From lakoff@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU Fri Jan 29 20:06:36 1993
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 18:02:16 -0800
From: George Lakoff
To: market@henson.cc.wwu.edu
Subject: Re: metaphors
The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor
George Lakoff
(c) Copyright George Lakoff, 1992
To Appear in Ortony, Andrew (ed.) Metaphor and Thought (2nd edition), Cambridge
University Press.
Do not go gentle into that good night. -Dylan Thomas
Death is the mother of beauty . . . -Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning
Introduction
These famous lines by Thomas and Stevens are examples of what classical theorists, at
least since Aristotle, have referred to as metaphor: instances of novel poetic language in
which words like mother, go, and night are not used in their normal everyday senses. In
classical theories of language, metaphor was seen as a matter of language not thought.
Metaphorical expressions were assumed to be mutually exclusive with the realm of
ordinary everyday language: everyday language had no metaphor, and metaphor used
mechanisms outside the realm of everyday conventional language. The classical theory
was taken so much for granted over the centuries that many people didn't realize that it
was just a theory. The theory was not merely taken to be true, but came to be taken as
definitional. The word metaphor was defined as a novel or poetic linguistic expression
where one or more words for a concept are used outside of its normal conventional
meaning to express a similar concept. But such issues are not matters for definitions; they
are empirical questions. As a cognitive scientist and a linguist, one asks: What are the
generalizations governing the linguistic expressions re ferred to classically as poetic
metaphors? When this question is answered rigorously, the classical theory turns out to be
false. The generalizations governing poetic metaphorical expressions are not in language,
but in thought: They are general map pings across conceptual domains. Moreover, these
general princi ples which take the form of conceptual mappings, apply not just to novel
poetic expressions, but to much of ordinary everyday language. In short, the locus of
metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in
terms of another. The general theory of metaphor is given by characterizing such cross-
domain mappings. And in the process, everyday abstract concepts like time, states,
change, causation, and pur pose also turn out to be metaphorical. The result is that
metaphor (that is, cross-domain mapping) is absolutely central to ordinary natural
language semantics, and that the study of literary metaphor is an extension of the study of
everyday metaphor. Everyday metaphor is characterized by a huge system of thousands of
cross-domain mappings, and this system is made use of in novel metaphor. Because of
Pagina 1 di 41The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor
17/02/2006file://C:\Programmi\eMule\Incoming\new\Lakoff,%20George%20-%20The%20Conte...
these empirical results, the word metaphor has come to be used differently in
contemporary metaphor research. The word 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). I will
adopt the contemporary usage throughout this chapter. Experimental results
demonstrating the cognitive reali ty of the extensive system of metaphorical mappings are
discussed by Gibbs (this volume). Mark Turner's 1987 book, Death is the mother of
beauty, whose title comes from Stevens' great line, demonstrates in detail how that line
uses the ordinary system of everyday mappings. For further examples of how literary
metaphor makes use of the ordinary metaphor system, see More Than Cool Reason: A
Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, by Lakoff and Turner (1989) and Reading Minds: The
Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science, by Turner (1991). Since the everyday
metaphor system is central to the understanding of poetic metaphor, we will begin with
the everyday system and then turn to poetic examples.
Homage To Reddy
The contemporary theory that metaphor is primarily conceptual, conventional, and part of
the ordinary system of thought and language can be traced to Michael Reddy's (this
volume) now classic paper, The Conduit Metaphor, which first appeared in the first
edition of this collection. Reddy did far more in that paper than he modestly suggested.
With a single, thoroughly analyzed example, he allowed us to see, albeit in a restricted
domain, that ordinary everyday English is largely metaphorical, dispelling once and for all
the traditional view that metaphor is primarily in the realm of poetic or figurative
language. Reddy showed, for a single very significant case, that the locus of metaphor is
thought, not language, that metaphor is a major and indispensable part of our ordinary,
conventional way of conceptualizing the world, and that our everyday behavior reflects
our metaphorical understanding of experience. Though other theorists had noticed some
of these characteristics of metaphor, Reddy was the first to demonstrate it by rigorous
linguistic analysis, stating generalizations over voluminous examples. Reddy's chapter on
how we conceptualize the concept of communication by metaphor gave us a tiny glimpse
of an enormous system of conceptual metaphor. Since its appearance, an entire branch of
linguis tics and cognitive science has developed to study systems of metaphorical thought
that we use to reason, that we base our actions on, and that underlie a great deal of the
structure of language. The bulk of the chapters in this book were written before the
development of the contemporary field of metaphor research. My chapter will therefore
contradict much that appears in the others, many of which make certain assumptions that
were widely taken for granted in 1977. A major assumption that is challenged by
contemporary research is the traditional division between literal and figurative language,
with metaphor as a kind of figurative language. This entails, by definition, that: What is
literal is not metaphorical. In fact, the word literal has traditionally been used with one or
more of a set of assumptions that have since proved to be false:
Traditional false assumptions
z All everyday conventional language is literal, and none is metaphorical.
