Metaphor

As an expression in speech or writing, a metaphor directs the mind of the listener or reader to think about some particular thing similar or analogous to the metaphor's literal meaning, as a mountain of paperwork prompts the listener/reader to think about a large pile of papers requiring processing, implying perhaps the difficult job ahead getting on top of pile, or, to use another metaphor, the difficult job of whittling the pile down to a flat plain. Metaphors extend beyond their literal meaning, often into the realm of ideas and action.

Metaphors can serve a variety of functions:

• to add stylistic or poetic flourish to language, as when William Shakespeare, in sonnet XVIII, refers to the sun as the eye of heaven and writes of variations in sunny days in terms of the state of the sun's gold complexion;
• to express what we experience in rich and vivid language, which, through its emotional impact, often promotes the communicative goals of metaphor described in the following bullets, just one of the miracles of metaphor;
• to express a thought in familiar and compact terms that to express literally would require more elaborate, intricate, convoluted, or elusive language, as when scientists refer to DNA as the blueprint of the cell, or as the database the cell uses to construct itself and function in particular ways;
• to enhance the listener/reader's ability to grasp an unfamiliar or difficult-to-grasp concept using a more familiar concept, as when cognitive scientists refer to the mind as a machine, as a telephone switchboard, or as a network, or to a biological cell as a miniature factory;

• to accomplish that same pedagogical goal using a constructed fictional, sometimes fantastical, novel concept, as when Kosslyn and Koenig, in their book, Wet Mind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience, construct a fictional scenario of rows of octopi unknowingling generating information output about local fish density to overhead seagulls through interactions of their tentacles, a metaphor they constructed to explain the nature and operation of a connectionist neural network;

• to influence the frame or cast of mind of the listener/reader regarding something, as when politicians use expressions such as right to life, war on terror, and surge.

Those functions of metaphor are elaborated upon in:     

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish-a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action....We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. — George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Often the literal meaning of the metaphorical expression gives a concrete or familiar or readily visualized image — the 'source' — whereas often the referent of the metaphor — the 'target' — is more abstract.      When Shakespeare´s depressed Macbeth laments, "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death", he does not refer literally to a lighted pathway leading to a destination of oblivion, but instead refers to something different, something more abstract, something related to the futility of life and the inevitability of death, more specifically perhaps to our past as a journey that we traveled foolishly, futilely, only to arrive at death as our final destination.

Metaphors then require the listener/reader to render an interpretation of the intended comparison, or transfer, of source to target, an interpretation of how the metaphorical expression maps to the intended target. In context, Macbeth's "Out, out brief candle" invites the listener/reader to interpret the brief life of a candle's flame as the brief period the flame of life burns in a human being, as mapping a burning candle to a living (combusting) human.

This article discusses, among other things, the reasons we so frequently employ metaphor in speech and writing, why it is, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson state in the accompanying textbox, "....that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action."

Metaphor as style in speech and writing

Viewed as an aspect of speech and writing, metaphor qualifies as style, in particular, style characterized by a type of analogy. An expression (word, phrase) that by implication suggests the likeness of one entity to another entity gives style to an item of speech or writing, whether the entities consist of objects, events, ideas, activities, attributes, or almost anything expressible in language. For example, in the first sentence of this paragraph, the word ´viewed´ serves as a metaphor for ´thought of´, implying analogy of the process of seeing and the thought process. The phrase, "viewed as an aspect of", projects the properties of seeing (vision) something from a particular perspective onto thinking about something from a particular perspective, that ´something´ in this case referring to ´metaphor´ and that ´perspective´ in this case referring to the characteristics of speech and writing.

As a characteristic of speech and writing, metaphors can serve the poetic imagination, enabling William Shakespeare, in his play "As You Like It", to compare the world to a stage and its human inhabitants players entering and exiting upon that stage; enabling Sylvia Plath, in her poem "Cut", to compare the blood issuing from her cut thumb to the running of a million soldiers, "redcoats, every one"; and, enabling Robert Frost, in "The Road Not Taken", to compare one´s life to a journey.

Viewed also as an aspect of speech and writing, metaphor can serve as a device for persuading the listener or reader of the speaker-writer´s argument or thesis, the so-called rhetorical metaphor....

Metaphor as foundational to our conceptual system

Cognitive linguists emphasize that metaphors serve to facilitate the understanding of one conceptual domain, typically an abstract one like 'life' or 'theories' or 'ideas', through expressions that relate to another, more familiar conceptual domain, typically a more concrete one like 'journey' or 'buildings' or 'food'.   Food for thought: we devour a book of raw facts, try to digest them, stew over them, let them simmer on the back-burner, regurgitate them in discussions, cook up explanations, hoping they do not seem half-baked. Theories as buildings: we establish a foundation for them, a framework, support them with strong arguments, buttressing them with facts, hoping they will stand. Life as journey: some of us travel hopefully, others seem to have no direction, many lose their way.

A convenient short-hand way of capturing this view of metaphor is the following: CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN (A) IS CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN (B), which is what is called a conceptual metaphor. A conceptual metaphor consists of two conceptual domains, in which one domain is understood in terms of another. A conceptual domain is any coherent organization of experience. Thus, for example, we have coherently organized knowledge about journeys that we rely on in understanding life.

How does this relate to the nature and importance of our conceptual system, and to metaphor as foundational to our conceptual system?

  Nature and importance of our conceptual system

Our conceptual system comprises a system of concepts. 'Concept' nominalizes the physiological activity of conceptualizing, a physiological activity performed by the human living organism. Thus our conceptual comprises the system whereby we perform the physiological activities of conceptualizing.

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