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Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking: A Dynamic View
Traditional thinking on metaphors has divided them into two camps: dead and alive. Conventional expressions from everyday language are classified as dead, while much rarer novel or poetic metaphors are alive. In the 1980s, new theories on the cognitive processes involved with the use of metaphor challenged these assumptions, but with little empirical support. Drawing on the latest research in linguistics, semiotics, philosophy, and psychology, Cornelia Müller here unveils a new approach that refutes the rigid dead/alive dichotomy, offering in its place a more dynamic model: sleeping and waking.
To build this model, Müller presents an overview of notions of metaphor from the classical period to the present; studies in detail how metaphors function in speech, text, gesture, and images; and examines the way mixed metaphors sometimes make sense and sometimes do not. This analysis leads her to conclude that metaphors may oscillate between various degrees of sleeping and waking as their status changes depending on context and intention. Bridging the gap between conceptual metaphor theory and more traditional linguistic theories, this book is a major advance for the field and will be vital to novices and initiates alike.
To build this model, Müller presents an overview of notions of metaphor from the classical period to the present; studies in detail how metaphors function in speech, text, gesture, and images; and examines the way mixed metaphors sometimes make sense and sometimes do not. This analysis leads her to conclude that metaphors may oscillate between various degrees of sleeping and waking as their status changes depending on context and intention. Bridging the gap between conceptual metaphor theory and more traditional linguistic theories, this book is a major advance for the field and will be vital to novices and initiates alike.
290 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2008
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February 12, 2022
This is a very technical book, which appears to be written primarily for linguists. I only read the introduction, and 5 of the chapters as applicable to my research in architectural metaphor. I liked the idea that metaphor can be both simultaneously dead and alive (like Schrodinger’s cat), dependent on context and the ‘cognitive activation of metaphoricity’ which can come from gestures, pictures and other observable “metaphoricity cues”, and the interpersonal and intrapersonal nature of communication.
She runs through the traditional history of metaphor analysis noting that historically literary metaphor considered only deliberate metaphor as ‘vital’ and ‘alive’ and that writers such as Max Black and Ricoeur considered language to be a cemetery littered with the corpses of dead metaphors. Lakoff and Turner, she notes, then turned this theory on its head by (in a move she calls ‘typical of linguists’) by turning their attention not to the deliberate poetic device, but the everyday unconscious metaphors embedded in words, proving that metaphors tend to only be dead as a result of overuse. [In a theme similar to Derrida’s analogy of the ‘effacement’ of a coin through over-usuage, in White Mythology.]
She outlines terms for metaphor activation as “REVITALISATION” and the re-animation of ‘dead’ metaphors; “RE-MOTIVATION”, but generally avoids re- phrases as they are too slippery. She also notes the long debate over whether metaphors reside in language or thought, and she resolves that metaphoricity is BOTH language AND thought.
At the heart of her debate is that metaphoricity is an individual phenomenon rather than a (only and always) collective convention. Activating metaphors can be triggered by different things and generate different results.
She notes that as ‘radical’ as Lakoff and Johnsons book ‘Metaphors we live by’ was, it was grounded in the research of others who were already beginning to see metaphor as a resident of ‘thought’ as much as ‘language’, and moreover, that as much as it seemed to liberate metaphors from language, it nonetheless built structures around how they were generated and interpreted which ironically placed them back within a system that required language to use. CMT would therefore be like a bird tethered to the ground by a long rope, not quite free to fly wherever it wants.
One interesting idea is essentially chicken and egg; does the gesture create the metaphorical inference, or does metaphorical concepts cause us to say and act a certain way. Similarly, in a moment akin to ‘if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound’ she wonders something to the effect of; if no one notices that the words are metaphorical – are they, in fact metaphorical, or merely words?
I’m not qualified to make a proper assessment of this book as it is outside my area of expertise, but I can say that I love the idea that metaphor is akin to a hypothetical Schrodinger’s cat – don’t ask me why - but it makes me happy.
She runs through the traditional history of metaphor analysis noting that historically literary metaphor considered only deliberate metaphor as ‘vital’ and ‘alive’ and that writers such as Max Black and Ricoeur considered language to be a cemetery littered with the corpses of dead metaphors. Lakoff and Turner, she notes, then turned this theory on its head by (in a move she calls ‘typical of linguists’) by turning their attention not to the deliberate poetic device, but the everyday unconscious metaphors embedded in words, proving that metaphors tend to only be dead as a result of overuse. [In a theme similar to Derrida’s analogy of the ‘effacement’ of a coin through over-usuage, in White Mythology.]
She outlines terms for metaphor activation as “REVITALISATION” and the re-animation of ‘dead’ metaphors; “RE-MOTIVATION”, but generally avoids re- phrases as they are too slippery. She also notes the long debate over whether metaphors reside in language or thought, and she resolves that metaphoricity is BOTH language AND thought.
At the heart of her debate is that metaphoricity is an individual phenomenon rather than a (only and always) collective convention. Activating metaphors can be triggered by different things and generate different results.
She notes that as ‘radical’ as Lakoff and Johnsons book ‘Metaphors we live by’ was, it was grounded in the research of others who were already beginning to see metaphor as a resident of ‘thought’ as much as ‘language’, and moreover, that as much as it seemed to liberate metaphors from language, it nonetheless built structures around how they were generated and interpreted which ironically placed them back within a system that required language to use. CMT would therefore be like a bird tethered to the ground by a long rope, not quite free to fly wherever it wants.
One interesting idea is essentially chicken and egg; does the gesture create the metaphorical inference, or does metaphorical concepts cause us to say and act a certain way. Similarly, in a moment akin to ‘if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound’ she wonders something to the effect of; if no one notices that the words are metaphorical – are they, in fact metaphorical, or merely words?
I’m not qualified to make a proper assessment of this book as it is outside my area of expertise, but I can say that I love the idea that metaphor is akin to a hypothetical Schrodinger’s cat – don’t ask me why - but it makes me happy.
Displaying 1 of 1 review