Metaphor in Focus : Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor Use [1 ed.] 9781443867313, 9781443844680

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Metaphor in Focus

Metaphor in Focus: Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor Use

Edited by

Elisabetta Gola and Francesca Ervas

Metaphor in Focus: Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor Use, Edited by Elisabetta Gola and Francesca Ervas This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2013 by Elisabetta Gola and Francesca Ervas and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4468-3, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4468-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A PHILOSOPHICAL GUIDE TO METAPHOR USE ............................................. 1 ELISABETTA GOLA AND FRANCESCA ERVAS CHAPTER ONE .............................................................................................. 9 METAPHOR IN THE COLLECTIVE IMAGINARY: THE INTERPRETATION AND REPRESENTATION OF SPACE IN THE CALVINIST, JEWISH AND CATHOLIC WORLDS FABIO TARZIA CHAPTER TWO ........................................................................................... 21 THE PRAGMATICS OF METAPHOR USE: FROM THE CONCEPTUAL VIEW TO THE RELEVANCE-THEORETIC PERSPECTIVE FRANCESCA ERVAS AND ELISABETTA GOLA CHAPTER THREE ........................................................................................ 37 MODELLING METAPHOR USE: A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC READING OF BILATERAL PROCESSES IN LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING LUCIA MORRA CHAPTER FOUR .......................................................................................... 53 METAPHOR USE IN THE 19TH CENTURY NOVEL: FROM THE BILDUNGSROMAN TO THE NOVEL OF LIFELONG LEARNING ALESSIO CECCHERELLI AND EMILIANO ILARDI CHAPTER FIVE............................................................................................ 67 METAPHOR USE IN ADVERTISING: ANALYSIS OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN MULTIMODAL METAPHOR AND METONYMY IN A GREENWASHING ADVERTISEMENT PAULA PÉREZ SOBRINO CHAPTER SIX.............................................................................................. 83 METAPHOR USE IN FINANCIAL REVIEWS: A LANGUAGE IN CRISIS; LINGUISTIC CHANGE AND METAPHORICAL PATTERNS IN EU FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEWS (2004-2010) OLGA DENTI AND LUISANNA FODDE

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CHAPTER SEVEN ...................................................................................... 101 METAPHOR USE IN POLITICS: THE POLITICAL METAPHOR BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS STEFANO DI PIETRO CHAPTER EIGHT ....................................................................................... 113 METAPHOR USE IN EDUCATION: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO INVESTIGATING LANGUAGE USE IN A SPECIFIC FIELD OF STUDY JOHN C. WADE CHAPTER NINE ......................................................................................... 135 METAPHOR USE IN THE WEB: THE WINDOW AS A METAPHOR OF THE SPACE IN THE COMPUTERS GRAPHICAL INTERFACES MAURIZIO GALLUZZO CHAPTER TEN .......................................................................................... 143 METAPHOR USE IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: A PROPOSAL FOR THE MEANING OF ERRORS IN THE USE OF CONVENTIONAL METAPHOR GIORGIO COZZOLINO CHAPTER ELEVEN .................................................................................... 155 METAPHOR USE IN SIGN SYSTEMS: A TWO-STEP MODEL FOR THE UNDERSTANDING OF METAPHOR AND METONYMY VALENTINA CUCCIO AND SABINA FONTANA

A PHILOSOPHICAL GUIDE TO METAPHOR USE ELISABETTA GOLA AND FRANCESCA ERVAS

There is no more reason why the features belonging to a picture should be distorted for the purpose of such imaginative suggestion than that the poet's metaphors should spoil his words for the ordinary uses of man. (William H. Hunt)

This volume is a philosophical guide on metaphor use. Foregoing research concerning metaphors has focused on either the theoreticallinguistic problems or the uses in specific research fields. Although these domains share some common interests, there has been little crosscommunication. On the one hand, theoretical studies on metaphor have often been “empty” as they failed to present actual examples of metaphor use and its features in different domains. On the other hand, research on the use of metaphor in specific fields has often been “blind”, as no indepth theoretical analysis of metaphor use was presented. The aim of this volume is to bridge the gap between the theoretical and the empirical side of the research on metaphor use. Therefore, while adopting a theoreticalphilosophical point of view, the volume also presents the interdisciplinary connections between philosophy and other scientific areas such as linguistics, cognitive science, discourse analysis, communication studies, didactics, economics, arts and political science. Thus, the volume presents a broad focus on metaphor and is composed of ten chapters. The first chapter deals with a historical reconstruction of the use of metaphor in different socio-political and religious contexts. The leading contemporary theories of metaphor are discussed from both a pragmatic and a cognitive perspective in the second and third chapters. The following seven chapters aim to show how metaphor is used in various domains with particular regard to its use in novels, advertising, financial reviews, education, web documents, discourse analysis, and sign systems. In the first chapter Metaphor in the Collective Imaginary, Fabio Tarzia argues that metaphor has been primarily used to build a “collective imaginary.” For example, metaphors assist in creating a boundless

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communication system that represents the cultural identity of a community. Tarzia focuses his attention on the notion of “space,” conveying the double meaning of “internal” and “external” space. Each community modulates this notion through the dynamics of the social structure. According to Weber (1904), for instance, the notion of space is represented in different ways depending on the historical developments of religion, one of the most important human structures of knowledge. Tarzia proposes an indepth analysis of Weber’s idea, explaining how three different collective imaginaries, the Calvinistic-Puritanical, the Jewish and the Catholic, have made reference to metaphors of space in order to express their religious identity. From the Calvinistic-Puritanical point of view, the outer darkness metaphor represents the initial discovery of an already predestined future of either salvation or damnation. In this way, the island that Robinson Crusoe lands on is a metaphor of a new identity. In other words, the island is a space proving that he is predestined to salvation. From the Jewish point of view, the metaphor of being between light and darkness represents the passage from slavery to freedom. At the same time, this metaphor entails both the risk of being ghettoized and the need to be accepted by other “nations.” As for the Catholic point of view, the metaphor of the inner darkness represents the absence of God in one’s soul. Due to this absence, a Christian may be driven to look for Christ in the outer world. The space is further modulated to signify the difficulty people have in recognizing God inside themselves and in the outer world. In the second chapter, The Pragmatics of Metaphor Use, Francesca Ervas and Elisabetta Gola discuss two main theoretical frameworks for metaphor analysis: Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual theory of metaphor (1980) and Sperber and Wilson’s relevance approach to metaphor understanding (1986). Both theories are important landmarks in theorizing the mechanism of metaphor use. According to the conceptual theory, metaphor is considered not only as a linguistic phenomenon, but also a universal, cognitive one. From the conceptual view, our personal thoughts follow a metaphorical structure and are therefore metaphorical in nature. Lakoff and Johnson have been criticized for their conceptual reduction, which brought the need for a re-assessment of the linguistic component of metaphor use. On the one hand, corpus-based linguistics has provided an empirical answer to this criticism by showing the linguistic-cultural bias on metaphor understanding. On the other hand, the relevant-theoretic approach has embraced this challenge and indicated that metaphor use is not a “special” linguistic phenomenon, but rather the result of a pragmatic process of meaning modulation. Nowadays Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory is studied for the socio-cultural oriented approaches,

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which considered alternative routes to metaphor understanding (Carston 2002, 2010), such as the reference to images. In the third chapter, Modelling Metaphor Use, Lucia Morra focuses on Carston’s recent thesis on metaphor understanding (Carston 2002). For Morra, the linguistically encoded concept of metaphor comprehension is adjusted, thereby producing an “ad hoc” concept. In other words, by either narrowing or loosening the concepts, we can access the “explicature,” which is an enriched structure of the non-literal expression according to contextual expectancies of relevance. In a recent paper, Carston (2010) slightly modified her model of language understanding for it to be responsive to certain psycholinguistic findings. Morra argues that the neural bilateral model of language understanding proposed by JungBeeman (2005) could be of interest for linguistic approaches having a contextualistic view, such as Carston’s approach. According to Morra, Jung-Beeman’s model could be joined with Carston’s account of metaphor use together with Giora’s hypothesis of graded salience (Giora 2003). From one point of view, when lexicalized metaphors are processed, their salient (figurative) meaning might be recognized as the most relevant. Following Jung-Beeman’s model, in the processing of lexicalized metaphor, the left hemisphere (LH) could occupy the main role and the necessary adjustment would be minimal. From another point of view, when metaphors are not lexicalized, the adjustment required would be greater and would involve more contribution from the right hemisphere (RH). The RH could indeed add detail to the images having literal meanings. As the incoming linguistic stimuli are being decoded, the LH produces further derivation from the global “literal” representation and the LH further selects the pragmatic inferences. The fourth chapter, Metaphor Use in the 19th Century Novel, is a work on social functions of literature with particular attention given to the genre of novels. Emiliano Ilardi and Alessio Ceccherelli examine the role of metaphors in the context of Marshall McLuhan’s sociological approach (McLuhan 1994). According to McLuhan, art – and especially literature – is a medium and thus a symbolic form. That is to say it is a metaphor that directly or indirectly translates one form of human experience into another. To this basic cognitive function McLuhan adds the specificity of artistic media as being “prophetic.” In this added function, metaphor appears to have a peculiar role. Through the simulating power of literary metaphors, readers gain a certain kind of familiarity with the transformations even before they are fully accomplished. An example is given by late nineteenth-century poetry ranging from those composed by the symbolists to those by the historical avant-garde. Such poetry

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undermined the linear, logical structure of the literary text, anticipating cognitive-perceptual structures of the new electronic media. To achieve this effect the authors argue that a sort of ethical imagination must be created to mediate between an escape through fantasy and a necessary discipline of the ability to fantasize, as opposed to the Fordist rationalization. In doing so, the novel finally seems able to unify these ideas so as to create a new paradigm of production that will fully emerge only at the end of the twentieth century. The fifth chapter, Metaphor Use in Advertising, written Paula Pérez Sobrino, is a survey on the relation between metaphor and metonymy through the study of greenwashing campaigns in advertising discourse. The analysis is focused on the way meaning is constructed in a multimodal context. Metaphor and metonymy, indeed, are found to play a significant role in the construction and development of advertising discourse. In the considered example, Pérez Sobrino shows that greenwashing campaigns make use of green marketing in order to promote a misleading perception that company policies or products are environmentally friendly. This powerful chain of inference is mostly due to metonymy, which only in recent years has perked researchers’ interest and caused focus to be more frequently placed on metaphor. Another original aspect of Sobrino’s study of conceptual metaphor is related to the fact that research about metaphors in advertising has been extremely focused on verbal manifestations of this trope, while other modes such as visual and audio-visual, which merge in multimodal contexts, still remain largely unexplored. Hence, in this chapter, the link between cognition and persuasion is discussed by exploring the connections between metaphor and metonymy in a multimodal context (Forceville 1996). In the sixth chapter, Metaphor Use in Financial Reviews, Luisanna Fodde and Olga Denti aims to analyse how business discourse may be affected by emerging crisis phenomena. The proposed research refers mainly to the 2004-2010 world financial crisis and is based on a corpus comprising of a series of EU financial stability reviews published between these dates. The chapter aims to answer the following question: how is the 2004-2010 world financial crisis reflected in or deviated by language metaphors and metaphorical patterns? The two types of analysis, quantitative and qualitative, highlight the metaphorical density that is typical of business discourse as it undergoes systematic and dramatic changes in the presence of financial turmoil. It also highlights the textual/linguistic, discursive and genre-specific elements present in the examined corpus. The issue of metaphors and metaphoric language in business and financial discourse has been investigated thoroughly over the

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last years (Gotti 2003; Kövecses 2005). Metaphors have been shown to belong to this type of discourse, in which the dramatic force of the events discussed is particularly salient and may trigger further interest and satisfaction on the part of the audiences involved. The same also happens when the authors try to give a multimodal perspective of the analysis, showing how the visual elements presented in the texts enhance comprehension and cohesion. The study emphasizes that lexical choices follow the same trend and patterns as financial events. In the seventh chapter, Metaphor Use in Politics, Stefano Di Pietro conducts a case study devoted to the domain of politics. He analyses the impact that multimedia and technological development have had in the political use of metaphors. Due to modern mass media, politicians are regarded in a different scope, representing every aspect of their political actions and personal life. Di Pietro describes how the enhanced panorama of political communication is viewed from an electorate’s eyes. This is done, for example, by showing a gesture in a photograph, a spot on the television or any other image that may have an important role in the deep semiotic processes of the viewer. Instruments and theories giving light to a number of phenomena concerning political communication have been analysed through several case studies taken from recent events in Italian and American politics. In particular, Luigi Bersani’s and Barack Obama’s communication strategies are both compared using conceptual metaphors as a tool to compare the differences and similarities in their communicative choices. The use of metaphor is also considered from an emotional viewpoint and their influence on the decision-making process is illustrated. Together with insights from Cognitive and Mind Sciences, they enhance our understanding of the phenomena at stake. In the eighth chapter, Metaphor Use in Education, John Wade analyses the language of education in a similar way as conceptual metaphor has been. The theoretic framework is indeed Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor approach (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), with particular attention to the idea that metaphor pervasively affects our subconscious thinking. Among the conceptual metaphors, Wade conducts an analysis around the schema EDUCATION IS A JOURNEY, which hypothetically could be interpreted as a rough path that leads to a pre-established, institutionalised destination. A corpus-based analysis is then presented to evaluate this hypothesis. In the second stage of the procedure, a number of keywords are associated with the concept of JOURNEY. With the help of a dictionary of synonyms, a thesaurus and a KWIC concordance, the frequency of non-metaphorical meanings and metaphorical meanings related to JOURNEY are estimated. The research showed different patterns describing EDUCATION as a

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JOURNEY. A few examples include “being on the wrong track,” “going down well-worn tracks,” or the idioms with “way” and “course.” The initial results and the corpus-based method, along with the cognitive semantics approach, are noteworthy for both its linguistic and pedagogical implications. In the ninth chapter, Metaphor Use in the Web, Maurizio Galluzzo explores perhaps the most pervasive and successful metaphor of our computational machines: the metaphor of the window. This metaphor has indeed been the basis of the user interfaces on our computers for over 30 years. However, “the window” represents a projected plan of perspective lines or a defined and fenced place to which we can turn our attention. When computers’ graphical user interface was introduced, we returned to the oldest definition of space: the window, inside which anything can happen, but can be endlessly replicated. Moreover, even though windows are seemingly and endlessly replicated on the outside, it is always contained inside other windows. Galluzzo explains that the fascinating historical origins of the metaphor are found in famous painters, such as Piero della Francesca, Pietro Perugino and Leon Battista Alberti, who strongly influenced the Western visual culture. Yet he also points out how this visual structure in its turn influences the use of visual metaphors on the web, by explaining how the “new sheet of paper to write on” – i.e. the man-computer interface – is conceived. In doing so, Galluzzo shows that not only have metaphors been used to build a virtual space on the web, but also that the web in itself can be considered a metaphor of our contemporary vision of the world. The tenth chapter, Metaphor Use in Discourse Analysis, written by Giorgio Cozzolino, is a research proposal for analysing errors in metaphor use. According to Cozzolino, recurring mistakes in metaphor use can be exploited as a test to identify some semantic features of these conventional uses. In analysing the discourse of everyday life, several examples are given, ranging from both personal communication and communication via media (radio, TV, web, etc.). Cozzolino proposes an analysis of two kinds of mistakes in metaphor use: hybrid metaphors and reframed metaphors. The former combines a primary meaning (stemming from a non-literal expression) with a secondary incoherent one (originating from another non-literal expression) leading to a potentially ambiguous interpretation. The latter involves the partial local modulation of a non-literal expression, displaying a different image of the non-literal expression used. Unsurprisingly, preliminary results show that correct conventional metaphors are more easily recognized than mistaken metaphors. The analysis of the collected data also shows that conventional metaphors lose their effect over time

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according to the different mistaken uses and/or contexts of use. As a less predictable outcome, participants’ answers also show a weak familiarity with common ways of speaking, even in the case of correct and conventional metaphors. Another notable result is that even native speakers do not always share the meaning of widespread conventional metaphors. In the eleventh chapter, Metaphor Use in Sign Systems, Valentina Cuccio and Sabina Fontana attempt to integrate the cognitive linguistic theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and the relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) in order to provide a comprehensive explanation of metaphor use. Cuccio and Fontana do not consider these two theories of metaphor use as being in opposition. In particular, they focus their analysis on sign systems, considering and comparing both metaphors and metonymies, in order to show that these two theoretical frameworks could interrelate in providing an explanation of non-literal language use. Therefore, Cuccio and Fontana present a two-step model in which the conceptual, cognitive-linguistic theory supplies an explanation of the neural and embodied levels, while the relevance theory gives an explanation of socio-cognitive abilities, such as Theory of mind. In typical development, these two steps of metaphor understanding, despite the fact that they develop consecutively, often work together. By comparing home sign systems and conventional sign systems, Cuccio and Fontana demonstrate that in home sign systems there is only the first embodied level of metaphor. These are metaphors of orientation, i.e. metaphors fabricating a whole system of concepts in correlation with the action of our body in the world. Moreover, orientational metaphors seem not only to be embodied but also cross-linguistically similar, exactly because they are based on human physical interaction with the world. The same kind of metaphors could indeed be found in the hearing community’s gestures and in the deaf community’s sign language. However, no inferential metaphors were discovered because they require a wide social community, a common cultural background and a shared language. In other words, a full production and comprehension of inferential metaphors would require a second level, which would be a more pragmatic oriented process of interpretation and could be responsible for the integration of the communicative intention with more socio-cultural specific cues of the context.

