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Kövecses, Z., Metaphor. A Practical Introduction
1. What is metaphor?
In the cognitive linguistic view, metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain. Examples of this include when we talk and think about life in terms of journeys, about arguments in terms of war, about love also in terms of journeys, about theories in terms of buildings, about ideas in terms of food, about social organizations in terms of plants, and many others. A convenient shorthand 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. We thus need to distinguish conceptual metaphor from metaphorical linguistic expressions. The latter are words or other linguistic expressions that come from the language or terminology of the more concrete conceptual domain (i.e., domain b). Thus, all the preceding expressions that have to do with life and that come from the domain of journey are linguistic metaphorical expressions, whereas the corresponding conceptual metaphor that they make manifest is life is a journey. The two domains that participate in conceptual metaphor have special names. The conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical expressions to understand another conceptual domain is called source domain , while the conceptual domain that is understood this way is the target domain. Thus, life, arguments, love, theory, ideas, social organizations and others are target domains, while journeys, war, buildings, food, plants, and others are source domains. The target domain is the domain that we try to understand using the source domain. But of course, in order to be able to suggest the existence of conceptual metaphors, we have to be able to distinguish linguistic metaphors from nonmetaphorical (i.e., literal) linguistic items. A group of researchers, called the Pragglejaz Group, designed the following metaphor identification procedure ( MIP ):
- Read the entire text-discourse to establish a general understanding of the meaning.
- Determine the lexical units in the text-discourse: (a) For each lexical unit in the text, establish its meaning in context, that is, how it applies to an entity, relation, or attribute in the situation evoked by the text (contextual meaning). Take into account what comes before and after the lexical unit. (b) For each lexical unit, determine if it has a more basic contemporary meaning in other contexts than the one in the given context. For our purposes, basic meanings tend to be •More concrete (what they evoke is easier to imagine, see, hear, feel, smell, and taste) •Related to bodily action •More precise (as opposed to vague) •Historically older. Basic meanings are not necessarily the most frequent meanings of the lexical unit. (c) If the lexical unit has a more basic current-contemporary meaning in other contexts than the given context, decide whether the contextual meaning contrasts with the basic meaning but can be understood in comparison with it.
- If yes, mark the lexical unit as metaphorical. Some Examples of Conceptual Metaphor: statement of conceptual metaphors and metaphorical linguistic expressions. An argument is war. Your claims are indefensible. / You disagree? Okay, shoot! Love is a journey. Look how far we’ve come. / I don’t think this relationship is going anywhere. Ideas are food. She devoured the book.
So far, we have used the word “to understand” to characterize the relationship between two concepts (A and B) in the metaphorical process. But what does it mean exactly that A is understood in terms of B? The answer is that there is a set of systematic correspondences between the source and the target in the sense that constituent conceptual elements of B correspond to constituent elements of A. Technically, these conceptual correspondences are often referred to as mappings. Source: JOURNEY Target: LOVE the travelers ⇒ the lovers the vehicle ⇒ the love relationship itself the journey ⇒ events in the relationship the distance covered ⇒ the progress made the obstacles encountered ⇒ the difficulties experienced decisions about which way to go ⇒ choices about what to do the destination of the journey ⇒ the goal(s) of the relationship This is the systematic set of correspondences, or mappings, that characterize the love is a journey conceptual metaphor. Constituent elements of conceptual domain A are in systematic correspondence with constituent elements of conceptual domain B. But how important is metaphor in our lives and how important is it to study? One of the best (but not quite serious) illustrations of the seriousness and importance of metaphor can be found in the myth of Oedipus. As part of the myth, Oedipus arrives in Thebes where he finds that a monster, called the Sphinx, is guarding the road to the city. She poses riddles to everyone on their way to Thebes and devours them if they are unable to solve the riddles. So far, everyone has been devoured when Oedipus arrives. The Sphinx asks him the riddle: Which is the animal that has four feet in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening? Without hesitation, Oedipus answers: Man, who in infancy crawls on all fours, who walks upright in maturity, and in his old age supports himself with a stick. The Sphinx is defeated and kills herself. Oedipus thus becomes the king of Thebes. How was Oedipus able to solve the riddle? At least a part of this must have been his knowledge of conceptual metaphor. There appear to be two metaphors operative in figuring out the riddle. The first is the metaphor the life of human beings is a day. Oedipus must have been helped by the correspondences that obtain between the target concept of life and the source domain of day. Morning corresponds to infancy, midday to mature adulthood, and evening to old age. Since he knew these mappings, he offered the correct solution.
