Metaphors and Why We Use Them

Dear Readers,

Here's an essay I just finished for my Language and Linguistics class. It's about metaphors, and I think it's pretty interesting. Enjoy.

Metaphors and Why We Use Them

History of My Understanding of Metaphor

My understanding of metaphors has changed over the years. When I was in middle school, during a unit on poetry, my class learned about metaphors and similes. The teacher taught us that a metaphor is a comparison between two things using the words “is” or “was”, and that a simile was a comparison between two things using the words “like” or “as”. The teacher also gave us the impression that metaphors were creative, imaginative things that creative writers invented.

That explanation of metaphors and similes from middle school more or less stayed with me until two years ago, when I took a college class on poetry, and we used the book, The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms. The book said that, contrary to what I had been taught in secondary school, there were four types of metaphors, represented by the following four formulas: X is like Y (my love is like a red, red rose.) X is Y (my love is a red rose), X of Y (Girl of rose), and XY (rose-girl). (Padgett, p. 114) Those four formulas expanded and shifted my understanding of similes and metaphors. I learned that a simile was just a subset of the larger category of “metaphor”, and that a metaphor was basically a creative comparison of two different things.

But now I consider both the middle school explanation and the Handbook of Poetic Forms explanation to be over-simplified. Those two explanations seemed to put an undue amount of emphasis of trivial word usage, usage of words such as “is” or “like” or “of.” Those two explanations may have been user-friendly for creative writers, but they failed to get at the heart of what a metaphor was really doing. The explanations also ignored research on metaphors coming from the field of linguistics.

My understanding of metaphors grew again in ENG 504, when I read about metaphors in Edward Finegan’s textbook, Language: Its Structure and Use, in the chapter on semantics. I was surprised to see a section on metaphors at all in a linguistics textbook. I was even more surprised when I read, “Metaphors occur constantly in day-to-day speaking and writing because they are a fundamental part of our thinking” (Finegan, 2008, p 189). And then Finegan gives several examples of common everyday metaphors, including this one found in a newspaper:

“The dollar is falling sharply.”

At first, to most people, that sentence doesn’t even sound metaphorical. Some would not even recognize that any figurative language is going on. But a closer examination reveals otherwise. When the newspaper says, “the dollar is falling sharply,” it’s not reporting on a story in which someone drops a dollar bill from a tall building or something ridiculous like that. The newspaper is obviously talking about inflation or buying power, things which do not literally go up or down. Abstract things such as inflation and buying power may increase or decrease, but they cannot literally psychically gain or lose elevation in the atmosphere. Only physical things can literally rise and fall. So, the sentence, “The dollar is falling sharply” is metaphorical in nature. That sentence is relying on two underlying metaphors, which could be expressed as: “money is an object that can fall” and “down is bad”.

But where did this thinking about underlying, unconscious metaphors begin? And who began to notice the common, everyday metaphors, apart from the metaphors used by poets and other creative writers? To answer these questions, we have to turn to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

Conceptual Metaphors

In 1980, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson became the pioneers of metaphor research when they published Metaphors We Live By. In that book, Lakoff and Johnson introduced the idea of conceptual metaphors and everyday metaphorical linguistic expressions. Lakoff and Johnson’s “conceptual metaphors” are expressed in writing as A IS B. An example is “Argument is war” and “Love is a journey”. People don’t normally go around saying these conceptual metaphors out loud, but they have these metaphors in their minds, unconsciously, and it affects the way they talk. In other words, the conceptual metaphors affect a person’s metaphorical linguistic expressions. For example, a man who has the “Argument is war” conceptual metaphor in his brain will use expressions like, “Your claims are indefensible,” “He attacked every weak point in my argument,” “His criticisms were right on target,” and “I demolished his argument” (Kovecses, p. 5). Those four sentences would not make much sense to the listener if the listener didn’t also have the “Argument is war” conceptual metaphor in his or her head.