z All subject matter can be comprehended literally, without metaphor.
z Only literal language can be contingently true or false.
z All definitions given in the lexicon of a language are literal, not metaphorical.
z The concepts used in the grammar of a language are all literal; none are
metaphorical.
Pagina 2 di 41The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor
17/02/2006file://C:\Programmi\eMule\Incoming\new\Lakoff,%20George%20-%20The%20Conte...
The big difference between the contemporary theory and views of metaphor prior to
Reddy's work lies in this set of assumptions. The reason for the difference is that, in the
intervening years, a huge system of everyday, convention al, conceptual metaphors has
been discovered. It is a system of metaphor that structures our everyday conceptual
system, including most abstract concepts, and that lies behind much of everyday
language. The discovery of this enormous metaphor system has destroyed the traditional
literal-figurative distinction, since the term literal, as used in defining the traditional
distinction, carries with it all those false assumptions. A major difference between the
contemporary theory and the classical one is based on the old literal-figurative distinction.
Given that distinction, one might think that one arrives at a metaphorical interpretation of
a sentence by starting with the literal meaning and applying some algorithmic process to
it (see Searle, this volume). Though there do exist cases where something like this
happens, this is not in general how metaphor works, as we shall see shortly.
What is not metaphorical
Although the old literal-metaphorical distinction was based on assumptions that have
proved to be false, one can make a different sort of literal-metaphorical distinction: those
concepts that are not comprehended via conceptual metaphor might be called literal.
Thus, while I will argue that a great many common concepts like causation and purpose
are metaphorical, there is nonetheless an extensive range of nonmetaphorical concepts.
Thus, a sentence like The balloon went up is not metaphorical, nor is the old philosopher's
favorite The cat is on the mat. But as soon as one gets away from concrete physical
experience and starting talking about abstractions or emotions, metaphorical
understanding is the norm.
The Contemporary Theory: Some
Examples
Let us now turn to some examples that are illustrative of contemporary metaphor research.
They will mostly come from the domain of everyday conventional metaphor, since that
has been the main focus of the research. I will turn to the discussion of poetic metaphor
only after I have discussed the conventional system, since knowledge of the conventional
system is needed to make sense of most of the poetic cases. The evidence for the existence
of a system of conventional conceptual metaphors is of five types:
-Generalizations governing polysemy, that is, the use of words with a number of
related meanings.
-Generalizations governing inference patterns, that is, cases where a pattern of
inferences from one conceptual domain is used in another domain.
-Generalizations governing novel metaphorical language (see, Lakoff & Turner,
1989).
-Generalizations governing patterns of semantic change (see, Sweetser, 1990).
-Psycholinguistic experiments (see, Gibbs, 1990, this volume).
We will primarily be discussing the first three of these sources of evidence, since they are
the most robust.
Conceptual Metaphor
Pagina 3 di 41The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor
17/02/2006file://C:\Programmi\eMule\Incoming\new\Lakoff,%20George%20-%20The%20Conte...
Imagine a love relationship described as follows: Our relationship has hit a dead-end
street.
Here love is being conceptualized as a journey, with the implication that the relationship
is stalled, that the lovers cannot keep going the way they've been going, that they must
turn back, or abandon the relationship altogether. This is not an isolated case. English has
many everyday expressions that are based on a conceptualization of love as a journey, and
they are used not just for talking about love, but for reasoning about it as well. Some are
necessarily about love; others can be understood that way: Look how far we've come. It's
been a long, bumpy road. We can't turn back now. We're at a crossroads. We may have to
go our separate ways. The relationship isn't going anywhere. We're spinning our wheels.