2. Common Source and Target Domains
It was shown that conceptual metaphors consist of a source domain and a target domain, as well as a set of mappings between them. It was also noted that the source domains are typically more concrete or physical and more clearly delineated concepts than the targets, which tend to be abstract and less-delineated ones. What, then, are the most commonly used source and target domains? In other words, which clearly delineated physical concepts are used most in understanding which less clearly delineated abstract concepts? Common Source Domains : The human body is an ideal source domain, since, for us, it is clearly delineated and we know it well. This does not mean that we make use of all aspects of this domain in metaphorically understanding abstract targets. The aspects that are especially used in metaphorical comprehension involve various parts of the body, including the head, face, legs, hands, back, heart,
distinguished: structural , ontological , and orientational. These kinds of metaphor often coincide in particular cases.
- Structural Metaphors : in this kind of metaphor, the source domain provides a relatively rich knowledge structure for the target concept. In other words, the cognitive function of these metaphors is to enable speakers to understand target A by means of the structure of source B. As noted in chapter 1, this understanding takes place by means of conceptual mappings between elements of A and elements of B. For example, the concept of time is structured according to motion and space. Given the time is motion metaphor, we understand time in the following way elements: physical objects, their locations and their motion. There is a background condition that applies to this way of understanding time: the present time is at the same location as a canonical observer. Given the basic elements and the background condition, we get the following mappings: times are things;
- Ontological Metaphors : provide much less cognitive structuring for target concepts than structural ones do. (Ontology is a branch of philosophy that has to do with the nature of existence.) In general, ontological metaphors enable us to see more sharply delineated structure where there is very little or none. Given that undelineated experiences receive a more delineated status via ontological metaphors, speakers can use these metaphors for more specific jobs: (1) to refer to, to quantify, or to identify aspects of the experience that has been made more delineated. We can conceive of personification as a form of ontological metaphor. In personification, human qualities are given to nonhuman entities. Personification is common in literature, but it also abounds in everyday discourse, as the examples below show: life has cheated me.
- Orientational Metaphors : the name derives from the fact that most metaphors that serve this function have to do with basic human spatial orientations, such as up-down, center-periphery and the like. It would perhaps be more appropriate to call this type of conceptual metaphor “coherence metaphor”. For example, all the following con-cepts are characterized by an “upward” orientation, while their “opposites” receive a “downward” orientation. More is up - less is down : Speak up , please. // Keep your voice down , please. Nature of Metaphor : metaphors may be based on both knowledge and image. Most of the metaphors we have discussed so far are based on our basic knowledge of concepts. In them, basic knowledge structures constituted by some basic elements are mapped from a source to a target. In another kind of conceptual metaphor that can be called image-schema metaphor , however, it is not conceptual elements of knowledge (like traveler, destination, and obstacles in the case of journey) that get mapped from a source to a target, but conceptual elements of image-schemas. These phrases ( pass out, space out, zone out ) have to do with events and states such as losing conscious-ness, lack of attention, something breaking down, death, and absence of something. All of them indicate a negative situation. More important for the discussion of image-schema metaphors is that they map relatively little from source to target. As the name implies, metaphors of this kind have source domains that have skeletal image-schemas, such as the one associated with out. Notice that there is no general structural metaphor involved in this mapping. The mapping is of the one-shot kind generated by two images brought into correspondence by the superimposition of one image onto the other. These are one-shot image metaphors. Levels of Generality of Metaphor : For example, the “motion” schema has only initial location, movement along a path and final location. This highly generic motion schema gets filled in with more detail in the case of the concept of a journey: we may have a traveler, a point of departure, a means of travel (e.g., a car), a travel schedule, difficulties along the way, a destination, a guide, and so on. Another property of such generic-level schemas as “motion” is that they can be filled in not just one but in many ways. The motion schema can be realized not only as a journey but also as a walk, a run, a hike, or mountain climbing. These are specific level instances of the generic motion schema. All of these would instantiate the schema in a
different way, but they would have the same underlying generic-level structure of the motion schema. Now conceptual metaphors can be generic-level or specific-level ones. The ones that we have discussed so far are all specific-level metaphors : life is a journey.
