Metaphor: From a Rhetoric Device to a Cognitive Systematicity
As announced in the introductory chapters, the present study not only aims at combining quantitative and qualitative perspectives on the three Renaissance playwrights’ compound use, but also takes three different vantage points on the compounds as part of the qualitative investigation. Besides an analysis of their morphological make-up and their semantic structure, the metaphoricity of the compounds represents a further focus of this study. The definition, conceptualisation and treatment of metaphor in large sections of contemporary linguistic research, however, has undergone some major restructuring during the last decades by which the individual appreciation of the relationship between metaphor and literary creativity naturally did not stay untouched. In order to provide the necessary theoretical basis for the analysis of metaphor in the compounds from the corpus, the following chapters will attempt to provide an overview of the key issues concerning the conceptualisation of metaphor (within and without the realms of literature) and the changes and redefinitions that have affected its conceptualisation in much of contemporary linguistics.130
5.1.1. Aristotle and the Traditional View(s) on Metaphor
The first seminal and thus certainly still one of the both most widely known and most influential theories of metaphor is Aristotle´s. His deliberations on the topic of metaphor may seem scattered and sparse in comparison with more contemporary contributions that easily fill volumes, but the cornerstones of Aristotle’s approach, as presented in The Poetics and Rhetoric, still take up most of the basic assumptions that are fundamental to what has been labelled ‘the traditional view on metaphor.’131
130 The branches of linguistics that are meant here, are, of course, the different approaches that apply a cognitive / conceptual definition of metaphor and are (although to different extents) influenced by Conceptual Metaphor Theory as first formulated by Lakoff & Johnson (1980). Such cognitive approaches constitute the majority of contemporary linguistic metaphor research, however, this is not to say that other approaches that are premised on a more traditional rhetoric understanding of the phenomenon do not exist.
131 Given this congruence of the very basic fundaments of Aristotle’s and the various contemporary approaches that can be subsumed under ‚the traditional view(s)‘, I allow myself to focus on the former´s basic assumptions.
This is not to say that the elaborations and extensions that have been made in younger contributions are to be
125 Aristotle’s most general (and most frequently confuted) attitude to metaphor is to perceive it as a consciously applied rhetoric device, which “is most important both in poetry and in prose" (Aristoteles 1959:355)132 as it gives "perspicuity, pleasure, and a foreign air"
(Aristoteles 1959:355) to one´s diction. This Aristotelian understanding of metaphor is restricted to the linguistic sphere and is basically a technique of substituting terms along four lines: “either transferred from the genus and applied to the species or from the species and applied to the genus, or from one species to another or else by analogy” (Aristoteles 1960:81), in a distinctly conscious manner. Hence, it is only logical, that perceiving metaphor as an instrument of rhetoric, Aristotle presents the skill of handling this tool as measurable along the lines of good or bad, or more specifically, appropriate and inappropriate. Thus, in the Rhetoric he offers instructions on how to choose one´s metaphors "observing due proportion"
(Aristoteles 1959:355) and with the aim of either ornamenting or depreciating the subject in mind (cp. Aristoteles 1959:355) and underlines both the nature of metaphor as having an ornamental stylistic and rhetoric function and as being subject to evaluation: "we must make use of metaphors and epithets that are appropriate" (Aristoteles 1959:355). In the same section, the reader is also reminded that "metaphors must not be far-fetched" (Aristoteles 1959:359), which brings another fundamental assumption of the Aristotelian understanding into focus: As the metaphorical term133 must be derived "from what is akin and of the same kind, so that, as soon as it is uttered, it is clearly seen to be akin" (Aristoteles 1959:359), the implicit comparison that is being drawn is supposed to be between two things that share certain pre-existing similarities. It is this prerequisite of an appropriate metaphor that Aristotle already points at in The Poetics, attributing an "eye for resemblances" (Aristoteles 1960:91) to poets who master the art of using metaphor appropriately and by doing so manage successfully to accomplish "by far the greatest thing" (Aristoteles 1960:91).
