF A PLANT Now they've finished will they sit back and enjoy the fruit of their labors? American and Japanese firms are better at using the fruits of scientific

-

-

research. They enjoy the fruits of success and live well. ...the first fruit of the union between IBM and Apple. Their campaign seems to be bearing fruit. Sooner or later our common efforts will bear fruit. Last week their labor bore fruit and most achieved good exam results. They were eager to continue the long and fruitful association. She returned home after her fruitless efforts to find a job. Unfortunately a plan to reprint the play never came to fruition. You have the capacity to bring your ideas to fruition. Employers reaped enormous benefits from cheap foreign labor.

METAPHOR: DOES IT CONSTITUTE OR REFLECT CULTURAL MODELS? 179 Reynolds reaped the reward for his effort by taking sixth place. Cecilia's records are not yet reaping huge profits. ...a TV film that's reaped a clutch of international awards. We have thousands of ideas to harvest. The harvesting of knowledge from space will be one of the great scientific endeavors of the next century. Now we can see that most of the assumed literal features of the superordinate concept of complex systems as given in section 1 have their counterparts in the PLANT metaphor: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

the preparation of the development —» of a complex system to create and start a complex system —>• the initial stages of the development → the best stages in the development → the appropriate development of → • the system the inappropriate development of the system to take care of a system the benefits that the system yields →

the preparation of the growth of a plant to sow a plant the beginning of the growth of a plant the flowering of the plant the healthy growth of a plant the unhealthy growth of a plant to cultivate a plant the fruits or the crops of the plant.

Apparently, then, the COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS metaphor utilizes most of the metaphorical entailment potential associated with the concept of plant. This is knowledge that ordinary speakers of English (as opposed to experts such as biologists) have about plants. The vast amount of rich knowledge focuses on one basic constituent mapping of the metaphor, the mapping according to which the natural, biological growth of plants corresponds to the (abstract) progress or development of complex systems. This elaborate knowledge about the growth of plants structures much of our knowledge about the "developmental" aspects of complex systems. Now if we regard abstract concepts, such as abstract complex systems, as arising independently of metaphor (such as COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS), we have no possibility to account for the content and structure of these abstract concepts; indeed, we are left with no possibility for explanation at all. All we can say is that the abstract concept has emerged out of thin air. By contrast, the metaphor account can provide a detailed and systematic explanation why a certain assembly of content and structure constitutes an abstract concept; the particular assembly of conceptual elements is provided by the source domain of plants.

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However, this raises a further issue: we have no account of what motivates the metaphor itself that in turn motivates the abstract concept. Although the structure and content of an abstract concept is now motivated (by a metaphor, i.e., COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS), we do not have any clear experiential motivation for the metaphor itself. This creates a situation that requires some explanation, since all metaphors must have some experiential basis in order to be readily understandable. Is it the case that COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS does not have this? The problem is similar to what Grady (1997) mentions in connection with THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS. He points out that on the surface this metaphor has no experiential basis, but if we recognize the existence of what he calls "primary" metaphors, the experiential basis is obvious. In this case, we would have two primary metaphors that underlie THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS: ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE and PERSISTING IS REMAINING ERECT. These primary metaphors do have a clear experiential basis; namely, ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE is motivated by the fact that a physical object with a structure is characterized by logical and causal relations among its parts and PERSISTING IS REMAINING ERECT is motivated by the fact that many physical objects typically perform their functions in a standing position. As I have previously pointed out (Kövecses 1995,1997), metaphors such as COMPLEX ABSTRACT SYSTEMS (like THEORIES) ARE BUILDINGS and COMPLEX ABSTRACT SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS are characterized by central mappings that function as "simple" (or in Grady's terminology, "primary") metaphors. (On the notion of "central mapping," see Kövecses, n.d. a.) In these two cases, they would be ABSTRACT STRUCTURE IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE (equivalent to Grady's ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE) and ABSTRACT DEVELOPMENT IS PHYSICAL GROWTH. We can say that these simple, or primary, metaphors have "internal motivation," as opposed to other cases in the literature that can be said to be "externally motivated" (such as the motivation of increased body heat for ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER). What this means is that given a physical concept, the concept is characterized by certain abstract properties which are projected into the mental space of abstractness and thereby become target domains. As we saw above, in the case of ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE the properties projected from concrete to abstract space include logical and causal relations among concrete parts, while in the case of ABSTRACT DEVELOPMENT IS PHYSICAL GROWTH they would include some temporal progression from an initial state to a desired final state, as specified in the mapping above. The resulting picture for the Metaphorical Emergence (3) view would thus be somewhat different from the diagram that was given at the beginning of the paper:

METAPHOR: DOES IT CONSTITUTE OR REFLECT CULTURAL MODELS? 181 18 1 ABSTRACT CONCEPT

ABSTRACT PROPERTIES OF CONCRETE OBJECT PARTS AND PROPERTIES OF CONCRETE OBJECT Figure 4: Metaphorical

Emergence (3)

In other words, this is a case of metaphor where the metaphor is motivated, the motivation being "internal" to the source domain. These cases are markedly different from the motivation that can be found in many other instances of metaph met aphor or in the th e literatu lite rature re (e.g., AN ANGER IS IS HOT HOT FL FLUI UID D IN A CONTAI CONTAINER NER)) and that can be said to be "exter "ex ternal nally ly moti mo tivat vated, ed,"" in the sense that the basic bas ic experi exp erienc encee that motivates a metaphor lies outside the metaphor's metaph or's source domain (as body heat lies outside of the source concept HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER, at the same time bearing some resemblance to it). 4.

Metaphorical emergence (4)

Another instance of an externally motivated metaphor can be found in connection with the concept of marriage. Let us now return to the Literal Emergence (2) view of the concept of marriage and see what an alternative metaphor-based explanation would be like. We can begin by observing that in her discussion it remains unclear whether Quinn equates the expectational structure of marriage marri age with the concept of marriage itself. Nowhere does she describe or define marriage itself in terms other than its "expectational structure." This leads one to believe that marriage is conceptualized by people in terms of this structure only. But is it? Don't people have an idea of what marriage is before they have an expectational structure of it? One would think that they do, yet this aspect of the concept of marriage does not show up in the paper. Marriage is presented by Quinn as an expectational structure, and all the other aspects of it that she discusse disc usses, s, such as compatibility, compatib ility, difficulty, difficulty, effort, effort, success and failure, failure, and risk, are given as consequences of this structure. What, then, does the notion of marriage consist of before it acquires its particular expectational structure?

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First and foremost, marriage is some kind of abstract union between two peopl peo ple. e. To illust ill ustrat ratee this conceptio conce ption, n, consider cons ider some definitions definit ions of marri m arriage age in a sample of American dictionaries: marriage 1 the

state of being married; relation between husband and wife; married life; wedlock; matrimony 4 any close or intimate union (Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition)

marry 1 a) to join

as husband husband and wife; wife; unite in wedlock wedlock b) to join (a man) man) to a woman as her her husband, or (a woman) woman) to a man as as his wife wife vi. vi. 2 to enter into a close or intimate relationship; unite (Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition)

a: the state of being married b: the mutual relationship of husband and marriage 1 a:

wife; wedlock; c: the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

joi n marry 1 a: to join

as husband husband and wife according to law or custom custom 2 to unite in close and usu. permanent permanent relation vi 2 to to enter into a close close or intimate union (these wines - well) (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

husband marriage 1. a. The state of being husband of man and woman as husband and wife (The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary) Dictionary)

and wife; wife; wedlock b. b . The legal union

marry 1. a. To become united with in matrimony

(The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary)

married 1. United in matrimony

(Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary)

As these dictionary definitions show, a major component of the concept of marriage is the-legal, social, emotional, etc.—union of two people. This seems to be a large larg e part par t of the th e notion not ion that is prior pr ior to the t he expect e xpectatio ational nal structure stru cture associat asso ciated ed with marriage. In other words, the prototypical, or stereotypical, idea of marriage must include the notion that it is an abstract union of various kinds between two people peo ple.. As Quinn suggests, the concept of marriage is structured by a mapping of the American cultural conception of love. However, she only finds this in the

METAPHOR: DOES IT CONSTITUTE OR REFLECT CULTUR CULTURAL AL MODELS? MODELS? 183 18 3 OR REFLECT expectational structure of marriage. But now we can see additional structure in marriage that derives from love. This is the notion of unity involving two people. As Kövecses (1988, 1991) showed, the concept of romantic love is, in large meas me asur ure, e, under un derst stoo oodd and struct str uctured ured by the metaph met aphor or LOVE IS A UNITY OF TW TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS, as can be found in expressions like You belong to me and I belong to you, Theirs is a perfect fit, We're as one, She's my better half They broke broke up, They're inseparable, and They match each other perfectly. It is

largely the functional unity of two physical parts that may serve as the source domain for the abstract target concept of marriage. But more generally, our understanding of non-physical-social, legal, emotional, spiritual, psychological, etc.-unions derives from physical or biological unions. This is a perfectly regular way in which human beings conceptualize and, by conceptualizing, also build their non-physical world. We have seen the same process at work for the various specific concepts that belong to "complex systems." In other words, in the terminology of the view of of metaphor that Lakoff and John Jo hnso sonn (1980) (19 80) initi in itiate ated, d, we have ha ve the t he conce co nceptu ptual al metaph met aphor or NON-PHYSICAL UNITY (It is significant signifi cant that the t he etymologic etymo logical al root of the words wo rds union IS PHYSICAL UNITY. (It and unity is the Latin word unus meaning "one.") This is the metaphor that underlies our conception of various social, legal, psychological, sexual, political, emotional emot ional,, etc. unities and explains the use of of such expressions as "to join forces," "the merging of bodies," "the unification of Europe," Euro pe," "to be at one with the world," "a union of minds, min ds,"" "a deep spiritual union with God," etc. Obviously, the metaphor also applies to marriage as a non-physical unity between two people. Some examples from the above dictionary definitions include "to join in marriage," "a marriage union" "the legal union of man and woman," and "to be united in mat ma trimo ri monny"; y" ; henc he ncee the th e meta me taph phor or MARRIAGE IS A PHYSICAL AND/OR /OR BIOLOGICAL UNITY OF TWO PART PARTS. S. Not No t surp su rpri risi sing ngly ly,, we find find exam ex ampples le s of this th is metaphor in the data that Quinn presents. She names what we call the MARRIAGE IS A PHYSICAL AND/OR BIOLOGICAL UNITY metaphor "two inseparable objects," as in We knew we were going to stay together and and "an unbreakable bond," as in That just kind of cements the bond (Quinn 1991:68). At this point it might be objected that my analysis is largely based on dictionary data and that Americans may not conceptualize marriage according to the unity metaphor. We have some evidence that they do. The evidence is both direct and indirect. In 1992 at Rutgers University, New Jersey, in an informal experiment I asked students in an Introduction to Anthropology course to write down linguistic expressions about marriage. They came up with dozens of different expressions, including the ultimate bond, She's my ball and chain, They are a match made in heaven, They 've They 've tied the knot, She's my better half They broke up, I can't function without her, They're getting hitched, They dissolved

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their union, and

others. These are all UNITY metaphors or at least closely related to this metaphor. They suggest that the notion of UNITY is not alien to many Americans when they talk and think about marriage. The indirect evidence comes mine, Ted Sablay, conducted concerning from a set of interviews that a student of mine, romantic roman tic love l ove in the summer of 1996 at the university of Nevada, Las Vegas. Vegas . The interview subjects were seven male and seven female students from roughly the same white middle-class background. What the interviews reveal about romantic love should be taken seriously in dealing with marriage because, as Quinn herself claims, marriage is in many ways structured by our understanding of love. In his report on the project, Ted Sablay found that the most frequent metaphor for love is the unity metaphor for his interview subjects. This gives us some reason to believ bel ievee that, t hat, at least for some Americ Ame ricans ans,, the conception concep tion of marriage marr iage is still st ill built bui lt on the idea of forming a unity with another and that this notion is not just an antiquated dictionary definition. What is the relationship between the idea of marriage-as-a-non-physicalunity and the expectational structure of marriage that Quinn describes? We can suggest that the t he conception of marriage as a unity between two people peopl e is the basis, basi s, or the foundation, of its expectational structure; namely, that marriage is expected expect ed to be shared, beneficial, and lasting. The reason that marriage is expected to be all these things thi ngs is that it is conceptualized as a unity of a particular kind: kind : the physical phys ical unity of two complementary parts, which yields the metaphor MARRIAGE IS IS THE PHYSICAL AND/OR BIOLOGICAL UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS. The details of the UNITY metaphor for marriage can be given as a set of mappings: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

the two physical parts → the physical joining of the parts → the physical/biological unity → the physical fit between the parts → the physical functions of the parts. parts. → in the unity the complementariness of the → functions of the parts the whole physical object → consisting of the parts the function of the whole object →

the married people the union of of the the two people in marriage marriage the marriage marriage union union the compatibility compatibility between the married people people the roles the married people play in the relationship the complementariness complementariness of the roles of the married people the marriage marriage relati relationshi onshipp the role or purpose of of the marriage relationship