But it’s not like one or two people out of ten have these conceptual metaphors in their heads. No, everybody has them in their heads. The conceptual metaphors do differ slightly from culture to culture, but every culture has conceptual metaphors in their heads, and everybody uses metaphorical linguistic expressions. Nobody speaks absolutely literally all the time. Indeed, it is impossible to speak absolutely literally all the time. And the interesting thing is that people don’t know that they have these conceptual metaphors in their head. Conceptual metaphors are tacit. It’s much like much knowledge of language. We cannot explain what we know. We unconsciously know what verbs and nouns and adverbs are and how to use them, but that doesn’t mean that we can perfectly diagram sentences.

Examples of Everyday Metaphors

When I learned about these metaphorical linguistic expressions, I wanted to find some of my own examples. Instead of looking at stories and poems, (places I would have looked before this semester if I were on the hunt for metaphors) I looked through newspaper articles, chatty blog posts, and transcripts of interviews and conversations. I ended up finding many more metaphors than I thought I would. It seems like once you start looking for metaphors, you will begin to see them everywhere, even in places you thought they would never be.

I found many examples, but one passage of speech is enough to illustrate how prevalent metaphors really are. The following is taken from a transcript of a conversation between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Sargent Shriver on February 1st, 1964.

Shriver: Oh God, I think it would be advisable, if you don’t mind, if I could have this weekend. I wanted to sit down with a couple of people and see what we could get in the way of some sort of plan. Because what happens, at least what my thought is, [that] you announce somebody like me or somebody else, and they don’t know what the hell they are doing or what this program is going to be specifically, and who is going to carry it, then you’re in a hell of a hole, because they are going to call you up and say, “Well now, what are you going to do? (peacecorpsonline.org)

Here are the metaphorical linguistic expressions (MLE) with accompanying conceptual metaphors (CM) I gleaned from the foregoing passage: (Some of the following CMs I borrowed from Lakoff and Johnson, and some I invented.)

MLE: “have the weekend”
CM: Time is an object
MLE: “see the plan”
CM: Logical structure is a psychical structure
MLE: “Get a plan”
CM: Logical structure is a psychical structure
MLE: “My thought is…”
CM: Thoughts are things that can be expressed in words
MLE: “Carry the program”
CM: Logical structure is a psychical structure
MLE: “You’re in a hell of a hole”
CM: Down is bad

By now in the paper it is clearly established that metaphors and metaphorical language are constantly occurring in day-to-day life, unbeknownst to most people. But why are metaphors used so much? Why don’t people just clearly say what they mean? Why don’t people speak literally and plainly? I have thought about and read about these questions, and come up with some answers.

Why Do We Use Metaphors?

1. Metaphors Sound Better

First, I think sometimes people use metaphors because it sounds better. Language use is a creative thing, even sometimes an artistic endeavor. People like to hear neat new twists, and so storytellers and journalists have intuitively learned to use metaphors well. For example, which of the following sentences sound better?

1. “Tennis star Serena Williams breezed through the early matches.”

2. “Tennis star Serena Williams efficiently won the early matches.”

Most would agree that sentence 1 sounds much better. Sentence 1 paints a better picture, so to speak. Why? I would venture because “efficiently won” does not conjure up in the mind of the reader any clear, nice images. “Efficiently won” is an abstract, as opposed to a concrete, richer phrase. “Breeze,” on the other hand, is a word that conjures up images and sensations of a slow-moving wind. Perhaps when a reader reads “breeze” instead of “efficiently won” the reader will think, if only for an instant, of a pleasant afternoon picnic or a morning stroll in which the breeze is lovely. And so there is connotation involved in the way storytellers and journalists and such select metaphors, too.

Let’s try another one. Let’s find a sentence that uses a metaphorical linguistic expression, replace it with a more literal expression, and see how it sounds.

1. “His speech was a catalyst for a new popular upheaval.”

2. “His speech started a new popular upheaval.”

Which one sounds better? To my mind, the first sentence sounds better. Why? The first sentence sounds better because the word “catalyst” calls up in the mind of the reader machinery, something tangible, whereas “start” is more boring and abstract.