This very high appreciation of metaphor as a rhetoric device, which Aristotle expresses on various occasions in his works, calls attention to a certain ambivalence in his approach to the proportion of an innate talent and practice, when it comes to the command of metaphor. In both of his books, Aristotle puts emphasis on the notion that the right use of metaphor "cannot
neglected, but as due to the aim of the overall study a full account of the multitude of theoretical approaches to metaphor seems hardly expedient, I restrict myself to the basic assumptions that are relevant to my investigation.
132 Quotations from Aristotle’s works are cited in their English translation, that is provided in the respective editions of the works from the Loeb Classical Library, which presents the Greek and English text parallely. The text of Aristotle’s Poetics is translated by W. Hamilton Fyfe and John Henry Freese has translated The Art of Rhetoric.
133 In traditional terminology, the metaphorical term is often called the vehicle of a metaphor, while the entity that is being described by the metaphor on the basis of a tertium comparationis (ground) is termed tenor. This terminology originally goes back to Richards' Philosophy of Rhetoric from 1936.
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be learnt from anyone else" (Aristoteles 1959:355; cp. further Aristoteles 1960:91), thus seemingly attributing the mastership of the device to an inherent and unique precondition, whose precise nature becomes clear when he calls the use of metaphor "the token of genius"
(Aristoteles 1960:91). Still, the very fact that he devotes a considerable part of both of his works to the nature of metaphor and does not fail to include instructions and explanations as to how the rhetoric device is to be applied successfully and appropriately, is a noticeable contradiction to this view, as has also been pointed out correctly by James E. Mahon (1999): "Aristotle must believe that our ability to use metaphors can be learned and improved from reading works such as the Rhetoric, otherwise he would not write it in such a manual-like way." (77) What follows from that, therefore, is that while poets, according to Aristotle, can indeed exercise and improve their ability to use appropriate metaphors, there are still qualitative differences between certain instances of the stylistic device, which are accounted for by some poets’ inherent talent for applying it.
These main assumptions made by Aristotle have (in various forms and interpretations and with a multitude of refinements and elaborations) governed a great part of the discussion about the nature of metaphors until the late 1970s, which saw the turn towards a cognitive approach to metaphor, which then set out to disprove what George Lakoff and Mark Johnson referred to as the "false views of metaphor [which] [i]n the Western tradition, […] go back at least as far as Aristotle." (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:244).134
5.1.2. The Cognitive Approach to Metaphor
5.1.2.1. The 'Contemporary Theory of Metaphor'
The most fundamental and simultaneously most important change in the view on metaphor that gained wide popularity with Lakoff and Johnson’s seminal work Metaphors We Live By (1980) is the redefinition of metaphor as being "not simply an ornamental aspect of language, but a fundamental scheme by which people conceptualize the world and their own activities" (Gibbs 2008a:3). The cognitive linguistic approach has shifted the main sphere of metaphor from language to thought, relegating the linguistic metaphorical expressions to the status of mere manifestations of a deeper cognitive system. In accordance with the basic principle of cognitive
134 The fact that, to a certain degree, misinterpretation of and a reductive view on Aristotle’s statements might have played a part in the constant criticism of his works by scholars advocating the cognitive view on metaphor will be the subject of ch. 5.1.3
127 linguistics, which perceives "communication [to be] based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:3) these linguistic manifestations of metaphor are being interpreted as "an important source of evidence for what this [cognitive]
system is like" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:3). Thus, the cognitive perspective on metaphor unanimously ascribes primary status to the systematically structured concepts in the human mind as conditio sine qua non for metaphorical expressions in language: "Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s conceptual system" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:6).135
This approach to metaphor as a way of thinking rather than a way of speaking or writing, has become "the most influential and widely used theory of metaphor" (Kövecses 2010:vii) and revolves around one basic predication, which Lakoff and Johnson pronounce in their very first work on the subject and which has been quoted ever since by a multitude of scholars: "The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another"
