Confronting Metaphor in Use
Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (P&BNS) Pragmatics & Beyond New Series is a continuation of Pragmatics & Beyond and its Companion Series. The New Series offers a selection of high quality work covering the full richness of Pragmatics as an interdisciplinary field, within language sciences.
Editor Andreas H. Jucker
University of Zurich, English Department Plattenstrasse 47, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail:
[email protected] Associate Editors Jacob L. Mey
University of Southern Denmark
Herman Parret
Jef Verschueren
Susan C. Herring
Emanuel A. Schegloff
Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp
Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp
Editorial Board Shoshana Blum-Kulka Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jean Caron
Université de Poitiers
Indiana University
Masako K. Hiraga
St.Paul’s (Rikkyo) University
University of California at Los Angeles
Deborah Schiffrin
David Holdcroft
Georgetown University
Sachiko Ide
Kobe City University of Foreign Studies
Sandra A. Thompson
Thorstein Fretheim
Catherine KerbratOrecchioni
John C. Heritage
Claudia de Lemos
Teun A. van Dijk
Marina Sbisà
Richard J. Watts
Robyn Carston
University College London
Bruce Fraser
Boston University University of Trondheim University of California at Los Angeles
University of Leeds Japan Women’s University
University of Lyon 2 University of Campinas, Brazil University of Trieste
Paul Osamu Takahara
University of California at Santa Barbara Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona University of Berne
Volume 173 Confronting Metaphor in Use: An applied linguistic approach Edited by Mara Sophia Zanotto, Lynne Cameron and Marilda C. Cavalcanti
Confronting Metaphor in Use An applied linguistic approach
Edited by
Mara Sophia Zanotto Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil
Lynne Cameron The Open University, UK
Marilda C. Cavalcanti State University of Campinas, Brazil
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia
8
TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Confronting metaphor in use : an applied linguistic approach / edited by Mara Sophia Zanotto, Lynne Cameron, Marilda C. Cavalcanti. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 173) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Metaphor. I. Zanotto, Mara Sofia. II. Cameron, Lynne. III. Cavalcanti, Marilda do Couto. P301.5.M48C655 2008 418--dc22 isbn 978 90 272 5417 7 (Hb; alk. paper)
2007048315
© 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Acknowledgements Introduction
vii 1
Applied linguistic approaches to metaphor Mara Sophia Zanotto, Lynne Cameron and Marilda C. Cavalcanti
Part I Investigating the nature of metaphor in use
9
1.
Opening Pandora’s box: Multiple readings of ‘a metaphor’ Mara Sophia Zanotto and Dieli Vesaro Palma
11
2.
Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk Lynne Cameron
45
3. Adding sound to the picture: Motivating the lexical composition of metaphorical idioms in English, Dutch, and Spanish Frank Boers and Hélène Stengers 4.
Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews Graham Low
Part II Examining metaphor in corpora 5. Brothers in arms: Contradictory metaphors in contemporary marketing discourse Veronika Koller
63 79
101 103
6.
Metaphor probabilities in corpora Tony Berber Sardinha
127
7.
Corpus linguistic data and conceptual metaphor theory Alice Deignan
149
8. Exploring metaphors in corpora: A study of ‘war’ in corpus generated data Solange Vereza
163
Table of contents
Part III Understanding metaphor in language education 9.
Young learners’ understanding of figurative language Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
10. Th e relationship between associative thinking, analogical reasoning, image formation and metaphoric extension strategies Jeannette Littlemore Part IV Using metaphor as a tool in professional development
181 183
199
223
11. The awakening of Sleeping Beauty: A teacher’s metaphor of professional development and language teaching João A. Telles
225
12. En route through metaphors: Chatrooms as safe places to deal with difficulties in an online course Marilda C. Cavalcanti and Ana Cecilia Bizon
243
13. School teachers in favela contexts: Metaphors they live by Fernanda Coelho Liberali 14. Professional knowledge landscape: A metaphor to conceive of e-mail practices in business settings Maximina M. Freire
267
287
Index of subjects
311
Index of names
313
Acknowledgements
Mara Sophia Zanotto would like to thank Jacob Mey for his acknowledgement of the importance of the conference Metaphor in Language and Thought held in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2002 which originated this volume, and for his encouragement towards this publication. The editors would also like to thank Carol Johns-MacKenzie of the Open University for her expert help with preparing the manuscript, and Isja Conen of John Benjamins for seeing the manuscript through to publication.
Confronting metaphor in use An applied linguistic approach Introduction People use metaphor in the ordinary moments of their lives. In family and work situations, they use metaphor to explain their thoughts and ideas to other people, and to express delight, caring, approval, as well as their more negative counterparts. Metaphor surrounds us as we go about our daily business, impacting on how we understand ourselves and others. It is timely for researchers to approach metaphor as social and situated, as a matter of language and discourse, and not just as a matter of thought. Over the last twenty five years, scholars have come to appreciate in depth the cognitive, motivated and embodied nature of metaphor, but have tended to background the linguistic form of metaphor and have largely ignored how this connects to its role in the discourses in which our lives are constructed and lived. This book brings language and social dimensions into the picture, offering snapshots of metaphor use in real language and in real lives across the very different cultures of Europe and Brazil and contributing to the theorising of metaphor in discourse. It originated in the 2002 conference Metaphor in Language and Thought held in São Paulo, Brazil. In addition, some supplementary papers were specially commissioned. This conference, and others such as the series Researching and Applying Metaphor, showed that many applied linguists are employing a range of methods to investigate metaphor in real world situations. The collection of papers in the book makes an important contribution to the development of an applied linguistic approach to metaphor by bringing together a wide-ranging collection of empirical studies. Between them, these studies demonstrate how metaphor can be taken as a research focus in fields of language use and can be used itself as an “analytic tool” (Zanotto & Cavalcanti 2003; http://creet.open.ac.uk/projects/metaphor-analysis/ index.cfm) to understand human interaction and thinking. This introductory chapter sets out what we mean by an applied linguistic approach and the implications of adopting such an approach for the study of metaphor. It outlines how this approach builds on conceptual metaphor theory, while also challenging it through its position that the language of metaphor must be integral to theory and method.
What is an applied linguistic approach to metaphor? There are various interpretations of ‘applied linguistic’ but central to how we intend the term here is language in use – our problem space is language used by people in
Introduction: Confronting metaphor in use
particular contexts. In this we follow the British applied linguist, Brumfit who defines applied linguistics as “the theoretical and empirical study of real world problems in which language plays a central role” (Brumfit 1995: 27). The real world for applied linguistics has historically been the teaching and learning of foreign languages, but nowadays applied linguistics goes beyond education to encompass language use in a range of workplace situations and contexts, including health, the law, forensic studies, development and human rights. In this book, we encounter metaphor at work in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch; in talk, e-mail, classroom interaction, poetry, book reviews, and advertisements; in schools, in training and in the globalised commercial world. Importantly, the focus on the real world means that applied linguistic researchers are committed to considering the implications of their studies – research often includes reflexivity and / or intervention that aims to implement or evaluate improvements in practice, to change as well as to understand. It will be clear that this interpretation of applied linguistics is very different from its more simplistic interpretation as ‘the application of linguistics’. Contemporary applied linguistics has developed theoretical and research tools suited to the exploration and understanding of contextualised language use, and finds the abstracted, decontextualised systems of formal linguistics seldom adequate for this work. While some academic departments of applied linguistics may have originated in departments of linguistics, the maturing of applied linguistics has led to a great deal of separation between the disciplines over the last decades (Cavalcanti 2004). Applied linguistic approaches to metaphor do not seek a linguistic theory of metaphor to apply; rather they draw together aspects of theory and methodology that serve to address research problems. In focusing on language used in real-world contexts, this often leads to work that crosses disciplines, engaging with theory around social, historical and cultural factors. In line with Candlin & Sarangi (2004: 2): applied linguistics [is seen] as a many centred and interdisciplinary endeavour whose coherence is achieved in purposeful, mediated practice by its practitioners. Achieving such focused principled action will allow us to accommodate perhaps unexpected theoretical and methodological bedfellows.
With a problem space that is real world language use, applied linguistic approaches to metaphor must consider both linguistic metaphor and conceptual metaphor. We reject the backgrounding of language that has sometimes appeared to be inherent in cognitive approaches; not only do we need to consider metaphor in its ‘natural environment’ of discourse when tackling applied linguistic problems, but we also suggest that an understanding of the multi-faceted phenomenon that is metaphor would be incomplete without knowledge of how metaphor operates in its discourse environment. While cognitive approaches to metaphor are characterised by a commitment to seek general principles, what Gibbs has called the ‘generalization commitment’ (Gibbs 1994: 15), applied linguistic approaches must pay attention to the specifics of
Introduction: Confronting metaphor in use
the contexts in which metaphor is used and the people who use it. This ‘contextualisation commitment’ leads to a requirement that we deal with both variation and stability in metaphor. While variation of metaphor with culture is a relatively recent concern for cognitive approaches (Kövesces 2005), variation is expected and central when, as in applied linguistic approaches, we work with contextualised use of metaphor. Variation in both conceptual and linguistic metaphor use is a key theme of this book: variation in choice of metaphors and in the sense made of other people’s metaphors; variation resulting from the gender, the history or social position of speakers; variation resulting from the purpose of discourse and from the organisation of discourse. All this variation presents challenges for a generalised theory of metaphor, challenges that we believe to be healthy for the field. We are forced away from a single, and, it has to be said, sometimes hegemonic, theory of metaphor as conceptual, towards a more pluralistic, multi-disciplinary perspective on metaphor in use. The idea of stability combined with variation emerges as a theme in this book as a direct result of our view of metaphor as dynamic, rather than static. Metaphor in use is dynamic because it is constructed by people as they talk or write, to suit their evolving purposes and goals (Cameron, 2007). The use of metaphor in a first language is learnt by children in the course of their interaction with adults and other children, in the context of their families and other socio-cultural groups. As it is used and re-used in new communicative contexts, metaphor in language and in thinking is continually changed and adapted. Out of this change, stabilities of various sorts emerge that we may label, for example, idiom or conceptual metaphor. When we analyse metaphor across a range of contexts, we can focus on what is stable, leading to generalisations, or we can focus on what changes, leading to contextualisations. We suggest that a focus on both stability and change, on how specific instances relate to longer term stabilities, can illuminate the dynamic nature of metaphor.
Researching metaphor in an applied linguistic approach Adopting an applied linguistic approach to metaphor has the immediate implication that a single research method is unlikely to be adequate for investigating metaphor in real world contexts. This collection of research studies illustrates how diverse methodologies are used and different techniques are combined to produce the rich data that are often needed to answer applied linguistic research questions. Going beyond experimental studies which have been characteristic of metaphor research in the last three decades (see Zanotto & Palma, this volume), this book fills in a gap in methodological diversification to deal with empirical data and with qualitative research in metaphor studies, while also including quantitative and qualitative/quantitative research. There are six qualitative studies (Cameron, Zanotto & Palma, Cavalcanti & Bizon, Liberali, Telles, Freire), four chapters with a primarily quantitative approach (Deignan, Berber Sardinha, Vereza, Boers & Stengers) and three chapters which present a combination of quantitative/qualitative techniques (Low, Piquer-Piriz, Koller).
Introduction: Confronting metaphor in use
At the very least, analysis of language as discourse must be accompanied by contextual information about language users and the situation of use. Contextual information may be generated using techniques such as those based on observation (and recorded in field notes and diary studies), audio and video recordings and interviews. Researchers are often interested in the understandings and assumptions of language users, and must turn to interpretive methodology to investigate “human meaning in social life and (in) its elucidation and exposition” (Erickson 1986, 119). In addition to the techniques mentioned above, think-aloud protocols (Ericsson & Simon 1984) deserve special attention because they can provide relevant insights about reflexive stages which cannot be captured in experiments (see Zanotto & Palma this volume). The technique used to access the perspectives of research participants in metaphor studies is an adaptation of the conventional think-aloud procedure which has been developed within a socio-cognitive paradigm in the work of the editors of this collection (Cameron 2003; Cavalcanti 1983; Cavalcanti & Zanotto 1994; Zanotto 1992, 1998). Cameron (2003) developed a socio-cognitive version of think-aloud for use with children, working in pairs and addressing a task as they read a text sentence by sentence and discuss the meaning of metaphors. Zanotto’s Metaphor and Indeterminacy Group at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo have developed a collaborative think-aloud technique with students which produces group verbal protocols. Again, think-aloud procedure alone does not provide sufficient information, and other techniques are used alongside, including reflection in diaries and retrospective interviews. While combinations of research methods appear to be inevitable in the investigation of metaphor in use, the issue of how techniques are selected and combined requires attention to ‘trustworthiness’ (Lincoln & Guba 1985; Denzin & Lincoln 1998) and to theoretical compatibility. We have selected studies for this volume that we feel meet such criteria, and that can thus illustrate methodological possibilities for other researchers. The book is divided into sections: • • • •
Investigating the nature of metaphor in use Examining metaphor in corpora Understanding metaphor in language education Using metaphor as a tool in professional development.
We now explain this organisation and site the chapters within our applied linguistic approach to metaphor.
Investigating the nature of metaphor in use: stability and variation The first four chapters of the book take metaphor as research object and explore the nature of contextualised metaphor in different types of discourse. This section presents a picture of metaphor in use, in which large scale stabilities emerge from micro-level dynamics and change. The papers of Zanotto & Palma, Cameron, Boers & Stengers,
Introduction: Confronting metaphor in use
and Low show how people adapt their formulations and interpretations of metaphor when they are engaged in talking, reading or writing. Zanotto & Palma and Cameron investigate very specific contexts, in which the messiness of real world metaphor use is displayed and described. The first deals with the multiple readings of metaphor in the context of classrooms. Using interpretive methodology, the study reveals how making decisions about the metaphoricity of a vehicle term is a complex process that may involve interwoven threads of metaphor and metonymy. Cameron´s chapter evidences the shifting nature of metaphor in talk, presenting a categorisation of types of metaphor shifting that can be used in analytic work across contexts. The paper by Boers and Stengers is important in reminding us of the importance of the phonological, much neglected in metaphor studies to date. They investigate lexical idioms, i.e., metaphorical expressions that have stabilised in a language, and suggest that the stabilisation and standardisation of lexical idioms are influenced by patterns of sound. In an interaction across scales of use, the micro-level of phonological realisation contributes to stabilisation of lexical idioms at the macro level. The particularity of stabilised idioms often causes problems for language learners, who may not be aware of exactly which linguistic aspects are frozen and which remain slightly variable (Cameron & Deignan 2006). Low examines the discourse of academic book reviews, combining metaphor analysis with positioning theory. We see how metaphor is used pragmatically as well as conceptually in this genre.
Examining metaphor in corpora The chapters in this section move to a more macro-level, where corpus analytic techniques become a valuable resource for studying stability and variation in large collections of contextualised uses of metaphor. Koller integrates cognitive and discursive approaches into her analysis of the metaphoric conceptualisation of brands, showing that socio-cultural influences are as relevant as embodiment for the construction of cognitive schemata. In Koller’s corpus of marketing discourse, a newly emergent conceptualisation is shown in action. Berber Sardinha’s chapter takes a probabilistic approach to investigate the metaphorical use of words and phrases in two corpora of Brazilian Portuguese, one restricted by genre and one non-specific. The chapter takes inspiration from Halliday’s work on the probability of use of lexicogrammatical items within the language system, and shows how probabilities offer some measure of the extent to which metaphor stabilisation has taken place. The techniques that Berber Sardinha develops can be used with corpora in other languages. Deignan’s chapter pushes further the argument that the linguistic patterns found in corpus data are more complex than conceptual metaphor theory has suggested, and that the nature of social interaction needs to form part of an adequate explanation of the data. Finally in this section, Vereza explores the collocations of metaphors in corpus data, focusing on the word war and using real world data to challenge generalisations made about conceptual metaphors such as argument is war.
Introduction: Confronting metaphor in use
The first sections of the book thus argue that rigorous description of contextualised metaphor use, from the most micro-level of talk to the macro-level of large corpora, is essential as part of developing an adequate explanation of the phenomenon of metaphor.
Understanding metaphor in language education In the third section, the focus moves to the specific context of language education where the goal is to develop learners’ metaphor competence (Littlemore & Low 2006) or metaphor capacity (Cameron 1996). Here attention to the interaction of generalisable stabilities with variation is again of relevance. Learners of a foreign or second language may be able to transfer some competence with metaphor, particularly in comprehension where universal conceptual or primary metaphors may work across languages. The chapters in this section are concerned with what language learners need to learn about metaphor use, and how people, from children to adults, build their metaphorical competence. The chapter by Piquer-Piriz focuses on a younger age group, investigating Spanish children’s comprehension of figurative language in English as a foreign language, combining experimental results with qualitative analysis. In an experimental quantitative study, Littlemore examines a technique to foster the metaphoric competence of university students in England for whom English is a foreign language.
Using metaphor as a tool in professional development The chapters in the fourth section of the book report studies which use metaphor as an analytic tool to explore the construction of professional practice, in the contexts of teacher education (Telles, Cavalcanti & Bizon, Liberali) and business communication (Freire). Each chapter reports an empirical study which identifies and collects metaphor in use, and draws on conceptual metaphor theory to explain the conceptualisation of professional practice. However, cognitive metaphor theory is found not to be sufficient, and each of the papers uses other theoretical frameworks and associated research approaches and techniques to deal with social aspects of metaphor use. Using narrative inquiry as a theoretical approach and hermeneutic phenomenological research procedures, Telles analyses spontaneous metaphors in oral narratives collected as part of an in-depth case study of an individual teacher. The metaphors allow him to (re)construct the teacher’s understandings of herself, of literacy and of her students. In an ethnographic study, Cavalcanti & Bizon use metaphor as a tool to explore computer-mediated interaction between participants in an in-service teacher education course. The metaphors of the teachers, found as they emerged in the chat room interaction, are focused against the theoretical framework of positioning theory. Liberali’s method involves examination of spontaneous metaphors used in oral and written descriptions. Through this process, she uncovers how teachers working in very poor conditions in Brazil think about their schools and students. In a process characteristic of applied linguistic work, the research technique in turn becomes a
Introduction: Confronting metaphor in use
professional development technique to encourage critical reflection by teachers. A further use of hermeneutic or interpretive techniques is found in the paper by Freire who explores the use of computers in the lives of professionals in the business world. Her data are a corpus of e-mail messages, written in English, and interviews with the writers. Again, the research includes reflections on practice by the participants; participation in the research study is designed to be an empowering experience rather than one in which the researcher generates data and then disappears from the scene.
Opening dialogue In this introductory chapter, we have made the case for taking seriously the social and contextual factors that impact on metaphor as a phenomenon of language and of thought, and for doing this through applied linguistic approaches. We have argued that cognitive theory alone cannot adequately serve applied linguistic metaphor research, and that we need to develop a rigorous theoretical and methodological pluralism. We hope that the chapters of the book will serve as evidence for the richness that can be accessed through such pluralism and that needs to be confronted for a full understanding of metaphor. We hope that the collection serves to open up dialogue between researchers that will benefit the field.
References Brumfit, Christopher (1995). Teacher professionalism and research. In G. Cook & B. Seidlhofer (Eds.), Principles and practice in applied linguistics (27–41). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cameron, Lynne (1996). Discourse context and the development of metaphor in children. Current Issues in Language and Society: Child Language, 3, 49–64 Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum. Cameron, Lynne, & Alice Deignan (2006). The emergence of metaphor in discourse. Applied Linguistics, 27, 671–690. Cameron, Lynne (2007). Confrontation or complementarity? Metaphor in language use and cognitive metephor theory. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 5, 107–135. Candlin, Christopher & Srikant Sarangi (2004). Making applied linguistics matter. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1, 1–8. Cavalcanti, Marilda C. (1983). The pragmatics of F(oreign) L(anguage) reader-text interaction: Key lexical items as source of potential reading problems. Ph.D. thesis. University of Lancaster, Lancaster, England. Cavalcanti, Marilda C. (2004). Applied linguistics: Brazilian perspectives. AILA Review, 17, 23–30. Cavalcanti, Marilda C. & Mara S. Zanotto (1994). Introspection in applied linguistics: Metaresearch on verbal protocols. In L. Barbara & M. Scott (Ed.) Reflections on language learning (148–156). Clevedon, Multilingual Matters. Denzin, Norman. K. & Yvonna Lincoln S. (Eds.) (1998). The landscape of qualitative research. London: Sage.
Introduction: Confronting metaphor in use Erickson, Frederick (1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (119–161). New York: MacMillan. Ericsson, K. Anders. & Herbert A. Simon (1984). Protocol analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gibbs, Raymond W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Zoltán (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lincoln, Yvonna S. & Egon G. Guba (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Littlemore, Jeannette & Graham D. Low (2006). Figurative thinking and foreign language learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Zanotto, Mara S. (1992). O processo de compreensão da metáfora na formação dos professores de língua materna (The process of understanding metaphors in teacher education for teachers of the mother tongue) In M. S. Zanotto e M. A. A. Celani (orgs.), Lingüística aplicada: Da aplicação da lingüística à lingüística transdisciplinar (Applied linguistics: From application of linguistics to cross-disciplinary linguistics) (233–246). São Paulo, EDUC. Zanotto, Mara S. (1998). A construção e a indeterminação do significado metafórico no evento social de leitura (The construction and indeterminacy of metaphorical meaning within the social reading event). In V. L. M. O. Paiva, (Ed.), Metáforas do cotidiano (Everyday Metaphors) (13–38). Belo Horizonte: Edit. da UFMG. Zanotto, Mara S. & Marilda C. Cavalcanti (2003). Metaphors in interpretive research in applied linguistics: Focus on education. Paper presented at BAAL 2003, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, September 4–9.
part i
Investigating the nature of metaphor in use
chapter 1
Opening Pandora’s box Multiple readings of ‘a metaphor’ Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma This research1 emerged out of a practical need to change reading practices in a classroom environment in order to tune them to a paradigm, which is open to multiple readings, and rejects the absolute interpretive authority of the teacher. When reading was taken as univocal, and the teacher (or the course book author) was considered the authority in interpreting the text, the teacher did indeed feel more secure in carrying out reading tasks in the classroom. However, s/he rarely made room for student subjectivity. In other words, the student’s voice was not taken into account. In fact, it seems that not allowing the student’s voice to be heard has a lot to do with multiple readings, since, if one makes room for students’ subjectivity, and the teacher no longer has the support of the sole reading found in the course book, what occurs may be rather unpredictable and generate considerable uncertainty. Nonetheless, after the paradigmatic changes of the 1970s, studies carried out under different theoretical trends have shown that the traditional view was inadequate, and that a text does in fact allow several readings. Meaning was no longer considered as emanating from the text itself, but as constructed in the interaction of the reader with the text, based on the reader’s context and knowledge – thus the possibility of multiple readings. In the classroom, however, the traditional practice persists – with the teacher’s interpretive authority and the ritual silencing of the student’s voice. Moreover, it is not an easy task to change this practice without providing guidelines to the teacher on how to proceed in the very complex issue of multiple readings. From a theoretical standpoint, multiple readings have been connected with ideas of meaning indeterminacy, which reflect a new approach to meaning. While meaning in the positivist paradigm (at least in terms of literal meaning) was considered something
1. This research is part of the Integrated Project ‘Metaphor, Indeterminacy and Multiple Readings in the Classroom’, developed by GEIM-LA – Metaphor and Indeterminacy Study Group in Applied Linguistics – registered in CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), whose members include Palma and whose coordinator is Zanotto.
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
clear, precise and determined, it is now considered inherently indeterminate. As stated by Moura (1998: 107), indeterminacy “occurs when to a linguistic form more than one semantic representation may be attributed, i.e., when the mapping between form and meaning is not univocal.” Therefore, indeterminacy refers to all cases in which meaning is not clearly determined, in other words, it “encompasses a large range of semantic phenomena such as homonymy, polysemy, ambiguity, vagueness, generality, metaphor, and so on.” (Zanotto & Moura 2002: 2). Though metaphor is considered a kind of indeterminacy phenomenon, it is seen, together with presupposition, as “rare and exotic borderline phenomena of natural language.” (Pinkal 1995: 24). For this reason, although recognised by some scholars as inherent to metaphor, metaphorical indeterminacy has not been considered as central focus of research. Indeterminacy scholars, including Martin (1992), Pinkal (1995), Poesio (1995), Wierzbicka (1996) and others, though recognising its existence and complexity, do not attend to this matter. Among metaphor scholars we find a similar picture. Although Black (1979) considered indeterminacy as part of the essence of metaphor, Gibbs (personal communication) has noted that many cognitive linguists seem to ignore this aspect and continue to work with metaphor as if it had a single, determined meaning. This indicates that metaphor indeterminacy needs to be investigated deeply both theoretically and also empirically, because there seems to be no empirical research whose objective is to understand how genuine readers interpreting a text deal with indeterminacy in general, let alone metaphorical indeterminacy. For this reason, we have carried out an empirical investigation using qualitative methodology, in which genuine readers generate (Mason 1996) data in natural contexts, i.e., the classrooms. In earlier research (Zanotto & Palma 2003) we investigated – with several groups of readers – the understanding of a metaphor in an authentic text within a classroom environment. Data analysis led us to conclude that the focused metaphor allowed three compatible readings, probably constituting a type of active polysemy in the context. This study, together with a more recent investigation,2 in which the focused metaphor led to conflicting readings – probably constituting a case of ambiguity – have allowed us to build the hypothesis that perhaps metaphor is not simply another kind of indeterminacy phenomenon with the same status of polysemy, ambiguity, vagueness and generality. Rather, metaphors display different kinds of indeterminacy just like literal language. This means that we can find a metaphor that allows polysemic reading (with compatible readings), or a metaphor that allows ambiguous reading (with conflicting readings), or even vague reading (without definite limits). Thus, it seems that metaphor
2. After the conclusion of the data generation by Zanotto & Palma (2003), Zanotto started another data generation procedure with a different poem by Drummond. The partial analysis of these data was presented in the workshop on Data-based Expert Workshop, as part of the project – MetNet: Metaphor Analysis – Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Using Discourse Data, coordinated by Lynne Cameron and held in the University of Leeds, in May 2006.
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
presents the same kinds of indeterminacy as literal language, but perhaps, and most probably, it presents its own specificities. With this hypothesis in mind, we have decided to carry out an empirical3 investigation to map the different kinds of indeterminacy found in metaphors, using data from genuine readers’ interpretations of different metaphors. For each potential type of metaphorical indeterminacy, we will carry out a collective case study (Stake 1998), following interpretive methodology (Erickson 1986; Denzin & Lincoln 1998), asking several groups to read the same text to broaden the possibilities of different readings. The larger project will thus involve several collective case studies (see methodology), with groups of readers reading several texts with potentially different metaphors from the point of view of indeterminacy. This chapter presents the first case study. For this study, we aimed at focusing on the process of co-construction of multiple readings, because the process might shed light on the nature of the undetermined product of interpretation, in other words, the multiple readings. We sought to answer the following questions: a. How do readers co-construct the multiple meanings of the focal metaphorical expression? b. What type of indeterminacy characterises the multiple readings? This chapter is organised in three sections, in addition to the introduction and discussion. In the first section below, we present a synthesis of our theoretical research on indeterminacy and in the second section we explain the research methodology. The third section is dedicated to the data analysis.
Metaphor indeterminacy Indeterminacy and fluidity of metaphorical meaning have, for a long time, constituted an obstacle for those seeking to scientifically focus on metaphor. This is explained by the ‘myth of objectivism’ (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Johnson 1987), according to which, words must bear clear, precise and determined meanings. As a consequence of this idea, metaphor, as well as other figures of speech, should be avoided when one sought to speak objectively, since their meanings were neither clear, nor precise, nor did they suit reality. Therefore, metaphors were not seen as desirable in scientific discourse, let alone as an object of scientific study.
3. We think that this empirical research, with qualitative methodology, on the indeterminate nature of metaphorical meaning leads us to deal with two of the challenges for metaphor scholars put by Ray Gibbs, in the opening plenary of RaAM 6 (Leeds, April 2006), that are: What do metaphors mean? And how do we count or individuate the meanings of a metaphor?
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
In objectivist semantics, the postulate of meaning determinacy was a key construct. Whenever looked at within this tradition, indeterminacy was seen as subsidiary to the claim of determinacy, as pointed out by Moura (1999): intrinsic indeterminacy found the following alternatives: (a) it was considered a deficiency of natural languages – as opposed to logical languages (Fregean position); (b) if indeterminacy is not considered negative, it should be controlled and eliminated whenever necessary (Quine’s position (1960)); and (c) indeterminacy is controlled within the context, and therefore, does not represent a real problem. (p. 2)
This objectivist understanding of the nature of meaning has been supported since the Pre-Socratic philosophers, and has lasted until recently, dominating Western philosophy and becoming the dominant research program in several subject areas. However, Johnson (1987) points to the seventies as the period in which a crisis seriously challenged this view, theoretically, in the field of Logic, by Hilary Putnam (1981), and empirically by a number of studies in different subject areas, which shared similar concerns, such as a focus on phenomena in which human understanding was required to account for meaning and reason (for example: categorising, concept framing, metaphor, polysemy etc.). Even though the postulate of determinacy has collapsed due to empirical studies, there remains a need for more empirical research to investigate the nature of indeterminate meaning. Because the study reported here focuses on metaphor in use, as interpreted by genuine readers in the natural classroom environment, it can contribute to unveiling the indeterminate nature of metaphoric meaning. It seems to us that the most important action is deep data analyses that point to what a theory of meaning, especially that of indeterminate meaning, must explain. And it is likely that even more complex theories will be needed to deal with indeterminacy as an inherent characteristic of ordinary language (Rommetveit 1985). As stated in the introduction, theoreticians in the field of semantics and pragmatics who deal with indeterminacy have not deeply discussed the specific case of metaphor. Among the authors who present a brief discussion of metaphoric indeterminacy, we could mention Martin (1992) and Pinkal (1995). Martin (1992) dedicates some thought to “semantisme flou” of metaphors, and discusses the metaphoric entailments4 as an open field of vague boundaries. Nevertheless what we have been finding in our data does not seem to refer only to metaphoric entailment but also to different target domains mapped on to the same source domain. Pinkal (1995), for his part, considers that more or less conventional metaphors are highly vague and ambiguous, and goes
4. “Le champ sur lequel se pratique l’implication métaphorique est un champ ouvert, aux limites floues.” (Martín 1992: 224) (The field on which metaphoric entailment is practiced is an open field of vague boundaries.)
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
on to generalise saying that “all kinds of semantic indefiniteness meet in the world of metaphors” (p. 23). This last statement reinforces our hypothesis, according to which metaphor displays the same kinds of indeterminacy as literal language. On the other hand, theoreticians are generally concerned with ‘precisefying’ 5 – i.e., with specifying meaning or solving indeterminacy. Even Gibbs, when dealing with multiple meanings of metaphor, tries to specify a meaning, by estimating the author’s intention (Gibbs 1987), or by investigating “how context constrains the interpretation of the indeterminate, non-propositional meanings of metaphor” (Gibbs and Gerrig 1989: 146). But he ends up conceding that “metaphors are often viewed as open-ended precisely because their ambiguity resists a single, definitive propositional meaning” (Gibbs 1987: 44). Yet, as far as metaphors are concerned, indeterminacy seems not to be resolved by context, nor even through knowledge of the author’s intention. In other words, there is, according to Black (1979: 25), “an inescapable indeterminacy”, essential to the very nature of metaphors. For this reason, we dare to suggest that it is precisely indeterminacy that makes metaphors so special. What is generally considered a problem that scholars want to solve is actually a characteristic inherent to metaphors, making it a phenomenon that has bewitched several scholars (Haskell 1987).
Methodology Qualitative methodology and Group Think-Aloud technique As pointed out by Gibbs (1994), we have witnessed a real empirical boom in metaphor studies in the last thirty years, largely as a result of experimental studies by cognitive psychologists and psycholinguists into the comprehension process of metaphor. The glut of experimental research studies is complemented by equally large shortage of qualitative studies. Among metaphor scholars who base their work on qualitative methodology, we find Steen (1994), Cameron (2002, 2003) and Zanotto and her research group (Zanotto 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001; Nardi 1999; Palma 1998; Vieira 1999). Our research on the construction processes of multiple readings of metaphors adopts a qualitative methodology, of interpretive orientation, “in which the immediate (often intuitive) meanings of actions to the actors involved are of central interest” (Erickson 1986: 120). Within this methodological frame, we have been carrying out collective case studies of an instrumental nature, as explained further below.
5. Pinkal (1995) and Poesio (1995) proposed the Precisification Principle, according to which “lexical meaning is intrinsically undetermined and can be precisified in many ways, according to the context.” (Zanotto & Moura 2002: 4)
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
The main method used to “generate” (Cf. Mason 1996) data is the Group Think-Aloud technique (Zanotto 1992, 1995), based on Brown and Lytle’s use of interactive thinking aloud as a pedagogical tool (Brown & Lytle 1988). While experimental methodology allows researchers “to tap into on-going, very fast, mostly unconscious, cognitive and linguistic processes” (Gibbs 1999a: 38), Group Think-Aloud, in contrast, is an instrument which allows investigation of conscious reflection about a text.6 Such activity allows participants to deepen their interpretation and multiple readings to take place. The Group Think-Aloud technique is a socio-cognitive7 re-interpretation of traditional Think-Aloud procedure (Ericsson & Simon 1984), based on meta-research on this technique carried out by Cavalcanti & Zanotto (1994). It is in fact a group reading practice, “in which readers, in a face-to-face interaction, share, negotiate, construct and assess different readings” (Zanotto 1997: 3). It is similar to the adapted procedure used by Cameron (2002, 2003), also in the socio-cognitive paradigm: Goal-directed Interactive Think-aloud (GITA). In concrete terms, the practice of thinking aloud in group is a social reading event (Bloome 1983, 1993), in which the teacher’s role is only to coordinate and mediate the discussion, giving up his/her role as interpretive authority and making room for students’ voices in the construction of readings. For this reason, besides being a technique of research, the interactive Think-Aloud is also a pedagogical tool. If the teacher does not take part in the activity, s/he should find out during the retrospective interview that follows if they did indeed focus on metaphor or s/he must take this opportunity to clarify doubts on thoughts that had been elicited and remained incomplete, or other aspects that were left unclear. The students are also asked to write a reflective diary after the activity is finished. Therefore, in our study, three different techniques are combined – Group ThinkAloud, reflective diary and retrospective interview – to allow for a more complete elicitation of data and for a triangulation process in data analysis. In interpretive research, triangulation refers to the crossing and confirming of data generated by one technique with data generated by other techniques, yielding “stronger evidence than if this evidence had been originated only from one source of information” (Erickson 2001: 14). However, in this chapter, due to space constraints and to the fact that the other tools have confirmed the readings constructed in the Think-Aloud task, only the data generated by this technique will be analysed. It is important to clarify that Group Think-Aloud is not an isolated data construction event. As a social reading event, it makes room for readers’ subjectivities to be 6. As Gibbs (1999a) points out, metaphor understanding is “a process that occurs in real-time along a variety of temporal dimensions, starting in the first milliseconds of unconscious processing and extending up to long-term, reflective analysis.” (p. 38) 7. When we decide to place ourselves in a socio-cognitive perspective, we are agreeing with Cameron (2002: 687) who states that, considering Vygotsky’s work, some versions of sociocultural theory “downplay the importance that Vygotsky gave to individual learning.”
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
displayed, allowing the students to reveal themselves to the group, and exhibit personal ideas, feelings and experiences. Therefore, it is important that the students know one another and feel at ease in the company of their peers and teacher. For this reason, the activity occurs in the context of a course, when students are already familiar not only with one another but also with the teacher/researcher, who can motivate them to experience this kind of activity.
Instrumental and collective case study The problem of multiple readings of metaphor arose from previous research studies carried out by Zanotto (Zanotto & Ricciardi (1984), Zanotto (1995, 1998)). The focus of these works was metaphor comprehension processes, but, in data obtained, multiple readings emerged with such strength and complexity that finding a methodological (and theoretical) framework appropriate to the problem became a challenge. As this was an investigation into multiple readings of metaphor, it was fundamental that we worked with different groups of readers so as to allow for varied reading constructions. We thus thought it appropriate to design an instrumental and collective case study (Stake 1998), following interpretive methodology. The reason for considering this an instrumental case study is that “a particular case is examined to provide insight into an issue or refinement of theory” (Stake 1998: 88). Therefore, the case will be examined (in depth) so as to shed some light on the matter of metaphor indeterminacy. Our interest in these participating groups does not relate to intrinsic aspects of the groups themselves, but in how they can contribute to clarifying a matter external to them, that is, the question of multiple readings. And because we worked with several groups (cases), the research is a collective case study, i.e., an “instrumental study extended to several cases” (Stake 1998: 89). Having defined the design, data from Zanotto & Ricciardi (1984) and Zanotto (1995, 1998) were used to form the collective case study, together with the data generated from four groups of students who took part in the research in 2003. The investigation divides into two phases, reflecting the two moments of research. The first phase involved two groups: – GA group – was composed of Zanotto and Ricciardi, who spontaneously constructed and negotiated their readings in an oral conversation, unknowingly accomplishing what today we call Group Think-Aloud or group protocol (see Zanotto & Ricciardi 1984). – GB group – was composed of 6 postgraduate students who experienced the group protocol task, in the classroom, coordinated by Zanotto, in 1992. Data were partially analysed in Zanotto (1995, 1998) In the second phase, Zanotto worked with 3 groups (G1, G2 and G3), each of 5 students, experiencing thinking aloud in group in the classroom, in 2003. After carrying out the think-aloud task without the participation of the teacher, each group was
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
interviewed and the students were also requested to write a reflective diary. After that, the three groups took part in a general discussion in which the different possibilities of reading were discussed. They thought the readings over to see if they would accept all of them, and produced criteria on which to base their acceptance or rejection of each reading. At the same time, Palma was working with another group (G4) of 7 students, coordinating them in the activity of thinking aloud in group. After the activity, a retrospective interview was carried out, and students were asked to keep a reflective diary. A final discussion was held one week later. To sum up, we have data from two groups in the first phase and four groups in the second phase, which will be triangulated in the analysis.
The text The text used for this research was the poem ‘Fraga e Sombra’ [Cliff and Dusk] by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a well-known Brazilian poet of the twentieth century. This text was selected because it has novel, and somewhat difficult metaphors, which should lead to non-automatic reading and to the elicitation of metaphor comprehension processes. Fraga e Sombra
Cliff and Dusk
A sombra azul da tarde nos confrange. Baixa, severa, a luz crepuscular. Um sino toca, e não saber quem tange É como se este som nascesse do ar.
The crepuscular blue shadow crushes us Dim and grim, the indistinct evening twilight A bell tolls, and not knowing the one who does Sounds as though from the air it came to light
Música breve, noite longa. O alfanje Que sono e sonho ceifa devagar Mal se desenha, fino, ante a falange Das nuvens esquecidas de passar.
Short melody, long-lasting night. The sickle That sleep and dream slowly reaps Has just become thin-drawn and a flock Of untroubled clouds, high in the sky, floats
Os dois apenas, entre céu e terra, Only the two of us between the earth and the heavenly sky Sentimos o espetáculo do mundo, Did feel the huge moving spectacle of the universe Feito de mar ausente e abstrata serra. Made of absent sea and abstract ridges infinitely high E calcamos em nós, sob o profundo Instinto de existir, outra mais pura Vontade de anular a criatura.
And we crushed inside us under the profound Instinct of surviving, other, even more intense, Vivid will, that of annihilating our very essence.
ANDRADE, Carlos Drummond de. Reunião. Rio de Janeiro, Livraria José Olympio Edit, 1969, p. 177.
(Translation by Sandra Madureira)
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
The focal metaphor The metaphor, whose comprehension process will be the focus of this study, is the implicit metaphor (Steen 1999) that appears in the first line of the second quatrain: “the sickle”. According to classic rhetoric, the implicit metaphor is a “metaphor in absentia”. This kind is opposed to the “metaphor in praesentia”, or explicit metaphor (Steen 1999), whose terms A and B, are usually clearly stated. Metaphor in absentia brings only one of the concepts, B, and the reader needs to seek A. As stated by Cameron (1999: 12), it is important to escape from the “recent trend of reducing all metaphors to the form of A is B”, and so we have chosen this implicit metaphor to focus on.
Data analysis The analysis is organised in two parts, reflecting the two phases of research. Each part contains subdivisions for each of the groups analysed. We sought to describe, in depth, the construction processes of the multiple readings for the two groups in the first phase, whilst the second phase readings are used to confirm or complement the data found in the first phase. The analysis focused on extracts related to the comprehension process of the sickle metaphor, and was constructed by an inductive search of relevant theories that could explain aspects of the understanding processes found in the data.
First phase – GA and GB groups Group GA The text was read by Zanotto and Ricciardi, who individually constructed different readings, and later negotiated their understandings. During a retrospective conversation, they reached a consensus, accepting the different readings, whose processes were later discussed in Zanotto & Ricciardi (1984).8 First reading of sickle metaphor. The first reading of sickle metaphor was constructed by Zanotto, who read sickle as moon in a bottom-up process of inferences based on textual clues (in italics), as in extract 1 below: Extract 1 In the cataphoric sense, we have, on the surface, sleep and dream which, metonymically, by temporal contiguity, suggest night. This possibility is 8. Our objective in this paper was to focus on a metaphor found in an authentic text, so as to verify the role played by the context in the construction of metaphorical meaning.
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
anaphorically confirmed by Short melody, long-lasting night. The cataphor also offers us another clue: flock of clouds, which, by spatial contiguity, evokes sky (. . .). Thus, aware of the sickle blade shape, we were able to coherently organise the result of inferences and arrive at a possible referent: MOON, both in the shape of a new moon or crescent moon, and in the shape of the last quarter. Anaphoric elements such as shadow, evening, crepuscular and bell tolls – the latter metonymically evoking by cultural-religious contiguity, the hour of the Hail Mary (6 p.m.) – can now be seen as weaving a temporal circumstance, preparing the reader for the arrival of the Moon . . . (From Zanotto & Ricciardi 1984: 45).
In this reading construction, some inferences are made in terms of spatial, temporal and cultural religious contiguities, which we considered to be metonymic processing, by analogy with the distinction between metaphoric processing and processing metaphoric language – proposed by Gibbs (1999a). According to Gibbs, metaphoric processing is “a general mode of understanding that can be applied to any kind of situation or language” (p. 40). On the other hand, processing metaphoric language occurs when there is special linguistic expression or material that is metaphoric. Hence, by analogy, when we inferred the Hail Mary hour from the words “the bell tolls”, we were using a metonymic processing on a linguistic expression that is not metonymic. After the temporal (‘sleep’ and ‘dream’ which, metonymically, by temporal contiguity, suggest ‘night’) and spatial (‘flock of clouds’ which, by spatial contiguity, evokes ‘sky’) circumstances had been inferred by metonymic processing, similarity emerges between the form of a sickle and that of the moon. Consequently, the moon reading involved metonymic processing and the processing of metaphoric language. In this case, however, the metonymic processing, which closely follow contextual clues, serves the purpose of supporting the construction of the metaphorical meaning.
Second reading. The reading of time was constructed by Ricciardi also through a bottom-up process, as we can see in extract 2 below: Extract 2 Taking into account a co-textual element, we notice that to the Moon is attributed the eliminating action of reaping, a verb that synthesises twoimportant ideas; movement and destruction. The Moon is therefore destructive in its movement. (. . .) The subjective attribution of the eliminating characteristic to the Moon is achieved indirectly considering that the true eliminator is the evening time, not the moon itself. It is time that, in its trajectory, destroys night and brings dawn, chasing away sleep and killing dreams. In this sequence of inferences, we conclude that the direct referent of sickle could well be time, if we base our reading on the acting similarities
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
that both determine in their movements. Incidentally, Khronos, the Time God, brings in his hands a destructive sickle, (. . .) The author, however, presented a chain of references by metaphorically using sickle instead of moon and moon metonymically, instead of evening time, in a temporal contiguity association. (From Zanotto & Ricciardi 1984: 45–46)
In the first paragraph, there is an explanation for the metaphoric interpretation of moon as a reaper because it receives the attribute of carrying out the eliminating action of ‘reaping’. In the second paragraph the metaphorical meaning time is a reaper is constructed by analogical reasoning based on the similarity of action between ‘moon’ and ‘time’. The third paragraph brings reasoning based on the similarity between ‘sickle’ and ‘time’, whose similar trait is the “similarity of action and effect that both determine in their movement” – ‘both’ meaning, in this case, ‘sickle’ (as moon) and ‘time’. At the end of the paragraph, we state that ‘moon’ was used metonymically to replace ‘evening time’, in temporal contiguity association, thus, a metonymic processing. We can therefore confirm that the following readings were metaphorically constructed in a bottom up process: sickle as moon, sickle as time, moon is a reaper, time is a reaper, as well as the reading of moon for time, which involved metonymic processing. Readings occurred at different levels, but showing a tight connection between them – one of them, sickle as moon, serving as support for the construction of the other readings, moon for time and time is a reaper. This leads us to raise the question of whether only the first reading might have been a processing of metaphor language, whilst the others represented metonymic processing and metaphoric processing respectively. Another question relates to the problem of how we count or individuate the readings: do we have four readings or two? For the time being, we consider there to be two: sickle as moon and sickle as time, both metonymic readings connected to the metaphoric readings: moon as a reaper and time as a reaper.
Group GB First reading. The participants of GB group, coordinated by Zanotto, were: Carina, João, Sílvia, Antonio, Cristina and Emília (pseudonyms). The students’ conversation about the text followed the patterns of Group Think-Aloud since this made possible on-line constructions of meanings and moments of immediate retrospection, thus eliciting different readings and different processes of construction. The text was handed out to the students and they were given a few minutes for silent individual reading, after which time, students engaged in conversation about the text. The expectation was that the readings would emerge in the same order as in the GA group, since the moon reading seemed logically necessary to reach the reading of time. Let us see what happened.
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
After 14 initial conversational turns, João focuses on the verse in which the sickle appears, unchaining the construction of one of the readings, as shown in Extract 3:9
Extract 310
1
João life carries on between sleep and dream, right? . . . . and . . . I mean, there is no problem . . . that . . . that background that he shows is just the balance between dream and sleeping, I mean . . . there is nothing else . . . there’s transcendence, isn’t there? 5 Teacher you can say it . . . she has got something there Carina I thought of something else because . . . when he speaks of bell . . . short melody . . . long-lasting night . . . I thought that. . twilight that is short when compared to night that is long . . . I thought Cristina But music could be related to the bell . . . 10 Carina I thought the bell sound I related the bell sound with that of the twilight, at six in the evening . . when the bell tolls . . . that’s what I thought . . . which is exactly at the crepuscular time . . . and which is very short in relation to the night and then . . . he speaks of the . . . er . . . of the sickle, doesn’t he? 15 João Which is . . . Carina which I checked (in the dictionary) to know what it means . . . and it is a sabre . . . João Which is . . . Carina a cutting weapon which would really be time passing by and cutting 20 down the time that people have to dream or to sleep . . . sleep and dream . . . as the night goes past, right? . . . I thought a lot about time/it was an idea that frequently kept returning . . . João Time? Carina time .. the idea of time going past . . .whether slowly or quickly . . . 25 time during the night that goes past. . that keeps cutting . . .
9. The original data were in our native language – Brazilian Portuguese – but they will be presented only in translation into English. 10. Transcription conventions , continuing intonation contour . final intonation contour . . short pause . . . longer pause [ ] overlapping talk ??? indecipherable talk “italic” – reading of the poem
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
In lines 1 to 3, João brings the hypothesis of “life carries on between sleep and dream” or “(it) is just the balance between dream and sleeping”. At this moment, Carina takes the turn (lines 6–8), after the teacher’s approval (5),11 saying that she had thought of something different and presents her interpretation for sickle, in a kind of immediate retrospection, given that she had just finished her reading of the text. Although Cristina (9) and João (15, 18 and 23) make some attempts to interrupt Carina, her flow of thought seems not to be under threat. She begins by interpreting “short melody, long lasting night”, saying that twilight is short when compared to the night, which is long. In this turn (6–8), she seems to be carrying out a metaphoric processing, since she replaces melody by twilight, seemingly reading, in a metaphoric manner that the “twilight is a short melody”. However, Cristina calls their attention (9) to the reading that the short melody is that of the bell, i.e., she reads literally, and not metaphorically as the melody of the twilight. Carina answers her, making her metonymic processing explicit when she relates the bell tolling to the twilight through temporal contiguity. After that, Carina focuses on the sickle (14). She first constructs its literal meaning: a sabre (17), a cutting weapon (19),12 and then she constructs its metaphorical meaning, seeking for an entity in another domain: which would really be time passing by and cutting down the time that people have to dream or to sleep. She bases her reading mainly on reaps sleep and dream and constructed an analogy between sickle and time by means of the cutting action or function. Analysing Carina’s reading in accordance with Lakoff & Turner (1989: 41, 86), we could say that she activated the conceptual metaphor: time is a reaper,13 reconstructed through analogical reasoning and supported by the metonymic reading of sleep and
11. The numbers of lines that are being analysed will be indicated in parenthesis. 12. She needed to refer to the dictionary – which was in class for students to use – because in Portuguese, the author uses a less well-known word ‘alfanje’ [sickle], rather than ‘foice’ [scythe] – which is more common. In a Portuguese dictionary (Ferreira 1999), alfanje [sickle] has two meanings: (1 a) short, broad bladed sabre; (2 a) long-handled scythe used for cutting grass. In literature, sickle is more used with meaning one, as a metaphor for the moon and a symbol of death. This can be explained because sickle was in its origin a ‘Moorish sabre with a short , broad blade, convex in the shape and employed as a weapon up to the mid-XIV century”. (Grande Enciclopédia Larousse Cultural (Great Larousse Cultural Encyclopedia (1998) São Paulo: Plural Publishers). 13. In fact, this metaphor is part of a composition of metaphors, as pointed by Lakoff & Turner (1989: 74): “. . . time can be personified as a reaper because we have a basic metaphor that people are plants; that time can be a changer because of our common sense notion that the passage of time plays a causal role in bringing about events, especially changes; that time can be a thief because we have the further metaphor that life is a precious possession, and so on.”
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
dream as ‘time to sleep and dream’.14 In this case, we could say that Carina is the sole author of this reading; it was not a case of co-construction since she presented it in immediate retrospection. The fact that this group’s first reading was that of time, by top-down process ing, was contrary to Zanotto’s expectations that the first reading would be that of moon – which, being a symbol of time would inevitably lead to the reading of time, just as with Zanotto and Ricciardi, who constructed their interpretation of time through bottom-up processing. We can therefore conclude that the reading of time could be constructed by following two different paths: a metaphoric path, in group GB and GA, and a metonymic path, in group GA. This variation in processes was not expected.
Transition to the second reading In the extract below, when the teacher asks Carina to confirm her reading of time (1–2), we have the beginning of another reading process initiated by Sílvia, who, using another sentence whose subject is also the sickle (has just become thin-drawn), disagrees with Carina’s reading (3–4). Extract 4 1 Teacher The sickle that sleep and dream slowly reaps – did you interpret this as time? Sílvia Let’s see . . as time? . . . the sickle becomes thin-drawn ahead of clouds? Time. . .drawn? Thin. . thin before clouds? it can’t be so . . .
14. It is important to note that when speaking of time passing by and cutting down the time that people have to dream or to sleep, Carina constructs a causal tautology. Fauconnier & Turner (1999: 84), when explaining the conceptual integration that occurs in the image of death (a similar process to the one that occurs in the reading of ‘time’, whose anthropomorphic representation can be seen in the image of Khronos, the God of Time) state that, in one of the spaces found in the blending, there is ‘an abstract pattern of causal tautology in which an event of certain kind is caused by an abstract causal element: e.g.,: Death causes dying. Sleep causes sleeping. Lust causes lusting.” We could add that: Time cuts time. . . Therefore, in Carina’s speech there are two occurrences of time, generating a situation that is apparently illogical, but that constitutes the causal tautology. The first occurrence is that of ‘time’ as a subject for the verb ‘to cut’ and, if ‘time cuts’, we can easily infer that time is a reaper. The second occurrence of ‘time’ is that of an object of the verb ‘to cut’ – that which suffers the action of being cut down and that, by tautology, is time itself. Nonetheless, this occurrence is followed by a defining relative clause “(time) that people have to sleep and to dream”, which would constitute an indirect form, classified by rhetoric as ‘periphrastic’ (or circumlocution) to say that ‘evening time’ or ‘nights’ that, in turn, would be an indirect way of saying ‘lifetime’. In short, the periphrastic expression shows that the idea of ‘lifetime’ is encapsulated, which could lead the reader to the global inference: time reaps lives, i.e., it causes death, which is another possible reading for sickle, as we will see later.