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Acknowledgements We would like to thank the authors of the chapters of this volume, for their willingness to improve their work. We thank the members of the Italian Association for Metaphor Studies (Carla Bazzanella, Claudia Casadio, Marco Casonato, Lia Formigari, Elena Gagliasso, Pietro Storari, Daniela Veronesi). We are also grateful to the Department of Pedagogy, Psychology and Philosophy and the Faculty of Human Sciences, as well as the School of Communication Science of the University of Cagliari for the collaborative environment and support. Special thanks to Dominic Thompson for having carefully revised the overall manuscript.

References Carston R. (2002). Thoughts and Utterances. The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. —. 2010. “Metaphor: Ad Hoc Concepts, Literal Meaning and Mental Images”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 110 (3): 295–321. Forceville C. (1996). Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London/New York: Routledge. Giora R. (2003). On Our Mind: Salience, Context, and Figurative Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Gotti M. (2003). Specialized Discourse: Linguistic Features and Changing Conventions. Bern: Peter Lang. Jung-Beeman M. (2005). “Bilateral brain processes for comprehending natural language.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (11): 512–518. Kövecses Z. (2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff G. and Johnson. M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McLuhan M. (1994). Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. Boston: MIT Press. Sperber D. and Wilson D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Weber M. (1904-1905). Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Beltz Athenäum: Weinheim, 1996.

CHAPTER ONE METAPHOR IN THE COLLECTIVE IMAGINARY THE INTERPRETATION AND REPRESENTATION OF SPACE IN THE CALVINIST, JEWISH AND CATHOLIC WORLDS

FABIO TARZIA

Introduction The imaginary may be described as a great communications system, circular in nature, which brings out (and then brings out again) the radical archetypes underlying a given cultural identity. To be able to be communicated and hence be used for their main purpose (that is, to construct and adapt itself to the historical processes of a given “community”), they must first of all be “formalized”, and hence expressed within a media environment. Let me give one example. The basic human drive of the relationship between finiteness and immortality has, from the earliest times, been dealt with and partially solved with the idea of God. But in order to be known, this idea needs a metaphor which expresses it (the “sun”, the “father of the gods”, the “old man with a beard” etc.). Metaphors are therefore the essential link between the archetypical levels and the media which communicates them. “Space” occupies a particular position within this scheme of things. Particularly the relationship between internal and external space, as Juri Lotman has shown, as one of the fundamental structures through which Man acquires an identity (Lotman 1975). Drawing on this idea of cultural semiotics, for example, Carlo Ginzburg drew a basic borderline between a hunting culture and an agricultural culture (Ginzburg 1986). Looking at this from the sociological point of view, Manuel Castells (who elaborated a fully-fledged social theory of space) described space as “the expression of society (but not its) reflection: It is not a photocopy of society. It is society… The spatial forms and processes are made up of the

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dynamics of the global social structure including the contradictory trends brought about by conflicts” (Castells 2002, p. 471). From the point of view of media studies, lastly, for Marshall McLuhan space is the extension of the body. It is by treating this space that individuals communicate and defend themselves, according to an approach which might be called the mediology of space (McLuhan, 1964). If the media are essentially “environments”, then “spatial forms and processes” which derive from the dynamics of the social structure, are also, and perhaps mainly, media expressions. The questions to be asked, then, are: does there exist a standard treatment of space that is capable of defining particular cultures in respect of others? And the counter-question: does there exist a metaphorical system connected to individual cultures that is able to bring out this archetypical self-definition? But how does one set out along such a complex pathway? Is it not perhaps the case that the founding fathers of Sociology, and primarily Weber, attempted to perform the operation of the historical definition of cultures via religion, as the most typically human cultural structure, the most all-embracing, the most powerful of all? The reasoning I am setting out here is a brief explanation of how three different imaginaries, the American, the Jewish and the Catholic, express themselves and their identity by reference to a fundamental spatial archetypical structure: the relationship between internal space and external space, which Lotman had defined as In/Es. The reasoning takes up a number of fundamental and essential metaphors through which this archetypical level is formalised, and is based on the assumption that the essence of each of the imaginaries is religious: Calvinistic-Puritanical, Jewish, and Catholic-Christian (Tarzia 2009). I am not trying to argue that the American and the Catholic worlds are only this. But it is obvious that such complex and ancient histories and cultures cannot be “confined” in a discourse covering only a few pages, which is inevitably somewhat schematic. I would refer the reader to more wide-ranging works that are in the press for a complete treatment of the subject. But here I would like to begin by setting out a few essential features. .

1. The first metaphor: the outer darkness In 1719 Daniel Defoe published his masterpiece, Robinson Crusoe. Even though the question has been quite thorough debated already, it is hard not to read into the text a puritanical ideological base (Watt 1937). Indeed, his stay on the island might be construed as a kind of re-education

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in Puritanism. For Robinson was shipwrecked after having sailed away in search of fortune against the better judgment of his father, a wealthy landowner living off his assets. Two equally mistaken ideals: being an adventure on the one hand, and living off landed property, on the other: the island offers the possibility of a third way, that of a new identity. Building up the relationship between the individual and space is dealt with brilliantly in the book. Robinson is terrorized by the outside space even when he discovers that it is not infinite but circumscribed. He devotes a great deal of time to building an impregnable fortress for himself, resting against a cliff side, in which he excavated a cave as a store room. At this point he appears to have everything he needs: he could farm the land around him and live quite well. But he cannot. He then begins to timidly explore the island. He moves around during daylight, returning to base every day, and over the course of months and years, he sets up places where he can stay over and which he can easily reach: a pavilion in the centre of the island, a fence, the cave with the treasure etc. His true satisfaction, even after being away for some time, is always the possibility of returning home. In the earliest construction of Calvinistic Puritan space we can recognize a simple mapping: a home, a path through the external space, with safe and secure stages, and a return to the starting point. What does this movement refer to in metaphorical terms? To the Puritan mind the individual is predestined to salvation or damnation. A person who is “saved” does not need to establish contact with others and the world outside – indeed this should be avoided. But they cannot avoid moving out and moving around the world. According to Weber (Weber, 1094-1905) we must “discover” that we have been predestined by God, and the only real way to do this is by being successful. Robinson Crusoe transformed his island into an extremely rich possession; in other words, he demonstrated that he was the “chosen one”. But this movement (the expression of the Alliance, of which we can still see the consequences today, between capital and the religious system) cannot be an end in itself: it is solely to clarify the relationship between that individual and God. In other words, it is pure production without consumption (according to the earliest Puritanical pattern which lasted for about a century, and then only in America). This is why Robinson Crusoe returns home: because inside his fortress, after having moved around outside, he can talk directly to God (opening the Bible at random, or through evident manifestations of God’s goodness, such as the corn seeds thrown on the ground which miraculously bear fruit). This “Robinsonian” organization of space becomes creative: enclosed and protected spaces, with a sharp separation against the outside world and

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its inhabitants, predestination, a direct relationship with God, going out, travelling following a set route, and then returning home. Let us now imagine that we are entering the Bronx, today. At the Yankee Stadium the home team, the Yankees, are playing the Detroit Tigers. It would seem to be a perfect ritual representation of the movement I have just described: the only sport which makes provision for a return to base/home (and not simply violating the goal or the basket or the opposite team’s area). The batter alone, threatened by the pitcher, hits the ball and runs through dangerous territory (in which he can be touched and eliminated by the defenders lined up by the opposing team) until he arrives safely back at base. After the second batter has started running, he will leave the second base and then head for the third base. The strategic aim is to return home (and hence score points) from whence he had departed. If what Roger Callois and Victor Turner say is true (Callois 1967; Turner 1982), it is as if we were witnessing (week after week) confirmation of a profound identity through a collective ritual in that stadium. But this confirmation not only comes about in the “ordinary” ritual time, namely by being repeated “daily”, but perhaps above all in exceptional times and states. Let us just take two examples: America’s wars and space ventures or – as is logical – the way they have been mythologized and narrated. In most of America’s war stories, from the first 17th-century Indian wars to the Second World War, and today’s wars (including their smallest variants, such as commando operations to free a hostage or kill an enemy), the very essence is getting out, eliminating the external threat, and returning home. “Bring our boys home” is one of the standard phrases in United States movies. The great adventure of Apollo 11 was prophesied by Kennedy as an operation that would put a man on the moon, touch the soil of our satellite, and “return home safe and sound”: Kennedy’s new frontier did not take the form of a wide-ranging movement to conquer space, but a “commando” action, of re-consecration, envisaged within the atmosphere of a “space race” typical of the “Cold War” in which Korea and Vietnam functioned as great movements of “re-consecration”. It was about leaving the world and casting out into space to demonstrate that America was fighting a just war, to confirm that it was the “chosen” nation, but then to return “home”, to the place where God speaks to his people. The examples could continue ad infinitum. There are two points to be noted. The first is that it is not, of course, purely and simply a modern rehashing of the Puritanical essence of its origins, but an underlying settled structure that is constantly reused and adapted. From the earliest Puritanism, these “processes” retained their essential “ideological”

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structure: predestination, distinction, “manifestation”. And it is precisely baseball which suggests the second adjustment: these processes are not immutable; in other words, their functions are adjusted. The Vietnam war used the return structure without being able to explicate it any more: the Marines could no longer “purify” the realm of the “dark force” and so they did not return home (from the ideal point of view), as if the sign of “distinction” they had gone out to seek was no longer being given to them. Hollywood operated here for the first time to offer a critical viewpoint: works like Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) worked precisely around the idea that any such return had now become impossible. Here we are not talking simply about an imaginary which “reflects” an event (the defeat in Vietnam) but on the contrary an artistic reworking, based on the event of the war without a return home, reasoning around the fact that the ancient identity structure, of which we have spoken, has tragically revealed its total impotence in the face of a historical reality that has now changed. I anticipate, and wish to respond to, other objections. This story is primordial: for example, it is clearly expressed in Propp’s analysis of the Russian fable about magic (the damaged hero, leaving on an adventure, going into the ogre’s lair, kills it, frees a hostage and returns home). Of course the narrative structure is archetypical, but in the world of fable studied by Propp there is the whole ideal driving force of sedentary agricultural civilization which, through the story, performed an exorcism guaranteeing the security of the stability that had just recently been achieved. The story is archaic, but its use can be adapted, and in the Anglo-American case, it takes on a completely different “religious” value as we have already seen. The second objection is linked to the fact that we are also accustomed to another aspect of the American world contrary to what I have just described: the out-reaching attitude, conquering new frontiers and the world, without fear and attack syndromes, in which space offers an opportunity and is not seen as a threat (Ilardi 2009). Yet the thesis underlying our argument is precisely that the load-bearing structure of the American imaginary is built upon an intertwining of these two identities: the Puritanical and the frontier, closed and open, syndrome and the conquest of space. One seems to need the other within a simple, essential system which apparently seems to have been decisive (as history shows) in the pursuit of world hegemony. At all events, markets (for consumption) are not only conquered with weapons but also by using the imaginary. When the US troops entered Rome after the fall of Mussolini on 4 June, 1944 they were greeted by crowds, who were delirious not only because

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they were celebrating the end of the war, but also because the seal was being set on that tragedy by “old friends”, the good super-heroes and the cowboy avengers that the Italians had learned so well to recognize through the cinema and cartoons which not even Fascist censorship had succeeded in keeping out.

2. The second metaphor: between light and darkness Jerusalem, 7 June, 1967, 9:45 am. Israeli Sherman tanks firing at ground level at the Lions Gate. Captain Zammush and Commander Motta Gur and his paratroopers race breathlessly along the Via Dolorosa, being shot at by the Jordanian-Arab riflemen. They reach the front of the Temple Mount and do not know how to reach the Wailing Wall below. They ask an old Arab to help them, and he directs them: they break down an old wrought iron gate, run down some steps and find themselves in the narrow area between the Wall and the hovels in the Maghreb quarter. There is an extraordinary photograph showing the phases immediately following the moment in which these first Israeli squads reached that point. As Robert Darnton has shown, (Darnton 1984) it is by looking at something past, an episode, a detail which appears incomprehensible, that one finds the key to “other” mentalities. Looking closely at this photograph, it is interesting to see the faces, the joyful expressions of course, but also the bewilderment of the Israeli soldiers. I am sure that it was specifically about this episode that Abraham Yehoshua was thinking when he wrote one of the episodes in his masterpiece, Mr Mani (Yehoshua 1990). The characters in the novel, which is set in 1899, Ephraim and Linke Shapiro with Doctor Mani, travel to Jerusalem, and Ephraim in particular, on reaching the Wailing Wall is overcome, just like the soldiers in 1967 when faced with what he calls the “last station of history”, which struck for its simplicity and originality, which make any false promises or foster any illusions. It is a last stop of history, no less than that board in the train station - a blank wall with no opensesames or hidden crypts. What more can I tell you, Father? What else? It is perhaps the ultimate dam… (Yehoshua 1992, p. 265)

…for Jews, but this is also where a reverse resurrection takes place: not from the diaspora to Jerusalem, but from Jerusalem to the diaspora, from the wall of Zion to the remote village in Poland in which he was born and where he was told about this story:

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the Christians would rise from their graves where they were, but we Jews would crawl through underground caverns and come out in the Land of Israel... which is just what I’ve been doing these past few days, but in the opposite direction – from there to here – cavern-crawling and turning over in many graves – as though travelling not upon the globe but deep beneath its surface – with the coaches groaning and the locomotive wailing and smoke and soot and great showers of sparks by night – from tunnel to tunnel and from one remote station to another - each time the same flicker of gas lamps, and the same onrush of blackness, and then the same total nothing – and where you looked in the foggy distance, our flour mills standing like titans - talk of resurrection! I am happy, Father; why, we nearly came to grief... (Yehoshua 1992, p. 209)

