Introduction
This Unit is mainly concerned with the linguistics of metaphor in literature. There has been much work in recent years that has been concerned to show that metaphor is not just a literary feature, but can be found to be fundamental to our understanding of the world in general, and both creative and conventional metaphors have been found in most everyday conversation and non-literary writing. In turn, literary linguistics can benefit by 're-importing' the fruits of this work in order to give further insights into the operation of metaphor in a literary context.
In order to complete this Unit successfully, it would be useful to have the following books to hand:
Culpeper, Jonathan; Short, Mick and Verdonk, Peter (eds) (1998) Exploring the Language of Drama: From Text to Context. London: Routledge.
Verdonk, Peter and Weber, Jean Jacques (eds) (1995) Twentieth-Century Fiction: From Text to Context, London: Routledge.
Metaphor study has been a major feature of literary linguistics since the study of ancient rhetoric. There are many dozens of different approaches to metaphor, designed to answer questions such as (but not limited by) the following:
- is metaphor ornamental or essential for meaning - in other words, can metaphors be translated?
- how can metaphor be defined? - in order to encompass cases such as
- the man is a wolf
- Juliet is the sun
- you are the apple of my eye
- there is an explosion of geraniums in the ballroom of the hotel
- I'm spitting feathers
- no man is an island
- he blew his top
- he poured himself home
- the wine-dark sea
- Britpop
- what is the conceptual difference between metaphor, simile, analogy, and metonymy?
- do metaphors constrain the way we understand the world?
- is metaphor a linguistic or psychological phenomenon?
- what is the relationship between metaphor and idioms?
- can interpretations of metaphors be predicted, measured or measured theoretically?
- what are the different possible ways in which a conceptual metaphor can be expressed?
- given two 'sides' to a metaphor, how does one side change by being affected by the other?
- if metaphor can be seen as being like a mapping in this way, can the features be mapped in both directions?
Even a cursory examination of this field could easily form a module in its own right. Here in this Unit, I will restrict the discussion to a stylistic means of discussing metaphor, looking firstly at metaphor as a structure and a structure-mapping, and then at the surface expression of metaphor, and ending with an introduction to the area of cognitive poetics which deals with conceptual metaphor.
Firstly, we must make a distinction between conceptual metaphor and the surface expression of metaphor. There is an unfortunate terminology clash here. Traditionally, an example such as 'That man is a shark' would be seen as a metaphor whereas 'That man is like a shark' would be seen as a simile or analogy. However, this distinction is based on the surface realisation ('like') of the examples. Much recent work in linguistics and psychology would see the same underlying conceptual metaphor underlying both these forms: THE MAN IS A SHARK (conceptual metaphors are always written is small capitals like this). It would be better if 'metaphor' were reserved for the surface realisation, and conceptual metaphors were called something else: suggestions have included isomorphism, mappings, and idealised cognitive models, among others. This distinction is useful because the conceptual metaphor THE MAN IS A SHARK can underlie several possible surface expressions of the metaphor: 'that man is a shark', 'shark-man', 'he was in a feeding frenzy', 'he's always got to keep moving forward', 'he's sharking', and so on. I will deal with conceptual metaphor at the end of the Unit.
Metaphor as Structure
One way of examining a metaphor is to decompose it into its constituent semantic units. This is called componential analysis and is an ordinary language means of representing the denotational meaning of individual words. For example:
a wolf - definite + count + animate + mammal - human + adult +/- male - linguistic - bipedal + nocturnal + predatory + vicious These features are, of course, not exhaustive. However, the features in common allow the metaphor to work: in general, the more shared features, the more apt the metaphor seems ('the wolfish man' seems easier to resolve or interpret than 'the plantpot man'). The fact that there are some features which clash (human, linguistic, bipedal) are what should cue us up to perceive the sentence as being potentially deviant, and this deviance can be resolved by a metaphorical interpretation. Finally, the features that do not actually clash but that seem to have no obvious aptitude or correspondence (nocturnal, predatory, vicious, and others of course) are the ones that are metaphorically tranferred or 'mapped' across so that 'the man' is re-perceived as possessing these traits of 'wolfishness'.