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
5 Carina ah . . . it can be [she laughs] João no.. the sickle slowly reaps . . . sleep and dream . . . Sílvia What becomes thin drawn? Carina The sickle . . . João the sickle .. the sickle is hardly drawn thin . . . thin . . . ahead of the 10 phalanx of clouds . . Carina Is hardly drawn. . . João Thin-drawn Sílvia That’s why I abandoned the idea of time . . .
As we can see in Silvia’s speech (4), she uses the substitution of sickle by time, and that creates an incongruity (Cameron 2003: 12) whose resolution can lead to the construction of another reading. Then substitution is being used as a strategy to metacognitively monitor comprehension, both in order to verify Carina’s hypothesis for the reading of time and as a means of monitoring her search for another reading, as we will see in the next extract. Carina laughs and re-states her reading of time (5), and João repeats the words found in the text (6). Nonetheless, Sílvia returns to the issue at hand (7), by asking what becomes thin-drawn? i.e., time is an abstract concept and cannot be drawn, to which Carina replies with the literal reading: the sickle (8). João and Carina continue to think aloud (9–12), and Sílvia concludes her thought by stating that because of that (incongruity) she abandoned the idea of time (13). The group, however, leaves Sílvia’s last turn without a response, and the problem unanswered, moving to other aspects of the text.
Second reading – a riddle to be solved The group continues to discuss other aspects of the text during 145 turns, and it is only through intervention from the teacher that the group returns to the issue raised by Sílvia: Extract 5
1 Teacher You abandoned something ah . . Silvia said that . . . that idea of time . . . that ah . . . that Carina had brought up . . . you (silvia) said that you abandoned it . . . but you didn’t say why. Sílvia because he says . . . time is not drawn.. thin-drawn . . . especially . . . 5 thin . . this made me forget about this idea of time . . . Cristina The sickle that sleep and dream slowly reaps has just become thin-drawn Sílvia I’m under the impression that he wants to use an image there . . . João He uses an image with the word slowly. . . which is also about time. 10 Antonio but short time . . . Teacher And so? . . . what did you think it is? Sílvia Short melody . . . I put it like this . . .who is or what is this sickle that terminates sleep and dream and is thin-drawn ahead of clouds? . . . it
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
doesn’t seem to be the sun . . . in the morning . . . because . . . it 15 could be . . . Antonio I think time is quite strongly there Teacher let’s allow Silvia to finish . . . João I don’t think that . . . Sickle is really sickle, there is no interpretation beyond that . . . because as the bell is being tolled by someone . . . 20 whom we don’t know . . . it spreads that grievous song . . . within the twilight. . . the sickle is . . . cutting something . . . but it slowly harvests . . what? Sleep and dream . . . I mean.. it is there as a part of . . . do you understand? Of something that is thin-drawn . . . Sílvia well . . . to me this sickle is not clear . . . 25 Carina to me it is time going by . . . Sílvia yes . . . I thought of that . . . but . . . João It is an element that separates sleeping from dreaming . . . Sílvia I think that it is not . . . an element that keeps cutting sleep and dream . . it is not separating the two . . . 30 João no . . . it is not separating the two . . . it is rather, intercepting . . . it decreases the possibility of someone dreaming and . . . sleeping . . . Sílvia and who does that? Carina time . . . it goes by and you . . .??? Sílvia yes . . . but why does he say that time can be thin- drawn? 35 Carina it is thin-drawn. . . it doesn’t draw itself . . . it is thin-drawn . . . Sílvia but if it is hardly drawn or if it is thin-drawn, the word hardly is
determining something here . . .
After the teacher returns to the issue of the reading of sickle with the group (1–3), Sílvia also recovers her thought (4–5), stating that sickle cannot be time because time cannot draw itself. In the following turns (6–10), Cristina, Sílvia, João and Antonio think aloud about the problem and the idea of time is raised again. However, the teacher speaks to Sílvia (11), asking her what she thinks sickle is. Silvia then replies (12–14), formulating the problem by a new and interesting perspective: if time cannot draw itself, she says: Who is or what is this sickle that terminates sleep and dream and is thin-drawn ahead of clouds? In other words, Sílvia uses here an unexpected strategy of comprehension: she empties sickle of its reference and temporarily changes it in a deictic expression: who is or what is (the sickle) while its metaphoric reference is sought (see Zanotto 1990). She also raises the hypothesis of sickle being the sun, but refutes it immediately (13–14). She is then interrupted by Antonio who restates the idea of time (16). However, at this point, the teacher asks the group to allow Sílvia to complete her reasoning (17). João, though, does not listen and reaffirms his literal reading (18–19). Sílvia will still insist on the group, returning, several times, to the same problem (24, 26, 28, 29, 32 and 39) sometimes receiving Carina’s time reading as a reply
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
(25, 33), other times having João’s interpretative attempt, by means of the deictic strategy, in which he speaks of something (23) or of an element (27). At this moment, the thinking aloud process about the sickle is interrupted, and the group starts to think about the phalanx of clouds metaphor (flock of clouds in the translated version),15 which takes ten turns, after which Sílvia brings their attention back to the sickle:
Extract 6 1 Sílvia what confused me was this ‘thin-drawn’ . . . who is going to draw itself? It reaps and it draws itself ahead of the clouds? João ??? Carina the night is long . . . what was short was the twilight . . . the night is 5 long . . . and so . . . the time is going by very slowly . . . Teacher You are trying to solve a problem Carina we are indeed . . . (she laughs)
Silvia, therefore, puts the question of incongruity between time and thin-drawn forward again (1–2). What Silvia wants to say here is that time is abstract and cannot be drawn. Thus, it is necessary to seek a referent from another domain that can be drawn. The verb ‘to draw’ is therefore being used as a clue for another reading. It is interesting to note that Sílvia uses the deictic strategy again: who is going to draw itself? (1–2) On the other hand, Carina goes back to thinking aloud about time (4–5), and the teacher says that they are trying to solve a problem (6), to which Carina agrees by laughing (7). The group, however, goes back to the discussion of flock (phalanx) of clouds for the 13 turns that follow. Up to this point in the discussion, we can notice that the group is not taking Silvia’s proposition into account. They do not listen to Silvia, worried as they are with their own voices echoing inside their minds. Carina, for example, keeps bringing back her reading of time, while João maintains his literal reading. Besides, sometimes the group digresses and discusses other aspects of the text. Thus, until this moment, the group had been holding a monological kind of discussion, while Silvia was dialogically trying to construct meaning from her colleagues’ words, adequately acting as a mediator. They seemed to be functioning within the frame of the conduit metaphor (Reddy 1979), i.e., within the principle of one sole and pre-determined reading, by casting out 15. The translated version uses flock of clouds, because the translation is intended to be poetic, rather than being word for word. However, in order to achieve this, the original meaning was altered, since the expression in Portuguese would have corresponded to phalanx of clouds. Thus, the students were focusing on the phalanx metaphor when thinking aloud. In order for readers to better understand the students’ discussion, we have included a word for word translation of the verses in which sickle appears: “the sickle that slowly reaps sleep and dream, is barely drawn, thin, ahead of the phalanx of clouds forgotten to pass.”
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
the reading of others since this would imply accepting another possible reading. At this point, the teacher comes to Silvia’s assistance:
Extract 7
1 Teacher but I think Sílvia is right . . . something has become thin-drawn . . . I don’t mean that the interpretation of time is wrong . . . but something has become thin-drawn . . . Sílvia yes . . . 5 Carina It’s the sickle! Teacher her question . . . is valid . . . . Carina It is thin-drawn . . . this is what I thought, a phalanx full of arms . . . an army full of arms . . . a sickle? It is hardly thin-drawn . . . a sickle . . . it isn’t . . . easily told apart . . . it is only one . . . 10 Sílvia so who is this sickle? All Laugh Cristina that’s a problem, isn’t it? Teacher I think it would be interesting if you solved it . . . Sílvia now . . . it is interesting that phalanx (falange) and sickle (alfanje) are 15 written with the same characters João but that’s not a problem . . .??? Carina and sound the same too. . . interesting this Cristina yes, it is.. João I don’t think so . . . let’s see . . . the bell is an object . . . that exists . . . 20 right? The sickle is precisely an object that exists . . . I think there isn’t any interpretation beyond that . . . besides what’s there . . . do you understand? Sílvia Right . . . João It speaks of someone tolling the bell . . . there is someone cutting 25 some . . . something . . . but so finely cutting it that one can hardly notice . . . due to the presence of the phalanx of clouds . . . thin . . . why thin? Because it is all a dream . . . Sílvia Is it possible that the sun is in the shape of a sickle? It isn’t, is it? João The sun . . . at least . . . 30 Teacher You’re getting warm . . . João Are we getting warm, teacher? Cristina No . . . the night . . . the long night. . . Teacher The Sun at night, folks? That’s not possible. Emília The moon, folks! . . it’s the moon there! . . . in the shape of the 35 moon All Yeah! . . you got it! . . it’s the moon! . . . the new moon [laughing a lot] João ah . . . the sickle . . . Teacher That’s it . . . you found it! Carina That is hardly drawn . . . 40 All ahh! . . that’s it . . . (laugh and clap)
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
45
João Hey! . . . look . . . of course! . . . of course! . . . the last quarter . . . Sílvia It is the moon, everyone . . . (laugh) look . . . Antonio It could be the first or the last quarter Teacher Isn’t it an enigma? Sílvia It’s delightful, isn’t it? Teacher it is a great enigma and . . . so . . . what is the link between the
Emília 50 Carina
moon and time? What do you say? Is it the moon or the time? . . . which one do you accept? Or do you accept both? both . . . especially because with that moon . . . which is a phase of the moon that we relate to time . . . the moon goes past the sky, doesn’t it? When it finishes . . . the
night is over . . . it represents . . . it is the symbol of time . . . still, I keep my opinion . . .
The teacher goes back to the problem that had been left on hold, by saying that Sílvia was right in looking for another interpretation of time (1–3). Sílvia agrees with her (4), but Carina replies interrupting the teacher and stating that it was indeed the sickle that was being drawn (5). She carries on with her thought (7–9), trying to justify that the sickle is being drawn by opposition with the word phalanx, which is an army of weapons – the sickle being just one of them, thin-drawn. Sílvia, nonetheless, returns to the matter making everyone laugh because of her persistence: so who is this sickle? (10) Cristina’s response strengthens the idea that it is indeed a problem (12) while the teacher encourages them to solve it (13). However, in the following four turns (14–18), Sílvia, Joa~o Carina and Cristina think aloud of the Portuguese sound similarity between alfanje (sickle) and falange (phalanx of clouds, translated as flock of clouds in the poem), and João seemingly wants to say (16) that this is not a problem; that the real problem is being left aside. Returning to the problem at hand, João pursues his literal reading of sickle, reiterating that there is no other understanding apart from that (19–21). Sílvia, apparently agrees (23) with João, and he continues to think aloud of the meaning that sickle (24–27) might have, by using a deictic strategy – since he replaces sickle for someone – which seems to indicate that he is not quite sure about what or who the sickle might be. Sílvia raises the hypothesis of the sun being the sickle (28), but she herself dismisses it. João begins a thought that is left incomplete (29), and the teacher says that they are getting warm (30), i.e., they are getting closer to solving the enigma, to which João, feeling encouraged, asks for confirmation that they are really getting warm (31). Cristina backs Sílvia, by saying that the text mentions “a long-lasting night” (32). At this point, the teacher strengthens her point by saying: The Sun at night, folks? That’s not possible (33). Therefore, they could infer that sickle could not be the sun. At this moment, the solution comes from Emilia (34) – who had, silently, been tagging along with the discussion and now was showing that she had been following everything that had been said: the moon, folks! It’s the moon! In the shape of the moon.
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
The reading of sickle as ‘moon’ was therefore co-constructed by this group (especially by Sílvia, Emília and Cristina), through bottom-up processing, in which the verb “to draw” was an important clue for the readers to complete the mapping across domains (Lakoff 1993) between sickle and moon. The construction process was similar to that of a solution of an enigma16 (at the end of the activity, Sílvia made the comment that it was a delightful enigma (45), and her peers seem to think similarly, if we consider their laughing and clapping (40). After that they discuss whether the moon would have been a new moon, a first or a last quarter. This metaphor functioned as a novel metaphor for these readers.17 João and Carina accepted the reading of moon, but Carina also maintained her interpretation of time and João gave up his literal reading. In short, the group GB accepted two different readings: moon and time and rejected the literal meaning. It is important to note that the process by which Silvia and the group coconstructed the reading of sickle as moon was an on-line process, and that Silvia used several strategies: – At first, she substituted sickle by time, and realised the incongruity between time and drawing; which led her to the rejection of the time reading hypothesis. This fact shows that the substitution was a strategy to verify if this hypothesis would solve the incongruity – which leads us to the conclusion that incongruity, apart from being a necessary condition for the identification of the metaphor (Cameron 2003), is also important guide for interpretation. – Then, she replaced sickle by the deictic expressions who or what temporarily erasing its literal reference, while its metaphoric reference was sought; – After that, she replaced it by the ‘sun’ – another reading hypothesis, but she herself rejected that, and so did the group, because the poem is about the twilight, the beginning of night. We thus notice that textual coherence and relevance (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995) are important in the evaluation of readings, and can constitute an important path to investigate the question of acceptance or rejection of the multiple readings.
16. “the interpretation of this metaphor is similar to that of an interpretive guessing game or riddle (Georges & Dundes 1963) that, incidentally, is essentially a metaphoric game: who or what is it (sickle is emptied of its reference and works like a deictic) Thin-drawn in the sky at night (clues of place and time) Which is sickle shaped ( similarity) But is not a sickle? (dissimilarity) (Zanotto 1998: 30) The answer is the moon (solution: metaphorical reference)” 17. However, in the literature, it is a metaphor that has been used quite often. Kövecses (2002: 49) gives an example of a sonnet by Shakespeare in which this metaphor occurs. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rose lips and cheeks/within his bending sickle’s compass come. (Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
–
Finally, Emilia, based on the whole process that had been constructed by Silvia, came up with the solution in an authentic process of co-construction (Jacoby & Ochs, 1995) of reading.
Another important aspect is that the reading hypothesis of moon was constructed from a similar trait (the shape) and from two non-similar traits, which were the result of metonymic inferencing for the place (the sky) and the time (at night) in which the sickle is placed. Mapping per se was finalised after the students explored similarities between sickle and moon, discussing whether it was a first or last quarter moon.
Third reading - death After the construction of moon and time by the group, the professor synthesised what had been said and added a third possible reading: Extract 8 1 Teacher There is something else . . . then . . . the sickle as a moon . . . it’s a metaphor, isn’t it? There is a space of intersection between them . . . the form, right? And . . . perhaps in other aspects too . . . what occurs to me now is the form . . . and Silvia deducted . . . that it was 5 something that had been there . . . because it was thin-drawn ahead of the phalanx of clouds . . . it was finely drawn . . . in the sky. . she thought. . she thought . . . is it the sun? No, it can’t be. . so I gave you a clue . . . sun. . at night? Impossible! It’s the moon. . which is to say that you were very close to the moon . . . now . . . the moon . . . 10 crossing the night . . . or, in other words.. reaping dream and sleep. . this takes us to the idea of time . . right? Now there is a link there João . . . temporal . . . Teacher a link . . . I don’t know if metaphoric or metonymic . . . which
15 20
is the moon . . . we need to think a little further to see . . . I know that the moon . . . slowly passing through the night . . takes us to . . perhaps it is another metonymy here . . but, in any case, it
forms two levels . . and time passing by . . . leads to death . . . which was the other part that you . . justified by speaking of the sickle, because you recalled that the sickle is the symbol of death . . . also . . . one can go straight to (to that reading)
In lines 1–11, the teacher synthesises the processes of the readings of moon and time and then constructs the reading of death as a consequence of time passing by (lines 17–20), thus using the reading of time as support for the construction of this new reading. In this case, we could say that there was an inference based on a relation of cause and effect, though it is not a metonymy within the text – and this is a different case from when the reader sees sickle standing for death, based on the metonymic
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
relationship of instrument for agent. In this case, we could say that the sickle represents a metonymy in the text.
Discussion of the readings of the first phase Table 1 summarises the readings of the first phase and shows the processes, the textual clues and the authorship for the readings. It also allows us to see the complexity of the phenomenon that we initially thought might be ‘a metaphor’. In fact, what we have is a network of metonymic and metaphoric readings with semantic relations between them. Simply calling this phenomenon ‘a metaphor’ does not seem to be appropriate. What is its identity then? How can we define this metonymic and metaphorical network? These questions motivated Zanotto to seek theories and a methodology for this investigation. Indeterminacy, for example, was not the focus of her research work; but the search for theories that might explain the phenomenon, however, led her to the theoreticians who dealt with this matter. Nonetheless, this search led to the understanding that there were no specific studies on metaphorical indeterminacy, thus, the challenge remained to carry out further empirical research that might contribute to the elaboration of theories around metaphoric indeterminacy. Comparison of data from groups GA and GB showed that the reading of time was possible prior to that of the moon, due to top-down processing activated by the verb reaps, which was the most relevant clue (see Cavalcanti 1989) for Carina. Besides, we also had the reading of death, which had not appeared in group GA. What if other groups experienced the thinking-aloud in group of the same text? Would we have further surprises? It was then that we had the idea of designing a collective case study to check if other surprises might occur, or if the readings would begin to repeat. Thus, data from Zanotto & Ricciardi’s (1984) and Zanotto’s (1995, 1998) works were revisited, becoming part of the first phase, and Palma was invited to take part in the second phase.
Second phase In this phase, the data analysis focuses only on the readings validated by the groups – and for time and space constraints, it will not be as detailed as the analysis of first phase.
Group 2 The readings of the first three groups found in the second phase, G1, G2 and G3, who experienced the Group Think-Aloud in a course taught by Zanotto, were not mediated by the teacher. However, she later ran retrospective interviews with them, and requested them to write diaries. What was noticed was that, without the teacher’s mediation, students simply put forward their individual readings to the group, rather than working dialogically. For this reason, we cannot say that there was co-construction, nor
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
Table 1. Synthesis of the first phase readings Group Participants Readings Processes GA Zanotto and sickle Ricciardi as moon moon is a reaper moon for time time is a reaper GB 6 students time is a and Zanotto reaper sickle as moon sickle is death
Textual clues
Bottom up by Sleep and dream analogical Long-lasting night reasoning untroubled clouds supported by Shadow, evening, metonymic crepuscular processing Bell tolls Bottom up by reaps analogical reasoning Metonymic Sickle processing Bottom up by analogical reaps reasoning Top down reconstructed Bell, short melody, by analogical long-lasting night, reasoning evening, supported by crepuscular, metonymic sleep, dream processing Bottom up by Has just become analogical thin-drawn reasoning and metonymic processing of clues for the metaphorical interpretation Bottom up by Sickle reaps metonymical reasoning based on instrument for agent and on cause for effect relation
Author of reading Zanotto
Ricciardi Ricciardi Ricciardi Student Carina
Co-construction of Sílvia and Emília
Zanotto
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
negotiation of readings. They did not discuss the readings put forth by their peers, each one remaining with their own understanding of the text. In the interviews and in the general discussion between the groups, they were later requested to think about the readings that had been constructed. We will only consider data from group G2 because they constructed the only reading accepted as valid in the general discussion. This group was formed by five students: Cecilia, Paula, Sueli, Pedro and Juliana. They constructed three different readings for sickle: death, insomnia and the shadow of a rock in the shape of a sickle. The first was accepted by the group and the other two were rejected, assessed as unwarranted. The reading hypothesis of death was constructed by Pedro, described when he produced the following retrospection, in the group discussion:
Extract 9 Pedro Here you have a metaphor of Death . . which . . which is the . . sickle . . it’s Moura-Torta [character] . . . from children’s stories . . . the woman that came with a sickle . . . to reap lives . . . so the sequence is a metaphor of death . . . that thing of love and death . . .
Pedro presents an equivalence: the sickle . . . it’s Moura-Torta from children’s stories, and explains it: the woman that came with a sickle to reap lives. This explanation is evidence that Pedro had constructed two types of inferences: one based on contiguity: (1) the sickle is an instrument used by Moura-Torta (a personification of death); (2) and another inference based on similarity: “reaps sleep and dream” reminds him that Moura-Torta reaps lives, i.e., death is a reaper (Lakoff & Turner 1989). Therefore, we have metonymic as well as metaphoric processing in this reading. As he reports it, the metonymy is the first one to appear. The readings that were later rejected by the group were of “a shadow of a rock which constructs a sickle shape” and “insomnia”. Pedro thought that the shadow of a rock would make a thin drawing of a sickle, but in the general discussion with the other groups, this reading was left aside. The reading of death, made by Pedro, was not easily accepted and was refuted by Cecilia, who proposed the idea of insomnia.18 But this reading was also refuted in the general discussion since the students concluded that insomnia did not have any relationship of similarity, nor of contiguity, or any other relationship, with the sickle. Group 1 did not construct any reading that was accepted. Given the time when the poem was published, the students related the sickle with military power of the
18. Cecilia: I think that it is insomnia . . . that long night that never ends . . . ( ) and you don’t dream don’t dream . . . and you don’t sleep . . . for something that . . . that doesn’t . . . that deprives you . . . of thatmoment of yours, do you understand?
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
dictatorship period in Brazil, but in the general discussion, they rejected their own reading, saying that the Brazilian army does not use a sickle as weapon. Group 3 did not construct any reading for sickle.
Group G4 The group coordinated by Palma was composed of the following students: Valéria, Aurora, Silmara, Ana Carla, Eugênia, Angélica and Amarílis. During the group discussion, the teacher acted as a mediator, coordinating the interventions and asking questions, so that the group could deepen their reflections about the sickle metaphor. Two interpretations were given for sickle: moon and death. First reading – moon. Extract 10 below is preceded by a long discussion whose trigger for the construction of the meaning of moon was given by Amarílis who insisted on analysing the lines: The sickle that sleep and dream slowly reaps has just become thin-drawn while keeping up a dialogue with the mediator. After this dialogue, the teacher synthesizes what had been said and asks Amarílis what the sickle might be. The student answers by presenting the group a reading hypothesis (see below line1): Extract 10 1 Amarilis would the sickle be the sun? ?? how come? Amarilis the sun . . . in order to have shadows you need the light of the sun . . . Ana Carla but look at what he says short melody long-lasting night. . .would 5 this . . . this short melody and this long-lasting night be referring to the sickle? Amarilis no, it is referring to what was said before . . that which tolls . . . Ana Carla the sickle . . . thinly drawn ..the sickle . . . Silmara when I read the text I couldn’t do it . . . 10 Amarilis is it the moon? The moon is thin . . .
In light of the skepticism shown by a voice which is not identified (2), Amarílis seeks to justify the solution presented, by relating the hypothesis made to a term found in the poem, i.e., the ‘shadow’, thus establishing a retroactive relation (Palma 1998) between sickle and shadow (3), in the sense that she goes back to the text seeking clues to decipher the metaphor. Ana Carla follows Amarílis’ strategy and relates short melody long-lasting night to sickle (4–5). However Amarílis answers (7) that short melody longlasting night is related to a bell tolls. After that Ana Carla insists on the drawing of sickle (8) and is interrupted by Silmara (9), who does not actually finish her explanation of her line of thought because she is interrupted by Amarilis. She brings the hypothesis of sickle as the moon (10), based on the similarity between the shape of sickle and moon, and on the verb to draw, that was recovered by Ana Carla. It is important to highlight
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
that, before that, the group had discussed the curved format of the sickle, and Angélica had even drawn it on the board, in a similar form as the first quarter moon. Thus, in constructing her reading of sickle as moon, Amarílis seems to have related the drawing on the board to the idea of sickle being thinly drawn, since, by deciphering the enigma, she also says the moon is thin, and draws the moon in the air, pointing to what was represented on the board. The group carried on in their bottom-up processing, in which the verb to draw was a fundamental element in establishing a cross-domain mapping (Lakoff 1993) between sickle and moon. Thus, it was through a process of analogical reasoning that the reader constructed this meaning of sickle, which can be seen in the use of the adjective thin applied to moon, closely bound to its first quarter form. Second reading – death. The reading of sickle as death was constructed by Silmara through top-down processing. The following excerpt shows how this meaning was constructed:
Extract 11
1 Angélica A bit of our hopes, of positive expectations in life..as if it refused us the very right to dream which is something that human beings need in order to live. . .those who do not dream, do not live, right?. . . Silmara Then we would have something like the twilight which is a kind of 5 death, isn’t it? . . . and beside that there is (?? ) trying the attempt to cut, there is the image of death that we have socially . . . the card with a hood, the dark face and a sickle . . . isn’t it? So this image came to my mind now, though it was very abstract, but now it is closer to the shape . . . of actually cutting . . . expectation of dream 10 and of hope . . .
It is with Angélica’s turn, stating that those who do not dream (1–3) do not live, that Silmara attributes to the sickle the idea of death (4–7), supported by the metaphor twilight as death (4–5). By thinking of her background knowledge – the Tarot card, with elements that compose its image such as the hood, the dark face and the sickle – she constructs this reading as a social representation of death. She also highlights that, initially, this image was presented in abstract form, but now, in view of the verb to reap, it has become more concrete (7–10). By bringing death to this social archetype, Silmara activates the conceptual metaphor death is a reaper (Lakoff & Turner 1989), thus constructing this reading, through top-down processing, highlighting the allegories of death and sickle (or scythe) (Cf. Cirlot 2005: 259). In short, in G4, there were two readings of sickle: sickle as moon and death is a reaper. The first occurred through bottom-up processing – with similar meaning construction to that of GB group, in the first phase. The second reading occurred through top-down processing, as had happened to the reading time as a reaper by Carina, in group GB.
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
Discussion of the readings of the second phase In the second phase, three readings were repeated: sickle for death, sickle is moon and death is a reaper. The only reading constructed by bottom-up processing and the teacher’s mediation was sickle is moon. The other readings – including both the ones accepted by the group and the ones rejected by them – were constructed by top-down processing. It seems that the students, without the teacher’s mediation, have difficulty in carrying out bottom-up processing when reading the poetic text. In sum, the data found in this phase did not present much novelty, except for the top-down processing in the reading of death is a reaper. Table 2, below, provides an overview of the readings of the second phase Table 2. Synthesis of second phase readings Group Participants Readings Processes G1 Five students — G2 Five students death is a reaper sickle for death G3 Five students — G4+Teacher 7 students+ sickle is teacher moon death is a reaper
Textual clues
— — Top down by Sickle reaps activation of conceptual metaphor and metonymic processing — — Bottom up Sickle, thin-drawn process Sickle, reaps Top down process
Authors — Pedro
— Amarilis and Anacarla Silmara
General discussion The methodology used – Group Think Aloud technique in a design of collective case study – to focus on multiple readings of ‘the metaphor’ resulted in the generation of valuable data which, besides shedding light on some mechanisms of the comprehension process, made it possible to discuss the very identification of the figure, considering that what emerges is a network of readings interwoven by metaphoric and metonymic threads. That which one might classify simply as ‘a metaphor’, proved to be a more complex matter, a polysemous amalgam of metaphors and metonymies. In other words, confronting metaphor in use leads the researcher to face these types of phenomena which constitute a challenge for metaphors scholars to explain. In short, the sickle is like a chameleon – depending on the processing employed by the reader, it can be a different metaphor or a different metonymy. Therefore, focusing on the process, which was the intention stated in the first research question (how do readers co-construct the multiple readings of the focal metaphorical
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
expression?), has led us to notice the variety of processes involved in the construction of the multiple readings, and has made us confront an unexpected problem: how to count and individuate the readings in this amalgam of metaphoric and metonymic threads? At the end of the first phase, we thought there had been three different readings, since we were only taking into account the different target domains that had appeared in the readings: moon-time-death. However, taking into account the different construction processes, we could think of more readings, for example, sickle as moon (based on the form similarity) or moon as a reaper (based on the function). The same can be said about sickle for time (based on the metonymic relation of instrument for agent) and time as a reaper (based on the function). Therefore, the prior position of counting only three readings seems to be reductive from the point of view of meaning. Nonetheless, if we were to consider the readings organised in a network whose nodes would be moon, time, and death, would the nuances created by metonymic or metaphoric processes be the links between these nodes? This is one question that we leave open for future research. The discussion of individuation of readings makes evident, in fact, that accounting for the construction process can shed light – but also make more complex – the discussion about the product of interpretation, i.e., the multiple readings. We therefore leave another question unsettled: Do the different processes of readings construction have influence on the nature of the readings or on the criteria for individuating the readings? Apart from this, the focus on the process provided different evidence on bottom-up and top-down processing. The bottom-up processing, analysed in depth in group GB’s reading, in the first phase, showed several strategies used in the construction of the reading of moon by Silvia and the group: substitution strategy, the role of incongruity in the search for another reading, deictic strategy, and textual strategies for searching textual clues for the construction and evaluation of reading hypothesis. On the other hand, the readings carried out through top-down processing constituted evidence of the activation of conceptual metaphors by the readers: time as a reaper and death as a reaper. The activation of conceptual metaphors or of contiguity relations, having previous knowledge as a basis seems to be related to the reader’s most relevant textual clue. This leads us to the discussion about the role played by the context. In relation to the role of context, the data analysis suggests that depending on the textual clue of greater relevance (Cavalcanti 1989)19 for the reader, and depending on
19. In her study on the reader’s pragmatic interaction with the text, Cavalcanti adopts the principle of relevance as central to reading comprehension and, considering the difference in
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
his previous knowledge, the reading is processed differently. If sickle is the strongest clue, for example, it is likely that the metonymic reading based on the relation instrument for agent takes place. In this case, we have sickle for time or for death, but immediately the reader associates time or death to reaps, and then, this time or death, inferred by a metonymic process, becomes a metaphor time is a reaper or death is a reaper. Thus, metonymic and metaphoric processing come together in processing. If the strongest clue is reaps, the more probable readings are the metaphoric time is a reaper, as in Carina’s reading (group GB), or death is a reaper, as in Pedro’s reading (group G2), or even in Silmara’s case (group G4). If, however, the strongest clue is thin-drawn, the most likely reading is moon, constructed metaphorically. We can, therefore, see that the context allowed for several readings, but it also invalidated others, such as those of ‘the sun’, ‘insomnia’ and ‘shadow of a rock which constructs a sickle’. In other words, the context can broaden readings, but also limits them. As for the coincidence in the readings, the lack of variation shows that meanings constructed, even if new to some of the readers, have culturally been linked to the focused figure for millennia, so much that they are found in symbols dictionaries (Chevalier & Gheerbrandt 1982/1997; Lurker 1988/1997). Therefore, reading variations were not as numerous as expected. In fact, the ‘multiple readings’ are quite stable. According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant, in their Dictionary of Symbols, the moon in its different phases has been used by people to mark time and death: The Moon is a symbol of biologic rhythms, (. . .) of living time of which it is a measure due to its successive and regular phases. The Moon is also the first dead. During three nights, in each lunar month, it is as if dead, it disappears . . . then it re-appears and grows in brightness. In the same sense, it is believed that the dead acquire a new modality of existence. The moon is for men (sic) a symbol of this passage from life to death and from death to life; it is even considered by many peoples as the place of passage, as in the underground. (pp. 561–562)
The moon, in the first quarter phase, which symbolizes death and re-birth, is often also represented in literature by the scythe or by the sickle, which, in turn, are symbols of time and death, as discussed by Lurker (1997), in his Dictionary of Symbols: “sickle and scythe are symbols used for reaping, of time and death, and for this reason they are attributes of Saturn-Khronos and of the personification of death” (p. 275).20 This reinforces Gibb’s claim (1999b: 146) that we “should think about metaphor and its relation to thought as cognitive webs that extend beyond individual minds and are spread out into the cultural world”. points of view, she distinguishes the reader’s and the author’s relevance in what she calls reader relevance and author salience. 20. In this dictionary, one can also find the explanation that Khronos, God of Time is represented with a scythe, and that Saturn /Crono is represented with a sickle.
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma
As for the second question – what type of indeterminacy characterizes the multiple readings? – we can say that answering it is very complex and challenging. This is so because, if there is already a lot of discussion about the indeterminacy of literal language, that of metaphor will provoke even more discussion. To initiate the debate, we will pose some questions because we are not ready to provide answers as yet. If we consider that polysemy involves compatible meanings that are semantically related (Moura 2001), we can then consider that this is a case of polysemy (regardless of whether it is represented by three or more readings). However, if we consider that polysemy requires meanings to be lexicalised (i.e., that they are found in language dictionaries), and that the readings that occur for sickle are not lexicalized, we would have to abandon this label. Nonetheless, we could question this requirement for lexicalisation in the case of the metaphor, since dictionaries do not generally present an appropriate treatment of metaphoric meanings. What we have at present are dictionaries of symbols, and they show us that the meanings attributed to sickle and moon have culturally been linked to them for millennia. Besides, if we draw a comparison with the literal language in which words used to name artifacts allow us to think in terms of form and function and, for this reason, are polysemic (Moura, personal communication), we could think that, just like sickle in literal language is polysemic because it allows readings as to the form and the function, the word sickle in the poem is also polysemic because it allows for metaphorical readings in terms of the form: sickle as moon, and in terms of the function: moon as a reaper, time as a reaper, death as a reaper. And we still need to add that sickle, being an artifact, also allows for metonymic readings based on the instrument for agent relation: sickle for time, sickle for death. This reasoning, based on the comparison with literal language can shed light on the question of individuation of readings, besides reinforcing our hypothesis that metaphoric language will display the same types of indeterminacy as literal language. However, the nature of this metaphoric polysemy deserves deeper discussion, together with the issue of individuation of readings and that of the interaction of metaphor and metonymy. Although it holds similarity with literal polysemy of sickle, a discussion on the specificities of metaphorical polysemy, for example, is still needed – an interesting characteristic of this polysemy is that all meanings are valid in the context, i.e., it does not become precisified. In the end, we raised more questions than answers due to the immense complexity of the issue of metaphoric indeterminacy – a challenging and bewitching subject. . .
Acknowledgments This research is supported by grant from CNPq (Grant 301053/2005–7), Brazil, awarded to Mara Sophia Zanotto. We would also like to thank Ray Gibbs, Lynne Cameron, Marilda Cavalcanti, Heronides Moura and the anonymous reviewer for their invaluable
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box
comments, and the students who participated collaboratively in the data generation. We also would like to thank Sandra Madureira for having translated the poem.
References Black, Max (1979/1993). More about metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd and revised edition) (19–41). New York: Cambridge University Press. Bloome, David (1983). Reading as a social process. Advance in reading/language research, 2, 165–195. Bloome, David (1993). Necessary indeterminacy and the microethnographic study of reading as a social process. Journal of Research in Reading, 16, 98–111. Brown, Carol S. & Susan L. Lytle (1988). Merging assessment and instruction: protocols in the classroom. In S.M. Glaser, L.W. Searfoss & L.M. Gentile (eds.), Reexamining reading diagnosis: New trends and procedures (94–102). Newark, NJ: International Reading Association. Cameron, Lynne (1999). Operationalising metaphor for applied linguistics. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (3–28). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, Lynne (2002). Metaphors in the learning of science: A discourse focus. British Educational Research Journal, 28, 673–688. Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum. Cavalcanti, Marilda C. (1989). Interação leitor-texto – Aspectos de interpretação pragmática [Reader-Text Interaction – Aspects of Pragmatic Interpretation] Campinas: Editora da UNICAMP. Cavalcanti, Marilda C. & Mara S. Zanotto (1994). Introspection in applied linguistics: Metaresearch on verbal protocols. In L. Barbara & M. Scott (Eds.), Reflections on language learning (148–156). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Chevalier, Jean & Alain Gheerbrant (1982/1997). Dicionário de símbolos (Dictionnaire des symboles) Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio (ed. Robert Laffont & ed. Jupiter). Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (2005). Dicionário de símbolos (Dictionary of symbols). São Paulo: Centauro. Denzin, Norman K. & Yvonna S. Lincoln (Eds.) (1998). The landscape of qualitative research. London: Sage. Ericsson, K. Anders & Herbert A. Simon (1984). Protocol analysis. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Erickson, Frederick (1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (119–161). New York: MacMillan. Erickson, Frederick (2001). Prefácio (Preface) In M.I.P. Cox & A.A. de Assis-Peterson (Eds.), Cenas de sala de aula [Classroom scenes] (9–17). Campinas: Mercado de Letras. Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner (1999). Metonymy and conceptual integration. In K. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Metonymy in language and thought (77–90). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ferreira, Aurélio B. de H. (1999) Novo Aurélio – O dicionário de língua Portuguesa. [New Aurélio – The dictionary of Portuguese language] Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira. Georges, Robert A. & Alan Dundes (1963). Toward a structural definition of the riddle. Journal of American Folklore, 76, 111–118.
Mara Sophia Zanotto & Dieli Vesaro Palma Gibbs, Raymond W. (1987). What does it mean to say that a metaphor has been understood? In R.E. Haskell (Ed.), Cognition and symbolic structures: The psychology of metaphoric transformation (31–48). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Gibbs, Raymond W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, Raymond W. (1999a). Researching metaphor. In L. Cameron, and G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (29–47). New York: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, Raymond W. (1999b). Taking metaphor out of our heads and putting it into the cultural world. In R.W. Gibbs & G. Steen (Eds.), Metaphor in cognitive linguistics (145–166). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jacoby, Sally & Elinor Ochs (1995). Co-construction: An introduction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 28, 171–183. Johnson, Mark (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kövecses, Zoltán (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Turner (1989). More than cool reason. A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (202–251). New York: Cambridge University Press. Lurker, Manfred (1997/1988). Dicionário de simbologia [Wörterbuch Der Symbolik. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Vorlag]. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. Mason, Jennifer (1996). Qualitative researching. London: Sage. Martin, Robert (1992). Pour une logique du sens. Paris: PUF. Moura, Heronides M.M. (1998). Indeterminação na língua e na poesia [Indeterminacy in language and in poetry]. Revista da ANPOLL, 5, 107–120. Moura, Heronides M.M. (1999). Indeterminação e contradição: Um caso de conflito de papéis sociais [Indeterminacy and contradiction: a case of social role conflicts]. Intercâmbio VIII, 399–408. Moura, Heronides M.M. (2001). A determinação de sentidos lexicais no contexto [Determination of lexical meanings in the Context]. Cadernos lingüísticos, 41, 111–125. Nardi, Maria Isabel A. (1999). A metáfora e a prática de leitura como evento Social: instrumentos do pensar a biblioteconomia do futuro [Metaphor and reading practice as a social event: Tools for thinking future library science] Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, Unpublished PhD thesis. Palma, Dieli. V. (1998). A leitura do poético e as figuras de pensamento por oposição: Caminhos e descaminhos de paradigmas na modernidade. [Poetic reading and thinking figures by opposition: Paths unfolding in modern paradigms]. Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, Unpublished PhD thesis. Pinkal, Manfred (1995). Logic and lexicon: The semantics of the indefinite. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Poesio, Massimo (1995). Semantic ambiguity and perceived ambiguity. In K. van Deemter and S. Peters (Eds.), Semantic ambiguity and underspecification. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Putnam, Hilary (1981). Reason, truth and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rommetveit, Ragnar (1985). Language acquisition as increasing linguistic structuring of experience and symbolic behavior control. In J.V. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (183–204). Cambridge: CUP.
Chapter 1. Opening Pandora’s box Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson (1995) Relevance: Communication & cognition (2nd edition). Oxford: Blackwell. Stake, Robert E. (1998). Case studies. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), Strategies of qualitative inquiry (86–109). London: Sage. Steen, Gerard (1994). Understanding metaphor in literature: An empirical approach. London: Longman. Steen, G. (1999). Metaphor and discourse: Towards a linguistic checklist for metaphor analysis. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (81–104). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vieira, Josalba R. (1999). Metáforas e conflitos: A leitura de poesia e a discussão em grupo na sala de aula de Inglês como Literatura estrangeira [Metaphors and conflicts: Poetry reading and group discussion in an English as foreign literature class]. UNICAMP, São Paulo, PhD thesis. Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zanotto, Mara S. (1990). A natureza dêitica da metáfora alegórica [The deictic nature of allegoric metaphor]. Linguagem 7, 81–85. Zanotto, Mara S. (1992). O processo de compreensão da metáfora na formação dos Professores de língua materna [The process of understanding metaphors in the teacher education for teachers of the mother tongue]. In M.S. Zanotto and M.A. A. Celani (Eds.), Lingüística aplicada: da aplicação da lingüística à lingüística transdisciplinar [Applied linguistics:From application of linguistics to the crossdisciplinary linguistics] (233–246). São Paulo, EDUC. Zanotto, Mara S. (1995). Metáfora, cognição e ensino de leitura [Metaphor, cognition, and the teaching of reading]. D.E.L.T.A., 11, 241–254. Zanotto, Mara S. (1997). A leitura como evento social para um enfoque humanístico do ensino de línguas [Reading as a social event for a humanistic approach to language teaching]. Paper presented at XIX Congresso Mundial da FIPLV, Recife, Brazil. Zanotto, Mara S. (1998). A construção e a indeterminação do significado metafórico no evento social de leitura [The construction and indeterminacy of metaphorical meaning within the social reading event]. In V.L.M. Paiva (Ed.), Metáforas do cotidiano [Everyday metaphors] (13–38). Belo horizonte: Edit. da UFMG. Zanotto, Mara S. & Heronides M.M. Moura (2002). Indeterminacy and negotiation of meaning. In J. Verschueren, J-O. Östman, J. Blommaert & C. Bulcaen (Eds.), The handbook of pragmatics (1–13). Supplement 2000. Amsterdam, John Benjamins. Zanotto, Mara S. & Dieli V. Palma (2003). Opening Pandora’s Box: A Case Study in Development. Paper presented at RaAM 5 – Researching and Applying Metaphor. Paris, Université Paris 13. Zanotto, Mara S. & Maria Laura P. Ricciardi (1984). A construção textual do significado metafórico [The textual construction of metaphorical meaning] IX Anais do Grupo de Estudos Lingüísticos de São Paulo (42–47), Batatais.
chapter 2
Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk Lynne Cameron This chapter explores what happens to a metaphor after it has been first used. Metaphor shifting refers to changes and adaptations made to the metaphor as the talk or text proceeds. Shifting is analysed from the perspective of what language users do with the vehicle (or source domain) term, its connecting concepts and lexical fields, in the dynamic flux of language use. The data on metaphor shifting is drawn from two very different discourse contexts: school classrooms and conciliation talk. In each context, certain types of shifting are found which serve the particular discourse purposes or goals. This adaptive variation with context is found to connect to underlying stability in the available processes of metaphor use. Metaphor shifting thus illustrates the research issue that arises in applied linguistic approaches to metaphor, and as discussed in the Introduction to this volume, of relating generalised principles to context-bound descriptive frameworks. Empirical evidence is presented of three types of shifting: vehicle re-deployment; vehicle development, and vehicle literalisation, in which metaphor shifts into the real world. The range of types of shifting are exemplified and described, together with the rhetorical and discourse effects of their use in context. The final section brings these processes together in a general framework of metaphor shifting, and considers implications for applied metaphor research and theory-building.
Background The changing and shifting nature of metaphor in use can be found at different levels. At the broadest level of polytropy, language users might move between metaphor and various other types of figures, including metonymy. Kimmel, taking an anthropological approach to metaphor, argues for the study of metaphor in its dynamic discourse context and highlights shifting between metaphor and other figures in “interpenetrating, overlapping, or nested tropes” (2004: 291). Friedrich (1991: 23) lists five inter-related ‘macrotropes’ that language users, whether poets or ordinary people in conversation, combine and adapt: imagistic, modal, formal, contiguity-based (metonymy) and analogical (metaphor). The connections between metaphor and metonymy are explored in several chapters in two recent volumes (Barcelona (Ed.), 2003; Dirven & Pörings (Eds.),
Lynne Cameron
2003) but are more concerned with ‘interaction’ at a conceptual level (e.g., Croft 2003; Goossens 2003) rather than, as here, with how speakers shift from one figure to another in the course of on-line talk, and the impact such shifting has on the discourse. Of all the macrotropes, metaphor is the only one that introduces an ‘outsider’ into the discourse, in the form of the vehicle terms (lexical items) and the conceptual domains that speakers connect to them. Cognitive metaphor theory holds that conceptual metaphors are static, fixed mappings between Topic (or target) and Vehicle (or source) domains. When we study metaphor in the dynamic context of language use, our concern is with linguistic mappings that are adaptive and changing. These are tracked by successive uses of and changes in the Vehicle term, and related words and phrases. The domains that underlie Vehicle terms are inherently fuzzy in nature (Croft 2003). For real speakers in real discourse contexts, the domain of a lexical item is everything activated in memory by the use of that item. This encyclopaedic ‘everything’ will include images, words, meanings, concepts, personal episodic memories. There will be a certain commonality across speakers with similar cultural experiences and from our shared physical interactions with the world, but there will also be many individual differences. Metaphor shifting in literary texts is addressed by Goatly (1997) in a chapter entitled “The interplay of metaphors”, where he sets out categories and labels to describe how writers of novels, plays and poems shift their metaphors across and within domains as a text proceeds. However, the labels he chooses for his descriptive framework are not consistent, particularly in capturing a sense of dynamics; some, such as ‘repetition’ and ‘diversification’, describe actions, but other labels describe a property, e.g., ‘multivalency’. Kövesces (2003: 80) uses the term ‘scope’ of metaphor to describe the different Vehicle domains that can be linked to a Topic, but again this is not a dynamic label that can describe movement in talk or text. Ponterotto (2003) does acknowledge the dynamic, context-based nature of conversation, but starts from the premise that conceptual metaphors are present in speakers’ minds and then purports to show how they help maintain cohesion in talk. She is thus engaged in a different type of research aim from the empirically-driven work reported here. Steen (1992) offered a set of ‘metaphor processes’ to describe within-domain shifting in the utterances of research participants in think-aloud studies. This set was adapted for the studies with school students reported in Cameron (2003) and is explained in more detail when it is used later in this chapter.
Discourse contexts Metaphor shifting will be described in two types of talk, differing in discourse context, participants and purposes. One data set comprises talk between a perpetrator of violence and a victim in a series of meetings arranged at the request of the victim to try to understand the motivations that led to the violence. The participants were
Chapter 2. Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk
Patrick Magee, who in 1984, acting for the Irish Republican Army, planted a bomb in a UK hotel where the Prime Minister and members of her cabinet were staying, and Jo Berry, whose father Sir Anthony Berry was killed by the bomb. Video recordings of some of their meetings were provided by Jo Berry and analysed in a research project that aimed to explore the role of metaphor in the dynamics of reconciliation talk.1 The transcribed talk was analysed for the use of linguistic metaphors, following the procedures set out in Cameron (2003, chapter 3). The use and development of metaphors was examined within and across turns and speakers, focussing particularly on ‘metaphor clusters’, i.e., episodes with particularly high densities of metaphor use (Cameron 2007; Cameron & Stelma 2004). The participants came to the conciliation meetings with the discourse purposes of explaining their feelings and actions to the other person, metaphorised as exchanging stories. They entered the discourse from very different starting points, and undertook a journey in order to come to understand the very different experiences of the other person, or, taking a difference or ‘alterity’ view of talk (Cameron 2003), to reduce the gaps in knowledge and understanding between them.2 The other discourse context from which I draw examples of metaphor shifting is the primary (elementary) school classroom (reported in Cameron 2003). The participants were a class of fifteen students, aged between 9 and 11 years and all using English as first language, and their teachers from a small school in the north of England, serving a rural community. In addition to recordings of classroom talk, an adapted form of think-aloud technique was used to elicit students’ understanding of metaphor in written texts on scientific topics: the ozone layer and the heart. In the think-aloud studies, two girls from the class were given a specific goal in reading the texts, to evaluate its accessibility to a slightly younger child. In practice, the students explained text content, sentence by sentence, to each other and to the researcher. The discourse purposes of classroom talk can be summarised as the teacher helping children to master ideas or skills while maintaining control and motivation. In the think-aloud tasks the students operationalised their goal as the joint construction of an explanation of the text, helping each other when there were problems in understanding. As in the conciliation context, talk aimed to reduce alterity; in contrast with the conciliation context, alterity was concerned with external conceptual knowledge and understanding rather than the interpersonal.
1. We thank the participants for their permission to use and publish the data, and for their co-operation in the research. We acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Board, UK in carrying out the research project. 2. Alterity derives from Bakhtin’s notion of ‘Otherness’ and is used to describe what separates speakers, to contrast with intersubjectivity as what they share.
Lynne Cameron
Vehicle re-deployment – shifting in topics Vehicle re-deployment describes the process in which, after its first use, a vehicle term is re-used in identical or similar form but with a different topic. The label is chosen to reflect the action as centred in the vehicle, rather than the topic. Conciliation talk revealed a significant type of vehicle re-deployment in the adoption by one speaker of a metaphor used originally by the other. We may call this discourse process of taking over the metaphor of another speaker an ‘appropriation’ of a metaphor, a label from socio-cultural theory (Wertsch 1998). The appropriating and sharing of metaphors across speakers appears to be a significant indicator of achievement of the discourse goals of conciliation, particularly where the vehicle expressions are emotive. The metaphor vehicle healing was first used by Jo in a poem that she brought to the meetings and read aloud to Pat. In the poem she connects the vehicle to two different topics, recovering from grief at the loss of her father and to the peace negotiations in Ireland:3
Extract 1
I feel that my heart heals, as Ireland heals.
In response to the reading of the poem, Pat picks up the metaphor vehicle and uses it to refer to a slightly different topic, helping other victims of the violence (Extract 2):
Extract 2
1 Pat 5
I am hoping it will be – er, . . .(1.0) it can act as a – a– a lesson or an example, . . . that somebody else can – er,
3. The conciliation talk was transcribed into ‘intonation units’ (Chafe 1996). The ends of intonation units are marked with the following symbols:
, continuing intonation contour . final intonation contour – a truncated (incomplete) intonation unit
Other symbols:
. . . . .(2.0) [ ] ???
short pause longer pause, time in seconds overlapping talk indecipherable talk
Chapter 2. Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk
10 Jo Pat
. . .(1.0) er – gain something from it. . . hmh . . . and er, . . move on in their own, . . you know, . . healing process.
A more significant shift occurs as Pat talks about how he feels meeting Jo and listening to her pain. With a lot of hesitation and pausing, suggesting some unease, he uses the healing vehicle for the first time in reference to himself (extract 3, line 14):
Extract 3
1 Pat 5 10 15 Jo Pat 20 Jo Pat 25
(to) be confronted, . . with your pain. . . . that’s a consequence that – er, . . .(3.0) you know, I suppose I deserve. . . .(2.0) you know, . . .(1.0) and – er, . . .(2.0) seems very – how do you put it, er, . . .(2.0) maybe that’s part of healing too, . . my healing. your healing. . . [yeah]. [yeah]. . . .(1.0) you know, er, . . .(2.0) it’s – er, something I have to go through. . . . hmh . . . if I’m gonna sort of – er, . . .(1.0) really retain my humanity.
To claim an entitlement to a similar process could be seen as unjustified from a perpetrator of violence, but it may also be seen as a measure of the success of their meeting that he feels able to do so. From Jo’s response in line 15, and from the use of healing in the rest of the conversation, there seems to be an acceptance that Pat can use the
Lynne Cameron
same metaphor as Jo, even though his process of working through the consequences of political decisions is very different from Jo’s recovering from grief. At the end of the meeting (extract 4), his use of the healing metaphor seems to refer to both of these processes:
Extract 4
. . . the process . . . (1.0) that we’re in. . . . (1.0) that er – it has . . . provided – er, . . . a sort of, . . an opportunity, a window to . . . reflect on the past. and that’s a part of the [healing] process.
Appropriation takes place through re-use of a metaphor vehicle with a changed topic. In the conciliation context, appropriation through vehicle re-deployment seems to offer a safe way for a speaker to attempt alignment with the other, and appropriation of metaphors is an important signal and measure of increasing alignment between participants. Less direct vehicle re-deployment can be seen in the following extract from the first analysed conversation. Here Jo describes how the idea of meeting Pat came to her after her father was killed by the bomb. Terms from the vehicle domain of movement or journey used first to metaphorise the actual process of conciliation and then redeployed to metaphorise the idea of it.