And it is precisely this return to the diaspora which provokes the tragedy. Doctor Mani, who has begged Ephraim to leave him at least his sister Linka, a fervent Zionist, commits suicide. The diaspora is Yehoshua’s real problem. He views it as a neurosis, a constant wavering between dispersion and the centre, a mechanism which deliberately prevents him from deciding between religion and the nation: are Jews defined by reference to their land (like every other people) or their religion (regardless of the place)? For Yehoshua, the solution is simple: to become a normal state, in which citizenship is established by the passport and not by the religion (Yehoshua 2004). What could have left the Israeli soldiers open-mouthed if not the unconscious, almost primordial conception, of the end of that wavering? Let us look at it from another point of view. According to Stefano Levi Della Torre (Levi Della Torre 1995) polemically at odds with Yehosha, the diaspora, the constellation of identities dispersed throughout the world, is the true Jewish identity. It is its extraordinary mechanism which enabled the oldest people in the world to survive for 2000 years. The linchpin of the diaspora is the community “gathered together” in the ghetto: at night time the “enclosure” makes it possible to achieve the ideal link with the centre, with Jerusalem; while opening the gates in the morning, makes the opposite possible: economic and cultural integration with the various “host” nations (Zanini 1997). Wavering between open and closed is therefore the essence of how to interpret space in the Jewish culture, its deep-seated archetypical structure. One should therefore ask whether there is justification for the concern shown by the Israeli soldiers before the Wall or before Yehoshua’s character who hastily escapes back towards Poland. And here is a first potential objection. Whether the mechanism is deepseated or not, today the State of Israel exists; practically and symbolically, then, the diaspora should be finished. Are we sure of that? Yehoshua is

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sceptical. For example, he interprets the settlements and the outposts in the West Bank that have increased in number in recent decades as a new kind of diaspora. The point is that one cannot easily wipe out a mental and cultural structure which has taken 2000 years to become rooted and entrenched. For today, people talk very loosely about diaspora: Tunisians, Algerians, the whole of North Africa, Pakistanis and half the Middle East, are all viewed as travellers scattered throughout the world (Appadurai 1996). Sociologists of various extractions fill their mouths with this term. Perhaps we should agree on the language. Between the Jewish type and “today’s” diasporas there are at least three essential differences. For nearly 2000 years (that is, for an incredibly long and hence “founding” time) the diaspora was total. No large Jewish communities existed any longer in Palestine, there was no longer any territory-based political and state authority (in Pakistan, for example, a state continues to exist, even though many of its citizens have been scattered throughout the world). That identity mechanism was therefore incorporated and deeply introjected: such as when a non-swimmer is thrown into deep water and is forced to learn how to float. And if that person remains in the water, not for a century but for two millennia, that person will move in the direction of full-fledged mutation. When the British took over the oceans in the 16th century, Carl Schmitt (Schmitt 1954) said that they “became fishes”, and moved in the water as well as, and better than, on land. Lastly a third question. It has only been in the past few decades that the Jewish diaspora has used the mass media to link the various communities scattered throughout the world, and then only with difficulty. Amos Oz beautifully describes the traditional telephone call which his family made every three or four months from a pharmacy in Jerusalem to another pharmacy in Tel Aviv, where the relations all gathered and lived, after agreeing on the day and the time by letter: this was 1947, and that contact was still a great event (Oz 2002). For 1900 years the Jewish diaspora had neither a physical centre nor a possibility of linking the parties. In this sense the “mythologisation” and “imagination” of the central identity reached its highest level of expression. If there is not the slightest relationship, fantasising runs wild, as does virtualisation. The Pakistani or North African diasporas took place in practice when it became possible to maintain direct communication with the Homeland: in this way, integration with the “host” communities could be reduced to the minimum, while the Jews were “forced” to relate radically with those communities. In other words, and I am not the only one who thinks so, perhaps Israel is simply one, even the most important one, of the stars in the immense constellation of the Jewish Diaspora: the wavering continues.

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3. Third metaphor: the darkness within Mother Teresa April 1961. Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote her umpteenth letter to her spiritual director, the Jesuit Father Joseph Neuner. In it, she spoke of her terrible interior emptiness which had accompanied her for decades: Now Father -Since 49 or 50 this terrible sense of loss, this untold darkness, this loneliness, this continual longing for God, which gives me pain deep down in my heart. Darkness is such that I really do not see neither with my mind nor with my reason, the place of God in my soul is blank. There is no God in me, when the pain of longing is so great, I just long and long for God and then it is that I feel. He does not want me. He is not there. (Kolodiejchuk 2007, p. 217).

According to interpretations of Catholic mysticism dating back to St John of the Cross, the absence of God is the greatest gift which the Lord can give to his chosen ones. It enables them to share suffering, and hence love, to the full. Like the stigmata, the emptiness of God refers to the decisive moment of the resurrection, to the greatest doubt of the dying Jesus: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” I would like to propose another interpretation here. The absence of God in the soul is exactly what drove Mother Teresa into the stinking alleyways of Calcutta and to look for the dying in the sewers. Christ is outside, in the world, and not inside the soul of those who believe in him: He is in the deeds of those who are seeking him (Kolodiejchuk 2007, p. 218). This explains those extraordinary words that have been reported so many times in recent years, but which only have any meaning if held up against what we have just read: “If I ever become a Saint – I will surely be one of “darkness.” I will continually be absent from Heaven to lit the light of those in darkness on earth” (Kolodiejchuk 2007, p. 7). Paradise resplendent, or the city of God described in the Apocalypse, all lit up and with the doors open, was not the ideal place for that little nun. She liked to go around the world, seeking “in the slums, or in dark holes, because that is where our Lord is always truly present”. It is a kind of ecstasy of the space to be conquered. Unlike the syndrome for what is off the beaten track laid down by the inscrutable and pre-determining will of God which drove the Puritans, obscurity was essential to Mother Teresa, an opportunity to find God in the world and shed light on Him. The ecstasy of space is not an end in itself, but takes on meaning because it is a reconquest of the world in the more general pathway leading to God. The Catholic does not go home, or at least not to his little earthly home. The whole of a Catholic’s life is a journey towards their true home, the house

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of God, but this journey cannot be taken alone: one cannot even embark on it unless one imagines it performed in the company of all those whom one meets on the road and who join the company, as suggested by the great 16th century Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier (proclaimed Saint in 1622) who decided to leave for India after having dreams of “carrying” an indigenous man on his shoulders. And on the subject of travellers, let me take a dizzying leap backwards, by almost 2000 years. Luke’s Gospel, chapter 24, Emmaus. This is the open, Pauline Gospel, in contrast to the apocalyptic and Essenese Gospel of Mark, and Matthew’s Gospel of mediation. Two disciples are leaving Jerusalem, thinking that everything is over, that the crucified Christ has not risen. And on the way they meet a stranger who seems to know nothing, and they take him with them and invite him for supper. Here he breaks the bread and blesses the wine, and reveals himself for who he really is. And then he suddenly vanishes. This Scriptural text is normally interpreted as showing the difficulty that people have in recognizing God. But I would like to offer another interpretation. First of all, a beautiful disturbingly Catholic sensation which is the exact opposite to what Freud would theorize almost 2000 years later. It is not the acquaintance who becomes a stranger, but the stranger who makes himself known. If, therefore, Christ is everywhere, above all in places where he is not recognized, it is unthinkable to be able to keep him locked up overnight in a house awaiting the dawn: in other words, one cannot hope to expect eternal life, waiting for the Reaper to do his final task of separating the wheat from the tares, while remaining safe, pretending that outside there is nothing. Christ disappeared just as he disappeared in the soul of Mother Teresa. Like Mother Teresa, the disheartened and despairing disciples left the protective walls behind them to return to Jerusalem, and then to spread out through all the pathways of the world in search of other unknown people who “concealed” Christ within them. In this case too, I can imagine one possible objection. This “open” Christianity of ecstasy and of world conquest belongs only to a small part of the history of the Church. In the first five centuries, when the homogeneity of the Roman Empire made it possible for the faith to spread, or in the “Jesuitical” period of the Counter-Reformation, with the attempt to spread the word in every part of the reachable world, or, later, ideally, in the age of Vatican II. For the rest of Western history, the whole of the Middle Ages until the 16th century, and then until the end of the 17th century until practically today, the Church and the Catholic community seemed closed in and encircled, sometimes with apocalyptic features. Has Mark prevailed over Luke? The Essenes over Paul? What is most

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genuinely Catholic? In my opinion, if Catholic Christianity is built up and builds itself up as a universalistic religion there can be no doubts. It can become tactically inward-looking to survive, but if it permanently cuts itself off strategically, it will die.

References Appadurai A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Caillois R. (1967). Les Jeux et les Hommes. Le Masque et le Vertige. Paris: Gallimard. Castells M. (1996). The information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. I: The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Darnton R. (1984). The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Basic Books. Ginzburg C. (1986). Miti emblemi e spie. Torino: Einaudi. Ilardi E. (2009). La frontiera contro la metropoli. Spazi, media e politica nell’immaginario urbano americano. Napoli: Liguori. Kolodiejchuk B. (2007). Mother Teresa: Come be my Light. The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta”. New York: Doubleday. Levi Della Torre S. (1995). Essere fuori luogo. Roma: Donzelli. Lotman J. e Uspenskij B. (1975). Tipologia della cultura. Milano: Bompiani. McLuhan M. (1964). Understanding Media. New York: McGraw Hill. Oz A. (2002). A Tale of Love and Darkness. New York: Vintage. Schmitt C. (1954). Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung. Leipzig: Reclam. Tarzia F. (2009). Mondi minacciati. La letteratura contro gli altri media. Napoli: Liguori. Turner V. (1982). From Ritual to Theatre. The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Binding. Watt I. (1957). The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. California: University of California Press. Weber M. (1904-1905). Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Beltz Athenäum: Weinheim, 1996. Yehoshua A.B. (1990). Mar Mani; transl. from the Hebrew by H. Halkin. Mr. Mani. New York: Doubleday. —. (2004). Antisemitismo e sionismo. Una discussione. Torino: Einaudi. Zanini P. (1997). Significati del confine. I limiti naturali, storici, mentali. Milano: Bruno Mondadori.

CHAPTER TWO THE PRAGMATICS OF METAPHOR USE FROM THE CONCEPTUAL VIEW TO THE RELEVANCE-THEORETIC PERSPECTIVE

FRANCESCA ERVAS AND ELISABETTA GOLA

Introduction This chapter aims at presenting two main theoretical frameworks for metaphor use analysis: the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and the relevance approach to metaphor understanding (Sperber and Wilson 1986). The former has considered metaphor not only as a linguistic phenomenon, but also as a cognitive mechanism. On the one hand, corpus linguistics, as well as artificial intelligence, provides an empirical answer to the criticism for conceptual reduction in relation to the conceptual metaphor theory. On the other hand, the relevant-theoretic approach showed that metaphor is not “special,” but rather the result of a pragmatic process of “narrowing” or “broadening” of the literal meaning. Interestingly, an alternative route to metaphor understanding has been proposed in the relevance-theoretic framework (Carston 2002, 2010), referencing images evoked in metaphor use.

1. The conceptual metaphor theory The strongest theoretical framework for metaphor analysis of the last thirty years is perhaps cognitive semantics, developed by the Berkeley group, spearheaded by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. They outline the conceptual theory of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) in which the main idea involves metaphors also being a cognitive phenomenon and not only a linguistic and rhetorical device.

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This is not a novel idea to the history of western thinking, beginning with Aristotle (Poetics, Rethorics), through to the ancient rhetoric of Quintiliano (Institutio oratoria), and up to the more recent epistemological approach (Black, 1962). Nevertheless, the claim of the centrality of metaphors in language and thought is usually attributed to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Their work “Metaphors We Live By” (1980) together with previous thinking create a very large consensus around this perspective, generating numerous studies and consolidating the idea that metaphors should be viewed as a conceptual phenomenon. In “Metaphors We Live By,” the theoretical manifesto of the conceptual metaphor theory is charted: Metaphor is for most people device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish ௅ a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 3).

In establishing a strong relationship between our conceptual system and metaphor structures based on the idea that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, Lakoff and Johnson oriented the research of the next two decades towards the semantic aspect of metaphors. Metaphor has been examined from different points of view, primarily through a semantic perspective including the themes of metaphors and representations, metaphor and truth, metaphor and understanding, etc. Some pragmatic and communicative aspects are certainly included in the overall view. For instance, the everyday reality to which Lakoff and Johnson refer is constituted of human interactions: “The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 3). Language, discarded as a secondary step in meaning construction, seems to in fact play a central role: “Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 3). Metaphors and metaphor understanding are not secondary, peripheral mechanisms in meaning definition processes. On the contrary, they represent the core of knowledge construction. Even if there is an extensive range of non-metaphorical concepts, most of the assumptions about literal meaning have been proven false from the idea that everyday language is

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literal, through the definition in lexicon entries of dictionaries (considered literal) and to the correspondence theory of truth in the philosophy of language. The conceptual metaphor theory disrupts these assumptions. Metaphor and metonymy represent rather the main mechanism involved in knowledge growth that traverses a combination of potentially isomorphic domains. A metaphor is indeed a cross-domain mapping in which a set of features of the source domain is mapped to a target domain. For example, the metaphor “AN ARGUMENT IS A CONTAINER” highlights some aspects of an argument revealed by the metaphorical expressions that are used to speak about arguments. Therefore, the linguistic side of this conceptual device is composed of the metaphorical expressions that refer to the conceptual metaphor. The following expressions are such examples (cfr. Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 92): Your argument doesn’t have much content That argument has holes in it Your argument is vacuous I’m tired of your empty arguments That conclusion falls out of my argument Returning to literal meaning, dictionary entries do not include such explanations, but the direct experiences that emerge in interacting with our environment do. The container concept, for example, emerges directly as we “experience ourselves as entities, separate from the rest of the world – as containers, with an inside and an outside” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 58). Metaphors are necessary in grasping concepts, to which they impose a structure. Inferences in a certain domain can be applied and inherited only via metaphor. It could not be said: “His theory has a strong foundation” if we could not also navigate the following chain: THEORY IS A CONTAINER – BUILDING IS A CONTAINER -> THEORY IS A BUILDING

No other alternative meaning – presumed literal – exists that can induce the same set of inferences. Well-fitted primary metaphors, in which the source domain is directly linked to the “real” world, are selected depending on parameters that can be condensed in the key concepts of experience and embodiment.

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Considering a path that leads from direct experience to cultural metaphor, cognitive semantics identifies types of conceptual metaphors with varying distances to a literal standpoint. Those closest to the literal are orientational metaphors. They represent the first level of abstraction on the experience of spatial orientation, which organizes an entire conceptual system in terms of opposition, such as: up/down, front/back, in/out, deep/shallow, central/peripheral. Such metaphorical schemas are not arbitrary, but they strongly depend on the way in which our bodies are structured. Nevertheless, there is leeway for some cultural variation: “Not all cultures give the priority we do to up-down orientation. There are cultures where balance or centrality plays a much more important role than it does in ours” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 24). Going a step beyond orientation, our experience of physical objects and substances represents the basis by which we select parts of our orientation. Our experiences are then referred to by categorizing these parts, grouping them, quantifying them, in a word reasoning about them. By combining orientation with objects or substance we obtain other concepts, such as the container as an object and container as a substance: Bounded objects, whether, human beings, rocks, or land areas, have sizes. This allows us to be quantified in terms of the amount of substance they contain. Kansas, for example, is a bound area –a container- which is why we can say, “There’s a lot of land in Kansas”. Substances can themselves be viewed as containers. Take a tub of water, for example. When you get into the tub, you get into the water. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, pp. 29-30)

Another case of ontological metaphor is personification, in which certain properties of humans are mapped into nonhuman entities, as in the expressions: This fact argues against the standard theories. Life has cheated me. Inflation is eating up our profits. His religion tells him that he cannot drink fine French wines. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 33)

In everyday language these kinds of expressions are pervasive, unconsciously used and spread throughout our arguments and conversations. This constitutes the background of an implicit set of schemas and beliefs from which new knowledge stems.