[emphasis in the original] (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:5). More specifically, this process of understanding is made possible by the structure of our minds, which operate with conceptual domains. These can become connected with each other via conceptual metaphor, which describes the experiencing of one target domain in terms of another domain, which is commonly termed the source domain (cp. Benczes 2006:48). Conceptual metaphor theory understands this cognitive process of a mapping between two (or potentially more) distinct domains as one of the most fundamental ones in human thought, and research conducted by various scholars has found a multitude of patterns in the English language that led them to set up a catalogue of conceptual metaphors (i.e. cognitive mappings between domains) which have been argued to underlie many conventional ways of speaking about certain things. The nature of the source domains of conceptual metaphors has been shown to be more closely connected to basic human experience and thus more concrete than the target domains, which serve their purpose of facilitating our understanding of abstract concepts like, e.g., love, life or arguments. (cp. Lakoff and Johnson 1980:118). Typical examples of common conceptual metaphors are therefore TIME IS MONEY or AN ARGUMENT IS WAR (cp. Lakoff & Turner 2001), that can be
135 The terms cognitive and conceptual are largely being used as synonyms in this study, because although over the last decades several branches of research have developed (cp. Kövecses 2010), the basic assumption of metaphor being basically a matter of human thought and only secondarily a linguistic phenomenon is common to all cognitive approaches. Therefore, although the term ‘conceptual metaphor’ was coined by Lakoff and Johnson, it still forms the basis for other cognitive approaches (cp., for example, conceptual blending theory as presented by Fauconnier & Turner 2003). The main distinction that will be made in this study is that between traditional approaches which basically share the Aristotelian view on metaphor and cognitive / conceptual ones that ground their theses on the existence of conceptual metaphors in the human mind.
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traced in linguistic expressions such as ‘to waste time’ or ‘to attack a position’ (cp. Lakoff &
Johnson 1980:4). In this regard, much emphasis has been put on the notion that correspondences (commonly termed ‘mappings’) between the respective domains (e.g., two opponents in an argument corresponding to warring factions) are not based on similarities observable in the real world, but only emerge by the mental application of one domain to the other in a conceptual metaphor. (cp. Kövecses 2010:9) Consequently, this is a further aspect of the cognitive approach that fundamentally differs from the Aristotelian view, which takes similarity as a main condition for a successful metaphor.
The cognitive redefinition of metaphor makes several terminological clarifications necessary, the first of which is the distinction between metaphor as a cognitive systematicity, the conceptual metaphor, which resides in the realms of the human mind and metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon, which has frequently been termed linguistic metaphor (cp. Kövecses 2010:4).136 In his 1993 account of The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor137 Lakoff chooses to use the alternative (and less clear) terms metaphor and metaphorical expression, but makes both the fundamental understanding of metaphor in conceptual metaphor theory and the cognitive view on the distinction between the two levels of metaphor very tangible:
[The term metaphor] has come to mean ‘a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system.’ The term ‘metaphorical expression’ refers to a linguistic expression (a word, phrase, or sentence) that is the surface realization of such a cross-domain mapping (this is what the word ‘metaphor’ referred to in the old theory). (Lakoff 1993:203)
This extension of the term metaphor to apply to both conceptual structures and to linguistic expressions that are perceived to be based on those structures, however, entails another shift of categories when it comes to linguistic metaphors that are not perceived as such by the speaker. As Lakoff argues, there is "a system of metaphor that structures our everyday conceptual system, including most abstract concepts" (Lakoff 1993:204) but the fact that this system "is mostly unconscious, automatic, and […] used with no noticeable effort" (Lakoff 1993:245) leads to many of the resulting linguistic metaphors being hardly recognised as such, because "they are usually taken as self-evident, direct descriptions of mental phenomena. The fact that they are metaphorical never occurs to most of us" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:28).
