10. Rhetoric and Metaphor
What is Metaphor? Isn't it Just Pretty Language?
Unlike terms such as rhetoric and ideology, common uses of the term metaphor aren’t necessarily weighed down by negative associations. Most of us have been taught that a metaphor is a kind of vivid presentation in language where we are prompted to think of one thing in terms of another.
Way back in the day, Aristotle offered this explanation of metaphor:
Now strange words simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh. When the poet calls "old age a withered stalk," he conveys a new idea, a new fact, to us by means of the general notion of bloom, which is common to both things.
This transfer of ideas from one thing to another (both plants and people bloom, grow, decay, and wither) can be seen in common expressions such as “my roommate is a pig" (example is from Sonja Foss). Assuming that your roommate’s species is Homo sapiens and not Sus scrofa domesticus, the metaphor prompts your audience to see the human being in light of the disorderly, dirty behavior of a pig.
Lakoff and Johnson on Conceptual Metaphor
Studies of metaphor have been greatly influenced by the work of linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (L&J) beginning in the late 20th Century.
L&J argue that, despite what we might have been taught about metaphors as a kind of dressing up of language or something added to thought to make it more appealing or vivid (or "creative"), metaphors are actually best conceptualized as fundamental to thinking itself.
In other words, for L&J, we don’t have thoughts and then dress them up in metaphors to make them prettier or more appealing. Instead, we think in terms of one thing having the qualities of another at our most basic levels of thought. L&J call this conceptual metaphor, arguing that “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”
Specialized Terms: Target and Source
L&J provide specialized terms so that we can examine metaphors and how they work with the precision that specialized terms provide. The most important terms to understand upfront are target domain and source domain.
Some common conceptual metaphors that L&J use as examples are:
Understanding is vision (“I see your point,” “Your conclusion is muddy,” “This is clearly said,” etc.)
Argument is war (“Defend your position,” “Attack that element,” “She destroyed my claim,” etc.)
Time is money/limited/a commodity with value (“Invest your time in drafting and feedback,” “That movie was a waste of two hours I’ll never get back,” “My training paid off,” etc.)
Good/Happy/Strong is Up; Bad/Sad/Weak is Down (“She is over the whole division,” “His powers have increased,” “He’s hit rock bottom,” “I’m feeling down,” “My confidence is growing,” etc.)
Why Metaphors Matter
If metaphor fundamentally structures our thought and expression, it can be a powerful means of structuring experience and thus of enormous interest to rhetorical analysts interested in communication and its implications.
War implies aggression, attack and defense, and an orientation toward defeating or killing the enemy. Dance implies cooperation, coordination, and an orientation toward an experience that benefits both partners. The activity of arguing looks a lot different under these two different conceptual metaphors.
Again, what is encouraged, expected, or rewarded on a football field versus a traditional schoolroom? Who is empowered, required, or encouraged to do what, in what way, by the metaphor? What counts as good or bad in each metaphor's conceptual universe and value system?
Make a list and compare the two scenarios. You will find, as rhetoric scholar Benjamin Bates puts it, that “[m]etaphor is not a simple substitution of one term for another, but a way of creating a powerful perceptual link between the two things.”
Metaphor can be a powerful index to the overall vision of how a rhetor creates and suggests attitudes, actions, and associations—for good and for ill. The rhetorical analyst examining metaphor is working with some of the most fundamental and important considerations of how ideas circulate.
As scholar and theorist Wayne Booth urged:
To understand a metaphor is by its very nature to decide whether to join the metaphorist or reject him, and that is simultaneously to decide either to be shaped in the shape his metaphor requires or to resist. … In this perspective, criticism of metaphoric worlds, or visions, becomes one clear and important-perhaps the clearest and most important-instance of a general human project of improving life by criticizing it.
Similarly, Bates argues that when a rhetor selects a particular source domain, "the rhetor is attempting to activate a cluster of associations so that the [audience] comes to understand the unfamiliar phenomenon in a way preferred by the rhetor."
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