What we have here is a source domain in which there are two parts that fit each other and form a whole, where the particular functions of the parts complement each other and the parts make up a larger larger unity that has a function (or functions). This source schema of a physical unity has parts that are additional to the basic

METAPHOR: DOES IT CONSTITUTE OR REFLECT CULTURAL MODELS? 185 experience between baby and first caretaker. Unlike the infantile experience, here two originally separate parts are joined, or put together; unlike the infantile experience, there is a pre-existing fit between the parts; unlike the infantile experience, the whole has a function that is larger than, or goes beyond, the functions of the individual parts. What corresponds to these in the target domain of marriage is that two separate people who are compatible join each other in marriage with some life goal(s) in mind. It is this structure that appears in the way many people (Americans) think about marriage. But this way of conceptualizing marriage is simply a special case of the larger process whereby non-physical unities in general are constituted on the analogy of more physical ones. It is important to see that the physical unity metaphor characterizes not just marriage but many other abstract concepts where the issue of non-physical union arises, that is, abstract concepts that have union as one of their dimensions, or aspects. This dimension of non-physical union emerges from the content and structure of what we called "physical unity (of two complementary parts)" source domain. In this sense, abstract concepts that acquire the dimension of non-physical union can only be metaphorical. This is for the simple reason that the dimension inevitably emerges from the physical source of physical unity. The application of this simple, constitutive metaphor to marriage is both transparent and important. Its signifi cance lies in the fact that in the concept of marriage non-physical union is a core dimension. Indeed, it is so fundamental that, as we will see shortly, the expectational structure that Quinn identified derives from it. In Quinn's view, the basic experiences constitute cultural models (like those of abstract concepts in general and that of the concept of marriage in particular) and the cultural models select the fitting conceptual metaphors. In my view, it is the basic experiences that select the fitting conceptual metaphors and the meta phors constitute the cultural models. As we saw above, there are differences bet ween what the basic experiences and what the conceptual metaphors can yield relative to abstract concepts. Basic experiences in themselves could not account for the content and structure of the concepts of love and marriage (just as they could not account for the cultural model of anger). The more that is needed is provided by such constitutive metaphors as NON-PHYSICAL UNION (in love and marriage) IS PHYSICAL UNITY an d ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER. This metaphorically structured understanding of marriage forms a definition

of marriage and provides its expectational structure. The definition could be given as follows: marriage is a union of two people that are compatible with each other. The two people perform different but complementary roles in the relationship. Their union serves a purpose (or purposes) in life. This is, of course, a genericlevel definition that can be filled out with specific details in individual cases.

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The expectational structure arises from the definition in the following way: because a part by itself is not functional, people want to share their lives with others in marriage. Because only one or some parts fit another part, people want compatible partners in marriage. Because (to get a functioning whole) a part must perform its designated function, people want to fulfill their designated roles in a marriage relationship. Because wholes have a designated function to perform, marriage relationships must be lasting. As can be seen, this is similar to Quinn's expectational structure. One difference, though, is that in our characterization compatibility is a mapping in the UNITY metaphor, while in hers it is a consequence that follows from the expecta tional structure. Another difference is more substantial. It is that we have given the expectational structure of marriage as a consequence of a certain metaphorical understanding of marriage, one that is based on the metaphor NON-PHYSICAL UNITY IS PHYSICAL UNITY. It is in this sense that we claimed that the concept of marriage is metaphorically constituted. (A similar argument is presented in Kövecses, n.d. b.) In sum, what Quinn calls the expectational structure results from a particular metaphorical understanding of marriage. Thus, marriage is not a literally concei ved abstract concept, although the metaphor that yields the expectational structure is based on certain bodily experiences. 5.

Conclusions

To attempt to answer the question whether metaphors constitute or simply reflect cultural models requires an answer to the question how abstract concepts emerge. We have considered several possibilities for the emergence of abstract concepts: (1) Literal Emergence, (2) Literal Emergence from some basic expe rience, (3) internally motivated Metaphorical Emergence, and (4) Metaphorical Emergence motivated by some external experiential basis. We have argued that Literal Emergence (1) is not a viable way of thinking of the emergence of abstract concepts because it provides no account whatsoever of why abstract concepts have the particular content and structure that they do. We have also argued against Literal Emergence (2), a view which maintains that abstract concepts emerge directly - without the mediation of metaphor - from basic human experience. In particular, we pointed out that Quinn's analysis of American marriage leaves out of consideration a large and significant portion of this concept - the part which is metaphorically conceived and from which the expectational structure of marriage derives. The notion of marriage, on our analysis, is partially based on and con stituted by the generic metaphor NON-PHYSICAL UNITY IS PHYSICAL UNITY. Given this metaphor, we can naturally account for why marriage has the expectational


structure that it has, as well as for the fact that the same metaphor applies to many domains that are seemingly unrelated to marriage or love. I suggested in this paper that a number of abstract concepts can only em erge metaphorically: either via Metaphorical Emergence (3) or Metaphorical Emer gence (4). Conceiving of their emergence this way, we can offer a systematic and integrated account of not only such specific concepts as anger, love and marriage but abstract concepts in general. References

Deignan, Alice, ed. 1995. Cobuild English Guides 1: Metaphor. London: Harper Collins. Gibbs, Raymond W. 1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press. Grady, Joseph E. 1997. "THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS revisited". Cognitive Linguis tics 8. 267-290. Holland, Dorothy, & Naomi Quinn, eds. 1987. Cultural Models in Language and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Zoltân. 1988. The Language of Love. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. 1991. "ALinguist's Quest for Love". Journal of Social and Personal Rela tionships 8. 11-91. 1995. "American Friendship and the Scope of Metaphor". Cognitive Ling uistics 6. 315-346. 1997. A Student's Guide to Metaphor. Manuscript. n.d.a "The scope of metaphor". Metaphor and Metonymy at the Cross roads, ed. by Antonio Barcelona. Berlin: Mouton. n.d.b Metaphor and Emotion. Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. , & Mark Johnson 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. , & Zoltân Kövecses 1987. "The Cognitive Model of Anger Inherent in American English". Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. by D. Holland, & Naomi Quinn, 195-221. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quinn Naomi. 1991. "The Cultural Basis of Metaphor". Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology, ed. by J. Fernandez, 56-93. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Shore, Bradd. 1996. Culture

in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of

Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.

METAPHORS AND CULTURAL MODELS AS PROFILES AND BASES

ALAN CIENKI Emory University

For it is in metaphor - perhaps more dramatically than in any other form of symbolic expression - that language and culture come together and display their fundamental inseparability. A theory of one that excludes the other will inevitably do damage to both. - Basso (1976) None of the points I will make is radically new and revolutionary. Most of them may seem obvious to anthropologists, working as they do on the 'messy' side of the language/culture boundary that linguists avoid as best they can. - Keesing (1979) 1.

Introduction:

The problem to be considered

While it may be true that the issues raised in this paper will not be revolutionary to anthropologists, perhaps this research will at least advance ling uistics one more step toward the "messy", cultural side of language. This work is motivated by interrelated research from several theoretical perspectives. One of them is the view of meaning (semantic structure) as a kind of conceptual structure. In cognitive grammar, for example, "...semantic structures are regarded as conceptualizations shaped for symbolic purposes according to the dictates of linguistic convention" (Langacker 1987:98). Another is a basic premise from which many, if not all, who consider themselves 'cognitive linguists' work - that linguistic meaning is encyclopedic in nature. As Langacker (1987:163) expresses it, "The entity designated by a symbolic unit can therefore be thought of as a point of access to a network. The semantic value of a symbolic unit is given by the open-ended set of relations - simple and complex, direct and indirect - in which this access node participates." The present study is also motivated by research on the integral relations between metaphor and cultural models (e.g., Lakoff and Kövecses 1987, Quinn 1987, Sweetser 1987a, Emanatian 1996). Here I will follow Shore's ( 1996) explication of cultural models as falling into a large number of genre forms, including linguistic and non-linguistic, spatial, social, diagnost ic, and others. While metaphorical models represent one kind of cultural model,

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higher level conceptual metaphors, in particular, certainly play a role in various kinds of cultural models. A final motivating issue is the problem of the interre lation between shared, cultural models and individual cognitive or mental models. As Shore (1996:47) notes, "Cultural models are constructed as mental representa tions in the same way as any mental models with the important exception that the internalization of cultural models is based on more socially constrained experi ences than is the case for idiosyncratic models." This complex of issues brings out various aspects of language as both a cognitive and a social phenomenon. The dilemma to be addressed here is how to handle these complex relations practically when trying to analyze specific lexical items; in this paper, the semantics of terms for two different moral concepts in Russian will be considered. If meaning is encyclopedic, and involves metaphors which are integrally tied into various cultural, and cognitive models, where does one draw the line on what constitutes the semantics of a particular word? 2.

Previous approaches to this problem

In some respects, this is not the first time that this problem has been confronted in semantic analysis. Keesing (1979), for example, discusses how cultural knowledge is drawn upon to understand the meanings of particular lexical items, and thus how adequate semantic representations "may have to be articulated with, predicated on, and constructed with reference to such cultural knowledge" (Keesing 1979:20). Yet when presenting a semantic analysis, how can one avoid constantly repeating the presupposed cultural knowledge in the explanation of the semantics of individual lexical items? Keesing suggests several ways for linguistic description to begin to incor porate and make reference to a cultural analysis. One is to admit key concepts from the given cultural system into the system one is using for semantic des cription. Another is to key the semantic analysis to culturally salient distinctions, more specifically, to prominent symbolic oppositions in the culture. For speakers of the language Kwaio on the Solomon Islands he notes some oppositions which are also prominent in European cultures, such as male:female, up:down, culturemature, and others which are less prominent, such as sacred:(mola:)polluted and ancestors:humans. This is reminiscent of what Ivanov and Toporov (1965) call 'semiotic modeling systems', pairs of oppositions which often co-align in a coherent way within a culture, and what van Leeuwen-Turnovcovâ (1991, 1994, and elsewhere) discusses as 'cultural paradigms'. Palmer's (1996) discussion of how cognitive linguistics is especially wellsuited to help bridge some theoretical and methodological gaps with anthropology is also instructive. Palmer presents an approach to semantics which incorporates cultural analysis by relying on the distinction made in cognitive grammar between


191

a 'profile' and a 'base'. Langacker (1987) observes how the entities, processes, and relations designated by language are merely highlighted parts of implicit, larger wholes. In the framework of cognitive grammar, Langacker refers to the highlighted substructure as the 'profile' and the whole to which it relates, the scope of predication, as the 'base'. (Note the forerunner in Talmy's [1983] appli cation of the Gestalt psychology distinction between 'figure' and 'ground' to the study of language.) As Langacker (1987:183) explains, "The semantic value of an expression resides in neither the base nor the profile alone, but only in their combination; it derives from the designation of a specific entity identified and characterized by its position within a larger configuration." Palmer extends the application of this notion by observing that a semantic relation can be thought of as the relation profiled against a culturally modeled base. Recasting Sweetser's (1987a) analysis of lie, Palmer (1996:186) notes how a speech act can only be judged a lie (the conceptual profile) relative to a certain cultural model of communication (the conceptual base). 3.

