Ideas About Metaphor
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David Wheeler, R1382155
One of Lynne Camerons main aims in Metaphor in Everyday Language is to demonstrate that metaphors are much more than mere figures of speech, as they had long been considered by literary scholars. She identifies metaphors as having a Topic (the real subject of the utterance) and the Vehicle (another word used to refer to the Topic, but one which is untrue or disjunctive).
She argues that, in fact, rather than being confined to use in literature, metaphors are embedded in our thought and language (Cameron, page 46 in Metaphor in everyday language, pp 46 – 52 in coursebook) and that figurative expression is an everyday (and sometimes unrecognized) part of human communication. She notes that the publication of Lakoff and Johnsons Metaphors We Live By in 1980 has shifted attention away from the metaphor as a figure of speech and has lead to an emphasis on the metaphor as a figure of thought, evidence of cognitive activity. From this point of view, human language and human thought are not inherently literal (Carter 2004, p70), but inherently figurative. Thus, cognitive linguists are less likely to see a distinction between the literary and the non-literary, but to stress the differences between the literal and the non-literal (Carter 2004, p71).
This re-thinking of what constitutes metaphor has increased the number of metaphors that we are aware of. Everyday talk or writing does not make much use of new metaphors, but makes frequent use of dead metaphors –
David Wheeler, R1382155
even when the language user is not aware of their metaphoricity. This is because such metaphors help to structure much of our ordinary conceptual understanding of experience. Gibbs (cited in Carter 2004, p70) takes the word stand – and demonstrates that many meanings of this word are to do with being vertical, resistance to attacks and endurance; so that the basic meaning of stand – to move or to be or to become upright, in other words the physical action it denotes – is linked conceptually to its figurative meanings (for example, The argument still stands or Im Still Standing).
If this is all accepted, it follows, according to Cameron, that researchers face new issues around the nature and identification of metaphor (page 47 in the coursebook). Fundamental to her argument is the notion that metaphor can be identified even when users of it have not intended any metaphorical meaning. Cameron argues that everyday talk does not make use of novel or innovative metaphors – the sort I referred to in my opening as figures of speech – but that such metaphors as are used are in her words conventionalised, often seen by their users as simply the way things are expressed.
Cameron, however, makes greater claims for the ubiquity of metaphor in everyday communication. Our tendency to use conventionalised metaphor, she argues, indicates two crucial human tendencies.
David Wheeler, R1382155
Firstly, we have a basic human cognitive capacity (page 49) to notice similarities between two different things (the Topic and the Vehicle) and that this cognitive ability allows us to understand an unfamiliar Topic by applying what we do know about the Vehicle. Cameron (coursebook pp49-50) backs this up with evidence from a doctor explaining treatment to a patient in order to argue that this use of metaphor is designed to demystify specialist medical jargon and allow the patient to understand medical procedures with reference to their understanding of the Vehicle. This deliberate use of metaphor can be summarized as being used by experts to explain difficult concepts to non-experts; the experts resort to conceptual metaphors that we can all understand to allow insight and understanding for the non-expert.
Secondly, Cameron argues, that metaphor can have an affective role which panders to the human need for intimacy and social inclusion. In examples drawn form the world of education, Cameron argues that this affective metaphoricity is used to mitigate threats and to reduce challenge in daunting circumstances, often using humour.
Cameron admits that the use of cognitive metaphor remains an empirical issue to be investigated and that Gibbs (1994) and earlier theorists of conceptual metaphor have not explained the connection between individual minds and conceptual metaphors. She suggest that further research needs to
David Wheeler, R1382155
be undertaken to investigate how children develop the metaphors of their communities. She also recognizes that culture or ethnography may make a huge difference in the way that conceptual metaphors work; this, in turn, may depend on the affordances offered by a particular language. She also admits that there can be difficulty in identifying metaphors and the conceptual domain that it is based on: there may be several Vehicle domains which fit the lexical evidence (coursebook p51). Finally, she points out that there is much work still to be done to explore the connections between everyday uses of metaphor and the poetic uses of metaphor. Here she seems to imply a cline of literariness, while admitting that it needs further research.
Camerons work is clearly based on earlier work by Lakoff and Johnson and by Gibbs.
I find much of what Cameron has to say convincing, especially when read in conjunction with Carter (pp59-71).
One of Carters criticisms of Gibbs – that he makes little or no reference to spoken data (Carter 2004, p 71) – cannot be said of Cameron; she cites several examples of the use of metaphor from everyday spoken data. However, she uses examples form the world of education and medicine; this works well to substantiate her argument that metaphor can be used by
David Wheeler, R1382155
experts to non-experts and that it can be used to make what is threatening easier to both understand and respond to; however, it might be interesting to examine the use of metaphor in spoken discourse between equals, in situations where expert knowledge