Extract 5
1 Jo 5 Pat Jo 10 Pat
. . .(1.0) [and] I – and I saw very clearly. . . .(1.0) that the – . . the end of that journey, would be, . . . sitting down and, . . . talking to the people who did it. . . . hmh . . . that just came in a moment, and then went away, and then – . . . there’s been a long long . . 16 years of [getting to this point]. [hmh hmh]
Chapter 2. Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk
In line 4, Jo uses the metaphor vehicle the end of that journey to refer to the topic of coming face to face with the person responsible for killing her father. The journey is a metaphor for the process of coming to terms with her grief and finding out about the motivation of the bombers. The shift occurs in lines 9 and 10, where came and went away, which are related to journey and movement, are used to talk metaphorically, not about the meeting, but about the idea of meeting. She returns to the former topic in line 12, where she rephrases the vehicle the end of the journey to getting to this point, a within-domain vehicle shifting (see next section). Vehicle re-deployment in extract 5 involves a greater change in vehicle terms than in the previous example of healing. One of the enduring problems in metaphor analysis lies in describing the ‘domains’ underlying topic and vehicle (Cameron 1999; Croft & Cruse 2004), particularly since the basic identifying criterion of metaphor is a mapping between two ‘distinct’ domains. To see the shift from journey to came / went away to getting to this point as re-deployment of a vehicle relies on seeing these lexical items as connected through an underlying conceptual domain. Cognitive metaphor theory takes this as a starting point (although the theoretical problem then becomes the limiting of domains). A discourse-based theory of metaphor in use can perhaps take a bottom-up, inductive approach to domains, in which the vehicle domain is the lexical space ‘carved out’ by the talk. In the process of analysis, came / went away may be tentatively grouped in an emerging vehicle domain with journey for later re-analysis. Vehicle re-deployment is thus an adaptive process in which the same or related vehicle term is applied to a changed topic domain. Even if the lexical form of the vehicle remains the same, its sense will shift slightly as it co-adapts to the new topic. Vehicle re-deployment is connected to the ‘multivalency’ (Goatly 1997: 255), a term connected to the science of atoms and molecules. Multivalency describes the (static) property of a metaphor vehicle to work with several different topics; vehicle re-deployment describes the dynamic and interactional process in which language users take advantage of multivalency. To understand the vehicle re-deployment in terms of the discourse context and purposes, we need to know that there was no external management of the conversation, apart from one or two requests from the film crew; the two sat together for long periods of time, moving from one topic to another as their thoughts took them. They had responsibility for managing the process of the talk towards their overall goal of reducing differences in knowledge and understanding. This contextual constraint was reflected in utterances, as here, that made meta-comments on the content or nature of the talk. When we move to the discourse of education, we again find instances of vehicle re-deployment. One particular type emerged as significant and was labelled ‘topic reference shift’ (Cameron 2003: 184). This time the shifting was accidental and connected to lack of topic knowledge on the part of the students. In the first think-aloud study about the ozone layer, the students discussed the text sentence: The atmosphere is the blanket of gases that surround the Earth. The topic of the metaphorical vehicle blanket is atmosphere, and the sentence includes other terms
Lynne Cameron
from the same or related domains: gases, the Earth. As the students try to make sense of the sentence, Ellen produced the explication in Extract 6:
Extract 6
Ellen:
there’s actually two types of gases . . there’s a bad type of gas and a good type of gas which is a . . blanket around our earth
In her unpacking and re-construction of the metaphor in the above extract, Ellen uses the vehicle term blanket with a good type of gas (referring to the ozone layer), thereby shifting the topic reference from the atmosphere to just a single gas or part of the atmosphere. This seemed to be a temporary shifting, since the protocol concludes (Extract 7 below) with an accurate metaphor construction in which the blanket vehicle is connected to gases:
Extract 7
1 Ellen: Louise: 5
cos when you’re in . . bed you’ve got a blanket sort of . . . protecting you from the cold and then there’s another type of blanket which is of gases . . surrounds the earth
However, when asked to recall the content of the text one week later, the shifted version was produced:
Extract 8
R: what is the ozone layer? Louise: . . . it’s like an invisible shield around the earth Ellen: or blanket . . as the book puts it
In Extract 8, the vehicle blanket has become linked in the students’ minds to the single layer of gas, the ozone layer, rather than to multi-layered atmosphere of the original text. (The topic shift has also happened with the metaphor shield which occurred later in the same text and that Louise recalls here). This particular instance of Topic Reference Shift does not do any educational ‘damage’, in that the metaphor works equally well for both ozone layer and atmosphere, but other occurrences result in greater inaccuracies. Shifts in topic reference through vehicle re-deployment occurred in both thinkaloud studies. Topic reference shift occurred more often with metaphorically used verbs than noun phrases. Talk around 5 of the 8 verbs used metaphorically in the ozone layer text included topic reference shifts. Verbs used non-metaphorically were much less likely to show such shifts in meaning. They were sometimes compounded by the students’ lack of topic knowledge or by the text structure, as with the mistaken pronominal reference in Extract 8. Accurate topic knowledge sometimes served to restrain the shifting, whereas absence of such knowledge might accentuate it.
Chapter 2. Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk
The use of linguistic metaphor vehicles in talk creates an affordance which speakers can use in various ways and for various interactional purposes. The outcomes of vehicle re-deployment manifest themselves in various ways, including metaphor appropriation and topic reference shifts, as language is used in different discourse contexts, driven by differing goals and purposes. In the educational context, where students struggled to make sense of unfamiliar ideas using incomplete knowledge of topic domains, vehicle re-deployment might happen by accident and lead to, perhaps temporarily, inaccurate interpretations of metaphors. In the conciliation context, where participants were trying to make themselves understood by the other party, more deliberate vehicle re-deployment could signal a desire for alignment through metaphor appropriation.
Vehicle development Vehicle shifting is more widely recognised in the literature than vehicle re-deployment or topic shifting. Once a vehicle is introduced into discourse it is often developed through repetition, relexicalisation and explication (Steen 1992; Cameron 2003), or extended and modified (Goatly 1997) as aspects of the vehicle are mentioned and connected, implicitly or explicitly, with the topic to build up a set of mappings between the domains. In educational talk, the development of the vehicle often forms a key part of explaining an idea through metaphor. In the following extract, several metaphor vehicles are used to help students understand how igneous rocks are formed through the action of volcanoes.
Extract 9: Volcanoes 1 T: 5 Ss: L: T: 10 Ss: T: Ss: T: 15 Ss: T:
yes . . it’s a volcano . . .(1.0) and . . . (2.0) the rocks that are formed by fire . . . just imagine rock . . .(1.0) getting so hot . . . (2.0) that it actually melts . . . (1.0) so that it becomes like . . sticky treacle ugh (whisper) treacle or even . . . like . . . runny butter ugh have you ever put . . . a little dish . . . with butter in . . . into the microwave? yes and left it for too long? yes do you know what happens? . .
Lynne Cameron
S: T: 20 25 S: T:
I did it at the weekend . . so I know what happens is molten lava like wax? yes . . . (1.0) it can be a bit like wax . . . (1.0) but do you know what happens to butter? it does . . . there are two things it does . . which are like . . volcanic . . rocks . . when they’re being ???? it bubbles it bubbles . . well done . . yes . . and it sort of keeps doing this ???? so that’s where these rocks come from . . . (1.0) (from Cameron 2003: 103)
In this extract, the metaphorical comparisons have the form of similes. Two are produced by the teacher like sticky treacle, like runny butter, and one by a student like wax.4 The first, rock . . . becomes like sticky treacle, is introduced into the talk after a process of Topic development (lines 1–4). The metaphor topic volcanic rock is talked about as rock getting so hot that it actually melts. The sticky treacle vehicle is not further expanded, but instead runny butter is introduced as a comparison for the same topic. These two can be seen as coming from separate vehicle domains (treacle vs butter) or as both coming from a domain of solid foods that can have a liquid consistency. If we choose the latter description, then the vehicle term is ‘relexicalised’ in a within-domain shift from treacle to butter. In line 17, a student offers a further vehicle relexicalisation when she asks if lava is like wax. At this point the teacher is in the middle of explaining how runny butter is like lava and she does not take up the student’s suggestion, just repeating and modifying it in her feedback as a bit like wax. In the course of the interaction, both wax and butter are repeated by speakers. Of the three vehicle terms, butter offers the most useful vehicle to be further developed, since, like rock but unlike treacle, it requires heat to change state from solid to liquid. Between lines 19 and 25, the vehicle domain of butter is further extended in terms of its action under heat and explicitly connected to the Topic volcanic rock. In the educational context, this development is labelled ‘vehicle elaboration’. In addition to elaboration, which takes the talk about vehicle to a more specific level of features, the broader category of ‘vehicle explication’ may also involve giving an example of the vehicle or expanding the vehicle without going to a more specific level.
4. Such comparisons match the criteria for metaphor in that two unlike domains are brought together and some new meaning emerges that draws from both of them. Since it is the comparison that is metaphorical, the vehicle is identified as including the tuning device like.
Chapter 2. Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk
In the conciliation talk, speakers used the same processes of vehicle repetition r elexicalisation, and explication. They used these for their specific discourse purposes in trying to explain and understand, not scientific concepts, but themselves and each other. In Extract 10, Pat asks Jo whether she had thought about the meeting in terms of the political or the personal, using see metaphorically to refer to her expectations:
Extract 10
1 Pat 5 Jo 10 Pat Jo
. . . did you see it as like individuals, or did you see it as a sort of a – . . .(1.0) the big . . political picture, the IRA, or, . . . the war. . . .(1.0) um you know what I mean, er, yeah, . . . you were – you were aware that there’s a – . . . it’s going to be an individual who you’d be sitting down with. hmh . . .(1.0) I saw it as both.
The vehicle term see is repeated (line 2) and used by the other speaker in its past tense form (line 14). Line 3 of the extract includes the phrase the big political picture which continues the seeing metaphor. An additional type of vehicle shifting found in the conciliation conversations was to a contrasting term in the same domain. In the next extract, Pat is talking about the impact of meeting Jo and understanding the consequences of his actions, for which he uses further vehicle terms from the domain of seeing. Within this domain, he first contrasts seeing close up (coming face-to-face) and not seeing (lose sight of), and a few seconds later, contrasts a whole picture with a glimpse:
Extract 11 1 5
you only come face-to-face with it in a situation like that. there is – . . .(1.0) it’s so easy to lose, . . . sight, . . .(1.0) of, . . you know, the enemy’s humanity. . . . it’s never the whole picture.
Lynne Cameron
10 15
. . . it’s never the whole picture. . . . that’s why, you know, on reflection you – . . sometimes you get a – like a glimpse. even in the midst of – er, a lot of struggle. . . of the other person’s humanity.
In the next example, Jo contrasts the feeling of being on a journey (on the way, line 1) with that of reaching a safe place (come home, line 9) as she talks about the process of going to Ireland to talk to people:
Extract 12 1 5
to meet so many people on the way, to – . . . to help me. . . .(1.0) I . . . first . . came to Northern Ireland in 85. . . . beginning of 85. . . .(1.0) and, . . .(2.0) when I arrived, I’d such a feeling of, . . .(2.0) I’ve come home.
Contrasting metaphors were used for emphasizing a point, as in the examples above, and also to explore alternative actions, such as when Jo discussed what it would have been like to respond to her father’s death with anger and revenge, rather than seeking conciliation. In this discourse context, the exploration of alternative responses and hypothetical scenarios is important for participants, and it seems that Vehicle development and shifting offers a useful way to do this. The possibility of vehicle shifting through elaboration was exploited at a couple of points in the conciliation talk by Pat, in order to distance himself from statements made by Jo. At these points, it seemed that she was claiming too much shared ground between them. In her poem, Jo speaks of conciliation as building a bridge. Pat comments after the poem is read aloud: in the journey. . .coming to a bridge . . with two ends
The elaboration of the bridge vehicle to emphasise two ends also forces a topic shift, away from conciliation itself to emphasize the different starting points of the two participants in the conciliation process. This move enables Pat to distance himself slightly while at the same time maintaining alignment through the use of Jo’s metaphor vehicle.
Chapter 2. Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk
Vehicle development over a longer time scale leads to the phenomenon of systematic metaphor, a discourse alternative to ‘conceptual metaphor’. For example, extracts 10 and 11 include lexical items connected to see and picture: lose sight of the other’s humanity until we do see each other in our true light. . we’re always going to be dealing with some reduction or a caricature get a glimpse (of the other person’s humanity) a distorted picture
Using the idea of the emergence of a vehicle domain across a discourse event, and collecting together connected metaphor vehicles as metaphors shift across the talk, we have a larger metaphor set whose vehicles describe partial, problematic or deficient ways of seeing, contrasting these with whole or true ways of seeing. This vehicle domain is connected in the metaphor set to a topic domain of not fully understanding the Other. This emergent metaphor set is a context-bound phenomenon, related to a specific discourse event and speakers, and that I call a ‘systematic metaphor’. Systematic metaphors are emergent phenomena that arise on the level of the discourse event out of decisions made in the minute-by-minute dynamics of talking-and-thinking, and are identified inductively. Systematic metaphors are not the same as generalized conceptual metaphors, abstracted across multiple discourse events and speakers. The particular systematic metaphor illustrated above might be appropriately labelled not fully understanding another person is partial or problematic seeing. Its relation to the conceptual metaphor understanding is seeing might be of variation around a larger stability, or of a specific instance of a more generalized form. Table 1 summarises the types of within-domain vehicle shifting, or vehicle development, found in talk across the two contexts. Table 1. Types of Vehicle development Vehicle development
Description
Vehicle Repetition Vehicle Relexicalisation Vehicle Explication Vehicle Contrast
the term is repeated in identical or transformed form a near synonym or equivalent is used expansion, elaboration or exemplification of the term an antonymic or contrasting term is used
Shifting from one vehicle domain to another also occurs. Conciliation, for example, is spoken of as a journey, and as building a bridge. These separate semantic domains are sometimes brought together in a combined scenario, as in Pat’s coming to a bridge.
Lynne Cameron
Shifting into the real world: Vehicle literalisation The final type of metaphor shifting to be reported is from metaphor to the real world or literal, sometimes via metonymy. Extract 10, line 6, included an example of this shifting: 1 Jo 5
. . .(1.0) [and] I – and I saw very clearly. . . .(1.0) that the – . . the end of that journey, would be, . . sitting down and, . . . talking to the people who did it.
sitting down is a ‘bridge term’ (Kittay 1987: 166): a lexical item which can apply in both vehicle and topic domains. People getting to the end of a journey might sit down for a rest and people involved in conciliation might sit down when they meet each other. When a bridge term is used, the vehicle domain is brought into the topic domain, and the metaphor is shifted into the literal (i.e., non-metaphorical) world. In the shift, the metaphor of the conciliation process as a journey collapses into the literal scenario of Jo sitting down with Pat and talking. In a radio interview, Pat literalises the scenario even more vividly and specifically by describing the place where they sat:
Extract 13
I’m sitting there beside the woman whose father I have killed and at that time I was sitting in this wee kitchen talking to this woman for the first time whose father’s dead
In the conciliation context, the movement from metaphor to literal reflects the course of the conciliation process; metaphor is used in talk about the process leading up to meeting but the meeting is described more literally. However, there is still use of a trope here, in that sitting down is a metonymy, standing for meeting. The phrases sitting and talking to / sitting down with are not innocent but, when all uses are considered across the conversations, appear heavy with import, some of it carried over from the connection to the end of the journey but most of it deriving from real world social and physical experience. Sitting down with someone (a) is an intentional action, (b) unavoidably requires an acknowledgement of the person you sit with, who is a specific individual, not a stereotype or category, and (c) renders the participants open and vulnerable to each other. As such, sitting down with is a very potent metonymy to describe
Chapter 2. Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk
a conciliation meeting. Similar metaphor to literal shifting, often with metonymy, also occurred with the domains connected to walking, spaces, places. A somewhat parallel process has been observed in literature, where the literalisation of a vehicle results in it taking on in its literal use some of the symbolism that it held in the metaphorical scenario (Goatly 1997: 278) In the educational talk, the same process was labelled ‘vehicle contextualisation’. Here metaphor vehicle terms were shifted into the real world of the participants, but not into the Topic domain (Cameron 2003: 107) Extracts 6 and 9 include examples. In Extract 6, the girls talking about the metaphor the atmosphere is the blanket of gases connect the Vehicle term blanket to their own lives and experience: cos when you’re in . . . bed you’ve got a blanket sort of . . . protecting you from the cold
Here the Vehicle blanket is literalised and contextualised by connecting to being warm in bed. Protecting is a bridge term, since it can apply to both blankets and the atmosphere, and it was in fact the property that the girls focussed on in their discussion of the atmosphere and ozone layer. As with topic reference shift, the affordance of literalisation may operate to help understanding or to hinder it. In the ozone layer text, the writer follows the sentence about the blanket of gases with the sentence “It is made up of several layers” where the pronoun It refers to the atmosphere. The word layers acts as a bridge term in the dynamics of the talk, linking the domains of atmosphere and blanket for the students, even though it was intended just as information about the Topic. Later in the think-aloud, Louise comments: he’s talking about it (the atmosphere) . . . a layer like a blanket
The word layers becomes linked to the vehicle domain of blanket, and, on a bed, each blanket forms a single layer. When vehicle and topic are re-combined, there are two interpretations, both different from the author’s intended meaning: the atmosphere is a single layer, or the blanket refers to just the ozone layer, as in the topic reference shift. The affordances of the text combined with the children’s own experiences lead to indeterminacy of meaning (see Zanotto & Palma, this volume). In Extract 9, the teacher contextualises the vehicle runny butter for the students when she moves the talk to her experience of overheating butter in a microwave oven. There is no bridge term used here: T: Ss: T: Ss:
have you ever put . . a little dish . . with butter in . . into the microwave? yes and left it for too long? yes
Lynne Cameron
Vehicle contextualisation is a shift into the real world which seems designed to help make sense of the metaphor by connecting it to the students’ life experience. In these cases, there is no symbolism or import to be transferred.
Discussion and conclusions Metaphor shifting has been elaborated in this paper as a phenomenon of metaphor in use. When people use metaphor in talk, they seldom produce a neatly constructed figure in a single utterance, other than when a metaphorical idiom is used at the end of a turn (Drew & Holt 1988). Spontaneous talk is dynamic and approximate, with metaphors introduced, adjusted and developed over utterances and turns. As speakers pursue their discourse aims and topics through talking-and-thinking, connections and reminders are sparked in their minds which may divert them sideways. It seems that linguistic metaphor, by bringing a vehicle term with its lexical field and semantic domain into the talking-and-thinking, acts to loosen the referential ties with the topic domain, creating affordances for the various types of shifting reported in this chapter. The introduction of Vehicle terms into the text seemed to create a kind of centrifugal cognitive force that opens up potentially endless links to other concepts . . . (Cameron 2003: 191)
Metaphor shifting occurs as speakers move through a social, linguistic and cognitive ‘landscape’, adjusting and adapting contingently. When we transcribe and analyse their talk, it is as if we are allowed to view that landscape from a distance and thereby see it as a whole in a way that the speakers themselves could not. What appears to us as a path across the landscape, to them is the avoidance of immediate obstacles, split second decisions as to direction, and the negotiation of sudden difficulties. The types of metaphor shifting identified here show us some of the possibilities available to speakers and their outcomes in particular discourse contexts. They may be summarised as in Table 2. The central two columns of Table 2 list the shifting processes that are available to metaphor users. In a particular discourse context, these possibilities interact with speakers and the discourse environment to become affordances that may be helpful in the achievement of discourse purposes, or may take the talk in inappropriate directions. The approach to metaphor taken here has been dynamical and discourse-based (Cameron 2007; Cameron & Deignan 2006). Metaphor shifting has been described from evidence of linguistic metaphor use in real discourse contexts. It has not been
Chapter 2. Metaphor shifting in the dynamics of talk
Table 2. Types of metaphor shifting Metaphor shifting
Vehicle
Topic
Vehicle re-deployment The same or semantically- changes connected lexical item is re-used with a different Topic. Vehicle development Vehicle term is remains the same ● repeated ● relexicalised ● explicated – exemplified moves to – elaborated connected – expanded Topics ● contrasted Vehicle literalization Vehicle term (bridge) merges with is used in reference Vehicle; to Topic can become metonymic
Discourse outcomes Emergent Vehicle domain. Topic Reference Shift. Metaphor appropriation. Explanations through metaphor. Extended metaphors. Challenges to metaphor. Systematic metaphor Vehicle contextualisation. Symbolisation of Topic.
necessary to take a strong cognitive approach that would assume the pre-existence of conceptual metaphors in individual minds. If conceptual metaphors are taken to be mappings that have stabilised across speech communities and cultural groups, they can be seen as one influence on metaphor shifting in a discourse context. In the metaphor of ‘the landscape of talk’ used earlier, conceptual metaphors may offer established way-routed paths that speakers are more likely to take because they are more ‘visible’. They are not, however, the only possibility open to speakers. The multiple possibilities opened up by the use of a metaphor Vehicle term are both derived from and constrained by speakers’ experience of the world, their socio-cultural contexts, and their discourse purposes.
References Barcelona, Antonio (Ed.) (2003). Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Cameron, Lynne (1999). Operationalising metaphor for applied linguistic research. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (3–28). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum. Cameron, Lynne (2007). Patterns of metaphor use in reconciliation talk. Discourse and Society, 18, 197–222.
Lynne Cameron Cameron, Lynne, & Juup Stelma (2004). Metaphor clusters in discourse. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2, 107–136. Cameron, Lynne, & Alice Deignan (2006). The emergence of metaphor in discourse. Applied Linguistics, 27, 671–690. Chafe, Wallace (1996). Discourse, consciousness and time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Croft, William (2003). The role of domains in the interpretation of metaphors and metonymies. In R. Dirven & R. Pörings (Eds.), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast (161–206). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Croft, William, & Cruse, Alan. (2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dirven, René, & Ralf Pörings (Eds.) Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Drew, Paul, & Elizabeth Holt (1988). Complainable matters: The use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints. Social Problems, 35, 398–417. Friedrich, Paul (1991). Polytropy. In James Fernandez (Ed.), Beyond metaphor: The theory of tropes in anthropology (17–55). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Goatly, Andrew (1997). The language of metaphors. London: Routledge. Goossens, Louis (2003). Metaphtonymy: The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in expressions for linguistic action. In René Dirven & Ralf Pörings (Eds.), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast (349–378). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kimmel, Michael (2004). Metaphor variation in cultural context: Perspectives from anthropology. European Journal of English Studies, 8, 275–294. Kittay, Eva Fodor (1987). Metaphor. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kövesces, Zoltan (2003). The scope of metaphor. In Antonio Barcelona (Ed.), Metaphor and metonymy at the crossraods (79–92). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ponterotto, Diana (2003). The cohesive role of cognitive metaphor in discourse and conversation. In Antonio Barcelona (Ed.), Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads (283–298). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Steen, Gerard (1992). Metaphor in literary reception. Doctoral dissertation. Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Wertsch, J. (1998). Mind as Action. New York: Oxford University Press.
chapter 3
Adding sound to the picture Motivating the lexical composition of metaphorical idioms in English, Dutch and Spanish Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers In this chapter we investigate the lexical composition of a core category of conventional metaphorical expressions, i.e., figurative idioms. More precisely, we shall be looking at idioms in English, Dutch and Spanish that can be traced back to the following general source domains: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
agriculture & gardening (e.g., nip something in the bud); buildings & construction (e.g., get in on the ground floor); clothes & adornment (e.g., try something on for size); commerce & accounting (e.g., wipe the slate clean); entertainment & public performance (e.g., play to the gallery); fauna & flora (e.g., put out feelers); food & cooking (e.g., on the back burner); games & sports (e.g., keep your eye on the ball); handicraft & manufacturing (e.g., break the mould); health & medicine (e.g., keep your finger on the pulse); jurisdiction & punishment (e.g., read the riot act); mechanisms & machinery (e.g., fire on all cylinders); religion & superstition (e.g., fall from grace); science & research (e.g., the acid test); vehicles & transport (e.g., miss the boat); war & aggression (e.g., break ranks); weather & natural phenomena (e.g., under a cloud).
As the focus of this book is metaphor, we shall not include similes, i.e., explicit analogies, as part of our investigation. We shall only take into account standardised, (semi-) fixed, multiword figurative expressions that instantiate implicit analogies. Before cognitive-semantic theory, the form-meaning relation of idioms was predominantly treated as arbitrary, in the sense that their figurative meaning could not be inferred by simply adding up the semantics of their lexical constituents. In other words,
Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers
idioms were considered as non-compositional (e.g., Fernando & Flavell 1981). Since the 1980s, however, cognitive semanticist (Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Gibbs 1994) have argued that the meaning of many idioms is not arbitrary but in fact motivated, i.e., explainable (albeit in retrospect). The genesis and semantics of various classes of figurative idioms have been shown to be motivated by general conceptual metaphors (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson 1980) and/or conceptual metonymies (e.g., Kövecses 1990). The meaning of the idioms that we shall be looking at in this chapter is motivated by the original, literal usage of the expressions. More precisely, these figurative idioms project the experiential ‘logic’ or value-judgements associated with a typical scenario in their source domain onto more abstract domains. For example, hitting below the belt, being on the ropes, and throwing in the towel project the experiential logic and value-judgements associated with typical scenarios of boxing matches. Jumping the gun projects a typical scenario of a running contest. Pulling something out of a hat projects a typical scenario of a magician’s performance. And so on. In contexts of second language acquisition or foreign language teaching, presenting idioms as semantically motivated is obviously an attractive alternative to the traditional approach in which idioms are presented as arbitrary, because motivated meaning carries the potential of insightful learning instead of blind memorisation. Several controlled experiments have already revealed the benefits of cognitive semantic approaches to teaching conventional metaphorical expressions (such as figurative idioms) with regard to comprehension (Boers 2000a) as well as retention (Boers 2000b; Boers 2001; Boers et al. 2004a; Kövecses & Szabó 1996), and even with regard to register awareness (Boers et al. 2007). The purpose of the present chapter, however, is not to motivate why given idioms mean what they mean. Instead, its purpose is to investigate whether it might be possible to motivate the precise lexical composition of idioms, i.e., why certain word combinations rather than others are the standard ‘choice’. At a conceptual/semantic level it is to be expected that idiomatic language will be nourished by lexical fields that are connected with experiential source domains that have been relatively salient in the linguistic community. In other words, the heavy presence of certain lexical fields in a particular community’s repertoire of idioms may reflect that community’s preoccupations (albeit of the past). For example, it is probably not surprising that the repertoires of idioms of communities with a rich ‘seafaring’ past (such as English and Dutch) contain a considerable number of idioms that are derived from the source domain of boats and sailing (e.g., in the doldrums; on an even keel; a steady hand on the tiller) and that thus contain words belonging to the associated lexical field. Some experiential domains may be quite culture-specific and consequently their derived idioms may be quite language-specific. Idioms containing words borrowed from the domains of baseball and cricket, for instance, are obviously more common in English than are idioms containing keywords borrowed from the domain of bullfighting. Some quantitative evidence of such cross-linguistic variation in source-domain salience will be presented below, in section two. Language learners apparently find idioms that are derived from
Chapter 3. Adding sound to the picture
‘unfamiliar’ source domains especially hard to interpret and remember (Boers et al. 2004b). While the relative salience of a given source domain may help explain the occurrence of its associated lexical field in a considerable fraction of a language’s idiom repertoire, it often falls short of explaining the precise choice of lexis. Given the phenomenon of (near-)synonymy, the question remains why certain source-domain content words have made it into standardised idioms rather than their (near-)synonyms (when available). For example, if the idiom Cut and run is derived from the nautical domain where it literally meant cutting the anchor cable so that one could escape from sudden danger (Speake 1999), then we may wonder why cut and flee or cut and sail away have not become standardised phrases. Likewise, we may wonder why jump the gun has become the standardised phrase rather than precede the gun or start before the gun, why we say leave someone high and dry rather than leave someone up and dry, why time will tell rather than time will say, why it takes two to tango rather than it takes two to waltz, and so on. Conceptual metaphor theory may help language learners appreciate the relatively systematic nature of source-domain to target-domain mappings at a conceptual level, but learners would benefit even more if they could see some rhyme and reason for the precise choice of lexis in the instantiations of conceptual metaphors at the linguistic level. We propose that in a number of conventional expressions a kind of phonological motivation is at play, which could explain why certain word combinations rather than semantically close-equivalent ones have had special appeal to become ‘institutionalised’. More specifically, we propose that alliteration and assonance can play important roles in the lexical composition of idioms, a role which to our knowledge has not received much attention in conceptual-metaphor research. Quantitative evidence of the prevalence of these sound patterns will be presented below, in section three. Recognition of the role of alliteration and assonance in the lexical make-up of idioms can indeed be beneficial in SLA or FLT contexts. Experiments have shown, for example, that alliteration significantly facilitates learners’ recollection of multiword expressions (such as strong collocations and idioms), and that this mnemonic effect can be enhanced by awareness-raising (Boers & Lindstromberg 2005). As we shall see below, however, the proposed types of phonological motivation may not be equally prevalent across languages. At least two typological continua may make a given language more or less prone to, for example, alliteration (e.g., above board). The first typological continuum that comes to mind is related to word stress and the prosodic distinction between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages (e.g., Abercrombie 1967; Catford 1986). Alliteration is probably most pronounced if it precedes a stressed vowel (or accentuated foot). Languages that are generally believed to lean towards stress-timed rhythm, such as English and Dutch, may therefore be more prone to alliteration than languages that are generally believed to lean towards syllable-timed rhythm, such as French and Spanish. Furthermore, the prototypical type of alliteration, i.e., the repetition of word-initial consonants (e.g., from pillar to
Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers
post), for instance, may be especially common in languages where word stress is commonly placed at the beginning of words, such as English, but less so in languages that give prominence to the final syllable of words, such as French. As a word of caution, it needs to be mentioned that the distinction (and certainly the dichotomy) between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages has increasingly come under fire from experimental phoneticians, some of whom claim that some languages (e.g., Spanish) do not correspond to either type (e.g., Dauer 1983) and some of whom claim that the typology itself may be a fallacy (e.g., Pamies Bertràn 1999). At any rate, our data (see below) reveal that Dutch (a so-called stress-timed language along with English) is much less prone to alliteration than English, which suggest that the prosodic typology cannot be the whole story. A second typological continuum that may help explain cross-linguistic variation in the popularity of (word-initial) alliteration is the distinction between fixed-word-order languages with poor inflection and loose-word-order languages with rich inflection (e.g., Comrie 1981). Inflection (which is richer, for example, in Spanish than in English) tends to make words longer and thus creates more distance between word-initial consonants that are repeated, which may weaken the alliterative effect. Alliteration is probably most powerful when it involves monosyllabic words (e.g., to a tee; through thick and thin). The relative fixedness of word order (which often appears to compensate for the absence of inflection) may also enhance the ‘productivity’ of alliteration. If word order is fixed, then this may increase the likelihood of phonologically appealing word combinations being reiterated and subsequently becoming standardised. The English alliterating idiom beat about the bush, for example, will still cohere in a complex subordinating clause, such as in My wife complained that I shouldn’t have beaten about the bush again last night. By contrast, if word order changes along with clause types, such as in German and in Dutch where in subordinating clauses the verb is moved to final position, the alliterating components of an expression may not cohere anymore. The alliterating components in the Dutch idiom “iemand bij de neus nemen” (Lead someone by the nose), for example, will be separated in “Mijn vrouw klaagde dat ik me niet bij de neus had mogen laten nemen” (My wife complained that I shouldn’t have let myself be led by the nose). Furthermore, a grammatical necessity of adding prefixes under certain syntactic patterning may turn word-initial alliteration into word-internal alliteration and thus weaken its effect. For example, the past participle in Dutch takes the prefix “ge-”, which may weaken the alliteration again, as in “Ik vroeg me af of ik bij de neus was genomen” (I wondered if I had been led by the nose). If the effect of alliteration is outspoken only in the ‘canonical’ form of idioms but weakened in many of their actual occurrences, then it is less likely to be a motivating force behind their precise lexical selection. In view of these cross-linguistic, typological variables, we hypothesise that of the three languages whose idiom repertoires we shall be looking at (i.e., English, Dutch and Spanish) English is likely to be richest in prototypical alliteration, since it has the least inflection and a comparatively fixed word order.
Chapter 3. Adding sound to the picture
Part of the picture The purpose of this section is twofold: (i) to describe the databank that our study is based on, and (ii) to demonstrate that at a conceptual/semantic level the lexical composition of metaphorical idioms in a language is fuelled by the lexical fields of source domains that have been especially salient in the culture behind that language. We chose English, Dutch and Spanish as objects of investigation because (i) these were languages we were both familiar with and (ii) comparable well-established idiom dictionaries for each of them were available to us. These were The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms (Speake 1999), The Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (Sinclair & Moon 2000), the Van Dale Idioomwoordenboek (de Groot 1999) and the Diccionario Espasa dichos y frases hechas (Jiménez 1997). The advantage in using these particular dictionaries was the fact that they each provide background information about the origins of many idioms, which often helped us identify their source domains. The dictionaries also appeared comparable in terms of the scope opted for in our study (i.e., standardised metaphorical expressions), although the Spanish dictionary seemed to include more similes than the English and Dutch dictionaries (which was an additional reason for excluding similes from our study). The three dictionaries were screened for metaphorical idioms that could be traced back to the source domains listed at the beginning of the chapter (games & sports, warfare & aggression, etc.). The dissection of concrete reality along these particular categories is not at all meant as an ‘epistemological’ statement. It is the pragmatic outcome of an earlier pedagogical project in which our students were given the task to categorise idioms along source domains with a view to helping them remember the expressions (see Boers et al. 2004a). The hand counts in the dictionaries generated a databank of 1,497 English idioms, 1,368 Dutch idioms and 1,116 Spanish idioms. As experiential domains cannot always be clearly delineated, various idioms had to be listed more than once, under different source-domain headings. For example, some of the idioms derived from hunting (e.g., a sitting duck) and fishing (e.g., swallow something hook, line, and sinker) could be included under ‘sports’ as well as under ‘fauna’, and also under ‘food’. This categorisation under more than one source domain was required for about six per cent of the idioms (in the three languages). Figure 1 presents an overview of the relative contribution of the different source domains to the idiom repertoires of English, Dutch and Spanish. As expected, the distribution of the three idiom repertoires over the range of source domains appears to reflect some cross-cultural variation. Perhaps the most striking example is the greater proportion of Spanish idioms that are derived from the source domain of religion and superstition, which makes up over 17% of the Spanish idioms in our databank. Various marked contrasts appearing from graph one can be accounted for by the distribution of idioms at the level of more specific source domains than the general
na
u fa
n
sio
es gr
ns tra
rt po
i ok co
ng
ce
an
rm rfo
n
tio
ti rs
t
en
m ish
g
rin
u ct
Dutch Spanish
g
tin
n ou
English
t
en
m rn
ry
e in ch
a
en om
g in
n de
e
n ici ed
h n io rc ct ea s u r & tr n a re e a o c m ga & ns uf ra ag he & m un up ac ad e & & o n o p s p d e & c p a & l fl s o & r & s& nc lth m re s& e& ra ic fo cle n s& ea bl rc tu wa tu & he on sm cie o g l hi e i i t a i h u s e u n t ft g n p i v m a li an ic clo ld ric re ch icr t& r& om ui isd ag e d c e r n b n e h m ju at m ha in we tr a te en source domains
ts or
sp
Figure 1. Source domains of English, Dutch and Spanish idioms.
& es
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
m ga
percentage of repertoire
20
Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers
Chapter 3. Adding sound to the picture
ones selected for the primary categorisation. For example, the great proportion of English idioms that are derived from games and sports is partly due to (i) a high number of English idioms derived from ball games (45 idioms as compared to 18 in Dutch and only 8 in Spanish), 21 of which are baseball and cricket expressions (e.g., go in to bat for someone; knock someone for six), and (ii) a high number of card-games and gambling idioms (e.g., turn up trumps; break the bank) (56 idioms as compared to 41 in Spanish and 24 in Dutch). At the level of such more specific source domains, English also appears richest in ‘hunting’ and ‘horse-racing’ idioms. By contrast, a considerable fraction of Spanish games-and-sports idioms consists of 42 bullfighting expressions (while the Dutch and English bullfight-idiom collection seems confined to a red rag to a bull, take the bull by the horns and see red). The observation that English appears to have the most idioms derived from the general source domain of fauna and flora is partly due to its comparatively high number of ‘dog’ expressions (33 as compared to 18 in Spanish and 16 in Dutch). The fact that Spanish appears to have the fewest idioms derived from vehicles and transport is partly due to its comparatively low number of ‘boats-and-sailing’ expressions (34 as compared to 77 in English and 96 in Dutch). However, the connection between culture and metaphorical language is obviously very intricate (e.g., Boers 2003; Deignan 2003), and any conclusions with regard to culture based on the idiom repertoires of languages should therefore remain very tentative. It is important to remember, for example, that figure 1 represents a distribution over different source domains as calculated on the basis of hand counts in a lexicon, irrespective of any differences in frequencies of occurrence among the idioms. As a result, the relative contributions by the different source domains to the idiomatic lexicons available to language users does not necessarily correspond to what segments of that available lexicon are actually used on a regular basis. After all, a given source domain may have generated a high number of idioms, but a large proportion of these may actually be low-frequency items (or their popularity may have decreased over time). Conversely, a source domain that has generated relatively few idioms may still be quite salient in language use, if those few idioms happen to be high-frequency items. To illustrate this possibility, figure 2 shows the distribution over the different source domains of 564 English idioms of our databank that are signalled in The Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (Sinclair & Moon 2000) as the most frequent ones (as calculated on the basis of their occurrence in The Bank of English). Figure 2 leads us to suspect, for example, that the source domain of fauna and flora may be much less reflected in present-day English idiomatic language than suggested by figure 1. A corpus search confirms this suspicion. Looking up all the idioms derived from the four ‘most dominant’ source domains in the (British part of) The Bank of English (http://www.cobuild.collins.co.uk) results in: • •
approximately 4,750 hits for the domain of games and sports; approximately 4,150 hits for the source domain of vehicles and transport;
es
&
rts
a
un
fa
n io
s es gr
t
or
p ns
ng
i ok co
n
io
t sti
rm
g
in
t un
t
en
hm
g
rin
u ct
Frequent idioms
source domains
t
en
nm
All idioms
ce
an
ry
e in ch
a
en m no
ng ni
e rd ga
e
n ici
ed m
h n io rc ct ea s u r s & re a or co str fa e tra ni fo pe & ra ag & m ac ad er & & on nu ph su pu d e & c p a & & l flo s c & h o & & r & s n lt m re & ra ic fo cle es ce n ea bl wa tu & cie on gs ltu hi er io th ism a h i u s e u n t ft g o n n p i v c m a li cl ld ric ha & di m cr re t& ui ag ec di co er ris b n en h u m j at m ha in we tr a te en
o sp
Figure 2. Source domains of English idioms: ‘all’ vs. ‘frequent’ idioms.
g
0
5
10
15
20
am
percentage of repertoire
25
Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers
Chapter 3. Adding sound to the picture
• •
approximately 3,300 hits for the source domain of war and aggression; approximately 2,250 hits for the source domain of fauna and flora.
According to its presence in the corpus, the set of idioms derived from fauna and flora (which appeared to be one of the most productive source domains measured in terms of the variety of expressions available in the idiom repertoire as a whole) is now relegated to fourth position. By contrast, the domain of vehicles and transport appears comparatively more ‘productive’ than was suggested by figure 1. This is not so surprising, considering earlier quantitative pilot studies (e.g., Boers & Demecheleer 1997) that showed a very high frequency of JOURNEY metaphors in English (often instantiated by ‘boats and sailing’ idioms). At the same time, the frequency data confirm the relative contributions made by other source domains suggested by figure 1. For example, the very high ‘productivity’ of sports and games as a source of figurative idioms in English is clearly confirmed by the corpus data. We believe frequency data like these may inform materials writers who wish to present idioms to learners in a ‘source-thematic’ fashion, with a view to facilitating insightful learning (e.g., Lazar 2003; Wright 1999). For example, although a theme of ‘animal’ expressions may at first sight appear to be a useful subject for pedagogic exploration, precisely because of its lexical wealth, learners would probably benefit more if priority were given to a thematic exploration of ‘games’ expressions or ‘travel’ expressions, as these tend to be much more common in actual usage. It would be interesting to also compare the distribution of the Spanish and Dutch idioms over the different source domains with their relative frequencies of occurrence in present-day language use. Unfortunately, neither Spanish or Dutch idiom dictionaries provide information on frequency bands. Conducting a corpus search remains a possibility, but considering the fact that both Spanish and Dutch show a much richer inflection (including vowel changes) and a much looser word order than English, this promises to be an intricate and time-consuming exercise.
Adding the sound While culturally salient source domains can motivate why certain lexical fields are drawn from for the lexical make-up of idioms, they cannot motivate why sometimes one word rather than a semantic (near-)equivalent within the same lexical field is ‘selected’ for the composition of a given idiom. We demonstrate in this section that phonological patterning is at play in such selection in a fair number of metaphorical idioms. More specifically, we shall be looking at the sound patterns of alliteration and assonance. In reality, however, these should not be viewed as independent phenomena, since they tend to work in tandem with others to create prosodic effect. For example, alliteration may not be very overt in hook, line and sinker and lock, stock and barrel, but it nonetheless supports the rhythmic pattern of these three-part expressions.
Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers
We screened our databank of English, Spanish and Dutch idioms for the following patterns: • • • •
prototypical alliteration, i.e., repetition of word-initial consonants (e.g., a cash cow); non-prototypical alliteration, i.e., repetition of consonants including a non-wordinitial one (e.g., an iron fist in a velvet glove; off the cuff); prototypical assonance, i.e., rhyme (e.g., be left high and dry); non-prototypical assonance, i.e., incomplete rhyme (e.g., jump the gun).
Some idioms (1.5% in English, 0.8% in Spanish and 0.3% in Dutch) show a combination of alliteration and assonance. This is usually the case when a content word is repeated (e.g., neck and neck), but also in a couple of other expressions (e.g., through thick and thin). These were counted twice, both as instances of alliteration and assonance. As the aim of the exercise was to find motivation for lexical selection, we took only content words into account (i.e., no articles). Assonance that was determined by grammatical rules rather than the ‘choice’ of words, such as gender agreement in Spanish adjective-noun combinations (e.g., “mosquita muerta”) was not taken into account either (as other adjectives would take the same ending, anyhow). The screening was carried out by both authors and if either of them felt hesitant about classifying an idiom as phonologically motivated, then a ‘conservative’ approach was adopted and the idiom was not classified under the suggested sound pattern. Since word-initial alliteration and rhyme are easily recognisable, ‘disagreement’ between the two authors only occurred with regard to the categories of non-prototypical alliteration (i.e., non-word-initial alliteration) and non-prototypical assonance (i.e., incomplete rhyme). Figure 3 shows the relative prevalence of the examined sound patterns in the idiom repertoires of English, Dutch and Spanish.
20 18
percentage of repertoire
16 14 12
assonance alliteration total
10 8 6 4
total
2 0
alliteration English
Dutch
assonance Spanish
Figure 3. Alliteration and assonance in English, Dutch and Spanish idioms.
Chapter 3. Adding sound to the picture
According to our hand counts, 19.71% of the English idioms in our databank show either alliteration and/or assonance that may have played a part in the ‘choice’ of at least one of the content words in those items (and that could thus help learners remember these idioms, too). Overall, the sound patterns under examination turn out less frequent in Spanish (15.78% of the repertoire) and in Dutch (13.38% of the repertoire), but they nonetheless provide considerable ‘coverage’. Chi square shows the difference between English and Spanish to be significant at p < .02 (χ2 = 6.44), that between English and Dutch at p < .001 (χ2 = 16.30). Alliteration appears to be especially popular in English, where no fewer than 17.84% of the idioms show alliteration (15.03% word-initial), as compared to 12.10% in Spanish (11.02% word-initial) and 12.06% in Dutch (10.09% word-initial – but see below). Chi square shows these differences to be significant at p < .001 (χ2 = 15.75 and 17.99, respectively). Assonance turns out to be much less common, as it was found to occur in 3.41% of the English repertoire (1.87% rhyme), 4.48% of the Spanish repertoire (3.67% rhyme), and only 1.61% of the Dutch repertoire (1.24% rhyme). The lower frequency of assonance in the Dutch repertoire in comparison with English is significant at p < .01 (χ2 = 8.64). In comparison with Spanish it is significant at p < .001 (χ2 = 17.06). These comparative findings corroborate the hypothesis put forward in the introduction, which was that languages with little inflection (and many monosyllabic words), and with a relatively fixed word order might be most prone to taking prototypical alliteration into account when forming multiword expressions. A more detailed analysis of the subsets of idioms that show prototypical alliteration provides more supporting evidence of this typological link. Firstly, it was argued above that the impact of alliteration is likely to be greatest when monosyllabic words are involved, as the distance between the repeated consonants is then minimal. In the English subset of prototypical alliteration, 52.8% of the cases involve two monosyllabic words. This compares to 7.89% in Dutch and only 2.25% in Spanish (which happens to have the highest degree of inflection of the three). Secondly, it was argued that SVO-to-SOV transformation (which is the case in Dutch) could reduce the likelihood of alliterating phrases cohering all the time. In addition, adding a prefix to the past participle (like “ge-” in Dutch) could reduce the likelihood of prototypical alliteration involving verb forms in actual syntactic patterning. Consequently, the majority of Dutch idioms in which alliteration occurs with a finite verb have variants in actual usage in which the alliteration in weakened. In fact, almost half of the Dutch idioms that were counted in graph three under prototypical alliteration do not always show this word-initial alliteration in linguistic practice. Only 18.42% of the alliterating verb-object combinations maintain word-initial alliteration at all times, either because they are invariable, set phrases or because the alliterating consonant happens to be /G/, as in “de geest geven” (give up the ghost) (in which case the past participle preserves the alliteration, as in “hij heeft de geest gegeven”). By comparison, over 42% of both the English and Spanish subsets of prototypical alliteration involves finite verb forms.
Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers
The finding that the lexical composition of up to twenty per cent of English metaphorical idioms can be motivated phonologically must be welcome news to EFL learners facing the enormous challenge of mastering English phraseology. Still, one may wonder if the use of alliterating or rhyming idioms by native speakers might not be confined to purposes of amusement or poetic effect. In other words, one may wonder if the reported high percentage may not be skewed by the presence in our databank of alliterating or rhyming idioms that are actually restricted to very low frequency bands. However, if we zoom in on the 564 idioms in our bank that are signalled in The Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms (Sinclair & Moon 2000) as the most frequently used ones (and therefore – according to the editors – as the ones that should be given priority in EFL), the pattern that emerges is quite compatible with the overall findings. As shown in figure 4, we find that over 23% of the set of ‘frequent’ idioms show a form of phonological motivation, mostly alliteration again (14.18% word-initial). This suggests that phonological motivation is not only widespread in the idiomatic lexicon as a whole that happens to be available to speakers, but that those speakers do certainly not shy away from ‘choosing’ phonologically motivated expressions for actual use.
25 percentage of repertoir
e
assonance alliteration total
20 15 10 total
5
alliteration
0 All idioms
assonance Frequent idioms
Figure 4. Alliteration and assonance in English idioms: ‘all’ vs. ‘frequent’ idioms.
Conclusions In this chapter we have argued in favour of an additional type of motivation for metaphorical idioms, i.e., phonological motivation, that goes beyond the conceptual/semantic level proposed by cognitive semanticists. The advantage of this addition is that it helps motivate the precise lexical composition of a fair number of idioms, i.e., why the
Chapter 3. Adding sound to the picture
combinations of exactly those words rather than potential (near-)synonyms make up these standardised phrases. From an SLA/FLT perspective, the advantage of this additional type of motivation lies in the before-mentioned mnemonic benefits of having learners notice the phonological patterning. We have focused on two phonological patterns, i.e., alliteration and assonance, of which especially the former turns out to be quite ‘productive’ in the languages we have examined. We feel we have been rather ‘conservative’ in our estimates (a ‘when in doubt, leave it out’ – approach), and yet our hand counts in the combined databank yield between 13% and 20% of idioms where phonological motivation is likely to have played a part in lexical selection. From an affective point of view, this may offer some encouragement to learners facing the challenge of mastering (part of) L2 phraseology, especially when the L2 happens to be English. Sceptics may argue, of course, that this still leaves about 80% of figurative idioms without phonological motivation. Some of these, however, consist of just one ‘content’ word (e.g., The works; A toss-up), in which case the question of selecting a word among (close-) synonyms to create an alliterating combination does not even arise. The comparative findings of the study hint at effects of cross-cultural variation at the level of lexical-field selection (the relative ‘productivity’ of source domains) and at cross-linguistic differences at the level of precise word selection (the relative ‘productivity’ of given phonological patterns, possibly explainable by typological reasons related to matters of word stress, inflection and word order).
Perspectives for further research Of necessity, ours was just an exploratory study that should be interpreted as an invitation for further research. After all, we have focused on only two sound patterns, in only one segment of phraseology, in only three languages, and by taking only a synchronic vantage point. The following lines of investigation seem especially appealing. •
•
•
We have found corroboration of the proposed typological hypotheses for the relative frequency of alliteration by looking at the idiom repertoires of only three languages. Obviously, more languages would need to be examined before generalised claims can be made. We have presented evidence of phonological motivation in just one segment of phraseology, i.e., metaphorical idioms. It may be worth investigating whether similar motives are at play in the lexical selection in other standardised multiword expressions, such as non-figurative idioms (e.g., spic and span), similes (e.g., dead as a dodo; drunk as a skunk), strong collocations (e.g., wage war; road rage; live and learn), etc. Ours was a comparative study of phonological patterning in a segment of standardised, conventional phraseology. It would be interesting to know whether the
Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers
•
•
same contrastive trends might be observed in the literatures of the three languages, especially in connection with the metric preferences in their poetry, drama and songs. We have implicitly considered alliteration and assonance as potential motives for lexical selection for reasons to do with ‘auditory effect’. However, the same (and similar) phenomena could also be looked at from the perspective of articulation, especially ‘articulatory economy’. Perhaps ease of articulation might be an additional driving force behind the standardisation of some multiword expressions rather than their potential (near-)synonymous counterparts. For example, one of the motives for saying It’s raining cats and dogs rather than It’s raining dogs and cats might be the ease of linking consonants that happen to be phonetically close rather than distant. The question remains whether such patterns are indeed widespread in phraseology. Ours was essentially a synchronic study of lexical selection. To lend extra strength to the hypothesis that phonological patterning is indeed a motivating factor in the way standardised phrases are formed, our study should be complemented by a diachronic study of lexical adaptation. For example, many alliterating idioms have non-alliterating variants (e.g., home and hosed vs. home and dry; come up trumps vs. turn up trumps; hard/hot on your heels vs. close on your heels; sow the seeds vs. plant the seeds; go to ground vs. go to earth; beat your breast vs. beat your chest; fill the bill vs. fit the bill). If diachronic research were to show that, when alliterating forms compete with non-alliterating ones for the status of standardised, institutionalised idiom, the alliterating ones often win out, then this finding would corroborate our phonological-motivation thesis.
Acknowledgements We would like to thank the following graduates at the Erasmus College of Brussels for allowing us to use some of the data they collected for their MA dissertations: Erika Blanckaert, Kathy Elsen and Annemie Vandiest.
References Abercrombie, David (1967). Elements of general phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Boers, Frank (2000a). Enhancing metaphoric awareness in specialised reading. English for Specific Purposes, 19, 137–147. Boers, F. (2000b). Metaphor awareness and vocabulary retention. Applied Linguistics, 21, 553–571. Boers, Frank (2001). Remembering figurative idioms by hypothesising about their origins. Prospect, 16, 35–43.
Chapter 3. Adding sound to the picture Boers, Frank (2003). Applied linguistics perspectives on cross-cultural variation in conceptual metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol, 18, 231–238. Boers, Frank & Murielle Demecheleer (1997). A few metaphorical models in (western) economic discourse. In W.A. Liebert, G. Redeker, & L. Waugh (Eds.), Discourse and perspective in cognitive linguistics (115–129). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Boers, Frank, Murielle Demecheleer & June Eyckmans (2004a). Etymological elaboration as a strategy for learning idioms. In P. Bogaards & B. Laufer (Eds.), Vocabulary in a second language: Selection, acquisition, and testing (53–78). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Boers, Frank, Murielle Demecheleer & June Eyckmans (2004b). Cross-cultural variation as a variable in comprehending and remembering figurative idioms. European Journal of English Studies, 8, 375–388. Boers, Frank & Seth Lindstromberg (2005). Finding ways to make phrase-learning feasible: the mnemonic effect of alliteration. System, 33, 225–238. Boers, Frank, Hélène Stengers & June Eyckmans (2007). Presenting figurative idioms with a touch of etymology: more than mere mnemonics? Language Teaching Research, 11, 43–62. Catford, John C. (1986). Prosody: A practical introduction. Oxford: Clarendon. Comrie, Bernard (1981). Language universals and linguistic typology. Oxford: Routledge. Dauer, R. (1983). Stress timing and syllable timing reanalysed. Journal of Phonetics, 11, 51–62. de Groot, Hans (Ed.) (1999) Van Dale idioomwoordenboek. Utrecht/Antwerpen: Van Dale Lexicografie/Reader’s Digest. Deignan, Alice (2003). Metaphorical expressions and culture: an indirect link. Metaphor and Symbol, 18, 255–272. Fernando, Chitra & Roger Flavell (1981). On idiom: Critical views and perspectives [Exeter Linguistics Studies, 5]. Exeter: University of Exeter. Gibbs, Raymond (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jiménez, Alberto B. (1997). Diccionario Espasa : dichos y frases hechas. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Johnson, Mark (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Kövecses, Z. (1990). Emotion concepts. New York: Springer. Kövecses, Zoltan & Péter Szabó (1996). Idioms: a view from cognitive semantics. Applied Linguistics, 17, 326–55. Lakoff, George (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Lazar, Gillian (2003). Meanings and metaphors: Activities to practise figurative language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pamies Bertràn, Antonio (1999). Prosodic typology: on the dichotomy between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages. Language Design, 2, 103–130. Sinclair, John & Rosamund Moon (Eds.) (2000). Collins cobuild dictionary of idioms. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers. Speake, Jennifer (Ed.) (1999). The Oxford dictionary of idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, Jon (1999). Idioms organizer. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.