Our relationship is off the track. The marriage is on the rocks. We may have to bail out of
this relationship. These are ordinary, everyday English expressions. They are not poetic,
nor are they necessarily used for special rhetorical effect. Those like Look how far we've
come, which aren't necessarily about love, can readily be understood as being about love.
As a linguist and a cognitive scientist, I ask two commonplace questions:
z Is there a general principle governing how these linguistic expressions about
journeys are used to characterize love?
z Is there a general principle governing how our patterns of inference about journeys
are used to reason about love when expressions such as these are used?
The answer to both is yes. Indeed, there is a single general principle that answers both
questions. But it is a general principle that is neither part of the grammar of English, nor
the English lexicon. Rather, it is part of the conceptual system underlying English: It is a
principle for under standing the domain of love in terms of the domain of journeys. The
principle can be stated informally as a metaphorical scenario: The lovers are travelers on a
journey together, with their common life goals seen as destinations to be reached. The
relationship is their vehicle, and it allows them to pursue those common goals together.
The relationship is seen as fulfilling its purpose as long as it allows them to make progress
toward their common goals. The journey isn't easy. There are impediments, and there are
places (crossroads) where a decision has to be made about which direction to go in and
whether to keep traveling together. The metaphor involves understanding one domain of
experience, love, in terms of a very different domain of experience, journeys. More
technically, the metaphor can be understood as a mapping (in the mathematical sense)
from a source domain (in this case, journeys) to a target domain (in this case, love). The
mapping is tightly structured. There are ontological correspondences, according to which
entities in the domain of love (e.g., the lovers, their common goals, their difficulties, the
love relationship, etc.) correspond systematically to entities in the domain of a journey
(the travelers, the vehicle, des tinations, etc.). To make it easier to remember what
mappings there are in the conceptual system, Johnson and I (lakoff and Johnson, 1980)
adopted a strategy for naming such mappings, using mnemonics which suggest the
mapping. Mnemonic names typically (though not always) have the form: TARGET-
DOMAIN IS SOURCE-DOMAIN, or alternatively, TARGET-DOMAIN AS SOURCE-
DOMAIN. In this case, the name of the mapping is LOVE IS A JOURNEY. When I speak
of the LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor, I am using a mnemonic for a set of ontological
correspondences that characterize a map ping, namely:
THE LOVE-AS-JOURNEY MAPPING
-The lovers correspond to travelers.
-The love relationship corresponds to the vehicle.
-The lovers' common goals correspond to their common destinations on the journey.
-Difficulties in the relationship correspond to impediments to travel.
It is a common mistake to confuse the name of the mapping, LOVE IS A JOURNEY, for
Pagina 4 di 41The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor
17/02/2006file://C:\Programmi\eMule\Incoming\new\Lakoff,%20George%20-%20The%20Conte...
the mapping itself. The mapping is the set of correspondences. Thus, whenever I refer to a
metaphor by a mnemonic like LOVE IS A JOURNEY, I will be referring to such a set of
correspondences. If mappings are confused with names of mappings, another
misunderstanding can arise. Names of mappings commonly have a propositional form, for
example, LOVE IS A JOURNEY. But the mappings themselves are not propositions. If
mappings are confused with names for mappings, one might mistakenly think that, in this
theory, metaphors are propositional. They are, of course, anything but that: metaphors are
mappings, that is, sets of conceptual correspondences. The LOVE-AS-JOURNEY mapping
is a set of ontological correspondences that characterize epistemic correspondences by
mapping knowledge about journeys onto knowledge about love. Such correspondences
permit us to reason about love using the knowledge we use to reason about journeys. Let
us take an example. Consider the expression, We're stuck, said by one lover to another
about their relationship. How is this expression about travel to be understood as being
about their relationship? We're stuck can be used of travel, and when it is, it evokes
knowledge about travel. The exact knowledge may vary from person to person, but here is
a typical example of the kind of knowledge evoked. The capitalized expressions represent
entities n the ontology of travel, that is, in the source domain of the LOVE IS A JOURNEY
mapping given above. Two TRAVELLERS are in a VEHICLE, TRAVELING WITH
COMMON DESTINATIONS. The VEHICLE encounters some IMPEDIMENT and gets
stuck, that is, makes it nonfunctional. If they do nothing, they will not REACH THEIR
DESTINATIONS. There are a limited number of alternatives for action:
z They can try to get it moving again, either by fixing it or get ting it past the
IMPEDIMENT that stopped it.
z They can remain in the nonfunctional VEHICLE and give up on REACHING
THEIR DESTINATIONS.
z They can abandon the VEHICLE.
z The alternative of remaining in the nonfunctional VEHICLE takes the least effort,
but does not satisfy the desire to REACH THEIR DESTINATIONS.