Terms for two moral categories as a case study

We will consider how to practically take these factors into account by analyzing two terms for moral categories in Russian, one described by the root 1 chestn- (as in the words chestnosf, chestnyj, chestno (roughly translatable as "honesty", "honest", and "honestly"), and the other characterized by the root porjadochn-, as in the words porjadochnosV, porjadochnyj, porjadochno (roughly: "honesty/decency", "honest/decent", and "honestly/decently"). (Note that historically, the root chestn- is derived from chest' "honor" while porjadochncomes from porjadok "order" which is derived from rjad "row".) The terms are of particular interest because, although they are closely related, they are characterized in terms of contrasting metaphors. The data consist of over 20 videotaped conversation-interviews with pairs of Russian university students conducted in Moscow in May of 1996. 2 The data were gathered as part of a larger study on the semantics, metaphors, and cultural models related to terms for "honesty" as used by Russian and American university students. The students were only told beforehand that I was interested in differen ces in academic practices between American and Russian universities. The stu dents were given three written questions to discuss with each other which con cerned how they would describe how students take exams at their university, what it means to conduct oneself honestly {chestno) during an exam, and how they would feel if they found out that a classmate had received a higher grade on an exam than they did as a result of cheating. They then read a brief scenario descri bing how a couple of fictitious students found a problem set that was going to be on an upcoming math exam, and how one of the students actually used them to

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prepare for the exam. The interviewees were asked whether they thought the students acted honestly {chestno) or not. For the last part of the interview I asked them a few additional questions including, given all that they had talked about, what they thought honesty (chestnost') was, and how they would compare it with porjadochnost' The procedure, therefore, involved both implicit and explicit elicitation of the speakers' thoughts on the use and meanings of these words. Most of the conversation-interviews lasted 25 to 40 minutes. Participants were infor med of the full objectives of the project in a debriefing after completion of their conversation-interview. As the analysis of the videotapes is ongoing, the findings presented here are preliminary; nevertheless they provide interesting insights into metaphors viewed against the background of cultural models. 3.1

Metaphors for chestnost'

Consider the following examples of how chestnosf was described. 3

(1) [23] A -

Chestnosf - ona bolee prjamolinejna, chërno-belogo cveta, takogo. "Chestnosf - it's more straight-lined, like black and white.''

(2) [15] B -

Nu, chestnosf - èto zhëstche, chem porjadochnost', vottakvot. "Well, chestnost' is more rigid than porjadochnost', like that."

(3) [23] B -

U nas kak-to, votja ne znaju. Menja .. ostanavlivaet voobshche kategorija chestnostfi/nechestnosti.] [Ja ne- ne ponimaju. ] [Delo v torn, chto-] Da. [Uni- Universi- UJniversitet, vsë-taki, ne shkola, A kogda prepodavateV stremitsja vo to by chto ni stalo, vot ... sognat' studentov v kakie-to ramki.

B - "Here somehow, I just don't know. I'm .. basically stumped by the category of chestnost' [/nechestnost'.] [I don't- don't understand.]" A["The thing is that- ]Yeah. [The uni- universi- u]niversity isn't grade school, after all, when the teacher tries no matter what, well... to round up the students into some kind of boundaries (frames)."

was described, for example, as prjamolinejna ("straight-lined"), as an absolute category {chërno-belogo cveta "black and white"), zhëstche ("harder, more rigid"), and as involving ramki ("limits, bounds") - in general, as an object that is straight and rigid or as a space or path with definite boundaries. These, and other, metaphorical expressions provide evidence of the following conceptual metaphors among these speakers of Russian: Chestnosf

CHESTNOST' IS

STRAIGHT (LINEAR) CHESTNOST' IS RIGID CHESTNOST' IS A BOUNDED SPACE.


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However, the evidence for these metaphors is not limited to verbal expressions. One major reason that these conversation-interviews were videotaped was to gather data on the gestures that co-occur with speech. As previous research (Calbris 1990; McNeill 1992; Cienki 1998) shows, evidence for conceptual metaphors can also be found in spontaneous gesture, supporting the view that metaphors are not restricted to expression only in spoken, signed, or written language. The gestures observed in this data provide another indication that these metaphors reflect ways speakers are thinking about this abstract concept. In some examples, the metaphor expressed by a gesture is not explicit in speech, and in other examples, the gesture provides a missing lexical item, missing because the gesture made the point better for the speaker than words could. Examples (4) and (5) reflect the proposed metaphor CHESTNOST' IS STRAIGHT (LINEAR). 4 (4) [9] A -

Dlja menja chestnost' èto nekaja absoljutnaja kategorija. Kogda vot est' situacija, seichas vostupit' chestno f tak}. "For me chestnost' is a kind of absolute category - when there's this situation,

then (you need) to act honestly {like this!." (5) [19] A -

Antonim (chestnosti) - èto Izhivost' i obman ... kogda luchshe solgat' v blago zhe tarn chego-to, chem skazat' pravdu v Hi ho. "The antonym (of chestnost') is falsity and deception ...

when it's better to lie for the good of something or other than to say the truth to someone's {face}."

In example (4), the speaker displays a rigid, flat right hand, palm facing left, while saying "like this". In (5) the speaker makes a straight-line motion with her open right hand from in front of her face toward my face, as I am sitting facing her. As the last example shows, metaphors characterizing chestnost' as 'straight' in Rus sian seem to focus more on the negative aspects that this entails (directness as rude) as opposed to the more positive evaluations of honesty as 'straight' and 'proper' found in the comparable conversation-interviews conducted with Ameri can students. Finally, it should be noted that chestnost' was characterized as something abstract, that is, not as easily related to one's practical, lived experience: (6) [23] B -

V bytu ono ne ispol'zuetsja, vot, vot s- v moej srede ne ispol'zuetsja v bytu, to est' èto ponjatie iz oblasti ideaVnogo...

"In everyday life it isn't used, so in my environment it's not used in everyday life, that is it's a concept from the realm of the ideal ..."

194 3.2

ALAN CIENKI Metaphors for porjadochnost' Porjadochnost', however, was

characterized via quite different metaphors.

(7) [23] A- Jadumaju, chtoporjadochnost' - boleeshirokoe ponjatie. "I think that porjadochnost' is a broader concept." (8) [23] B - Porjadochnost' - razmytoe bolee ponjatie, gumanizirovannoe chto-li,... "Porjadochnost' is a more washed out concept, humanized sort of, ..." (9) [7] B - A votporjadochnost' okazyvaetsja bolee prizemlënnym ponjatiem. "But porjadochnost' turns out to be a more down-to-earth concept."

Again, the gestures reveal the metaphorical way in which the speaker is thinking about these concepts, which sometimes is expressed verbally, and sometimes not. In (10) the speaker characterizes chestnosf by holding her hands stiff in front of her, palms facing each other, rhythmically moving them up and down on the stressed syllables (what McNeill [1992] calls 'beats') while speaking the underlined words of the first sentence. In the second sentence, when discussing porjadochnost', she spreads her two hands out flat in front of her, palms facing down, moving them away from her body and outwards, away from each other, as if over the surface of a table. 5 (10) [23] B - Skazhem tak, chestnosf - èto bolee formaliz.ovannoe sobliudenie kakix-to norm. A porjadochnost', ona vkljuchaet sjuda ochen' ochen' boVshuiu is- (?) moraVnye} plasty. Ona bolee shirokaja. "Let's put it this way, chestnosf is a more formalized observation of certain norms. But porjadochnost' ', it includes here a very very big {(s- ?) moral} layers. It's broader."

In (11) the speaker contrasts porjadochnost' with chestnosf and its rigidly fixed category borders. The gesture again involves the two hands rigidly facing each other in front of the speaker, and slightly curved, as if holding a large bowl. She makes small beats with her hands in that position during the speech in curly brackets. (11) [23] B - Porjadochnost' - razmytoe bolee ponjatie, gumanizirovannoe chto-li; ne otnositsja k ... k vot {k zhëstko fiksirovannym tarn ..}... "Porjadochnost' is a more washed-out concept, humanized sort of; it doesn't relate to- ..to like (to rigidly fixed there ..}..."

The verbal metaphorical expressions for porjadochnost' included bolee shirokaja ("broader") and bolee razmytoe ponjatie ("a more washed out concept"), but also prizemljonnoe ponjatie ("a down-to-earth concept"), and reflected it as a less


195

clearly delimited space or object, but also one that relates more closely to the complexities of real life. These and the metaphoric gestures support at least the following metaphors for porjadochnosf among these speakers: PORJADOCHNOST' IS A BROAD SPACE PORJADOCHNOST' DOES NOT HAVE CLEARLY DEFtNED BOUNDARIES.

is not conceived by these individuals as a mathematically defined, rigidly bordered space defined by ideal rules, but a human space (gumanizirovannoe "humanized"), more relevant to the real behavior of people in society.

Porjadochnost'

4.

The wider context of usage

Many interviewees equated examples (12) and (13).

chestnost'

(12) [15] A - Chestnost' - èto govorit' pravdu. A - "Chestnost' is telling the truth."

with "telling the truth", as in

B - Ne govorit' lozh'. B - "Not telling a lie."

(13) [21] A - éto nazvat' veshchi svoimi imenami. "It's calling things by their own names."

The metaphorical characterization of chestnost' as a straight path is coherent with what is often described as the CONDUIT metaphorical model of (truthful) discourse. Consider the reinterpretations of Reddy's (1979/1993) CONDUIT meta phorical model of speech commonly assumed in American and many other cultures. Vanparys (1995) includes among its components the metaphor that COM MUNICATION is TRANSFERRING WORD/SENTENCE/TEXT-CONTAINERS, and Grady (1998) proposes TRANSMISSIONS TRANSFER. The most felicitous transfer is pre sumed to occur in a straight fashion with no obstructions (cf. Sweetser [1987b] andEmanatian [1996] on discourse journeys). Cienki (1998) offers evidence for the metaphor TO SPEAK IN A MAXIMALLY INFORMATIVE WAY (truthfully, honestly) IS TO TRANSFER WORDS ALONG A STRAIGHT PATH among both English and Russian speakers. However, the positive or negative evaluation of honest speech is depen dent on context. So while telling the truth is seen as good, especially from the adult perspective if children do it, it can also be rude (cf. skazat' pravdu prjamo v lico "to say the truth straight to someone's face") given cultural models of politeness that not all truths need to be spoken out loud. Sweetser ( 1992) and Emanatian ( 1996) provide convincing evidence for the following metaphors relating to thought and reasoning among speakers of Ame-

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rican English. The present data from Russian indicate that these metaphors are, indeed, more widespread. IDEAS ARE LOCATIONS (POINTS) IN SPACE FROM ONE IDEA-SPACE TO ANOTHER THINKING IS MOVING FROM LOGICAL THOUGHT IS STRAIGHT DECIDING IS CHOOSING BETWEEN MULTIPLE PATHS To tie in the present data, metaphorically MOVING (that is, acting) in one DIRECTION (manner) along the STRAIGHT PATH of of chestnosf chestnosf does not require deci sion-making; it involves simpler rules, doing things 'straight'. Porjadochnosf, however, is more complex, involving social norms that depend on the situation. MOVEMENT (action) in the less clearly delimited SPACE of porjadochnosf does require requir e thoughtful action and can entail a variety of of consequences. consequence s. This may also explain why many of the Russian interviewees associate chestnoe povedenie ("chestnyj behavior") with children, and porjadochnoe povedenie ("porjadochnyj behavi beh avior" or")) as someth som ething ing adults adult s are more m ore consciou cons ciouss of. of. Conside Cons iderr exampl exa mplee (3) in which the speaker deemphasizes the importance of chestnosf' at the university versus in grade school. In that same interview, the other speaker says the following (14): (14) [23] B -Ja

dumaju, chto èto zavisit ot togo - vot, raznicu m/ v ponimanii v ponimanii ètix.. veshchej,v kakoe vremja v nashej zhizni v obshchem vxodjat èti èti ponjatija. Chestnosf - èto (?) tak skazaf v nas, nachinaja nas, nachinaja uzhe v sadik, tam "èto nechestno, ne xorosho tam, ne krasivo". Porjadochnosf - èto uzhe na urovne urovne ... ... pojavljaetsja tam v podrostkovom vozraste, kogda bolee slozhnye moral' nye kategorii pojavljajutsja.

these.. things "I think that it depends on - the difference difference b/ in the understanding of these.. on what time in our life in general these concepts come in. Chestnosf - it's (?), so to speak, in us, beginning in kindergarten already, like 'That's not chestno, not good there, not nice.' Porjadochnosf - it's already on a level ... appears there in adolescence, when more complex moral categories appear."