Frank Boers & Hélène Stengers
Appendix: some more examples of the investigated kinds of phonological motivation 1. Prototypical alliteration (repetition of word-initial consonants) look to your laurels; run someone ragged; a new lease of life; settle a score; set the scene; a busy bee; a feeding frenzy; bitten by the bug; bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; cut the cackle; have a bee in your bonnet; have bats in your belfry; make a mountain out of a molehill; neither fish nor fowl; play possum; rule the roost; the fur is flying; the rat race; turn tail; turn turtle; have other fish to fry; peas from the same pod; at sixes and sevens; below the belt; break the bank; cut corners; dice with death; get someone’s goat; pull your punches; pip someone at the post; too close to call; turn the tables; watch grass grow; a carbon copy; cut from the same cloth; shape up or ship out; the tools of the trade; cut the cord; bay for blood; read the riot act; prime the pump; pull the plug; a flight of fancy; belt and braces; done and dusted; fan the flames; fighting fit; go great guns; hide nor hair; leave someone in the lurch; meet your match; pack a punch; part and parcel; pinch pennies; practise what you preach; run riot; the bare bones; the cream of the crop; the gift of the gab; the worse for wear; without rhyme or reason; short shrift; read the runes; a close call; a leading light; broad in the beam; the coast is clear; carry the can; a war of words; at daggers drawn; a bolt from the blue.
2. Non-prototypical alliteration above board; in fits and starts; keep your pecker up; rain on your parade; froth at the mouth.
3. Prototypical assonance (rhyme) an eager beaver; a fat cat; horses for courses; pie in the sky; the bee’s knees; steer clear.
4. Non-prototypical assonance raise Cain; flip your lid; cook the books; cakes and ale; pop your clogs; pick nits.
chapter 4
Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews Graham Low Why study book reviews Book reviews represent something of a paradox. On the one hand, they are published regularly in many of the world’s most prestigious academic journals, they can at times exert a powerful influence on a whole discipline, and they provide a channel of communication for both experienced and new academics. On the other hand, they are relatively unremarked. They are rarely cited in books or journals (Wiley 1993), rarely recognised in research rating exercises, frequently not subjected to peer review, and rarely analysed by discourse analysts (Motta-Roth 1998: 30–1; Römer 2005). Moreover, they are not always easy to read. Guo (1989) noted for example that the problems posed by metaphor, sarcasm and the indirect ways in which reviewers at times express their opinions mean that second language readers can have serious problems reading ‘between the lines’. So, while knowing how to read and write a book review is an important part of any academic’s professional toolkit, little is yet known about the tools. Motta-Roth’s (1998) analysis of 60 texts showed that academic book reviews could validly be treated as a genre characterised by four main moves: ‘Introducing the book,’ ‘Outlining the book’, ‘Highlighting parts of the book’ and lastly ‘Providing a closing evaluation of the book’. There were some differences between reviews in the three areas she studied (Linguistics, Economics and Chemistry), but these were primarily differences of content and focus. Thus, for example, chemists emphasised recency of publication and the inclusion of tables and appendices, economists emphasised mathematical modelling and linguists tended to emphasise appeal to particular groups of readers. The Motta-Roth analysis is valuable in that it suggests a coherent structure and flow of ideas underlying reviews, but it does not explain why second language learners might have problems reading them. To understand Guo’s difficulties, we need to look more at how evaluations are carried out across the text as a whole and how reviewers suggest opinions. This difference of emphasis will require a different type of analysis. One way forward is to look at reviews in terms of Positioning Theory. Positioning Theory is based on the idea that social relations are primarily constructed and maintained in terms of conversations and that the participants, or ‘social actors’, repeatedly
Graham Low
position and reposition themselves in a fluid way within and across interactions, in terms of attributes like power and believability, in order to achieve long-term and short-term goals (van Langenhove & Harré 1999a). As book reviews are by definition evaluative and texts about texts, they would seem well suited to this sort of approach. Moreover, the social constructivist approach to academic research emphasises the need for researchers to ‘sell’ their work in a ‘market’ and thus to make use of public relations and marketing techniques, in order to generate a reputation within the relevant academic community. As no-one can hope to keep abreast of everything published, reviews constitute an essential part of the marketing activity, by ‘pushing’ or ‘advertising’ the book (van Langenhove & Harré 1999b). However, reviewers need to keep or construct a reputation just as much as the original writers do, so Positioning Theory encourages the analyst to look for ways in which reviewers present themselves with respect to the readers, just as much as they react to the author and the content of the book. Claiming a position in a text means that you claim a number of rights, duties and obligations and that you recognise that readers will have certain expectations of your subsequent behaviour (van Langenhove & Harré 1999a). We may usefully expand this slightly by allowing such claims to represent what LePage & Tabouret-Keller (1985) called ‘acts of identity’ whereby individuals by the way they talk (or write) attempt to position themselves inside or outside a whole range of social and intellectual groups. Positioning can be achieved in various ways, depending whether the positioning is relative to an idea or another actor. Four commonly cited ways, however, are by redescribing something in a very selective way, by evaluating, by giving biographical details and by using indexicals like ‘I’ and ‘we’. Several of the above ideas are close to concepts developed within Conversation Analysis, such as alignment, appeals to the reader, breakdowns and repairs and interactional sequences. The primary difference between Positioning Theory and Conversation Analysis is that Positioning Theory recognises long-term strategic planning, rather than just the ‘here and now’ and does not require all inferences to be based on the actual reactions of a listener (Törrönen 2001). Positioning Theory is thus more suited to a purely textual analysis of written reviews, though the four Conversation Analysis concepts above can usefully be retained. Descriptions of Positioning Theory tend to emphasise the formal separation of initial positionings from the reactions and repositionings which build on them: van Langenhove and Harré talk of ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third order’ positionings. Such numbering is not always terribly informative in practice, however (and will not be used here), but the general insight that positioning reflects a layering of events and activities is an important one and provides a valuable way of describing the context underlying both the reviews and the analysis of them. 1. First, the writer writes the book and positions him/herself with respect to the material, to other research and to other researchers.
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
2. Second, the reviewer reads the book and reacts to some or all of the reviewer’s claims. 3. Third, the reviewer writes the review, selecting which reactions to include for an assumed readership and in the process claiming positions backwards with respect to the book and forwards with respect to the readers. 4. Lastly, readers read the review, react to the reviewer, the book/author and generate reactions of their own. The key point is that actors have differential access to these layers; the readers may or may not know of the author, may or may not have read the book and may or may not know of the reviewer. The same applies to the researcher; in this case, I know none of the authors, have read none of the books reviewed, though I do know of, and have read work by, the reviewer in Review 17. A related point is that the actors (or their work) are variably included in the layers; for example, the reviewer may or may not have been mentioned or attacked in the book and the reviewer may or may not choose to mention this. Positioning is thus likely to be complex in book reviews and to be a locus for clashes between roles such as being an expert, selling the book and helping the reader. It can be seen that Positioning Theory is somewhat broader than metadiscourse in the sense of “reader-writer interactions” (Hyland & Tse 2004: 159), or even “writers project[ing] themselves into their work to signal their communicative intentions” (Hyland 1998: 437). Applying Positioning Theory also avoids the need for the sort of discrete countable formal or functional categories which both Hyland (1998) and Le (2004) found problematic, due in part at least to the ambiguity or vagueness of pronouns like ‘we’.
The present study The present study focuses on one of Guo’s problematic areas, metaphor. Metaphor is known to be closely associated with evaluation in academic texts generally (Littlemore 2001) and also to play a major role in attempts by writers to mediate between academic research and readers who have not, or could not, read it, as in science books for children, newspaper articles about science, or reports in ‘popular’ science journals like The New Scientist (Cameron & Low 2004; Low 1997, 1999a, 2005). In this latter role particularly, metaphor has been observed to operate in collaboration with a wide range of other rhetorical devices such as extreme-case formulation,1 direct questions, alliteration,
1. The term ‘extreme case formulation’ is borrowed from Conversation Analysis. It will be used
here to include not just hyperbole and exaggeration, but cases of genuine reporting of large size or great intensity. The grouping of figurative and ‘literal’ is justified by the finding in Low (2005) that writers use both for similar rhetorical purposes.
Graham Low
humour, use of animacy metaphors, reference to familiar, everyday objects, reference to the reader and even reference to the reader’s likely reactions. Moreover, studies of oral educational discourse by Cameron (2003) and Corts & Meyer (2002) and, more relevantly to the present context, my examination of the four academic book reviews in Low (1997), found that a small number of metaphors were repeated, developed, or used systematically across stretches of text and that these ‘recurrent’ metaphors reflected positioning on the part of the reviewer.2 Indeed, the review in Nature of an edited book of brain research papers, opened with a highly complex paragraph where the reviewer positioned himself repeatedly and saliently via two intertwining recurrent metaphors (of a unfolding map and a nourishing buffet) and a complex structural system of (boundary) frames within frames. There was thus good reason to believe that, if more reviews were analysed, metaphor would be found to be used with some regularity for positioning purposes, both (a) on its own, in the form of recurrent metaphor (functioning as what Ponterotto (2003) called ‘overarching metaphor’) and (b) in conjunction with other figurative devices. To this end, a small corpus of twenty academic book reviews was constructed, half from science journals, the other half from social science journals. The three primary research questions were: RQ1: How much textual evidence is there of the academic reviewers positioning themselves (or other actors)? RQ2: How far do the reviewers employ metaphor when doing so? and RQ3: If they do use metaphor to aid positioning, what sort of metaphor is involved and how is it used?
A secondary, more reflective, question was: RQ4: Is Positioning Theory useful as a framwork for evaluating metaphor in written academic discourse?
Although Motta-Roth (1998) compared reviews in three subject areas, the focus in this paper is more general and the data from the science and social science reviews are pooled. Even so, in order to give an indication of the source of the phenomena discussed, references to science reviews will be given in bold type (e.g., R13).
Method Nine reviews were taken in July 2004 from current Social Science Citation Index journals and nine from Science Citation Index journals (see Appendix). One review came
2. The adjective ‘recurrent’ is preferred to Cameron’s (2003) ‘systematic’, as no assumptions are made about the form or function of the various exponents of the metaphor. There is also no requirement for it to be conceptually developed, as is the case with Lakoffian ‘extended metaphor’.
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
from a 2003 issue, simply because the 2004 one had no reviews. As Nature regularly reviews science and social science books, one of each was selected. The result was ten reviews in each subject area, totalling 18,891 words. The reviews were first read, then checked for basic quantitative data like word length, number of rhetorical sections, number of direct questions, number of references to first, second and third persons and the number of humorous items. Extremecase terms, including superlatives, were also identified (see note 1). The texts were then coded for metaphorically-used words, in the sense of Steen (2004), and Pragglejaz (2007). Delexical verbs like ‘give’ and ‘make’ were treated as non-metaphoric unless they were involved in personification (as in ‘This book gives an overview’). Specialist technical terms were checked with subject experts, though the coding decision was ultimately made by myself. Although the individual words in a simile or an A is B metaphor (like ‘Time is money’) are not technically metaphorically used, they were coded as metaphoric if the two terms of the comparison were perceived as discrepant; in the event, there were only two such examples, neither of them similes, in the entire dataset. Where a problem still existed, the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary was used as an aid. The percentage of metaphorically-used words, and percentage of animacy versus non-animacy-based metaphors was then calculated. The fourth stage was to identify text involving positioning. The personal references, extreme-case terms and markers of ‘pseudo interaction’ to use Wales’s (1980) term (especially direct questions) were used as an initial guide to points where positioning might be occurring. The sequences of acts of positioning emerged with repeated readings. Identification of the type(s) of positioning involved could then be made. Lastly, positioning sequences were examined to see whether they contained metaphoric expressions; as one may assume that much of the positioning in a review is both ‘intentional’ and ‘deliberate’ (in van Langenhove and Harré’s terms), so the focus was primarily on what Cameron (2003) called ‘deliberate’ metaphors. Nevertheless, words in a positioning sequence which were based on purely conventional metaphor, or even words taking on metaphoric resonance near a metaphoric expression, were checked to see if they contributed to the positioning.
Results Baseline data The main characteristics of the reviews are given in Table 1. It can be seen that the science journals tended to publish very few reviews, while the social science ones had more; indeed, the maximum (R02) was 27. The science reviews in the sample were also significantly shorter at the 5% level than the social science ones (U = 17, p = 0.013). Only three reviews (R04, R05 and R18) were formatted as academic articles, in the sense that they had a set of text-final references; all three were in social science journals.
Graham Low
Table 1. Baseline data for the 20 sample reviews Reviews N per issue
Word length Metaphor (average) density (%)
Total Social science Science
967.7 1164.2 749.3
20 10 10
4.4 7.1 1.3
10.5 11.7 9.2
Animacy density (%) 1.2 1.3 1.3
Three other reviews included full references in the body of the text and again two of these were in social science journals (R19, R20) and the third (R17) was a review of a social science book. The reviews varied in their structure; most adopted a tripartite structure of Introduction, Contents and Concluding evaluation, though no clear discipline-related pattern was found. Eight of the reviews contained no recommendation, including six where the reviewer was generally positive about the book. The indices for metaphor use showed that the greatest density (15%) occurred in a social science review and the least (6.4%) in a science review, and average difference between the groups was again significant at (U = 19, p = 0.019). Animacy expressions occurred about every hundred words and almost all involved the book being treated as a person or living organism. The proportion of animacy to non-animacy-based metaphor did not, however, differ significantly across the two groups (U = 49.5, p = 0.971), nor did the proportion of reviews containing ‘I/me’ or ‘we’ references (60% for both groups). Fourteen of the reviews were written by men and five by women (one case was unclear). The aim here is not to explore gender-related writing patterns, but the metaphoric density of the women’s texts is consistently in the lower half of the density figures and only one woman (R20) included humour (25% of the women versus 36% of the men). Interestingly the pun in R20 is related to positioning and will be discussed below. In short, although the focus here is on the 20 texts as a group, there are nevertheless several disciplinary differences between them, which would be worth exploring with a bigger corpus and from which we might perhaps infer that scientists value and/ or use reviews rather differently from social scientists.
Recurrent metaphors Apart from personification metaphors (“The book states”), there are only two examples in the corpus of recurrent metaphor which has more than two occurrences; both are from Nature (R13, R14) and both link the reviewer and the reader in a journey through the book. R13 is a review of research into the promise of extending life. Exponents of WRITING IS A PERFORMANCE, elaborated as boxing, acting and oral story telling, intertwine
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
with exponents of WRITING IS A JOURNEY. The reviewer begins by establishing a fight scenario in line 4, with a neutral reporting noun (“account”):
(1) . . . behind its blow-by-blow account of intrigue and scientific skulduggery, the book . . . 3
The image is made specific in the middle of the second section, where a boxing ring is implied:
(2) In the opposite corner, we encounter the enigmatic Michael West, whose career . . .
The “account” previously also became a play or melodrama at the start of the second section:
(3) Hall sets the stage by describing a visit to the home of Leonard Hayflick
Then it becomes a saga and a tale in the fourth section: “The stem cell saga, as told by Hall”, indeed “grippingly told”, and by the conclusion, “The tale is well told”. The telling is also presented as a journey in the third section and the two metaphors intertwine:
(4) The twists and turns [FIGHT or JOURNEY] of the discovery of telomerase . . . are well told [SAGA]. Along the way [JOURNEY], we learn of the squabbles [FIGHT?] too.
In sum, the metaphors develop, intertwine and play off each other from the start to the end of the text. It can be seen from the above that the review becomes explicitly interpersonal as the metaphors unfold; the reviewer as previous reader of the book aligns with the current reader of the review, to create a hypothetical, and chronologically implausible, joint team moving through the tale, as the author tells it (“we encounter”, “we learn”). Review R14, about the role of inositol rings in cell biology, introduces the further complexity of a recurrent metaphor interlocked with a similar recurrent metaphor. Both metaphors are contained within the second section, listing the contents of the book. The first is the guide/team; as in R13, the reviewer and the reader form a joint (interactive) team on a journey through the book:
(5) Sergio Grinstein and colleagues take us through the process of phagocytosis and introduce the reader to PtdIns(4,5)P2
(6) The chapter provides a comprehensive guide to the dynamic nature of the process
(7) We are given a tour of proteins
3. Underlining is used to mark metaphorically used words or lexical units. The reviews themselves are referenced as R01 – R20.
Graham Low
(8) The final chapter takes us into the nucleus
At step one, however, phagocytosis itself is described variously as a journey, a battle and birth:
(9) Cells of the immune system remove invading micro-organisms
[(9) is followed by (5) above – hence the interlocking]
(10) an accumulation of this lipid allows the recruitment of
There is then a series of process terms before the birth and journey metaphor: Subsequently. . . disappears . . . converted into . . . degraded . . . removal of PtdIns(4,5)P2 . . . leading to the dismantling of the actin network (11) which then attracts a new set of proteins to take the nascent phagosome to the next stage in its journey.
In both cases, the recurrent metaphors are used by the reviewers to deliberately reposition themselves with respect to the readers in terms of solidarity, in order to create a pseudo-joint activity. Few assumptions are made about the readers beyond a willingness to read jointly and the ability to keep up intellectually with the argument. However, although inclusive “we”s are used repeatedly, there is little evidence of either reviewer abandoning the (tacit) claim to authority and control; indeed the choice of terms like “blow-by-blow” and “opposite corner” in R13 suggest a deliberate positioning of ironic, if emotionally positive, detachment and distancing above the author.
Self-positioning in other contexts The reviewers in R13 and R14 clearly use recurrent metaphor to help them position themselves with respect to the reader(s), but the questions remain of whether selfpositioning is widespread in the other reviews and whether metaphor is used to support it. The answer to the first question is that all twenty reviews show some textual evidence of self-positioning by the reviewers. In five cases this is fairly minimal (R01, R02, R19, R09, R10) with just two or three examples; evaluations like “This is a great book” (R01) or “a quantum leap” (R19), or “one of the strengths of the book. . .” (R02), a comment like “the last chapter, which is typically planned as a review” (R09), or the suggestion that adding some critical discussion might help readers (R01), flag that the reviewer has expertise in the field, is well-read and, in the last case, is less likely to be confused than the readers. Nevertheless, in all cases reviewers make some effort to position themselves above the readers in terms of academic expertise, and thus status. We might also expect reviewers to position themselves below the author, where the book or author is admired, but above him or her where the book is found wanting. Although there are two examples of humility in the corpus (R20 and particularly
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
R19 – discussed in more detail below), the situation is not straightforward and the reviewer still tries to be ‘on top’. R08 provides a good example of how reviewers tend to react even in the face of a book that is “superb”, “original”, “a remarkable achievement” and metaphorically “a major step along the road towards accurate quantification”. Despite the explicit admiration, the reviewer takes care to lay claim repeatedly to at least five related roles or characteristics (relevant words are bolded): A member of the relevant research community: (12) Which Dudarev was perhaps the first to bring into our field from earlier Russian work
Having expertise: (13) Certainly the most thorough, unified and comprehensive treatment . . . to appear for many years. (14) All the relevant theoretical background is given here.
Experienced: (15) The chapter on RHEED summarizes the major contribution that this group of authors has made to that field over many years
Well-read: (16) The best treatment of their angular dependence to be found in any textbook (17) It is . . . unusually clearly written and complete.
Up-to-date: (18) In biology, too, there are now renewed efforts to go beyond the simple Beer’s law . . .
In general, claims to authority in the corpus show a frequent use of extremecase formulation, which in turn implies a more general claim to positioning oneself at the head of the field, by implication close to, or even above, the authors. From a metaphor point of view, the claims to authority rarely go beyond conventional expressions like “bring our field” (R08) or “strengths” (R02), except where an academic advance is flagged (“a step along the road” (R08), “a quantum leap” (R19)). From a Positioning Theory point of view, we may also note that the claims are in most cases implied rather than explicit, meaning that it is frequently unclear whether the positioning is tacit or deliberate. R08 is somewhat different, in that the combination of claiming five characteristics, the frequent extreme-case formulation and the repetition of the claims throughout the text strongly suggests deliberate positioning.
Graham Low
The reviewers at times go further than simply claiming authority and in at least three cases (R04, R18 and R20) directly compete with the authors. R18 and R20 are particularly interesting in that they represent rather different approaches to competition. In R20, the reviewer begins by building up the book and the author, using extreme case terminology: (19) I recommend this book very highly (20) A specialist in American religion (21) . . . travelled to 14 carefully chosen and very diverse places (22) . . . paying particular attention to (23) These pages are a tour de force in themselves
Within this list there is a short joke, in the form of a play on words, presumably by the reviewer: the author travels to “two multi-religious “mindfields” (Israel and India)”. Unlike many of the jokes in the corpus, it is not targeted against the author or the reader, but would appear to serve to show that the reviewer is up to date in the field and feels secure enough to share a joke; I interpret this, at least on one level, as a gesture of solidarity with the author. After a brief description of part two of the book, the reviewer devotes a whole paragraph to describing and evaluating her own work. She begins by claiming part of the field as the equal of the author: (24) I have attempted the same exercise myself. Europe: the Exceptional Case. Parameters of Faith in the Modern World (publisher details), in many respects does for Europe what [author] does for the USA.
There is then a short description of what the reviewer (not the author) did. The claim to equality is, however, toned down in three ways: (a) the description is followed by an apology (“I have to confess”), (b) there are two overt statements about things the author did better than the reviewer, and (c), more relevantly for present purposes, the description itself is couched in third person terms, using personification metaphor: (25) It looks at Europe from the outside rather than within and asks not only what Europe is in terms of its religious life, but (importantly) what Europe is not.
However, the toning down (or humility) effect of the personification metaphor would seem to be somewhat reduced by the claim implied by the adverb “importantly”. The reviewer therefore ultimately draws back from the claim to equality, but retains the claim to be a European expert. This claim presumably warrants the selective focus on UK-related errors, with its disparaging “such” and emphasis on clearly demarcating areas of expertise: (26) Just occasionally, this embeddedness of such ideas in the mind of an American scholar leads to a misreading of the comparative cases. The comments on England, for example, . . ..
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
The reader remains uncertain whether the foregrounding of the reviewer’s expertise at the expense of the author is part of the earlier claim for equality, a way of repairing a problem with evaluating non-European data, or conceivably both. This is in fact a good example of where ‘communicative intention’ is unclear. The reviewer in R18 is in a slightly different position; she would appear to not to be currently in direct competition with the author, but rather to imply that she would like to be. She admires the book, but is not included in it. She also admits to learning from it, and aligns herself with the reader, though in a more self-abasing way than the ‘joint reading team’ reviewers in R13 and R14 (above): (27) Children, the editors tell us, . . . (28) Nevat-Gall’s chapter shows us how . . . (29) Similarly, Fusilo, Lieberati, and Ponte-Corvo’s chapter shows us that. . . (30) Kasuya’s report informs us that . . .
By the end of the review, the reviewer has effectively positioned herself below the authors, and away from the elite in-group of researchers. The two-paragraph conclusion is accordingly used to repair the situation. First, an apparently neutral comment is made that the book “provides considerable food for thought for further research on these topics”. The metaphor would appear to serve a generalising, decoupling and topic-changing, or at least refocusing, function, of the sort described by Drew & Holt (1998) for conversation. This is followed by five direct questions suggesting unknowns. Second, the questions are followed by a sort of answer, involving a self-reference and a fairly conventional metaphor, which acts as the climax to the paragraph: (31) Although the work of Blum-Kulka (2003), Cook-Gumperz (1995), Goodwin (1990), Ervin-Tripp and Kuntay (1997), and Kyratzis (1999) has begun to tackle these problems, more contexts of unstructured, spontaneous peer talk among children need to be considered, where these are applicable. . .
The reviewer references herself in a diplomatic yet clear-cut way, as active, up-andcoming and a member of the elite group (along with the authors) researching the topic. The self-reference, in other words, appears to be more than simply referencing a third party in support of an argument (an ‘evidential’ within Hyland’s ‘textual metadiscourse’ or Hyland & Tse’s ‘interactive resources’). The link with the authors is then firmed up in the short final paragraph of the review, where the reviewer, it seems, hopes to publish in the same series. The reader has to infer this, as the claim is again diplomatically couched, exploiting the ambiguity of the third person “one”: (32) The topic . . . is essential for research in language development . . . One can hope that this book will serve as the carefully conducted initial set of analyses of a long series to take on this important problem.
Graham Low
It is axiomatic in Positioning Theory that acts of positioning have both a moral (or institutional) and a personal component (van Langenhove & Harré 1999: 20). In both the above challenges to the author, the reviewers employ personal arguments, such as the explicit biographical detail in R20 and the reference to it in R18. However, at no point does either reviewer depart from a professional academic role, so the point where the moral becomes the personal is unclear; indeed the two would not seem to be necessarily mutually exclusive. Metaphor occurs in both R20 and R18, but its role in furthering the challenges is subtle. The use of “embeddedness” in R20 to emphasise the claim of restricted expertise and of personification to tone the challenge down are fairly transparent, but the use of the conventional “tackle” and “take on”, along with “serve” and “long”, in R18 to emphasise the challenge and validate the reviewer’s future effort is somewhat more debatable. The use of metaphor is somewhat clearer where the author overtly admits to being in a difficult status position with respect to the author and feels the need to repair the situation. There are two examples of this in the corpus, both from science reviews (R07 and R14). I will use the first to illustrate the point. The R07 reviewer begins his review by directly admitting ignorance and fallibility: (33) Neonatologists are not always directly involved in the intensive care of neonates as surgical patients. In my own case this has led to a slightly blinkered approach. I am very familiar with perinatal stabilisation of problems such as gastroschisis, with the intensive care of infants with diaphragmatic hernias, and with the referral of infants with less acute problems. However, perioperative management, particularly of uncomplicated cases, and the mysteries of operative techniques have been beyond my reach. A book, with neonatologists within its scope, ideally with strong emphasis on presentation, embryology, and associations as well as describing surgical options, would plug a significant gap in my knowledge.
However, it may be noted that the lowering of the reviewer’s status is only relative and is accompanied by hedging (“slightly blinkered”), a firm explicit statement of expertise using extreme case terminology (“I am very familiar”), a joke (“mysteries”) and a string of three unlinked metaphor groups (“blinkered”, “beyond my reach” and “plug . . . gap”). The effect is to create a conversational tone and a matey relationship with the reader, but the positioning (i.e., the recovery or repair) is transparent, as is the supporting role of the metaphors. The rhetorical position adopted by the reviewer, of being a genuine reader, allows him to admit – at times using metaphor to do so (see second example below) – to feeling humbled before parts of the text: (34) Fascinating drawings . . . left me wondering that such a complicated operation could be so simply described. (35) The five sides dedicated to respiratory management emphasised to me the potential rewards to be reaped from closer integration . . .
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
Unfortunately, the role of humble reader proves ultimately too hard to maintain, and the emotion and the metaphor are used at the end to restore expertise: (36) I’m glad to say that this book is the one to plug the gaps in my knowledge
Despite the repeated, and presumably quite genuine, extolling of collaboration, the reviewer’s approach to the actual readers is not quite so humble. The recommendation in the final sentence to “fellow pediatricians” and the more distanced “I would encourage surgeons and neonatologists” is given a slight edge by the previous paragraph’s comment that: (37) We have found the book valuable in furthering our understanding of the problems we see on a day to day basis.
The “we” refers solely to the reviewer and his team, not to the reader. The reviewer may be a reader, but he is not a reader like the colleagues to whom the book is recommended; he is someone who has already benefited and learned, and is thus somewhat above the other (still relatively ignorant) readers. The claim remains implicit rather than explicit, however, so it is again unclear whether tacit or deliberate positioning is involved, though (as with R08) the repetition, this time of metaphoric expressions, might suggest it was deliberate. The reviewer consistently foregrounds the personal throughout R07, using biographic detail about himself and (by implication) the readers, but as with R20 and R18, he does so without departing from the institutional role of informed academic. The boundary between the moral and the personal thus remains blurred.
Positioning the reader and third parties Many of the self-positionings described above inevitably serve to position the reader at the same time. Where the reviewer aligns with the reader via a journey metaphor to create a joint reading team, for example (as in R11, R13, R14), this necessarily positions the readers as relatively informed and willing to be led. Again, when the reviewer in R08 discusses his own ignorance, he is positioning many of his colleagues as similarly lacking, However, in all cases in the corpus of alignment with the reader the reviewer strives to maintain the upper hand. This may simply involve a statement implying that the reviewer knows better than the reader, (38) . . . readers will need to look elsewhere for information on . . .. (R12)
or it can involve actively ordering the reader around:
(39) Readers will find the chapter on woody plant DNA marker analysis to be useful (R12) (40) Markers have many useful roles . . . But we should not . . . lose sight of the central concern, which is expressed variation. (R11)
It can even, as in R08 or R14, involve putting the reader down (in the latter text via a humorous allusion): (41) The field is moving rapidly but this volume will be a useful addition for many researchers who have only recently discovered that their favorite protein is regulated by PtdIns. (R14)
Graham Low
At other times the reader appears to be called up by the reviewer to help further the argument, or even to help attack the author (R03, R06, R15, R16). In these instances, the reviewers are happy to foreground themselves when it comes to offering praise, but tend to let other actors do the criticism. I shall use R03 as the example. The reviewer in R03 begins, rather like the reviewer in R20 (above), by praising the author and using a short joke to align with him and demonstrate membership of the field (“Chapman draws on . . . the human-environment approach for which geographers remain (in)famous to analyse. . ..”). “Geographers” may or may not include the readers of the review! The alignment is reinforced by the use of the metaphor “a prism” to flag the light and truth that Chapman seeks. A range of possible readers is then pulled out of the hat to make objections and locate the errors in Chapman’s arguments. The reviewer backgrounds himself by politely suggesting hedges or using pronouns (like “one”) with extremely vague reference: (42) Specialist South Asianists would be justified in challenging . . .. (43) Can one justifiably translate the Manusmriti as the ‘Laws of Manu’ . . . ? (44) The reader is left . . . without much understanding of the . . . dynamics that have shaped its rich and complex philosophy.
That these agents are simply proxies for the reviewer is made clear from the use of the metaphoric “shaped” and “rich”, which can only be interpreted as the reviewer’s own opinion and read as making a claim to expertise about Indian culture. In the next but one sentence, the reviewer also tries to repair the author’s credibility by using another metaphor, “lopsidedness” (and possibly “reflection”): (45) This lopsidedness, as Chapman explains, is a reflection of his own “Britishness”
The criticism situation then itself becomes complex, as the reviewer criticises academics who want “a more ‘critical’ analysis”, while sympathising with them, but avoids serious criticism of the much praised author. The result is the rhetorical equivalent of trying to have your cake and eat it. (46) Chapman may also be criticised by theorists of political geography / geopolitics . . . To be fair, Chapman does acknowledge the situatedness and contextuality . . . but steadfastly avoids getting bogged down in any deconstructivist analysis, presumably to maintain the smooth flow of his narrative.
Again, the metaphoric “avoid getting bogged down” and “maintain smooth flow” quietly restore the author’s status, as well as reflecting the reviewer’s expertise. Interestingly, “bogged down” echoes “the quagmire” in the Introduction, where the reviewer
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
sets the scene by stressing a universal problem, and thereby initiating the backgrounding of his personal accountability: (47) South Asia has been subject to a growing plethora of research, leaving students and academics alike in the quagmire of data overload.
It may be wondered why an enthusiastic reviewer needs to keep his head down rhetorically, particularly when several of the other reviewers actually shift to a personal “I” when it comes to flagging omissions and errors (e.g., R04, R11, R19). The answer may lie in the comment about Chapman’s work near the end, that: (48) This point has still not been fully recognised or valued in geography and social science study generally.
The reviewer would thus appear to be concerned to maintain his own reputation, by positioning himself as someone at the academic cutting edge, yet as someone who is nevertheless part of the mainstream. There are several examples of the reviewer using a joke with the reader to attack the author, and in one case, to attack the person the author was writing about as well (R15), but perhaps the ultimate use of the reader plus third parties to attack the author occurs in the two really negative reviews – one from science (R16), the other from social science (R06). The techniques are different, but the impact in both cases is that of a tidal wave. R16 is a reaction against the claim that “our planet is significant, perhaps being uniquely situated to foster both complex life and scientific discovery”. The review has four parts: (1) an introduction outlining Carl Sagan’s (desirable) position that we are ignorant, and stating the essence of the authors’ contrasting position, (2) a middle section giving details of the authors’ claims, (3) a section refuting the claims and (4) a brief conclusion summarising Sagan and the refutations. The Sagan quote at the start (part 1) contains three “our”s and a “we” implying all humanity – to include the reviewer, the readers, the authors and everyone else. The section focusing on the claims in the book (part 2) has no personal references at all. The objection section (part 3) has four “we”s and three “our”s, and the brief conclusion (part 4) has two “we”s and an “our”. Quite who the “we”s include is vague in the extreme, though it is clear that “our life” and “our science” are contrasted with life on other planets. The reviewer’s aim appears to be to make the objections in the name of humanity itself, and as this includes the authors, the repetition of the “we” takes on an ironic tone. This interpretation is given partial support by the sarcastic use of a quote by the authors, “the wonder of this book”, at the end of part 1, and by the ironic use of (positive) extreme case terminology in part 2. A further irony is that readers are of little interest as readers (at least of the book), since the reviewer does not want to encourage people to read the book; thus despite the tidal wave of attacking “we”s, the readers are actually addressed hypothetically and in the third person: (49) Potential readers of [book] would do well to first familiarize themselves with the biases that can result from this kind of selective sampling.
Graham Low
Though parts 1 and 4 do involve some metaphor mixed in with the positioning “we”s, the expressions “lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark” and later “our blue dot” serve primarily to frame the start and end of the text. Beyond this there is minimal functional use of metaphor – just the back-handed compliment “the authors attempted to avoid cherry picking . . .”; the R16 reviewer positions himself more by the ironic use of extreme-case formulation. The other review, R06, is from a Philosophy journal, so one might expect a slightly different rhetorical approach, though in fact the reviewer is strenuously arguing in favour of ‘hard’ quantitative predictive models in the social sciences. Topically, the review has three (possibly four) parts, but interactively and functionally it has, like the book being reviewed, two main parts. Part one (the first four paragraphs) describes what the author alleges/claims, and the reviewer makes his primary objection in an impersonal, unemotional, non-interactive way: (50) The problem with this view is not . . . Rather the problem with this book is found at the beginning, in the diagnosis of the current condition of social science. (51) Here one needs to examine the author’s argument that . . .
From paragraphs 5 to 10, however, the style shifts radically and the reader is faced with thirteen direct questions plus two “Surely . . ..” statements attacking the author and his views. The situation is similar with respect to pronouns; the first four paragraphs have just two “one”s and a “we” that includes everyone but the author. But now paragraph 6 alone, with five questions, has two “we”s, an “our” and a “one”, and paragraph 10, the conclusion with the last three questions, has three “we”s and two “our”s. The “we”s appear to refer to everyone, or all social scientists, and to include the reader: (52) How can one possibly succeed in improving our society without making some prior attempt to gather knowledge concerning why humans behave as we do? (Question 5)
One may reasonably ask who the questions involve and who they might be addressed to. Questions like “Does the author forget . . ..?” (Question 1) and “What would the author say . . .?” (Question 3) seem as though they are addressed by a barrister to a court or jury about an author in the dock. This interpretation is reinforced by the multiple use of negative questions “Wouldn’t . . . ?” and the “Surely. . .” statements. The reader is thus positioned as either judge or jury. Several questions marshal third parties, both people and disciplines: “What would the author say to quantitative political scientists . . .?” (Question 3), “Are economists deluding themselves . . . ?” (Question 6), “Is it any wonder that so few social scientists take philosophical debate very seriously?” (Question 10), or “. . .. Wouldn’t much of modern meteorology and even much of quantum physics fail to measure up?” (Question 8). In the conclusion, the reviewer foregrounds himself a little and offers an answer (“No”) to Question 12 and Question13, but the others remain as questions.
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
There are several salient metaphors in this second part of the review. There are occasional one-off examples (“medicine . . . evolved out of its trappings” (Question 1)), but essentially they form two clusters. The first is in paragraph 8, immediately ahead of the general Question 10. (53) [the book] pretends single-handedly to resolve a debate that is still raging in the philosophy of social science. Worse is the arid assumption that with a little Foucault and Habermas, one can show that whole disciplines in the social sciences melt away as pure methodological bravado. Is it any wonder that so few social scientists take philosophical debate very seriously? (Question 10)
With its two increasingly negative sections (“pretends” → “Worse”), ending on a short three-word phrasal unit employing words that are polysyllabic, academic and metaphoric (“pure methodological bravado”), the section moves steadily towards a climax (Low 1999b). The combination of personification, fire, drought, dissolving and purity metaphors (plus the contemptuous metonymy “a little Foucault and Habermas”) serve to build up intensity prior to the attack question and thus to justify the question when it appears. The second metaphor cluster is, unsurprisingly, in the conclusion, where (54) We should not expect a revolution at all in a field until it has self-consciously embraced not just the ambitions and trappings of science, but also the scientific attitude . . .
And (55) Though it is easy to despair, there are signs that such a vision is just beginning to take hold and bear fruit in the social sciences.
The function of the metaphoric expressions here is not so much to support the attack, but, as with R16, to frame the text as a whole. Even so, although the FRUIT TREE metaphor (“take hold and bear fruit in the social sciences”) makes a significant contribution to the final climax, it still emphasises the reviewer’s own opinion and his up-todate expertise and thus contributes to the reviewer’s self-positioning.
Conclusion I shall begin by summarising the answers to the four main research questions. The twenty reviews in the corpus differ markedly in the amount of positioning by the reviewer – that is to say, positioning which can be identified without knowledge about (activity) Layers 1 and 2: the book reviewed, the author, and the reviewer’s choice of what to include and exclude. Reviewers consistently claim a position of authority, asserting or implying that they are well-read, up to date, experienced, a member of the relevant research community and/or having relevant expertise.
Graham Low
Where such status is problematic, repair procedures are invoked to rectify the situation. All the reviewers position themselves with respect to the author, and most position themselves with respect to the reader(s). Where criticism or challenges are involved, however, the reviewers may well marshal third parties, as well as the author and the readers, to share the arguing. Even in cases where the book is praised, however, the reviewers generally attempt to position themselves above the authors as well as the readers. Positioning is achieved by a range of linguistic devices, but particularly extremecase formulation, emotional lexis, humour, direct questions, indexicals and metaphor. This situation, where metaphor is but one of a range of rhetorical tools, is similar to that found in popular or less-formal science explanations (Low 1997; Cameron & Low 2004) and closely resembles the situation in oral conversation noted by Carter & McCarthy (2004) in their discussion of creativity. Although jokes (in ten reviews) and references to the actors involved (“we/our” in twelve reviews and “I/my” in seven) might be expected to result in a highly interactive, even conversational, style, in fact all the reviewers maintain a degree of distance between themselves and the readers. Only one text (R13) addresses them directly (with just two personal “you”s). References to “we” and “us” are frequently vague or ambiguous, as with Le’s (2004) broadsheet editorials. Koller (2003) noted that some of her business texts seemed to be talking to third parties, rather than the reader and the same is found here; many comments about omissions and errors, and even the forensic questioning in R13, appear to expect a response from the author, or third parties, rather than the readers. Metaphors contribute to positionings in various ways; they flag reviewer expertise and status, they highlight points where reviewer status is problematic, they help repair lapses of status, they mark changes of focus, they evaluate the author, and they intensify attacks (or help make them more credible), though conversely, they can also tone them down. Having said that, the contribution of metaphor to many of the claims to authority by the reviewer is purely via conventional metaphors, unless an academic advance is suggested. In short, the use of metaphor to aid positioning is considerably less common and less structured across the corpus than was predicted at the start. While Corts and Meyers (2002) found recurrent metaphors recurring in waves (or clusters) throughout their oral sermon data, and Low (1997) found examples in two of the four academic book reviews, the situation does not apply here. Beyond the use of personification metaphors (“The book says”), there are only two examples of recurrent metaphor (R13, R14) – though both play a part in the reviewers’ self-positionings. The result is that metaphoric expressions and underlying metaphors, in this corpus at least, tend to be one-off items, even when they work together in a cluster. The limited use of metaphor to aid positioning has to be a deliberate rhetorical choice, as the general incidence of metaphorical words in the reviews is not particularly
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews
low, ranging from 6% (R16) to 15% (R02), with an average of 10.5%. The answer may simply be that all reviewers felt constrained by the need to retain a degree of formality in academic written texts, and that formality implied limiting the use of deliberate metaphor. Alternatively, the result could simply be the result of having a fairly small sample. Either way, the lesson for prospective review writers is that, where positioning is involved, control over extreme-case formulation, emotional lexis and humour is as important as, if not more important than, (functional) control over metaphor. Finally, it is possible to give an answer to the secondary research question, on the usefulness of Positioning Theory to studying metaphor in written discourse. The use of Positioning Theory plus a small number of functional concepts from Conversation Analysis proved a fruitful way of describing the basic context of both the reviews and the analysis itself, as well as providing a practical initial means of locating examples of positioning and of describing how these flow through the texts. This made it possible to explore the complexities and the different ways in which the authors positioned any or all of the possible social actors, in a way that would have been difficult using Conversation Analysis alone, or using a metadiscourse analysis which relied on a clear distinction (a) between addressees and (b) between the message and the writer’s attitude to it (between ‘textual’ and ‘interpersonal’ metadiscourse, or between ‘interactional’ and ‘interactive’ in Hyland & Tse’s (2004) terminology). The only ‘problems’ encountered were the difficulty at times of distinguishing between tacit and intentional positioning and between personal and moral/institutional modes. The former is hardly a ‘real’ problem, as writers frequently disguise their intentions and readers just as frequently ask themselves if something was intended. The conflation of personal and moral, however, may be something particularly associated with positionings in academic texts. There have to date been few studies employing Positioning Theory as a means of examining metaphor in discourse, beyond Berman’s (1999) study of national identity in Indonesia, but the method would seem to have distinct advantages and be well worth further investment.
References Berman, Laine (1999). Positioning in the formation of a ‘national identity’. In L. van Langenhove & R. Harré (Eds.), Positioning theory (138–159). Oxford: Blackwell. Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum. Cameron, Lynne & Graham Low (2004). Figurative variation in episodes of educational talk and text. European Journal of English Studies, 8, 355–373. Carter, Ronald & Michael McCarthy (2004). Talking, creating: Interactional language, creativity and context. Applied Linguistics, 25, 62–88. Corts, Daniel P. & Kristina Meyers (2002). Conceptual clusters in figurative language production. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31, 391–408.
Graham Low Drew, Paul & Elizabeth Holt (1998). Figures in speech: The role of figurative expressions in topic transition in conversation. Language in Society, 27, 495–523. Guo, Hongyi (1989). A tentative study of academic book reviews: Stylistic features and rhetorical functions. MA dissertation, University of York. Hyland, Ken (1998). Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 30, 437–455. Hyland, Ken & Polly Tse (2004). Metadiscourse and academic writing: A reappraisal. Applied Linguistics, 25, 137–155. Koller, Veronika (2003). Metaphor clusters, metaphor chains: Analysing the multifunctionality of metaphor in text. Metaphorik, 05/2003, 115–134. Le, Elizabeth (2004). Active participation within written argumentation: metadiscourse and editorialist’s authority. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 687–714. LePage, Robert & Andrée Tabouret-Keller (1985). Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Littlemore, Jeannette (2001). The use of metaphor in university lectures and the problems it causes for overseas students. Teaching in Higher Education, 6, 333–349. Low, Graham (1997). A celebration of squid sandwiches: Figurative language and the management of (non-core) academic text. University of York: Project report, pp. 46. Low, Graham (1999a). Teaching learners to use metaphor. In L. Kasanga (Ed.), Languages and the new democracy: participation, rights and responsibilities (39–63). Sovenga SA: University of the North Press. Low, Graham (1999b). Teaching foregrounding skills in academic text. In L. Kasanga (Ed.), Language(s) and the New Democracy: Participation, Rights and Responsibilities (103–123). Sovenga, SA: University of the North Press. Low, Graham (2005). Explaining evolution: The use of animacy in an example of semi-formal science writing. Language and Literature, 14, 129–148. Motta-Roth, Désirée (1998). Discourse analysis and academic book reviews: A study of text and disciplinary cultures. In J. Fortanet, S. Posteguillo, J.C. Palmer & J.E. Coll (Eds.), Genre studies in English for academic purposes (29–58). Castelló, Spain: Universitat Jaume I, Servei de Publicacions. Ponterotto, Diane (2003). The cohesive role of cognitive metaphor in discourse and conversation. In A. Barcelona (Ed.) Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. A cognitive perspective (283–298). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Pragglejaz (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically-used words in discourse. Metaphor & Symbol, 22, 1–39. Römer, Ute (2005). ‘This seems somewhat counterintuitive, though. . .’ – Negative evaluation in linguistic book reviews by male and female authors. In E. Tognini-Bonelli & Del Lungo Camiciotti (Eds.), Strategies in academic discourse (97–115). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Steen, Gerard (2004). What counts as a metaphorically used word? The Pragglejaz experience. In S. Coulson & B. Lewandowska (Eds.), The literal-nonliteral distinction (299–322). Berlin: Peter Lang. Törrönen, Jukka (2001). The concept of subject position in empirical social research. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 31, 313–329. van Langenhove, Luk & Rom Harré. (1999a). Introducing positioning theory. In L. van Langenhove & R. Harré (Eds.), Positioning theory (13–41). Oxford: Blackwell. van Langenhove, Luk & Rom Harré (1999b). Positioning and the writing of science. In L. van Langenhove & R. Harré (Eds.), Positioning theory (102–115). Oxford: Blackwell.
Chapter 4. Metaphor and positioning in academic book reviews Wales, Katy (1980). Exophora re-examined: The uses of the personal pronoun ‘we’ in presentday English. UEA Papers in Linguistics, 12, 21–44. Wiley, Mark (1993). How to read a book: Reflections on the ethics of book reviewing. Journal of Advanced Composition, 13, 477–492.
Appendix: The corpus of academic book reviews Social Science (SSCI) R01 Busher, Hugh (2004). Review of Doing a doctorate in educational ethnography. British Educational Research Journal, 30, 463. R02 Kucera, David (2003). Review of, Labour market and social protection reforms in international perspective. International Labor Review, 142, 373–375. R03 Menski, Martin (2004). Review of The geopolitics of South Asia. From early empires to the nuclear age. Political Geography, 23, 493–495. R04 Braunstein, Yale, M. (2004). Review of Cost proxy models and telecommunications policy: A new empirical approach to regulation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Information Economics and Policy, 16, 311–313. R05 Sloboda, Brian (2004). Review of Applied time series modelling and forecasting. International Journal of Forecasting, 20, 137–139. R06 McIntyre, Lee (2004). Review of Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Philosophy of Science, 71, 418–421. R18 Kyratzis, Amy (2004). Review of Talking to adults: The contribution of multiparty discourse to language acquisition. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 807–811. R19 Ashkanasy, Neal M. (2004). Review of The future of competition: Co-creating unique value with customers. The Academy of Management Executive, 18, 155–157. R20 Davie, Grace (2004). Review of Crossing the gods. The British Journal of Sociology, 55, 2, 301.
Science (SCI) R07 Oddie, Sam J. (2004). Review of Newborn surgery, 2nd ed. Archives of Disease in Childhood Fetal and Neonatal Edition, 89, F373. R08 Spence, John (2004). Review of High energy electron diffraction and microscopy. Acta Crystallographica Section A, 60, 355. R09 Sarto, Cecilia & Cristina Valsecchi (2004). Review of Molecular analysis of cancer. Proteomics, 4, 2203. R10 Mills, Terence, C. (2004). Review of A companion to theoretical econometrics. Journal of Time Series Analysis, 25, 315–316. R11 Pemberton, Josephine (2004). Review of Introduction to conservation genetics. Genetical Research, 83, 221–223. R12 Kane, Michael E. (2004). Review of Micropropagation of woody trees and fruits. Journal of Plant Physiology, 161, 887. R13 Kirkwood, Tom B.L. (2004). Review of Merchants of immortality: Chasing the dream of human life extension. Nature Medicine, 10, 575.
Graham Low R14 Cockcroft, Shamshad (2004). Review of Phosphoinositides in subcellular targeting and enzyme activation. Nature Cell Biology, 6, 481. R15 Kruger, Lawrence (2004). Review of Soul made flesh: The discovery of the brain – and how it changed the world. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 685. R16 Vakoch, Douglas A. (2004). Review of G. Gonzalez & J.W. Richards, The privileged planet: How our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery. Nature, 429, 808–809.
SCI journal, but social science book and social science reviewer R17 Sweetser, Eve (2004). Review of Hearing gesture: How our hands help us think. Nature, 429, 606.
part ii
Examining metaphor in corpora
chapter 5
Brothers in arms Contradictory metaphors in contemporary marketing discourse Veronika Koller Over the past 15 years, marketing as a social practice has undergone a fundamental shift. This shift has been driven by increased competition in a globalised market and concomitant shorter product life cycles. Along with product development and marketing, consumption has been accelerated, too, leading to decreased customer loyalty and thus putting pressure on sellers to gain and retain what loyalty there still is. Furthermore, e-commerce has brought about a “de-intermediation process” (Parvatiyar & Sheth 2000: 13) bringing buyer and seller closer together again. As a consequence, the buzzword these days is “Relationship Marketing”. Although the term actually made its debut in the early 1980s already (Berry 1983), it was only a decade later that the new approach caught on in theoretical writings (Peterson 1995; Reichheld 1996; Shani & Chalansani 1992; Sheth & Parvatiyar 2000). Relationship Marketing is perhaps best characterised by contrasting it with the more time-honoured concept of Transaction Marketing, which dates back to the 1960s (Kotler 1967), as summarised in Table 1: Table 1. Comparison Transaction and Relationship Marketing Transaction Marketing
Relationship Marketing
product customer acquisition short-term tactics profit maximization external competition as rivals product
customer customer retention long-term strategy mutual benefit internal competition as partners brand
Of further importance is the transition from tangible products to intangible brands, the importance of which is reflected in the fact that already more than 60 per cent of the value of fast-moving consumer goods (such as cosmetics or soft drinks) is accounted for by their brand value (Grauel 2000: 18). Brands as intangible entities represent the cognitive-affective concepts consumers hold about a particular
Veronika Koller
product or service.1 Consequently, it has become the task of marketing to “establish a strong and stable set of associations in the minds and memories of consumers” (Moore 2003: 335), i.e., to communicate and reinforce particular concepts through, for instance, advertising. Ideally, the concepts communicated will tie in seamlessly with those already held by the recipients of branding messages, with marketers customising not only goods and services to meet the needs of the envisaged target group but also tailoring text and image production in advertising and other promotional channels to fit or even manipulate consumers’ cognitive schemata (Forceville 1996: 81). It follows that brands are “now the dominant means by which the producers . . . extend themselves . . . into the world inhabited by their . . . customers” (Moore 2003: 335). Put differently, brands – the central commodities in Relationship Marketing – serve as vehicles to colonise the private sphere of consumers as well as their cognitive models. The overall aim of this paper is to show in how far the sub-discourse of Relationship Marketing has actually changed the cognitive underpinnings of contemporary marketing discourse. In accordance with Relationship Marketing’s focus on “cooperative and collaborative relationships between the firm and . . . other market actors” (Parvatiyar & Sheth 2000: 7), several Relationship Marketing theorists have argued that the war metaphor, while firmly entrenched in general marketing discourse, is “quite inappropriate or even disastrous for strategies like [Relationship Marketing]” (Hunt & Menon 1995: 84) and should consequently be replaced by the more suitable marriage metaphor (Dwyer, Schurr & Oh 1987: 14). However, business magazines and papers still show abundant evidence of metaphoric expressions deriving from the domain of war. Although journalists occasionally claim that “just as one’s friendships need to be kept in good repair, customer relationships can be maintained only through consistency” (Khermouch 2001: 50), such alternative conceptualisations are dwarfed by the number of expressions such as
(1) people can soon expect to be bombarded with telephone
commercials (Tomkins 1997) or
(2) the company’s . . . $150m advertising blitz (“Virtual rivals” 2000: 25)
On the other hand, advertisements very much embrace a relationship, particularly a romance, metaphor (e.g., “looking for the best banking partner?” combined with pictures of happy couples). A mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches will help to show what cognitive impact Relationship Marketing has so far had on marketing discourse in different spheres, i.e., in the secondary discourse of business magazines and the primary discourse of advertising. Before describing these methods, however, I will outline how linking discourse and cognition gives rise to the overall research question as well as to the specific set 1. In an alternative definition, Moore (2003: 334) incorporates the tangible product or service into his understanding of brands, defining them as “unstable conjunctions of tangible, material things . . . with “immaterial forms of value”.