2. Everybody Else Is Doing It

We use metaphors because everybody else is doing it. This isn’t much of an answer, and I admit that it’s a little bit of circular reasoning, (We all use metaphors because we all use metaphors.) but keep in mind that we learn language from other people who are constantly using metaphors. From the time we are infants, we absorb the metaphors that are used in everyday speech, and we learn to use metaphors the way all the other people are using metaphors. We can never break free from metaphors and speak completely literally.

3. Understanding

The most convincing argument I have heard that explains why we use metaphors goes like this: We use metaphors to understand abstract things in more concrete, tangible terms. Remember how “breeze” sounded better than “efficiently won” and how “was a catalyst for” sounded better than “started”? Well, “breeze” and “catalyst” sounded better because they are more understandable, concrete terms.

Zoltan Kovecses explains it well when he explains the difference between “source domains” and “target domains.”

The two domains that participate in conceptual metaphor have special names. The conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical expressions to understand another conceptual domain is called source domain, while the conceptual domain that is understood this way is the target domain. Thus, life, arguments, love, theory, ideas, social organizations, and others are target domains, while journeys, war, buildings, food, plants, and others are source domains. The target domain is the domain that we try to understand through the use of the source domain. (p. 4)

Thus, when we use metaphors, we draw on concrete things we are tangibly familiar with, like food and plants, to explain abstract things that are tougher to explain. It would follow that the more abstract a conversation gets, the more metaphors would be used. A conversation about spirituality would likely have more metaphors in it than a conversation about how to make sourdough bread, for example.

4. Reality is Metaphorical

My final reason attempting to explain why humans use metaphors all the time gets weird. My thoughts are not completely clear or straightened out yet. (But this paper is due today, so straightened-out or not, here my thoughts come.)

We also use metaphors because “reality” and “literalness” are hard to pin down. The line dividing metaphors from non-metaphors is fuzzy. We can’t speak literally all the time because there is no Literalness with a capitol L, so to speak. “Meaning” itself is hard to pin down. It’s hard to talk about metaphors this much without getting philosophical. In fact, many of the books on metaphors in the field of linguistics do get very philosophical. Lakoff and Johnson, for example, end Metaphors We Live By with chapters titled, The Myth of Objectivity and The Myth of Subjectivity, chapters that read like they belong in a book on philosophy or science, not in a book on metaphors.

Where does meaning reside? Meaning does not exist merely in the individual words one uses. “The boy kicked the dog.” And “The dog kicked the boy” both contain the same words, but the syntax drastically changes the meaning. But ultimate meaning doesn’t come from only the combination of lexical items and syntax. Pragmatics and sociolinguistics teaches us that context-specific features of an utterance, such as body language and voice intonation, add to the meaning of utterances. For example, “That movie should win Best Picture for sure,” spoken one way, could have a “literal” or a conventional meaning. But if those same words in that same order were spoken another way, with a different voice intonation, “That movie should win Best Picture for sure,” would be sarcastic.

Is meaning, then, just the combination of words, syntax, and social factors? Not exactly. David E. Rumelhart wrote a brilliant essay called Problems with Literal Meanings that explores the question: “Where does meaning reside?”

In a section of his essay titled, Are Conveyed Meanings Ever Literal Meanings? Rumelhart discusses the meaning of the following sentence: “The policeman raised his hand and stopped the car.” Rumelhart explains that readers will most likely read this sentence and think of a traffic cop, who is directing traffic. The reader would also assume that the traffic cop stopped a car that had a driver in it. But where did that assumed meaning come from? The sentence does not explicitly say that there was a person driving the car. Nor does the sentence explicitly say that the policeman motioned for the car to stop and the driver pressed on the brake pedal with his foot. If one were just relying on the words and the syntax itself, one could interpret the sentence to mean, for example, that a policeman raised his hand and pressed his hand up against an unmanned car that was rolling down a hill, perhaps because the person who had parked the car forgot to set the emergency brake or turn their wheels toward the curb. Thus, Rumelhart claims that conveyed meaning is not solely gleaned from words or syntax or immediate utterance-specific factors, but that conveyed meaning “depends on our real world knowledge” (p. 77) In other words, our previous experiences and our wisdom of the real world helps us understand every new utterance we hear or read.