The metaphors for chestnosf and porjadochnosf are also integrally related to other cultural models which are not necessarily metaphorically-based, but are shared by Russians who have gone to Russian schools, especially if they have also attended a Russian university. univers ity. For example, exampl e, Russian students are normally admitted to specific departments of study, and go through the university in groups in each department, taking tak ing the same classes together. As the interviewees indica ted, the bonds between students in a group are very strong, and members of a group rely on each other a great deal, both academically and socially. Treating Treat ing

METAPHORS AND CULTURAL MODELS MODELS AS PROFILES AND BASES

197 19 7

each other right is consequently viewed viewe d as more important than following the rules imposed impo sed by the institution, insti tution, the university. (Contrast this with the American system in which college students choose their own classes, with students majoring in the same subject subject only sometimes someti mes sharing classes together. Studying independen in dependently, tly, rather than working workin g together, is more the norm.) The larger larger opposition in Russian Ru ssian culture - what Ivanov and Toporov (1965) call a semiotic modeling system, and what Shore (1996) might call a foundational schema - of svoj ("one's own") ver sus chuzhoj ("other") ties in with the system of groups, such that acting in accor dance with the interests interest s of one' on e'ss own group is deemed very important. import ant. This rela tes to the positive posi tive evaluation evaluatio n of empathy for for members of one' on e'ss group. One stu dent, speaking about porjadochnost' , said: (15)[15] B- Da, vsegda stavit' sebja na ix mesto. Samoe glavnoe. éto tochno samoe glavnoe ... u cheloveka. To, chestnost', uzhe - ne objazatel'no. "Yeah, always putting yourself in their place. The most important thing. It's It 's definitely the most important thing ... with a person. But chestnost', well - not

necessarily."

porjadochnost' fits Similarly, the positive evaluation of porjadochnost' fits in with the importanc impo rtancee placed pla ced on observ obs erving ing certain certai n culturally cultu rally shared norms norm s of behavio beha viorr in society, society , as mentioned by the speaker in (16).

(16) [13] A - Porjadochnost'

- naverno sobljudenie obshcheprinjatyx ustanovlennyx kakix-to norm v obshchestvennyx.. to est', .. ètika ètika tam, povedenie tam, povedenie v obshchestvennyx mestax. "Porjadochnost' is is probably the observation of some kind of established generally

accepted norms in society .. that is, .. like ethics, behavior in public places."

Indeed, the history of relations in Russia between 'the 'th e common peopl pe ople' e' and autho rity figures, the communist commu nist authorities in particular, the power differe differential ntial between betwee n them, them , and the fact fact that the student-interviewees student-int erviewees are still part of of a generation raised under unde r the communist communi st system, sys tem, must not be ignored. The importance of not telling on others, especially on members of one's own group (despite institutio nal/univers nal/u niversity ity rules to the contrary) should not be underestimated underes timated.. Several stu dents mention men tioned ed the importance importanc e of of not telling on fellow students who were getting getti ng answers from others during an exam. The phrase Ne donosi ("Don't inform") was mentione ment ionedd more than once as a guiding principle of behavior. This, This , too, favors favors the posit po sitiv ivee evaluat eval uation ion of the metaph met aphori orical cal flexibility flexibi lity of porjadochnost' over the rigidity of chestnost' in regard to rules of of behavior. The Russian students' valuing of porjadochnost' over chestnosf in the context of taking exams also fits in with the interpersonal nature of how Russian

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university students take most exams, as a one-on-one meeting with the professor or with a committee of professors during which the student gives an extensive narrative (oral) answer to one or more questions chosen at random beforehand from slips of of paper. One student concluded, (17) [20] B - Voobshche i ona, chestnost' nasha, ne formal'no

ne polagaetsja. Eto ix (prepodavatelej) sovershenno ne interesuet. Ix naverno interesuet kak-to obmen znanija, a uzh chest nost' -nechestnost' - v zadnem plane. chestnost', is not formally "In general it, our chestnost', formally expected. It doesn't doesn 't interest them

(instructors) at all. all. They're They 're probably interested in some exchange of knowledge, but uh chetnost'-nechestnost' (honesty-dishonesty) (honesty-dishonesty) is in the background."

The format of the exam, choosing a slip of paper with the question on it that you are required to answer, probably contributes to the generally held view among students studen ts that it is like a lottery, and that the exam will not necessarily reflect what the student really knows. knows . The word for for the slip of paper, bilet, is also the same as that for "ticket". "tick et". The metaphor metapho r of an an exam as a lottery frames frames it as something left left up to chance rather than being a competition between participants. kogda on prixodit prixodit na èkzamen, on, putëm zhrebija zhrebij a ili loterei, vybiraet sebe bilet, (18) [23] A - I kogda on v kotorom dva ili tri voprosa iz vsego kursa. "And when he comes to an exam, as in a drawing or lottery, he chooses a ticket for himself on which there are two or three questions from the entire course." nu popal neschastlivyj bilet. (19) [23] A-No inogda byvaet ob"ektivno nu popal "But sometimes, objectively, it happens, well, you get an unlucky ticket."

(20) [16] B - ékzamen - nekaja fortuna. "An exam is a kind of fortune."

Helping fellow students by sharing answers, either by copying during a written exam or sharing information while preparing an oral answer for the question on the bilet one has chosen, is technically against university rules, and therefore ("dis honest"). t"). However, However , since most exams (other than entrance entranc e exams exam s nechestno ("dishones to the university) are not a matter of competition, acting porjadochno and helping helpi ng one's on e's fellow students, rather than chestno and not helping, helpin g, is generally consid c onsidered ered by student stu dentss the more mor e socially socia lly acceptable accept able behavior. behav ior. Returning to Palmer's (1996) recasting of Langacker's (1987) distinction as the betwee bet weenn a profile profil e and a base, such that a semantic semanti c relation relati on can be thou t hought ght of as relation profiled against a culturally modeled base, we can see how various cultural models mo dels provide prov ide different different bases according to which metaphors, metapho rs, as profiles, may be interpreted and evaluated as positive or negative (table 1). This overview


199

of the metaphors for chestnost' and porjadochnost' reveals interesting parallels with what Lakoff (1996) calls the 'strict father' and 'nurturant parent' models of morality; however, detailed comparison with them must remain a subject for future study. some aspects profiled by the metaphors

chestnost'

porjadochnost'

planar planar / / broad space fuzzy boundaries multidirectional multidirectional motion flexible human complex consider many interpersonal factors/relations

realm of existence: existence: type of order/rules order/rules involved: type of behavior behavior involved:

linear (straight) clearly bounded unidirectional motion rigid ideal simple follow the ideal rule

some of the the bases bases

evaluation of metaphors metaphors for porjadochnost' chestnost' and within these bases

spatial: force-dynamic:

cultural model of discourse cultural model of action action

tell the truth (respect others in your your group) act individually conforming act with respect to others to the institutional rules in-group possibly possibly rude polite po-chelovecheski (human/ officially proper humane) important for children children important for adults adults

cultural models of politeness politeness cultural model of evaluating evaluating behavior behavior cultural models of age ageappropriate behavior do own work, don't cheat cultural model of exam examtaking (student perspective) (students') cultural model of irrelevant exam as lottery cultural models of relations relations to authority (nonauthority perspective)

help others in your group get through exams why not help others win too? Ne donosi!

("Don't report"/ don't squeal on others, esp. in-group)

and porjadochnost' porjadochnost' profiled Table 1 Metaphors for chestnost' profiled against the bases of chestnost' and various cultural models

While Wh ile recogniz ing the role of of metaphor in our understanding of abstract concepts is one way of enriching semantic analysis, acknowledging how metaphorical and other cultural models interrelate can take the study of semantics even further toward its "mess y" side. As A s Palmer (1996:292) states, "Most "Mos t linguistic usages and discourses exist somewhere on a continuum from conventional, mutually pres pr esup uppo pose sedd and trad tr aditi ition onall allyy situat sit uated ed mean me anin ings gs to m eani ea ning ngss emer em erge gent nt in uniq un ique ue confluences of society, culture, history, and discourse itself." The study of this

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relationship between metaphorical conceptualizations of abstract domains, such as moral categories, and how they are contextualized with respect to different cultural models can give us further insight into meaning as something both situated and emergent. Some cultural models of behavior are more relevant and prominent in speakers' minds in certain situations than in others. As Shore (1996:313) expresses it, "the mind is best thought of as having a polyphonic structure, and... knowledge of cultural models is always layered as different kinds of knowledge, at different degrees of distance from focal awareness." How the sSTRAIGHT, for example, is interpreted in a given context I metaphor CHESTNOST' will depend in part on the cultural model according to which it is being framed: as "proper", conforming to (metaphorically STRAIGHT) institutional rules of behavior; or as "rude", according to the model of polite behavior which frames honest speech as metaphorically STRAIGHT and RIGID, and therefore capable of injuring someone in a metaphorical (emotional) sense just as a straight, rigid object (like a knife) could injure someone in a physical sense. The differing spatial/force-dynamic gestalts profiled metaphorically through the roots chestn- (straight, bounded, rigid, etc.) and porjadochn- (broad, fuzzy boundaries, flexible) might be thought of as distinct "foundational schemas" (see Shore 1996) in Russian culture, general patterns which organize or link up "families" of related cultural models. Shore (1996:53) notes that the image schematic patterns discussed by Johnson and Lakoff, such as CENTER-PERIPHERY, CONTAINER (inside-outside), and PATH (source-path-goal) may be instantiated in numerous models shared by many members of a group, and so can provide coherence to a shared worldview. Similarly, the linear/rigid and broadspace/flexible patterns discussed here are repeatedly highlighted as contrasting metaphoric characterizations of various culturally-modeled domains. 5.

Conclusion:

Approaches advocated in this study

Even this brief analysis has hopefully shown that a combination of approaches in the study of metaphor and semantics can provide richer insights. Future stages of this project will involve analysis of conversation-interviews with American students, and ultimately the comparison between different types of cultural models of honesty employed by Americans and Russians. The present project has tried to focus attention on the following areas as a way of studying metaphors as profiles against the bases of cultural models. One area is the analysis of metaphorical expressions in context, especially in one of the most prototypical contexts of language use, that of two people talking - the conversational dyad. One topic to be explored further is how the profile/base approach can be applied to the study of creative versus conventional metaphoric expressions within a given body of discourse. A hypothesis to be


201

explored is that a more creative expression highlights a new framing of the topic under discussion, thereby giving it new salience, and allowing it to serve as a new profile against the base of what has already been discussed. Another approach advocated here is to integrate the study of metaphorical expressions from actual discourse data with what is being said in between the metaphorical expressions to help reveal the cultural models of which they are a part. In connection with this, it is also important to distinguish between what is being said versus what is tacit, assumed cultural knowledge (the bases against which semantic relations are being profiled). This assumed knowledge may be made explicit if, for example, someone from outside the cultural group is present (such as the American interviewer with the Russian students), and the speaker is aware of the information gap between them (perhaps prompted by the inter viewer' s questions). Future research in this project will give special consideration to which cultural notions and practices are considered by interviewees to be more versus less conventionally known, and how this factor relates to interviewees' use of metaphorical expressions. Finally, this study advocates further research on the relations between verbal and non-verbal (such as gestural) expression, in part because of how gesture can offer additional evidence of metaphorical thought. Future analysis of the videotaped conversation-interviews will concern the extent to which gestural data support the reality of the underlying conceptual metaphors proposed on the basis of the verbal, spoken data. Notes

I gratefully acknowledge the comments received from members of the audience when an earlier version of this work was presented at the Fifth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference in Amsterdam in July, 1997. I am also grateful to Gerard Steen, Ray Gibbs, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on an earlier draft. Address for correspondence: Dept. of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA (e-mail: [email protected]). 1. 2. 3.

4.