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
of methods employed to answer it. In the empirical part of this study, I will then carry out a tripartite analysis combining a computer-aided quantitative investigation into a corpus of business media texts on marketing, a qualitative analysis of a sample article from it and a summary of the multimodal features employed in selected advertisements. All three parts are poised to describe the cognitive model possibly underlying marketing discourse and the traces Relationship Marketing has left on that model so far. By way of conclusion, I shall finally discuss these Relationship Marketing traces. First, however, I will outline the theory this study is based upon.
Theory Discourses construct the world from a particular perspective (here, from the marketing angle). As such, discourse is inextricably linked to cognition, transporting the models and schemata by which its participants make sense of reality. It follows that discourse, in its abstract sense, is essentially a socio-cognitive practice. In cognitive linguistics, the discussion in how far cognitive models are socially determined and vice versa has a long tradition (for a recent contribution, see Boers & Littlemore 2003). In their seminal work, Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 156) observe that “metaphors . . . highlight and make coherent certain aspects of our experience . . . metaphors may create realities for us, especially social realities”. Further, the authors claim that such selective representation is intentional, in the sense that “people in power get to impose their metaphors” (1980: 157). If we consider discourse and, by extension, metaphor as constitutive of social relations, one of the clearest manifestations of power is the possibility to control discourse and hence cognition, e.g., by “a coherent network of [metaphoric] entailments that highlight some features of reality and hide others” (1980: 157). However, such critical views on the socio-cultural aspects of metaphor seem to have diminished ever since the early days of conceptual metaphor theory. More recent cognitive accounts of metaphor clearly emphasise embodiment rather than socio-cultural influences as a determinant for cognitive schemata (e.g., Grady, Oakley & Coulson 1999). However, looking into the origins and structures of metaphor, while of great importance, should be coupled with looking at the effects and purposes of metaphor usage if a full picture is to emerge. Approaches like the neural theory of metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1999) run the risk of reductionism when applied to complex metaphors: While embodiment may indeed determine usage of primary metaphors such as more is up, it seems doubtful whether complex metaphoric concepts, too, are really nothing but the inevitable entailments of such embodied primary metaphors. It is definitely worthwhile to also take into account the social and, ultimately, ideological constraints operating on the generation and usage of complex metaphors.2 2. This view is similar to Kövecses’ (2000: 183–186) notion of “body-based constructionism”. However, while his focus is on the physical constraints acting on cultural models, the argument is here reversed by stressing the impact social and cultural factors have on originally embodied concepts.
Veronika Koller
Recently, headway has been made in employing the cognitive theory of metaphor to unravel ideological implications (Dirven, Hawkins & Sandikcioglu 2001; Dirven, Frank & Pütz 2003; Zinken 2003; Goatly 2007). The model suggested in this paper elaborates on those endeavours. First, it agrees that primary metaphors are embodied and universal (Grady 1997; Johnson 1999). For example, the war metaphor can be traced back to an embodied and hence universal force schema (Talmy 1988). The relationship metaphor likewise represents a higher-level form of embodied models, in this case the part-whole schema and possibly the primary affection is warmth metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1999: 50). However, both their recombination into complex metaphors as well as their usage in discourse is determined by socio-cognitive schemata. As such, the relationship metaphor relies on social phenomena (e.g., family forms or domestic partnerships), showing that mental models are not merely “an idealised set of cognitive objects, but a range of socially situated discursive practices” (Augoustinos & Walker 1995: 306). The mental models structuring ideologies, i.e., those beliefs, values and attitudes of social groups “by which relations of power, control and dominance are maintained and preserved within any society” (Augoustinos & Walker 1995: 291) are acquired and (re)produced through social, including discursive, practices and also provide group cohesion. It follows that according to the ideology prevailing in the broader socio-cultural formation, a given discourse will favour particular conceptual metaphors, which subsequently gain prominence as metaphoric expressions in text. Thus, the male-defined sphere of business in general and marketing discourse in particular is amenable to masculinised models such as the war metaphor. By contrast, Relationship Marketing theorists not only propose an alternative relationship metaphor but have also described the approach in stereotypically feminine terms as “cooperative”, “committed”, holistic and fluid (Morgan 2000: 483 489 497). However, we will see that Relationship Marketing is still very much an emerging alternative conceptualisation, and that the dominant model continues to reinforce the conceptual models held and expressed by the majority of discourse participants. In the case of socio-economic change, we are bound to find competing discourses – such as those of Transaction Marketing and Relationship Marketing – and, consequently, conceptual struggle betrayed by contradictory metaphoric expressions. Before testing this claim against empirical evidence, however, I will briefly describe the data analysed and delineate the methods employed to evaluate it.
Data and method The analysis in this paper is geared towards drawing inferences about the cognitive models underlying the discourse that manifests itself in the texts under investigation. Given the above view of discourse as a socio-cognitive practice, it is crucial that the analysis include a wide range of texts, both in terms of number and type,
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
to arrive at the cognitive models likely to be shared throughout a given discourse community. To that end, the empirical part will rely on two different corpora and integrate three sub-analyses to ensure both scope and depth of, as well as comparisons between, data. The first body of data is a purpose-built, machine-readable corpus of business magazine and newspaper texts on marketing. The 210 articles in the corpus, which were all published between 1996 and 2001, were taken from four different publications (Business Week, The Economist, Fortune and, as the single newspaper, the Financial Times), with each publication contributing roughly a quarter to the total of 159,576 words. Media texts were chosen as they cover marketing from various angles, without necessarily promoting a particular approach to the discipline. However, media texts as secondary discourse are obviously closely intertwined with primary discourse, incorporating and recontextualising primary voices, including their metaphors, in the form of direct or indirect quotes. Moreover, it is the defining characteristic of any special-interest publication that the people it is written for (in this case, businesspeople and, more specifically, marketers) are largely identical to the people written about. For the corpus at hand, this particularity is corroborated by the publications’ readership demographics: A quarter of all Business Week (European edition), just over half of Economist and well over a third of Financial Times readers (38 per cent) hold senior management positions (Business Week 2004, The Economist 2004, Financial Times 2004). Although no comparable statistics are available for Fortune, education and income figures suggest that their professional profile does not differ vastly (Fortune 2004). Also, between two thirds (Business Week US edition) and a stunning 91 per cent (The Economist Europe) of readers are actually men. In view of this convergence, it can be assumed that incorporating marketers’ voices into secondary discourse reflects readers’ discourse and its central metaphors. Due to difficulties in accessing internal corporate discourse on marketing, it was advertising that was chosen as an instance of primary marketing discourse. To provide for cohesion between the different sets of data, the advertisements were taken from the three magazines in the corpus,3 so that recipients would be the same as for the first set of data. Commissioned by marketers, advertisements are directed explicitly at envisaged ideal consumers (the so-called “target group”) and seek to create a cognitive-affective environment conducive to consumption. The metaphors employed are therefore likely to build on the normative function of schemata, knowing that through them, people “can . . . access a rapid, almost automatic, affective or evaluative reaction to incoming information” (Augoustinos & Walker 1995: 48). It stands to reason that the war metaphor, which is generally evaluated negatively, will be very much avoided in advertising. Indeed, when perusing the magazines from the corpus, it became obvious that the war
3. The Financial Times was excluded as it mostly features comparatively small black-and-white advertisements.
Veronika Koller
metaphor is virtually non-existent in advertisements. The metaphoric models used in advertisements in business magazines rather tend to revolve around growth / living organism (e.g., company as tree), musician (e.g., CEO as conductor) and, most interesting in the context of this study, relationship metaphors. The advertisements summarised in the sub-section below all feature realisations of the latter, and therefore constitute a selective sample that is intended to cast light on the reflection of Relationship Marketing in primary marketing discourse. As for methods, the corpus as a whole was analysed quantitatively to ascertain the absolute and relative frequency of metaphoric expressions of war and relationships and to get a handle on the scope of these metaphors in marketing discourse. This quantitative analysis was carried out with the help of WordSmith Tools 3.0. Combining a program for word list generation with a key word search function and a concordancer, WordSmith Tools is a software suite that enables the researcher to process large amounts of machine-readable text and view the results on screen. For the present study, I used the concordancing function, which allows to search for the occurrences of particular words or phrases from any text, or collection of texts, fed into the program. Further, the concordancer will calculate collocates and clusters (i.e., semi-fixed co-occurrences of more than two words) around the search or “node” word. Figure 1 shows part of the concordance for target, with <mw> (“metaphor war”) as a manually added tag.
Figure 1. Concordance target.
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
I started by defining two lexical fields with 35 lemmas of war or relationships each.4 In selecting them, I drew on my previous knowledge of media discourse on marketing, on anecdotal evidence as well as on a number of thesauri and glossaries (U.S. Department of Defense 1988; Sommer & Weiss 1996; Wilkinson 1993; Ammer 1999). I then ran these lemmas through the concordancer to see how many of them were actually realised in the corpus, and manually reworked the ensuing concordance lines to ascertain which of those that did occur would do so metaphorically. As any researcher in the field knows, metaphor identification is a thorny issue and some degree of “informed intuition” (Deignan 1999: 180) is probably inevitable. This is not to say, however, that the process should not be made as rigorous as possible. Concerning the metaphoric expressions observable at the level of text, one possible form of metaphor identification works with lexical units (single words, phrasal verbs, polywords like “of course” and conventional compounds as listed in corpusbased dictionaries) for which contextual and basic meanings are established. If contextual and basic meanings are in contrast to each other but still related by similarity, the lexical unit will be classified as a metaphoric expression (Pragglejaz Group 2007). While that method was not applied in full for the present paper, the decision whether an occurrence of a particular word counted as metaphorical was still based on a decision about contrasting but similar basic and contextual meaning. Furthermore, Low (1999, 2003) has proposed a number of criteria to validate research into metaphor which I additionally relied on for the present study. Thus, I started with a hypothetical word field for war and relationship metaphors and checked actual occurrences in the corpus for whether they met the following six criteria: 1. Novel extensions of conventional metaphors: a. The Swoosh continues to court young male hoopsters (Lee 2000). 2. Novel extensions of other speakers’ metaphors: b. “We’re the infantry on the beach,’ ” says [E*Trade’s CEO] . . . It’s unclear whether these initiatives will keep E*Trade ahead of the advancing troops (Himelstein 1996). 3. Metaphor made explicit: c. “The customer is . . . your wife” (Newman 1999).
4. The term “lemma” is here employed to mean a headword (for example fight) which can be split up into several lexemes (e.g., fighter, to fight). These lexemes in turn comprise various word forms (e.g., fighting, fought, fights).
Veronika Koller
4. Explicit discussion of the semantic features transferred: d. Like football and trench warfare, [trying to gain market share in the consumer products market] is a contest of sweat, mud, and inches (Brooker 2001). 5. Struggle over the semantic overtones of the metaphor: e. “Customers love brands, but the bond between the consumer and the brand is loosening” (Byrnes 2000). Next, I singled out a sample text to test the quantitative results against an in-depth analysis. To that end, I would first look at, again, number and type of metaphors, as well as at their location within the article. The concordancer can once more help ascertain how metaphoric expressions structure text: The program’s so-called dispersion plot function indicates where in the text previously tagged and searched-for expressions occur, detailing file name, number of words, number of occurrences (tokens) and the standardised number of tagged tokens per 1,000 words. The right-hand part of the graph shows the individual occurrences in one article represented by vertical lines.
total metaphoric expressions
metaphoric expressions of war
metaphoric expressions of relationships
Figure 2. Dispersion plot of Smith et al. (1998).
A different visualisation of metaphoric expressions in text is provided by the VisDis 2.0 software developed at the University of Leeds (Cameron & Stelma 2004). In Figure 3, the diamonds and circles represent the different metaphors used throughout the text.
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
metaphoric expressions in Smith et al. 1998 metaphoric expressions
text sections
0
5 war relationship 10
15
1
2
Figure 3. Visual display Smith et al. 1998.
These computer-assisted forays into text structure pave the way to answering qualitative questions such as how metaphoric expressions come to structure text in the form of clusters and chains. Clustering in different parts of the text, as shown in Figures 2 and 3, is hypothesised to meet different functions: Metaphoric expressions in the opening stretches of an article are seen as having a defining role by setting the agenda in terms of topic conceptualisation. When clustering in mid-text, however, metaphoric expressions are theorised to serve an argumentative purpose by elaborating on the agenda. Finally, metaphoric clustering towards the end of an article can be considered to function as a persuasive device by “driving the point home”. Moreover, there are also interrelations between the different metaphoric expressions: According to Kyratzis (1997), the metaphoric elements of a text can elaborate, extend or exemplify each other. On the other hand, they can call each other into question or, as I would add, even negate each other. Apart from that, especially very frequent expressions, such as target or launch, can simply echo each other by recurring throughout a text. This taxonomy in fact ties in with metaphors’ different functions in salient text slots, as elaboration, extension and exemplification represent an
Veronika Koller
intensification device, whereas questioning or negating help to attenuate a metaphor (Eubanks 2000). Thus, if a particular metaphor is both realised in a salient position and extended, elaborated or exemplified, it stands to reason that the author wishes to promote that metaphor as the dominant conceptualisation of the topic in question. Taken together, quantitative metaphor frequency as well as qualitative metaphor clustering and chains therefore enable the researcher to assume a metaphoric scenario (see Musolff 2007) underlying marketing discourse. The third part of the analysis deals with advertisements featuring the relationship metaphor. The samples will be summarised drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006: 175–214) theory of image composition to see how marketers conceptualise consumers. This final analysis will enable me to compare primary to secondary marketing discourse and assume an underlying model possibly influenced by Relationship Marketing.
Empirical findings Metaphors in secondary marketing discourse This first part of the empirical section comprises both quantitative insights into the corpus of business media texts on marketing, to ensure the scope of the analysis, as well as a qualitative look at a sample text taken from that corpus to provide depth. If we look at relationship and war metaphors in business media discourse, the first and most obvious finding is the predominance of the latter. From the lexical field of war I defined, a stunning 33 lemmas (94.29 per cent) were realised, resulting in 583 tokens and a type-token ratio of 0.057.5 Even if the findings for the war metaphor are adjusted by counting only those three types that are employed for metaphoric descriptions of marketer-customer relationships (blitz, bombard, target),6 we are still left with 108 tokens or a type-token ratio of 0.028. In contrast to that, only 14 items (40 per cent) from the field of relationships were realised metaphorically, yielding 46 tokens and a type-token ratio as high as 0.304. It thus becomes clear that the war metaphor is selected considerably more frequently than is its counterpart from the domain of
5. The type-token ratio divides the number of different lemmas by the number of its occurrences, thus representing a measure of lexical variety: the higher the ratio, the less lexically varied the text is. 6. Examples include (3) [the company] has blitzed the marketplace . . . with pitches (Leonhardt 1997) (4) consumers [are] every day bombarded by . . . advertising messages (“Strategic advantages” 1998) and (5) the ads target minors (Neuborne 2001).
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
relationships. However, while the type-token ratios indicate variety in the way the war metaphor is realised, the most frequent expressions it takes are also rather conventionalised: The three top slots are occupied by the lemmas campaign, launch and target, which together show 368 tokens and thus make up nearly two thirds of all metaphoric expressions of war. Accordingly, the entrenched war metaphor gives rise to very conventional expressions such as: 6. Coca-Cola is to launch a global advertising campaign this weekend (Liu 2001) or 7. firms are having to target potential customers more precisely (“Hi ho” 1997). Nevertheless, both marketers and journalists also come up with quite a few unconventional or novel expressions: 8. by being first [to go public], “you get blood on your spear . . . ,” he says (Himelstein 1996) 9. Dell’s efficiency jihad (Park & Burrows 2001). It is those less entrenched metaphoric expressions which convey the underlying metaphor’s productivity (Clausner & Croft 1997). The above figures show that the relationship metaphor is not particularly entrenched in secondary marketing discourse. Consequently, it is not particularly productive either: Most lemmas, be they frequent or not, record only very formulaic expressions along the lines of 10. it has attracted those Nike lovers (Leonard 2001). In this context, the fact that the relationship metaphor is less entrenched in the data does in no way question its metaphoricity; what it does is weaken the metaphor’s impact on the model underlying marketing discourse. It seems that secondary marketing discourse does not ascribe any great importance to this alternative metaphor. What the war and relationship metaphors have in common, however, is the fact that both are highly gendered. Their relative strength or weakness in quantitative terms is conspicuously similar to the demographic structure of the publications’ overwhelmingly male readership and as such could point to a high degree of reader-orientation on the part of the authors. To test the quantitative findings, I will now analyse qualitatively a sample text taken from the corpus (Smith et al. 1998).7 Key: metaphoric expression of war metaphoric expression of relationship *relevant metaphoric expressions not included in lexical fields 1 2
Marketing in Latin America Millions of young, hip consumers are on a shopping spree – and the race is on
7. Reporduced from 9 February 1998 issue of Business Week by special permission, copyright © 1998 the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Veronika Koller
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45
to grab their attention. . . . It’s all part of Latin America’s new shopping spree. As governments have beaten down inflation and whipped up economic growth, purchasing power has surged, from working-poor neighborhoods to affluent enclaves. Sensing a trend with lots of room to run, homegrown and multinational companies are hitting the region with a marketing blitz. Their target is Latin America’s nearly halfbillion citizens and its attractive demographics: Almost half the population is younger than 20. Hooked on new technology, these new consumers are eager to tap into global trends, from fast food to fashion to PC banking. “Latin America is becoming a region of choice,” says Nizan Guanaes, president of the DM9DDB ad agency in Sao Paulo. “It is a region that hungers for new products.” . . . There’s more than just money behind the trend. Falling trade barriers and better communications are weaving the region’s once disparate countries into a more uniform market. And nearly a decade of gradual economic improvement has raised expectations and awakened a new desire to consume. . . . Perhaps nowhere is the battle for Latin consumers raging more fiercely than in the market for high-tech goods and services. Upgraded telephone lines, the result of privatizations of state-run telecom services, have led to a remarkable rise in Internet use. Thousands of local companies and some multinationals such as Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. are putting up Web pages in Spanish and Portuguese to introduce more sophisticated buyers to their products. . . . As Latin Americans begin to take falling prices and the newest gear for granted, companies are hustling to find new ways to woo customers. Miniphone, an Argentine cell-phone operator, hawks its services on commuter trains, from minivans parked at highway gas stations, and at beach sites that provide a playground for the kids, free cold drinks, and complimentary salsa lessons for new recruits and established clients. With such tactics, Miniphone has snatched nearly half the Argentine market from rival Movicom since 1993. . . . From cell phones to basketball, the *barrage of messages is still a novelty to Latins, who are happy to be joining the global consumer community. So far, they tend to be receptive to pitches, whether they’re extolling new services or breaking old social taboos. Latins receive less than 10% as much junk mail as Americans and Europeans do, and unlike Americans they don’t yet hang up on telemarketers. The appetite for foreign brands will continue as long as the regions’ economies prosper. But the competition among marketers for the hearts, minds, and wallets of these new Latin consumers is bound to grow ever fiercer.
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
The above article records nine metaphoric expressions of war and relationships. Of these, two thirds are instantiations of the war metaphor, whereas the remaining three can be traced back to the relationship metaphor. As can be seen from Figures 2 and 3 above, the tagged metaphoric expressions cluster in the first half of the article, are then largely suspended and taken up again at the very end (lines 43–45). In both slots – first half and end – realisations of the two different metaphors alternate, being condensed at the level of the sentence in the closing line. While the expressions may be too scattered in the first half to make for a strong defining initial cluster, such condensation in the textually salient end slot seems to indicate a persuasive dual conceptualisation of the topic at hand. However, the dispersion plot alone does not suffice to corroborate this hypothesis. If we look at the text itself, we soon discover that the war metaphor is used to describe both the relationship between marketers and consumers as well as that between different marketers or competitors. The former relationship (“companies are hitting the region with a marketing blitz”, lines 9–10) is elaborated throughout (“Their target is Latin America’s . . . citizens”, “the barrage of messages”, line 37), making for a chain encompassing the text as a whole. However, line 22 shows the collocation “the battle for Latin consumers [is] raging fiercely”, a metaphoric description of the relationship between marketers. The closing sentence in fact echoes this metaphor when informing the reader that “the competition . . . is bound to grow ever fiercer” (lines 43–45). In short, metaphoric expressions of war are organised in two separate chains the elements of which echo and elaborate on each other. The relationship metaphor is not uniform either. Too infrequent to show clustering or chain organisation, the metaphoric status of its first realisation (“a new desire to consume”, line 20) is moreover ambiguous: The lexical item “desire” is here linked to “consume”, giving it a contextual meaning “urgent wish or need”. Seen as such, “desire” would only be metaphorical if its basic meaning is understood as more physical than this contextual meaning (Pragglejaz Group 2007).8 The other two instances of the relationship metaphor entail the conceptualisation of consumers as static objects whereas marketers appear as dynamic agents: “to woo new customers” (line 30) and “the competition . . . for the hearts . . . of these new Latin consumers” (lines 43–44). Consumers’ part in the metaphoric relationship is underscored by the observation that “consumers are eager to tap into global trends” (lines 11–12), a statement introducing the quote that Latin America “is a region that hungers for new products” (lines 14–15). Later in the article, this quote from a primary discourse participant is echoed by the writers (“The appetite for foreign brands will continue” [line 42]), who thus
8. Both the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (2002, based on the World English Corpus) and the Times-Chambers Essential English Dictionary (1997, based on the British National Corpus) list the sexual meaning of “desire” only as the second meaning, thus making a case against its metaphoric usage in the text at hand.
Veronika Koller
collaborate with marketers in fostering a particular metaphorisation. In the light of the expressions hunger and appetite, customers’ “new desire to consume” (line 20) now appears as the final link in an echoing chain combining the primary metaphor desire is hunger (Deignan 1997: 30–32) with the complex consuming is eating. So while we do find additional metaphors extending those of war and relationships, the article lacks questioning, let alone negating, metaphors. The likely metaphoric scenario to emerge in the above text excerpt is therefore the following: On the one hand, the article constructs marketers as moving in relation to each other. This movement can be goal-oriented, uncoordinated or antagonistic, with these primary metaphors being expressed in phrases such as “the race is on to grab their attention” (lines 2–3), “companies are hustling to find new ways” (line 30) and “nowhere is the battle . . . raging more fiercely” (line 22). On the other hand, however, aggression is also directed against consumers (see above). This two-fold aggression against competitors and consumers serves to construct the latter as objects of competitive and aggressive movement, i.e., as the territory marketers fight over.9 Metaphorisation of marketer-consumer relations is complexified by the entry of the relationship metaphor (see above). The inherent contradiction between the two metaphors is eased by both the war and the relationship metaphor serving to construct consumers as passive targets of marketers’ endeavours. Seen in this light, Latin Americans’ alleged desire to consume, stressed elsewhere in the article, turns into a passive need only active marketers can meet. This active-passive dichotomy is also reflected in grammar, with marketers mostly featuring in dispositive movement processes denoting aggression of various degrees (“grab their attention” [line 3], “hitting the region” [lines 8–9] or “Miniphone has snatched [the] market” [lines 34–35]). Consumers, on the other hand, are mostly restricted to more static emotive processes as those denoted by “these new consumers are eager” (line 11), “[it] is a region that hungers” (line 14), “a new desire to consume” (line 19) and “Latins . . . are happy to be joining the global consumer community” (line 38). Judging from quantitative metaphor distribution in the corpus and qualitative metaphor usage in the sample article, Relationship Marketing discourse so far seems to have had only a slight effect on marketing discourse. Not only is the absolute number of metaphoric expressions of relationships in the corpus dwarfed by the instantiations of the war metaphor. The latter also shows a far higher percentage of lexical field items being realised metaphorically. Finally, the war metaphor also shows higher productivity in the sense that it gives rise to novel expressions whereas the relationship metaphor is overwhelmingly restricted to conventional formulaic phrases. In the sample, metaphoric expressions of war form echoing and elaborating chains throughout the text. The relationship metaphor, on the other hand, only does so with support
9. In a spill-over effect, further aggression can be found in “governments have beaten down inflation and whipped up economic growth” (lines 5–6).
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
from the conceptually related desire is hunger metaphor. Most importantly, the two metaphors, although seemingly opposed to each other, nevertheless jointly construct consumers as the passive object of aggression or courting. Writers of business media texts on marketing thus clearly focus on the perceived view held by marketers – who also happen to be their readers -, disregarding the fact that the same readers also function as consumers when reading the advertisements featured in the magazine. It is to these advertisements that I now turn to compare how marketers themselves use metaphor to construct consumers.
Metaphors in primary marketing discourse The second empirical sub-section deals with primary discourse data, in this case advertisements. For the analysis, I looked at eight examples featuring the overriding metaphor marketer-consumer relationships are private relationships. These private relationships can take the form of friendships, family relationships or, predominantly, domestic partnerships and marriages. Before summarising the examples, a double caveat seems in order: First, my identification of relationship metaphors is obviously influenced by a Central European cultural background, and researchers with other backgrounds will likely come up with a different set of samples. Second, it should be noted that the metaphorical domestic partnerships identified comprise only monogamous heterosexual partnerships, all other forms being apparently not entrenched enough in collective cognition to be used metaphorically in mainstream advertising. With these provisos in mind, let us look at how marketers construct their consumers when addressing them directly. Seven out of the eight examples represent what Forceville (1996) refers to as verbal-pictorial metaphor. The predominance of this form, in which both the text and the picture interact to form a metaphor, corroborates Morgan and Reichert’s claim that “metaphors in advertising are typically an interplay of both copy and image” (1999: 8). Typically, the copy refers to the service provided and thus to the target, while the picture represents the source. Further, the visual parts of the advertisements tend to be placed in the top half, thus representing the source as the “ideal”, i.e., “the world of ‘what might be’ [and] the projected happiness the product might bring”, while the target captures reality, “the world of ‘what is’ [and] the product itself ” (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006: 186). Other layout features are employed to help centre the viewer, i.e., the consumer. An advertisement by oneworld airline alliance illustrates the point, showing two penguins bowing their heads toward a baby penguin standing between them. The picture in the ad is accompanied by the following copy: It’s natural to want to be cared for. Oneworld is an alliance of eight airlines, with one goal: To care for our passengers. Whether that’s rewarding your loyalty with frequent flyer miles, giving you access to over 340 lounges or simply being there to look after you. Why? Because oneworld revolves around you.
Veronika Koller
In the picture, the baby penguin is given maximum emphasis, both by being centred horizontally with the parents at the margins, as well as by the bent heads of the latter functioning as vectors that point to the baby penguin. Moreover, the baby penguin looks at the viewer directly and thereby functions as a mirror for them. The viewer of the advertisement is obviously meant to identify with the cared-for baby, the centre of attention. Elsewhere, gaze can be coupled with direct address (e.g., “Looking for rewarding relationships?” as the tag line of a Philips advertisement featuring the largescale face of a woman). This combination not only lends particular salience to the source domain but also strongly implies the consumer. The viewer can also be centred by a link between picture and text: Although an advertisement by Accor, an upmarket hotel chain, addresses the prospect only once (“earn your smile”), the fact that a smiling woman made salient by being depicted three times strongly suggests that the consumer whose smile is to be earned is meant to identify with her. A final means of focusing attention on the viewer is provided by an advertisement by Tendi, a company providing online software consulting services: Shot from a low angle, the picture shows women in bridal gowns on the left and right giving way to the viewer, who is positioned centrally but outside the picture.10 The central perspective, which sets the individual viewer off against a number of brides to choose from, enables that viewer to envisage himself walking up and along the alley to the vanishing point, taking his pick from the women left and right of his path. His status is even further elevated by the fact that at least four women look at him directly while none of them interact with each other. The Tendi advertisement is also a rather blatant example of the metaphorically gendered nature of marketer-consumer relationships. By elaborating the relationship metaphor to brands are brides, the sample explicitly constructs a male viewer. In view of the fact that the advertisement promotes the services of a software consultant, constructing the consumer as male is likely to reflect the marketer’s (and, in the view of readership demographics, publisher’s) main target group. In this respect, the advertisement is a good example of how operating in a buyer’s market affects the (metaphoric) strategies employed to win that buyer. On a more critical note, however, the advertisement is crudely sexist, depicting as it does a large number of women competing to become the object of male choice.11 If the influence of Relationship Marketing 10. The German copy translates as follows: Which is the right one? Software shopping for the undecided. Many mothers have pretty daughters. But which is the right one for you? Tendi.com is software shopping on the Internet. We offer more service, more information, more clarity - and save you from being spoilt for choice fast. Whether you finally consent to marry Adobe, Corel, Lotus, Macromedia, Microsoft, Network Associates, Quark or Symantec will then be your personal decision. And that can be for life. 11. Obviously, this construction only works within a heterosexual matrix, assuming the ideal consumer to be male. Viewers outside that target audience can take on a subversive role:
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
discourse results in such stereotypical gendering, Desmond’s (1997: 345) doubts whether Relationship Marketing really signals a “feminized” form of marketing are more than justified indeed. However, the consumer can also be constructed as female. An advertisement by investment banking group Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MSDW) extends the relationship metaphor to marketer-consumer relationships are a dance. Here, we see children engaged in some formal dance, with one girl-boy couple positioned centrally. The boy directs a frontal gaze at the viewer, while the girl turns her back on them. Moreover, this gaze is coupled with direct address of the viewer (“shall we dance?”). If we furthermore consider that the text implicitly constructs the consumer as female (“for any company, this is absolutely not the time to be a wallflower”), it becomes clear that this particular advertisement conceptualises the marketer as the boy asking the consumer to dance. By constructing the consumer as the courted woman (see also the Accor advertisement) and themselves as suitors, marketers here reflect expressions from secondary marketing discourse like “to woo new customers” (Smith et al. 1998) or, quoting primary discourse, “The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife” (Newman 1999). Still other examples refrain from casting the consumer in a specific gender role. While showing domestic scenes and spelling out the source domain (e.g., UBS private banking claiming that “the closer the understanding, the greater the trust, and the more productive the partnership”), they simply represent people in obviously happy romantic relationships to create a cognitive-affective environment conducive to consumption. Indeterminate gender roles as exemplified by the UBS advertisement avoid the risk of triggering potentially negative connotations. After all, metaphorically constructing the consumer as a woman to be courted is a rather double-edged strategy. On the one hand, positioning the prospect as someone to be wooed is certainly flattering and allocates some power to the consumer to make her choice. On the other hand, however, it confines the consumer to a passive role and thus allocates more power to the marketer and brand owner. Thus, while the consumer can take either gender, gender roles largely remain along the lines of active masculinity and passive femininity. The family metaphor realised in the oneworld example faces a similar dilemma. Although it provides rich conceptual structure and may indeed appropriately reflect the network idea of Relationship Marketing (Hunt & Menon 1995: 87), it also entails some potentially negative power issues: If it is true that, due to increased supply in globalised markets and unmediated e-commerce, power has shifted to the customers, then why are they conceptualised as children dependent on a much more powerful parent? In the oneworld example, the advertiser has employed compositional devices
As Messaris (1997: 41) notes, by “giving female viewers a male perspective on the models in the images, these ads are creating visual conditions that can lead to cross-gender identification”.
Veronika Koller
such as the vectors and the mirror gaze to downplay the dependency feature of the family metaphor in favour of its care and security aspects. These devices turn the first example into an apt illustration of what Ungerer (2000) refers to as a “muted metaphor”: Drawing on the highlighting and hiding function of metaphoric transfer (Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 10–13), Ungerer observes that the usage of metaphor in advertising often involves “an attempt to impose artificial mapping constraints on innovative metaphors” (2000: 329). The rich conceptual sources advertisers rely on to secure recipients’ attention entail both positive and negative aspects, making it necessary for advertisers to “mute” the latter. On the whole, the influence of Relationship Marketing discourse seems very pronounced in the advertisements, up to the point where key terms of the approach are integrated intertextually into the copy (e.g., the MSDW ad echoing the main tenets of Relationship Marketing when talking about “networks”, “partnering” and “forming alliances with your competitors”).12 When we compare secondary and primary discourse, it becomes evident that they entail recipients as either readers – who may well be marketers themselves – or consumers. Accordingly, the focus and the metaphors of text producers shift from marketers to consumers, too: In the sample article, marketers were metaphorically constructed as actively fighting over the territory that is “the market”, i.e., passive consumers, or courting those consumers to gain a competitive advantage. In either case consumers remain the acted-upon rather than the agents, and even in markets where they are receptive to those activities, they are restricted to static emotive processes. As far as the relationship conceptually supports the war metaphor by elaborating on the same metaphoric scenario, it is not so much an alternative, potentially subversive, conceptualisation but is rather co-opted into the dominant paradigm. This qualitative weakness of the relationship metaphor is reflected in its quantitative scarcity and unproductive nature in the corpus as a whole. The advertisements on the other hand focus on the consumer and to that end, use the relationship metaphor lavishly. By the same token, the consumer is either conceptualised as a child lovingly looked after by its parents (oneworld), as a woman to be courted (MSDW), or as a man entering into a romantic relationship with a woman (Tendi). Other advertisements employ the relationship metaphor in gender-unspecific ways, creating a generally positive cognitive-affective environment by presenting happy couples as the source domain. In view of the fact that the advertisements were almost exclusively published in the same magazines and at roughly the same time as the articles in the corpus, it is evident that they will be received by the same persons, albeit in the different roles
12. It is no coincidence that the service industries should show an enforced usage of the relationship metaphor. As Kapferer (2002: 178) observes, “the relationship facet is particularly important for service . . . and corporate brands” (see also Grönroos 2002: 138), although it is becoming increasingly salient for marketing consumer goods, too.
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse
of marketer or consumer. However, the metaphoric construction of these two in the marketer-centred articles does not at all square with their conceptualisation in the advertisements, exposing recipients to contradictory metaphoric constructions of themselves in different roles. By waging aggression against consumers on the one hand and posing as the partners, friends and family members of consumers on the other, marketers appear as virtual “brothers in arms”.
Conclusion Relationship Marketing and its emphasis on “mutually beneficial relationships” and the concomitant “process of engaging in cooperative and collaborative activities” (Parvatiyar & Sheth 2000: 8 9) calls for a radical reconceptualisation of marketing practice. One of the traces the increasingly important Relationship Marketing paradigm has left in marketing discourse is the relationship metaphor. However, it could be seen that its function in secondary discourse differs vastly from that in primary discourse. While, thanks to the Relationship Marketing approach, both war and relationship metaphors are now part of marketing discourse, they do not seem to have been blended or recombined otherwise yet. In fact, what we are dealing with is not so much a hybrid conceptual model as two contradictory metaphorisations, with Relationship Marketing representing an emergent rather than dominant paradigm. As articles and advertisements in business magazines are received by the same readers, these are addressed with conflicting messages. While it will be up to further research to reveal the impact these contradictory metaphors have on readers’ self-image, the data analysed in this paper allow for some tentative conclusions to be drawn about the cognitive underpinnings of marketing discourse: Although the war metaphor remains dominant and to some extent co-opts emerging alternatives, the diffusion of Relationship Marketing into mainstream marketing discourse might well represent a shift no only in practices and discourse features such as particular metaphoric expressions, but in conceptual models as well. Future, diachronic studies would certainly help to trace this shift. In this chapter, I have tried to show that a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods applied to a comparison of different sub-discourses helps to draw inferences about the dynamic and contradictory metaphoric model underlying contemporary marketing discourse. In particular, a corpus-based approach to metaphor in discourse can provide a first idea of patterns of metaphoric expressions in large amounts of data. Despite the required manual reworking, the results thus generated help ascertain the textual patterns of metaphoric expressions and provide an overview of how particular source domains are realized linguistically. While quantitative approaches facilitate broad investigation, subsequent qualitative analysis complements such approaches by enabling in-depth detailed analysis of sample texts. Moreover, it seems important to enrich the analysis even further by integrating a multimodal analysis of metaphors as
Veronika Koller
they are expressed by the interplay of different semiotic modes. Finally, including nonlinguistic approaches such as Relationship Marketing into the theory provides a starting point for future discussions of discursive and cognitive phenomena in the broader context of socio-economic change in late capitalist societies.
References Ammer, Christine (1999). Fighting words: From war, rebellion, and other combative capers (2nd ed). Chicago: NTC Publishing. Augoustinos, Martha & Iain Walker (1995). Social cognition: An integrated introduction. London: Sage. Berry, Leonard L. (1983). Relationship Marketing. In L.L. Berry, G.L. Shostack, & G.D. Upah (Eds.), Emerging perspectives on service marketing (25–38). Chicago: American Marketing Association. Boers, Frank & Jeanette Littlemore (2003). Cross-cultural differences in conceptual metaphor: Applied linguistics perspectives. Special issue of Metaphor and Symbol 18 (4). Brooker, Katrina (2001, February 5). A game of inches. Fortune 44–46. Business Week (2004). BW Media Kit: BusinessWeek International Europe edition. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://mediakit.businessweek.com/a-m-mend.html Byrnes, Nanette (2000, August 28). Brands in a bind. Business Week. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www.businessweek.com/@@IJ00VIcQJLJxkwcA/archives/2000/b3696173. arc.htm Cameron, Lynne & Juup Stelma (2004). VisDis 2.0 [software]. Leeds: University of Leeds Department of Education. Clausner, Timothy C. & William Croft (1997). Productivity and schematicity in metaphors. Cognitive Science, 21 ,247–282. Deignan, Alice (1997). Metaphors of desire. In K. Harvey & C. Shalom (eds.), Language and desire: Encoding sex, romance and intimacy (21–42). London: Routledge. Deignan, Alice (1999). Corpus-based research into metaphor. In L. Cameron & G. Low (eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (177–199). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Desmond, John (1997). Marketing and the war machine. Marketing intelligence and planning, 15, 338–351. Dirven, René, Roslyn Frank & Martin Pütz (eds.) (2003). Cognitive models in language and thought: Ideology, metaphors and meanings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dirven, René, Bruce Hawkins & Esra Sandikcioglu (eds.) (2001). Language and ideology: Theoretical cognitive approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dwyer, F. Robert, Paul H. Schurr & Sejo Oh (1987). Developing buyer-seller relationships. Journal of Marketing 51, 11–27. The Economist (2004). Advertising: Our readers. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http:// ads.economist.com/web/demographic.html Eubanks, Philip (2000). A war of words in the discourse of trade: The rhetorical constitution of metaphor. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Financial Times (2004). The global audience. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www. fttoolkit.co.uk/advertising/pages/pdfs/ftatw_brochure_2005.pdf
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse Forceville, Charles (1996). Pictorial metaphor in advertising. London: Routledge. Fortune (2004). Fortune reader profile. Retrieved September 30 2005, from http://www.fortune. com/fortune/mediakit/readerprofile.html Goatly, Andrew (2007). Washing the brain: Metaphor and hidden ideology [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 23]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grady, Joseph (1997). Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphors and primary scenes. Ph.D dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Grady, Joseph, Todd Oakley & Seanna Coulson (1999). Blending and metaphor. In R.W. Gibbs & G. Steen (Eds.), Metaphor in cognitive linguistics [Current Issues in Linguistics Series 175] (101–124). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grauel, Ralf (2000, March). Die Macht der Marke [The power of brands]. brand eins, 16–24. Grönroos, Christian (2002). Quo vadis, marketing? Toward a relationship marketing paradigm. The Marketing Review, 3, 129–146. “Hi ho, hi ho, down the data mine we go”. (1997, August 23). The Economist, 49–50. Himelstein, Linda (1996, September 18). This virtual broker has real competition. Business Week. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www.businessweek.com/1996/30/b3485115. htm Hunt, Shelby D. & Anil Menon (1995). Metaphors and competitive advantage: Evaluating the use of metaphors in theories of competitive strategy. Journal of Business Research, 33, 81–90. Johnson, Christopher (1999). Constructional grounding: The role of interpretational overlap in lexical and constructional acquisition. Ph.D dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Kapferer, Jean-Noël (2002). Corporate brand and organizational identity. In B. Moingeon & G. Soenen (Eds.), Corporate and organizational identities: integrating strategy, marketing, communication and organisational perspectives (175–193). London: Routledge. Khermouch, Gerry (2001, August 6). Why advertising matters more than ever. Business Week, pp. 50–51. Kotler, Philip (1967). Marketing management: Analysis, planning, and control. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kövecses, Zoltan (2000). Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kress, Gunther & van Leeuwen, Theo (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). London & New York: Routledge. Kyratzis, Sakis (1997). Metaphorically speaking: Sex, politics and the Greeks. Ph.D dissertation, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books. Lee, Louise (2000, October 30). Nike tries getting in touch with its feminine side. Business Week. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www.businessweek.com/@@JIyt5ocQKbJxkwcA/archives/2000/b3705116.arc.htm Leonard, Devin (2001, February 18). Madison Ave. fights back. Fortune, 66–69. Leonhardt, David (1997, March 17). Two-tier marketing. Business Week. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www.businessweek.com/@@uaauC4cQq7JxkwcA/archives/1997/ b3518001.arc.htm
Veronika Koller Liu, Betty (2001, April 20). Advertising campaign aims to restore Coke’s fizz. Financial Times. Retrieved September 26, 2004, from http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=010420002066 Low, Graham (1999). Validating metaphor research projects. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (48–65). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Low, Graham (2003). Validating metaphoric models in Applied Linguistics. Metaphor and Symbol, 18, 239–254. Messaris, Paul (1997). Visual persuasion: The role of images in advertising. London: Sage. Moore, Robert E. (2003). From genericide to viral marketing: On ‘brand’. Language and Communication, 23, 331–357. Morgan, Robert M. (2000). Relationship Marketing and marketing strategy: The evolution of Relationship Marketing strategy within the organization. In J.N. Sheth & A. Parvatiyar (Eds.), Handbook of relationship marketing (481–504). Beverly Hills: Sage. Morgan, Susan E. & Tom Reichert (1999). The message is in the metaphor: Assessing the comprehension of metaphors in advertising. Journal of Advertising, 28, 1–12. Musolff, Andreas (2007). What role do metaphors play in racial prejudice? The function of antisemitic imagery in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Patterns of Prejudice, 41, 21–44. Neuborne, Ellen (2001, March 19). Viral marketing alert! Business Week. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www.businessweek.com/@@uaauC4cQq7JxkwcA/magazine/ content/01_12/b3724628.htm Newman, Cathy (1999, July 22). A legend in world advertising. Financial Times. Retrieved September 26, 2004, from http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=990722014825 Park, Andrew & Peter Burrows (2001, September 25). Dell, the conqueror. Business Week. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www.businessweek.com/@@SfuB34YQSOZxkwcA/ magazine/content/01_39/b3750039.htm Parvatiyar, N. Jagdish & Atul Sheth (2000). The domain and conceptual foundations of Relationship Marketing. In J.N. Sheth & A. Parvatiyar (Eds.), Handbook of relationship marketing (3–38). Beverly Hills: Sage. Peterson, Robert A. (1995). Relationship Marketing and the consumer. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 23, 278–281. Pragglejaz Group (2007). MIP: a method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22, 1–39. Reichheld, Frederick F. (1996). The loyalty effect: The hidden force behind growth, profits, and lasting value. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Shani, David & Sujana Chalansani (1992). Exploiting niches using Relationship Marketing. Journal of Services Marketing, 6, 43–52. Sheth, Jagdish N. & Atul Parvatiyar (Eds.) (2000). Handbook of relationship marketing. Beverly Hills: Sage. Smith, Geri, Elisabeth Malkin, Ian Katz, & Gail DeGeorge (1998, February 9). Marketing in Latin America. Business Week. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www.businessweek.com/@@sztKVIcQJ7JxkwcA/archives/1998/b3564010.arc.htm Sommer, Elyse & Dorrie Weiss (1996). Metaphors dictionary. Detroit: Visible Ink Press. “The strategic advantages of direct selling” (1998, October 26). Financial Times. Retrieved September 26, 2004, from http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=981026008140 Talmy, Leonard (1988). Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science, 12, 49–100. Tomkins, Richard (1997, September 21). Sold to the person on hold. Financial Times. Retrieved September 26, 2004, from http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=970921000752
Chapter 5. Metaphors in marketing discourse Ungerer, Friedrich (2000). Muted metaphors and the activation of metonymies in advertising. In A. Barcelona (Ed.), Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: A cognitive perspective (321–340). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. U.S. Department of Defense (1988). Dictionary of military terms. New York: Arco. Retrieved September 30, 2005, from http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/ “Virtual rivals” (2000, May 18). The Economist, pp. 24–29. Wilkinson, Peter R. (1993). A thesaurus of traditional English metaphors. London: Routledge. Zinken, Jörg (2003). Ideological imagination: Intertextual and correlational metaphors in political discourse. Discourse and Society 4, 507–523.
chapter 6
Metaphor probabilities in corpora* Tony Berber Sardinha In metaphor studies, it is widely held that metaphor is a frequent phenomenon. People make regular use of metaphor in everyday, colloquial language (Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 57); researchers employ metaphors in scientific (Brown 2003) and academic discourse (Salager-Meyer 1990) as well as in theory formulation; newspaper and magazines are replete with metaphors (Koller 2004); metaphors also abound in religion (CharterisBlack 2004), politics (Charteris-Black 2004; Lakoff 2002; Musolff 2004; Partington 2003), and education; (Cameron 2003; Cortazzi & Jin 1999), to mention just a few of the spheres of human activity and experience. In sum, metaphor is everywhere; as Richards (1936: 92) had observed, “we cannot get through three sentences of ordinary fluid discourse without it.” Although there is a consensus in contemporary metaphor research that metaphor is abundant, only a few studies have actually provided figures showing the extent of its use in language. Those that do tend to agree on the recurrent and widespread use of metaphors. For instance, Deignan & Potter (2004: 1236) note that “non-literal language is extremely common, often accounting for a substantial proportion of the corpus citations of a word.” Gibbs & Franks (2002: 151) remark that their data “are notable, first of all, because they show just how prominent metaphor was.” Similarly, Moules et al., (2004) comment that they were “struck with how often metaphors arise in the language of grief ”. In this study, I want to take a closer look at metaphor frequency in language by focusing on an aspect that has received scant attention so far: metaphor probability. Probability is the likelihood of an event happening; in our case, the likelihood of a word or expression being used metaphorically in a corpus. The aim is to check the probability of words expressing metaphorical meaning. More specifically, I want to provide answers to the following questions: (1) What is the likelihood of encountering metaphorical expressions in (a) a specialised corpus and (b) a general language corpus? (2) What is
* I want to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, as well as to the editors, for their professionalism and encouragement. I also want to thank the following for their financial support during the project: CNPq, for grants 350455/2003-1, 307307/2006-9 and 450239/2006-3; Capes for grant 0397/04-0; and FAPESP, for grant 06/00109-9.
Tony Berber Sardinha
the probability of metaphorical lexis being (a) a certain word class or (b) having marked frequency in comparison with a reference corpus? (3) What patterns of probability, if any, are discernible in the data? (4) How do different kinds of probabilities of metaphor in language support or refute different sorts of metaphor theories? I intend to investigate these questions using corpora of Brazilian Portuguese. Although the actual metaphorical words that were looked at are from the Portuguese language, the principles by which this investigation was carried out could be applied to other languages as well. No theory of metaphor can foresee which word forms will be used more often metaphorically. Given what is currently known about metaphor in language, we may predict that certain expressions will have a high degree of probability of metaphor use, while others will have low probability. Thus, we cannot anticipate the exact spread of probabilities in our data. As Deignan (2005: 179) has shown, probabilities of metaphor use vary even across forms of the same lexeme: in a large general English corpus, words like “budding” and “blooms” are more likely to be used metaphorically (both 98%) than related forms such as “buds” and “bloomed”, which are more likely to convey a literal meaning (100% and 74%, respectively). Addressing these questions is important, I want to argue, not simply because they may provide interesting frequency information about the use of metaphorical language, but also because they put the spotlight on the central role that probabilities play in any principled description of language (Bod, Hay, & Jannedy, 2003b; Halliday, 1991, 1992, 1993).
Probabilities in linguistic theory Probabilistic approaches are not the dominant paradigm in linguistics; as Chambers (1995) (cited in Manning, 2003: 290) puts it, linguistics still suffers from a “tradition of categoricity”, that is, analysis is based on assigning features to discrete categories, which carry no information about the likelihood of that category happening at all.1 According to Manning (2003: 290), this was common practice among American structuralists. But it was Chomsky who made the most scathing criticism of the probabilistic position, by arguing “it must be recognised that the ‘probability of a sentence’ is an entirely useless one, under any known interpretation of this term (Chomsky 1969: 57; cited by Manning 2003: 289). This had the effect of killing off interest in probabilities for a long time, until the advent and dissemination of the computer corpus made it inevitable that probabilities came to the fore once again. 1. As Bod et al., (2003a) argue, categorical and probabilistic approaches are not incompatible, though. In fact, they are simply two perspectives on the same phenomenon. Categorical approaches focus on the endpoints of distributions, whereas probabilistic ones include the points in between as well.
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
The main proponent of a probabilistic framework for language is Michael Halliday, who draws attention to the role of probabilities in shaping abstract linguistic systems (Halliday, 1991, 1992, 1993). His general claims are that probabilities are essential properties of linguistic systems, and that seeking these probabilities in corpora and attaching them to the options available in the linguistic system is a way of enriching language description. We must bear in mind in the following discussion that Halliday does not refer to metaphor in his account of probabilistic systems, and he restricts his examples to functional systems such as polarity. However, there does not seem to be any impediments to our doing so. In fact, his ideas about language as probabilistic systems are general enough for us to apply them to issues related to metaphor use. Halliday began his work on probabilities in the linguistic system when he was preparing his grammar of Chinese, in the mid 1950’s. Later, he calculated probabilities for English, taking samples of 2000 clauses from four different registers and counting grammatical features in them: What I hoped to do was to model each system not just as “choose a or b or c”, but as “choose a or b or c with a certain probability attached to each. In other words, I was positing that an inherent property of any linguistic system is the relative probability of its terms. (Halliday 1993: 3)
In 1991, Halliday spent time at Cobuild, the large corpus linguistic lexicography project based in Birmingham, where he resumed his work on systemic probabilities, this time using large electronic corpora. This allowed him to derive the probabilities from larger amounts of data, which resulted in more robust figures. To his surprise, the probabilities taken from the large corpus resembled his previous ones from small nonelectronic corpora. For polarity, the early probabilities were 0.9 positive and 0.1 negative, whereas the later ones were 0.8675 and 0.1325, respectively. For primary tense, they had been 0.5 present and 0.5 past, and then were 0.4955 and 0.5041. His findings showed that there was a tendency for probabilities to be distributed either as 0.9 to 0.1 or as 0.5 to 0.5 (Halliday 1993: 9). The former, he called “skew” distributions, and the latter, “equiprobable”. Drawing on Shannon and Weaver’s model of communication, Halliday proposed that skew systems are less informative, as there is less uncertainty in relation to users selecting the highly probable choice. Equiprobable systems, on the other hand, are more informative, as there is greater freedom of choice for users in selecting either one of the options available. The fact that probabilities are part of linguistic systems alters the way we understand the concept of “choice” in language use, as it does not mean “free choice” any longer. As Halliday explains: [Language users] could choose to use negative more often than positive, just as they could choose to use stroll more often than walk – but they won’t . . . . grammatical choices are governed by overall patterns of probability. (Halliday 1993: 3).
Tony Berber Sardinha
These overall patterns of probability vary according to a number of different situations. For example, probabilities attached to a given feature may be different for a specific register than they are for language as a whole. According to Halliday (1993: 24), register variation can be defined as “the resetting of probabilities in the lexis and in the grammar.” Probabilities also change over time, and this describes language change diachronically. The process of change is dynamic: “each instance, that is, every piece of language that is actually spoken or written nudges the probabilities of the system, so that the system may change in the course of time.” (Kilpert 2003: 183). Halliday”s work on probabilities was taken up by other systemicists, who investigated a range of different aspects of language (e.g., Matthiessen 2002; Nesbitt & Plum 1988; Shimazumi 1996) and their probabilities of occurrence. Outside of Hallidayan linguistics, there is a wealth of research showing the potential of probabilities in enriching language description, teaching, and engineering. For instance, Bod, Hay & Jannedy (2003b) argue the case for taking account of probabilities in several sub-fields of linguistics, including psycholinguistics, morphology, phonology, syntax and semantics.