The ontological correspondences that constitute the LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor map
the ontology of travel onto the ontology of love. In doing so, they map this scenario about
travel onto a corresponding love scenario in which the corresponding alternatives for
action are seen. Here is the corresponding love scenario that results from applying the
correspondences to this knowledge structure. The target domain entities that are mapped
by the correspondences are capitalized:
Two LOVERS are in a LOVE RELATIONSHIP, PURSUING COMMON LIFE GOALS.
The RELATIONSHIP encounters some DIFFICULTY, which makes it nonfunctional. If
they do nothing, they will not be able to ACHIEVE THEIR LIFE GOALS. There are a
limited number of alternatives for action:
z They can try to get it moving again, either by fixing it or getting it past the
DIFFICULTY.
z They can remain in the nonfunctional RELATIONSHIP, and give up on
ACHIEVING THEIR LIFE GOALS.
z They can abandon the RELATIONSHIP.
The alternative of remaining in the nonfunctional RELATIONSHIP takes the least effort,
but does not satisfy the desire to ACHIEVE LIFE GOALS. This is an example of an
inference pattern that is mapped from one domain to another. It is via such mappings that
we apply knowledge about travel to love relationships.
Pagina 5 di 41The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor
17/02/2006file://C:\Programmi\eMule\Incoming\new\Lakoff,%20George%20-%20The%20Conte...
Metaphors are not mere words
What constitutes the LOVE-AS-JOURNEY metaphor is not any particular word or
expression. It is the ontological mapping across conceptual domains, from the source
domain of journeys to the target domain of love. The metaphor is not just a matter of
language, but of thought and reason. The language is secondary. The mapping is primary,
in that it sanctions the use of source domain language and inference patterns for target
domain concepts. The mapping is conventional, that is, it is a fixed part of our conceptual
system, one of our conventional ways of conceptualizing love relationships. This view of
metaphor is thoroughly at odds with the view that metaphors are just linguistic
expressions. If metaphors were merely linguistic expressions, we would expect different
linguistic expressions to be different metaphors. Thus, "We've hit a dead-end street"
would constitute one metaphor. "We can't turn back now" would constitute another,
entirely different metaphor. "Their marriage is on the rocks" would involve still a
different metaphor. And so on for dozens of examples. Yet we don't seem to have dozens
of different metaphors here. We have one metaphor, in which love is conceptualized as a
journey. The mapping tells us precisely how love is being conceptualized as a journey.
And this unified way of conceptualizing love metaphorically is realized in many different
linguistic expressions. It should be noted that contemporary metaphor theorists commonly
use the term metaphor to refer to the conceptual mapping, and the term metaphorical
expression to refer to an individual linguistic expression (like dead-end street) that is
sanctioned by a mapping. We have adopted this terminology for the following reason:
Metaphor, as a phenomenon, involves both conceptual mappings and individual linguistic
expr
本文档为【The contemporary theory of metaphor-Lakoff】,请使用软件OFFICE或WPS软件打开。作品中的文字与图均可以修改和编辑,
图片更改请在作品中右键图片并更换,文字修改请直接点击文字进行修改,也可以新增和删除文档中的内容。
该文档来自用户分享,如有侵权行为请发邮件ishare@vip.sina.com联系网站客服,我们会及时删除。
[版权声明] 本站所有资料为用户分享产生,若发现您的权利被侵害,请联系客服邮件isharekefu@iask.cn,我们尽快处理。
本作品所展示的图片、画像、字体、音乐的版权可能需版权方额外授权,请谨慎使用。
网站提供的党政主题相关内容(国旗、国徽、党徽..)目的在于配合国家政策宣传,仅限个人学习分享使用,禁止用于任何广告和商用目的。