In the transliterated Russian words, the spelling ch represents a voiceless palatal affricate (as in English spelling), they is a voiced palatal glide, and the apostrophe indicates that the preceding consonant is palatalized. This research was supported by a Short-Term Travel Grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). Numbers in square brackets indicate the interview number; the letters A and B indicate the two different speakers in each interview; metaphorical expressions are highlighted in bold face; text in square brackets aligned vertically between two speakers indicates overlap; slashes (/) indicate restarts by the speaker; given the length of the examples, translations, rather than morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, have been provided. Speech co-occuring with relevant gestures will be underlined, with curly brackets { } placed around the speech that aligns with the main "stroke" portion of each gesture. Words

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5.

in parentheses, unnecessary in the context of the actual discourse, have been added to make the relevant references clear. The question mark in parentheses indicates an unintelligible word.

References

Basso, Keith H. 1976. '"Wise Words' of the Western Apache: Metaphor and Semantic Theory". Meaning in Anthropology, ed. by K. Basso, & H. Selby, 93-121. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Calbris, Geneviève. 1990. The Semiotics of French Gestures. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana Unuversity Press. Cienki, Alan. 1998. "Metaphoric Gestures and Some of their Relations to Verbal Metaphoric Expressions". Discourse and Cognition: Bridging the Gap, ed. by Jean-Pierre Koenig, 189-204. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI. 1998. "STRAIGHT: An Image Schema and its Metaphorical Extensions". Cognitive Linguistics 9. 107-149 Emanatian, Michele. 1996. "Conversational and Intellectual Paths". Paper presented at the conference "Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language n", Buffalo, N.Y. Grady, Joe. 1998. "A Reassessment of Metaphors for Mental Processes". Discourse and Cognition: Bridging the Gap, ed. by Jean-Pierre Koenig, 205-218. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI. Ivanov, Vjacheslav, & Vladimir Toporov. 1965. Slavjanskie jazykovye modelirujushchie semioticheskie sistemy [Semiotic Modeling Systems of the Slavic Languages]. Moscow: Nauka. Keesing, Roger. 1979. "Linguistic Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge: Some Doubts and Speculations". American Anthropologist 81. 14-36. Lakoff, George. 1996. Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , & Zoltán Kövecses. 1987. "The Cognitive Model of Anger Inherent in American English". Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. by Dorothy Holland, & Naomi Quinn, 195-221. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 1: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. McNeill, David. 1992. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Palmer, Gary B. 1996. Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.


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Quinn, Naomi. 1987. "Convergent Evidence for a Cultural Model of American Marriage". Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. by Holland, & Quinn. 173-192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reddy, Michael J. [1979]/1993. "The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in our Language about Language". Metaphor and Thought, second edition, ed. by Andrew Ortony, 164-201. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shore, Bradd. 1996. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sweetser, Eve. 1987a. "The Definition of lie: An Examination of the Folk Models Underlying a Semantic Prototype". Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. by Dorothy Holland, & Naomi Quinn, 43-66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987b. "Metaphorical Models of Thought and Speech: A Comparison of Historical Directions and Metaphorical Mappings in the Two Domains". Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, ed. by J. Aske et al., 446-459. Berkeley, Calif.: Berkeley Linguistics

Society. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. "English Metaphors for Language: Motivations, Conventions, and Creativity". Poetics Today 13. 705-724. Talmy, Leonard. 1983. "How Language Structures Space". Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research, and Application, ed. by Herbert L. Pick, & Linda P. Acredolo, 225-282. New York: Plenum Press. 1988. "Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition". Cognitive Science 12.49-100. Van Leeuwen-Turnovcová, Jirina. 1991. "KRUM und DREHEN im Kultur paradigma der ORDNUNG". Znakolog 3. 131-66. 1994. "TAUB, BLIND, STUMM und DUMM: Zur Semantik der Abweichung vom Gewohnten". Zeitschrift für Slawistik 39. 545-59. Vanparys, Johan. 1995. "A Survey of Metalinguistic Metaphors". By Word of Mouth: Metaphor, Metonymy and Linguistic Action in a Cognitive Perspective, ed. by Louis Goossens et al. 1-34. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:

John Benjamins

CONGRUENCE BY DEGREE ON THE RELATION BETWEEN METAPHOR & CULTURAL MODELS

MICHELE EMANATIAN

1.

Introduction

This paper explores the plausible idea that the conceptual linkings in conventional metaphors should occur elsewhere in the conventional imaginative repertoire.1 If systematic, everyday metaphor provides us with a way to think about something through mapping it to another conceptual domain, wouldn't it make sense for the same mapping to be found in our extra-linguistic symbolic lives? Claims in the literature notwithstanding (Lakoff 1987; Quinn 1991; Kövecses 1990), I believe that we really do not yet know much about how metaphors which serve as schemas fit with non-metaphorical cultural models. Conclusions are, of course, dependent on definitions of cultural models, on where one model is felt to leave off and the other begin. We know that there may be both linguistic (metaphorical, metonymic, grammatical) and non-linguistic aspects to the shared schemas of a culture, those received yet emergent and mutable patterns we may absorb, use, change, reject, and pass on. In such cases, do we count the linguistic aspects as a separate cultural model, and the other aspects (for example, action sets, kinesthetic schemas, visual image models, etc. - Shore 1996) as models in their own right? Or does it make more sense to speak of a single cultural model, which is manifest in a variety of different 'modalities'? As always, how we slice things depends on our purposes. In this paper I will sometimes speak as if metaphor (the type of linguistic model I am interested in here) is part of a 'larger' cultural model, and at other times speak as if it constitutes a model separate from other models for the same thing. What matters for present purposes is the extent to which the mappings found in metaphor resemble, echo, or differ from the mappings found elsewhere. My goal is to argue that the relation of metaphor to cultural models varies, and that no simple statement about its priority, centrality, or epiphenomenality will suffice. To this end, I would like to draw attention to one of the relationships

between a metaphorical model and non-metaphorical cultural models, that of congruence. The cross-domain mapping of a conceptual metaphor and the crossdomain mapping that might be observable in other symbolic resources available

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to members of a culture may be congruous in that they may exhibit parallelism, harmony, or appropriateness - a correspondingness in character. Congruence across mappings will be illustrated through the specific example of lust and sex in Chagga, a Bantu language of Tanzania. Chagga metaphors for lust and sex will be shown to be congruous with non-linguistic symbols and rituals of sexual coming of age. The expanses of congruence, however, mask points of incongruence: there is some measure of discord if the fine details of mappings are taken into account. 2.

Metaphors of sex & lust in the Chagga language I would now like to illustrate the complexity that

I feel is common in congruent relationships between metaphorical models and non-metaphorical, especially non-linguistic, models for the same target domain or concept. Before we examine the systematic conceptual metaphors for lust and sex that are used by Chagga speakers, the limitations of this study must be made explicit. The data and native speaker commentary were elicited from a single male speaker outside the Chagga speech community, over the course of several years. They are therefore both sex-skewed and de-contextualized. I can make no observations about the kinds of situations which provoke these expressions, about the use or appropriateness in encounters, nor about expected responses to them. I cannot vouch for the representativeness among Chagga men of this speaker's means of expressing his feelings of lust and about sex. I do, however, believe that the body of metaphors analyzed here constitute a conventional Chagga perspec tive on sex and lust, while raising interesting questions for further research. On first glance, the similarity with English is dramatic. There is a very small number of source domains, and these English has too: heat, eating, and to a lesser extent, animals. These are systematically employed in expressing lustful feeling and in articulating sentiments about sexual matters, such as assessments of the qualities of potential partners. As in English, inferences may be drawn about the target concepts (e.g. a sexual partner) on the basis of the understanding of the source concepts (e.g. a type of food). We can begin with the domain of eating. In Chagga copulation is metaphori cal eating. For a man to say ngikundiimlya, as in (1), is to express the desire to copulate with a woman. (1)

[I want to eat her] = "I want to have intercourse with her." 2 ngí

kundíímlya

Men feel hungry, that is, lustful; they look for snacks; enjoy feasting; salivate at the thought of good food; and feel satiated - all in the sexual domain. They crave

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207

tasty, or sweet, partners, and if they find one, may never have to eat again. Consider (2) through (12). (2)

ngi'ichuo njáa (ia mndu mka)

= "I'm desirous (of a woman)."

(3)

ngí ndépfûlá wundo wóó lyo

(4)

ngí kém'meTia ma 0ta

[I feel hunger (for a woman)]

[I'm going to look for a little something to eat] = "I'm going to find a sexual partner."

[I swallow saliva for/because of her] = "I really desire her (as a sex partner)."

(5)

kengíonjía hó, máe

(6)

ngém 'sokiâ châ kándo

(7)

nékewûtsu

(8)

ngâ 'm 'lyâ ngéchîkââ ngûé sepfo

(9)

ngâ m 'lya ngéchîpfâ pfo

(10)

ékelo ta ?

[Does she taste good/sweet?]

(11)

nékeloøta châ 'sûkâri 'ûki

[She tastes sweet/good as sugar honey ]

(12)

ngalo tio

= "Let me try you out, sexually."

[Give me just a taste (of) there, woman]

[I'll descend on her like a feast] = "I'll have sex with her enthusiastically and exhaustively." [She satisfies] = "She's sexually satisfying to me/men." [If I eat her, I won't have to eat again] = "If I have sex with her, I'll be satisfied forever." [If I eat her, I' 11 live forever] = "If I have sex with her, I'll be satisfied forever." = "Is she a good sexual partner?" = "She's a good sexual partner."

[I was "tasted good", i.e., I experienced sweet taste] = "I've been exquisitely satisfied, sexually."

Utterances like (8) and (9) show that it is possible to use the source domain to reason about the target domain. The structural relationship, of ingesting food and thereby feeling satiated, is maintained in the target domain of sex. The second conceptual metaphor for the sexual sphere in Chagga is a heat metaphor. Desirable sexual attributes are correlated with heat, so that a warm woman, one who roasts or burns, as in (13)-(15), or who has a "heaven of fire", as in (16), is highly desirable.

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(13) (14) (15)

nékeókya nékehâ náwo m'rike

[She roasts] [She burns] [She has warmth] = "She is sexually desirable."

(16)

náwo

[She has a "heaven" of fire] = "She has desirable sexual attributes (skills, natural endowments, interests)." 'ûshângu lo mo

'heaven' is colloquial and euphemistic for 'vagina'; it is a shortened form of the phrase ushanguni lo ruwa 'stand before god', lit., 'in the face of god'. ruwa 'god' also means 'sun'.) Sexy women are metaphorical heat-producers, such as ovens or fires (17), which give off smoke (18). Cold women are not of interest (19). (Ushangu

(17)

kyambuya rikó lilya

[Look at that oven] = "Look at that sexy woman."

(18)

ngi wóni m'tsu

(19)

[She's cold] = "She lacks desirable sexual attributes."

[I see smoke] = "I can tell she's sexually exciting." nékechólóliá

It should be noted that examples thus far are from a man's point of view; this is an artefact of fieldwork which I will return to below. The third source domain for sexual matters in Chagga is animals. Certain kinds of animals map metaphorically to potential partners with a variety of sexual attributes. See examples (20)-(23). (20)

ni kite

(21)

kapfó

(22)

kiambuya

(23)

apââ 'tawó ngileyetsi

= "She is promiscuous."

[She is a dog]

[How are you, my bull?] = "How are you, my stud?" 'iâko ?

[Look at that rooster] = "Look at that sexy young guy." lyô

[Wow, a fattened heifer] = "Wow, a sexy young woman!"


209

For instance, framed sexually a woman may be a dog, meaning she's promiscuous ; or a man may be a bull, meaning he's a 'substantial' male lover. A rooster is a young, good-looking man, while a fattened heifer is a nubile young woman. Sexual partners are linked to animals in these and other expressions, via certain attributes, which are themselves not mentioned. Animal behaviors, such as stalking prey, may also be ascribed to people, once they are framed sexually, as in (24). (24)

ni kí kí ûowélia ihâ ?

[What are you stalking there?] = "Who are you pursuing sexually?"

Note the coherence between the heat metaphor and the eating metaphor. In each, the sexual attributes of a woman are conceptualized as perceptible features: heat and taste. Cooked food is, of course, hot. There is also some coherence between the animal metaphors and the eating metaphor. Stalking is hunting behavior, engaged in by both humans and some kinds of animals to obtain sustenance. In both metaphors the desired person is framed as ultimately being consumed as food. A comparison with the metaphorical 'structuring' of the sexual domain in as many languages as data is readily available for, indicates that the domains of eating and heat, at least, are cross-culturally common as metaphorical sources for sexual feeling, behavior, and attributes. It is not common to find sexual feelings, attributes, or behaviors metaphorically conceived as activities like farming or grooming, or as qualities like wetness or bendability (Emanatian 1995, 1996). Observations about pan-cultural aspects of metaphorization are important and provocative in this era in which cultural relativism has attained such prominence. Yet, as has been argued elsewhere, it is equally important to note that there is conventionality here; that is, there is cultural specificity to the metaphor: in how the domains are framed; in their productivity; in the fine details. 3.