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2. Structural metaphors and metaphorical mappings Most arbitrary and cultural mappings are composed of structural metaphors, in which the source domain is related to experiences that are more sophisticated and complex than ontological and orientation metaphors. In this case, the source domain does not impose a structure, but coherently maintains a correlation between the source domain and the target domain, structuring one domain in terms of another. The way in which we comprehend aspects of a concept in terms of another is highly systematic and consistent. This is the reason why a metaphor highlighting a meaning hides all the other aspects that are inconsistent with it. For example, the fact that we conceptualize arguing as a battle prevents us from seeing the cooperative aspects. This systematicity is reflected in the way we use metaphorical expressions in language: Since metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way, we can use metaphorical linguistics expressions to study the nature of metaphorical concepts and to gain an understanding of the metaphorical nature of our activities (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 7).

Structural metaphors are still grounded and systematic, even if the image-schema involved in the mapping process are different from those related to spatial experience or ontological basic concepts. The grounding of conceptual metaphors is based on resemblances, or rather on the structural correspondence of two domains. For example in the conceptual metaphor TIME IS MONEY, the fact that money is a limited resource entails the fact that time is also a limited resource. Coherence is extended hierarchically as well. Metaphorical mappings are indeed organized, in the Lakoff and Johnson hypothesis, in hierarchical structures (Fig. 1). The inheritance hierarchy accounts both for the grounding (the metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY is based on the general EVENT-STRUCTURE METAPHOR) and for a wide range of generalizations. Lexical generalization is such an example, which accounts for the following expression: “I’m at a crossroads on this project/in life/in our relationship, etc.). “Metaphorical mappings do not occur isolated from one another. They are sometimes organized in hierarchical structures, in which “lower” mappings in the hierarchy inherit the structure of the “higher” mappings” (Lakoff 1993, p. 222).

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Event-structure metaphor

Target: Events State Changes Purposes Causes Difficulties

Source: Space are are are are are

Target: Life Significant Life events Life goals

Life event

destinations forces Impediments to motion Source: Journey

are are

Target: Love Causes

locations movements

movements destinations Source: Journey

are are

forces locations

Fig. 1. Inheritance hierarchies

The way in which mapping and inheritance work is subject to the invariance principle and is explained as such: “Metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive topology […] of the source domain, in a way consistent with the inherent structure of the target domains” (Lakoff 1993, p. 215). Theoreticians who have studied metaphors with different perspectives have questioned this set of general assumptions. A methodological problem related to the vicious cycle is potentially generated from the idea that conceptual metaphors have priority over linguistic expression, and the fact that we can use metaphorical linguistic expression to study conceptual metaphors. This problem emerges, in particular, when we try to formally simulate the process of understanding metaphors or to detect them in a text. In this case the necessity of an integrated theory arises (Gola and Federici 2009). There are at least three aspects requiring integration and they are as follows: lexical issues description of lexical structure needs to be integrated with non-literal

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properties (Moravcsik 2001); world knowledge representation - ontologies have to include metaphorical mappings among different areas (Martin 1990); and effective use in texts - specific yet often frequent cases can only be found in real texts (Koller et al. 2008). Corpus linguistic analysis in particular often highlights that designating one specific device to detect and understand metaphors is difficult to implement. Contemporary research on neural systems suggests that metaphor is not a primarily specific device. Along these considerations, the invariance principle seems to be too unbounded and general to explain the current metaphoric concept. The relevance theory (cfr. Markus Tendhal 2009) tries to answer this set of issues.

3. The relevance theoretic approach in the literalistcontextualist debate to metaphor use In their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition (1986), Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson challenge Paul Grice’s philosophical heritage. Following Grice, the debate on non-literal language understanding centred on his three main conceptual legacies: a) the idea of communication as an expression of speaker’s intentions b) the existence of a tacitly shared cooperative behaviour (guided by some rational standards expressed by a general Principle of Cooperation and the conversational maxims); c) the distinction between what the speaker said and what a sentence communicated, thus dismissing the idea of a “monolithic” linguistically encoded meaning. In Grice’s view, metaphor use is a way to a) communicate a speaker’s intentions in a conversational context; b) respect the Principle of Cooperation, while flouting a maxim, thus generating a conversational implicature; c) express a non-literal meaning which departs from the one linguistically encoded in the expression used. In metaphor use, a cooperative speaker – by pronouncing something obviously false in a context yet by providing enough cues for the listener to notice – flagrantly disobeys the maxim of quality: “Try to make your contribution one that is true. [...] 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence” (cfr. Grice 1989, p. 27). The cooperative listener – trusting the speaker’s cooperative rational behaviour in communicating his thoughts – should infer what the speaker intended to say, thus grasping the conversational implicature. This was one of the most exploited Gricean idea: conversational implicatures are, in general, conceived as the part of meaning which is not literally expressed but rather implied and implicitly communicated. They can be calculated on the basis of the literal meaning of the expression used, the conversational maxims

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and contextual information. Contemporaries debating the non-literal language understanding have challenged Grice’s philosophy. Challengers include both neo-Gricean scholars, such as Jay Atlas, Gerald Gazdar, Robert Harnish, Laurence Horn and Stephen Levinson, and post-Gricean scholars, such as François Récanati, Kent Bach, Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. The debate questioned the very idea of a sharp cut-off distinction between literal or linguistically encoded meaning and non-literal or implicated meaning. From a Gricean perspective, that which is explicitly said originates from the conventional meaning of the sentence and the inferential processes encompass the “pre-semantic” mechanisms of disambiguation and reference assignment. The role of conversational maxims concerns only the domain of that which is implicitly communicated. In particular, Grice’s pragmatic, use-oriented characterizations of metaphor (1989) – as well as the uses of Searle (1993) and Davidson (1978) – “assume that there is a clear, sharp notion of sentence-meaning, or what is said by a sentence, that contrasts with what it can be used to mean” (Stern 2006, p. 244). From this point view, as Claudia Bianchi argued, Grice defended the idea of a conventional, linguistically encoded meaning: “Grice, even though intending to unhinge the traditional view of language as proposed by the code model, provided instead the theoretical tools to defend it” (Bianchi 2009, p. 74). In the contemporary debate, on the one hand, the so-called “Literalism,” in both its “Minimalism” (Cappelen and Lepore 2005) and “Indicalism” (Stanley 2007) definitions, has defended the existence of a “literal” meaning based on the conventional meaning of what is said and composition rules, while challenging the Gricean explanation. On the other hand, “Contextualism” has argued against the existence of a “literal” meaning, which is largely underdetermined by the conventional, linguistically encoded meaning of a sentence and needs pragmatic inferential processes in order to be grasped (Recanati 2010, Carston 2002). The contemporary debate focuses on at least three levels of meaning: 1) what is linguistically encoded, 2) what is said (explicatures) and 3) what is implicated (implicatures). The locus of metaphor is now at stake and provokes the following question: does it belong to the explicit level or the implicit one? Is it an explicature or an implicature? On the literalist side, the explicit meaning of a sentence is obtained through a process of saturation and disambiguation. This is accomplished on the basis of a minimal proposition, which corresponds to the conventional meaning of a sentence. The implicit meaning of sentences is then obtained through pragmatic processes, such as enrichment, transfer

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and conversational implicature. Thus the Neo-Gricean scholars focus on isolating the semantic level, also known as the “minimal proposition,” from readings founded on shared assumptions and encyclopaedic knowledge about how language is normally used, which instead concerns the enriched or maximal proposition. From this point of view, metaphor belongs either to the field of this secondary, enriched form of proposition (Stern 2006) or to the field of pragmatics (Stanley 2005). However, on the contextualistic side, the distinction between a minimal and a maximal proposition does not seem to corroborate, because the minimal proposition does not correspond to any of our pre-theoretical intuitions on “what is said.” The proposition expressed is never the minimal proposition, but the maximal proposition, already enriched through pragmatic processes of modulation (such as the “narrowing” and “broadening” processes) and transfer, which allow the passage from the logical form to the explicit meaning. From this viewpoint, language is poor, considering what is in fact lexicalized. Furthermore, there is a clear gap between what is literally expressible and what speakers may need to express. The logical form is then an incomplete conceptual representation, which is both the output of a semantic module of linguistic decoding and the input of a pragmatic module, which gives the contextually enriched proposition as an output. This explanation of the explicit meaning of sentences allows for an eradication of the traditional distinction between literal and non-literal uses of language, as what is considered “literal” is the result of a pragmatic process of modulation. In the relevance-theoretic perspective, the phenomenon of semantic underdetermination cannot indeed be solved simply through disambiguation or saturation, be it expressed in the superficial structure of the utterance as the minimalists claim or hidden in the logical form of the sentence uttered as the indicalists claim. They instead defend a continuity outlook, on which there is no clear cut-off step between metaphorical and nonmetaphorical uses of language: it is more economical to hypothesize a single mechanism responsible for both the enriched proposition and conversational implicatures (Wilson and Carston 2007). Relevance theory employs two general principles to explain this mechanism, a cognitive principle of relevance and a communicative principle of relevance: According to the Cognitive Principle of Relevance, human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance, so that perceptual, memory retrieval and inferential processes are likely to include automatic heuristics for selecting potentially relevant inputs and processing them in the most relevance-enhancing way. According to the Communicative Principle of

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Chapter Two Relevance, every act of overt communication conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance. To be optimally relevant, an utterance (or other act of overt communication) must be at least relevant enough to be worth processing, and moreover the most relevant one compatible with the communicator’s abilities and preferences (Wilson-Carston 2006).

The listener yielding enough contextual implications or cognitive effects to make it relevant in the expected way then interprets an utterance. In the relevance-theoretic perspective, metaphor interpretation is guided by these principles as well as other “loose uses” of language. In other words, the pragmatic mechanisms guided by relevance principles concern not only the implicit meaning of an utterance and the derived implicatures, but also the explicit meaning. In this sense, relevance theory questions the very idea of literality, i.e. the existence of “literal meaning” as opposed to “nonliteral meaning,” as well as the notion of minimal proposition in and of itself.

4. The two routes to metaphor understanding Sperber and Wilson question the psychological plausibility of previous theoretical hypotheses, putting forth the “tribunal of experience” of Gricean philosophy of language. It is well known that Grice did not intend to explain these phenomena in terms of psychological processes, but rather to propose a rationalization or rather an ideal justification for them. His theory had then a normative connotation, more than a psychological one. His view of metaphor as an implicature directly came from his argumentative conception of rationality (concerning the whys of human linguistic behaviour), rather than the instrumental conception of rationality (concerning the hows of human linguistic behaviour) used by relevance scholars. Indeed, in terms of psychological mechanisms, both metaphor and irony were explained as a violation of the maxim of quality and their specificity in terms of communicative processes remained unexplained. Moreover, Sperber and Wilson claim that the process of inferential comprehension guided by relevance principles is pervasive and omnipresent. Therefore they must be extended beyond the field of implicatures to the explicit level of meaning, i.e. the explicatures. Experimental findings have shown that reaction times for the understanding of utterances with figurative uses of language, such as metaphors, are not always longer than reaction times for the understanding of literal utterances. In fact, understanding depends on the salience and frequency of the metaphors used (review Giora 2003, Gibbs 1994). In this perspective, metaphors can no longer be explained in

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terms of an implicature arousing after the comprehension of literal meaning. Appealing to a “unified approach” to non-literal uses of language, the process of modulation is used by Carston (2002) and Recanati (2004, 2010) among others to explain not only the cases of “loose use” of language but also metaphors. This pragmatic process takes the encoded concept and generates an ad hoc concept in the proposition the speaker intends to communicate, i.e. a proposition corresponding to the intuitive truth-conditions. They assign thus the intuitive truth-conditions to the explicit proposition, respecting speakers’ semantic intuitions: understanding a statement means knowing the concrete circumstances of its truth. For instance, in the sentence “Caroline is a PRINCESS,” the linguistically encoded concept “PRINCESS” as female royal is modified in an ad hoc concept “PRINCESS*” as a spoiled, indulged girl when uttered in conversational contexts (Wilson and Carston 2006). The ad hoc concept is derived from the linguistically encoded concept and the overall interpretation of the utterance “Caroline is a PRINCESS” is guided by expectations of relevance. The listener must derive the proposition “Caroline is a PRINCESS*” from the utterance “Caroline is a PRINCESS” which might sound contextually inappropriate, in order to satisfy her expectations of relevance and make sense of the speaker’s utterance. The mutual understanding does not necessarily require that the speaker and listener share the same ad hoc concept: an interpretive resemblance, i.e. a partial overlapping of logic and encyclopaedic knowledge of source and target concept, is sufficient (Wilson 2000). This explanation of metaphor use has provoked some criticism. For instance, on the literalist side, it has been claimed that the ad hoc concept mechanism produces a non-controlled proliferation of interpretations: “the pragmatic operation of loosening over-generates metaphorical interpretations, differences of interpretation that are not reflected in our intuitive judgments” (Stern 2006, p. 255; cfr. Stern 2000, Stanley 2002). Relevance scholars should then explain how the “correct” metaphoric interpretation is derived, by specifying how the computation of contextual implications or cognitive effects works in relation to the cognitive effort and the resources required by the interpretive process. Relevance theory has been criticized that the same solution, the ad hoc concept mechanism, has been adopted for all “loose uses” of language, metaphors included. A number of linguistic phenomena, which are very different from one another, would have the same explanation and, under this respect, the relevance theory would lose its explicative power.

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Robyn Carston partially answered this kind of criticism by distinguishing different processing in the class of “metaphors.” Metaphors would still be explained as a local, on-line pragmatic adjustment of the encoded lexical meaning resulting in an ad hoc concept. However, in the case of novel or literary metaphors, an alternative, “imaginative” route is hypothesized (Carston 2010, Carston and Wearing 2011). Metaphoric interpretation would maintain the literal meaning of the metaphorically used language, which undergoes a more global pragmatic process resulting in a range of communicated affective and imagistic effects. By doing so, Carston allocates much more importance to the evocative power of images in metaphor understanding and reassesses Donald Davidson’s view (1978), in which metaphors have “no other meaning than the literal one.” The “ulterior purpose” of a metaphor is indeed to produce an imagistic effect: “metaphor can, like a picture or a bump on the head, make us appreciate some fact but not by standing for, or expressing, the fact” (Davidson 1978, p. 46). For Davidson, in using a metaphor, the speaker is not conveying any other message other than the literal one and the further imagistic effect of the metaphor is exactly due to its literal meaning. This idea is also confirmed by experimental studies, which showed that in the process of disambiguation the irrelevant meaning disappears at a significant rate when compared to the process of metaphor interpretation, which requires more demanding attentional resources to suppress the corresponding literal meaning (Rubio Fernandez 2007). This second route to understanding metaphors does not exclude the other, which is a more conceptual way to metaphor understanding and gives access to an implied propositional content. However, the literal meaning is not suppressed and endures in evoking an image with more important effect with respect to the first route. I take this second position with regard to the imagistic effects of metaphorical (and other) utterances or texts: images are not communicated but are activated or evoked when certain lexical concepts are accessed and may be further imaginatively developed (by, for instance, shifting mental focus or perspective, zooming in on detail, or forming a connected dynamic sequence) as the conceptual content of the utterance is recovered. (Carston 2010, p. 319)

In Carston’s view, literal meaning plays a fundamental role for metaphor understanding. In the same vein, but on the non-contextualist side, Stern noted: “No account of metaphor will be adequate without explaining the fact that something about the meaning of the literal vehicle remains active in metaphorical interpretation” (Stern 2006, p. 250).