4. Metaphor in Literature
Do literary metaphors constitute a special set among metaphors? Sometimes they do, but most of the time poets and writers use the same conceptual metaphors that ordinary people do. Nevertheless, we feel that literary metaphors are somehow special. This is because ordinary conceptual metaphors are regularly transformed by poets and writers in a number of ways: by (1) extending , (2) elaboration , (3) questioning , and (4) combining. Personification is another common device used in literary texts. In this chapter, I show why the abstract concept of time is personified the way it is. I explain this with the help of the generic-level metaphor events are actions. Literary texts also abound in image-based metaphors. These are one-shot images that require the mapping of several elements of one image onto another. Although people are not explicitly instructed about which element of one image maps onto which element of another, they can perform the mappings successfully in the process of interpreting literary texts. Some metaphors extend through entire literary texts or large portions of them. These are called “extended metaphors” or “ megametaphors .” They may not explicitly “surface” in the texts at all but tend to appear in the form of what we call “ micrometaphors .”
5. Nonlinguistic Realizations of Conceptual Metaphors
In addition to conceptual metaphors being expressed linguistically, they can also be realized in many other ways. These nonlinguistic ways include movies and acting, cartoons, drawings, sculptures, buildings, advertisements, myths, dream interpretation, the interpretation of history, cultural symbols, politics and foreign policy, morality, “moral politics,” social institutions, social practices, the nonlinguistic structure of certain literary genres, and many others that have not been discussed here. One such case is where metaphors are realized in gestures. There is a growing body of research into metaphorical aspects of gestures. Considering these cases, we can conclude that conceptual metaphor pervades much of our social, artistic, psychological, intellectual, and cultural lives. Metaphor is present not only in the way we speak but also in much of our nonlinguistic reality. This insight makes the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor especially valuable to nonlinguists as well. At the same time, sensitivity to metaphor in language may help us discover conceptual metaphors in many nonlinguistic areas of human experience.
6. The Basis of Metaphor
On what basis do we select the source domains for particular targets? In the traditional view, the selection of sources assumes an objective, literal, and preexisting similarity between the source and the target. By contrast, the cognitive linguistic view maintains that the selection of source domains depends on human factors that reflect nonobjective, nonliteral, and nonpreexisting similarities between a source and a target domain. These are called the “experiential bases” or “motivation” of conceptual metaphors. Some of the common kinds of such similarities are (1) correlations in experience, (2) perceived structural similarity, (3) perceived structural similarity induced by basic metaphors, and (4) source being the root of the target. In this last case, the source may be either the biological or the cultural root of the target. Conceptual metaphors have motivation (i.e., are motivated), not prediction (i.e., cannot be predicted). The source domains for a particular target cannot be predicted within a given language. The source-to-target mappings are merely motivated by the factors mentioned above. The same applies to cross-linguistic comparisons. We cannot expect the exact same metaphors to occur in all languages, but we cannot expect metaphors that contradict universal human experience, either. The neural theory of metaphor extends the study of metaphor to the brain. As a result of our normal functioning in the world, groups of neurons become connected in the brain by means of neural circuitry. When two groups of neurons get connected by a mapping circuit, we have to do with conceptual metaphors.
In addition to distinguishing metaphors according to conventionality, function, nature, and level of generality, we can distinguish them on the basis of their complexity. There are simple and complex metaphors. Simple (or primary) metaphors function as mappings within complex metaphors. The Case of Fire : for most people, the related concepts of fi re and heat are primarily associated with the metaphorical comprehension of emotions, such as anger, love, desire, and so on. These basic mappings account for most of the linguistic expressions above. Among them, it is “the heat of the fire -> the intensity of the situation” mapping that is central. The reason is, first, that most of the metaphorical entailments of this metaphor follow from or are based on this mapping (e.g., maintaining intensity, sudden increase in intensity, latent intensity). Second, a major human concern with fi re is its intensity; that is, we ask whether we have a fi re that is appropriate for the purpose at hand. Third, the linguistic examples that dominate the various applications of this source domain consist of metaphors that reflect intensity as a main meaning focus. Fourth and finally, there is very clear experiential basis for this mapping. When we engage in intense situations (actions, events, states), we produce body heat. This is especially clear in the case of such emotion concepts as anger and love, where many linguistic expressions capture this kind of bodily experience associated with intense emotion.
