What is metaphor?
For over 2,000 years, metaphor was studied within the discipline known as rhetoric. This discipline was first established in ancient Greece, and was focused on practical instruction in how to persuade others of a particular point of view by the use of rhetorical devices. Metaphor was one of these devices, which were called tropes by rhetoricians. Due to its central importance, metaphor came to be known as the master trope. Within this approach, metaphor was characterised by the schematic form: A is B, as in Achilles is a lion. As a consequence, metaphor has been identified since the time of Aristotle with implicit comparison. In other words, while metaphor is based on the comparison of two categories, the comparison is not explicitly marked. This contrasts with simile, where the comparison is overtly signalled by the use of as or like: Achilles is as brave as a lion; Achilles is brave, like a lion.
Clearly, examples of metaphor like Achilles is a lion are based on comparison. Following Grady (1997a, 1999) we will use the term perceived resemblance to describe this comparison. In this case, the resemblance is not physical: Achilles does not actually look like a lion. Instead, due to cultural knowledge which holds that lions are courageous, by describing Achilles as a lion we associate him with the lion’s qualities of courage and ferocity. Metaphors of this kind are called resemblance metaphors (Grady 1999).
Resemblance metaphors based on physical resemblance have been called image metaphors (Lakoff and Turner 1989). In other words, image metaphors are one subset of resemblance-based metaphors. For instance, consider the following translation of the beginning of André Breton’s surrealist poem ‘Free Union’, cited in Lakoff and Turner (1989: 93):
Several of these lines represent image metaphors. For example, in the third line the poet is establishing a visual resemblance between the shape of his wife’s waist and the shape of an hourglass.
Resemblance metaphors have received considerable attention within conceptual metaphor theory, particularly within the approach now known as Cognitive Poetics (see Lakoff and Turner 1989 for a seminal study; see also Stockwell 2002, and Gavins and Steen 2003). However, for the most part, research in the conceptual metaphor tradition has not been primarily concerned with metaphors of this kind. Instead, research in this tradition has focused on the kind of everyday language illustrated in the following examples. These examples represent common ways of referring to particular experiences of relationships like marriage. The examples in (15) are from Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 44–5).
What is striking about these examples is that they represent ordinary everyday ways of talking about relationships: there is nothing stylised or overtly poetic about these expressions. Moreover, for the most part, they do not make use of the linguistic formula A is B, which is typical of resemblance metaphors. However, these expressions are clearly non-literal: a relationship cannot liter ally spin its wheels, nor stand at the crossroads.
Although a slim volume, Lakoff and Johnson’s 1980 book Metaphors We Live By changed the way linguists thought about metaphor for two important reasons. Firstly, Lakoff and Johnson observed that metaphorical language appears to relate to an underlying metaphor system, a ‘system of thought’. In other words, they noticed that we cannot choose any conceptual domain at random in order to describe relationships like marriage. Observe that the expressions in (15) have something in common: in addition to describing experiences of relationships, they also rely upon expressions that relate to the conceptual domain JOURNEYS. Indeed, our ability to describe relationships in terms of journeys appears to be highly productive.
This pattern led Lakoff and Johnson to hypothesise a conventional link at the conceptual level between the domain of LOVE RELATIONSHIPS and the domain of JOURNEYS. According to this view, LOVE, which is the target (the domain being described), is conventionally structured in terms of JOURNEYS, which is the source (the domain in terms of which the target is described). This association is called a conceptual metaphor. According to Lakoff and Johnson, what makes it a metaphor is the conventional association of one domain with another. What makes it conceptual (rather than purely linguistic) is the idea that the motivation for the metaphor resides at the level of conceptual domains. In other words, Lakoff and Johnson proposed that we not only speak in metaphorical terms, but also think in metaphorical terms. From this perspective, linguistic expressions that are metaphorical in nature are simply reflections of an underlying conceptual association.
Lakoff and Johnson also observed that there are a number of distinct roles that populate the source and target domains. For example, JOURNEYS include TRAVELLERS, a MEANS OF TRANSPORT, a ROUTE followed, OBSTACLES along the route and so on. Similarly, the target domain LOVE RELATIONSHIP includes LOVERS, EVENTS in the relationship and so on. The metaphor works by mapping roles from the source onto the target: LOVERS become TRAVELLERS (We’re at a crossroads), who travel by a particular MEANS OF TRANSPORT (We’re spinning our wheels), proceeding along a particular ROUTE (Our relationship went off course), impeded by obstacles (Our marriage is on the rocks). As these examples demon strate, a metaphorical link between two domains consists of a number of distinct correspondences or mappings. These mappings are illustrated in Table 9.1.
It is conventional in the conceptual metaphor literature, following Lakoff and Johnson, to make use of the ‘A is B’ formula to describe conceptual metaphor: for example, LOVE IS A JOURNEY. However, this is simply a convenient shorthand for a series of discrete conceptual mappings which license a range of linguistic examples.
The second important claim to emerge from Metaphors We Live By was that conceptual metaphors are grounded in the nature of our everyday interaction with the world. That is, conceptual metaphor has an experiential basis.
In these sentences there is a conventional reading related to QUANTITY. In (16a) the sentence refers to an increase in share prices. In (16b) it refers to an exam result that represents a numerical quantity. Although each of these readings is perfectly conventional, the lexical items that provide these readings, going up and high, refer literally to the concept of VERTICAL ELEVATION. Examples like these suggest that QUANTITY and VERTICAL ELEVATION are associated in some way at the conceptual level. The question is, what motivates these associations?
QUANTITY and VERTICAL ELEVATION are often correlated and these correlations are ubiquitous in our everyday experience. For instance, when we increase the height of something there is typically more of it. If an orange farmer puts more oranges on a pile, thereby increasing the height of the pile, there is a correlative increase in quantity. Similarly, water poured into a glass results in a correlative increase in both height (vertical elevation) and quantity of water. According to Lakoff and Johnson, this kind of correlation, experienced in our everyday lives, gives rise to the formation of an association at the conceptual level which is reflected in the linguistic examples. According to this view, conceptual metaphors are always at least partially motivated by and grounded in experience. As we have seen, then, cognitive semanticists define metaphor as a conceptual mapping between source and target domain. In the next section, we look in more detail at the claims made by Conceptual Metaphor Theory.