Metaphorical correspondences outside language?

Returning now to questions of the relationship between metaphor and wider cultural models, it must be acknowledged that in Chagga conventional metaphors do not exhaust the notions of sexual attraction, sexual desirability, lust, the goals/purposes/functions of sex, etc. available to members of the culture. Other

dimensions of culturally grounded understandings of this domain might also include (at least) aesthetic values; notions of responsibility; of social appropriate ness and normalcy (e.g. whether 'rape' is accepted or not; what actions count as 'rape'; whether multiple partners are sanctioned; etc.); gender distinctions and roles; where sexual power resides; cosmological understandings about the

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regeneration of life; beliefs about sexual maturation and what being an adult is; the symbolization and enactment of these in artefact and ritual; the institutionalization of some of these ideas in child-rearing practices, law, and religion; and so on. (One culture may or may not give salience to dimensions of a cultural model that are quite prominent in another; for example, conventional visual images are very important in American cultural models of sex, but this does not seem to be the case in Chagga.) The degree of harmoniousness between the metaphors and non-linguistic aspects of the Chagga 'take' on things sexual (the latter as recorded and interpreted in Moore's 1977 ethnography) is quite striking. In the symbolism of ritual events and artifacts there are correspondences between heat, eating, and animals, on the one hand, and sex, on the other hand. These correspondences are outside language. These specific linkings of sex with non-sex are widely established in Chagga culture. Moore describes cosmological correspondences between life and death, between food and sex: "there was a symbolic and ritual preoccupation with food and sex, with eating and fertility as the basic means of preventing death, both immediate and eternal, and perpetuating life" (1977:47). The body was a container, in both feeding and reproduction. Feeding in the mouth maintained life, "feeding" in the vagina in intercourse produced new life. Aspects of traditional daily life reflected these particular culturally significant correspondences, and to some extent this is still the case. Bananas, a staple food on Kilimanjaro, are proscribed in raw form for adults. Married women and men eat only bananas which have been peeled and cooked, or circumcised and having been sexually "in the fire". Children eat only raw or unpeeled roasted bananas. The "separation of sexual life of the generations was extended to food" (Moore 1977:51). Pregnant women were not supposed to eat bananas, nor drink beer, as these were and are associated with men, symbolically and economically. In ritual we find conventional symbolic representations of the order of the universe. Part of the instruction to Chagga boys undergoing the circumcision and initiation ritual was a likening of the fetus to a trapped or arrow-pierced animal struggling to get free. Intercourse was likened to hunting (and thus the achieve ment of procreative manhood). Initiate boys were allowed to "hunt" birds, plants, and gentle mammals (such as gazelles) with bows and arrows, referring to their prey as "elephant", "buffalo", "leopard", or "lion" (Moore 1977:59). After initiation there was a licentious period, in which boys were allowed to roam in groups and rape any woman they chose (1977:60). In the female circumcision and initiation ritual, small animals, such as grasshoppers and tadpoles, were captured. "Hunting had the implication of seeking out progeny, a metaphor for procreation". 3 The ritual also included


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instruction to the girls in which a firebrand stood for the penis, ashes for the vulva, and embers for the seeds in a woman's body out of which children grow (Moore 1977:62). Freshly initiated girls, when betrothed, were traditionally sequestered for three months, during which time they were "lavishly fed" (1977:61, 63). Both women and cows were and are considered a man's property. In ritual symbolism, then, there are mappings between sex and food, between the search for a mate and hunting, and between sex and heat or fire. The mappings are parallel to the metaphorical correspondences found within contemporary colloquial Chagga usage. As has been noted by others, this sort of congruence contributes to an outsider's sense of how a culture works (Strauss & Quinn 1994; Shore 1996). Yet, a closer look at these symbolic associations reveals a measure of discord: the congruence between linguistic/conceptual mappings and extralinguistic/conceptual mappings is a matter of degree. First, the symbolism in the boys' rituals is somewhat different in fine detail from the symbolism in the girls' rituals. The boys hunt for sexual partners, akin to talk of stalking and the metaphorical search for something to eat. But the girls are hunting for progeny - in contrast to the metaphors described to this point. Cosmology shows a similar difference of perspective along gender lines: according to Moore, "feeding" in the vagina produces new life. Yet in the metaphors we have examined, it is the man who is fed in intercourse. Interestingly, the male informant on which the metaphor study is based offered two expressions used by Chagga women which shed some light on this seeming incongruence. Consider (25) and (26). (25)

ngimóangari

[I'm thirsty] = "I want to have more intercourse."

(26)

napfú líé

[She's searching for milk] = "She's 'in heat'; she's desirous of sex." má

Yuwa

A woman may express a desire for sexual intercourse by saying she's 'thirsty' ; this functions as a plea that intercourse not be interrupted (as it might be to avoid conception). A woman may also 'search for milk', as does a female animal in heat. It is relevant that semen in Chagga is 'male milk'. Male milk and female blood combine in the child (Moore 1977:62). (Even today new mothers are given a potent mixture of cow's blood and butter, called mlaso.) There is reason to believe that this thirst metaphor is an expression not of feminine lust, but rather of the desire to conceive a child. The status of a woman in Chagga society increases as she bears children (particularly if they are male). The existence of these

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expressions alongside the progeny-oriented initiation rituals suggests an interesting difference of perspective among Chagga women and men, and may not in fact be incongruence (of the sort we have been discussing) at all. A comparison of the symbolic associations for heat with the metaphorical meaning of heat in the sexual domain provides a second instance of partial incongruence. The avoidance by unmarried men and women of roasted bananas bananas that have been "in the fire" - accords with the contact of male with hot female in the metaphors. In the girls' initiation ritual, however, it is the penis which is the hot object (a firebrand), while the vulva are only ashes. The 'product' of conception is figured here too, as embers. Again, it is conspicuous that conception is not part of the system of linguistic-conceptual metaphors collected from a male consultant. It seems, then, that the striking parallelism between conceptual metaphors for lust/sex and extra-linguistic symbolism in Chagga is in actuality threaded with incongruity. To my mind, though, the existence of disparity does not erase the basic congruity within these different parts of a cultural model. We might want to say instead, for instance, that the conception-oriented metaphorical and symbolic correspondences are part of a different cultural model, one more available and useful to females, and created by females, in this highly gender-differentiated society. The sexual domain is one area where there are clear differences of perspective according to gender; where there are different construals of the whole ensemble of experiences (and their offshoot concepts) of life-desire-sex procreation-death. Given Chagga social structure, we might expect there to be two different cultural models and two different systems of conceptual metaphor. A complementary study of situated use of metaphor, and in particular, of women's ways of talking about sexual matters, may well undo apparent instances of incongruence between linguistic and non-linguistic mappings. In any case it remains remarkable that the same non-sexual domains are drawn from as sources for both symbol and metaphor. This larger scale resonance does not disappear upon the discovery of smaller scale incongruence, such as we have for the metaphor and symbol of heat. 4.

Discussion

The Chagga example shows a high but not total degree of congruence between metaphor and non-linguistic symbolism; it involves complex cultural models in which metaphor is only one 'constituent' or dimension. In looking more generally at the issue of the relatedness of metaphorical and non-metaphorical models, the notion of a scale of congruence will be useful to us. At one end of the scale, we find congruence across many dimensions of a cultural model, metaphorical and otherwise. If a model is general enough, it may


213

have broad applicability across many target domains, cross-cutting other cultural models. Such is the case with "foundational schémas". An example is the modularity schema, discussed by Shore (1996) and Martin (who calls it "flexible specificity", 1994). In the contemporary U.S., the modularity schema is manifested as a design strategy underlying real physical structures like furniture, shopping malls, and workbooks; more abstract realities, like work or the immune system; and highly abstract concepts that are largely our creations, such as "lifestyle", or knowledge itself. A conceptual metaphor, Adaptable Is Flexible, is one of the many tentacles of the modular foundational schema (Emanatian, in prep.). Contemporary flexibility - metaphorical and otherwise - is often understood as modular, with salient part-whole structure and notions of fit and interchangeability. Metaphorical objects, such as a body of law, a child care policy, or a personal identity, may be modularly flexible, h flexible investment strategy, for example, achieves its flexibility (bendability) - its adaptability - via its modular structure, its ever-shiftable and largely interchangeable parts. The wide ranging application of the modularity schema in American culture is paralleled by the increasingly common association between the modular brand of metaphorical flexibility and the highly desirable American trait of adaptability. That is, the broadly relevant cultural model of modularity is echoed in a prevalent linguistic-conceptual metaphor. High degrees of congruence would seem to obtain between metaphor and other aspects of cultural models in the case of foundational schémas. While other instances of foundational schémas have been mentioned in the literature (Indian purity and pollution, American self-reliance - Strauss & Quinn 1994; Samoan mana - Shore 1989), the relation between conceptual metaphor and these 'larger' cultural models has yet to be systematically studied. At the other end of the congruence scale, we find co-existence of contradic tory cultural schémas, that is, incongruence. Although such co-existence may be peaceful (Kay 1987; Turner & Fauconnier 1995), recent research has highlighted the "collision" of contradictory models (Quinn 1996; Shore 1996; Strauss & Quinn 1994), raising the questions of how, in a given context, we select one model from among a set, and of how we deal with conflict when more than one is evoked. Similarly, within linguistic studies of metaphor, attention has been drawn to varying degrees of coherence among metaphors for the same concept (within a culture). (I use "congruence", rather than extending the term "coherence" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), "co-alignment" or "co-orientation" (Sweetser 1993), to give prominence to relations of harmoniousness or correspondingness, and to de-focus the notion of a logical or orderly relationship that "coherence" can connote.) As Johnson points out, for example, "... our most basic concepts, such as law, freedom, and rights are defined by multiple, often inconsistent conceptual

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MICHELE EMANATIAN

metaphors..." ( 1995:162). Conflicting entailments of related metaphors have been drawn out, for example, in considering the war metaphor for argument and a hypothetical dance metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), or the different metaphors for thought within analytic philosophy (Lakoff & Johnson 1999). (See also Lakoff 1996a, 1996b; and Pesmen 1991 on prohibitions against mixed metaphor.) As metaphor analyses become more socialized - in the sense of being broadened to encompass the fuller cultural models the metaphors are part of - the issues of coherence, selection, and conflict resolution are likely to become more salient and more interesting. On the scale of congruence, then, we have at one extreme high congruence, as in the case of a foundational schema. At the other, we have low congruence, as in the case of colliding cultural models for 'the same thing'. In-between, I am claiming, lie the perhaps more abundant instances of partial congruence, such as we have seen illustrated by the domain of lust and sex in Chagga. Of course, field research into ways women talk about their sexual experience might reveal a metaphoric system in perfect congruence with the non-linguistic models underlying girls' initiation practice and beliefs about conception; then again, it might not. My own cautious inclination would be not to assume congruence until 'the facts' are in. We might wonder whether there might ever be a relationship of noncongruence between metaphor and cultural model, that is, not where the mappings are in conflict, but rather where they miss each other entirely. Non-congruence would seem to be an accurate description for the two limiting cases: either where there is little or no metaphor to a cultural model (consider the American schema of going to a laundromat), or where a metaphor comes close to exhausting a cultural model. With highly abstract notions, such as that of logical or coherent thought or discourse, there appears to be little to our cultural understanding that is not metaphorical. For example, it is difficult to define coherent thought without using path and journey metaphors, such as direct, straightforward, ox follows (Emanatian 1996). As Grady (1995) puts it, [C]ertain metaphors are so deeply entrenched in our thought processes that ... they can hardly be the basis for expressing novel conceptualizations ... [but rather are] part of our conceptual architecture. It is probable that many of these 'invisible' metaphors are based on generic-is-specific type mappings from physical experience to more abstract concepts, which may actually have little if any structure in the absence of the metaphors, (p. 15; italics mine)


215

In either of these limiting cases, then, a relationship of non-congruence seems to obtain between metaphor and the larger schematic patterns of understanding provided by a culture. Again, the significance of the scale of congruence is that the one thing we know (to my mind) about the relation between metaphorical cultural models and non-metaphorical cultural models is that it is highly variable. Claims that metaphorical understandings are primary or central - or epiphenomenal - are at best premature. 5.