11. Metaphor Systems
We have found that seemingly isolated conceptual metaphors form coherently organized larger groupings called “metaphor systems.” In this chapter, I present two such metaphorical systems and a subsystem in some detail: namely, the great chain metaphor , with one of its subsystems the abstract complex systems metaphor , and the event structure metaphor. It may not be accidental that, so far, these two large systems have been found. In line with other findings in cognitive linguistics, the great chain metaphor represents a metaphorical understanding of “things” in the world, while the event structure metaphor is a way of understanding “relations,” including states and events. The two systems account for thousands of metaphorical linguistic expressions in English in an economical way that suggests an organization of linguistic and conceptual metaphors that is not simply an alphabetical list. In the great chain metaphor, there is a hierarchy of entities (things), and the entities higher in the hierarchy are understood via entities lower in the same hierarchy, but it can also be the case that entities lower in the hierarchy are conceptualized as entities higher up in the hierarchy (as when complex objects are personified in terms of humans). The complex systems metaphor is a subsystem of the great chain metaphor, in which any kind of abstract complex system is comprehended in terms of the human body, buildings, machines, and plants. In the event structure metaphor, various kinds of events and their different aspects are conceptualized as location, force, and motion. Interestingly, the two large systems appear to be different as to their nature: in one, metaphorical processes apply to a hierarchy in both directions (Great Chain; though there is a dominant direction here as well), whereas in the other, various abstract concepts are invariably understood in terms of concrete ones (Event Structure). What other metaphor systems there are in English and how they interact with each other remain issues to be determined by future research.
12. Another Figure: Metonymy
Some metonymic linguistic expressions that might serve as examples: I’m reading Shakespeare // America doesn’t want another Pearl Harbor. This suggests that in metonymy we use one entity, or thing (such as Shakespeare and Pearl Harbor), to indicate or to provide mental access to another entity (such as one of Shakespeare’s works and defeat in war. In the traditional view, metonymy is chiefly the use of a word in place of another in order to refer to some entity, where one word can be used for another if the meanings of the words are contiguously related. In the cognitive linguistic view, metonymy is conceptual in nature; its main function is to provide mental access through one conceptual entity to another; it is based on ICMs ( idealized cognitive model ) with specific conceptual relationships among their elements.
A Comparison of Metaphor and Metonymy: (1) While metonymy is based on contiguity, that is, on elements that are parts of the same ICM, metaphor is based on similarity. (2) While metonymy involves a single domain, metaphor involves two distant domains. (3) While metonymy is largely used to provide access to a single target entity within a single domain, metaphor is primarily used to understand a whole system of entities in terms of another system. (4) While metonymy occurs between concepts, as well as between linguistic forms and concepts and between linguistic forms and things/events in the world, metaphor occurs between concepts. Metonymic Relationships and Metaphor: metonymy-producing relationships, such as part of a thing for the whole thing and agent for action , are manifest in a variety of ICMs, such as Thing ICM , Constitution ICM and Complex event ICM, as well as Action ICM , Perception ICM , Causation ICM and others. The relationships fall into two large configurations: Whole and Part and Part and Part. Certain metonymic relationships form the basis of many metaphors. Discussed in this chapter are several metonymic relationships that can lead to the development of conceptual metaphors. These include causation, whole-part, and correlation. There may well be other such metonymic relationships on which metaphors are based. Interaction of Metaphor and Metonymy: metaphors and metonymies often interact linguistic expressions. Some expressions can be interpreted as the mixed case of metaphor from metonymy, while others as mixes of metonymy within metaphor. We can conceive of metonymy as a through-mapping. We can distinguish between outward-looking and inward-looking metonymies. A through-mapping can be either a relationship of reference or that of highlighting. Given such distinctions, we can arrive at a prototype characterization of metonymy.