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Conclusion In this chapter, the conceptual theory of metaphor and the relevancetheoretic approach to metaphor use have been presented and discussed. As we have seen above, the conceptual theory of metaphor has been criticized for giving the priority to the conceptual component over the linguistic component of metaphor, and thus often forgetting the key role of literal meaning in metaphor use. Moreover, the cognitive-linguistic approach to mental images is quite different from the one proposed by relevancetheoretic scholars: the image-schemata employed by Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual theory of metaphor are indeed sets or clusters of concepts, i.e. “schema of concepts” rather than real, outright images. In this sense, the conceptual theory explanation could still be compatible with the first “basic” route described by Robyn Carston as the route, which gives access to the ad hoc concept and could only accidentally evoke an image. On the contrary, in regards to the second, “Davidsonian” route proposed by Carston, the evoked images seem to be different in nature when compared to the cognitive linguistic view. They are not coded in linguistic forms (as concepts are) and cannot be reduced to “conceptual schema” (as conceptual theory did), because they resemble pictures. In both the routes to metaphor understanding, literal meaning is never completely suppressed. There is simply a difference of degree. In novel and literary metaphors, the literal meaning is considerably longer depending on the listeners’ imagination and is completely rehabilitated in our understanding of metaphor use.

Acknowledgements Elisabetta Gola wrote the first and second sections, Francesca Ervas wrote the third and fourth sections, but the overall paper is the result of common, shared effort. We wish to thank the research group "Linguistica.Mente" (Pietro Storari, Valentina Favrin, Giulia Piredda and Ines Adornetti) for all the useful comments.

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References Bianchi C. (2009). Pragmatica cognitiva. I meccanismi della comunicazione, Roma: Laterza. Black, M. (1962). Metaphor. In Models and Metaphors. Studies in Language and Philosophy, Ithaca-London 1962, pp. 25-47. Cappelen H. and Lepore E. (2005). Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism. London: Blackwell. Carston R. (2002). Thoughts and Utterances. The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. —. (2010). “Metaphor: Ad Hoc Concepts, Literal Meaning and Mental Images”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 110 (3): 295–321. Carston R. and Wearing C. (2011). “Metaphor, hyperbole and simile: A pragmatic approach”. Language and Cognition, 3 (2): 283–312. Davidson, D. (1978). What metaphors mean. Critical Inquiry, 5(1): 31–47. Gibbs R.W. (1994). The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giora R. (2003). On our Mind: Salience, context, and figurative language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grice H.P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. Lakoff G. and Johnson. M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sperber D. and Wilson D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Koller V., A. Hardie, P. Rayson, and E. Semino (2008). “Using a semantic annotation tool for the analysis of metaphor in discourse”. Metaphorik.de 15. http://www.metaphorik.de/15/. Gola E. and S. Federici (2009). “Words on the edge. Conceptual rules and usage variability”. Proceedings of RaAM workshop. Liverpool, July 2009. Lakoff G. and M. Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live by, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (Illinois) and London (UK). Lakoff G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In: Ortony A., ed. Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. Martin J.H. (1990). A Computational Model of Metaphor Interpretation, Academic Press, New York. Moravcsik J.M. (2002). Metaphor, Creative Understanding, and the Generative Lexicon. In: F. Bouillon, F. Busa, eds. The Language of Word Meaning. Cambridge (MA): Cambridge University Press: 247– 261.

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Recanati F. (2004). Literal Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2010). Truth-Conditional Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rubio Fernàndez, P. (2007). “Suppression in Metaphor Interpretation: Differences between Meaning Selection and Meaning Construction”. Journal of Semantics 24: 345–371. Searle J. (1993). “Metaphor”. In: Ortony A., ed. Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 83–111. Stanley J. (2002). “Making it articulated”. Mind & Language, 17 (1-2): 149–168. —. (2005). “Semantics in context”. In: G. Preyer and G. Peters, eds. Contextualism in Philosophy: Knowledge, Meaning, and Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 221–254. —. (2007). Language in Context: Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stern J. (2000). Metaphor in Context. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. —. (2006). “Metaphor, Literal, Literalism”. Mind & Language, 21 (3): 243–279. Tendhal M. (2009). A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor. Relevance Theory and Cognitive Linguistics, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson D. and Carston R. (2006). “Metaphor, Relevance and the ‘Emergent Property’ Issue”. Mind & Language, 21 (3): 404–433. —. (2007). “A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: relevance, inference and ad hoc concepts”. In: Burton-Roberts N., ed. Advances in Pragmatics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Makmillan: 230–260. Wilson D. (2000). “Metarepresentation in linguistic communication”. In: Sperber D., ed. Metarepresentations: a multidisciplinary perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 411–448.

CHAPTER THREE MODELLING METAPHOR USE A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC READING OF BILATERAL PROCESSES IN LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING

LUCIA MORRA

Introduction The chapter explores how the neural bilateral model of language understanding proposed by Jung-Beeman (2005) and Carston’s relevancetheoretic approach of utterances comprehension (Carston 2002; 2010) can complement each other. Next, it underlines the convergences between recent findings about the neural basis of metaphor processing and Carston’s description of the same process. Convergences between the two approaches suggest the possibility of a cognitive bilateral model of metaphor comprehension in which salience and relevance play complementary roles.

1. Beeman’s bilateral model of language understanding In 2005, Mark Jung-Beeman suggested that accumulated evidence from neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and neuroanatomy sketches the possibility of a bilateral model of language understanding (Jung-Beeman 2005), namely that both hemispheres of our brain contribute different skills at every step of language processing1. 1

The dominance of the LH in language processing has been debunked by empirical evidence of RH activity in addition to left in healthy subjects while they were processing language, especially when they were comprehending non-literal language, organizing sentences into stories or conversations, drawing connective inferences, getting jokes, mentally repairing grammatical errors. Neural activity is often stronger in LH, but a number of studies report a greater activity of the RH

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In this model, both the hemispheres perform semantic activation, integration and selection of meanings, but apply different kinds of computation: in fact, many differences in their microcircuitry have been detected that could explain their diverse sensitivity to semantic relations reported by neuropsychological studies. For Beeman, the language areas of the left hemisphere (LH) work as an articulated system devoted to fine coding (a fine code being a representation in which units, having few incoming and outgoing connections and a high threshold of activation, individually respond accurately to a narrow range of stimuli), while their homologues in the right hemisphere (RH) work as an articulated system devoted to coarse coding, a coarse code being a distributed representation in which each unit, due to its large number of incoming and outgoing connections and to its low threshold of activation, inaccurately represents a property, but their pooling together can provide precise interpretations when there is variability across the units and much overlap between their sensitivities (Beeman 1998). In Beeman’s model, “the two hemispheres probably store similar representations2, but differ in the way they dynamically access information” (Jung-Beeman 2005, p. 513). In response to each input word, they activate different semantic fields, contextually shaped (each hemisphere being particularly sensitive to different contexts), and modulated by attention and time course. The LH “quickly focuses semantic activation on features related to the [salient3] or contextually relevant meaning (inhibiting features related to the subordinate or contextually irrelevant meanings)” (ibid., p. 514). By contrast, the RH maintains weak, diffuse activation of a broader semantic field, including features irrelevant to the context or distantly related and secondary word meanings. In both the hemispheres, semantic activation is modulated through a selection process that inhibits some of the activated meaning connections. Fig. 1 shows the example

when subjects perform those higher-level language tasks in which patients with RH damage show poorer performances. For extensive references, see Beeman (2005) and Giora (2007). 2 Beeman endorses the view in which semantic memory is widely distributed across all brain areas. In accordance with evidence supporting the idea that the temporal pole bilaterally is the convergence zone for unimodal semantic representations into a multimodal representation, he locates semantic activation in posterior middle/superior temporal gyri. 3 Beeman (2005, p. 514) says “features related to the dominant, literal”, but the notion of “literal” proved ineffective in neural studies, that now prefer to talk of salient meaning (Giora 2003), cf. §2.

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Beeman gives of the different semantic areas possibly activated by the RH and the LH by the input word “foot”.

RH: R x

LH:

CUT

x

CUT

FOOT FOOT

x

TOES

x

RULER x

TOES x

RULER

Fig. 1. Example of the RH/LH areas activated by the input word “foot”.

An advantage of maintaining a broad semantic activation along a narrow one is apparent when sequences of words are processed. Once the accessed semantic areas are modulated in the two hemispheres, both of them (with different capacities and sensitivities to contexts) perform semantic integration with previously worked semantic fields, namely compute the degree of their semantic overlap. A tight integration can be worked out only among strongly focused semantic fields, but larger fields are more likely to overlap and “could include information that initially seems irrelevant, but which turns out to be important” (ibid, p. 515). The sensitivity of the RH to remote semantic overlaps could explain its advantage in metaphor processing, in linguistic reinterpretation, and in drawing inferences. For instance, “most people, when hearing the following excerpt: “Samantha was walking on the beach in bare feet, not knowing there was glass nearby. Then she felt pain, and called the lifeguard for help”, would infer that she cut her foot” (ivi).

RH:

LH: FOOT

FOOT

CUT PAIN

CUT GLASS

Fig. 2. Semantic overlaps in RH/LH areas.

PAIN

GLASS

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In both hemispheres, semantic integration is modulated by selection, through which competing activated concepts are sorted out to the effect that some of them are inhibited while others are selected for further processing. According to Beeman, then, data suggest a two-pronged model of natural language comprehension, with search of tight links in the LH, and maintenance of broader meaning activation and recognition of distant relations in the RH. Beeman’s model of language comprehension suggests that language processing architecture specialized along lines similar to those already adopted by the visual system and in general sensory systems (Morra 2010). The coarse linguistic coding performed by the RH and the fine linguistic coding performed by the LH can be considered as serving kinds of analysis similar respectively to peripheral and focal vision: the two subsystems work in parallel, exchanging information, and we are unaware of this duality while interpreting verbal stimuli. In the RH an input word weakly activates a large selection of meaning connections (including associations to images and sensory–motor and emotional properties of its denotation), all maintained under the threshold in degree of activation that is necessary for surfacing to consciousness. Coarsely exploring this broad meaning area, the RH, guided by contextual considerations and pragmatic principles specific to language communication, checks the relevance of the salient meanings focused by the LH in response to the verbal input, and, when other meanings seem more promising for the line of thought under construction, and then worthy of being processed at high resolution by finer and more conscious stream of analysis run by the LH, may induce a change of focus. The two streams of analysis, however, like peripheral and focal vision, are best thought of as different specializations of the same primitive mechanism that developed specific skills and competences not excluding possible redundancies and entailing a high degree of interaction.

2. Beeman’s model and Carston’s account of language comprehension Beeman’s model is interesting for linguistic-philosophical approaches to language understanding, especially for those endorsing a contextualistic stance. In fact, it proved compatible with Giora’s graded salience hypothesis (Giora 2003), and the convergences between the two theories led to a sort of blending between them (see, for instance, Giora 2008). In Giora’s hypothesis, information stored in the mental lexicon is accessed considering its degree of salience, determined by factors such as usage frequency, familiarity, conventionality, prototypicality. Two parallel

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approaches are activated simultaneously at the initial stage of meaning processing: a fast bottom-up mechanism that pertains only to salient linguistic information, in which meanings are taken into consideration that are accessed directly as an automatic response to a linguistic stimulus, and a slower top-down process that is sensitive to linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge, in which all activated meanings are integrated with contextual information and retained if they are instrumental in constructing the intended interpretation, regardless of contextual compatibility or appropriateness, and suppressed if they are considered irrelevant or disruptive to utterance interpretation. This means that contextual information may be strong enough to activate appropriate meanings on its own accord very early on, but even in the presence of highly constraining contexts favouring an alternative meaning, the activation of more salient meanings cannot be prevented. Beeman’s model, on the other hand, looks redundant for approaches to language comprehension advocating that context may restrict lexical access from the start relying on the contextual compatibility of the word’s meanings, without entailing any contextually inappropriate understanding at the initial stage. However, Beeman’s model shows strong compatibilities with an instance of this kind of approach, the relevance-theoretic account of language comprehension (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995), especially with the version proposed by Robyn Carston (2002, 2010). In accordance with relevance-theoretic approach, Carston considers interpretation as an effort to reconstruct the speaker’s intentions, with the linguistic code offering only partial and incomplete evidence for the thoughts being communicated. The gap between what is linguistically encoded and what is communicated is resolved through a pragmatic-inferential mechanism which invests processing effort in directions which hold the promise of relevance, or cognitive gains. In processing communicated stimuli, this pragmatic mechanism aims towards an optimal trade-off between processing effort and emerging cognitive effects: it therefore looks for cognitive effects in order of accessibility and stops when expectations of relevance have been satisfied (Carston 2002, p. 365).

The output of the decoding process is a set of incomplete logical forms and procedural constraints that are used for the construction of propositional (truth-evaluable) representations. The enrichment of these forms is obtained through pragmatic processes, namely “processes requiring considerations of speaker intentions”, that are seized on the presumption that utterances (if addressed to someone) can be expected to have cognitive effects (support or contradict existing assumptions, combine

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inferentially with them to produce new conclusions). Pragmatic processes follow a path of least effort4, namely they test the most accessible referents, contextual assumptions and implications, and stop at the first overall interpretation that, satisfying expectations of relevance at a low enough processing cost, yields enough true contextual implications or other cognitive effects. In the enrichment phase, the interpretive system may not only add conceptual constituents, resolve ambiguities and referential indeterminacies, but usually it “constructs the intended concepts “on-line (on the fly)”, pragmatically inferring them on the basis of the encoded concepts “in response to specific expectations of relevance raised in specific contexts”5 (Carston 2002, p. 322). The adjustment that produces the “ad hoc” concepts consists of narrowing or loosening the accessed concepts, namely in suppressing the information these concepts encode because they are not relevant in the context (loosening entailing the inhibition of logical or however central information, narrowing the inhibition of more encyclopaedic information). An ad hoc concept is considered relevant, and then retained as the intended interpretation, when it connects with available contextual assumptions to yield positive cognitive effects at a low cost. So, only pragmatically adjusted concepts (and not lexically encoded concepts) contribute to the propositional form of the utterance. The assumption(s) that arise out of the development of the logical form of the utterance, provided that they fall within the speaker’s communicative intentions, are explicatures that interact with contextual assumptions in order to produce implicatures. While explicatures are a product of both linguistic decoding and pragmatic inference, implicatures rely solely on inference (although their derivation is constrained by the encoded content of the utterance). Explicatures and implicatures both contribute to what is communicated, and their derivation, far from entailing temporally different

4

Processing effort is the effort the cognitive system “must expend in order to arrive at a satisfactory interpretation of incoming information, involving factors such as the accessing of an appropriate set of contextual assumptions and the inferential work involved in integrating the new information with existing assumptions” (Carston 2002, p. 379). 5 “The lexical form maps to a “conceptual” address in memory to which is attached a package (or packages) of information: we dip into this package and take out just a part of it. The process is always selective, there is always some subset of the activated information which is left behind or discarded, whether the ultimate upshot is one of a narrowing or a broadening. If this is right, there is a sense in which all concepts are ad hoc, that is, temporary constructs arising for specific purposes at particular times” (Carston 2002, pp. 361-362).