Probabilities in metaphor studies Unlike in many areas of linguistics as mentioned above, probabilities have received no direct attention in metaphor studies. A quick search in Google Book Search (books. google.com) reveals that there were 218,000 book pages containing the word “metaphor” in their collection in mid 2005, but zero pages containing any of the phrases “metaphor probability”, “metaphor probabilities”, “probability of metaphor” or “probabilities of metaphor”. Similarly, in EBSCO, the online article portal, there were 15,970 articles whose subject descriptors include “metaphor”, and only four of these mention the word “probability”, none of which dealt with probability in connection with linguistic metaphor. The same happened in relation to the Bibliography of Metaphor and Metonymy (http://www.benjamins.com/online/met/). This lack of interest in the topic as indicated in these bibliographic searches might indicate that probabilities are irrelevant for metaphor studies, but in fact there is nothing to suggest that probabilities have no importance to our understanding of metaphor use. As Halliday proposed, probabilities are a key element in linguistic systems, and metaphor could be regarded as one such system. If probabilities exist as a result of people making regular use of certain choices in speaking and writing, and if using words or expressions in a metaphorical way is one of these choices, then there should be regular probabilities attached to metaphor use. Perhaps one reason why probabilities have not been discussed in the metaphor literature is because they might appeal to researchers investigating metaphor in language use, who are a minority, rather than to those looking at metaphor in thought. We need corpora in order to arrive at (meaningful) probabilities, and corpus research into metaphor is a recent development, with
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
the earliest publications in the field perhaps going back to 1997 (Boers & Demecheleer 1997; Deignan, Gabrys, & Solska 1997). Although there is no previous literature reporting metaphor probabilities directly, there is a growing body of research into metaphor from a corpus perspective that reports frequency information. In those cases where data for non-metaphorical use is also presented (because probability is calculated as a ratio of metaphor use to total use), we may derive the probabilities ourselves, since as Halliday (1991: 67) notes, “there is no discontinuity when we rewrite frequency as probability”. Unfortunately, there are just a few studies that meet this criterion. In a pioneering corpus-based study of metaphor, Deignan (1999) investigates the uses of 40 words related to the human body, in the Bank of English. She found that 67.8% of the uses of the noun “blow” were metaphorical (meaning “setback” or “minor victory”). Her analysis also showed that 100% of the citations of collocations such as “pay” + “price” and “death blow” were metaphorical. Deignan & Potter (2004) report frequencies of certain words being used metaphorically in the domain of bodily experience. They investigated metaphorical terms related to the body (e.g., heart, mouth, hand) in English and in Italian. They used three large corpora (one of English and two of Italian), totalling 364 million words. Their corpus searches revealed that the metaphorical use of certain words is very common, with “around 65% of citations of head(s) and heart(s), around 50% of hand(s) and eye(s), around 25% of citations of nose(s), and around 17% of citations of mouth” being non-literal (Deignan & Potter 2004: 1236) across the two languages. We may read these figures as saying that “head” and “heart” have a 0.65 probability of being used in metaphorical expressions, which, according to Halliday’s theory would be a borderline case between a skew and an equiprobable distribution. “Hand” and “eye”, on the other hand, are clearly equiprobable, whereas “mouth” is certainly skew (0.13: 0.83), but favouring literal use. Charteris-Black (2004: 223) provides detailed information on metaphor and nonmetaphor uses of selected words in the Koran. A word such as “path” has a very high likelihood of metaphorical use (60 out of 68 occurrences, or 0.88 probability), as do “lamp” (5 out 6, or 0.83) and “root” (6 out of 10, or 0.6). “Journey” words are the most likely to be metaphorical in the Koran (0.62 probability), followed by “weather” (0.44) and “fire and light” (0.25). His figures suggest that most probabilities are within the equiprobable range, except for “fire and light”, which is skew (0.75: 0.25), but again in favour of non-metaphor. This reinterpretation of frequency information in terms of probabilities suggests that metaphor may not be the default option in language use, at least for most of the words whose probabilities could be computed post hoc. In other words, we might expect that metaphors, while frequent, may not necessarily be the most probable option in language use. Nevertheless, we should be careful in reaching this conclusion based on the scant evidence available in the literature. We hope this study will bring new evidence that may help us evaluate the probabilistic status of metaphor in language.
Tony Berber Sardinha
Data and method The data for this study consisted of two corpora. The first is a register-specific corpus, containing 14 conference calls, totalling 85,438 tokens (5,194 types; henceforth, specialised corpus). These conference calls are phone calls hosted in Portuguese by a Brazilian investment bank between its board of directors and the general public, investors, shareholders and the press. The second corpus is a large, register-diversified corpus of Portuguese called “Banco de Português”, with nearly 223 million tokens (henceforth, general corpus; lael.pucsp.br/corpora). The specialised corpus was fully hand-annotated for metaphor vehicles by the author (see explanation of metaphor vehicle below). This consisted of reading each text and tagging vehicles with a special code. There were three rounds of annotation, in order to ensure a consistent and thorough tagging. After the third round, a list of the vehicles was extracted and concordances were run for each vehicle. This was done so as to guarantee that no occurrences of any vehicle word form was left unchecked. The concordance lines were then read one by one and any errors or omissions were corrected. Upon completion of the hand-annotation phase, a total of 423 metaphor Vehicle word forms had been identified. The general corpus was used as follows. For each of the 423 metaphor vehicle word forms found in the specialised corpus, a concordance was run in the general corpus. A maximum of 100 randomly extracted concordance lines was allowed for each word form. Each concordance was then analysed manually and the metaphorical uses of each word form were tagged. A computer program was written by the author to compute the probabilities of each word form being a metaphor vehicle in the specialised corpus, the general corpus and jointly in the two corpora. The probability of being a metaphor vehicle was calculated following Bod (2003: 12) as: “The probability P of an event A can be defined as the ratio between the size of A and the size of the sample space Ω. Let |A| be the number of elements in a set A; then P(A) = |A| / |Ω|”
In our case, the sample space is set of all occurrences of a word form, and the event of interest is the subset of all metaphor Vehicles. This translates as: P([W is a metaphor Vehicle]) = |[occurrences of word form W as metaphor Vehicle] | / | [occurrences of word form W] |”
To illustrate, the word apostas (bets) occurred 72 times in the specialised corpus; of these, 25 were as a metaphor vehicle; thus: P([apostas is a metaphor vehicle]) = 25 / 72 = 0.3472
This means there is a 0.3472 probability of apostas being a metaphor vehicle in the data. Probability values vary between 0 and 1, with 0 meaning impossibility and 1
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
certainty (Bod 2003: 12). These ratios can be expressed as percentages as well, which is less common, though (Bod 2003: 12). In the previous example, this would be a 34.72% chance of apostas being used metaphorically. The key concepts in the analysis are metaphor and metaphor vehicle. Two main kinds of metaphor are distinguished in contemporary metaphor theory: conceptual and linguistic. A conceptual metaphor is one which “brings together two domains that are distinct and somehow incongruous, but whose juxtaposition can be made sense of ” (Cameron 2002: 674). These two domains are termed “source” and “target” domains (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). Take the following use of apostas: (1) “Investidores estrangeiros continuam aumentando suas apostas na Bolsa paulista.” (Foreign investors continue to raise their bets on the São Paulo Stock Exchange.)
In this example, two distinct domains are mapped together, namely investment (the target domain) and games/gambling (the source domain) (Koller 2004: 68–69). As a result, we may detect a conceptual metaphor underlying this fragment as investing money in the stock exchange is gambling. A linguistic metaphor is “a stretch of language that creates the possibility of activating two distinct domains” (Cameron 2003: 674). There are no hard and fast rules for determining how long such as stretch is, and so we have to determine this based on the presence of topic and vehicle terms. The vehicle terms are “the words that signal the incongruous domain” (Cameron 2003: 674). In the previous example, the vehicles are “aumentando suas apostas” (“raising their bets”). It signals the source domain of gambling. The remaining words are the “topic”, and they signal the target domain of investment. In this way, the linguistic metaphor turned out to be the whole sentence, but this is not necessarily true in all cases. Sometimes linguistic metaphors are shorter, and more than one of them may cluster together in one single sentence or, in the case of talk, in a single utterance or intonation unit. For the analysis of word classes, the corpora were run through a part-of-speech tagger for Portuguese, namely QTAG (Mason 1997), which had been trained for Portuguese. This tagger is available online at http://lael.pucsp.br/corpora.
Probabilities of metaphor Vehicles In this section, we present results for probabilities associated with metaphorical uses of both word forms and parts of speech. We report the results for word forms in the following section, and then the results for word class.
Word form probabilities The overall probabilities for word forms appear in Table 1.
Tony Berber Sardinha
Table 1. Overall probabilities of metaphorical use in the two corpora
General corpus
Specialised corpus
Both corpora
Vehicles Word forms Probability
15,220 21,854 0.70
4,311 5,021 0.86
19,531 26,875 0.73
The results indicate that the probability of a word form being metaphorical is greater in the specialised corpus than in the general language corpus. This can be explained by the existence of a bias in favour of the specialised corpus: the word forms whose frequencies were counted in the general corpus were only those that had already been found to be a metaphor vehicle in the specialised corpus. Because of this bias, there is naturally less chance of a word form being a metaphor vehicle in language as whole than in the register where it was originally detected as being part of a metaphor. In order to avoid this bias, it would be necessary to analyse all of the word forms in the general language corpus; given that this corpus has over 600 thousand word forms, this is unfeasible. In both corpora, the probability of being a metaphor is skew, in Halliday’s (1991) term. If we used a one-decimal representation of the ratios, we would have the classic skew distribution that Halliday demonstrated, that is, a 0.9 probability attached to metaphorical use versus a 0.1 probability for non-metaphorical use in the specialised corpus and 0.7: 0.3 for the general corpus. This suggests that in both corpora, the metaphorical senses of the vehicle word forms are dominant, but they are much more so in the specialised corpus. Non-metaphorical uses of Vehicles are quite rare in the specialised corpus; only 17% of the word forms were used non-metaphorically in the specialised corpus. One of these is fechando (closing), which appears six times in this corpus, five times of which as a vehicle (hence having a 0.8333 metaphor probability). Its typical metaphorical meaning was “be priced or listed when trading stops”: (2) “Ações ordinárias . . . recuaram 8,8%, fechando a R$ 148,50” (Regular shares . . . lost 8.8%, closing at R$ 148.50)
Its single non-metaphorical use was in the sense of “closing down a branch”: (3) “Se vocês pretendem continuar este ajuste até o final do ano, quer dizer, fechando a agência.” (If you intend to keep this adjustment until the end of the year, that is, closing down the branch.)
There are a few cases of strictly equiprobable probabilities (0.5: 0.5) as well as of what Halliday (1993: 38) calls probabilities “within the equiprobable range” (0.6: 0.4) in both corpora. These can be discerned if we break down the probability values by bands, shown in Table 2 below.
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
Table 2. Breakdown of probability values by band Probability band
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 Total
General corpus
%
Spec. corpus
%
22 18 17 34 20 34 33 47 57 77 64 423
5.2 4.3 4.0 8.0 4.7 8.0 7.8 11.1 13.5 18.2 15.1 100
6 0 6 7 3 10 8 12 10 11 350 423
1.4 0.0 1.4 1.7 0.7 2.4 1.9 2.8 2.4 2.6 82.7 100
According to Table 2, the number of equiprobable probabilities (the 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6 bands) is much greater in the general corpus (20.5%) than in the specialised corpus (5%). Skew distributions (bands 0.7 or higher, and 0.3 or lower) account for 79.4% of metaphorical uses in the general corpus and for 95% in the specialised corpus. If we take into account only skew distributions that give preference to metaphor (0.7 or higher), then we find 59% of the vehicles in the general corpus and 90% of those in the specialised corpus in this situation. This shift in the probability ratios from 0.7: 0.3 (in the general corpus) to 0.9: 0.1 (in the specialised corpus) can be described as a “resetting” of the probabilities, in Halliday’s terms. Resetting is calculated by simply subtracting a general corpus probability from the corresponding specialised one. For example, to calculate the amount of resetting in these overall metaphorical probabilities, we subtract 0.7 from 0.9, giving 0.2. To describe the direction of resetting, we propose the following. If the difference is positive, we can talk about “upward” resetting, meaning that the probability level rose in the specialised corpus in comparison to the general one. If, on the other hand, the difference is negative, then we can refer to it as “downward” resetting, in which case, the probability decreased in the specialised corpus. In this case, the difference is positive, and so there was “upward” resetting. Although the general trend in probability resetting was upward, there were individual cases where vehicles had both no resetting and downward resetting, as Table 3 shows. Table 3. Summary of probability resetting Upward resetting (general corpus < specialised corpus) No resetting (general corpus = specialised corpus) Downward resetting (general corpus > specialised corpus) Total
323 63 37 423
Tony Berber Sardinha
The results indicate that the vast majority of cases (323; 76%) involved probabilities moving upward, that is, they were higher in the specialised corpus than in the general one, thus confirming the overall probabilities presented earlier. However, in 63 cases (15%), probabilities were not reset at all. And in 37 cases (9%), probabilities moved downward, that is, reset the other way round, being greater in the general corpus. Let us look at each one of these cases in more detail, beginning with a breakdown of resetting by average probability and frequency of once-occurring Vehicles (hapax legomena), presented in Table 4. Table 4. Resetting breakdown by average probability and hapax legomena vehicles
Average probability of vehicles
Hapax Legomena among vehicles
Corpus
Corpus
Direction of resetting Upward (General < Spec.) No resetting (General = Spec.) Downward (General > Spec.)
Specialized
General
Specialized
General
0.97
0.62
119 36.8%
13 4.0%
1.00
1.00 33 52.4% 0 0.0%
0.48
0.77 12 32.4% 0 0.0%
Table 4 shows the quantitative profiles of vehicles in terms of their probability resetting. Words that had an upward shift in probability (General < Spec.) are normally rare metaphors both in general language (4% occurring only one) and in the conference calls (37% occurring only once). Words that underwent no resetting are frequent ones whose metaphorical meaning is the dominant one in Portuguese, including the context of banking. Finally, words that had downward probability resetting (Spec. < General) tend to be general words with frequent metaphorical senses in the language, which are rarer in the conference calls. Tables 5, 6 and 7 present examples of vehicles in the three cases of resetting. Table 5 shows vehicles with the greatest values of upward resetting, that is, words whose probabilities increased the most in the specialised corpus in the comparison with the general corpus. Words in this group reflect genre-specific, domain-specific, and general language metaphors. Among the vehicles that are restricted to the context of investment banking are as travada, referring to the value of a currency being “locked” for a transaction, and jogamos in the sense of building/factoring an element into a business projection. Vehicles that are specific to the domain of business are parada, referring to “a slow economy”, and empatar used as “balance the books”. Finally, general language metaphors are revealed by vehicles such as bola de cristal (crystal ball; in the sense of “guessing”), fotografia (snapshot, referring to a quick visual summary) and navegando (sailing in rough seas, in an allusion to a period of hardship).
General corpus
Specialised corpus Resetting
Aliança 0.01 1.00 0.99 (alliance) Parada 0.03 1.00 0.97 (stopped) Bola 0.04 1.00 0.96 (ball) Jogamos 0.05 1.00 0.95 (throw) Atingidos 0.05 1.00 0.95 (hit) Fotografia 0.05 1.00 0.95 (snapshot) Depositado 0.05 1.00 0.95 (deposited) Bala 0.06 1.00 0.94 (bullet) Loteria 0.07 1.00 0.93 (lottery) Travada 0.07 1.00 0.93 (locked) Empatar 0.08 1.00 0.92 (tie) Canal 0.09 1.00 0.91 (channel) Chute 0.10 1.00 0.90 (kick)
Vehicle (literal translation)
Table 5. Examples of vehicles with upward resetting
o (banco) firmou uma aliança estratégica com (companhia x) (the bank formed a strategic alliance with (company x)) a economia parada (slow economy) acho que precisa de uma bola de cristal para saber o que vai acontecer (I think we need a crystal ball to know what’s going to happen) é isso que nós jogamos na projeção (that’s what we build into our projection) bases essenciais para que estes objetivos sejam atingidos (essential basis for us to meet our objectives) aí tem uma fotografia do que é a transação (there’s a snapshot of what a transaction is) que mostra a confiança que o mercado tem depositado no (banco) (that shows the trust that the market has placed in the bank) eu entenderia que eles estariam guardando bala (I would understand that they were holding fire) mas isso é loteria, não temos idéia do que vai ocorrer (but this is a lottery, we have no idea what’s going to happen) nós temos a moeda dólar travada para a aquisição (we have the dollar locked in for the acquisition) como isso poderia empatar o balanço em reais (how that might balance the books in Brazilian reais) entre outras estratégias que o banco pode adotar, um canal alternativo (among other strategies that the bank may adopt, an alternative channel) isso não foi um chute, foi sim uma análise metodológica (that was not a guess, it was a methodological analysis)
Example (adapted translation)
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
General corpus
Specialised corpus Resetting
Volátil 1.00 1.00 0.00 (volatile) Turbulências 1.00 1.00 0.00 (turbulence) Solvabilidade 1.00 1.00 0.00 (solvability) Segmentos 1.00 1.00 0.00 (segments) Refletiria 1.00 1.00 0.00 (would reflect) Reestruturação 1.00 1.00 0.00 (restructuring) Rede 1.00 1.00 0.00 (network) Patamares 1.00 1.00 0.00 (threshold) Oscilação 1.00 1.00 0.00 (oscillation) Organicamente 1.00 1.00 0.00 (organically) Nuances 1.00 1.00 0.00 (nuances) Nicho 1.00 1.00 0.00 (niche) Metas 1.00 1.00 0.00 (goals)
Vehicle (literal translation)
Table 6. Examples of vehicles with no resetting
em função da conjuntura mais volátil (because of the more volatile conjuncture) bastante importante para o Brasil apesar das turbulências (very important to Brazil despite the turbulence) a evolução e a composição do índice de solvabilidade (the evolution and composition of the solvability index) nós estamos indo e indo com sucesso para novos segmentos (we are successfully going to other segments) esta crise se refletiria no aumento da taxa de câmbio (this crisis would reflect in the rise of the exchange rate) a nossa expectativa é que as despesas de reestruturação . . . (our expectation is that restructuring costs. . .) continuamos expandindo a rede de agências (we continue to expand our branch network) o patrimônio líquido do banco tem se mantido em patamares bastante elevados (the bank’s liquid assests have remained at very high levels) reversão da provisão da oscilação do dólar (reversal of fluctuation of the dollar) essa área continuará crescendo mais rápido organicamente (this area will continue to grow faster organically) Não é uma pergunta fácil de responder porque ela tem diversas nuances (this is not an easy question to answer because it has several nuances) nosso banco ele é bastante segmentado e cada nicho tem um diretor (our bank is well segmented, and each niche has a director) Projeções, metas operacionais e financeiras (Projections, operational and financial goals)
Example (adapted translation)
Tony Berber Sardinha
General corpus
Specialised corpus Resetting
Vamos 0.15 0.03 –.12 (go) Leva 0.75 0.60 –.15 (take) Fechar 0.66 0.50 –.16 (closing) Papel 0.68 0.50 –.18 (role) Em cima 0.70 0.50 –.20 (on top of) Monte 0.72 0.50 –.22 (mount) Recuperação 0.79 0.56 –.23 (recovery) Passou 0.95 0.71 –.25 (passed)
Vehicle (literal translation)
Table 7. Examples of vehicles with downward resetting
(continued)
vamos ao próximo slide, nº 5 (let’s go to the next slide, #5) o que que leva o banco a ter esta exposição (which makes the bank have such exposition) que deverá ocorrer com o fechar do ano (which should happen at the closing of the year) o setor financeiro tem um papel importante dentro da economia brasileira (the banking sector has an important role in the Brazilian economy) em cima deste modelo nós avaliamos diversas hipóteses (we have evaluated several hypotheses related to this model) se há um monte de ajustes a serem feitos (if there are heaps of adjustments to be made) perspectiva de longo prazo a nosso ver de recuperação (long term perspectives of recovery, in our view) a margem financeira que passou de 1 bilhão e 831 milhões no 1º trimestre (the financial margin that exceeded 1 billion, 831 million in the first quarter)
Example (adapted translation)
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
General corpus
Specialised corpus Resetting
Inferior 0.84 0.53 –.31 (lower) Diante 0.59 0.20 –.39 (in front of) Dão 0.75 0.33 –.42 (give) Quadro 0.50 0.05 –.45 (framework) Entrar 0.75 0.25 –.50 (enter) Passo 0.85 0.33 –.51 (pass) Deu 0.81 0.25 –.56 (gave)
Vehicle (literal translation)
Table 7. Continued
a evolução de 8,5 no exercício é inferior à inflação (the evolution of 8.5 in the year is lower than inflation) se é que dá pra fazer diante de todos esses discursos dos candidates (if we can do it at all given all this talk by the candidates) no caso de uma desvalorização não dão problema (in the case of devaluation they don’t cause any problems) em consonância com o quadro econômico que o país está vivendo (in agreement with the economic framework that the country is living in) É uma pergunta filosófica; portanto não vou entrar nela (A philosophical question; I won’t get into it) eu passo a palavra ao Dr (nome omitido) (I give the floor to Dr (name omitted)) você me deu um susto (you gave me a fright)
Example (adapted translation)
Tony Berber Sardinha
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
Table 6 presents vehicles that showed no resetting. These tend to be technical words from the domain of business and finance whose metaphorical uses became more typical than the technical meaning from other areas. For example, the metaphorical sense of volatilidade (volatility) that refers to the characteristic of a market to fall and rise sharply is much more common than the source meaning from chemistry (i.e., something that turns into vapour). Similarly, in the general corpus “turbulence” now refers more frequently to instability in the economy than to instability of a gas, or to trouble during a flight, and this reflects the fact that these topics are more talked about in our two corpora. Besides business metaphors, some of these vehicles with zero resetting include general concepts used in different areas, such as metas (goals) and nicho (niche). Table 7 gives examples of vehicles with downward resetting, that is, words whose probabilities were lower in the specialised corpus in comparison with general corpus. These tend to be general words in the language, such as high frequency verb forms (vamos/go, leva/take, passou/passed, fechou/closed, deu/gave) and prepositional groups (em cima de/on top of, diante de/in front of). This set also includes frequent nouns such as recuperação (recovery), quadro (framework) and papel (role).
Word class probabilities In this section, the probabilities of metaphor vehicles being certain word classes are presented. These probabilities were calculated as follows: for each word class, in each corpus, the frequency of vehicle word forms was divided by the frequency of non-vehicle word forms. Consequently, word class probabilities refer to vehicle word forms only, and not all nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on in the corpora. For instance, in the case of nouns, first we counted how many vehicles were nouns (a), then we computed all occurrences of the same word forms in each corpus (b), and we finally divided (a) by (b). The same method was applied to all other categories. Results appear in Table 8. Table 8. Probabilities of vehicles being a word class
Probability
Class
General corpus
Specialised corpus
Types*
Adjective Adverb Article Conjunction Noun Numeral Pronoun Preposition Verb
0.73 0.63 0.00 0.00 0.69 0.00 0.00 0.61 0.70
0.93 0.96 0.00 0.00 0.96 0.00 0.00 0.73 0.91
74 (17%) 9 (2%) 0 0 151 (34%) 0 0 5 (1%) 202 (46%)
*The count of types (441) is higher than the count of vehicle types (423) because a word form can be more than one word class.
Tony Berber Sardinha
The figures in Table 8 show that the vehicles tend to be lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs). Vehicles are rarely grammatical (or function) words, with the exception of prepositions. For the general corpus, words are more likely to be vehicles if they are adjectives, followed by verbs, adverbs, nouns and prepositions. For the specialised corpus, this order changes substantially. They are most probably nouns, followed by adverbs, adjectives, verbs and prepositions. Results show a high level of upward probability resetting in the specialised corpus, with vehicles strengthening their probabilities across the board in comparison to the general corpus. All categories but one (prepositions) are clearly in a skew distribution, of the kind 0.9: 0.1 or higher in the specialised corpus. In the general corpus, most are skew (0.07: 0.3 or 1.0: 0), but two of them are within the “equiprobable range” (Halliday 1993: 38), namely adverbs and prepositions. This resetting reflects the shift for individual words, shown above. The biggest changes were for adverbs (+ 0.3284) and nouns (+ 0.2730).
Summary and discussion Our findings suggest that probabilities of metaphor use are high or moderately high in general. The high probabilities associated with metaphorical use that we found in this study contrast with previous studies reviewed. In general, our calculations based on published figures in previous literature (Charteris-Black 2004; Deignan & Potter 2004) presented a picture of metaphor as not being the default option in language, despite being a frequent phenomenon. The fact that our findings suggest otherwise perhaps has to do with the difference in methodology between this study and previous investigations. Previous studies were largely based on searching corpora for selected words; only a fraction of the total words in those corpora were considered, which may have resulted in bias. In this study, by contrast, all words were taken into account, which has levelled the playing field, as it were, allowing all words a chance to be included in the sample. If a pre-selection process had been applied to our data, some high probability words might have been ignored, thus lowering the overall probability level in the whole dataset. However, this study alone cannot provide the final answer on the probability of metaphor in language. This would require large scale investigations across several registers in different languages. Our results also showed that there is a higher probability associated with a word form recurring as a Vehicle in a specialised corpus (0.86) than in general language (0.73). This is in accordance with Halliday’s theory that suggests that registers reset the general probabilities of language. In our case, this resetting was in the direction of making probabilities stronger in the specialised register, but this does not need to be necessarily the case, at least in theory. Metaphors form a skew distribution, of the kind that Halliday (1991) found for systems in the grammar of English such as polarity. These figures provide quantitative
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
c orroboration of the systematic nature of metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). More specifically, these high probabilities in specialised language also reflect the metaphorical nature of terminology, as certain metaphors become the “default” or “unmarked” way of referring to a number of concepts and topics in the domain of market trading. The fact that the probability profile for metaphors is skew in turn indicates that words may be primed for metaphor, just as they are primed for collocation and grammatical class: By primed, I mean that as the word is learnt through encounters with it in speech and writing, it is loaded with the cumulative effects of those encounters such that it is part of our knowledge of the word (. . .) that it regularly co-occurs with particular other words. (Hoey 2004: 23).
I would argue that metaphoricity is one of the characteristics that words are primed for; it is part of the knowledge that language users have about lexis. The fact that our findings showed probabilities of metaphor use has theoretical implications. Firstly, none of the available theories of metaphor can account for probabilities of metaphor use. In Conceptual Metaphor Theory, for example, the claim that metaphor is ubiquitous does not lead us to the patterns of probability found in this study. Nor does it explain the amount of variation and stability in the metaphorical senses found in the data. As Zanotto, Cameron and Cavalcanti (in the introduction to this volume) argue, the presence of variation and stability poses a challenge for theories of metaphor in general, but at the same time it highlights the need for an applied linguistic perspective on metaphor. Secondly, whereas theories of metaphor emphasise the ubiquity of metaphor, our findings point toward the inevitability of metaphor. This means that in certain contexts (as in our banking domain corpus), for words with metaphoric potential, speakers communicate almost entirely through metaphor. This suggests that participants must know their metaphors in order to belong in that discourse community.
Conclusion Metaphor has normally been considered a frequent device in language use. Recent corpus studies have confirmed that metaphor is indeed common. This investigation is in agreement with previous corpus-based studies, in that metaphorical uses tended to be frequent in our data. However, our findings indicated that metaphor is not only frequent, but in many cases it is also the most probable option in language use for words that have some metaphorical potential. This is in line with Deignan’s comments, according to which “contemporary corpus data show that metaphorical senses of some words are used as frequently as, or even more frequently than, non-metaphorical senses” (Deignan 2005: 94). A large-scale quantitative profile as provided by this study makes this point perhaps more salient, in that it enabled us to notice the high metaphoric
Tony Berber Sardinha
probability of a large number of word forms, as compared to the low probabilities of metaphoricity of a small set of word forms. There seems to be a case here for suggesting that corpus linguistic investigations of metaphor should report more directly the probability of non-metaphorical uses ones as well. This would enable the audience to better judge the actual metaphorical potential of the words and patterns being investigated. Implementing this would not be problematic, since probabilities are easy to calculate. Researchers who extract frequency of metaphors automatically have all the data that are needed to compute these probabilities: the concordancer or frequency wordlister provides the total occurrences of a word in the corpus; by examining the citations, he/she will determine the total number of metaphorical uses. Now it is a simple matter to divide the metaphor frequency by the total number of occurrences. Of course, when researchers are dealing with corpora of many millions of words, this will have to be done with a sample of total citations of each word, as it is normally done (e.g., Deignan & Potter 2004, who used 1000 concordance lines for each word). We are not claiming, though, that all corpus-based investigations ought to report probabilities or even proportions of metaphor use; each study will report data in the way that it sees fit. What we are suggesting, though, is that researchers have access to these probabilities and keep them in mind in order to have a clearer perspective on the extent to which metaphor is typical / atypical, likely / unlikely and so on. In addition to broadening our understanding of the pervasiveness of metaphor in language use, a probabilistic account has practical applications as well. One of these is to use probabilities as a means for ranking word senses in dictionaries. Senses with the higher probability should appear first in a dictionary entry, even if it is a metaphorical one. In English dictionaries, this is standard practice, unlike in Brazilian Portuguese dictionaries. Take the word patamar (threshold), for instance, which came up in our data with a 1.0 probability of metaphorical use, meaning “abstract level”. In the Dicionário Houaiss (Houaiss, Salles Villar, & Franco, 2001), a recent authoritative dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese, this sense appears last, glossed as “a derivation; figurative sense”. The publishers do not make it clear to extent if any corpus data were used in the preparation of the dictionary, but several accounts indicate this was very limited. The top sense refers to the concrete meaning of an area on a staircase. The same is true of the more recent Dicionário UNESP do Português Contemporâneo (Borba 2004), a corpus-based dictionary, where “patamar” appears as the second of two senses, marked as “abstract”. The makers of this dictionary claim senses were ordered by corpus frequency, but this is not confirmed in this or in other cases from our data. In this dictionary, sometimes examples of a metaphorical use appear under a definition of a concrete sense, as for segmento (segment), which in our data has a 100% probability of metaphorical use and appears next to an example where segmento is used to talk about a (concrete) section of log. Awareness of probabilities of word senses in general and between metaphorical and non-metaphorical senses seems to be lacking in the examples looked at here.
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora
Another practical application of probability research is in the design of computer software for identifying metaphors in corpora. Since, as was shown here, metaphor uses are systematic, the computer might be programmed to pick up metaphorical uses of words based on their attested probability of metaphoricity. The software would have to be fed with information from a corpus such as ours, hand annotated for metaphor. The idea is for this program to operate fully on probabilistic principles, without any a priori rules about what a metaphor vehicle is. The rationale is that a robust corpus-attested probability profile of a word is a good guide for guessing the probability of that same word being used metaphorically in an unknown but similar corpus. These probabilities would be extracted from the corpus and this would help identify metaphors in other corpora of the same kind. Words in the corpus would be annotated with tags showing their probability of metaphorical use, and the user would then determine where to draw the line between metaphor and non-metaphor based on the probability tags.
References Bod, Rens (2003). Introduction to elementary probability theory and formal stochastic language theory. In R. Bod, J. Hay & S. Jannedy (Eds.), Probabilistic linguistics (11–38). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Bod, Rens, Jennifer Hay & Stefanie Jannedy, (2003a). Introduction. In R. Bod, J. Hay & S. Jannedy (Eds.), Probabilistic linguistics (1–10). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Bod, Rens, Jennifer Hay & Stefanie Jannedy (2003b). Probabilistic linguistics. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Boers, Frank & Murielle Demecheleer (1997). A few metaphorical models in (Western) economic discourse. In W.-A. Liebert, G. Redeker & L. Waugh (Eds.), Discourse and perspective in cognitive linguistics (47–56). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Borba, Francisco da Silva (2004). Dicionário UNESP do Português Contemporâneo (UNESP Dictionary of Contemporary Portuguese). São Paulo: UNESP. Brown, Theodore L. (2003). Making truth: Metaphor in science. University of Illinois Press. Cameron, Lynne (2002). Metaphors in the learning of science: A discourse focus. British Educational Research Journal, 28, 673–688. Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum. Chambers, Jackfc K. (1995). Sociolinguistic theory: Linguistic variation and its social significance (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwells. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Chomsky, Noam (1969). Quine’s empirical assumptions. In D. Davidson, W. V. Quine & H. Jaakko (Eds.), Words and objections. Essays on the work of W.V. Quine (53–68). Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Cortazzi, Martin & Lixian Jin (1999). Bridges to learning: Metaphors of teaching, learning and language. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (149–176). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deignan, Alice (1999). Linguistic metaphor and collocation in nonliterary corpus data. Metaphor and Symbol, 14(1), 19–36.
Tony Berber Sardinha Deignan, Alice (2005). Metaphor and corpus linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Deignan, Alice, Danuta Gabrys & Agnieszka Solska (1997). Teaching English metaphors using cross-linguistic awareness-taising activities. ELT Journal, 51, 352–360. Deignan, Alice & Liz Potter (2004). A corpus study of metaphors and metonyms in English and Italian. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 1231–1252. Gibbs, Raymond W. & Heather Franks (2002). Embodied metaphor in women”s narratives about their experiences with cancer. Health Communication, 14, 139–165. Halliday, Michael A. K. (1991). Corpus studies and probabilistic grammar. In K. Aijmer & B. Altenberg (Eds.), English corpus linguistics: Studies in honour of Jan Svartvik (30–43). London: Longman. Halliday, Michael A. K. (1992). Language as system and language as instance: The corpus as a theoretical construct. In J. Svartvik (Ed.), Directions in corpus linguistics. Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 82, Stockholm, 4-8 August 1991 (61–78). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. Halliday, Michael A. K. (1993). Quantitative studies and probabilities in grammar. In M. Hoey (Ed.), Data description discourse-Papers on the English language in honour of John McH Sinclair on his Sixtieth Birthday (1–25). London: HarperCollins. Hoey, Michael (2004). The textual priming of lexis. In G. Aston, S. Benardini & D. Stewart (Eds.), Corpora and language learners (21–44). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Houaiss, Antonio, Mauro de S. Villar & Francisco M. de Mello Franco (2001). Houaiss Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (Houaiss Dictionary of the Portuguese Language). Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Objetiva. Kilpert, Diana (2003). Getting the full picture: A reflection on the work of M.A.K. Halliday. Language Sciences, 25, 159–209. Koller, Veronika (2004). Metaphor and gender in business media discourse: A critical cognitive study. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lakoff, George (2002). Moral politics: How Liberals and Conservatives think (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Manning, Christopher D. (2003). Probabilistic syntax. In R. Bod, J. Hay & S. Jannedy (Eds.), Probabilistic linguistics (289–342). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Mason, Oliver (1997). QTAG-A Portable probabilistic tagger computer software. (Version 1). Birmingham: University of Birmingham http://www.english.bham.ac.uk/staff/omason/ software/qtag.html Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. (2002). Systemic functional profiles of system and text: investigations based on texts, text archives and corpora. Presented at the International Systemic Functional Congress, Liverpool: UK. Moules, Nancy J., Kari Simonson, Mark Prins, Paula Angus, & Janice M. Bell, (2004). Making room for grief: walking backwards and living forward. Nursing Inquiry, 11, 99–107. Musolff, Andreas (2004). Metaphor and political discourse: Analogical reasoning and debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Nesbitt, Christopher & Gunther Plum (1988). Probabilities in a systemic grammar: The clause complex in English. In R. P. Fawcett & D. Young (Eds.), New developments in systemic linguistics (6–38). London: Pinter. Partington, Alan (2003). The linguistics of political argument-The spin-doctor and the wolf-pack at the White House. London: Routledge.
Chapter 6. Metaphor probabilities in corpora Richards, Ivor A. (1936). The philosophy of rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Salager-Meyer, Françoise (1990). Metaphors in medical English prose: A comparative study with French and Spanish. English for Specific Purposes. 9, 145–159. Shimazumi, Marilisa (1996). The Knower and the informant in institutional talk: A Transitivity perspective. Unpublished MA dissertation. AELSU, University of Liverpool: United Kingdom.
chapter 7
Corpus linguistic data and conceptual metaphor theory Alice Deignan Among the arguments made in this book is that developing an accurate understanding of the way metaphor is used in various contexts is important both for research in applied linguistics, and for the development of language instruction materials. The research described in this chapter contributes to that understanding by bringing together models and tools from two different fields. I argue that linguistic metaphor in use has characteristics not explained by current theoretical models. This implies that one goal for applied linguistic research into metaphor must be to develop theory that accounts for these characteristics, and is at the same time coherent with what is known about cognitive aspects of metaphor. The first of the fields that I discuss, conceptual metaphor theory, was developed within the discipline of cognitive linguistics, although not all cognitive linguists subscribe to it by any means. The second is corpus linguistics. This has become well known as a research methodology over a similar time span to conceptual metaphor theory, that is, from the late 1970s onwards. Corpus linguistics has had a huge impact on descriptions of language in use, especially at the lexical level. The two fields work with different types of data and towards different goals, but it has been demonstrated by several researchers that corpus linguistics can bring new insights into the study of metaphor (for example, Charteris-Black 2004; Koller 2002; Cameron & Deignan 2003). The relationship works both ways: conceptual metaphor theory is attractive to corpus linguists and other researchers who have worked with meaning in naturallyoccurring data, for two reasons. Firstly, conceptual metaphor theory recognises the ubiquity of metaphor. This accords with the experience of corpus linguists that a large proportion of the concordances of many words are accounted for by non-literal uses. For instance, in the Bank of English1 corpus, the majority of the verbal uses of blossom are associated with relationships and other abstract entities, rather than with its literal
1. The Bank of English is a corpus of contemporary written and spoken English, owned by HarperCollins Publishers and held at the University of Birmingham. The corpus data discussed in this chapter were taken from a 59 million word sample of the Bank of English.
Alice Deignan
meaning, the flower of fruit trees. Secondly, conceptual metaphor theory provides an explanation for the systematicity in metaphorical uses that can be observed in some semantic groups. For instance, many verbs associated with plants, such as blossom, bloom, bear fruit and wither, have metaphorical uses with related meanings, used to talk about relationships, businesses and ideas. However, from the perspective of applied linguists, conceptual metaphor theory research is sometimes problematic in its choice and use of data. It will be argued here that this results in an over-simplified view of conceptual and linguistic metaphor and the connections between them. Corpus linguistic techniques can redress this problem, by enriching our understanding of the dynamic yet sometimes limited nature of metaphor in use. This chapter begins with a discussion of the use of language data in cognitive and psycholinguistic research, critiqued using corpus data. In the second half, it describes detailed corpus evidence for one conceptual metaphor, and discusses the implications of this for a theoretical position on metaphor.
Cognitive approaches and language Proponents of conceptual metaphor theory claim that what distinguishes their approach from earlier accounts of metaphor is that the conceptual level of mapping is seen as central, while language is secondary. According to conceptual metaphor theory, mental mappings are realized through linguistic metaphors, among other phenomena such as gesture, and it is the underlying mental mapping which results in systematicity at the linguistic level. Lakoff and Johnson write: . . . the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s conceptual system. (Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 6)
However, although the theory views language as subsidiary to thought, the evidence cited in support of it tends to be linguistic. In an early position paper, Lakoff wrote that three types of evidence convinced him of the centrality of metaphor to thought; these were:
1. “systematicity in the linguistic correspondences” of linguistic metaphors;
2. “The use of metaphor to govern reasoning and behaviour based on that reasoning”; and
3. “The possibility for understanding novel extensions in terms of the conventional correspondences.” (Lakoff 1990: 50)
The first of these is clearly linguistic and the third is linguistic by implication, referring to the semantic links often found between novel linguistic metaphors and
Chapter 7. Corpus linguistic data and conceptual metaphor theory
existing conventional metaphors. The second is not linguistic, but it is much less straightforward to demonstrate than the first and third, and is therefore rarely used as central evidence in the conceptual metaphor theory literature. Like Lakoff, Kövecses places great importance on linguistic evidence, writing, “in order to be able to arrive at [. . .] metaphors, metonymies and inherent concepts [. . .] one needs to study the conventionalised linguistic expressions that are related to a given notion,” (Kövecses 1991: 30). Gibbs (for example, 1994) is concerned with figurative thought and thought processes and has researched these using a range of experimental techniques. The connection with figurative language in his work is inevitable. People communicate their thoughts using language, and his experiments tend to consider people’s reactions to instances of language. It is difficult to imagine how experimental research into figurative thought can be conducted without language. It seems then that while on the one hand researchers in the cognitive tradition tend to downplay the importance of language, arguing that it is secondary to thought, they nonetheless depend on language to advance theory and knowledge. It is argued in the next section that this double-edged attitude towards language leads to problems.
Problems with the cognitive approach to linguistic evidence From the perspective of the applied corpus linguist, there is a central problem with the language data that many researchers use either to support or refute conceptual metaphor theory: they are often invented. The data are generally of two types: they are produced from the researcher’s or participants’ intuitions, or they are gathered from psycholinguistic experiments, such as testing and comparing participants’ reactions to various metaphorical and non-metaphorical language items in invented texts. This applies to many researchers who work tightly within the conceptual metaphor theory paradigm, and also more widely to cognitive linguistic research into metaphor. Applied and corpus linguists have known for some years that intuition is not a good guide to language use (for example, Sinclair 1991, 2004), and it has been shown that sentences invented for the study of metaphor often contain atypical word meanings and lexico-grammatical structures (for example, Deignan 2005). A further problem is that the invented data tend to consist of single sentences or at best short paragraphs, lacking in context, and therefore sometimes suggesting ambiguity that is rarely present in natural discourse. These three problems: the use of invented data, the use of data with insufficient context, and the perception of ambiguity, are inter-related and therefore may cluster in a single piece of research. For example, a researcher may invent groups of sentences that show atypical meaning and use, and are largely context-free, and therefore potentially ambiguous. A prompt sentence from work by Gernsbacher et al (2001) illustrates this. Their experimental work tested how quickly participants were able to agree that
Alice Deignan
particular statements were true, depending on whether they had read a metaphorical, literal or nonsensical sentence first. For example, participants would read: 1. That defense lawyer is a shark. and then be asked to judge the veracity of
2. Sharks are tenacious.
Corpus investigation suggests that the metaphorical sentence, which appears to have been invented, is atypical in meaning. The researchers claim that the metaphorical meaning of shark is “tenacious” and perhaps “vicious”. A corpus analysis of metaphorical shark(s) suggests that this is not usually the case. There are 321 citations of shark in the corpus, of which 11 are metaphorical. They are shown in the following concordance. Concordance of shark, literal citations deleted. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
at Carlsbad, fumed: ‘I’m not a shark I’m not greedy. I’m not banks were also victims in the loan shark scam. Spring: Either anks has been accused of using loan shark tactics after charging Dressed in black, his Miami loan shark visits LA to round up money date stars John Travolta as a loan shark who goes to Hollywood faulted on a debt he owes to a loan shark, or moneylender. It’s starts to sell is his own a loan shark’s enforcer who comes out turns up the pressure. But the loan shark offers hope with a sordid lso been to your apartment.’ A loan shark?” Marlette asked Perhaps if her family included Mr Shark The Slum Landlord or Mr hundred grand, and he pays back the shark, stiffs the kid, and
In all these citations, shark is used to connote unscrupulous and greedy behaviour in business or occasionally legal dealings, particularly when this involves exploiting vulnerable people. The quality of tenacity, highlighted in Gernsbacher et al’s research, was not evident in these citations. The concordance of the plural, sharks, confirmed this. There are 38 citations of the metaphorical use of the plural form, which show the same meaning as the singular. There are also 5 similies, where the meaning focuses on the way literal sharks kill and eat swiftly and mercilessly. As well as in meaning, Gernsbacher et al’s “That defense lawyer is a shark” is atypical in its structure. A=B metaphors have been found to be rare in naturally-occurring discourse (Cameron 2003). This is confirmed in this case by the corpus. Of the 11 metaphorical forms of shark in the corpus, only one resembles an A=B form, the first citation in the concordance above, “I’m not a shark”. The second problem, lack of context, also appears here. In one sense, Gernsbacher et al’s research is all about context, because it investigates the effect of the preceding sentence on comprehension. However, there is no wider context for each pair of sentences. In this the use of shark in “That defense lawyer is a shark” is clearly atypical of metaphors in naturally-occurring discourse, where the metaphor would usually be
Chapter 7. Corpus linguistic data and conceptual metaphor theory
part of a longer sequence of text. The following corpus citation shows how context builds up to a metaphorical interpretation of sharks: 3. Speaker 1: What about the taxi did you manage to get a new cab? Speaker 2: Er I did yeah, my brother-in-law he helped me quite a bit er he borrowed me quite a bit of money and he says well you know if you take a loan from those loan sharks you’ll be paying interest back forever so he goes I’ve got a bit of money you can borrow that off me. (UK spoken corpus)
The same holds for the following corpus citations, from different dialects and genres:
4. [name] vehemently denied media reports that he had a financial stake in the proposed World Golf Tour. [name], speaking on the eve of the US Tour’s Mercedes championship at Carlsbad fumed “I’m not a shark. I’m not greedy. I’m not involved in the World Tour financially”. (Australian newspaper corpus)
5. And I borrow money here and there and buy that old truck and build the cabin on it and try to keep eating on about fifty dollars a month and hope to God the loan sharks won’t figure out where I am and take the truck back. (US books)
A second example of data used in experimental work is now given, to demonstrate further the problems of basing metaphor research on decontextualised language. Here, the linguistic prompts appear after a paragraph setting the scene, but they nonetheless lack naturalistic features. Hamblin & Gibbs (1999) explored the decompositionality of socalled frozen idioms. They were specifically looking at the effect of the literal meaning of the verb on the overall meaning of the idiom, for instance the effect of literal meaning of kick on the idiomatic meaning of kick the bucket. In one experiment they asked participants to judge the appropriateness of the speaker’s last utterance to the context of the story. For each story, participants were in two groups, one of which had stories that were judged appropriate to the idiom, and one that had stories where the idiom was judged inappropriate because the literal meaning of the verb was incongruent with the overall idiomatic meaning of the phrase. One pair of stories was as follows:
Mr. Jones was the healthiest man in his town. He bragged about never having been in hospital. One day, Mr. Jones had a sudden massive heart attack. Mrs Jones called 911 and the paramedics rushed to the scene. “It looks like he died instantly,” one paramedic said to the other. “I’m sorry Mrs. Jones,” said the paramedic. “Mr Jones kicked the bucket.”
Mr Jones had been very ill and in the hospital for years. He had a terminal disease with no hope of recovery. Mr Jones had been on a respirator for the last few months. Finally, after years of battling the illness, the fight was over. Mr Jones’ doctor came into the hospital room “He’s finally in peace,” the doctor told the family. “Mr Jones kicked the bucket.” (Hamblin & Gibbs 1999: 30–31)
Alice Deignan
The intention is that the first story gives a more appropriate use of the idiom kick the bucket because the manner of death is quick, in common with the literal meaning of kick. Hamblin and Gibbs’ participants found, as the researchers expected, that the idiom was more apt in the first story. However, the above texts differ from naturally occurring texts, in a way applied linguists would consider critical. Both stories give context for the use of the idiom in the sense of background information, but neither of them suggests anything about the original intended audience, the type of text this is intended to represent, or the purpose of the text. Neither story gives us any information about the writer or speaker, and his or her relationship towards the events described and towards the intended audience. Naturally-occurring texts generally contain clues as to all of these; in Halliday’s (1978) terms, the field, tenor and mode of a text are realised through choices at the levels of discourse, grammar and lexis (and phonology in spoken texts). A further problem with the use of kick the bucket in these stories is that it is inappropriate from an interpersonal and pragmatic perspective. In the American English section of the corpus, there is just one instance of the idiom, in the following citation:
6. Moss Hanley said the old girl is about to kick the bucket anyway got some sort of kidney infection.
The citation is taken from Sort of Rich, a novel by James Wilcox that takes a comic perspective on many of the events it depicts. The rest of the citation contains clues that this section of the text is intended to be read as light-hearted and informal, in particular the reference to the character about to die as “the old girl”. Other citations of kick the bucket from the British section of the corpus support the contention that the idiom is used in informal settings, and connotes an irreverent view of death. On this evidence, it is highly unlikely that it would be used by medical staff in speaking to a bereaved family. Another problem for work relying on invented data, ambiguity, was mentioned above. The design of some psycholinguistic experiments seems to assume that polysemous words are inherently ambiguous. Giora describes one type, lexical decision tasks, as follows: “Participants are engaged in lexical decision tasks when, upon encountering a critical (ambiguous, figurative) word in a (context of a) target sentence, they have to make a decision as to whether a probe is a word or a non-word,” (Giora 2002: 493). The target sentences are generally designed either so that one meaning of the polysemous word is more likely, or so that either meaning is possible, that is, so that the word is ambiguous in its context, and participants’ reactions are compared in some way. Frisson & Pickering (2001) observed the eye movements of their participants when reading sentences containing polysemous words where the preceding context did not disambiguate. The corpus linguist’s difficulty with research of this kind is that ambiguity seems to be very rare in natural discourse. For instance, the concordance and longer citations of shark show how the immediate linguistic co-text tends to disambiguate.
Chapter 7. Corpus linguistic data and conceptual metaphor theory
The metaphorical meaning of shark collocates strongly with words from the semantic field of finance and crime, while the literal sense was found to collocate with words associated with the sea and marine life. If we can tentatively assume that readers and hearers build up expectations of what meanings are being created in the text as it unfolds, on the basis of typical word and meaning combinations, then there is far less of a problem with interpreting either literal or figurative language than the psycholinguistic experimental tradition would suggest. Sinclair’s comment that “ambiguity in a text is created by the method of observation, and not the structure of the text” (Sinclair 2004: 137) may apply. Researchers in this tradition make no claim that the language they use is natural. They are seeking to demonstrate the nature of mental links and categories rather than to explore the nature of metaphorical language in use. Nonetheless, it can be argued that the readers in their experiments are forced into atypical processing behaviour because they are required to deal with very unusual language, largely devoid of the usual clues that people would use in natural language use.
Using corpora to research metaphor So far, this chapter has shown how corpus data raise questions about other research traditions. Corpora have also contributed in their own right to our understanding of metaphor in use. The corpus research summarised in this section is part of a wider attempt to investigate the claims of conceptual metaphor theory through the examination of naturally-occurring linguistic metaphors. Here, a single conceptual metaphor is discussed, perhaps the best-known from the literature on conceptual metaphor theory: argument is war. Before discussing results of the corpus analysis, I comment on methodology.
Corpus methodology In order to explore argument is war through the corpus, the most obvious and frequent lexis from the source domain of war, words such as attack and defend, were analysed using concordance data, and then hyponyms and other related lexis were also studied. The first source for these was the discussion of the metaphor in Lakoff & Johnson (1980). Other words were added to the study as they emerged through their regular collocation with the original search words. Because this research starts with the analysis of words that have been chosen on the basis of pre-existing theory, it is not corpus-driven. Corpus-driven work develops directly from some form of automatic processing of the corpus, without a priori theoretical assumptions. Tognini-Bonelli (2001) contrasts corpus-driven research with corpus-based research, and characterises corpus-based research as that in which the corpus is used as a source of data to support or develop existing theory. Corpus-based research is not truly
Alice Deignan
exploratory, because it would be possible to find linguistic examples from any sizeable corpus to support almost any theoretical position. For instance, it will be shown below that a selective choice of examples would support a highly simplistic, but in fact inaccurate, understanding of conceptual metaphor theory. Corpus-based work is thus seen in a negative light by most corpus linguists. However, corpus-based and corpus-driven work could be seen as opposite ends of a cline, with many corpus studies, including this one, falling between these extremes. In my analysis of war lexis, I attempt to avoid the pitfalls of corpus-based work by studying all citations of each expression, or randomly sampled extracts of them, and attempting to classify every citation. This should help to avoid one of the key dangers of corpus-based work, the selective choice of examples that seem to confirm a preexisting hypothesis. Further, in using collocational information as starting points for further searches, the procedure allows for the unexpected to emerge from the corpus. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the procedure is corpus-based rather than driven in that it starts with the assumption that argument is war is a mapping worth investigating, and it will not unearth other mappings from the corpus, unless through a lucky chance.
Linguistic evidence for argument is war A central claim of conceptual metaphor theory is that source domains structure target domains through conceptual metaphors: logical relationships in the source domain are re-created in the target domain. The direction of the metaphor- that is, which domain is source and which is target- is not readily testable through corpus data. This needs to be established through semantic tests which look at qualities such as concrete and abstract meaning. However, the corpus can be used to examine whether the relationships between entities in each domain mirror each other. The existence of mirror sets of relationships would be consistent with the notion of one domain being structured by the other. The test is done by concordancing key lexis from the domain considered to be the source domain, in this case, war, and analysing the logical relations between the source and target domain meanings of each word. For argument is war, it is easily demonstrable that the logical relations between the meanings in the domain of argument generally parallel those in the domain of war (Deignan 2005). For instance, literal attack and defend have a relationship of antonymy, as do nominal attack and defence (US defense), as can be seen in the following corpus citations.