Concluding remarks

I have tried to argue in this paper that the relation of conventional and systematic conceptual metaphor to non-linguistic cultural models is not simple, nor can it be specified in advance of looking at the details of particular cases. To this end we have examined rather closely an instance of partial congruence across different aspects of conventional conceptualizations, metaphorical and otherwise. Partial congruence across modalities should not be surprising to metaphor analysts, since it is paralleled by the partial coherence found across the metaphors themselves. In the case of Chagga metaphors of lust and sex, the fact of partial congruence with ritual and symbolism is mirrored by the degrees of coherence in the metaphors. Points of coherence across the eating, heat and animal metaphors have already been mentioned, but there is incoherence as well. For instance, while a woman's desirable sexual attributes are mapped to pleasurable sensory experience in both the eating and heat metaphors (sweet tastiness and warmth), the basic ontologies of these metaphors are partly at odds: in the one case the woman is an oven that can roast food, while in the other she herself is food. Another example is the coherence-with-incoherence of the animal metaphors and the Sex Is Eating metaphor, mentioned earlier: both animals and humans are known to hunt for other animals, in order to consume them for food. Yet not all the humananimal correspondences pattern like this; for example, neither bulls nor men hunt cows. Also, some of the animals that appear in the metaphors are neither hunted nor consumed for food in real life (e.g. dogs). I have speculated about the extent to which 'cross-modal' congruence is a ubiquitous phenomenon. In close studies of how spontaneous gesture is related to the speech it accompanies, McNeill (1992) and others have found that metaphori cal gestures often express apart of the speaker's overall conception which is not being conveyed in the accompanying speech. There is a relationship of complementarity between them. The Chagga example discussed here shows a high but not total degree of congruence between metaphor and non-linguistic symbolism; it involves complex cultural models in which metaphor is only one 'constituent' or dimension. Other, limiting cases of overlap between metaphor and

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cultural models suggest that we cannot generalize about how exhaustive a role metaphor plays in the conventional schematization of concepts. The somewhat muddier analyses resulting from investigating congruence in metaphor and non-metaphorical models can nevertheless be of value. For example, the Chagga women's thirst metaphor may be put into perspective and made more intelligible to us through the examination of traditional female initiation practices. The partial congruence found across metaphorical vs. nonlinguistic conceptualizations of sexual activity in Chagga may spur us to explore the women's side of the story. As Corradi Fiumara has said, "To make explicit the ramifications of our dominant metaphors is to engage in a practice which brings us inexorably close to our inner life and which thus enhances unforeseen shifts in our axes of culture. The general picture changes: from clusters of changeless talking heads to a historical community of living creatures" (1995:85). Acknowledgments I appreciate helpful comments from the editors and two anonymous reviewers. Special thanks go to David Delaney and Alan Cienki, for many productive exchanges; to Alan again, for inviting me to the theme session, "On the Place of Metaphors in Cognitive and Cultural Models"; and to Joe Grady, for graciously delivering my paper at the conference in Amsterdam. Notes 1. See Johnson (1987) and Shore (1996) on how elements of thought and culture can be both conventional and imaginative. 2. Chagga (Chaga, KiChagga) is spoken by about 70,000 people, on Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I describe the KiVunjo dialect, of Central Kilimanjaro. For the examples I have used an orthography common in Africanist linguistics. Exceptions include: T for a retroflex flap, #t for a slightly fricated alveolar approximant, and r for an alveolar trill. High tone ' , falling tone Ä , and downstep ' are marked; low tone is left unmarked. Following the Chagga is a literal translation in brackets, while an approximation to the conveyed meaning appears below in double quotes. These latter glosses are often infelicitous or awkward, but a free translation into English is avoided because these sometimes employ a different metaphor, making for confusion. 3. Note that Moore's use of "metaphor" is broader than mine. I prefer to keep metaphor and symbolism distinct, in part because not all symbols are cross-domain mappings. Some may be metonymically based (see Shore 1996), as for example, the use of a lion's mane to stand for bravery (thought also to be a lion's trait).


217

References

Corradi Fiumara, Gemma. 1995. The Metaphoric Process: Connections between Language and Life. New York: Routledge. Emanatian, Michèle. 1995. "Metaphor and the Expression of Emotion: The Value of Cross-Cultural Perspectives". Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10. 163182. 1996. "Everyday Metaphors of Lust and Sex in Chagga". Ethos 24. 1-42. 1996. "Intellectual and Conversational Paths". Conference presentation, CSDL n, Buffalo, N.Y., April 1996. I n preparation. Why We All Want Flexibility: A Study of a Rhizomic Metaphor.

Grady, Joe. 1995. Special Field Exam, UC Berkeley Linguistics Dept. Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Reason and Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1995. "Introduction: Why Metaphor Matters to Philosophy". Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10. 157-162. Kay, Paul. 1987. "Linguistic Competence and Folk Theories of Language. Two English Hedges". Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed.by D. Holland, & N. Quinn, 67-77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Kövecses, Zoltan. 1990. Emotion Concepts. New York: Springer-Verlag. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1996a. Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1996b. "Sorry, I'm Not Myself Today: The Metaphor System for Conceptu alizing the Self'. Spaces, Worlds, and Grammar, ed. by G. Fauconnier, & E. Sweetser, 91-123. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. s & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , & Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Martin, Emily. 1994. Flexible Bodies. Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS. Boston: Beacon Press. McNeill, David. 1992. Hand and Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moore, Sally Falk. 1977. The Chagga of Kilimanjaro. Pt.l of The Chagga and Meru of Tanzania, by S. Falk Moore, & P. Puritt. Ethnographic Survey of Africa, East Central Africa 18, ed. by W.M. O'Barr. London: International Africa Institute. Pesmen, Dale. 1991. "Reasonable and Unreasonable Worlds; Some Expectation s of Coherence in Culture Implied by the Prohibition of Mixed Metaphor".

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MICHELE EMANATIAN Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology,

ed. by J.W.

Fernandez, 213-243. Stanford: Stanford University Quinn, Naomi. 1991. "The Cultural Basis of Metaphor". Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology, ed. by J.W. Fernandez, 56-93. Stanford: Stanford University 1996. "Culture and Contradiction: The Case of Americans Reasoning About Marriage". Ethos 24. 391-425. Shore, Bradd. 1989. "Mana and tapu": Developments in Polynesian Ethnology, ed. by A. Howard, & R. Borofsky, 137-173. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. 1996. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. New York: Oxford University Strauss, Claudia, & Naomi Quinn. 1994. "A Cognitive/Cultural Anthropology". Assessing Cultural Anthropology, ed. by R. Borofsky, 284-297. New York: McGraw-Hill. Sweetser, Eve. 1993. "'Inside/Outside, Upside Down' - Co-Orientation of Metaphorical Mappings in Literary and Everyday Language". Ms. Linguis tics Dept., UC Berkeley. Turner, Mark, & Gilles Fauconnier. 1995. "Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression". Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10. 183-204.

SUBJECT INDEX A absolute metaphors, 15 abstract experiential domains, 47 abstract metaphorical meanings, 34 analogical reasoning, 72, 76, 77 analogy, 10, 12-14, 22, 43, 66-74, 76, 97, 111, 112, 114, 120, 185 B base, 2, 6, 191, 198,200,201 blended space, 103, 106, 107, 114, 115, 119,120 blending theory, 72, 101,102,110,120,121 bodily experience, 34, 47-49, 55, 148, 154 bodily orientation, 14 body-world interactions, 156 C Chagga, 206-212, 214-217 cognitive grammar, 95, 189-191, 202 cognitive linguistics, 5, 1,2,4-7, 10, 25, 26, 42-45, 55-59,65,99,101,123,124,128, 140, 145-147, 149, 153, 154, 156, 161, 163, 164, 187, 190,201,202 cognitive models, 15, 19, 121, 128, 140, 146, 153, 154, 162, 190 cognitive semantics, 22, 29, 34, 47, 55 cognitive topology, 38, 149 cognitive webs, 146 coherence, 63, 157,163,200,209,213-215, 217 comparison, 10, 19, 59, 65-74, 85, 95, 117, 134, 199, 200, 203, 209, 212 comparison statement, 68, 69, 71 complex metaphorical blends, 112 complex systems, 169, 170, 174-176, 179, 180 componential analysis, 35 comprehension, 3, 4, 38, 64, 66, 75, 76, 146, 162, 175 conceptual blending, 5, 6,72,101,107, 111, 120-123

conceptual integration, 5, 105, 106, 111, 113, 115, 118 conceptual metaphor, 7, 1-6, 13, 18, 20-22, 57-61, 66, 68, 73, 79, 81, 86, 89, 90, 97, 101, 102, 110, 112, 120, 121, 123, 145-148, 150, 151, 153, 158, 159, 161, 162, 174, 183, 205, 207, 212, 213, 215 conceptual metaphor theory, 58, 66, 89, 90, 101, 102, 110, 120, 121 conceptual representations, 147 CONDUIT metaphor, 99, 203 conflicting entailments, 214 congruence, 8, 6, 205, 206, 211-216 conventional language, 146, 151 conventional mappings, 91, 118 conventional metaphors, 80, 84, 98, 109-112,205,209 conventional symbolic representations, 210 conventionality, 44, 48, 80, 96, 209 Conyers, 126-128, 130, 133, 136, 138-141, 144 correlation metaphors, 89, 90, 93, 95-97, 122 counterdetermination, 21 counting metaphors, 7, 47 cultural model, 7, 115, 127, 140, 143, 153, 154, 167, 169-173, 185, 189, 191, 199, 200, 203, 205, 210, 212-214 D directionality, 17, 20, 95, 98, 110, 117,118, 120 discourse, 7, 6, 11, 25, 48, 49, 53, 55, 57-66, 68, 71, 73, 75, 76, 99, 108, 123-125, 129, 135, 136, 139, 140, 142, 144, 150, 151, 158, 195, 199-202, 214 domain hypothesis, 18 E eating metaphor, 209, 215 elicited vs. non-elicited accounts, 134-136 embodied experiences, 148, 150, 154, 155

220

SUBJECT INDEX

embodiment, 6, 29, 34, 153-156, 161, 163-166 emergent structure, 103, 107, 122 empirical research, 151, 161 entrenchment, 106 Evangelical Christians, 129 experiential motivation, 79, 81, 84, 97, 180 experimental research, 50, 51, 55, 72 external representations, 152, 156, 157 F face-to-face narratives, 133, 134, 137 foundational schema, 197, 213, 214 framing, 109, 115, 117,201 G gender, 210-212 generic space, 103, 104 H heat metaphor, 207, 209 I idealized native speaker, 3 idiomaticity, 148 idioms, 2, 44, 145, 148-151, 155, 159, 161, 164 image donor, 18, 22 image fields, 18-21 image recipient, 18, 22 image schemas, 47, 48, 124, 148, 151, 152, 154, 163 image-schematic structure, 148 implicit metaphors, 61, 64, 65 incongruence, 206, 211-213 individualistic view of cognition, 151 invariance principle, 38 L language and agency, 128 linguistic metaphor, 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 16, 21, 57-61,65 linguistic reality, 20 linguistic/conceptual mappings, 211 literal, 3, 6, 18, 21, 44, 59, 61-66, 69-71, 73, 89, 108, 123, 149, 150, 167-173, 179, 181,186,216 literal emergence, 168-173, 181, 186

localist theory of grammar, 10 long-term memory, 146, 152, 156 M mental models, 55, 164, 190 mental representations, 87, 101, 147, 152, 153, 156, 157, 190 mental spaces, 102, 107, 111, 123 metaphor analysis, 6, 59, 64, 65 metaphor focus identification, 60, 61, 65, 68,73 metaphoric blends, 113, 114, 117, 122 metaphoric(al) gestures, 195, 215 metaphorical emergence, 168, 174, 180, 181, 186,187 metaphorical extensions, 39, 41 metaphorical ICMs, 19, 21 metaphorical idea identification, 62, 65, 67, 68,73 metaphorical scope, 34, 41 metaphorology, 15-18 metonymie tightening, 108, 113 metonymy, 44, 85, 99, 146, 157, 187, 203 moral categories, 191, 196, 200 N narrative, 124, 126,129,135,137,144,159, 198 non-biological metaphors, 133, 134 non-visual metaphors, 125, 131, 133-136, 139 nonliteral analogy identification, 67-69, 73 nonliteral comparison identification, 66-68, 73 nonliteral mapping, 66, 67, 71-73 nonliteral mapping identification, 71, 73 novel conceptualizations, 101, 214 O off-loading, 160 on-line narratives, 133-135, 137, 138 onomasiological approach, 22 ontology, 96 optimality principles, 107 P perception verbs, 29, 42, 43 perceptual metaphors, 7, 125, 131-140