13. The Universality of Conceptual Metaphors
It is argued in this chapter that some conceptual metaphors may be universal. These include such metaphors as happiness is up , happiness is light , the angry person is a pressurized container , and the event structure metaphor. We showed in the case of the angry person is a pressurized container that the universality of this metaphor can be found at the generic level. English and Hungarian are two typologically completely unrelated languages and represent very different cultures of the world. The Case of the CONTAINER Metaphor for Anger In English the conceptual metaphor in question is characterized as anger is a hot fluid in a container. You make my blood boil. // Let him stew. All these examples assume a container (corresponding to the human body), a fluid inside the container, and the element of heat as a property of the fluid. It is the hot fluid or, more precisely, the heat of the fluid that corresponds to anger. The Hungarian version of the container metaphor also emphasizes a hot fluid in a container. Anger seems to be conceptualized in a variety of unrelated languages as internal pressure inside a container. The hypothetical universality of the pressurized container metaphor for anger and its counterparts appears to derive from certain universal aspects of human physiology. When a metaphorical concept has such an experiential basis, it can be said to be embodied. However, not all metaphorical concepts have such clear bodily motivation (in the sense of physiological) as in the case of the pressurized container metaphor for anger. It can be suggested that there are other kinds of correlations in experience that can motivate other metaphors, including perceptual, cultural, category-based, and other correlations. The Event Structure metaphor may also be motivated by correlations in experience, which can be viewed as metonymic in character. The universality of such metonymic correlations may explain the universality of many conceptual metaphors.
14. Cultural Variation in Metaphor and Metonymy
Conceptual metaphors and metonymies and their cultural context can all be put to useful work in the study of cultural variation in the conceptualization of target concepts, such as the emotions. They enable us to
conceptual metaphor with a network model , which can account for several metaphorical and nonmetaphorical aspects of online understanding. The model consists of input spaces, a blended space, and a generic space. The model offers some distinct advantages, in that with its help we can account for certain metaphor-related phenomena more fully, we can provide subtler analyses of literary texts, and we can describe certain conceptual phenomena with greater systematicity than was available before. Advantages of the Network Model : (1) we can make previous metaphor analyses more precise, (2) we can provide more refined analyses of literary texts, and (3) we can better handle certain problems that arise in connection with the metaphor analysis as presented so far.
18. Metaphor in Discourse
First, metaphors can ensure the coherence of many types of discourse. Two basic types of coherence are identified: intratextual and intertextual coherence. This means that the same conceptual metaphor or metaphorical analogy can make a single discourse ( intratextual ) or several different discourses ( intertextual ) coherent. Second, context plays a crucial role in understanding why we use certain metaphors as we produce discourse. Conceptualizers seem to rely on several contextual factors when they use metaphors in discourse. The ones identified in this chapter include the immediate linguistic context, the knowledge conceptualizers have about themselves and the topic, the immediate cultural context, the social context, and the physical setting. Such metaphors have so far not been recognized by researchers working in conceptual metaphor theory. Third, in contrast to much of written discourse, in face-to-face conversations we find less robust evidence of conceptual metaphors used as coherence devices. The metaphoric process works in less explicit but in equally systematic ways. The metaphors that researchers identify in this type of discourse are called “systematic metaphors.” Such systematic metaphors may represent a level between metaphorical linguistic expressions and fully-fledged conceptual metaphors.
19. How Does All This Hang Together?
In conclusion, then, the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor as discussed in this book works on three levels: the supraindividual level corresponding to how a given language and culture reflects decontextualized metaphorical patterns, the individual level corresponding to the metaphorical cognitive system as used by individual speakers of a language, and the subindividual level corresponding to universal aspects of various kinds of embodiment. However, it is not claimed that the three levels are all equally well understood, researched, and described at the present time, and it is not claimed, either, that we know precisely how the three levels work together. But what is certain, as I hope this book demonstrates, is that the cognitive view as presented here has produced significant results, perhaps the most important of which is the realization that language, culture, body, mind, and brain all come together and play an equally crucial role in our metaphorical competence and, consequently, in the study of metaphor. However, as the many questions above indicate, what we have learned in the past ten years has just given us more to do in the future.