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phases of comprehension, “involves a process of mutual parallel adjustment of the two kinds of communicated assumption, which continues until the interpretation meets the addressee’s expectation of relevance” (ibid, p. 326). With her 2010 paper about metaphor understanding, Carston slightly modified her model of language understanding in order to make it responsive to two kinds of findings from psycholinguistic experiments. The first evidence her enriched approach incorporates comes from experiments designed to tap on-line processing, which indicate that the literal meaning is activated initially even in heavily metaphor-biased contexts, and that even in the cases of relatively rapid local meaningadjustment it does not just disappear once the intended content has been recovered, namely it remains activated well beyond the point at which the relevant interpretation has been recovered, especially in metaphors, evidence which the 2002 ad hoc concept approach could not account for. Lexical access always activates literal meaning(s): usually, when this meaning proves contextually irrelevant, it is quickly inhibited by meaning selection processes, but in some cases, and notably in extended and developed metaphors, its deactivation “requires a higher-level process of suppression than is involved in other meaning selection processes, such as the disambiguation of homonyms like “bank” or “coach”, where disappears significantly more quickly” (Carston 2010, p. 305). The literal meaning, however, never enters as such (namely, without passing though the enrichment process) the explicature, formed by pragmatically adjusted meanings. The second empirical evidence Carston incorporated into her account is that, even in comprehending literal language, people automatically and without much awareness token mental images of things corresponding to input words. Carston holds that, being part of the encyclopaedic information associated with the concepts that words encode, images are always activated when the concept is accessed: sometimes they remain mere by-products of the activation mechanisms (although they are, as literal meanings, always there to be searched further), sometimes, as in metaphorical uses of language, they are vehicles used in the recovery of propositional effects. Let us see how Carston’s “enriched” theory could be integrated with Beeman’s two-pronged model of language understanding and Giora’s graded salience hypothesis6. 6 Merging Carston’s and Giora’s position entails salience influencing the accessibility of assumptions already present in memory, but the presence of discourse context setting certain expectations in the hearer, and then of contextual information previous to the utterance interpretation, makes the hearer have some of

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Decoding a sound (a picture) as a word, namely recognising it as an access point to semantic memory, the hemispheres face the conceptual space the word points to with different strategies and different sensitivities to the information that the access makes available in the contingent context of interpretation. The LH quickly focuses the most salient meaning connections, namely those frequently activated, those recently activated (linked to what is occupying attention at any given moment), and those whose change or removal has the highest estimated repercussions on the overall semantic net due to their degree of interconnection in it: mainly, but not only, meaning postulates, phonological and syntactic properties. In the RH, on the other hand, the activated field contains also less salient connections: in short, but not exhaustively, encyclopaedic knowledge such as commonplace assumptions, scientific information, culture-specific beliefs, idiosyncratic observations and experiences, mental images7. In the subsequent step, both the hemispheres contribute to the construction of an ad hoc concept that can enter the explicature worked until that point. To this purpose, they narrow their respective activated areas following the strategy of constructing interpretations in order of accessibility and stopping when expectations of relevance have been satisfied. Consequent to the fact that the areas focused by the LH are narrow and for this reason they contain only the most salient meaning connections pointed to by the input word, this hemisphere works mainly on logical-lexical properties, and contributes to the construction of the ad hoc concept selecting which of them, if any, have to be inhibited to meet expectations of coherence. The RH, on the other hand, can also consider, although in less detail, encyclopaedic knowledge: it detects eventual overlaps with previously activated meaning areas, and selects which of the activated encyclopaedic features (if any) have to be inhibited to meet expectations of relevance. While both the LH and the RH analysis are geared towards the achievement of the greatest number of cognitive effects for the least the associated information more active than others. On frictions and possible convergences between relevance-theoretic approach and Giora’s theory (Giora 1998, Wilson 1998, Giora 2008). Huang (2007) proposed that the salience account proposed by Giora can work together with the relevance model in analysing metaphoric expressions. Carston 2010 adjustment of the 2002 approach enhances the compatibilities of the two approaches. 7 The difference between the two kinds of information is not clear-cut (Carston 2002, p. 322). Carston also considers the possibility that word meanings are not full-fledged atomic concepts, but rather schemas for the construction of actual concepts.

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processing effort overall (cognitive principle of relevance), the communicative principle of relevance (“every act of ostension communicates […] a presumption that it will be at least relevant enough to warrant the addressee’s attention and, moreover, as relevant as is compatible with the communicator’s competence and her personal goals and preferences” Carston 2002, p. 45) seems to rule mainly the activity of the RH. This hypothesis could explain, for instance, the high recruitment of the RH in mental correction of grammatical errors, expectations about the optimal relevance of the utterance including also that it instantiates a logically-syntactically sound form – something that can have a truth-value or a form suitable for the particular kind of speech act at stake. Once the ad-hoc concept is ready, the LH considers its compatibility with the explicature under construction looking for tight integration with previously worked ad hoc concepts. The RH, for its part, maintains a broader view of the concepts from which the ad-hoc concepts arose, detects their possible overlaps, and compares their cognitive potential against that of the explicature worked until that point. Once the explicature is completed, the RH takes it as the input for the construction of a wide array of weak implicatures, an array from which the LH chooses the implicatures that better support the recovery of the communicated meaning.

3. Neural research on metaphor processing and Carston’s account of metaphor comprehension One conclusion reached by recent neural research on metaphor understanding is that this understanding is not radically different from the literal one. A growing body of evidence suggests that what makes the difference in neural path for language processing is not the alternative literal/figurative, rather “the salient (coded and prominent)–nonsalient (novel and inferred) continuum” (Giora 2007, p. 111). A wide array of studies report that highly conventional metaphors (encoded in the interpreter’s lexicon) are processed without a significant contribution from the RH, but language areas of the RH show an increasingly greater activation when non-lexicalised metaphors are processed, and their contribution increases as long the complexity of the metaphor increases. When metaphors to be processed are very difficult or highly anomalous, both linguistic areas in the LH and the RH seem to increase their activation (for references, see Giora 2007, 2008). As neural research, cognitive-propositional approaches to metaphor developed within relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995, 2008;

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Carston 2002; Wilson and Carston 2008; Carston 2010) do not hold that “there is [a] clear cut-off point between literal utterances [and] metaphors”: they are interpreted in essentially the same way, “by an inferential pragmatic process of deriving contextual implications which meet particular standards of cognitive relevance” (Carston 2010, p. 302). In these approaches, metaphor interpretation is a context-sensitive pragmatic meaning-adjustment process whose result is an ad hoc concept which contributes to the recovery of both the explicature and the implicatures: Utterance: My lawyer is a shark. Explicature: lawyer X is a shark* Implicatures: lawyer X is ruthless, merciless to his opponents, exploits his clients financially, etc. (where the asterisk distinguishes the communicated concept shark* from the lexically-encoded concept shark) (Carston 2010, p. 301).

In Carston’s (2010) perspective, the strategy of constructing an on-line concept, which applies in general to utterance comprehension, applies as well when metaphors such as “Sally is a block of ice” are understood, a process in which images triggered by the activation of the salient (although contextually non relevant) properties of BLOCK OF ICE may prompt conceptual representations, including hypotheses about intended contextual implications. But this strategy cannot plausibly work when extended metaphors (such as any of Shakespeare’s), which often involve multiple sub-metaphors within the main metaphor, are understood. On the contrary, it is plausible, and “more in tune with the phenomenology of understanding these metaphors” (Carston 2010, p. 306), that the interpretive system undertakes a slower appraisal of the literal meaning of the whole that requires a greater focus on the literal meaning of component words and is subjected to reflective pragmatic inference that separate out implications that are plausibly speaker-meant. When the literal meaning of the words forming the extended metaphor are sufficiently closely related that they semantically prime and reinforce each other, their activation levels may become so high that they prompt the construction of sets of literal representations that take over from any process of metaphorical adjustment of concepts. Images (and feelings, sensations) that come with the literal meanings also morph progressively as the incoming linguistic stimuli are decoded, and their elaboration plays a key role in prompting thoughts about what the metaphor is about. The sets of literal representations are metarepresented and submitted for further reflective

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inferential processing, leading to many weak implicatures and other implications (different to some extent for different hearers/readers). This interpretive strategy represents another route available for understanding utterances, and metaphors in particular. Although comprehension usually follows the ad hoc strategy, a range of different factors may motivate a switch to the second route, some of them linked to the individual processing threshold beyond which the effort of local ad hoc concept formation is too great, relative to the high accessibility of the literal meaning (novelty or creativity of the metaphor, its extension, “whether it occurs in time-pressured face-to-face speech or in a literary text, and perhaps others”, and some linked to individual pragmatic attitude (the switching from one mode to another “may, on occasion, be made deliberately, a top-down decision taken to go with the language and adopt a reflective contemplative stance on it”, Carston 2010, p. 309).

4. An integrated model of metaphor comprehension Convergences between findings of neural research on metaphor understanding and the account for metaphor interpretation proposed by Carston 2010 suggest the possibility of a model of metaphor comprehension in which the two approaches complement each other. When lexicalized metaphors are processed, their salient meaning (the figurative one) may be straightforwardly recognized as the most relevant, so it is reasonable that in their processing the LH has a main role, the adjustment that leads to the ad hoc meaning being minimal. At any rate, it depends on context and pragmatic attitudes, whereas a metaphor is interpreted as open or closed to interpretation (Bazzanella and Morra 2007). Suppose both Jane and Mary work in a nursery school, Jane is assembling a table, and, while holding it, she says to Mary: “bring me a leg”. Mary’s interpretive system, especially if she is helping Jane, is ready to work on meanings relevant for the context at hand. The input word “leg” activates in her LH the most salient meaning SUPPORT FOR FURNITURE, and pragmatic considerations reinforce this interpretation, so this meaning is chosen as the ad hoc meaning. However, since the field evoked by “leg” in her RH has weakly activated, amongst others, meaning connections related to the concept LIMB (containing also links to images and sensory and kinaesthetic properties), Mary may interpret the metaphor as open to interpretation, and, for instance, bring Jane – for whatever reason, insubordination for one – the leg of a doll (especially if Mary is tiding up the toys). Beeman’s model of language understanding grants Mary the possibility of choosing interpretive options that violate (some of)

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the maxims ruling her current conversational interaction with Jane at a reasonable cost: when the word “leg” is used (uttered; understood) as a lexicalized metaphor, the meaning area related to LIMB has a very low degree of activation, but it lingers in the background and its activation can be enhanced whenever it is esteemed worthy of being searched further. In fact, the RH proves to be highly recruited when the interpretation of the salient but not contextually relevant meaning of idioms is required. When metaphors are not lexicalised, an ad hoc meaning must be built, an operation that requires more contribution on the part of the RH. Suppose that Jane is commenting with Mary upon the refusal of Eve, a close friend of theirs manifestly known not to be a member of a royal family, to work to earn her living, and says “Eve is a princess”. Mary’s LH, accessing the meaning area PRINCESS after having produced the concept EVEX, inhibits the salient property evoked by “princess” that makes a categorical statement impossible (BEING OF A ROYAL FAMILY): but, due to the small areas it focuses, apart from FEMALE, it cannot detect any overlap between the areas evoked in it by “Eve” and “princess”. The RH, working on broader areas that are more likely to overlap, inhibits the encyclopaedic properties of PRINCESS that do not overlap with those contained in EVEX (for instance RICH when Eve is known not to be so), and enhances the activation of the information hosted in both areas detected as analogous (for example SPOILED, if Jane and Mary mutually know that this is a characteristic of Eve). Were the metaphor used to convey new information to Mary, as it could be if she is hearing of this Eve for the first time, Mary can arrive at the communicated content because her RH evaluates, on the background of the most salient contextual assumptions, different implicatures derivable from the application of the encyclopaedic properties of PRINCESS to EVEx (considering first those most highly activated and stopping when enough implications have been derived to make the utterance relevant in the expected way). In this way, the ad hoc concept PRINCESS* Mary’s interpretive system constructs can contain the feature SPOILED, especially if Jane’s utterance follows her telling that Eve, being rich, refuses to earn her living, or DISTINGUISHED, if Jane’s utterance follows her telling how Eve is always magnificently dressed. For other kinds of not lexicalized metaphors, a first-order overlap is not enough, as it is clear when Mary processes Jane’s utterance “Eve is a block of ice”, made to communicate, among other things, that Eve is unresponsive to the feelings of other people. Here, no relevant overlap is available between the concepts EVE and BLOCK OF ICE, since the meaning area associated with BLOCK OF ICE does not contain a feature such as UNRESPONSIVE TO OTHER’S FEELINGS. Accessing BLOCK OF ICE after

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having contributed to produce EVEx, Mary’s LH inhibits the central feature FROZEN WATER OF A CERTAIN FORM while her RH tests the applicability of its encyclopaedic properties to the properties of EVEx, starting from the most salient HUMAN BEING. Let us suppose the RH picks up COLD as the first connection to be tested; the move makes the LH focus COLD and HUMAN BEING. COLD contains two salient meanings, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF OBJECT and PSYCHOLOGICAL PROPERTY OF HUMAN BEING, both salient because the first one fits with BLOCK OF ICE and the second with EVEx. The LH then candidates COLD* (that has both properties) as one of the ad hoc concepts to be used in the construction of BLOCK OF ICE*. Were the psychological meaning not in the encoded semantic area of COLD, the construction of the ad hoc concept COLD* would need more contribution on the part of the RH. The LH can detect which central features of COLD must be inhibited if COLD* has to apply to HUMAN BEING, but only the RH can find which of the encyclopaedic features of COLD can apply to it. The RH then checks, in order of accessibility, the applicability of features such as HAVING A TEMPERATURE THAT IS UNCOMFORTABLY LOW FOR HUMANS, HAVING A LOWER TEMPERATURE THAN EXPECTED, etc., to HUMAN BEING, this prompting the LH to focus these meaning areas, and the process goes on until a feature for the ad hoc concept COLD* that makes it meet expectations of relevance is found. Mental images triggered by the focus on these feature and their scrutiny play a key role not only in prompting hypotheses about intended contextual implications about the target of the metaphor, but as a source of some of the contextual implications which shape the ad hoc concepts. Actually, the extended sense of COLD entered the lexicon due to repeated broadening of the basic physical sense - from COLD to COLD*, which has both physical and psychological instances -, and narrowing of COLD* to COLD**, having only the psychological instances, a solidification process during which evocative aspects present in COLD have greatly diminished8. 8

In this perspective, the derivation of emergent properties requires no special interpretive mechanism. Properties that are not among those directly associated with the meaning of the metaphor vehicle can be arrived at by taking a set of premises as input and yielding as output a set of conclusions warranted by the premises, namely without appeal to special interpretive mechanisms not required for ordinary (non metaphorical) utterances (Wilson and Carston 2008). Stable associations between different cognitive domains established in the mental lexicon (mappings) can be considered as the product of the inferential process resulting from the repeated use of ad hoc concepts bringing together information from the same two domains, and that their existence contributes to metaphor interpretation on the effort side by increasing the accessibility of certain types of contextual

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Finally, it was said that neurological research points toward a high involvement of both hemispheres in the processing of very difficult or anomalous metaphors. Translated in Beeman’s model, Carston’s approach not only says the same thing, but prompts neurological research to test the understanding of highly wrought metaphors (neurological studies usually consider difficult metaphors extending only over a sentence). The slower appraisal of the salient although non relevant meaning of the whole metaphor, requiring a greater focus on the salient although non relevant meaning of its component words, could be performed mainly by the LH, which, out of these meanings, builds a coherent, although not assertive, set of conceptual representations, whereas the RH could in parallel elaborate the images (and feelings, sensations) that come with the literal meanings as the incoming linguistic stimuli are decoded and form a complex image sufficiently low-defined that can morph progressively, and plays a key role in prompting thoughts about what the metaphor is about. The RH would further subject the global “literal” representation produced by the LH to reflective pragmatic inferences plausibly speaker-meant, thus producing an array of weak implicatures further selected by the LH.