7. Ministers were attacked for withholding the truth.
8. The teenager was defended by his mum Sue on the doorstep of their family home yesterday.
9. That idea is still under attack.
10. Voices were being raised in defence of the system.
Chapter 7. Corpus linguistic data and conceptual metaphor theory
This, along with the relations between other words that occur in both domains, is consistent with the conceptual metaphor theory claim that the domain of argument is structured by the domain of war, although in itself it is not proof of this. However, the next section raises some questions, not about the metaphorical structuring of the source and target domains, but about the extent and boundaries of the conceptual metaphor.
The scope of the linguistic metaphors While the citations quoted in the previous section appear to support the existence of the conceptual metaphor argument is war, a more detailed study of the central words and expressions from the domain of war suggests a more complex picture. Concordances show that most of these words and expressions are used to talk about a far wider range of topics than argument and war, the meanings falling into two types of distribution. For the simpler of these types, the range of meanings can be explained by the existence of several other war metaphors, while for the second type there is less clarity. Examples of each are discussed. The nominal use of attack exemplifies the first, simpler type. There are five domains in which it is used particularly frequently: war, personal violence, sport, illness, argument. Typical citations are: war : 11. . . . to deter an American military attack against Iraq.
12. The latest rebel attack came as an American relief team . . .
personal violence :
13. . . . during the vicious revenge attack in a lonely country lane.
14. . . . after the killer’s attack left her brain-damaged in 1996. sport:
15. . . . we have explosive match-winners in our attack.
16. with David Fitzgerald in goal the Cork attack are going to find it
extremely . .
illness :
17. Aged only 52, Dior died of a heart attack in 1957.
18. . . . he had experienced a classical attack of migraine.
argument :
19. . . . what has become a regular attack on the sport’s governing body . . .
20. [he] then launched a bitter attack on the Tory press.
It is difficult to see the domain of personal violence as a target domain structured by the source domain of war. The domain of personal violence should perhaps be regarded as a sub-domain of war, sharing with war the notions of attack and defence, but not usually those of planning, strategy and competition. There then seems to be
Alice Deignan
no problem with regarding the other three domains as target domains, structured by the metaphors sport is war, illness is war and argument is war respectively. Kövecses uses the term “scope” of metaphor to describe “the full range of cases, that is, all the possible target domains, to which a given specific source domain concept (such as war, building, fire) applies” (Kövecses 2000: 80). He shows how some metaphors have a wide scope; that is, the source domain is mapped onto a number of target domains. The citations for nominal attack suggest that this is the case for the source domain of war. However, while many of the key linguistic metaphors associated with argument is war can be analysed as neatly as attack, others present a messier picture; these constitute the second type of meaning distribution. Among Lakoff and Johnson’s examples of argument is war is the following:
21. If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out. (Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 4)
Concordance data for strategy show a large number of meanings, by no means confined to the domains of argument and war, or even easily divisible into other discrete domains as was the case for attack, above.
Extract of the concordance for strategy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
I had to go to the board with a strategy for next year’s spending Vidal Sassoon on his business strategy, a regular face at the Pickwick the crux of the Bush campaign strategy. For three days in Mississippi, parallel of the mixed energy–strategy solutions of the animal world. a wider corporate environmental strategy which is currently being necessarily a sound financial strategy, since recently a lot of tomato to be said. In terms of grand strategy and of the wider war that in terms of picking a growth strategy for the future? 〈p〉 CRA/RTZ an equally brazen marketing strategy when it launched in Britain in to draw up a national military strategy involving simultaneous Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy. AQIS has been surrounded by 10 days ago that his employer’s strategy was to go out and “vaporise” the out a fire of this size. The strategy is to herd the fire away from The assumption behind this strategy is that healing should work to the development of a tourism strategy around Mackay. 〈p〉 Tourism
The concordance citations have been sorted alphabetically by the word occurring to the left of the node (which in many cases gives a strong clue to domain in itself). Citations 7 and 10 are from the domain of war. Citations 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 12 and 15 are all associated with the related domains of business, finance and employment though in several different ways, while citation 3 is from the domain of politics. Other domains represented in this extract are energy/the environment, medicine and fire-fighting. In the full concordance, the range of domains is still wider. From these data, there is
Chapter 7. Corpus linguistic data and conceptual metaphor theory
not a strong case for claiming that war is the source domain. Further, it is not easy to identify possible target domains clearly because each group of uses tends to merge into the next. The concordance for wipe out shows similar characteristics, and the case for war being the source domain is weak. Ritchie (2003) argues that the notion of war as source domain and argument as target breaks down when linguistic metaphors are examined in detail. He claims that many of the concepts that Lakoff and Johnson link to war could equally well correspond to activities such as a chess match, a bridge game, or a boxing match, in fact almost any of the numerous ways in which human beings compete with each other. Ritchie does not appear to use naturally-occurring data, but his findings are supported by the corpus. Grady’s (1997) work suggests a related theoretical account for the wide scope of some metaphors. He argues that many of the formulations commonly described as conceptual metaphors are actually at not the most basic level of mental mapping. He examined theories are buildings and argued that the basic level mappings involved are the more abstract organization is a physical structure and persisting is remaining erect. Buildings are prototypical structures and thus theories are buildings is a common instantiation of these two basic level metaphors. Grady’s argument explains apparent inconsistencies in the linguistic realisations of theories are buildings, and the spreading of this metaphor to a much wider range of topics. Semino’s (2005) detailed corpus analysis of verbs of speech activity supports Grady’s argument. This argument would also explain the behaviour of linguistic metaphors such as strategy and wipe out, which appear across a range of related domains. In this view, argument is war could be an instantiation of a more basic mental link, which could be expressed as mental activity (and competition) is physical activity (and competition). This part of the analysis has shown that while the notion of conceptual metaphors is superficially very attractive for linguistic description, a more basic level may be needed to explain some of the linguistic data. Conversely, the analysis has demonstrated how corpus linguistic data can be used to examine developments in metaphor theory. The discussion also demonstrates the need to look at corpus data in some depth and from a number of perspectives. A selective choice of concordance data could be used to support a simplistic view of conceptual metaphors but a more detailed and complete study raises problems with this view.
Fixed expressions in realizations of argument is war Studies of the other metaphors from the domain of war revealed a linguistic pattern that is not predicted by conceptual metaphor theory, though is unsurprising to experienced corpus linguists: the development of some fixed expressions. Interestingly, many of these are uniquely associated with the target domain. Three examples are discussed here. The verb shoot is rarely used metaphorically, but when it is metaphorical it is usually in the phrasal form shoot down, as in Lakoff and Johnson’s example “He shot down
Alice Deignan
all of my arguments” (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:4). Even shoot down is more frequently literal, but when it occurs with flames, the pattern is reversed. Citations of the expression shoot down in flames are always metaphorical in the corpus. The following citation is typical:
22. [He] has been surprised he says by the almost complete absence of adverse criticism, especially in America; “I expected to be shot down in flames”.
Similarly, the verb fire, meaning “shoot”, is rarely used metaphorically in the corpus as a whole. Fired collocates with shot or shots 290 times in the corpus, most of which are literal uses. There are 30 citations of fired with warning shot or shots. When plural, the meaning is literal in all but one case. However, the 4 citations of singular fired a warning shot are all metaphorical, as in:
23. Washington fired a warning shot at Tokyo yesterday, restating that sanctions would take hold on June 28 if the two sides did not reach a car agreement.
When the shot or shots fired are opening ones, whether singular or plural, the meaning is always metaphorical, as the five citations of this collocation show:
Extract of the concordance for fired
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
25-year-old farmer from Yeovil, fired his opening shots on Sunday, The opening shots have been fired in a new Tessa war. And the The opening shots were fired last week by Scottish Telecom, any more. Blur’s Damon Albarn fired the opening shot. When DJ on Tuesday night when Labor fired the opening shots in its telev
The concordance of gun/guns shows the same pattern; the word is rarely used metaphorically, but in the collocation guns blazing, metaphorical citations predominate. There are 33 citations of guns blazing, only four of which are literal. Of the 33 citations, 22 citations occur in the expression all guns blazing, all of which have a metaphorical meaning, as used in the following citation:
24. We need special people to come into English football, with special qualities. You need someone to come in with all guns blazing and say “What you’ve been doing is crap”.
Similarly, of the 96 citations of big guns, only four are literal, although nominal gun and guns are usually used with a literal meaning. The following citation is typical of the metaphorical use:
25. As the big guns of the financial world line up to sell you this form of investment, beware.
It is particularly noteworthy that all the component words in these multi-word expressions, as well as the word originally searched for, are from the source domain of war. In studying the concordance of a word such as verbal fire, it might be expected
Chapter 7. Corpus linguistic data and conceptual metaphor theory
that strong collocates would disambiguate between literal and metaphorical meanings. What would not usually be predicted is that collocates from the source domain, such as (warning) shot, would identify the target domain uses, yet this is what happens in all the cases described here. This phenomenon has been seen in other domains studied through corpus data; Deignan (1999) found that source domain collocates of nominal blow, (meaning “punch”) were often more frequent in the target domain: for instance, body blow and heavy blow tend to be metaphorical. There does not appear to be any aspect of conceptual metaphor theory, or developments from it, which would explain these two tendencies, firstly towards fixedness and secondly for some expressions, apparently composed completely of source domain words, to become uniquely associated with the target domain. However, clues can be found in the literature from related fields. Both applied and corpus linguists have identified and explored the tendency towards fixed expressions in some depth and from various perspectives (for instance, Wray 2002, Moon 1998), and in this light, the existence of many fixed expressions with metaphorical meaning is unsurprising. Carter (2004) argues, from his analysis of a corpus of spoken discourse, that much everyday language is creative. This could account for the development and embellishment of extended strings of metaphors. It is possible that these apparently opposing forces: fixedness and creativity; result in expressions such as all guns blazing. However, without further exploration, and possibly the use of sizeable diachronic corpora, it is impossible to be certain.
Conclusion For applied linguists Conceptual Metaphor Theory seems to have huge explanatory potential. However, some of the data that have been used both in support of it and to question it within cognitive linguistic traditions, are suspect for an applied or corpus linguist. When the theory is explored through corpus linguistic evidence, it is partly supported, but further questions are raised. Even allowing for theoretical developments in recent years, the cognitive approach to metaphor does not offer a complete account for patterns found in naturally-occurring language, at least as yet. For applied linguists researching metaphor, the question of linguistic patterning is an important one. Regularities have emerged again and again through corpus study, but the next step, generalisations from these, are more elusive. When some generalisations are established, we will be closer to a theory of metaphor that explains what we know about both its cognitive and linguistic properties.
References Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum Press. Cameron, Lynne & Alice Deignan (2003). Combining large and small corpora to investigate tuning devices around metaphor in spoken discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 18, 149–160.
Alice Deignan Carter, Ronald (2004). Language and creativity: The art of common talk. London: Routledge. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Deignan, Alice (1999). Linguistic metaphors and collocation in non-literary corpus data. Metaphor and Symbol, 14, 19–38. Deignan, Alice (2005). Metaphor and corpus linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Frisson, Steven & Martin Pickering (2001). Obtaining a figurative interpretation for a word: support for underspecification. Metaphor and Symbol, 16, 3&4. Gernsbacher, Morton Ann, Boaz Keysar, Rachel R.W. Robertson & Necia K.Werner (2001). The role of suppression and enhancement in understanding metaphors. Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 433–450. Gibbs, Raymond W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giora, Rachel (2002). Literal vs figurative language: Different or equal? Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 487–506. Grady, Joseph E. (1997). Theories are buildings revisited. Cognitive Linguistics, 8, 267–290. Halliday, Michael (1978). Language as social semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. Hamblin, Jennifer, L. & Raymond W. Gibbs (1999). Why you can’t kick the bucket as you slowly die: Verbs in idiom comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 20, 25–39. Koller, Veronika (2002). “A shotgun wedding”: Co-occurrence of war and marriage metaphors in mergers and acquisitions discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 17, 179–203. Kövecses, Zoltán (1991). Happiness: A definitional effort. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 6, 29–46. Kövecses, Zoltán (2000). The scope of metaphor. In A. Barcelona (Ed). Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: A cognitive perspective (79–92). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lakoff, George (1990) The Invariance Hypothesis: Is abstract reasoning based on image-schemas? Cognitive Linguistics, 1, 39–74. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Moon, Rosamund (1998). Fixed expressions and idioms in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ritchie, David (2003). argument is war- Or is it a game of chess? Multiple meanings in the analysis of implicit metaphors. Metaphor and Symbol, 18, 125–146. Semino, Elena (2005). The metaphorical construction of complex domains: The case of speech activity in English. Metaphor and Symbol, 20, 35–70. Sinclair, John (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, John (2004). Trust the text: Language, corpus and discourse. London: Routledge. Tognini-Bonelli, Elena (2001). Corpus linguistics at work. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wray, Alison (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
chapter 8
Exploring metaphors in corpora A study of ‘war’ in corpus generated data Solange Vereza
Analysing metaphors: the linguist’s intuition vs. real language use In the last decades there seems to have been a consensus among various scholars involved with the study of metaphor that their object of research is not merely a linguistic ornament characteristic of either poetic or “deceitful” discourses, as it is seen within the perspective of the long-standing Aristotelian tradition. Leaving behind this rather restricted view of metaphor, a substantial number of contemporary studies on figurative language are now based on the belief, which is becoming almost a premise nowadays, that not only is metaphor a phenomenon of both language and thought, but one which is pervasive in most language uses, from ordinary to scientific discourses. This new view of metaphor seems to have had an important impact on its status as an object of systematic investigation. Traditionally limited to the realm of literary scholarship and rhetoric, metaphor is now the centre of attention of cognitive scientists (e.g., Fauconnier 1994, 1997; Fauconnier & Turner 2002; Haskell 1987; Gibbs 1994), linguists (e.g., Sadock 1979; Sweetser 1990; Toolan 1996; Traugott 1986), philosophers (e.g., Black 1962, 1979; Kuhn 1979; Searle 1979), educators (e.g., Oshlag & Petrie 1979), applied linguists (Cameron 1999a, 1999b, 2003; Cameron & Low 1999a, 1999b) and cognitive linguists (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999). The massive body of research which has resulted from all this growing interest in metaphor constitutes an interdisciplinary area that has been referred to as “metaphorology” (Steen 1994), an area which is becoming so popular that trying to cover its present literature may be seen as “an overwhelming experience” (Gibbs 1999: 29). What seems to have emerged from this potentially chaotic scenario is the need for identifying and/or establishing possible parameters for mapping the vast amount and variety of research on metaphor. To this end, three aspects considered of fundamental importance have been accorded particular attention: defining the research object itself (what is metaphor?), operationalising it for research purposes (what would be a working definition for metaphor in particular studies?) and identifying and analysing the object
Solange Vereza
(how to investigate metaphor in thought and/or in discourse?). It might be argued that the latter aspect presupposes the other two: identifying and analysing metaphor would require a conceptualisation and operationalisation of metaphor. Another presupposition would be that these two methodological procedures, namely identification and analysis, would involve a linguistic corpus or a set of verbal protocols within which metaphors would be found (identified) and analysed, either in terms of their conceptual, semantic, linguistic, textual, pragmatic levels, or a combination of these. However, much of the work done on metaphor, more specifically on conceptual metaphor, does not draw its insights from analyses of metaphors found in real discourse or in verbal protocols (or other data supposedly representing or reflecting aspects of thought). As a matter of fact, cognitive linguists, i.e., those whose interests lie mostly in the study of conceptual metaphors, which are defined by Lakoff (1993: 203) as “cross domain mappings in the conceptual system”, are not necessarily engaged in analysing metaphors in language, as this is seen as ‘secondary’ (ibid. p. 208). Rather, they resort to made-up examples of “metaphoric expressions” or “realizations of cross-domain mappings” (p. 203), drawn, in principle, from their experiences and intuitions as native speakers, to be used as linguistic evidence of conceptual metaphors believed to underlie those expressions. To make a tentative or ‘working’ analogy with Chomsky’s famous dichotomy, cognitive linguists would only use ‘surface structures’ (“surface realizations”, Lakoff 1993: 203) as a means to arriving at the hypothesised ‘deep structures’, which would be those that really mattered theoretically for representing the sources from which the former would be generated. In other words, conceptual metaphors, like ‘deep structures’, would lie within the realm of ‘the mind’ (thought), conceptually motivating an endless number of coherent metaphoric expressions (‘surface structures’) to be found in language. These linguistic expressions would be, therefore, mere signals or markers of their ultimate source of meaning: their respective conceptual (‘mother’) metaphor. Despite the higher theoretical status enjoyed, in cognitive linguistics, by conceptual metaphors vis-à-vis their linguistic realisations, it might be reasonable to suppose that without the latter, there would be no evidence of the former: conceptual metaphors without their ‘linguistic markers’, ‘signals’ or ‘clues’ would probably represent an inadequate, unfalsifiable hypothesis and, as such, be rejected as a plausible scientific construct. The importance of Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980, 1999) examples or linguistic evidence of the conceptual metaphors the authors propose is undeniable. It would not be an easy task to refute the hypothesis that in our conceptual systems we ‘see’ or approach, for example, arguments as wars, time as money or life as a journey, when these metaphors are demonstrated by a number of linguistic metaphoric expressions which, together, successfully fulfill their role as empirical evidence from which the underlying conceptual metaphors can be inferred or unveiled. Moreover, the examples used are not totally ‘made up’ or manipulated by the theoreticians. Unlike Chomsky’s famous example, “colourless green ideas sleep furiously” (an apparently illogical sentence but recognisable by native speakers as syntactically correct), which was truly invented with the purpose of demonstrating the potential of language ‘creativity’, most examples used
Chapter 8. Exploring metaphors in corpora
by cognitive linguists are likely to be found in everyday discourse and are, therefore, felt by most readers as legitimate ‘real language’ examples, and not ‘artifacts’ manipulated just to fit the theory. In the context of the author’s argumentation, their possible lack of authenticity, i.e., the fact they have not emerged and collected from naturally occurring data, does not seem to weaken in any substantial way their power as empirical tools. This might, to some extent, explain the undeniable argumentative force of the conceptual metaphor hypothesis and, despite some criticism, the enormous influence Lakoff and Johnson’s views have had upon metaphor theories as a whole; after all, among the vast recent literature mentioned above, it is hard to find a paper in which no reference is made to the authors’ work. The same seems to be true in relation to the examples used in Reddy’s (1979) well known article “The conduit metaphor”, in which he presents more than a hundred language examples as evidence of the conceptual meta-linguistic metaphor he proposes. Within the cognitive paradigm, “linguistic metaphors, or metaphorical linguistic expressions, are linguistic manifestations of conceptual metaphors” (Kövecses 2002: 39). And as such manifestations are used, essentially, as empirical evidence of their “nurturing” metaphor, which is what seems to really matter, epistemologically, for the theoretician, the fact that they are produced by the linguist’s intuitions may be seen as irrelevant. The widespread use of such examples as realisations of conceptual metaphors, however, is not free of criticism, particularly from those scholars who believe metaphors cannot be divorced from its linguistic, cognitive and social context, and who advocate, therefore, a discourse or corpus oriented approach to metaphor (Cameron 1999a, 1999b; Steen 1999; Deignan, this volume). Discourse analysts, in general, whether interested in metaphor or not, would defend the use of ‘real language’, or naturally occurring data, to carry out their analyses. As Van Dijk (1997: 29) points out: Perhaps most pervasive in the study of discourse is the virtually exclusive focus on actually or naturally occurring talk and text. Unlike much work in formal linguistics and philosophy, invented or constructed examples are avoided in favor of examples and corpora of ‘real data’.
Researching metaphor on the basis of naturally occurring data presents a series of advantages over resorting to decontextualised examples as empirical evidence. Among these, there is the possibility of exploring more deeply the complex nature of metaphor in the light of its interaction with the other elements of discourse as a whole. Only against a discourse framework can the researcher, for example, investigate more fully the type and discourse function of particular metaphors as well as the speaker’s and hearer’s reactions towards the metaphoricity of particular expressions (Steen 1999). Moreover, approaching language not merely as the surface realisation of conceptual metaphors, or a container of ‘metaphoric expressions’ whose ultimate meaning would lie in another, apparently superior, sphere may open a promising field of investigation. In short, there seems to be a growing awareness that, in the case of metaphor research and application, “the actual language used does matter” (Cameron & Low 1999b: 78).
Solange Vereza
Corpus based research frequently presupposes collecting samples of naturally occurring discourse, which can take the form of authentic written or spoken texts which are recorded and transcribed. With such corpora available, researchers can direct their analyses towards the identification of metaphors, following specific criteria for this identification (Low 1999; Steen 1999). These criteria are not unproblematic as there are several ways metaphors can be defined, identified and classified. Cameron (2003) has observed, for example, that the classical A is B (both tenor and vehicle present in the formula) pattern presupposed by most cognitive linguists does not necessarily apply when language is looked at as use. This observation might trigger the question as to how restricted to the explicit linguistic form of metaphors detected in corpora should the analysis be. In other words, in the case where researchers, when establishing the type and degree of metaphoricity of ‘implicit linguistic metaphors’ (Steen 1999), have to resort to hypothetical underlying propositions (ibid), wouldn’t they be using, again, their ‘intuitions’? After all, propositions have to be inferred, in the same way that conceptual metaphors have to be hypothesised; they are empirically detectable in the same way that their counterpart linguistic expressions are. This issue is only an example of the many challenges one has to face when establishing criteria for analysing metaphors in discourse, not to mention the complexities involved in the study of the role played by metaphors in the overall pragmatic and ideological dimension of social interaction. How discursively legitimate is the analyst’s attempt to uncover the metaphoric ‘deep structure’ of implicit metaphors? Are conventional metaphors and idiomatic expressions to be treated as metaphors? Should a distinction between dead and conventional metaphors (Traugott 1986) be established? As the fields of metaphor as an object of study are becoming so vast, so are the possibilities for conceptualising and operationalising it for analytical purposes. Cameron (1999a, 1999b), following Wittgenstein’s non-essentialist approach, offers some operational criteria which are not only insightful but also very useful if one wishes to adopt a more informed approach to both identifying, describing and establishing the degree of metaphoricity of figurative language within particular corpora. It is a well known fact that a corpus in itself does not generate any insights. Corpus research requires that the researcher either establishes an analytical focus and categories of analysis, as suggested by Cameron (1999b) and Steen (1999), or makes use of corpus access software. The latter alternative is metonymically referred to as ‘corpus analysis’ or ‘corpus-based research’, with the ‘electronic’ aspect omitted from the term. According to Hunston (2002: 1), the study of corpora through electronic software has “revolutionised the study of language and of the applications of language, over the past few decades”. This ‘revolution’ can be explained by the fact that corpus access software enables the analyst not only to identify and count categories, but also to “observe categories and phenomena that have not been noticed before” (ibid.). Moreover, according to Deignan (1999: 178), electronic corpora can “enable the researcher to detect patterns of usage more quickly than either the use of intuition or the analysis of individual texts”.
Chapter 8. Exploring metaphors in corpora
As a powerful tool for corpus research, access software allows for establishing the frequency of words in specific or general corpora (The Bank of English, for example) and the regular linguistic patterns of words and their collocations as they appear within a large number of stretches of language (concordance lines or citations), as well as finding the key words of a particular corpus. It is not surprising, then, that electronic corpora have already been successfully used in metaphor research. According to Deignan (1999), most of these studies have used specialised corpora, from which metaphors were identified and analysed on the basis of their ideological role in particular genres. It might be reasonable, then, to conceive of this use of corpora as a tool for critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1995) of specific genres and ideological/institutional discourses. Deignan’s own research, on the other hand, is fundamentally language-oriented, i.e., it aims at investigating “syntactic, collocational and semantic patterning of linguistic metaphors” (p.179). This aim, however, presupposes operational definitions of linguistic metaphors; after all, the software will not establish by itself what is to be treated as metaphorical or not. What is to be considered as metaphorical, within a non-essentialist perspective, will depend upon the description of the possible types of metaphors encountered. Among the several types of metaphors proposed in the literature, one can be discarded from the outset: the so-called innovative metaphors. Computerised corpus analysis cannot aid in detecting a creative, extraordinary or idiosyncratic use of language; instead, it helps the researcher observe the usual and typical patterns of particular words within its immediate linguistic environment. That would leave us with conventional and dead metaphors. But even here, identification is not so straightforward. Deignan (1999: 182) points out that intuition alone does not suffice as there are, for example, cases of dead metaphors whose metaphorical origins or motivations are no longer present in the language and may, therefore, be regarded as literal expressions or cases of polysemy. Other cases can be treated as idioms, and some as metonymies. In corpus analysis, however, establishing criteria for identification is not essentially an a priori problem. Only through the analysis of the corpus will the researcher experience the need for establishing criteria and setting boundaries for identification in those cases where metaphoricity is not clear. It is here that it is important to resort to existing models and criteria for categorising metaphors and follow these in a consistent way throughout the research. That does not mean that new blurred or fuzzy cases will not come up in the corpus; but to handle these, models and criteria might have to be revised. It is not a case of ‘adapting the model to the evidence’, but of developing and revising models and criteria, which, supported by the new evidence, can be made more adequate and with a greater generalisation potential. It is exactly this aspect that makes corpus analysis more than an operational device for empirical research. It is my contention that it may, in fact, enable the analyst to carry out an ongoing reexamination and refinement of criteria, hypotheses, definitions and assumptions, which may ultimately affect the very theoretical apparatus on which the analysis itself is founded.
Solange Vereza
Deignan (1999) has demonstrated the enormous potential of corpus analysis for exploring the syntactical and semantic aspects involved in the metaphoricity (or not) of language expressions. The syntactical dimension of metaphors was examined through a study of the word “shoulder” in a general corpus through access software. The author found that the adjectival uses of the word was not metaphorical, whereas the verbal ones were predominantly metaphorical and the nominal non-metaphorical, but with several cases of metaphorical, metonymic and idiomatic expressions. The semantic aspects of metaphoricity were illustrated through a corpus analysis of the sense related adjectives ‘hot-warm-cold’, which suggested “while some lexical relations between metaphorical uses parallel those between non-metaphorical senses, this is not usually the case”(p. 195).
Towards an empirical analysis of the metaphoricity of “war”: using a collocational database With the aim of further exploring and illustrating some of the potentialities of electronic research as a means to investigating metaphors in naturally occurring data, I present below a small scale research on some of the possible metaphorical uses of a single word: war. As corpus analysis, in principle, cannot account for the search of the linguistic manifestations of conceptual metaphors, I am not considering here the possible language realisations of metaphors such as the well known ‘Argument is War’ proposed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980). Deignan (this volume), in order to examine how this conceptual metaphor is manifested in naturally occurring language, analyses “the most obvious and frequent lexis from the source domain of war”. In other words, her analysis focuses on citations of words which were selected a priori. As the aim of the present research is not to look at any particular conceptual metaphor, but at the metaphoricity of a specific word and its possible language patterns, I start with the citations containing the lexical item war. The main research questions guiding this brief analysis are the following: 1. Are the metaphorical uses of war characterised by specific collocational patterns? 2. If this is found to be the case, what would these patterns be? 3. And, at a more general level, how dependent on the linguistic context is metaphoricity? The analysis presupposes, therefore, an identification of “the metaphorical uses of war” which does not depend on the corpus itself, but on criteria of different nature. In the examples “war against Iraqi” and “war against the intellect”, the identification of the former as a non-metaphor and the latter as a metaphor was based on a presupposition that elements such as countries, nations and nationality groups – the latter being licensed by the state is a person metaphor (Lakoff 1992) – would be typical elements
Chapter 8. Exploring metaphors in corpora
of the source domain of “war”. This would not be the case of abstract notions such as “the intellect”, which, as a possible target of war, would result in semantic “incongruence”, which is thought to be one of the criteria for metaphor identification (Kittay 1987; Cameron 2003). The corpus consists of a collection of concordances taken from The Collins Cobuild CD ROM: English Collocations (1995),1 which uses first-order data from the Bank of English, a large ‘general corpus’ of naturally occurring language, consisting of 200 million running words of general English (Stubbs 2002). This methodological procedure implies that I am not exactly doing ‘corpus analysis’, but an analysis of a collocational database. However, it serves the purpose of demonstrating the potential of naturally occurring data and collocations as a rich source of insights into the metaphoricity of particular words or expressions in real language use. When typing any particular word, the program shows a list of the most frequent collocates of that word. According to Stubbs (2002: 29), a collocate is “a word-form or lemma which co-occurs with a node in a corpus”, and collocation would be “frequent co-occurrence”. In the case of the word war, its most frequent collocates in the database are: Table 1. Collocates of WAR Civil, during, end, post, against, since, first, before, years, between, year, now, crimes, prisoners, peace, country, go, ground, long
If this group of collocates is divided into two groups, one consisting of lexical words and another of grammatical words, one might expect to find non-metaphorical uses of war within the former. It is important to mention here that the use I am making of “expecting to find” does not imply the traditional concept of intuition, discussed earlier in this paper. Instead, we are adopting Stubbs’ (2002: 20) definition of expectation of “what is likely to occur”, which emerges from our “communicative competence, or knowledge (often unconscious) of what is probable, frequent and typical”. Thus, one may ‘expect’ literal uses of war with civil (civil wars), crimes (crimes of war), prisoners (prisoners of war), peace (war and piece), country (countries in war) and ground (ground war). When selecting these ‘lexical’ collocates, the citations which are presented support this hypothesis. As this analysis is, essentially, illustrative of the research potential of a collocational database, I have selected the first twelve citations among the lists presented for each collocate.
1. Material from the Bank of English® reproduced with the kind permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Solange Vereza
Table 2. Concordance of CIVIL ngle soldier or airman shoved into a civil war in Iraq that's been going on for are leading the country to chaos and civil war. He told a news conference in Ma come further involved in the Bosnian civil war. Yesterday, British troops suppo ch is now suffering so terribly from civil war - He's a Bosnian Muslim - He sti coup. Then, in conditions of growing civil war, the British reconstructed the s brought the country to the brink of civil war. Tarzan", a burly, baseball-hat t round of the country's 14-year-old civil war, sectarian skirmishes erupted ac in obstacles to ending the country's civil war. But under the military headgear upporting opposite sides in Angola's civil war - Cuba sent 50,000 troops to sup uthorities after their defeat in the civil war with the Communists in 1949 - On esumption of negotiations to end the civil war. The army has held power in Ethi ng force which is trying to stop the civil war in Liberia is making a new attem
Table 3. Concordance of CRIME id that Saddam probably won’t face a war crimes trial since he doubts anyone w al criticism. There will be talk of a war-crimes tribunal and of ways of tighte those who may face trial for alleged war crimes. Last month, Lawrence P FOX, `The Jewish Factor in British War Crimes Policy in 1942”, The English the allies are themselves committing war crimes by attacking civilians. Volume John Demjanjuk was convicted of Nazi war crimes - The court has new informat against his conviction last year for war crimes committed in Poland during the 930526gdn930526 UN lays plans for war crimes trials: Court in The Hague ouncil votes to set up a tribunal for war crimes in the Balkans; why the U.S. i has voted unanimously to investigate war crimes in Bosnia - I’m Bob Edwards ons to investigate the possibility of war crimes against Serbian leaders in Bos s,yesterday (Mon - The allegations of war crimes by Iraqi forces in Kuwait are
Table 4. Concordance of PRISONER some still to be held as prisoners of war - A senior state department official aq’s brutal treatment of prisoners of war and said that Iraqi leader Saddam Hus e renewal of interest in prisoners of war and those missing in action led to fo of its remaining allied prisoners of war and the International Red Cross says discuss the question of prisoners of war and those missing in action - A senio wscaster: Some 500 Iraqi prisoners of war due to be repatriated today were take o repatriate two hundred prisoners of war each day starting on Thursday. But th wo hundred former Libyan prisoners of war had been flown to Nigeria in a US f releasing hostages and prisoners of war had been conveyed and that the g, and some 18,000 Iraqi prisoners of war have been taken in that time as well. of Australian and Allied prisoners of war in the Japanese death camps of ues like the exchange of prisoners of war, Kuwaiti detainees and the return of w
Chapter 8. Exploring metaphors in corpora
Table 5. Concordance of PEACE - Issue 7858. 940409 Peacefire / War and peace in Bosnia Belgrade IT W n to offer the Serbs a choice between war and peace. If so, war has won. Slobod ning out of time - The choice between war and peace is in the hands of Iraq.” I sters having to comment on matters of war and peace. Barber: That’s right, and wentieth century will be the theme of War And Peace, a month-long series of s of armed force, upon which peace or war formerly depended.45 But Hobson g people to vote for peace instead of war - I’m asking to vote for tolerance in th looking at all the peace negotiations after World War I.And then after World branches bring notes of peace to this war memorial, the Yazukuni Shinto shrine s the choice we have in front of us - War or Peace. T 091090 XN NEWS tor of the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting; Zoran Pajic is mb reports:The only talks on the Gulf War peace process this week were
Table 6. Concordance of COUNTRY it - I can’t keep the country out of war, he confessed to a member of his Cab action seen in the country since the war. Germany’s economic crisis is also h concerned about being in a country at war. And here, just a few yards away, ls on ways to end the country’s civil war - And a senior Pakistani official has tory, and it left to the country only war and bloodshed and despair as a memory S troops and the country’s victims of war and famine - One of his first stops w ader said his country wanted to avoid war, but if war was imposed, it would said that whether his country goes to war depends on the Security Council - He aviour leads to interminable years of war for the whole country is the broader ently prepared to take his country to war - He threatened to make the whole r the best chance in years to end the war in that country - Boucher said the ta that they will not go home until the war in their country is over.Nobody knows
The uses of war with its most frequent ‘lexical’ collocates seem to be largely nonmetaphorical. Although the linguistic context consisting of only a few words on the left and right side of the node (the focused word: war) might be considered too limited for determining whether a word is used metaphorically or not, this does not seem to represent a substantial drawback in our data. Because of the presence of some ‘clues’ in the citations, such as the words belonging to the same semantic field of war (battle, army, forces), the reference made to some facts which are part of the readers’ encyclopedic knowledge related to real wars (Gulf, Bosnia, Iraq, Red Cross) as well as the identification of rhetoric structures associated with the journalistic genre, the literality of war is somewhat evident. It might be reasonable to suppose that the association of the word war with its most frequent collocates might limit its semantic potential for metaphoricity. As we
Solange Vereza
Table 7. Concordance of GROUND es is not yet ready to start a ground war - He says US forces will start such a think, engage in some sort of ground war - I would predict it would make--brin about delaying the start of a ground war in the Persian Gulf while the air war r an accident, could trigger a ground war in the next few weeks.Allied military page, as they say, and that a ground war is only a matter of weeks, if that. C y what’s required of Iraq if a ground war is to be avoided, and that’s pretty s l - He also said he thinks the ground war is now inevitable. Siegel: What do th eality of that quick-as-a-wink ground war - Perhaps as Ken mcdowell put it, ated through the length of the ground war.President Hafez al-Assad essentially this evening and announce this ground war that seems to be pretty definitely un - He said that the two-day-old ground war to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait is o n discussion of aspects of the ground war which could well be feint or diversio
can observe in the data, the words in the expressions ground war, war crime and prisoner of war are so frequent and strongly linked that they might even be regarded as conventional lexical phrases, or may be even as semi-compound words. This is not the case of the collocate country, as it does not accompany the term war directly, but, instead, it is linked to it through various prepositions, some times not even belonging syntactically to the same noun group. In all these cases, nevertheless, specific wars are being referred to literally. With the collocate peace, however, war is being used more as a general concept than as a specific fact. Although it cannot be said that in those citations war is used metaphorically, in some lines it seems to be referring to a general state of affairs and not as a historical fact. A hypothesis that could be further investigated would be as to whether this ‘general’ use of war might be more conducive to metaphoricity than the more specific ones. The grammatical word which might be expected to be most closely associated with war would be the preposition against. It does indeed appear in the corpus as the most frequent grammatical collocate of war (Table 8). Among the citations in table 8, we can find four clearly ‘metaphorical’ uses of war (war against women, war against the evil of cigarette, war against sloppy English and war against the intellect). The same tendency can be observed in the citations with the collocate between, another preposition intuitively associated with war (between countries, between opponents) (Table 9). In the case of against, the metaphoricity of war is established through the view of an ‘agent x’ as a potential enemy or a victim of attack, (against women, against sloppy English, against the intellect); in the case of between, as two opponents, (war between ABC and ITV, war between truckers and railroad). In both cases, war would seem to be the overall conceptual frame resulting from approaching people, institutions or objects as enemies, opponents or victims.
Chapter 8. Exploring metaphors in corpora
Table 8. Concordance of AGAINST be demonstrating against the Vietnam War 23 years ago, as he has admitted e-day old threat of launching all-out war against Slovenia - The Slovenes will Many women now realise that rape is a war against women. Despite `war rape’ No dope without smoke / An American war against the evil of cigarette papers Any--any legislation related to the war against Iraq that we should expect? R an military preparations for a ground war against Iraq.Army General Thomas who fought in Algeria’s independence war against France have demonstrated o some beneficial effect. But in the war against sloppy English in the playgro uth Africans and were involved in the war against Swapo.But the Defence Ministe once, as Dr Paisley demanded all out war against IRA terrorists. He left ther, the essays in Peter Shaw’s `The War Against the Intellect: Episodes on th and in its decision to authorize the war against Iraq - But the Soviet Union’s
Table 9. Concordance of BETWEEN Austria, shortly before the Bosnian war began,between the Croatian Franjo Bor h have been poor every since the 1979 war between the two countries. SIMON “ The series - subject of a bidding war between BBC, ITV and bskyb - casts in the 1950s and sixties, ended in a war between El Salvador and Honduras be held - In recent months the civil war between the forces of the resistance ing. At best, however, the continuous war between benchmark writers and The race had been billed as a two-man war between Moneghetti and Kenya’s talism - but it did not prevent world war between states belonging to that same k container trains is igniting a rate war between truckers and railroads, benef dies can be resolved to avoid a trade war between the US and the EC. parliamentarian has dubbed the war of laws between Moscow and the Hamilrton. In Adelaide . The war of words between Aiton Senna and Proust
What emerges here as possible evidence of the well known and widely researched ARGUMENT IS WAR conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) are some of the citations of war between, such as the ones in the examples war between benchmark writers, war between truckers and railroads and, more explicitly, in the war of words between Aiton Senna and Proust. In these examples, the war to which is being referred does not imply the non-metaphorical notion (from the source domain of “war”) of an armed or physical combat. Rather, the conflict seems to be actualised by means of arguments or word exchange, possibly as a result of a conflict of interests. The supposedly “invented” examples offered by Lakoff and Johnson as evidence of the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor are, therefore, joined or even reinforced by other evidence found in naturally occurring language. The “real examples” may, thus, be seen as stronger corroborating evidence (if compared to the non-empirical or intuitive examples proposed by the theoretician/analyst) for the “conceptual metaphor hypothesis”. This seems to be
Solange Vereza
one of the ways that corpora evidence, combined with intuition, may enhance theory development. As far as the citations with time prepositions are concerned, no metaphorical uses of war were observed in the data: Table 10. Concordance of DURING e on opposing sides during the Korean war,established diplomatic ties less than angements that were set up during the war in order to centralize the war effort ter committed during the Second World War in Germany or German-occupied at rocked the homefront during the US war in Vietnam, supporters and rces to fight during the Persian Gulf War, it did not prevent the country from nesday: If You Lived During the Civil War meet four characters who tell stories s the Continent during theseven Years War (Philadelphia, Pa: Drexel Institute s childhood. During the second world war, Stalin ordered all Ukrainians living centration camp in Croatia during the war - The Croats say that the number of 000 were given during the First World War.] The silver medal, for ranks below he says, died at the front during the war with Iraq. One has become a provincia . She’d been to Paris once during the war, with Hubert, to run errands for him.
Table 11. Concordance of BEFORE for help’’ to Britain before the Gulf War, as stated in your leader column. The of 1,600 troops. In the years before war broke out between Spain and the U.S., of Chapel Hill did so the day before war broke out in the Gulf - Reverend ther did in fact reach England before war broke out in September 1939 and we we. sales to Iraq before the Persian Gulf War - His testimony, along with pages of ritain and France - Even before World War I Britain and France had eroded the e development of airmail before World War I and was pioneered by Germany American experience before the Civil War - If this was the new Eden, it follow had been born and raised before World War II, in a society in which the main itely more prosperous than before the war. It was, he told himself, natural, in rman territory before the First World War. It included 78,000 sq. km. of Danzig r particularly before the First World War not so much but er because they
Several hypotheses can be raised to explain the patterns observed. Firstly, the prepositions against and between seem to collocate with a more general aspect of wars, which is that of antagonism. It is the ‘x’ against ‘y’ pattern, where the ‘x’ and the ‘y’ can take the form of people, institutions, movements, etc. However, the use of war with against does not necessarily require an explicit ‘x’, only a ‘y’, i.e., ‘the enemy’. One could
Chapter 8. Exploring metaphors in corpora
Table 12. Concordance of SINCE by the only horse to do it since the war. That horse was # is # Red Rum, who a ration of German Jews, born since the war and with no personal memory of the portant summit since the Second World War - Assuming as all now do that last ribed as the heaviest since the civil war began in earnest more than eight year It also for the first time since the war began called on the Iraqi people to s it’s shot 154 allied planes since the war begin - Witnesses in Turkey say that ority and Kurdish minority. Since the war both groups have come to see him as ctable than it had been since the pre-war days of Oswald Mosley. In the ing clean have not returned since the war ended - Even more jarring are the bra recession here since the Second World War hasn’t endeared him to the public north African country since the Gulf War - He will meet President Zine elBritain and Germany, and since World War II between the Soviet Union and
then say ‘the war against the evil of cigarette’. With between, on the other hand, the explicit presence of both ‘x ’and ‘y’, either metaphorical or not, is required due to the semantic nature of this preposition. It might be asked at this point whether metaphors such as these are ‘innovative’ or not. My suggestion is that, in those cases, the metaphor is based on a conventional metaphorical use of ‘war against X’, where ‘x’ can be paradigmatically substituted with any other item which is seen as an ‘enemy’ against which one should fight. In this way, one might regard this ‘substitution’ process as both creative and conventional. Many clichés seem to follow this ‘paradigmatic pattern’, i.e., narrow innovation on the basis of a pre-existing semantic and syntactic pattern. However, it might, again, be asked whether the metaphoricity would lie in the word war, in which case there would be no ‘innovation’, however limited, or in the agents or subjects of war: the antagonists, which would be seen as ‘enemies’. And, as an entailment of this metaphorical treatment, the relationship between those elements would be regarded and referred to as war. This would, however, somewhat contradict Deignan’s (1999) claim regarding the impossibility of corpus analysis to detect innovative metaphors. Needless to say that this hypothesis would require a deeper examination in order to be appropriately discussed, which is beyond the scope of this study. But the point which should be stressed in the present discussion is the potential of analyses of corpus generated data as a source of insights which, in turn, might have some bearings upon the very definitions and criteria for identifying figurative language. As far as the ‘time prepositions’ are concerned, they seem to imply a specific, thus literal, war event: it is during, before or since that event that something is (was) happening. Wars seem to play an important role as specific time parameters or reference for representing dramatically remarkable events in the history of mankind. Another question which might be raised at this point is whether, in corpus analysis, in general, the word war would not need to be explicitly verbalised in
Solange Vereza
order to be thought of in metaphorical terms. After all, when working with corpora, analysts would, in principle, direct their inquiries towards linguistic metaphors and not underlying, conceptual or even implicit metaphors. Once again we are faced with the problem concerning the ‘implicit vs explicit’ nature of metaphors (Steen 1999), and the methodological or operational dilemmas resulting from this dichotomy. Can researchers infer the implicit metaphors emerging from corpora or should they restrict their task to the analysis of linguistically explicit metaphors? Are all implicit metaphors conceptually based? Corpus analysis may shed some light at this issue when we examine the uses of words such as defend, attack, victory, defeat, combat, among others, which are part of the “expected” (Stubbs 2002) semantic field of war but, according to the database used here, are not frequent collocates of that word. Among these, the words ‘defend’ and ‘victory’ were selected, at random, for this purpose. The citations below have been chosen for showing the referred words with their most frequent collocates, namely, against and first, respectively.
Table 13. Concordance of DEFEND had not yet acquired enough ego to defend against the soul. It was an ego so f ripped of the crown for refusing to defend against Nelson, who had done som to obtain U.S. planes and pilots to defend China against Japanese bombers, construction worker who decided to defend himself against felony charges of dr ossible moment and had no chance to defend himself against the blow that end himself since he had nothing to defend himself against - Peres declared, `I gular thoroughness.Simon is wont to defend himself against charges of cultural ntees and anti-aircraft missiles to defend it against possible reprisals from S unday night, the ERM had managed to defend its member currencies against ab countries to have sent forces to defend Saudi Arabia against the threat of I ines and everything else,managed to defend the people against the worst ravages ry. On Holy Saturday, the Matachins defend the church against attack by the Far
In both cases, several metaphorical uses of defend and victory can be observed. In the citations with defend, the metaphor of war could be ‘implicit’ in the underlying propositions (to defend oneself or a nation against an enemy attack, an entailment of war) without necessarily representing or ‘realising’ conventional conceptual metaphors. If there were a conceptual metaphor behind these uses, this would be a very vague, theoretically unsound one. But in the case of victory, on the other hand, the highly conventional conceptual metaphors ‘sport is war’ and ‘election is war’ do seem to be nurturing some of the uses of victory. Whether ‘victories’ and, by the same token, ‘defeats’, in sports and in elections should be seen as metaphorical extensions of the
Chapter 8. Exploring metaphors in corpora
Table 14. Concordance of VICTORY aving Pakistan needing just 120 for victory after declaring their first innings ely after the Conservative election victory, began to fall, first to 14 per cen s were dispelled with his brilliant victory in the first game, though he strugg over Stourport, their biggest ever victory in the first division, and Stourpor f the vote, a comfortable margin of victory in the first parliamentary election a hot field to notch her first Tour victory in the European Classic yesterday.H m. The least surprising first-round victory in the Wimbledon tennis championte of failing to secure an outright victory in the first round of voting yester AN: Grampus Eight score their first victory in the J. League, winning 3–0 away yfair and Ed Dougherty. Gallagher’s victory is his first since joining the US P hers, 327 pages, $32.95), Allende’s victory -- the first clear triumph of Marxi aged a 25-foot birdie putt to claim victory on the first extra hole - Pavin, wh
same terms from the war domain, or simply as dead metaphors and, thus, as nonmetaphors in the first place is debatable. Again, no conclusive remarks can be offered through this very brief analysis, which is only aimed at showing how the findings emerging from corpus analyses can be fruitful sources of insights, even in the case of conceptual metaphors. A deeper analysis might explore the few hypotheses suggested here, while many others could be raised. The extension and nature of the war metaphors into the language of sports, politics, relationships etc, and the nature of the metaphoricity of this word according to its uses in different genres are other interesting possibilities for further research using corpus generated data. Deignan’s research (this volume) provides relevant insights into the former topic, demonstrating the potential of corpus linguistics to “examine developments in metaphor theory”.
Concluding remarks I hope that this brief analysis of the metaphoricity of war through its most frequent collocates has demonstrated the richness of a collocational database as a tool for understanding the nature of metaphors in naturally occurring data. The collocations seem to indicate that metaphorical uses of words may fall into particular collocational patterns, which, in turn, demonstrates the importance of collocations for determining meaning in general. It might be premature to refer to the ‘tendencies’ I have observed in the data as true ‘patterns of metaphoricity’. I have not looked at “all (my emphasis) the words and structures which are regularly associated with the word”, to use Hunston & Francis’(2000: 37) definition of “pattern”. The small number of citations of each collocate may be a drawback in case one wishes to arrive at more reliable conclusions; after all, as Hunston & Francis argue (ibid. p.16), in corpus linguistics, “quantity is also quality”. The use of a larger database, or corpora worked electronically, may lead
Solange Vereza
to more solid conclusions. It should be highlighted, however, that my purpose in this paper was, primarily, to illustrate how the metaphoricity or words can be better understood through a study of corpus-driven collocations and, more generally, through electronic analyses of corpora. It is my contention that, by allowing the researcher to establish a productive and dialectical integration between theory and evidence, analyzing data from naturally occurring language may foster remarkable developments in metaphor research. Without basic epistemological assumptions, definitions and categories, sound research questions cannot be formulated and the data, in this case, would represent nothing more than a list of words. Even the patterns and regularities found cannot be interpreted outside a theoretical framework. On the other hand, the findings themselves will often require new questions, whose answers may lead to a re-evaluation of criteria and existing definitions. That does not mean, however, that corpus analysis is flawless. Deignan (1999: 196–197) points out its limitations, namely, “the limited usefulness of corpora in the study of innovative metaphor” and the fact that “the researcher will only uncover what he or she sets out to look for”. Both limitations, nevertheless, only become methodological drawbacks or flaws if the researcher overlooks them and makes claims that cannot be met by the use of electronic corpora. Therefore, the analysis of corpus-generated data and corpus-based research, in general, should not be criticised for being a tool aimed at exploring only some areas of the vast territory covered by metaphor as a meaning construction phenomenon. After all, these areas, though limited, are likely to be better and more deeply understood with the aid of this resourceful analytical tool.
References Black, Max (1962). Models and metaphors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Black, Max (1993). More about metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.) Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (19–41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, Lynne (1999a). Operationalising metaphor for applied linguistics. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (3–28). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, Lynne (1999b). Identifying and describing metaphor in spoken discourse data. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (105–134). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum. Cameron, Lynne & Graham Low (1999a). Researching and applying metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, Lynne & Graham Low (1999b). Metaphor: survey article. Language Teaching 32, 77–96. Deignan, Alice (1999). Corpus based research in metaphor. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (177–202). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 8. Exploring metaphors in corpora Fairclough, Norman (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman. Fauconnier, Gilles (1994). Mental spaces. Cambridge: CUP. Fauconnier, Gilles (1997). Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner (2002). The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books. Gibbs, Raymond W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, Raymond W. (1999). Researching metaphor. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (29–47). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haskell, Robert (1987). Cognition and symbolic structures. Norwold: Ablex Publishing Co. Hunston, Susan (2002). Corpora in applied linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunston, Susan & Gill Francis (2000). Pattern grammar: A corpus driven approach to the lexical grammar of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kittay, Eva F. (1987). Metaphor: Its cognitive force and linguistic structure. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kövecses, Zoltan (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuhn, Thomas (1993). Metaphor in science. In A. Ortony (Ed.) Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (533–542). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George (1992). Metaphor and war. The metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf. In M. Pütz (Ed.), Thirty years of linguistic evolution: Studies in honour of René Dirven (463– 481); Philadelphia/Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lakoff, George (1993). The contemporary view of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.) Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (202–251). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books. Low, Graham (1999). Validating metaphor research projects. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (48–68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oshlag, Rebecca & Hugh Petrie (1993). Metaphor and learning. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (579–609). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reddy, Michael (1993). The conduit metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (164–201). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sadock, Jerrold (1993). Figurative speech and linguistics. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (42–57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John (1993). Metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (83–111). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steen, Gerard (1994). Understanding metaphor in literature: An empirical approach. London: Longman. Steen, Gerard (1999). Metaphor in discourse. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (81–104). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stubbs, Michael (2002). Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics. Oxford: Blackwell. Sweetser, Eve (1990). From etymology to pragmatics: The mind-body metaphor in semantic structure and semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Solange Vereza Toolan, Michael (1996). Total speech: An integrational linguistic approach to language. London: Duken University Press. Traugott, Elisabeth (1986). “Conventional” and “dead” metaphors revisited. In R. Dirven & W. Paprotté (Eds.), The ubiquity of metaphor in language and thought (17–56). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Van Dijk, Teun A. (1997). Discourse as structure and process. New York: Sage.
part iii
Understanding metaphor in language education
chapter 9
Young learners’ understanding of figurative language* Ana M. Piquer-Piriz The semantic extension of terms through the transfer from a concrete (or literal) to an abstract (or figurative) sense has received a great deal of attention in recent decades from different perspectives such as cognitive linguistics (Lakoff 1990; Sweetser 1990; Taylor 2002) or corpus analysis (Deignan 1999; Gries 2006). Two mechanisms are often involved in this process: metaphor, in which the transfer occurs between two well-differentiated domains, and metonymy where the transfer is within a specific domain. Both mechanisms are figurative in the sense that they imply seeing something in terms of something else. Developments in cognitive linguistics have clarified, to a certain extent, the motivation and interrelationship of figurative expressions. It has been argued that the mental ability to understand a concept in terms of something else is an essential part of human reasoning, based on our bodily experience and our interaction with the world. We understand abstract concepts through our concrete experiences via the capacity to map from concrete to abstract domains (Lakoff 1990). Research has shown that making (young) adults aware of the literal origins of figurative lexis in a second or foreign language helps them comprehend and remember that lexis (for a detailed account of the literature on this topic, see Boers and Lindstromberg, forthcoming). On the other hand, the growth of competence with metaphor and metonymy in childhood has been the focus of a great deal of research (e.g., Vosniadou 1987; Winner 1988; Gentner 1989; Cameron 1996, 2003). This research, carried out on monolingual children, has mostly focused on metaphor, examining children’s ability to understand analogies or similarities between two different concepts. Given the fact that many children are raised speaking more than one language or learn a foreign language at an early age,
* I am very grateful to Fiona MacArthur for her feedback and help with this paper and to Frank Boers for his enlightening comments on it. This research was supported by Grant no. FIC00A008 from the Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología, Junta de Extremadura (Extremadura Regional Government’s Department of Education, Science and Technology).
Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
it seems relevant to explore whether the capacity to transfer from the literal to the figurative senses of a term is also available to children when using a second language (Piquer-Píriz 2005). In order to shed some light on this issue, a study was carried out with 7-year-old Spanish children learning English as a foreign language. The general research questions of study were:
(1) Are children (7-year-olds) likely to appreciate figurative meaning extensions in English learnt as a foreign language?
(2) What type of reasoning do these children use to ‘motivate’ their predictions of particular figurative meaning extensions?
Some cognitive linguistics scholars (Radden 2000; Dirven & Pöring 2002) propose a figurative continuum from literal through metonymical to metaphorical, which seems to suggest that metonymic extensions may be easier to grasp than metaphorical ones. This claim leads us to propose two secondary research questions that would be related to RQ (2): (2.1) Are 7-year-olds better at ‘predicting’ metonymic meaning extensions than metaphorical ones? (2.2) Do their ‘motivations’ reveal a preference for associative (i.e., metonymic) reasoning to reasoning by analogy (i.e., metaphor)?
In an attempt to answer these questions, a study was designed to analyse young Spanish learners’ interpretation of three figurative extensions of hand: give me a hand, the hands of a watch/clock and hand it to me. In the selection of the stimuli to be tested, the aim was to choose a lexeme that was first, highly polysemous, secondly, frequent in English, and finally, appropriate for children’s communicative needs in the English as a Foreign Language classroom. The polysemous wealth of hand is illustrated in the 85 different uses of this lexical item recorded in the Collins COBUILD Dictionary. Moreover, the two main uses (nominal and verbal) are highly frequent in English according to this dictionary. The three expressions chosen are appropriate candidates for young children’s communicative needs in the context of the English as a foreign language classroom since telling the time, asking for help or asking to pass things around will be part of what Breen (1985) identifies as the ‘unique social context of the classroom’ in Primary school. Furthermore, the three expressions chosen would be placed at different points in the literal-metonymical-metaphorical continuum: hand it to me is an utterance that cognitive linguists would classify as clearly metonymical. The hands of watch can be considered metaphorical (although there can also be seen a metonymical component in it, i.e., the function of pointing). Finally, Give me a hand can be considered metonymically based although its motivation is slightly more complex. The semantics of these three expressions will be analysed in more detailed below.
Chapter 9. Young learners’ understanding of figurative language
Lexico-grammatical features of give me a hand, the hands of a watch and hand it to me The three figurative uses selected are similar in that they are conventionalised forms in the English language and are recorded in dictionaries as such. However, they differ with regard to their lexico-grammatical features. First, while both figurative extensions of hand in the hands of a watch and hand it to me are realised by a single lexeme, the meaning conveyed in give me a hand is expressed by a multi-word, semi-fixed unit. Secondly, these figurative extensions are realised as a nominal (the hands of a watch), a verb (hand it to me) and a fossilised ditransitive phrase (give me a hand). Both the nominal and verbal forms are syntactically flexible, with variations being possible, such as, ‘the long hand on my watch has fallen off ’ (singular form) or ‘it was handed to me’ (passive shift). In contrast, the flexibility of give me a hand is restricted to tense modifications such as ‘I’ll give you a hand’ but does not allow passivisation ‘*a hand was given to me’. However, ‘give’ can be replaced by another verb, ‘lend’ (‘lend me a hand’) with the same figurative meaning. The other main constituent, ‘hand’, is syntactically fixed: neither the plural form (‘*he gave me two hands’) or the insertion of other determiners (‘*give me the/this/some/your hand) are possible. As regards their semantic features, it seems clear that in the cases of hand it to me and give me a hand, there is a mapping within the same conceptual domain that gives rise to these two expressions. According to Radden and Kövecses’s definition (1999: 21): Metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same idealized cognitive model.
In these two semantic extensions of hand, the vehicle is hand and the target would be function of human hand (doing) within the ICM (Idealised Cognitive Model) of ‘the human hand’. Thus, these two expressions would be linguistic instantiations of a conceptual metonymy that could be expressed as hand for doing. This conceptual metonymy could be considered as a special case of the more general body part for function.1 The case of give me a hand is somewhat different in that, apart from this metonymy, there may be a synecdoche involved in its semantics –hand for person– which is a specific case of the general part for whole, also illustrated in expressions such as
1. Barcelona (2000: 11) discusses this conventional metonymy that he casts as body part for (manner of) function in the example She caught the Minister’s ear and persuaded him to accept her plan (ear for attention). Kövecses (2002: 207–210) offers an alternative conceptual metonymy that could also account for these linguistic instantiations: the hand stands for the activity which, according to him, is a special case of the general the instrument used in an activity stands for the activity.
Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
all hands on deck. The notion of ‘helping’ is fundamental in the semantics of give me a hand and, therefore, hand can be considered to stand for the person that helps. The figurative extension of hand in the hands of a watch/clock is differently motivated. Conventional knowledge about the human hand and the hands of watch/ clock may account for its motivation as Kövecses (2002: 207) has emphasised. In this case, a comparison between the shared standard information about one specific function of the human hand –pointing or indicating– and the same function of the device of a watch or clock may have given rise to this semantic extension. That is, an analogy between two different entities (human hands and parts of watch/clock) arises from the conventional understanding of their respective functions (cf. Barcelona 2000). Two of these three figurative extensions of hand have no counterparts in Spanish. The syntactic shift of noun to verb in hand it to me is not possible in Spanish and the preferred realisation for the hands of a watch is agujas (needles). However, Spanish has an equivalent multi-word unit, echar una mano for give me a hand, although echar does not literally mean to give but to throw.
Method Participants Fifty-seven children (thirty-three girls and twenty-four boys) in their second year of Primary school (mean age 7: 9) participated in this study. As the sessions took place on different days, the total number of children that participated in the three parts of this study was not the same, because some children missed one of the sessions. All the participants were Spanish, apart from a boy from Ecuador who had moved to Spain the year before this study took place, and they all spoke Spanish as their mother tongue. The children attended two state schools and were from a variety of social and economic backgrounds.
Stimuli and design A situation in which they would be appropriately used was devised for each of three expressions chosen: give me a hand, the hands of a watch and hand it to me (see Appendix 1). Taking into account the children’s age and their limited attention span, the three situations aimed to be as short and clear as possible and to make sense to young children. A multiple-choice answer with three options accompanied each of the situations. Hand was obviously included as the correct answer and the two foils were other body parts, usually, head and mouth, although foot was also used with some of the children in situations 2 (the hands of a watch) and 3 (hand it to me). The children’s choices were thus constrained to the body part which would be the most likely candidate for use in these situations, in order to explore the kind of reasoning used by the
Chapter 9. Young learners’ understanding of figurative language
children in identifying possible figurative extensions. Evidently, had the study been focused on other concerns, such a constrained identification procedure would not have been appropriate. The situations were carried out in Spanish and the multiplechoice answers in English (see Appendix 1 for details).
Procedure The children were tested in groups of between 3 and 5 in a quiet area of their school. This method was chosen in order to simulate the normal context of the classroom, rather than working with the children in an artificial situation, so that they would feel comfortable enough to participate fully. However, working with groups may have some drawbacks. The most obvious is that it may lead to ‘group thinking’ or polarised opinion and some children may imitate or reproduce a partner’s answer. In this sense, it can be argued that grouping the children rather than testing them individually may affect the results because one child could be influenced by another. Nevertheless, this study was not designed as a laboratory experiment to test the subjects individually. It rather aimed to explore children’s ability to apprehend new figurative meanings. The negotiation of meaning with adults or peers has been acknowledged to play an important role in children’s understanding of new concepts (Vygostky 1962; Wood, Bruner & Ross 1976; Cameron 1996). Group work, thus, fosters negotiation of meaning among peers in the classroom, and, as will be seen, this also operates with the children’s answers. Furthermore, imitation of a partner’s response would involve choosing the same answer and using the same words when justifying an explanation. However, absolute mimicry of this type did not occur in the data analysed. Some children said that they agreed with a partner or that they thought the same but, in fact, came up with a different or complementary answer to the previous one. Agreeing with a peer can be considered a consequence of negotiation of meaning rather than simple imitation. The first answer may initiate a group interpretation or bias the ensuing discussion, but the other participants do not simply mimic but share views. In this sense, the first answer opens up a possibility which further answers may expand or contradict. This type interaction is normal in classroom context and a constant in learning (for an illustration, see the discussion of example 7 on page 191). Seven sessions of approximately 45 minutes were necessary to test all the children. More than one group was tested in each session and they did only one situation a day, so three different sessions carried out on different days were needed for each group. The three situations were presented in a different order to each group and the children were not told the correct answer until they had all finished. The sessions were divided into three main blocks: warm-up activities, the study itself and ‘reward’ time. In the first block, two warm-up activities were carried out. The first one consisted in asking the children their name, age and birthday in English. These are simple questions that are learned and practised very often as classroom
Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
routines, so being able to answer them helped the children to relax, to feel more confident and to understand they were going to be using their English. The second activity was aimed at checking which vocabulary items related to the body parts they had actually learned and to reinforce their knowledge of the literal meanings of the words hand, head, mouth and foot. Checking the children’s mastery of the ‘core’ meanings of the lexical items chosen was a necessary first step in the procedure because understanding a metaphorical or metonymical extension of a word obviously depends on knowing its basic meaning. This may be taken for granted in the children’s L1 but not in an L2. For example, the children sometimes confused some of the English words, especially head and hand, or produced ambiguous forms such as /he/ or /ha:/. In these cases, gestures typically used in classroom communication (pointing to the body parts in question) were used to clarify the learner’s communicative intention. The second block of the session was the study itself. One of the situations with the accompanying multiple choice answer (see Appendix 1) was presented, ensuring comprehension and providing clarification when requested. In most cases, one or more of the children took the initiative and offered answers. Those who did not participate freely were asked directly. Some of the children required longer than the others to provide an answer, but only on very few occasions did a child not complete the task. This process, like the rest of the session, was carried out orally. The children never had to produce or recognise the written forms of any of the words. This second block of the session was tape-recorded to be transcribed later. Transcription was orthographic and did not record overlaps or the length of pauses.2 The translations into English of these transcriptions try to reproduce as faithfully as possible the original wording. On completion of the task, all the children were thanked and told that as a reward, they would play a game and that they might get ‘a little pressie’. This usually consisted in guessing games related to their normal class work. The aim of this ‘reward’ time was to make the sessions enjoyable for the children to ensure their on-going cooperation in further sessions.
Results The design of the study, which involved the children freely explaining their interpretations, provided a considerable amount of data that was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative analysis of the answers provided by the children offers the results shown in Figure 1. As can be seen, the word hand was chosen as the correct option by 46%, 70% and 83% of the children in Cases 1, 2 and 3 respectively. In the three Cases, a higher percentage of children chose hand in preference to the other options: head, mouth, foot. 2. In the transcription, ‘C’ stands for ‘child’ and ‘R’ for ‘researcher’. When there is more than one child interacting in the same exchange, numbers are used to distinguish them, e.g., C1, C2 and so on.
Chapter 9. Young learners’ understanding of figurative language 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0%
hand
head
mouth
foot
give me a hand
46%
21%
32%
the hands of a watch
70%
14%
14%
2%
hand it to me
83%
6%
9%
2%
Figure 1. General quantitative results.
In Case 1 (give me a hand), hand was chosen by 46% of the children, followed by mouth (32%) and head (21%). In Case 2 (the hands of a watch), 70% of the children opted for hand, and 14%, 14% and 2% decided on head, mouth and foot, respectively. Finally, in Case 3 (hand it to me), hand was clearly the preferred option (83%), followed by head (6%), mouth (9%) and foot (2%). As was explained in the section devoted to the stimulus and design of the study, foot was only used with one of the second-year form in situations 2 (the hands of a watch) and 3 (hand it to me), so the percentages related to foot cannot be compared with the three other answers because it was not an option in all cases. These data seem to indicate that the most accessible meaning for the children is the one present in Case 3 (hand it to me) recognised by 83%, of the children. This is followed by Case 2 (the hands of a watch) in which hand was chosen by 70%. Finally the phrase the children seemed to find hardest to identify was give me a hand (Case 1), only identified by 46%. As will be seen below, this quantitative analysis alone is misleading, as a qualitative analysis sheds a different light on the choices made.
Case 1. Give me a hand Case 1 not only offers the lowest percentage of correct answers (46%) but also the most heterogeneous ones (See Figure 2). Despite this heterogeneity, there is a common feature in most of the answers provided by the children: they are based on an identification of the body part with its function. In the case of the hand-answers, this type of reasoning underlies 23 out of the total 26 (88%):
Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% give me a hand
hand
head
mouth
46%
21%
32%
Figure 2. Quantitative results Case 1 (Give me a hand).
(1) C: “‘hand’, porque las cosas se hacen con la mano.” C: ‘hand’, because you do things with your hands.
Some of these answers were quite general and simply stated that you do things with your hands or that in order to help, you need to use your hands. A few of them also mentioned things that can be generally done using our hands, mainly “coger cosas” (pick up things) or “trabajar” (work):
(2) C: “‘hand’, porque con ella puedes hacer de todo, puedes escribir, puedes coger cosas, puedes trabajar.” C: ‘hand’, because you can do all sorts of things with it, you can write, you can pick up things, you can work.
Other answers are more specific and refer to things children usually do with their hands such as “escribir” (write), “colorear” (colour) or “jugar con el ordenador” (play on the computer), showing very specific domain reasoning: (3) C: “porque si no sabes escribir se lo dices a un amigo y te ayuda a escribir” C: because if you can’t write, you ask a friend and s/he helps you write. (4) C: “‘hand’, porque te ayuda a escribir, y a dibujar y a pintar.” C: ‘hand’, because it helps you to write, draw and colour.
This identification of the body part with one of its functions was also present in the answers with head and mouth. It seems that when presented with Case 1 different children focused on different parts of the situation: using one’s hands to help (hand for doing), speaking in order to help (mouth for speaking) or thinking in order to help (head for thinking). Mouth was related to speaking in 15 out of 18 answers:
(5) C: “‘mouth’ porque tienes que hablar, porque no vas a ayudar a la gente sin hablar, porque él o ella si no sabe alguna palabra se la dices tú.” C: ‘mouth’ because you’ve got to speak, you can’t help people if you don’t speak, because if he or she doesn’t know a word you tell them. head is similarly correlated with thinking in 10 out of 12 answers:
Chapter 9. Young learners’ understanding of figurative language
(6) C: “‘head’, porque si tú estás pensando, vamos a suponer, que no sabes 9 x 9 y te pueden ayudar, te pueden decir cuántos son y se piensa con la cabeza.” C: ‘head’, because if you are thinking, for example, that you don’t know 9 times 9 and you can get some help, somebody can tell you the answer and you need your head to think.
Finally, as in examples (1) to (4) above, hand was clearly related with doing in 23 out of 26 answers. The lower percentage in the children’s selection of the item hand in Case 1 as opposed to Cases 2 and 3 may actually have been due to a problem with task-instruction in relation to the situation devised for the phrase give me a hand. This situation is more multi-interpretable than the other two because the notion of “helping me do something” can refer to physical help but also to an explanation, some advice and so on and, hence, the children’s choice of head and mouth as related to thinking and speaking. The use of a different reasoning strategy appears in the three remaining answers that selected hand. These three children in the same subgroup referred to the equivalent phrase ‘échame una mano’ in Spanish to justify their choice:
(7) C: “‘hand’ porque, muchas veces, algunas veces, la gente dice ‘¿me echas una mano?’ y es igual que ayudar.” C: ‘hand’ because, often, sometimes, people say ‘will you give me a hand?’ and it’s the same as helping.
The interaction in this group illustrates how an interpretation by one member who initiates the explanation is accepted by other children. However the other two members of the group did not follow up this explanation. They both chose mouth and focused on mouth for speaking (“uno cuando habla dice las cosas por la boca” – when someone talks, s/he says things through the mouth.) As will be seen below, another child uses a similar strategy in Case 2, resorting to her L1 linguistic knowledge and comes up with the word ‘manecilla’ to refer to the hands of the watch (example 14). In this case, none of her group-mates follows up the explanation she initiates. Thus, it seems that a child’s answer may remind the others of a connection that they may follow up if they find it sensible, or discard if they do not know it or do not agree.
Case 2. The hands of a watch Case 2 shows the greatest disparity of results depending on the type of analysis (quantitative or qualitative) applied to the data. A quantitative analysis overestimates the children’s comprehension of the figurative motivation of this use. As Figure 3 shows, 70% of the children chose the correct option but an examination of the different answers and the reasons provided by the children to justify them shows that these ‘correct’ answers are often a result of reasoning based on the physical
Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% hands of a watch
hand
head
mouth
foot
70%
14%
14%
2%
Figure 3. Quantitative results Case 2 (The hands of a watch).
contiguity of a watch and the body part. In fact, 59% (23 out of 39) of the correct answers are based on this type of reasoning: (8) C: “‘hand’ porque el reloj se pone en la mano.” C: ‘hand’ because you wear your watch on your hand.
The search for similarity, on the other hand, motivated other hand-answers, thus illustrating a different strategy to interpret the situation. Three of the children justified their choice of hand by comparing different parts of the watch (strap, face) with body parts (arms, wrists and fingers) in creative similes: (9) C: “porque la cuerda es igual que la muñeca porque es redonda y larga.” C: because the strap is the same as your wrist because it is round and long. (10) C: “porque lo del reloj (señalando la esfera) es redondo como si fuera el brazo, como los dedos (señalando las agujas)” C: because this thing on the watch (pointing to the face) is round as if it was an arm, like the fingers (pointing to the hands)
In these cases, the constraints on the possible answers may have prompted the children’s search for analogies. In two other cases, we find comparisons that relate the hands of a watch with a salient aspect of the hand, fingers. This leads to a simile based on the similarity of shape: (11) C: “porque los dedos parecen agujas.” C: because fingers look like the hands of the watch (‘needles’)
Movement, according to three of the children, is also a feature shared by both human hands and the hands of watches. In fact, the children’s gestures (a sweeping motion with the lower arm) seemed to relate this movement not so much with the hand itself, but with the arm: (12) C: “‘hand’, pues porque el brazo lo podemos mover como una aguja, por ejemplo como la pequeña”
Chapter 9. Young learners’ understanding of figurative language
C: ‘hand’, because we can move our arm in the same way a hand of a watch moves, for example, the short hand.
The similar function of both human hands and the hands of a watch to point, signal or indicate was also present in some of the children’s answers. Three children in two different subgroups argued in this way: (13) C: “‘hands’ porque indican como las manos, como cuando es, pues ahí, por ejemplo, pone la hora y hacen así [gesto], pues mira qué hora es.” C: ‘hands’ because they indicate like hands, as when it is, there, for example, it tells you the time and they go like this [gesture], look what time it is.
Finally, only one participant thought of the existence of the word ‘manecillas’ in Spanish to refer to the hands of a watch as the reason why hand was the correct answer: (14) C: “‘hands’, porque en español como manecilla se parece a mano y ‘hand’ es mano.” C: hands, because in Spanish ‘manecilla’ is similar to ‘mano’ and hand is ‘mano’.
Some of these types of reasoning strategies are also present in the children’s justifications for the selection of the foils (head, mouth or foot). For example, five out of the eight children that chose head, based their answers on comparisons: (15) C: “‘heads’, porque creo que los pelos son las agujas.” C: heads because I think that the hairs are the hands of the watch (needles). (16) C: “‘head’ porque esto [la esfera] es redondo como la cabeza” C: ‘head’ because this [the face] is round like a head.
The identification of the function of head (thinking) and head itself also appeared in one answer: (17) C: “‘head’ porque pensamos qué hora es con la cabeza.” C: ‘head’ because we think what time it is, using our head
In the case of the answers that preferred mouth, finding similarity between two entities is also the most widely used strategy (6 out of 8 answers illustrate this). Five of them are creative similes in which the hands of a watch are compared with parts of the mouth (teeth and tongue): (18) C: “‘Mouth’, porque parece que [se ríe] un ‘trocino’ (trocito) de esto [la aguja], si lo cortas, un cuadrado de un diente, si lo cortas, si se te rompe la aguja” C: ‘mouth’ because it looks like [laughing] a little bit of this [the hand of the watch], if you cut it out, a square of a tooth, if you cut it out, if the hand breaks
Case 3. Hand it to me Case 3 provides the most uniform data from both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective (see Figure 4 for quantitative results).
Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% hand it to me
hand
head
mouth
foot
83%
6%
9%
2%
Figure 4. Quantitative results Case 3 (Hand it to me).
In 93% (42 out of 45) of the correct answers, the choice of hand was justified in the same way: (19) C: “porque cuando damos algo lo hacemos con la mano.” C: because when we give something out we do it with our hand.
This high percentage of correct answers and justifications in this particular situation is even more remarkable if we take into account that these children were only familiar with the prototypical meaning of hand, that is, the noun form, as its verbal use had not been exemplified for them by their teachers or the text books. Their reasoning, therefore, seem to be based on their concrete sensorimotor experiences related to the manipulation of objects. Their answers are clear in this respect: (20) C: “‘hand’ porque normalmente las cosas se dan con la mano.” C: ‘hand’ because you normally use your hand to give things out. (21) C: “‘hand, porque si no tenemos mano ¿cómo lo vamos a pasar o como lo cogemos?” C: ‘hand’, because if we haven’t got a hand, how are we going to pass it or catch it?
Discarding the other body parts on the basis of experience that tells them that heads, mouths or feet are not usually employed to hand things to others, is reflected in some answers: (22) C: “‘hand’, porque se da con la mano, tú se lo das con la mano, ¡no con el pie, ni con la cabeza, ni con la boca!” C: ‘hand’, because you hand it with your hand, you hand it to him/her with your hand, not with your foot, head or mouth!
As regards the explanations for choosing head and mouth, all of them were also based on the two metonymies that had already appeared in the previous two situations (head for thinking and mouth for speaking). Thus, according to these children, you ask somebody, using your mouth, to hand something to you: (23) C: “‘mouth’ porque has tenido que hablar para decírselo, porque si no – no te vas a quedar callado y te lo va a dar.”
Chapter 9. Young learners’ understanding of figurative language
C: ‘mouth’ because you’ve talked to tell him/her, because if you don’t – you can’t keep quiet and expect that s/he hands it to you. Similarly, you need to think in order to do anything: (24) C: “‘head’, porque pensamos con ella.” C: ‘head’ because we think with it
Discussion All the examples given above illustrate the presence of figurative reasoning and the capacity to establish analogies between two terms in the children’s reasoning about the L2 at age 7. The results of this study show that these children in this particular context are able to set up links between the different uses of a term if they are provided with an appropriate stimulus to do so, and that they search for similarity and contiguity in their reasoning. Linguistically, this is reflected in their capacity to create comparisons, creative similes and metonymies. Metonymical reasoning is the most widely employed reasoning strategy throughout the three situations in which the children were tested. The three preferred metonymies are conventional and illustrate the sharing of a common cultural background. They all are instances of the schema body part for function: hand for doing, head for thinking and mouth for speaking. Examples (1) to (4) and (19) to (22) illustrate the first of these metonymies in Cases 1 and 3 respectively. Linguistic instantiations of the metonymy head for thinking appear in Case 1 (example 6) Case 2 (example 17) and Case 3 (example 24). Finally, mouth for speaking is linguistically realised in example (5), and (23) in Cases 1 and 3 respectively. Another conventional metonymy (hand for pointing), which may underlie the semantic extension ‘the hands of a watch/clock’ appears in example (13) in Case 2. This predominance of metonymical reasoning may be a result of the figurative extensions chosen for the study. As discussed above, two of the expressions used as stimuli are motivated by metonymy and a significant number of the children’s responses acknowledge this. However, this does not mean that children’s figurative capacity is restricted to metonymy. In fact, these children’s ability for metaphorical reasoning is also present in some of their answers and linguistically realised in creative comparisons and similes using the three body parts in question: hand (examples 9 to 12), head (examples 15 and 16) and mouth (example 18), and matching shared features such as shape or movement. This use of creative similes and comparisons replicates first language studies. That is, these children, when provided with evidence that a figurative expression exists in language, reason about it. Likewise, the frequency of metonymical reasoning in the three Cases, particularly in Case 3 in which metonymy is used in 93% of all answers (50 out of 54), illustrates its important role in these children’s understanding of these semantic extensions. Moreover, it also seems to show that they consistently employ analogical reasoning in preference to other strategies. These children rarely resort to linguistic reasoning based on their L1 knowledge. As has been noted, the phrase give me a hand has an equivalent
Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
in Spanish échame una mano. Nevertheless, only three (out of 56) of the children in the study used this reason to support their choice of hand (example 7). If the children were transferring from their mother tongue into English, the meaning of give me a hand would be very clear to them. However, the data reveal that, in fact, this is the most difficult of the three phrases for them to comprehend. On the other hand, hand it to me, which has no equivalent in Spanish (the noun ‘mano’ cannot be verbalised), is more accessible. These children cannot be transferring from Spanish into English in this particular case. Instead, their abstract reasoning is based on their concrete sensorimotor experiences related to the manipulation of objects, as their answers illustrate (examples 19 to 22).
Conclusions This study replicates some of the findings of previous research into the figurative capacity of monolingual children: analogical reasoning plays a significant role in children’s abstract reasoning. In relation to the research questions posed in the introductory section, the results of the study show that (1) these children are ready to contemplate figurative meaning extensions, and (2) they make use of analogical (metaphorical) and associative (metonymical) reasoning to motivate their predictions of these semantic extensions. Furthermore, figurative extensions motivated by metonymy seem to be more transparent for them, as illustrated by their identification of hand it to me, as predicted by some cognitive linguists. The children resorted to these mental capacities when confronted with non-literal linguistic forms in the second language in preference to other strategies which have traditionally been encouraged in the classroom, i.e., interlingual identification. Thus, promoting analogical and associative reasoning in the English as a Foreign Language classroom would aid the learners to recognise, understand and use the figurative meaning of many vocabulary items in English even at this early age (seven years old). These findings open up possibilities for material design which could exploit children’s natural ability to reason figuratively, both in their mother tongue and in the L2. It would, therefore, seem that children, from at least age seven, are ready for instruction around polysemous words informed by cognitive linguistics. In fact, this type of instruction at this age can be minimal, for example, when children encounter a figuratively used word, the teacher can encourage them to connect it to its literal meaning. This type of activity, used in the study above, has been shown to encourage children to establish the connection between the different meanings of a lexeme via metaphor and metonymy. The teacher would only need to guide them to the appropriate use of the word meaning. Drawing learners’ attention to these semantic possibilities would enrich their use of a restricted lexicon, such as body parts, an important consideration in settings in which the foreign language is learnt from an early age, but often with impoverished lexical input and severe time restraints on the child’s exposure to English.
Chapter 9. Young learners’ understanding of figurative language
References Barcelona, Antonio (Ed.) (2000). Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads. A cognitive perspective. Topics in English Linguistics, 30. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Breen, Michael (1985). Authenticity in the language classroom. Applied Linguistics, 6, 60–70. Boers, Frank & Seth Lindstromberg (forthcoming). Cognitive linguistics application in second or foreign language instruction: rationale, proposals and evaluation. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Cameron, Lynne (1996). Discourse context and the development of metaphor in children. Current Issues in Language and Society, 3, 49–64. Cameron, Lynne (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London & New York: Continuum. Deignan, Alice (1999). Metaphorical polysemy and paradigmatic relations: A corpus study. Word, 50, 319–338. Dirven, René & Ralf Pörings (Eds.) (2002). Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Gentner, Dedre (1989). The mechanisms of analogical learning. In S. Vosniadou & A. Ortony (Eds.), Similarity and analogical reasoning (199–241). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gries, Stephan (2006). Corpus-based methods and cognitive semantics: The many meanings of to run. In S. Gries and A. Stefanowitsch (Eds.), Corpora in cognitive linguistics: The SyntaxLexis Interface (57–99). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kövecses, Zoltán (2002). Metaphor: A practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, George (1990). The invariance hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas? Cognitive Linguistics, 1, 39–74. Piquer Píriz, Ana M. (2005). Young EFL learners’ understanding of some semantic extensions of the lexemes ‘hand’, ‘mouth’ and ‘head’. PhD dissertation. Universidad de Extremadura: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Extremadura. Radden, Günter (2000). How Metonymic are Metaphors. In A. Barcelona (Ed.) op. cit, (93–108). Radden, Günter & Zoltán Kövecses (1999). Towards a theory of metonymy. In K. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Metonymy in language and thought (17–59). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sinclair, John (Ed.) (2001). Collins COBUILD Dictionary for Advanced Learners of English. 2001. Glasgow: HarperCollins. Sweetser, Eve (1990). From etymology to pragmatics. Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, John (2002). Category extension by metonymy and metaphor. In R. Dirven, & R. Pörings (Eds.), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast (323–347). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Vosniadou, Stella (1987). Children and metaphors. Child Development, 58, 870–885. Vygotsky, Lev (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Winner, Ellen (1988). The point of words: Children’s understanding of metaphor and irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wood, David, Jerome Bruner & Gail Ross (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89–100.
Ana M. Piquer-Piriz
Appendix Case 1. Give me a hand “Si necesito que me ayudéis a hacer algo, ¿cómo creéis que os lo voy a pedir en inglés?” (If I need your help to do something, how do you think I will ask for it in English?) “Give me a head, give me a hand or give me a mouth?”
Case 2. The hands of a watch Children of this age are more familiar with digital watches, therefore, in order to check if they would recognise the hands of an analogue watch, in the first place, they were shown one and asked to describe how it works and its parts. “¿Cómo creéis que se llaman estas partes (señalando las agujas) en inglés?” (What do you think these parts (pointing to the hands) are called in English?) “mouths, heads, or hands?”
It is interesting to note that although the word manecillas (literally, “little hands”) exists in Spanish to refer to the hands of a watch, the most common word used to designate these devices is agujas which literally means “needles”.
Case 3. Hand it to me “X (el nombre de uno de los niños) tiene una hoja de papel y le pido que me la dé, ¿qué creéis que le voy a decir en inglés?” (X (the name of one of the children) has got this piece of paper and I ask him/ her to give it to me. What do you think I will say in English) “Head it to me, hand it to me or mouth/foot it to me?”
chapter 10
The relationship between associative thinking, analogical reasoning, image formation and metaphoric extension strategies Jeannette Littlemore Figurative extensions of word meaning Figurative extensions of word meaning account for many of the vocabulary items that foreign language learners are likely to encounter. The process by which a word takes on a related meaning is known as ‘semantic broadening’ (Gramley 2001). Because of this process, words often have substantially more connotative meanings than denotative meanings (Hoffman 1983) and often these connotative meanings are in more common usage than their denotative meanings. For example, the word cup denotes a drinking vessel, but is also used, metaphorically and metonymically, to refer to a part of an acorn, a hip joint, a part of a bra, and a sporting competition. Moreover, expressions such as the mouth of a river, the eye of a needle, and the leg of a table are commonplace expressions that represent metaphorical or metonymical extensions of parts of the body. It has been argued that these types of expressions are likely to constitute ‘dead’ or ‘conventional’ metaphors for native speakers and therefore involve little metaphorical processing. However, when language learners first encounter a word whose meaning can be derived metaphorically from its more basic sense, it is very unlikely that this word will constitute a ‘dead metaphor’ for these learners. Unless there is a direct equivalent in their own language, they may need to engage in some sort of metaphoric thinking in order to work out its new meaning in the given context. Such thinking may help learners to understand and acquire new vocabulary in the target language. For example, in my own teaching experience, a group of East Asian graduate students of English for Academic Purposes came across the word rooted, in the following context: “[These] problems are rooted in the technological uncertainties, ambiguous customer signals and immature of competitive structures of markets”. As they were already familiar with the meaning of the word roots, (that roots are usually in the ground, that they generally lie below the plant, that they attach it to the ground, and that they feed the plant) they were able to use this knowledge to work out the meaning of rooted in its more abstract context (be based on; have their foundations in; be
Jeannette Littlemore
fed by). The type of thinking involved here is essentially metaphoric in that it involves the identification of a topic (the problems faced by businesses) and a vehicle (the basic sense of roots, i.e., the roots of a tree), and a transfer of information between them.1 It is also possible to describe this process in terms of a conceptual metaphor; problems are trees. A feature of the source domain, trees (i.e., the fact that they have roots) is mapped on to the target domain, problems. There is a problem with the conceptual metaphor approach, in that it is very difficult, if not impossible to prove that a conceptual metaphor represents anything more than the analyst’s individual interpretation (Low 1999). On the other hand, the approach is useful as it focuses on the richness and complexity of the source domain, and on the types of features that can be transferred from it to the target domain. For this reason, the terms source and target domain will be employed for the remainder of the article. In this chapter, a study is described, which investigated the extent to which it is possible to train learners in the use of metaphoric extension strategies to understand words and expressions whose meanings have been metaphorically extended.
How might metaphoric extension processes be exploited for language learning purposes? If language learners are able to deal with metaphoric extensions of word meaning then they are likely to be better placed to appreciate and use language’s productive potential, thus exhibiting a higher degree of what Carter & McCarthy (1995) refer to as ‘language awareness’. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that activation of knowledge of the basic senses of a word in the target language can give learners insights into its connotations and semantic prosody, as well as enhancing its learnability and memorability (see for example, Boers 2000). So how might these processes be used in vocabulary comprehension? Let us consider the term ‘jumped on the bandwagon’, which appeared in the following context, and which proved problematic for a Spanish speaking upper-intermediate student of English. By the late 1990s even big names such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard had jumped on the bandwagon. Intel’s logo appeared on the computers of more than 1,600 manufacturers and its chips held a 75 per cent market share. (The Essence of Building an Effective Brand, The Financial Times, 18th December 2000) 1. There is some disagreement over whether this process can truly be described as ‘transfer’ or whether it is more appropriately described as ‘blending’ (see section 2, paragraph 3). There is also controversy concerning the point at which the context restricts the number of possible interpretations accessed.
Chapter 10. Metaphoric extension strategy training
In order to help this student work out the meaning of this expression, I began by asking her to separate out the words band and wagon, and asked her to picture a wagon carrying a band playing music. I then explained that it is an old-fashioned idea where the arrival of a bandwagon in a town generally attracted a large following. I then asked the student to picture the scene (a large group of people following the bandwagon) and to think of words and concepts associated with this image. The concepts that she came up with included popularity, crowd, movement, noise, publicity, enthusiasm, togetherness, old-fashioned clothes, a fair ground. I then asked her to think about how these concepts might apply to the context in which the expression appeared. In essence, I was asking her to engage in a metaphoric thinking process, in which she compared the source domain to the target domain. This led her to pick out concepts such as popularity, crowd, movement, noise, publicity, enthusiasm, togetherness from the above list. I then encouraged her to employ a blending process, whereby she attempted to blend the concepts of bandwagons and big business, by means of an interactive image (Intel sitting on the bandwagon, IBM and Hewlett Packard in the crowd behind). Although she claimed to find this part of the exercise difficult, she was able to identify a wider variety of concepts, which included preconceptions that she may already have had about IBM and Hewlett Packard. For example, she thought that they might be large, push the other companies out of the way and kick some of the weaker ones off the bandwagon. The interpretations produced by this student suggest that she was able to use both ‘transfer’ and ‘blending’ processes in the metaphor interpretation. When transfer processes are employed, characteristics of the source domain are simply transferred to the target domain. In the above example, this would lead to interpretations such as popularity, noise, and publicity. When ‘blending’ processes are employed (Fauconnier & Turner 1998), the two domains are blended, resulting in novel ‘mental spaces’ that have their own emergent structure. These mental spaces may include elements that are not intrinsically part of the source domain. The blending process may also be facilitated by the use of interactive imagery. In the above example, interpretations such as the idea that IBM and Hewlett Packard might be large, push the other companies out of the way and kick some of the weaker ones off the bandwagon may have resulted from blending processes. This student therefore appears to have achieved a rich understanding of the term ‘bandwagon’ through the use of mapping and blending processes.
Processes involved in metaphor interpretation Significant individual differences have been observed amongst language learners in their ability to engage in metaphoric thinking (Littlemore 2001), a finding that appears to be supported by an extensive body of literature on the subject of individual differences in ‘metaphoric competence’. Metaphoric competence refers to one’s ability to perceive and create metaphoric relationships between different concepts. It is usually concerned with metaphors that are perceived as novel at the time of processing (see,
Jeannette Littlemore
for example, Johnson & Pascual-Leone 1989; Johnson & Rosano 1993; Pollio & Burns 1977; Pollio & Smith 1979). As we have seen, metaphoric extensions of word meaning are likely to be processed by language learners as novel metaphors, the first time they are encountered. If the meaning of a metaphor is not easily understood from the context, and if there is no equivalent in a learner’s first language, then more often than not they will then need to employ interpretation processes that are normally reserved for novel metaphor. This means that, somehow or other, they will need to identify those aspects of the source domain that are relevant to the target domain, within the given context. Their lack of knowledge of the conventional associations that the domains have may mean that they find this a difficult thing to do. Below, three psychological processes are described, which may facilitate this procedure. These are associative fluency, analogical reasoning, and image formation.
Associative fluency Associative fluency refers to the ability to make a wide range of connections when presented with a given stimulus. It is thought to underlie the ability to identify a wide variety of possible interpretations for a single given metaphor (Pollio & Smith 1980). Although this is unlikely to be an essential skill for native speakers when interpreting metaphors, it may be useful for language learners, who may need to have several goes at interpreting a metaphor before coming up with a culturally-appropriate interpretation. Native speakers can rely on the activation of relevant schemata when interpreting metaphors. These are the representations of the world that people already have in their minds, and which they use to understand and interpret incoming information (Cook 1997). They include the sets of connotations that people readily attribute to incoming vocabulary. The ability to activate relevant schemata means that people do not have to pay attention to every detail of incoming information, and can therefore process it more rapidly. When interpreting metaphors, language learners need to be able to embrace schemata that are different from those in their own language. An ability to make a wide variety of associations for both the source and target domains should enable them to expand and adapt their relevant schemata, and give them a better chance of hitting on an interpretation that matches the one originally intended by the speaker or writer. This is likely to significantly enhance their metaphor interpretation skills.
Analogical reasoning Analogical reasoning is a process whereby partial similarities are observed between concepts so that the characteristics of one of the concepts can be used to shed light on the other (Holyoak 1984). The role of analogy in metaphor comprehension is controversial: some researchers believe that it plays a central role, whereas others do not. However, it is likely to play a more central role for language learners than for native
Chapter 10. Metaphoric extension strategy training
speakers. The reason for this is that, whereas native speakers can rely heavily on intuition and the activation of relevant schemata, language learners do not have access to the same residual knowledge, so for them, the process is more likely to be one of trial and error. As part of this process, they will need to draw as many analogies between the source and target domains as they can. Although this process may appear somewhat arduous, it may help them come up with more appropriate interpretations for the metaphors with which they are faced.
Image formation Research suggests that both metaphor production and comprehension are assisted by mental imagery. For example, in their model of metaphoric comprehension, Paivio & Walsh (1993) claim that the two elements of metaphor are fused by means of a gestalt interactive image. They claim that imagery helps the speaker or listener make the comparisons necessary for metaphor production or interpretation, and that imagery can generate novel, integrated representation for metaphor production, as well as increasing the efficiency of the search for relevant information for metaphor comprehension. Further support for the role of imagery in metaphoric competence comes from empirical findings that have been made in the area. For example, Harris et al. (1980) examined subjects’ use of imagery in encoding metaphors in comparison to nonmetaphors. In Harris et al.’s words, these images “were frequently highly creative, constructed, literally anomalous, surrealistic images involving both the topic and the vehicle fused in dynamic interaction” (op.cit., 178). It has also been shown that if participants are shown interactive images of the source and target domains, then this helps them to remember metaphorical links between the two domains (Lutz & Lutz 1977). It is difficult to say what the exact relationship might be between associative fluency, analogical reasoning, and image formation. If, as Paivio & Walsh (1993) propose, imagery helps the drawing together of conceptual referents then it may well be linked to analogical reasoning. On the other hand, if one is able to form an image of the source domain, then this may well help them to think of a wide variety of features associated with that source domain. This would then imply a link between image formation and associative fluency. The idea of image formation ties in quite neatly with blending theory, which requires the conceptual integration of the source and target domains. It could be that, when they interpret or produce metaphors, some individuals form a mental image that combines features of the source and target domains, and that they add extra features to this image. However, this idea is, at present, only conjecture. The only statement that we can make with some certainty is that the metaphoric competence in language learners may be enhanced by attending to the psychological processes of associative fluency and analogical reasoning, and that these psychological processes may be facilitated by image formation.
Jeannette Littlemore
As we saw above, the study described in this article investigated the extent to which it is possible to train learners in the use of metaphoric extension strategies to guess the meanings of unknown words and expressions. This training focused on the psychological processes of associative fluency, analogical reasoning and image formation. It also looked at factors that might affect students’ tendency and ability to employ metaphoric extension strategies. The first of these was the concreteness or ‘imageability’ of the items, the second was the presence or absence of contextual clues, and the third was the students’ cognitive style. These factors are described below.
Factors likely to affect a student’s ability to use metaphoric extension strategies Word concreteness It is likely to be the case that some words are more easily comprehended through the use of metaphoric extension strategies than others. One would imagine that the more concrete a word is, the more likely it is to evoke a mental image, and the more likely it is to elicit a metaphoric extension strategy. For example, a student of business English might find it easier to use a metaphoric extension strategy to work out the meaning of ‘a company staying afloat’ than they would for ‘a company exhibiting an entrepreneurial mindset’. A word’s concreteness, or ‘imageability’ has been shown to be one of the most powerful determiners of its memorability (Sadoski et al. 1993). Factors affecting a word’s concreteness include its part of speech (research by Johnson & Malgady 1980 shows that people tend to find it easier to picture nouns than verbs) and the subjectivity of the language (Sadoski & Quast 1990 found that emotional language is more likely to promote imagery than dry, objective language). One of the hypotheses tested in the study described below is that highly imageable words are more likely to be interpreted through metaphoric extension strategies. The imageability of the words used in the study was therefore independently assessed by a group of native speakers.
The presence of contextual clues When language students come across new or unfamiliar vocabulary, teachers usually encourage them to use contextual clues to guess its meaning. Indeed, this has been identified as one of the most important strategies for dealing with new vocabulary (Nation 1990). However, students sometimes find that the clues in the surrounding context are inadequate, or that they lack the appropriate skills for using them (Fukkink et al. 2001). When such clues are lacking they may then turn to alternative strategies, such as metaphoric extension strategies. One might therefore expect a student’s tendency to use metaphoric extension strategies to be inversely related to the usefulness of the clues in the surrounding context. This hypothesis is tested in the study.
Chapter 10. Metaphoric extension strategy training
Cognitive style A person’s preference for processing information in a certain way is usually referred to as their cognitive style (Schmeck 1988). Willing (1988) argues that a person’s cognitive style helps determine the cognitive-psychological aspects of their approach to learning and that this in turn helps determine the cognitive strategies chosen by the student. One of the most widely studied cognitive style dimensions is the verbaliser/imager dimension. Some people prefer to process information verbally, whereas others prefer to do it by forming mental images (Childers et al. 1985). Individual differences have been found in individuals’ ability and tendency to form mental images (Paivio & Harshman 1983; Riding & Douglas 1993; Thompson 1990), and individuals with a strong imaging capacity are significantly better at producing novel metaphors than individuals with a strong verbalising capacity (Littlemore 1998). Language learners who prefer to process information in images (‘imagers’) may be more likely to employ metaphoric extension strategies. On the other hand, students who prefer to process information in words (‘verbalisers’) may prefer to use the surrounding context. It is also possible that imagers will be able to use metaphoric extension strategies more successfully than verbalisers, and that verbalisers will be better at making use of clues in the surrounding context. These differences may mean that for some students, the use of metaphoric extension strategies may be second nature, whereas for others it may be more difficult. The study outlined below tests this hypothesis.
The study A small, exploratory study was designed in order to answer four research questions that were raised in the preceding discussion of metaphoric extension strategies. These are as follows: 1. Is it useful to encourage students to use metaphoric extension strategies? 2. Does the concreteness of the item affect a student’s inclination and ability to use metaphoric extension strategies? 3. Does the presence of contextual clues affect a student’s inclination and ability to use metaphoric extension strategies? 4. Does a person’s cognitive style affect their inclination and ability to use metaphoric extension strategies?
The participants The participants in the study were 43 post-graduate, overseas students at the University of Birmingham, studying a range of disciplines. They were all following a fifteen-hour course in English vocabulary and their level of English was upper-intermediate. The testing took place in the final 90-minute session of their course.
Jeannette Littlemore
Method The participants were first given a brief introduction to the different types of strategies that one can use to guess the meaning of new vocabulary. This was referred to as a ‘strategy awareness-raising session’ (see Appendix 1). In this session, they were encouraged to activate their knowledge of the basic sense of the words and to extrapolate from this (with or without the use of mental imagery) in order to work out their metaphorically extended meaning. The term ‘literal meaning’ was used instead of ‘basic sense’, as it was more likely to be understood by the students. After the strategy awareness-raising session, the participants were asked to work, at their own pace, through ten vocabulary items, each presented in a short surrounding context. The items used in the study were taken from an original list of 150 items that had been compiled in a pilot study. In this pilot study, an upper-intermediate student on a similar course had been asked to indicate any words that she did not understand. The ten items were selected on the basis that the participant in the pilot study had been familiar with the basic senses of the words, or of parts of the words and was able, with the help of the teacher, to use these meanings to guess the metaphorical meanings of the words in context. The items, in their surrounding contexts, were as follows: 1. Established companies seldom commit wholeheartedly to new innovations. 2. The needs of the students fit squarely with the university’s objectives. 3. Changing peoples’ views is not always easy because attitudes are often grounded in experience. 4. The new management must be willing to challenge deep-seated assumptions. 5. The task is going to be enormous; however we have managed to make a few inroads already. 6. It is natural to underestimate developing technologies because initially they don’t always measure up to the familiar alternatives. 7. Scientists made an important breakthrough when they discovered how to clone sheep. 8. There has been a gradual build-up of troops on both sides of the border. 9. Lecturers tend to focus on the best students, but it’s important for them to consider the needs of also-rans. 10. Global companies must also be able to exploit new opportunities and surmount the challenges of globalisation. The method used to identify these words and phrases as metaphorical corresponds roughly to the Vehicle Identification Procedure (Cameron 2003) in that I first established whether a stretch of discourse was potentially incongruous, by referring to a different topic, and secondly whether the incongruity could be removed by making use of the ‘obvious’ meaning. For each item, the participants were asked to work out the meaning of the underlined word. They were then asked to put a tick against any strategies that they had used.
Chapter 10. Metaphoric extension strategy training
They were allowed to tick as many strategies as they liked. The list of possible strategies was as follows: • • • • • •
I used only the surrounding context to work out the meaning I formed a mental image of the word and used this mental image to help me think of associated concepts I thought of the word’s associated concepts, without using an image I applied concepts associated with the word to the surrounding context I formed an interactive image between the word and the context I knew the word and didn’t need to do any of the above
It took the participants between forty and sixty minutes to complete the exercise. Their answers were collected at the end and feedback on their responses was given to each of the participants the following week.
Scoring the items Two independent, native speaker judges scored the participant’s responses. Each of the participants’ answers was allocated a score between 0 and 2. A score of 0 was allocated to items that were deemed to be completely wrong, as in the following example: Target item: they don’t always measure up to the familiar alternatives Participant’s response: they don’t always prior to the familiar alternatives
A score of ‘1’ was allocated to items that were deemed to be partially correct, as in the following example: Target item: Deep-seated assumptions Participant’s response: Out of fashion
A score of ‘2’ was allocated to items that were deemed to be completely correct, as in the following example: Target item: companies seldom commit wholeheartedly to new innovations Participant’s response: Companies rarely commit completely to new innovations
The scorers were asked to focus only on the target item. This meant that if a participant had understood the target item, but had misunderstood some of the surrounding words, then he or she was still given a score of two. There was 92% level of agreement between the scorers. In cases of disagreement, the items were discussed with a third party until agreement was reached. In order to assess the word concreteness (i.e., imageability) of the items, eight native speakers were given a list of the ten words and asked to indicate on a scale from one to five, how easy they found it to form an image of each word. These eight native speakers were all teachers of English but had not taught the participants in the study. As the reliability of their responses was reasonably high (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.76),
Jeannette Littlemore
the mean response was calculated for each item. These mean scores were taken as a measure of imageability of the items. In order to assess the usefulness of the contextual clues, six native speakers were given a list of the words in context and asked to indicate, on a scale from one to five, the usefulness of the contextual clues for working out the meanings of the items. These native speakers were all teachers of English who had either taught the participants in the study or students of a similar level. As the reliability of their responses was reasonably high (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.72), the mean response was calculated for each item. These mean scores were taken as a measure of the usefulness of the contextual clues for each item. In order to assess the cognitive style of the participants, Childers et al’s (1985) “Style of Processing” scale was administered to each of the participants after the study. This is a twenty-two item questionnaire whose reliability and validity have been found to be strong.2
Results 1. Is it useful to encourage students to use metaphoric extension strategies? All types of strategies were used both successfully and unsuccessfully by different participants, for different items, and no particular strategy was a predictor of overall success. So at this stage, we cannot say whether or not it is useful to encourage students to use metaphoric extension strategies. There were some interesting cases of both contextual clues and metaphoric extension strategies leading to the wrong interpretation, as in the following examples:
Example 1
Target item: There has been a gradual build-up of troops on both sides of the border Participant’s response: There has been a gradual construction of troops Strategy: Formed a mental image and thought of associated concepts
Example 2 Target item: Established companies rarely commit wholeheartedly to new innovations.
2. Cronbach’s alpha is reported to be 0.88 (Childers et al. 1985). In a study designed to measure the relationship between the imager cognitive style and a person’s ability to recall images in advertising, the scale was found by Heckler et al. (1993) to have significant predictive validity (p < 0.05).
Chapter 10. Metaphoric extension strategy training
Participant’s response: Already settled companies don’t make mistakes respecting new innovations. Strategy: Used only contextual clues
In Example 1, the participant may have associated the word ‘build’ with the word ‘construction’, which usually applies to physical objects. They thus concentrated on an inappropriate characteristic of the word. In Example 2, the participant may have inferred that well-established companies are less likely to make mistakes than new companies. Equally, there were some encouraging cases of successful use of both types of strategy:
Example 3 Target item: The task is going to be enormous, however we have managed to make a few inroads already. Participant’s response: bits and pieces; part of the job, small first steps. Strategy used: Formed a mental image and thought of associated concepts
Example 4 Established companies rarely commit wholeheartedly to new innovations Participant’s response: with full heart and soul Strategy used: Thought of associated concepts without using an image
Example 5 Target item: Scientists made an important breakthrough when they discovered how to clone sheep Participant’s response: The scientists opened up a new way of thinking Strategy used: Used only contextual clues
In Example 3, the participant claimed to be able to form an image a series of ‘inroads’ and from this image, was able to extract associated concepts such as smallness, incompleteness and stepping. In Example 4, the participant associated the word soul with the word heart, thus resulting in a fairly deep understanding of the expression. In Example 5, the participant was able to use contextual clues such as ‘discovered’ and ‘important’ in order to work out the meaning of the word. However, these findings, as they stand, are not particularly useful as they do not tell us anything about how the effectiveness of metaphoric extension strategies varies from item to item, or from student to student. In order to go into slightly more depth, a multinomial, logistic regression analysis was employed for each item. In this procedure, a dependent variable is entered into the model. The variables that are thought to affect this dependent variable are also entered into the model and the analysis computes which of these variables, if any, are likely to have had an effect on the dependent variable. In this study, the dependent variable was success in finding meaning of the item, and the independent variables were the various strategies employed. Those strategies
Jeannette Littlemore
Table 1. Predominant strategies used and strategies that predicted success for each item (p