136 In the present book, I will adhere to this terminology. The scope and nature of linguistic metaphor, however, varies depending on which theoretical stance is being taken and the understanding of linguistic metaphor as underlying the present study will be explained later in this chapter.
137 The title, although markedly self-confident and deliberately downplaying critical voices and alternative approaches, has also been chosen for this subchapter, as Lakoff´s theory is still of widest influence and his basic assumptions have been accepted by many scholars of metaphor. My aim is to delineate these basic assumptions and not to give a comprehensive account of theories on metaphor.
129 Conceptual metaphor theory has identified metaphor as a feature of everyday thought and speech and in the course of this process has been able to show that a lot of linguistic expressions that would have been perceived as non-metaphorical traditionally, can in fact be connected to underlying conceptual metaphors, such as, for example, orientational metaphors like MORE IS UP in ‘inflation is rising’. (cp. Lakoff & Johnson 1980:23) As a consequence, George Lakoff argues, that the "traditional division between literal and figurative language, with metaphor as a kind of figurative language" (Lakoff 1993:204) has been shattered by conceptual metaphor theory and cannot be maintained.
As becomes obvious from this quote, in Lakoff’s (1993) understanding, the term ‘literal language’ is applied to language that is in fact (at least according to conceptual metaphor theory) metaphorical, as in the above example of ‘inflation is rising’. This may be considered to constitute a labelling that is actually incorrect, as long as a classical understanding of the word
‘literal’, as representing the opposite of ‘metaphorical or figurative’, is assumed.138 Although, unfortunately no explicit definition of their understanding of the concept of literality is being given in their works, the way Lakoff and his colleagues use the term, indicates that it is a certain understanding of the term ‘literal’ that underlies their rejection of the distinction between
‘literal’ and ‘figurative’, which contains more than its traditional and basic sense of ‘non-metaphorical’. Lakoff´s understanding of the term seems in fact to be closely connected to what he terms the "[t]raditional false assumption[] [of] […] everyday conventional language [being]
literal, and none [being] metaphorical" (Lakoff 1993:204). When he designates obvious realisations of the conceptual metaphor THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS such as ‘He has constructed a theory’ as "literal expressions" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:53), he seems to partly equate the term ‘literal language’ with ‘everyday language’, or language that is metaphorical (just like ‘inflation is rising’), but commonly not perceived as such. As conceptual metaphor theory claims that metaphor is an integral part of everyday conversation, its rejection of the opposition between ‘literal’ (taken in the sense of ‘commonly not perceived as metaphorical’) and ‘figurative’ language becomes explicable, although it might be more adequate to claim that
138 As extensively discussed in Ariel (2002), the once assumed unity of the concept of ‘literal meaning’ as such has experienced a "demise" (Ariel 2002: title of paper) in the course of several cognitive and pragmatic redefinitions of the term. Among various other reinterpretations, these frequently included the abandoning of the original (or classical) conceptualisation of ‘literal’ as constituting the opposite of ‘figurative’, which can also be observed in Lakoff’s (1993) use of the term. In the present study, a less specified and more traditional understanding of ‘literal meaning’ as both ‘non-figurative’ and ‘context-independent’ will be applied, which partly overlaps with what Ariel (2002) terms "linguistic meaning" (392).
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there is no such opposition between common everyday language and metaphorical language, as the latter constitutes an essential part of the former.
