George Lakoff

The Nature of Conceptual Metaphor: Embodiment

~ Chad Chambers ~ 2 Comments

Part 6: Metaphor and Interpretation – Intro, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Enlightment

(This post adapted from doctoral seminar I led discussing two books – Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson; The Way We Think, Fauconnier and Turner. There are no footnotes or references, but majority of the material is drawn from these works.)

Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) questions the dominant Western Theory of Metaphor (WTM) at the most basic level – the nature of metaphor. Is metaphor a matter of words (its nature to describe one thing in relation to another) or is metaphor a matter of thoughts and actions (its nature to understand and experience one thing in the terms of another)?

To recap, WTM says a metaphor is a linguistic devise useful for explaining something abstract by referring to something more concrete. Thus, a metaphor is a matter of language and in reality just a rhetorical flourish. On the other hand, CMT assumes a metaphor is conceptual or cognitive. Thus, a metaphor is able to produce thoughts and transform actions not just describe them.

To oversimplify, we act based upon our conceptual system, according to the way we conceive of things. This conceptual system is constructed upon cognitive concepts (will leave the science for another post) that govern how we think by structuring how we understand and relate to situations. CMT proposes metaphors are the basic cognitive concepts upon which our conceptual system is built. CMT advances the case that an elaborate system of conceptual metaphors lies at the core of our human mind providing an underpinning for our imagining, knowing, acting, communicating, and creating. This system of conceptual metaphors, grounded in physical and social experiences, is a means by which we use our experiencing of one thing to not only explain something else, but to actually experience something else. In this way, metaphors shape our experiences and in so doing generate meaning through providing coherence and structure to our thought. A metaphorical structure of human thought suggests that metaphors are capable of providing new meaning to the past, to daily activity, and to what is hoped for in the future; metaphors have the ability to generate new realities. Lakoff and Johnson labelled this phenomenon embodied metaphor because they influence the way we think and act.

Consider these examples: (how they are reflected in our language)

Time is Money

  • You are wasting my time
  • How do you spend your time these days?
  • Time is running out.
  • You need to budget your time.
  • Is it worth your while?

Love is a Journey

  • Look how far we have come.
  • Our relationship has gotten off track.
  • We need to go our separate ways.
  • We are at a crossroads.

Love is War

  • He pursued her relentlessly.
  • He won her hand in marriage.
  • She fought for him.
  • She enlisted the aid of her friends.

WTM states these examples are descriptions only whose sole purpose is to clarify ambiguous meanings. Time is not really money, nor do we actually treat it like money, we only use the common concept of money to help us understand time. CMT, however, proposes metaphors work at a deeper level. To think of love as a journey or war means it structures the way we envision being in love and go about trying to find love.

Imagine two people meeting and forming a relationship. One comes with the idea love is a journey and the other love is war. Does this only matter for how they describe their relationship or will it actually inform the manner in which they engage their relationship? This is the fundamental difference between WTM and CMT, WTM says a metaphor describes and CMT says a metaphor acts.

The next two posts will dig deeper in CMT by examining how different metaphors blend and how to map a metaphor.

Metaphors and Interpretation

~ Chad Chambers ~ 6 Comments

This repost is the introduction of a conference paper I presented last year. It is a quick summary of the connection I see between conceptual metaphor theory and narrative interpretation. Much of what I post the next few Monday’s will unpack these ideas.

Since the works of Aristotle, the dominant Western theory of metaphors has been they are a linguistic devise useful for explaining something abstract by referring to something more concrete. Recent studies in the field of cognitive linguistics, however, have suggested that metaphors are mental operations capable of blending mental spaces to shape meaning. In other words, metaphors are not merely linguistic expressions but conceptual and thus capable of lending coherence and structure to thought.

These studies advance the case that an elaborate system of conceptual metaphors lies at the core of our human mind providing an underpinning for our imagining, knowing, acting, communicating, and creating.[1] This system of conceptual metaphors, grounded in physical and social experiences,[2] is a means by which we use our experiencing of one thing to not only explain something else, but to actually experience something else. In this way, metaphors shape our experiences and in so doing generate meaning through providing coherence and structure to our thought. A metaphorical structure of human thought suggests that metaphors are capable of providing new meaning to the past, to daily activity, and to what is hoped for in the future; metaphors have the ability to generate new realities.[3]

But a question remains, if metaphors are conceptual and capable of generating new realities how are they arranged or aligned so that they are useful? According to cognitive linguists, such as Mark Turner, story is the essential organizational principle of the mind. Much of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized in story because story is able to project one experience onto another in an effort to construct meaning.[4] At this point conceptual metaphor theory and literary hermeneutics merge, since story’s ability to project and thereby generate meaning is nourished by the system of conceptual metaphors from which it feeds. To borrow a phrase from Richard B. Hays, the system of conceptual metaphors is the substructure of story.[5] Story is the basic means of aligning the array of metaphors stored from past physical and social experiences to give significance to our present situations and experiences. In the terms of cognitive linguistics, story blends conceptual metaphors with our present situation resulting in the generation of new cognitive schemas that are able to give innovative meaning to past events and provide a new frame of reference for the present and future.[6]

[1] Fauconnier 1997.

[2] A conceptual metaphor’s grounding in physical and social experience is why some refer to this field as the “Embodied Mind.”

[3] Lakoff, Johnson 1980.

[4] Turner 1996.

[5] Hays 2002.

[6] Fauconnier, Turner 2002.