References Bazzanella C. and Morra L. (2007). “On Understanding Metaphor”. Lingue e linguaggio VI (1): 65–84. Beeman M. (1998). “Coarse semantic coding and discourse comprehension”. In: Beeman M. and Chiarello C., eds. Right Hemisphere Language Comprehension: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum: 255–284. Carston R. (2002). Thoughts and Utterances. The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. —. (2010). “Metaphor: Ad Hoc Concepts, Literal Meaning and Mental Images”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 110 (3): 295–321. Giora R. (1998). “When is Relevance? On the Role of Salience in Utterance Interpretation”. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 11: 85–94. —. (2007). “Is metaphor special?”. Brain and Language, 100 (2): 111–114

assumptions and implications. This translation done, the formalization of the notion of mapping can be considered a useful shorthand for appreciating the double interaction between target domain and source domain that gives way to the ad hoc concept.

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— . (2003). On Our Mind: Salience, Context, and Figurative Language. New York: Oxford University Press. —. (2008). “Is metaphor unique?” In: Gibbs R., ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. Huang M.Z. (2007). “Interpreting Cognitive Metaphor: Using Relevance Theory and an Alternative Account”. In: Jeffries L., McIntyre D. and Bousfield D., eds. Stylistics and Social Cognition. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi: 39–55. Jung-Beeman M. (2005). “Bilateral brain processes for comprehending natural language.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (11): 512–518. Morra L. (2010). “New Models for Language Understanding and the Cognitive Approach to Legal Metaphors”. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 23: 387–405. Sperber D. and Wilson D. (1986/1995). Relevance Theory: Communication and Cognition. Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell. Wilson D. (1998). “Discourse, Coherence and Relevance: A Reply to Rachel Giora”. Journal of Pragmatics, 29: 57–74. Wilson D. and Carston R. (2008). “Metaphor and the “Emergent Property” Problem: A Relevance-Theoretic Treatment”. Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, 3.

CHAPTER FOUR METAPHOR IN THE 19TH CENTURY NOVEL FROM THE BILDUNGSROMAN TO THE NOVEL OF LIFELONG LEARNING

ALESSIO CECCHERELLI AND EMILIANO ILARDI

Introduction The main social function of literary texts is that of creating a makebelieve world and in so doing to craft overarching metaphorical systems that are capable of anticipating subsequent changes in society, technology and communication. At the same time, these systems symbolically mend fissures in the past, mediating between the community-subject and the social context. However, the sociology of literature has the marked tendency to limit study of this function only to the formal dimension of the literary text. By contrast, through an analysis of the ways in which the world of work is represented in the nineteenth-century novel, this essay aims to focus instead on the metaphorical function of the other elements of the text: the characters, themes and contexts. It is our contention that the nineteenth-century novel is an all-encompassing allegory that anticipates the production system of the following century. Hence, it allegorizes a post-Fordist system rather than the Fordist modes of production contemporary with these novels.

1. Literary metaphors: cure or prevention? The sociology of literature has always held that the literary text’s primary social function is that of inventing metaphorical systems mainly with a view to mediating between social context and the subjectcommunity, but is itself often divided as to the means of this mediation. The classical sociology of Hegelian-Marxist inspiration champions the mere function of literature to produce a deferred mediation. In such

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classical sociology, the underlying belief is that, when faced with great historical transformations and fractures that make obsolete the interpretation of the past and produce a dramatic symbolic vacuum, literature intervenes to fill this void by inventing social metaphors. These metaphors function to mediate between the subject and the new context that has come to develop1. Literature then serves as a doctor, healing the wounds caused by history. The context gains further complexity when we consider another factor in addition to the classical variables found in both cases of the individual and of society. This factor is the media. According to Marshall McLuhan (1988, 1994), art – and specifically literature – is a medium and thus a symbolic form, a metaphor that directly or indirectly translates one form of human experience into another. It is to this cognitive function that McLuhan adds another: the specificity of artistic media to be prophetic, thereby anticipating the media and technological change by showing its effects on the cognitive-perceptive apparatus of the subject so that, through the simulating power of literary metaphors, readers gain a certain kind of familiarity with the transformations even before they are fully accomplished. Literature then works as a vaccine, providing us with metaphorical antibodies to deal with future wounds yet to be provoked by history. For McLuhan, the place where art displayed this feature is in its style or form, in its ability to produce structural metaphors that anticipate precisely the new cognitive-perceptual structures produced by the new media environment. For example, late nineteenth-century poetry (from those produced by the symbolists to those composed by the historically avant-garde) undermined the linear, logical structure of the literary text, anticipating cognitive-perceptual structures of the new electronic media. While all this is correct, it is probably also reductive. There is little reason to limit the anticipatory function of literature to the formal structures without extending it to those that might be called figurative metaphors, when these are the same symbolic figures that the literary text is capable of inventing, whether in terms of characters, settings and social space. This extension would then be the point of contact with the other school of sociology, headed by Weber, Simmel, and Lukacs. From this point of view, categories such as the ideal type or the type, invented by nineteenth-century sociology (deriving them from the act of reading novels) represent not only the milieu in which the novel was written, but also historical contexts still to come. The social metaphors produced by

1

For a review of the main theories of the sociology of literature, see Giovanni Ragone (2000).

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the great modern novel discussed in this thesis succeeded in anticipating changes in the next century. The challenge here is to identify those areas of society for which the nineteenth-century novel begins to produce overarching anticipatory metaphors. There are varying theories as to the moment when the modern novel was born. Some say its advent occurred with Defoe’s Crusoe, which shows us a subject who self-consciously and with confidence reshapes the world around him2. Others, however, say that the modern novel came about with the works of British writers such as Jane Austen and the Brönte sisters. This is to say that it was born with the realization that the quotidian life can be an interesting premise for the novels. No longer was it necessary to write about being shipwrecked and marooned on a desert island, hunting the great white whales, meeting with monsters and vampires, or identifying with a knight-errant who is perhaps slightly crazy and mistakes windmills for giants3. Dull everyday life now becomes a fit subject for the intrigues of the novel: families and their stories, the first loves of youth, the new, frenetic pace of life within the metropolis and the world of work. It is in fact upon the world of work that we wish to focus. We believe that the nineteenth-century novel, and the French novel in particular, is an overarching allegory for the productive system of the following century. In other words, the nineteenth-century novel is an allegory not for the Fordist productive system that was contemporary with it, but rather for the Post-Fordist system presently in place.

2. The invention of adolescence Lost Illusions (1837) by Balzac begins with a very detailed description of the techniques of printing in a small printing press in the province, that of the family Séchard. It is remarkable that among all the possible industries and commercial firms that were developing in Europe, Balzac chose one from the cultural industry. But perhaps this was not the case. According to Colin Campbell, Contrary to popular impression, the manufacturing industries most closely associated with the early Industrial Revolution were those producing consumer rather than capital goods and among these, those which produced objects for “luxury” consumption predominated (Campbell 2005, p. 25).

2 3

For example, Ian Watt (1993, 1996). For example, Franco Moretti (1987).

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On this reading, a revolution of the leisure time of the middle classes lay at the base of the Industrial Revolution. Along with the revolution of this leisure time was also the predisposition of the middle class to consumption, including consumption of unnecessary objects – novels being of course one of these objects. In addition, from a more genuinely “mediological” perspective, the prototype of mass production – and therefore of the factory of the future – could not be found in Manchester in the eighteenth century. Instead, it was to be found in Mainz in the fifteenth century, through the movable type printing press of Gutenberg. In beginning his most important novel by describing a printing house, Balzac would seem to be paying homage to the most important invention of the millennium. However, for it to gain more significance, it would have to be located not in the province but transferred instead to Paris, the great metropolis of fashion, consumption, and rising mass culture and cultural industry. Besides, if the modern novel is posed primarily as an object of consumption, it must then only be able to deal with consumption. Indeed, on closer inspection, reading Moby Dick or Robinson Crusoe could still be a meaningful source of identity for an individual subjected to work, particularly if the work is manual, such as farming, fishing, grazing, hunting, or building. In fact, by reading novels such as Wilhelm Meister (1796), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Old Goriot (1834), The Red and the Black (1830), Sentimental Education (1869), Bel Ami (1885), and The Possessed (1873), manual work has altogether disappeared. And yet, what do young romantic heroes, still on the cusp of adolescence, actually do? For much of the story, they simply indulge in fantasies about themselves as well as about what they will become, with at least a thousand forms of existence possible. In reading the novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, one learns that to fantasize, to daydream, to imagine other worlds, other situations, and other forms of existence – starting from the stimulus of the new metropolis of endless consumption – was no longer simply the privilege of a few artists or philosophers, but a right within anybody’s reach. At the moment in which the possibility of imagining other worlds or other forms of individual existence was to be democratized, imagination simultaneously becomes an instrument of production, and may even give birth to a new paradigm of production based on consumption of intangible assets. To use a metaphor, the novel then becomes a gymnastic exercise for this new activity of the masses, and therefore the main source of legitimacy for the cultural industry. Nevertheless, an activity that does not conciliate with the other side of the social organization of modernity – such as the repetitive and unchanging aspect of wage labour, the same one

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nascent in factories and which has no use for the imaginative capacities of the worker – inevitably finds itself eliminated from the nineteenth-century modern novel. In fact, it is exclusive, not inclusive, metaphors that produce the modern novel. But how can the salaried job be removed from the novel? To avoid being obliged to speak about work in a romantic plot, there is nothing better than to choose a teenager as the main character. This would then include the vast majority of European and American novelists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, so we must instead assert the idea that adolescence as a middle age is essentially an invention of the novel, which encodes the standards and extracts all possible variations. Adolescence is the age at which you are no longer a child but still not quite an adult, when you must choose although the choices seem endless, and where your identity seems to be a mass of clay still to be moulded at will, in a world that seems like a tank of infinite forms to play with (Moretti, 1987). On the other hand, the way out from adolescence and maturity passes through a single institution: work. Moreover, as of the nineteenth century, as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the consolidation of large national bureaucracies, work assumes a single rigid form: wage labour. Wage work takes the form of labourers in the factory, employees in the office, and even in the form of simple soldiers. In short, the novel discovers and invents a tremendously productive age of life for individuals from the narrative point of view. Is this discovery now to be abandoned? It is certainly far better to prolong it indefinitely, or to find working environments in which the qualities typical of adolescence (imagination, improvisation, disposition to risk, extreme tolerance for uncertainty, eagerness for constant changes) can be employed and thereby become the instruments of production. Is it possible that, by its rejection of wage labour, the nineteenth-century novel laid the basis for the legitimation of Post-Fordist work in the next century?

3. The disappearance of wage labor One thing becomes immediately clear in reading some of the major classics of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, such as Balzac’s Old Goriot and Lost Illusions, Maupassant’s Bel Ami, Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900), Zola’s Money (1891), Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, Mann’s Tonio Kröger (1903), Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (1933), and Dostoevksy’s Demons. In all of these works, the main character refuses to do waged labour from the beginning. Carrie leaves her work in the textile industry in Chicago. Lucien refuses to work in the printing house of his

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friend Séchard. Bel Ami takes leave from the army, whenever he can, and later abandons his job as a clerk in the French railways. Saccard chooses to become a beggar rather than to close himself up in an office. Dostoevsky’s characters are too busy putting their absurd philosophical views into effect to devote themselves to work. All of the rest have inherited more than enough to live safely without having to work. Pursuing its mission of reenchanting the world against the excesses of capitalist rationalization therefore, the nineteenth-century novel is forced to proceed by a process of elimination. Factory workers, clerks, and soldiers disappear, as do adults and those having the wisdom of age. Occurring precisely within the context of the maximum process of bureaucratization and proletarianisation of work, the novel chooses to set stories in other areas of production: those that allow a hectic social mobility, a high level of unpredictability, and which enhance creativity and imagination. These areas are identified in the emerging cultural industry represented by the novel of the nineteenth century as the perfect antithesis to wage labour. Wage labour produces repetition, whereas cultural work produces insecurity. The first disenchants the world, and the second re-enchants it. The former compels to maturity, understood as an internalization of the sense of limit, while the second – enhancing the capabilities of the individual imagination – indefinitely prolongs adolescence. While it is from the very outset the destiny of Thomas Buddenbrook to guide the family business, the destiny of Lucien de Rubempré never takes concrete form. It is not that he refuses to work, but that he never sticks to one job. He feels that he can become all the things capitalist society allows him to become: an artist, a journalist, a publisher, a politician and an actor. From the point of view of the cultural industry, the novel succeeds in presenting even the dream of capitalism without the division of labour (Ilardi 2005). It is through advertising, fashion, theatre, newspapers, publishing houses, and the filter of the fictional narrative, and not the factory or the office, that the great myths of capitalism are created. These same myths are the ones that serve to make it persistently attractive even today: success and easily acquired wealth – in short, the self-made man who has the ability to change his status quickly. It is the belief that anyone can start his life all over again, this time under a different guise, where there could be unlimited change. More importantly, imagination and creativity both play a central role in this belief. Paolo Virno was right when, fifteen years ago, he saw the cultural industry as indicative of the archetype of the current Post-Fordist production system. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, the authors argue, roughly, that even publishing, cinema, radio, television, etc. – in other words the “factory of

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the soul” – comply with the criteria of Fordist mass production and fragmentation. The thesis would show that capitalism is able to mechanize and fragmenting even spiritual production, just as it was able to do so in the areas of agriculture and metalworking. Seriality, insignificance of the individual task, econometrics of emotions and feelings – these are recurring themes. Of course, this critical approach allowed that, in the peculiar case of the cultural industry, some aspects cannot be completely assimilated to the Fordist organization of labor. In other words, in the cultural industry, some space needed to be reserved for the informal, the unplanned, the unexpected twist, and innovation in communications and ideas. All this was done not to foster human creativity, but so as to get satisfactory productivity levels. For the Frankfurt School, on the other hand, these aspects were nothing other than unimportant cultural debris and residues from the past. Only the widespread application of Fordism to the cultural industry mattered. From today’s perspective, it is easy to see that these so-called residues – such as the space given to the informal, the unexpected, the “unscheduled” - were the seeds of the future (Virno 1994, pp. 53-54).

All of this had already been anticipated and reported by the nineteenthcentury novel, which contrasts these alleged “residues” to the thendominant bureaucratic and industrial metropolis, and they had given rise to all the charms of the capitalist world. Through the cultural industry, described as the crossroads of all the productive cultural and political forces, social mobility can be represented in its full strength. On the one hand, therefore, we have the repetition and the sharp division between work time and nonworking labourer or employee; the other is subjected to the unpredictability of the work of the journalist or the actor. The journalists Lucien and Bel Ami, the aspiring actress Carrie, the creative Mouret, and the financial speculator Saccard have roughly the same aspects of the current Post-Fordist worker. They do not have any working hours. They are always working: when walking to Paris, when they go to the theatre, when courting women, when they go to dinner in the salons of the city. Working tools are all the intellectual faculties, emotional and communication skills: creativity, improvisation, intuition - all knowledge and experiences that have accumulated in their lives are put into production. Everything that Bel Ami learned from his experience of war in Algeria (the survival instinct, ruthlessness, lack of scruples and the ability to quickly find solutions to a difficult situation) is of use in the struggle in Paris, where he fights in order to rise within the hierarchy of the editorial staff. To the novelists of the nineteenth century, it was already clear that the new capitalism would put to work linguistic skills and, as a consequence, the whole person.

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Basically, the predicted Post-Fordism in the nineteenth-century novel seems to presuppose another typical feature of the present era – that of continuing education or, in other words, lifelong learning. Skills that are acquired through training and with difficulty immediately became obsolete, and there is accordingly a continual need to learn new ones.