SUBJECT INDEX perceptual vocabulary, 133, 134, 136-138, 141 pilgrim, 139 poetic metaphor, 44, 76, 99, 165 polysemy, 2, 29, 43 primary metaphors, 82, 84-86, 90, 93, 95-99, 122, 123, 180 production, 3, 4, 38, 72 profile, 6, 149, 191, 198, 200, 201 property selection processes, 37, 39 propositional analysis, 61-65, 67, 75 propositional metaphor analysis, 64, 65 propositions, 62, 66-69, 76, 134, 142, 152 proverbs, 91, 145 psycholinguistic evidence, 145, 151 psycholinguistics, 3, 59, 75, 145, 148, 151 psychology, 43, 45, 55, 63, 133, 145-148, 152, 154, 161, 163, 165, 191 public representations, 157, 160, 162 R religious narratives, 127, 130, 133, 134, 136-139 representation, 3, 4,14, 66, 90-93,102, 111, 113, 147, 152, 159, 164 resemblance hypothesis, 97 resemblance metaphors, 87, 93-97, 122 ritual, 126, 129, 142-144, 210-212, 215

221

S scale of congruence, 213-215 secular experience, 133, 136, 138, 139 semantic change, 29, 43, 165 semantic extensions, 34, 38, 41-43 semasiological approach, 22 semiotic modeling system, 197 sensory verbs, 132 sexual intercourse, 211 similarity, 12, 13, 66, 67, 76, 77, 88, 89, 96, 97, 111, 112, 120,206 similarity theory, 89, 97 situational cognition, 152 social/cultural artifacts, 162 symbolism, 210-212, 215, 216 T target concepts, 82, 83, 86, 96,97,118,122, 206 target domains, 5, 17, 34, 40,102,131,148, 149, 180,213 tenor, 61, 62 therapeutic discourse, 158 topic, 42, 62, 71, 73, 86, 117, 200, 201 U unidirectionality, 9, 13, 17, 20, 95 V visual metaphors, 125, 131, 133-136, 139

NAME INDEX A Ahlstrom, R., 36, 42 Allbritton, D., 145, 162 Alverson, H., 159, 163 Anderson, J., 10, 24 Arendt, H., 10, 24 B Badia, P., 35, 42 Balaban, V., vii, 6, 125, 126, 141 Barr, D., 146, 150, 163 Barwise, J., 42 Basso, K.H., 189,202 Bates, E., 129, 142 Beardsley, M., 60, 75 Berglund, R., 42 Berglund, U., 42 Bharati, A., 154, 163 Black, M., 75 Blake, R., 35, 42, 44 Bliss, E.L., 127, 142 Blumenberg, H., 7, 9, 12, 15-17, 22-24 Bly, B., 37, 44, 164 Boers, F., vii, 5, 6, 47-50, 55 Bogdonovich, J., 146, 150, 163 Bovair, S., 62, 63, 75 Brandt, P., 121, 122 Bréal, M., 20, 24 Britt, M., 63, 76 Britton, B., 62, 63, 75 Brown, M., 146, 164 Brugman, C., 42, 81, 111, 123 Buck, CD., 36, 42 Bühler, K., 10, 11,24 C Cacciari, C, 4, 7 Cain, W.S., 36, 42 Calbris, G., 193, 202 Cann, R., 41,42 Cas sirer, E., 10, 11, 14, 25 Cienki, A., vii, 6, 189, 193, 195, 202, 216

Clark, A., 163 Classen, C, 36, 42 Clements, C, 40, 43 Cohen, L., 58, 75 Colby, B., 157, 163 Coleman, L., 129, 139, 142 Colston, H., 5, 148, 149, 163 Comrie,B.,45, 129, 142 Corradi Fiumara, G., 216, 217 Coulson, S., v, vii, 5, 101, 117, 118, 120, 121, 123 Csordas, T., 153-155, 163-166

D Deignan, A., 187 DeLancey, S., 129, 130, 142 Demecheleer, M., 48, 55 Dornseiff, F., 10, 11,23,24 Dougherty, J.W.D., 127, 142, 143 Dowty, D., 42, 43 Draaisma, D., 49, 55 Duranti, A., 142 E Eggleston, R., 160, 163 Emanatian, M., viii, 6, 189, 195, 202, 205, 209,213,214,217

Engen, T., 36, 43 F Fauconnier, G., 76, 93, 101, 102, 107, 111, 114, 115, 117, 120, 121, 123, 124, 213, 217,218

Fernandez, J., 153, 163, 165, 187, 218 Fillmore, C, 115, 123 Fodor, I, 35, 43 Forceville, C., 160, 163 Frege, G., 42, 43 G Gamble, E., 42, 43 Garnham, A., 63, 75

NAME INDEX

Geertz, C, 127, 129, 142 Gehlen, A., 24 Gentner, D., 40, 43, 47, 49, 55, 72, 76, 122, 123 Gerrig, R., 145, 162 Gibbs, R.W., Jr., v, vii, 1, 3-7, 40, 41, 43, 75, 81, 86, 99, 139, 142, 145, 146, 148-151, 155, 156, 161, 163, 165, 172, 187,201

Gibson, J., 160, 164 Givon, T., 129, 142 Glucksberg, S., 40, 43, 92, 98, 99, 146,164 Goldberg, A., 99, 121, 123 Goodman, N., 10, 24 Grady, J., v, vii, 5, 79, 81-83, 85, 96, 98,99, 101, 112, 122, 123, 180, 187, 195, 202, 214,216,217

Green, C., 164, 176 Greeno, J., 152, 164 Grudin, J., 49, 55 H Haley, J., 158, 164 Harding, S., 129, 142 Hartung, J., 10, 11,23, 24 Henning, H., 43 Herder, J., 9, 25 Hermann, P., 10, 11,26 Herz, R., 37, 43 Hoffman, R., 25 Holland, D., 7, 127, 142, 143, 153, 164, 167,187,202,203,217 Honeck, R., 25 Hopper, P.J., 129, 142

Howes, D., 42 Hutchins, E., 152, 164 Hymes, D., 129, 143

I Ibarretxe-Antunano, L, 5, 29, 38, 42, 43 Ivanov, V., 190, 197, 202 J

Jackson, J., 155, 164 Jäkel, O., vii, 6, 9, 13, 14, 19-21, 23, 25 Jaynes, J., 10, 25 Jeziorski, M., 72, 76

223

Johnson, M., 1, 7, 9-11, 13, 14, 17-19, 21-22, 25, 26, 29, 34, 37, 41-44, 47, 49, 55, 57, 76, 79, 81, 83, 85, 89, 96, 98, 99, 101, 112, 122, 123, 131, 132, 140, 143, 145, 147, 148, 159, 164, 165, 167, 183, 187,200,202,213,214,216,217

Johnson, S., 164 Johnson-Laird, P., 10, 26 Jones, S., 137, 143 K Kant, L, 7, 9, 12-14, 22, 23, 25, 114, 116, 117, 121 Katz, A., 7 Katz, J.J., 43 Kay, P., 213, 217 Keesing,R., 189, 190,202 Keil, G., 12, 26 Kennedy, J., 160, 164 Keysar, B., 37, 40, 43, 44, 92, 98, 99, 115, 123, 146, 164 Kieras, D., 62, 75 Kirmayer, L., 155, 156, 164 Klein, G., 160, 163 Kövecses, Z., vii, 6, 30, 42, 44, 48, 56, 147, 153, 156, 164, 167, 171, 180, 183, 186, 187, 189,202,205,217 Kryk, B., 42, 44 L Labov,W., 129, 143 Lakoff, G., 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17-19, 21, 22, 26, 29, 34, 37, 41 , 42, 44,47 ,48, 56-58, 72, 76, 79, 81, 87-89, 91-93, 95-99, 101, 104, 109, 111, 112, 121, 123, 129, 131, 132, 140, 143, 145, 147-149, 153, 159, 164, 167, 171, 183, 187, 189, 199, 200, 202, 205, 213, 214, 217 Langacker, R.W., 116, 129, 130, 143, 189, 191,202 Lawler, J., 26

Lazarus, R., 155, 165 Lea, M., 137, 144 Leech, G., 42, 44 Lehrer, A., 31,44 Leontiev, A., 152, 165 Liebert, W.-A., 23, 26, 55

224

NAME INDEX

Lindvall, T., 42 Lock, M., 155, 165 Locke, J., 9, 11-13,26 Low, S., 54, 76, 81, 155, 165, 214, 216 Luria,A., 152, 165 M MacLaury, R., 25, 27 MacWhinney, B., 129, 142 Maglio,P., 121, 124 Mandelblit, N., 121, 124 Margalith, A., 58, 75 Martin, E., 25, 213,217 Matlock, T., 5, 121, 124, 132, 143 McGlone, M., 146, 164, 165 McKoon, G., 145, 162 McNeill, D., 193, 194, 202, 215, 217 Miller, A.L,10, 26, 49, 56, 58, 64, 66-69, 71,72,76

Morgan, P., 99, 123 Müller, F., 10, 11,26 Murphy, G., 4, 7, 37, 44, 147, 165 N Nascimento, S., 145, 163 Nayak,N., 145, 163, 165 O Oakley, T., v, vii, 5, 101, 120, 124 Obeyesekere, G., 128, 143 Ortega y Gasset, J., 10, 26 Ortony, A., 24, 26, 40, 44, 71, 75-77, 99, 203 P Palmer, G.B., 190, 191, 199, 202 Parkinson, B., 159, 165 Perfetti, C., 63, 76 Perry, J, 42 Pesmen, D., 214, 217 Peters, S., 42, 43 Porzig, W., 10, 11,26 Postal, P., 35, 43 Q Quinn, N., 6, 7, 127, 128, 140, 142, 143, 153, 154, 156, 164, 165, 167, 171-174,

181-187, 189, 202, 203, 205, 211, 213, 217,218

R

Rappaport, R., 128, 143

Reddy, M., 203 Reingold, H., 143 Reinhart, T., 58, 60-62, 64, 67, 69-72, 76 Rice, S., 4, 7 Richards, L, 60, 76 Rigotti, F., 48, 49, 56 Robert, A., 25-27, 121, 124 Roediger, H.L., 47, 56 Rogers, A., 42, 44 Rosaldo,R., 127, 143 S Sandra, D., 4, 7 Schiffman, S.,44 Searle,J., 81,89, 99, 115 Sekuler, R., 35, 42, 44 Shannon, B., 152, 165 Shore, B.,127,128,143,172,188,190,197, 200,203,205,211,213,216-218 Slater, C, 128, 143

Slobin, D., 129, 144 Smith, L., 152, 166 Spears, R., 137, 144 Sperber, D., 127, 144 Steen, G., v, vii, 1, 3, 5-7, 41, 57, 61 , 64, 74, 76, 154, 165, 201 Sternberg, R., 40, 45 Stigler, J., 157, 165 Strathern, A., 154, 165 Strauss, C, 127, 129, 140, 143, 211, 213, 218 Strom, L., 145, 164 Stromberg, P., 126-130, 144 Suchman, L., 152, 165 Sweetser, E., 5, 8, 29-31, 33, 4 1, 42, 44, 81, 99, 120, 121, 131, 132, 140, 144, 145, 165, 189,195,203,213,217,218 Sykes,J, 146, 150, 163 Synnott, A., 42 Szokolszky, A., 163 Szuchewycz, B., 129, 144

Gibbs & Steen (Eds.)-Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics .pdf

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