Activity
Select any pairs of the following words at random and place them into a sentence of the form '(A/The) A is (a/the) B'. You might have to add deifinite or indefinite articles to make the sentence grammatical. Using the componential analysis scheme above, can you set out the metaphoric basis of the sentence? Try a few of them, and try reversing them. Are there any that are more difficult than any others? Think about which types of words are difficult and which combinations and directions are easier.
This simple structural scheme offers a principled means of identifying deviance and suggesting how a metaphoric interpretation of that apparent semantic deviance might be resolved. It can specify the detail of traits that are transferred, and is useful for simple metaphors.
However, there are limitations to this sort of approach. For example, John Donne's famous 'No man is an island' would not be identified as a metaphor in this scheme, though it usually takes a metaphorical interpretation. In fact, Donne's sentence is not only literally true, it can be said to be deviant because it is outrageously true. This example indicates that metaphor is not simply a feature of semantics or even of syntax, but is a feature of discourse:
A successful metaphor is realised in discourse, is embodied in the given 'text', and need not be treated as a riddle. So the writer or speaker is employing conventional means to produce a non-standard effect, while using only the standard syntactic and semantic resources of his speech community. (Black 1990: 52).
In other words, metaphors cannot be said to exist as objects, but as interpretative solutions of perceived deviance at the level of grammar or meaning. This procedural, receptive and dynamic view of metaphor makes a structuralist account difficult to maintain.
Metaphor as Structure-Mapping
An alternative means of exploring the conceptual structure of metaphor is that developed by Dedre Gentner (1982). She sees a metaphor as involving a mapping from a base domain to a target domain. In 'Juliet is the sun', JULIET is the target domain, the object which is placed in topic position in the sentence as the focus of interest. THE SUN in this case is the base domain in terms of which the target, JULIET, is to be understood. Usually, base domains are given and familiar knowledge, and target domains are new and unfamiliar knowledge. In this example, some of the traits which we understand to attach to our knowledge of THE SUN are mapped across onto the target domain of JULIET: perhaps the notions that the sun is beautiful, life-giving, warm, and so on. Of course, unless a relationship of identity is being claimed, the mapping is partial: few readers would take as part of the metaphor the mapping that Juliet is a gaseous thermonuclear chain-reaction, or is 93 million miles away. Both traits (the attributes) and relations (predicates) within the base domain can be mapped, so that behaviours and processes can be part of the metaphorical process as well as attributive features.
Gentner describes several characteristics of metaphorical mappings (note that she claims this framework applies to all isomorphic mappings, including metaphor, simile, analogy, comparison, and so on):
Internal Characteristics of Mappings
- Clarity: is it clear which attributes are carried? Mathematical operations (where x = y) represent an extreme of clarity.
- Richness: this refers to the predicate density - how many relations are carried.
- Systematicity: the degree to which the imported predicates belong to a system which is seen as a coherent one
- Abstractness: the level of generality or detail that is carried over.
External Characteristics of Mappings
- Scope: this is wide if the base can be mapped to many targets (for example, WAR has a very wide scope, since it can be mapped to LOVE, TALKING, ARGUMENT, RACING, BUSINESS, GAMES, and so on)
- Validity: this involves a determination of whether the imported predicates are accurately placed.
Using this framework, we can distinguish expressive and explanatory metaphors. Expressive metaphors are often found in scientific analogies. Gentner quotes Galileo's analogy of the mast of a moving ship to explain the Earth's rotation. By contrast, consider this expressive metaphor:
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.