5.1.2.2. The Cognitive View on Metaphor in Literature
The insight of metaphorical language (and thought) pervading everyday language has been claimed as one of the main innovations of conceptual metaphor theory and has often been expressed as one of the most fundamental differences in opposition to traditional understandings. 139 Thus, if, "it has become one of the main tenets of cognitive linguistic theory that metaphor is not a figure of speech but is a pervasive device both in thought and everyday speech" (Benczes 2006:47f), then this elimination of a basic difference between everyday language and metaphorical language is bound to have striking implications for the view of metaphor in literature. Whereas the traditional approaches see literary metaphor as primary and closely connected to poetic talent, the establishment of a set of conventional conceptual metaphors that is common to a culture and entrenched in every one of its members’ thinking, denies the literary sphere a considerable part of the creative force that it is being granted by those approaches that "emphasize the discontinuity between metaphor in literature and metaphor elsewhere by focussing on highly creative, original, and often complex literary examples" (Semino & Steen 2008:235). In their 2003 afterword to their groundbreaking book Metaphors We Live By Lakoff and Johnson clearly phrase the cognitive stance towards metaphor in literature and thus pledge themselves to what has been labelled an "egalitarian"
(Mahon 1999:80) view on metaphor:
Metaphorical thought is normal and ubiquitous in our mental life, both conscious and unconscious. The same mechanisms of metaphorical thought used throughout poetry are present in our most common concepts. (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:244)
The emphasis on a common conceptual background of linguistic metaphor which is distinctly not a special gift of poets, however, naturally raises the question of what it is, that distinguishes what in the early stages of conceptual metaphor theory has been termed "literal expressions ('He has constructed a theory')" (meaning common everyday expressions) from "imaginative
139 For a closer analysis of Aristotle’s view on the sphere of metaphor, see chapter 5.1.3. For the present purpose, the notion that conceptual metaphor theory has frequently accused the traditional view of seeing metaphor as a privilege of literature (cp., e.g., Lakoff & Turner 2001) shall suffice.
131 expressions ('His theory is covered with gargoyles')" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:53), which tend to be characteristic of literature.
The conceptual metaphor theorists’ answer to this question mainly lies in "the masterful way in which poets extend, compose and compress" (Lakoff & Turner 2001:54) the underlying conceptual metaphors. Whereas "[t]he basic metaphors are not creations of poets" (Lakoff &
Turner 2001:54), there are several ways for poets to exercise their individual creativity in exploiting the cognitive systematicity and, thus, "create novel unconventional language and images from the conventional materials of everyday language" (Kövecses 2010:53). One of these methods is the combination of several conceptual metaphors to an expression of intense metaphoricity, as it can be observed in Shakespeare´s sonnet 73, in whose first two quatrains, according to Lakoff & Turner (2001), eight conceptual metaphors (including rather conventional ones such as PEOPLE ARE PLANTS and A LIFETIME IS A DAY) can be identified. (cp. 27ff). There are more possibilities for poets, however, than the mere combination of conceptual metaphors, as these can also be extended or elaborated by either adding new elements to the source domain, as has been exemplified in Dante’s Divine Comedy, which extends the conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY (cp. Kövesces 2010:53), or unconventionally expressing an already existing element in a modified form (cp. Kövesces 2010:53f). Moreover, although "poetic uses are often conscious extensions of the ordinary conventionalized metaphors" (Lakoff & Turner 2001:53f), they can still try to manipulate the cognitive system and
attempt to step outside the ordinary ways we think metaphorically and either offer new modes of metaphorical thought or to make use of our conventional basic metaphors less automatic by employing them in unusual ways, or otherwise to destabilize them and thus reveal their inadequacies for making sense of reality. (Lakoff & Turner 2001:51f)
Thus, notwithstanding their insisting on the idea that the creation of conceptual metaphors is rarely a job done by poets but that "[p]oetic metaphor is, for the most part, an extension of our everyday, conventional system of metaphorical thought" (Lakoff 1993:246), conceptual metaphor theorists do grant poets the general ability to either creatively employ the underlying systematicity or even (in some cases) create "a novel metaphor, that is a metaphor not used to structure part of our normal conceptual system but as a new way of thinking about something"
(Lakoff & Johnson 1980:53).