Methodological Questions: Conceptual Metaphor and Interpretation

~ Chad Chambers ~ Leave a comment

One more week without a book review as I finish my paper for this week. They will return next week, I have Gaventa and Barclay to review. In lieu of the review, I am offering a look at my methodology for interpreting a passage with conceptual metaphors in view. This is still largely a work in progress, but this is what I am using to look into Galatians 4:1-7 in this paper. (Sorry if formatting is little strange had trouble importing the text)

 

With cognitive studies’ investigation of language as the mind’s means of communication providing the template for investigation, the words of a text may be examined as the text’s form of communication.

 

  • What conceptual metaphors shape the text?

    -What are the central topics and epistemological assumptions of the text?

    -Are there organizing principles or patterns in the text?

    -Is there an intended impact of the text?  How is the impact framed?

  • How are these conceptual metaphors grounded, structured, related to each other, and defined?

 -As far as it can be reconstructed, what is the historical, social, and cultural meaning of the conceptual metaphor?

-What is the textual meaning of the conceptual metaphors?  How are the conceptual metaphors framed in the specific                 text?  How is the text connected with what comes before and after, and to document as a whole?

-In biblical interpretation, this will mean examining beyond a particular book by turning to intertextual aspects:  Is scripture quoted in the text?  Are there allusions to other scriptures, scriptural themes, or stories? How do these impact the framing of the conceptual metaphors in the text?

-How do the conceptual metaphors (both empirical and implied) define the thought-world of the text?  Do they organize the text?  Provide a structure for the discourse?  Project a line of reasoning?

  • How does the context of the reader influence the text’s reception?

-How does the world constructed by the text correspond to the historical, cultural, and social norms?  What parts are highlighted?  What parts are forgotten/deleted?

 -How do the highlighted and neglected parts impact the reading? How does the text cue the reader to respond?

-How does the blending of the frames, textual world, historical context and reader’s context, influence the intended impact of the text?

  • How metaphoric blends lie behind the construction of the text and the story?

 -At what points do the conceptual metaphors collide?  How does blending conceptual metaphors integrate the different fields into a shared field of meaning?  Does blending result in the construction of new meaning?  How does blending create new meaning?  Does the new meaning generate new schemas which can reinterpret the past and/or provide new ideals for the present and future?

-Does blending create a story that produces transformation of the conceptual metaphors?

-How might a storied approach to hermeneutics provide new possibilities for highlighting the transformative role of the text?

  • What role does an informed imagination play in the reception of the story?

    -How does the reader receive the conceptual categories of the text?  How does the reader form conceptual categories for the objects, events, actors and stories revealed in the text?  How is one story projected onto another story?

-How might speech-act-theory, with its focus on the text’s locution, illocution, and perlocution open possibilities for interpretation to move through understanding towards embodiment?  Can an interpretative community, by recognizing all three aspects of a text as part of one interpretative process come to understand the act of reading as informing its imagination through a call to not simply understand but to be drawn into participating in the conceptual world constructed by the text?

What results is a hermeneutical method, which incorporates a text’s empirical historical setting, implied historical setting, and literary context with the personal and communal life of the reader.  It is a hermeneutical method that moves through understanding a text towards embodying a text; embodied biblical interpretation.

 

George Lakoff, Conceptual Metaphors, and Biblical Interpretation

~ Chad Chambers ~ 3 Comments

This is not a traditional book review for this Monday, more of a concept review. I am scheduled to give a paper next week on how conceptual metaphors lend coherence and structure to arguments/narratives. This post is the initial draft of the opening of my paper where I try to concisely explain conceptual metaphor theory. Would appreciate any and all comments…

Since the works of Aristotle, the dominant Western theory of metaphors has been they are a linguistic devise useful for explaining something abstract by referring to something more concrete. Recent studies in the field of cognitive linguistics, however, have suggested that metaphors are mental operations capable of blending mental spaces to shape meaning. In other words, metaphors are not merely linguistic expressions but conceptual and thus capable of lending coherence and structure to thought.

These studies advance the case that an elaborate system of conceptual metaphors lies at the core of our human mind providing an underpinning for our imagining, knowing, acting, communicating, and creating.[1] This system of conceptual metaphors, grounded in physical and social experiences,[2] is a means by which we use our experiencing of one thing to not only explain something else, but to actually experience something else. In this way, metaphors shape our experiences and in so doing generate meaning through providing coherence and structure to our thought. A metaphorical structure of human thought suggests that metaphors are capable of providing new meaning to the past, to daily activity, and to what is hoped for in the future; metaphors have the ability to generate new realities.[3]

But a question remains, if metaphors are conceptual and capable of generating new realities how are they arranged or aligned so that they are useful? According to cognitive linguists, such as Mark Turner, story is the essential organizational principle of the mind. Much of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized in story because story is able to project one experience onto another in an effort to construct meaning.[4] At this point conceptual metaphor theory and literary hermeneutics merge, since story’s ability to project and thereby generate meaning is nourished by the system of conceptual metaphors from which it feeds. To borrow a phrase from Richard B. Hays, the system of conceptual metaphors is the substructure of story.[5] Story is the basic means of aligning the array of metaphors stored from past physical and social experiences to give significance to our present situations and experiences. In the terms of cognitive linguistics, story blends conceptual metaphors with our present situation resulting in the generation of new cognitive schemas that are able to give innovative meaning to past events and provide a new frame of reference for the present and future.[6]

[1] Fauconnier 1997.

[2] A conceptual metaphor’s grounding in physical and social experience is why some refer to this field as the “Embodied Mind.”

[3] Lakoff, Johnson 1980.

[4] Turner 1996.

[5] Hays 2002.

[6] Fauconnier, Turner 2002.