To further illustrate how meaning does not solely reside in the words, syntax, or things like body language and voice intonation, I would like to add to the Rumelhart’s discussion of the sentence “The policeman raised his hand and stopped the car.” The conventional, normal interpretation of “The policeman raised his hand and stopped the car,” (sentence 1) is different than the conventional, normal interpretation of a sentence like, “The clown went to the store and went to a movie,” (sentence 2). Sentence 1 could be rightfully understood as “the policeman stopped the car by raising his hand,” or “the car stopped because the policeman raised his hand.” The “and” in “The policeman raised his hand and stopped the car,” suggests a causal relationship between the first and second clauses. But no one would interpret the sentence “the clown went to the store and went to a movie”, to mean, “the clown went to a movie because he went to the store.” That’s absurd. The meanings of sentence 1 and sentence 2 lie not in the individual word “and” itself. It’s not like the “and” of sentence 1 and the “and” of sentence 2 have separate entries in the dictionary.

The point is, the location of meaning is tricky to pinpoint. The more you think about these issues, the harder it is to perfectly define was “literal” and “metaphorical” expressions are.

OK, We All Use Metaphors, but Do We Really “Live By” Them?

Now that I have established that we all use metaphors in our day-to-day lives, and now that I’ve discussed some possible reasons explaining why we use metaphors, one more important question comes up: Do we really “live by” metaphors, as Lakoff and Johnson claim? Do the conceptual metaphors in our heads and the metaphorical linguistic expressions we use really affect the way humans live?

To a certain extent, yes, the metaphors in our heads and the metaphors we speak affect our way of living. Lakoff and Johnson put it this way:

How we think metaphorically matters. It can determine questions of war and peace, economic policy, and legal decisions, as well as the mundane choices of everyday life. Is a military attack a “rape,” “a threat to our security,” or “the defense of a population against terrorism”? The same attack can be conceptualized in any of these ways with very different military consequences. (qtd. in Finegan, p. 190)

Conclusion

It may be a strange idea to think that language shapes not only our understanding of reality, but also our actions. But I have an anecdote that illustrates how the way we say something affects the way we actually do something.

The other night I sat down to dinner with metaphors and linguistics on my mind. I was having some mashed potatoes, and I first seasoned the potatoes with salt, and then I seasoned the potatoes with pepper. I wondered, “Why did I salt first and pepper second? Why do I always do that? Certainly the ordering of the sprinkling of the seasonings makes no difference in the food’s flavor.” Then the answer came to me, “I use the salt first because I say “salt” first when I say, “salt and pepper”. Brilliance!

Try saying “pepper and salt” out loud to see how peculiar it sounds. It just doesn’t sound right, does it? No, the set phrase that we all use is “salt and pepper,” and I believe that the order in which we say “salt and pepper” affects the order in which we use the salt and pepper.

So it is with metaphors. Metaphors are not just interesting linguistic peculiarities that linguists study to pass the time. And metaphors are not the mere poetic devices I thought they were long ago. Metaphors are virtually everywhere in human communication, and they greatly impact our opinions, dispositions, and our very way of life. That is why it is important that psychologists, linguists, philosophers, and other scholars continue to investigate the fascinating world of metaphors.


References


Finegan, Edward. (2008). Language: It’s Structure and Use (5th ed.). Boston: Thomas
Wadsworth.

Katz, Albert N., Cacciari, Cristina, Raymond, W. Gibbs Jr., & Turner, Mark. (1998).
Figurative Language and Thought. New York: Oxford UP.

Kovecses, Zoltan. (2002). Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. New York: Oxford UP

Lakoff, George, Johnson, Mark. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.

Ortony, Andrew. (Ed.). (1993). Metaphor and Thought (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge
UP.

Padgett, Ron. (Ed.). (2000). The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms. New
York: Teachers and Writers Collaborative.

Peace Corps Online. (2008). Retrieved December 2nd, 2008, from
peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/4099.html - 26k -

Radman, Zdravko. (Ed.). (1995). From a Metaphorical Point of View: A
Multidisciplinary Approach to the Cognitive Content of Metaphor. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.