What results from this overview is that, even with conceptual metaphor theory strongly rejecting "the mistaken notion that metaphor is something that belongs only to poets" (Lakoff
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& Turner 2001:215), there still is a certain space for poetic creativity in conceptual metaphor theory. The tendency of conceptual metaphor theorists not to focus on "what is unusual" (Lakoff
& Turner 2001:15) about a certain poem but rather to emphasise the ‘common ground’ of metaphor in everyday language and literary metaphor, however, certainly occasionally blurs this notion.
5.1.3. A Step towards Reconciliation
Throughout this chapter, as well as throughout most of the recent research history on metaphor theory, the two basic approaches, which have been termed traditional and conceptual (and have to be understood as underlying principles of several theoretical elaborations) have been presented as irreconcilable and fundamentally different. This impression is considerably intensified by advocators of conceptual metaphor theory tending to stage the cornerstones of their theory as clear contradictions to "the traditional picture of metaphor" (Steen 2010:1), which they accuse of falsely perceiving metaphor "as deviant, erratic, ornamental, and spurious" (Steen 2010:1). Whereas these "false views of metaphor [which] [i]n the Western tradition, [that] go back at least as far as Aristotle." (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:244) were dominated by certain fallacies such as "[t]he first fallacy […] that metaphor is a matter of words, not concepts" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:244) and the assumption that linguistic metaphor was
"mutually exclusive with the realm of ordinary everyday language" (Lakoff 1993:202), it was the ‘contemporary theorists’ who deserved credit to have done away with these essential misunderstandings.140
By having a closer look at the texts of the one who is so often blamed for having laid the foundation for the "historical barriers to understanding the nature of metaphorical thought and its profundity" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:244) in early works on conceptual metaphor theory, however, it can indeed be argued that it was Aristotle who to a certain degree has become subject to misinterpretation and that in some points his view on metaphor does not differ so much from the ‘contemporary theory’. The accusation of Aristotle seeing metaphor as restricted to the poetic and literary sphere only, for instance, can clearly be disproved by
140 Undoubtedly, however, much of the harshness and vigour that can be obsevered in the way early conceptual metaphor theorists refute the traditional understanding of the phenomenon has to be viewed in the context of their attempt to newly establish a view of metaphor that entailed several groundbreaking and radical changes of its conceptualisation.
133 consulting Rhetoric, where he explicitly presents metaphor as an important device especially for prose writings and speeches, since those, in contrast to poetry, were supposed to employ
"ordinary language" (Aristoteles 1959:353):
Proper and appropriate words and metaphors are alone to be employed in the style of prose; this is shown by the fact that no one employs anything but these. For all use metaphor in conversation, as well as proper and appropriate words;
(Aristoteles 1959:353)
This view as presented in Rhetoric is, in fact, rather contrary to what has been attributed to Aristotle: If metaphor is a device which is especially appropriate for prose, precisely because it is a normal and everyday phenomenon and "all use metaphor in conversation" (Aristoteles 1959:353), it is certainly not perceived as a privilege of poetic language. Without ever claiming, that Aristotle had taken anything into account which could be understood as a cognitive systematicity resembling the cognitive background of conceptual metaphors, for which the contemporary theory most successfully argues, one still has to acknowledge that he explicitly grants metaphor an important function both in literature and conversation. Aristotle´s view is thus congruent with at least the second part of the commonly pronounced view that metaphor is "a pervasive device both in thought and everyday speech" (Benczes 2006:47f). Consequently, James E. Mahon (1999) is totally correct, when he observes that
