There are metaphors and there are metaphors (2) – as creatively extended by Val McDermid vs the bog-standard metaphors we all use
In last week’s post I did a sort of mini Bluffer’s Guide to conceptual metaphor. (If those at the back of the class need their memories refreshed, please follow this link.)
Now, a claim that one strand of conceptual metaphor theory also makes is this: literary metaphor, far from being uniquely creative, makes widespread use of standard conceptual metaphors but does something rather special with them, such as extending or elaborating them.[i] For example, even Dante’s famous
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Ché la diritta via era smarrita
(‘Midway upon the journey of our life |I found myself within a forest dark, | For the straightforward pathway had been lost.’ [Longfellow’s version, courtesy of Project Gutenberg])
is nothing more nor less than an example of the LIFE IS A JOURNEY conceptual metaphor with the novel twist of the selva/forest thrown in. Which is a case of the entailments I mentioned, in this case from the source domain of real, physical journeys where you might get lost and end up in a ‘forest dark’. What Dante has done here is to extend the basic conceptual metaphor by adding the forest.
How artists extend or elaborate conventional metaphors was brought home to me forcefully and repeatedly while reading a detective novel Broken Ground[ii] by the inestimable Val McDermid.
In particular, it is animal-related metaphors that mostly caught my attention. I also include similes on the basis, as one author puts it, airily ignoring the oceans of ink spent on distinguishing similes from metaphors, that a simile is ‘a metaphor with the scaffolding still up’.[iii]
Several of the images both extend a conventional linguistic metaphor and acknowledge an underlying conceptual metaphor. In the hands of a creative writer I imagine such wordplay just flows unhindered from the metaphorical pen. That is one vital aspect of creativity: to take an existing form and refashion it.
The novel’s protagonist is the feisty DCI Karen Pirie, based in Edinburgh.
1. Two upper-middle-class Embra women, Dandy and Willow, discussing Willow’s violent husband, are confronted by Karen, who has overheard their (staged) conversation.
‘Dandy pushes her chair back, recoiling from this harsh truth, shock rearranging her face. But Willow became still as a cat watching prey.’ p.22
English makes use of dozens of feline metaphors and similes. The one acknowledged here is ‘to play cat and mouse with someone.’ At its simplest level that exemplifies the conceptual metaphor PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS, specifically WOMEN ARE FELINES (cf. sex kitten, cougar). It is also an example of the conceptual metaphor (my interpretation) HUMAN VICTIMS ARE ANIMALS’ VICTIMS (to rub sb’s nose in it, to lick your wounds, etc.).
2. DCI Pirie has taken over a case from a local male detective inspector, Wilson, who is not best pleased.
‘He’d pushed back the hood of his well-filled Tyvek suit and his white hair stood out in a halo like a red-faced Albert Einstein. “DCI Pirie, I presume?” he demanded, thrusting his head forward like a farmyard rooster staking out his hens.’ p.94
Here what is being referenced is the pecking order idiom, which depends on the conceptual metaphor (my interpretation) HUMAN HIERARCHY IS ANIMAL HIERARCHY (top dog, underdog, to rule the roost, etc.)
3. Wilson is later very put out by the fact that the body in the case will be wheeched off to Dundee for forensic investigation:
‘“I’m not comfortable with letting the body disappear down the road where we’ve got no input into what’s going on.” Wilson’s prickles were fully extended again.’ p.105
‘Prickles’ picks up on the metaphor of someone being prickly but goes beyond that by mentioning metaphorical (physical) prickles. The underlying conceptual metaphors are ANGRY HUMAN BEHAVIOUR IS DANGEROUS ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR and AND ANGRY PEOPLE ASSUME PARTS OF ANIMALS’ ANATOMY (makes my hackles rise).
4. After an altercation, DCI Pirie’s colleague jokes ‘ “Another name to add to the Christmas card list.”’
‘Karen pulled a face. “I’m not here to make friends. I can’t be doing with all that pissing up lampposts business. Murder isn’t territorial.” ’ p.105
This sounds like an original metaphor – at least it’s new to me and not mentioned in any idioms dictionary I’ve consulted. It plays to the fact that dogs assert their dominance over other dogs and mark their territory by urinating. As in 2, the conceptual metaphor is HUMAN HIERARCHY IS ANIMAL HIERARCHY.
The same colleague picks up the image much later when DCI Pirie wonders why her boss is so down on her.
‘“She’s one of those women who see other women as a threat?” Karen hazarded.’
‘“Maybe. But that’s not what this is about. This is dogs and lampposts. She wants control of HCU [Karen’s unit]. And that means ownership. […] She wants you out.” ’ p.221
5. A detective planted in Karen’s unit by Karen’s boss to spy on her has a bruising encounter with said boss.
‘For a fleeting moment, he wondered whether he’d backed the wrong horse in a race he hadn’t even known was being run.’ p.138
‘Backed the wrong horse’ references the pervasive conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A GAMBLING GAME (they’re bluffing; if you play your cards right, etc.) and the widespread use of horse-racing metaphors (horses for courses, under the wire, inside track, etc.) What Val McDermid has done here, though, is to extend and thereby re-animate the metaphor by mentioning an aspect of the source domain (in other words, made use of a ‘metaphorical entailment’) that is usually latent: that there is a physical race being run.
6. Later, Karen cannot believe that someone has no sinister motive in wanting to have dinner with her.
‘Or had she become jaundiced by the job? Had she grown so underexposed to the milk of human kindness that she didn’t trust it when someone poured her a glass of it?’ p.266
If a metaphor can be truly dead and buried, surely ‘milk’ in this Shakespearean idiom is. Yet it is brought to life here by activating an entailment from the source domain of physical milk: it can be poured into a glass.
7. My last example takes a rather clichéd metaphor and again springs a surprise on the reader by activating an entailment from the source domain. A former banker – and, potentially, Karen’s love interest – explains what happened in his bank when the global financial crash happened.
‘ “All around me people were being fired. They were literally staggering out of the office like they were drunk. They couldn’t believe their personal gravy train had walloped straight into the buffers.” ’ p.270
The underlying conceptual metaphor is A CAREER IS A JOURNEY and extension of the metaphor consists in two things: first, specifying the vehicle for the journey as a train, in this case ‘the gravy train’, and second, taking from the source domain the knowledge usually never activated in metaphors, that trains are stopped by buffers. Compare to hit the rails, to go off the rails.
Whatever you happen to be reading at the moment, I wonder how many animal metaphors it will contain. I bet there will be a few.
[i] Kövecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor A Practical Introduction (2nd edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 4.
[ii] McDermid, Val. (2019) Broken Ground [2018] (pback edn). London: Little, Brown Book Group.
[iii] Geary, James. (2011). I Is An Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We see the World. London: HarperCollins Publishers, p.8.