(T.S. Eliot, 'The Hollow Men')Galileo's analogy has a very high degree of clarity, but is not very rich: the colour, design and texture of the ship are not mapped as they are irrelevant for the purposes of the analogy. By contrast, Eliot's analogy is very unclear (there are two targets: 'wind' or 'rats' feet'), but it is very rich and evocative. It seems there is a clarity/richness trade-off between explanatory and expressive metaphors, with richness and ambiguity being valued in post-Romantic literature, and simplicity and clarity valued in scientific accounts.
Activity
Take the pairs of words that you formed into metaphors in the last Activity. Try to decide whether they are expressive or explanatory. Can you make decisions about clarity, richness, systematicity, abstractness, scope and validity?
Surface Expressions of Metaphor
Most research in metaphor has focused on the 'idea-content' or conceptual level, rather than the surface expression or linguistic realisation of the metaphoric form. Of course, it is the surface expression that is most of interest to the literary linguist. The stylistic detail of the actual expression of a metaphor can foreground different parts of the base domain, so that the target domain is understood in different ways in different forms of expression. Stylistic variation can be manifest in semantic choice and syntactic arrangement. For example, take one of the conceptual metaphors that could have been generated from the list in the Activity above: TRUTH IS A CHAIR. Whatever interpretations you apply as a means of resolving this metaphor, I think the connotations and associations, the resonances and textures of the metaphor, and perhaps even the denotational meaning itself might vary quite a lot if the CHAIR were realised as 'an armchair', 'a wooden chair', 'a stool', 'a deckchair', or 'a park-bench'. At the level of syntactic arrangement, different sequences of the terms of the mapping can radically affect which features of the base domain are mapped to the target. The following Activity can demonstrate this.
Activity
Taking the same list of words used above (reproduced below for convenience), randomly choose different words to construct sentences of the following forms. Again, you are allowed to add articles and plurals to make the sentence grammatical:
(The/a) A is (the/a) B
(The/a) C is not (the/a) D
(The/a) E is like (the/a) F
(The/a) G is the H of (the/a) I
There is (a) J in the K of L
There is (a) M in every N
O-P (that is, a modifier-headword blend: you might have to add a morpheme such as '-ly' or '-ish' to make this work)
What does the metaphor mean?
Which elements of the conceptual domains are mapped?
What is the effect of reversing any of the elements in the sentence?
Does the metaphor create a new idea or is there just a poetic effect?
Are all the sentences metaphorical, or can some be read literally?
It also matters quite a lot whether the base and target domains are actually mentioned explicitly on the surface of the text, or whether one of the elements is hidden and only indirectly suggested. I have called examples where both elements are explicit ('Juliet is the sun') visible metaphors. Invisible metaphors typically only have one of the elements mentioned, or half-mentioned, or alluded to ('Juliet brings everything to life', 'Juliet makes the plants grow', 'Flowers bend to Juliet's face', 'Sunny Juliet'). It seems to be the case that invisible metaphors require greater creative input on the part of the reader, in order to identify the terms of the mapping and form a satisfactory resolution. Where there is greater potential for creative interpretation, of course, there is also greater potential for ambiguity.
Cognitive Metaphor
Activity
At this point you should read two articles which apply cognitive linguistic understanding of metaphor to literary texts. In Verdonk and Weber (1995):
Chapter 2: Jean Jacques Weber's 'How metaphor leads Susan Rawlings into suicide: a cognitive linguistic analysis of Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen"'.
And in Culpeper, Short and Verdonk (1998):
Chapter 8: Don Freeman's '"Catch[ing] the nearest way": Macbeth and cognitive metaphor'.
You might like to try the suggestions for further study at the end of each of these chapters.
Further Reading
Black, Max (1990) Perplexities, New York: Cornell University Press
Gentner, Dedre (1982) 'Are scientific analogies metaphors?' in D.S. Miall (ed.) Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives, Brighton: Harvester.
Gibbs, R. (1994) The Poetics of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goatly, A. (1997) The Language of Metaphors, London: Routledge.