Aristotle, it turns out, holds a position on the ubiquity of metaphor in conversation and writing which supports current views about the omnipresence of metaphor in everyday discourse and the print media. (69)
Moreover, even if metaphor for Aristotle is certainly "a matter of words" (Lakoff &
Johnson 1980:244) and a consciously applied means of rhetoric, the extension of metaphor to the non-linguistic sphere to become a cognitive, cultural and ubiquitous systematicity, as it has been undertaken by cognitive theorists, is at least adumbrated by Aristotle’s enhancement of the general power of metaphor to "put[] the matter before the eyes" (Aristoteles 1959:359). As Mahon (1999) has been able to show convincingly, Aristotle
stresses the cognitive value of these metaphors, claiming that they are lucid and that they convey truths about the world. He also stresses their pedagogical value: metaphors tell us things about the world which we did not understand beforehand, and the 'learning process' is extremely enjoyable. (75)
This observation is indeed supported by Aristotle’s advice to coin and employ metaphor in the creation of rhetorical speeches, as they, as long as they are "appropriate" (Aristoteles 1959:367), are an important means to "produce persuasion" (Aristoteles 1959:367) and thus are bound to have a cognitive effect on the audience. It is therefore not true that Aristotle is ignorant of any
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connections between the realm of cognition and that of language, otherwise he would not have been able to acknowledge the learning effect of metaphors, which in astonishingly obvious similarity is adopted by Lakoff and Turner (2001) as an effect of poetry, which "through metaphor, exercises our minds so that we can extend our normal powers of comprehension beyond the range of the metaphors we are brought up to see the world through" (Lakoff &
Turner 2001:214).
Notwithstanding the fact that conceptual metaphor theory has substantially elaborated and extended the Aristotelian view on metaphor and has also correctly rejected several of his opinions, on the basis of a theory that is founded in a cognitive approach to the phenomenon (e.g., the existence of objectively existent similarities between source and target domains), Aristotle can indeed be argued to have "foreshadowed" (Mahon 1999:79) some of the essential claims conceptual metaphor theory makes. In fact, his works are far from presenting metaphor as "deviant, erratic, ornamental, and spurious" (Steen 2010:1) and, with the acknowledgement of the learning effect that can be achieved by being aware of a certain (not further defined) cognitive value of metaphor in choosing "appropriate" (Aristoteles 1959:367) linguistic metaphors and thus "putting the matter before the eyes" (Aristoteles 1959:359), Aristotle can be argued to encourage his audience to make people "understand[] and experienc[e] one kind of thing in terms of another." (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:5).
5.1.4. Terminological Clarifications: Metaphors Dead or Alive, Conventional or Institutionalized
As shown previously, the emergence of a cognitive approach to metaphor brought about some major shifts in the categories and terminology of metaphor theory and linguistics leading to traditional notions such as ‘literal’ being reinterpreted and redefined by contemporary scholars.
141 This has resulted in several ambiguities since, starting with the very basic meaning of
‘metaphor’ itself, in many cases traditional meanings and terms exist simultaneously to, and occasionally interfere with, their redefinitions. Thus, a clarification of terminology seems to be required.
The first term which, as it will turn out to be partially connected to the notion of poetic creativity, demands clarification is ‘conventionality’. In their first comprehensive work on the
141 Cp. chapter 5.1.2.1.
135 subject, Lakoff and Johnson, use the label ‘conventional metaphor’ with reference to both levels of metaphor, the conceptual and the linguistic one without offering any further differentiation.
