Meaning, language, and mind: an interview with Mark Turner - Interview

Style, Winter, 2002 by James W. Underhill

June 2001

James W. Underhill (JU): For a long time, metaphor was considered to be simply one of a number of rhetorical figures or tropes which were used for special effect in speech, and poets were thought to be their undisputed masters. Philosophers tended to follow Plato in not trusting metaphor, considering it to be a tool used by the sophist to bewitch and mislead the naive listener. In any case, few philosophers have followed Aristotle's more tempered view that metaphor can be a useful pedagogical tool as long as both the user and the listener are aware that they are engaged in using figurative language. In recent years, however, the status of metaphor in intellectual debate has been radically revised.

Since the 1970s, scholars from various academic disciplines have placed metaphor at the center of debates on literature, language, philosophy, and cognitive science. Among the philosophers, Derrida and de Man have argued that rhetoric is inescapable. According to them, the metaphors of philosophers' discourse can no longer be treated as having a decorative function; rather their metaphors structure and shape their discourse. Certain linguists have also taken up the idea that metaphor is far more fundamental and pervasive. In 1985, for example, the editors of The Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic science, Wolf Paprotte and Rene Driven, chose the title The Ubiquity of Metaphor when they included, in their 29th volume, articles from psychologists trying to determine at what age the child's mind begins to master metaphor and articles from linguists looking at the relationship between metaphor and word formation (for example, we arrive at dragonfly by metaphoric reference to both dragons an d flies). Geoffrey Leech, the English linguist, in his Semantics (1974/1981), considered metaphor not as a peripheral issue, but rather as a fundamental form of semantic transfer (214-19) that can allow us to make what he calls a "conceptual fusion," as in his example from an Anglo-Saxon poem, meer-hengest (sea-steed), in which a boat is considered metaphorically in terms of a horse. Perhaps one of the most interesting developments in the study of metaphor is the Lakoff-Johnson argument that a great deal of our language (and, consequently, our understanding of the world) is, in a certain way, "structured" by a series of proto-metaphors, underlying conceptual structures which are implied by the language that we use. Lakoff and Johnson argue, for example, that we can only understand the sentence "That's an indefensible argument" in metaphoric terms, by referring to the underlying proto-metaphor: ARGUMENT IS WAR, which implies that there are attackers and defenders, territories to be defended and castles to be a ssailed, etc. They argue that another proto-metaphor, LOVE IS A JOURNEY, underlies numerous everyday expressions and phrases. We might, for example, think of "Our relationship is really going places," "Our relationship has come to a standstill," "You and me are going nowhere."

The idea that proto-metaphors Form a basic cognitive structure to which we often refer without thinking in everyday language can be used to reinterpret much oF our speech. "You're wasting my time!" could be reinterpreted using the Lakoff and Johnson hypothesis as being structured along the lines of a fundamental premise: TIME IS MONEY. It is only because we can. count money and measure time, then superimpose counting on measuring, that the idea of wasting time becomes intelligible in terms of wasting money.

There is, according to Lakoff and Johnson, something very useful in perceiving and organizing the world in terms of proto-metaphors. Our metaphors highlight aspects or facets of something, allowing us to describe something unfamiliar or obscure in terms of something that we know well. The problem is that metaphors and proto-metaphors not only highlight, but also hide aspects of a thing. Love may share some characteristics with a journey. There is a beginning. We might Feel a great drive pushing us in some direction. Events and incidents might be understood in terms of obstacles, etc. Similarly, some arguments might be conducted in terms of wars. Some people do seem to attack others in debate. Some defend themselves. Others surrender. Often academic debates do (sadly) turn into tournaments with "winners" and "losers." But are all arguments wars? Is the idea of debate not rather founded on the sincere desire to achieve a mutually enriching exchange between two people with different ways of seeing the world? And does much of our rhetorical language (derived from the proto-metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR) not rather mislead us when it encourages us to conceive of discussion in combative terms?

The proto-metaphors of which Lakoff and Johnson speak can, then, be considered as cognitive blue-prints For the patterns which partially organize our way of thinking about our relation to the world, to others and to ideas. That is no doubt why they called the book in which they exposed their premise Metaphors We Live By. (The idea that we live in accordance with these metaphors is entirely lost in the French title: Metaphores dans la vie quotidienne.)