With regard to the "conventional metaphor LIFE IS A STORY" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) two linguistic realisations are presented, of which ‘Tell me the story of your life’ is labelled as a
"sentence[] with conventional metaphor" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) and ‘Life’s … a tale told by an idiot’ as the "nonconventional metaphor" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). The ambiguity of both terms, conventional and nonconventional, seems to go unnoticed. It is only when a clearer distinction between the linguistic expressions of (conceptual) metaphors and these conceptual metaphors as such is undertaken in Lakoff & Turner (2001) that the concept of
‘conventionalization’ gains a clearer shape:
[Conventionalization] applies at both the conceptual and the linguistic levels. At the conceptual level, a metaphor is conventional to the extent that it is automatic, effortless, and generally established as a mode of thought among members of a linguistic community. For example, DEATH IS DEPARTURE is deeply conventionalized at the conceptual level; we probably all have it. […] Conventionalization also applies to the connection between the conceptual and the linguistic levels. When, in this book, we speak of the degree to which a conceptual metaphor is conventionalized in the language, we mean the extent to which it underlies a range of everyday linguistic expressions. For example, DEATH IS DEPARTURE is not just conventionalized as a way of conceiving of death; it is also widely conventionalized in language, underlying a wide range of expressions such as 'pass away', be 'no longer with us', 'gone', 'among the dear departed,' and so on. (Lakoff & Turner 2001:55f)
A conventional conceptual metaphor is, thus, a prominent conceptual mapping, which is, as Lakoff (1993) puts it, "a fixed part of our conceptual system" (208). This results in the logical opposite to the conventional conceptual metaphor being a novel or unconventional conceptual metaphor, for which Lakoff and Johnson (2011) give the example LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART (139). Moreover, the above definition identifies a
"conceptual metaphor [that] is conventionalized in the language" [emphasis added] (Lakoff &
Turner 2001:55) as a conceptual metaphor, to which a "wide range of expressions" (Lakoff &
Turner 2001:55f) can be assigned as its realizations. This results in the establishment of two labels, ‘conventional (conceptual) metaphor’ and ‘conventionalized (conceptual) metaphor’, which both apply to the cognitive level of metaphor. To set up a balanced and complementary terminology, however, it is also necessary to establish a term for linguistic metaphors that are
‘conventional’ in the word’s most basic linguistic sense, i.e. that are institutionalized expressions with a metaphorical meaning, established in the common lexicon of English. This institutionalization of a metaphorical expression is to be understood as both independent of whichever conceptual background may be assigned to it and of whether the average speaker of
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English is conscious of its metaphoricity or not. This definition of institutionalized linguistic metaphors is bound to include what Lakoff and Johnson denote as "literal expressions structured by metaphorical concepts" in the sense of unconsciously used parts of "normal everyday language appropriate to the situation" (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:51),142 but can also denote expressions that are more consciously used and more marked as metaphorical, although still being institutionalized with their metaphorical sense.
Applying the now clarified terminology to one of the compounds would thus mean that the compound Barbary horse (O 1.1.114), being used by Iago in contextual reference to Othello in a conversation with Desdemona’s father, in which he insinuates that the latter will haue [his]
daughter couered with a Barbary horse (O 1.1.113f), could be argued to be an elaborate manifestation of the conventional conceptual metaphor PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS. This conventional conceptual metaphor is presumably also conventionalized in the language to a certain degree, taking into account the rather common use of expressions like ‘pig’ or ‘lion’ to refer to persons. In opposition to these particular realisations of the conceptual metaphor, however, which certainly can be seen to be institutionalized, Barbary horse is certainly not a common expression to denote a person and is thus not institutionalized with a metaphorical meaning, but gains this interpretation only within the special context of the play. Consequently, the use of the term Barbary horse in this context, although not expressing a novel or idiosyncratic conceptual metaphor, can be seen as being a novel and idiosyncratic linguistic metaphor.
The redefinition of terms and categories by Conceptual Metaphor Theory has affected another traditional perception, which is closely connected to institutionalization: the category of ‘dead’ metaphors. As the conceptual level of metaphor has not been part of the traditional approach, ‘dead’ metaphors are to be understood as applying to the linguistic level of metaphoricity only and, according to Kövecses, are traditionally defined as metaphorical expressions which
may have been alive and vigorous at some point but have become so conventional and commonplace with constant use that by now they have lost their vigor and have ceased to be metaphors at all (Kövecses 2010:xi).
The interpretation of this rather vague definition suggests that ‘dead metaphors’ can be equated with what Lakoff (1993) terms ‘literal’ expressions, i.e., expressions whose metaphorical sense
142 For a clarification of Lakoff’s understanding of the term ‘literal‘ see chapter 5.1.2.1.