4. The point of view of the school All the novels mentioned, as we have said, have young people as protagonists – young people who, for the most part, have rejected wage labour. This refusal to work, however, is preceded by another rejection: that of the institution of the school. In general, the relationship between school and novels was tenuous at best, especially during the nineteenth century – or in what is defined on the one hand as the century of the novel and on the other as the century of the science of education. Both perspectives are true, but this assertion denotes a certain conflict. There has always been a strong antipathy between schools and the novel as a literary form, despite – or perhaps precisely because – these works were referred to as Bildungsroman. «School condemns novel reading as having bad effects on students – and the novel, for its part, requires its hero to leave its studies early on, and treats school as a useless interlude that can be done without» (Moretti 1987, pp. 247-248). But what exactly did readers of the novel learn from reading it? Moretti has continually suggested that although it is a translated term, the Classical Bildungsroman must not be confused with the New Bildungsroman (or Educational Novel). On one hand, it is true that both have the same points of departure: the main character is a teenager whose maturity is often symbolized by a journey. Characterized mainly by the rejection of wage or manual labour, the protagonist’s choices and lifestyle are often in contrast with those of the previous generation. On the other hand, the results of the two are distinctly different – perhaps even opposites4. Nonetheless, the antithesis of school and novel would suggest:

4

In the case of the classical Bildungsroman, reconciliation is achieved, as exemplified by the narratives of Pride and Prejudice and the Wilhelm Meister). In the case of the new Bildungsroman, however, the conclusion is almost always less conciliatory than it might have been. For instance, there is the tragic conclusion of (The Red and Black), or the failure and decline of Lost Illusions, or indeterminate and almost pathological ending of Sentimental Education. Even in the rare case of success, as in Bel Ami, this outcome is achieved at the expense of balance. Thus, Bel Ami proves victorious, but the social consequences are devastating.

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the dual nature of modern socialization: an objective-specialistic process aimed at “functional integration” into the social order, which is the task of institutionalized education – and a subjective-generic process aimed at the “symbolic legitimation” of the social order, which is the task of literature. In other words: institutions such as school act to socialize behaviour, regardless of individual belief (one must know one’s lesson – not believe in its truth). Institutions such as the novel aim at socializing what The Theory of the Novel calls our “soul”: they see to that more or less conscious “consent” that guarantees continuity between individual existence and social structure. (Moretti 1987: 247-248).

More than education then, socialization, or at least an education that goes beyond specialist know-how or technical skills, aims to teach individuals how to live in the world, as opposed to earning a living. Work, once again, is excluded. This, however, is a perspective that takes into account only the viewpoint of the novel. From the point of view of the school, things stand differently. In fact, as early as the eighteenth century, the idea of education was reconfiguring in relation to specific employment sectors, gaining as central the perspective of professionalism. This occurred with the help of the establishment of specialized schools that focused on such fields as polytechnics, so that there started to develop schools distant from and in opposition to the humanistic or spiritualistic tradition by way of focusing on the training of “professionals”. This perspective of professionalism then became the central idea. In nineteenth-century positivism, then, thanks to the sociological reflection on education (from Marx to Comte to Weber, all of whom claim to varying degrees the business purpose of education, identified as a fundamental part of study), educational institutions acquired this primary social task more and more. The problem in the relationship between school and production remained central to educational and sociological debates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit postulate work (operari) as a factor in the passage to objective spirit, to culture, and to the production of specific, detailed knowledge. First Marx and then Dewey rearticulated this concept, extending it to encompass the understanding of history and the subject and indicating it as the quintessential basis for pedagogy (Ceccherelli 2011). The relationship between training and work was manifested in a variety of perspectives: first as the acquisition of functional skills in social, economic, and cultural reproduction; then as a distinctive character of man in respect to other animal species; and finally as a subject of study itself (both in the pedagogical sense, done in class, and in the sense of production, carried out in factories in relation to schools), connected in

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turn to the historical development of production and the labour market (Cambi 2003, pp. 181-182). In addition to the centrality of work, other ways to read the nineteenthcentury pedagogies would be to focus on the dichotomy of freedom/shape (strongly ideological) and the concept of Bildung (which in part is related to the first half of the dichotomy) as comprehensive training. The first instance also amplifies, in the respective fields of philosophy and pedagogy, a similar opposition, again identified by Moretti in nineteenthcentury novels, between the self-determination of an individual and the symbolic legitimation of society. In general, and overlooking for the meantime the many and substantial internal differences, on the one hand the bourgeois pedagogies and the positive pedagogies tend toward a paternalistic and/or socializing of the view on education, with the aim of encouraging acceptance of the social order. On the other hand, both are romantic pedagogies, as well as popular and socialist. Still, both strive, albeit in different ways, to bring into the foreground a liberating ideology in education: from self-liberation as philosophical self-awareness (Hegel), to the pedagogical model of a free, responsible, and critical man (Herbart), to the freedom from alienation and movement toward renewal, in complete freedom of omnilaterality by every man (Marx), to emancipation as overcoming of the existing social order toward a new order without classes (Marx, as well as utopian socialists ranging from Fourier to Proudhon). The second instance has importance within the German romantic pedagogies. At the level of topics and authors, these led the way in Europe and elsewhere, just as was the case with philosophy, music, and literature. The central pedagogical concept was that of Bildung, or “human education,” understood as an integral human development through culture, and harmoniously capable of overcoming the split between body and spirit, sense and reason, manual skills and knowledge. In particular, this overcoming is made possible through art and aesthetic activity, as opposed to contemporary models of homo faber and the citizen, as elaborated by, but not limited to, Schiller and Goethe. In our discussion, we cannot fail to see the presence of Goethe on both sides of the relationship between educational institutions and the novel, especially since the novel we are discussing is called in its first form as Bildungsroman. The Wilhelm Meister assumes a more fundamental role, being the origin of the Bildungsroman. In addition to this, in the section of the Journeyman Years called Pedagogic Province – it draws on the basic concepts of neohumanism from Schiller (man as harmony, the versatility of faculties, the well-roundedness of the educational function of art). These training purposes are achieved, according to Goethe, through a “capillary

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organization of the life of the educational community that manifests itself in every choice at any moment (between work and play, between a constructed and a natural environment) a clear desire to highlight the intellectual and moral implications that guide it, as well as to vary from the different cognitive demands” (Cambi, 2003, p. 202). The training, in short, becomes lifelong and even “lifewide”, breaking free from the specificity that occurred more or less in all other contemporary pedagogies. The harmony in the whole, assumed in the Bildung, is theorized, however, not only by philosophers and educationist of romantic neohumanism, but also, later, by Marx, whose “new man” must be able to grant intellectual activities to those manuals, “creating a harmonious and complete personality, which is expressed as “universal and well-rounded human relations and abilities”, addressed both to the production plan as to that of consumption and enjoyment, blending both “working well” and “leisure” well” (Cambi 2003, p. 251). In our case, the conjugation of two faculties and the harmonization of the two “times” occur not in reality but in the novel, and more specifically, in the Bildungsroman. Harmonization is a complex process, which also makes it more prophetic. Meanwhile, in the educational novel itself, there are two aspects worth noting. On the one hand, manual labour is eliminated from the narrative and ideological horizon focusing only on the intellectual faculties. On the other hand, these faculties are made productive, and “free time” thereby becomes “time to work”. It is here, perhaps, that there arises the willingness to contemplate Post-Fordist logic, which had already been predicted. The educational turns out to be a “lifelong learning novel”, as it is understood today, describing the need to have a continuous redefinition of one’s abilities and skills in order to be successful in society. In time, the educational model that will dominate history (the one based on operari) becomes in fact the philosophical and pedagogical reference to Fordism. The model of Bildung, strong in theory but weak in terms of practical implementation, seems to serve as a basis for PostFordism, first passing through the Bildungsroman (with Goethe acting as the glue holding pedagogy and literature together), and then through the educational novel, in which the noble prospect of lifelong and lifewide learning (still found in Goethe’s work) become dominated by the productive logic itself. The Flexible Man of Sennett is already in the French novel, which then becomes a kind of teaching method for the formation of cultural work.

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5. The protestant ethic and the romantic ethic: the reconstruction of a fracture? It should by now be clear that the French novel of the nineteenth century has sought to fulfil both (apparently contradictory) functions that the sociology of literature assigns to the literary text: the construction of a make-believe world that is capable of anticipating future changes and mending present divisions. The opposition between art and life, integral Bildung and specialized training, intellectual activity and mass production is overcome in a complex network of metaphors that uses the cultural industry as its engine. As depicted by the nineteenth-century novel, the cultural industry appears to be the only context in which the mere activity of using one’s imagination can be simultaneously a source of pleasure and of identity. Using one’s imagination is both a valuable skill and a precious commodity for the emerging mass culture based on consumption. The reader only needs to learn how to unify these elements. This is the education that is proposed by the novel. However, the capacity to transform emotions and fantasies into something enjoyable and productive requires a lengthy apprenticeship. An emotion may be represented as an event which is characteristically “outside” an individual’s control (...). Before any emotion can possibly be “enjoyed”, therefore, it must become subject to willed control, adjustable in its intensity, and separated from its association with involuntary overt behaviour (...). It is precisely in the degree to which an individual comes to possess the ability to decide the nature and strength of his own feelings that the secret of modern hedonism lies (...). A more crucial part of the capacity the emotional control concerns the deliberate cultivation of an emotion, especially in absence of any “naturally occurring” stimulus (...). Literacy, in conjunction with individualism, would seem to be the key development in this respect, for this grants individual a form and degree of symbolic manipulation which was previously restricted to groups (Campbell 2005, pp. 70-111).

The social function of the novel will be just that: to train the readers to manage their own powers of imagination and turn it into a source of both private pleasure and public production. By deriving the work exclusively from the cultural industry, the novel offers the reader a world in which imagination, fantasy, dreams, and ideals are not useless distractions for Romantic poets, but activities that can lead to success and wealth. To achieve this, however, a sort of ethics of the imagination must be created, one that can mediate between escape (through a fantasy world that sets

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man free from a world that is increasingly closing in on the individual inside the steel cage of wage labour) and a necessary discipline (of the ability to fantasize in order to transform it into work to oppose the Fordist rationalization). Putting the individual imagination to work is for the novel to try to heal and overcome one of the major fractures of modernity: the Protestant work ethic and Romanticism. The one had led inexorably to the Weberian iron cage, and the other had produced lunatic visionaries on the order of Napoleon. In doing so, the novel finally seems able to unite these ideas so as to create a new paradigm of production that will fully emerge only at the end of the twentieth century.

References Cambi F. (2003). Manuale di Storia della pedagogia. Roma/Bari: Laterza. Campbell C. (2005). The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern consumerism. London: Alcuin Academics. Ceccherelli A. (2011). L’intelligenza dei missili. L’educazione di oggi tra interiorità ed esteriorizzazione. Napoli: Liguori. Ilardi E. (2005). Il senso della posizione. Romanzo, media e metropoli da Balzac a Ballard. Roma: Meltemi. McLuhan M. and McLuhan E. (1988). Laws of media. The new science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McLuhan M. (1994). Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. Boston: MIT Press. Moretti F. (1987). The Way of the World. The Bildungsroman in European Culture. London: Verso. Ragone G. (2000). Introduzione alla sociologia della letteratura: la tradizione, i testi, le nuove teorie. Napoli: Liguori. Virno P. (1994). Mondanità. L’idea di "Mondo" tra esperienza sensibile e sfera pubblica. Roma: Manifestolibri. Watt I. (1996). Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (1993). The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. London: Hogarth Press.

CHAPTER FIVE METAPHOR USE IN ADVERTISING ANALYSIS OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN MULTIMODAL METAPHOR AND METONYMY IN A GREENWASHING ADVERTISEMENT

PAULA PÉREZ SOBRINO1

Introduction This chapter surveys the relationship between metaphor and metonymy in the construction of meaning in multimodal contexts in a greenwashing advertisement. Greenwashing (compound word modelled on “whitewash”) is a form of advertising which promotes a misleading perception that the company’s products are environmentally friendly. Specifically, this chapter analyses how the productive interaction between the multimodal metaphor PRODUCT X IS FRUIT and the GREEN FOR NATURE FOR NATUREFRIENDLY chain of metonymies is responsible for the construction of a positive image of the product. I tackle this study from a theoretical approach that combines two different perspectives. On the one hand I refer to Ruiz de Mendoza and Díez (2002) model of interaction between metaphor and metonymy, in particular their approach to metonymy cognitive processes of expansion and reduction domains. On the other hand the general background is Forceville’s (2002) multimodality proposals. The research on which this chapter is based has received financial support from grant FPU (Spanish Ministry of Education). Additionally, this study is associated to Project No. FFI2010-17610, Ministry of Innovation and Competitiveness, Spain. This research has been carried out within the Center for Research in the Applications of Language (CRAL), University of La Rioja (Spain). I would like to thank Prof. Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza and Prof. Lorena Pérez Hernández for their insightful remarks on earlier versions of this chapter. I shall take responsibility for any remaining mistakes.

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The defining characteristic of advertising is its univocal intention to convey a positive image of the product. This convention is not that evident in other contexts (for example, in artistic manifestations). This expectation involves a situation where every meaningful element that advertisers consider relevant (which is not the product itself) may help them to construct a positive image of the product or brand. The awareness of the intentionality of advertising, manifest to both advertisers and consumers, inevitably directs and constrains the range of possible interpretations of the advertisement. In this chapter I survey the extent to which metaphor and metonymy in interaction are responsible for construction of a positive image of a product in printed advertisements. However, how does the construction of a positive image hold for the case of contaminant industries, or anti-natural products? The creative team cannot overtly advertise them as “good services/products” since audiences would perceive it as false. Therefore, advertisers need to make some sort of intermediate step for their advertisements to be found relevant by the target audiences: for instance, the activation of an independent well connoted conceptual domain. In this chapter I will study the cognitive mechanisms that motivate certain product to be positively qualified as nature-friendly or “green” (by virtue of the GREEN FOR NATURE FOR NATURE-FRIENDLY metonymic complex (a label coined by Ruiz de Mendoza, 2007, to define the interaction between several metonymies). Advertising, in the same sense as metaphors, “borrows characteristics and affective values from certain more or less structured domains of human experience and transposes them to the product advertised” (VelascoSacristán and Fuertes-Olivera 2006, p. 221). This is the case of greenwashing (a compound word inspired in “whitewash”), a form of advertising in which the creative team promote the deceptive perception that a company’s policies or products are environmentally friendly. In this sense, greenwashing advertising borrows socially desirable values and signs centred on emotions and appeals, which mirror the current sensitivity of most western countries toward the preservation and conservation of the environment, or to the health benefits of consuming natural products. In other words, through the activation of the conceptual domain NATURE by means of the metonymic association to “green” in the conceptualization products or services, advertisers are indirectly building a positive image as NATURE-FRIENDLY of their originally contaminant products. Hence, the main goal of this chapter is to unravel the role that the PRODUCT X IS A FRUIT multimodal metaphor (i.e. a metaphor whose terms are cued in more than in one mode, Forceville 2009), in interaction

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with the GREEN FOR NATURAL PRODUCT FOR NATURE FRIENDLY metonymic complex, plays in the construction and perception of a positive image of a product/brand rooted in misguiding eco-friendly claims. Of vital importance to advertising discourse is that metaphor always involves a degree of perspectivation, as long as the selection of one metaphor leads to the highlight of certain features over others, thus remaining obscured. As a result, this partial metaphorical mapping can serve to advance our knowledge as well as to limit our thinking regarding the service or product advertised. Furthermore, I will enrich the analysis of metaphor by bearing in mind the possible patterns of interaction with metonymy, since metonymy proves crucial to highlight the “friendliness” of the product (otherwise conceptualized only as FRUIT via metaphorical mapping). The way in which both tropes interact within a multimodal context, such advertising, remains largely unexplored (with the prolific exception of Forceville 1996, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009a, 2009b; and other notable researchers such as Urios Aparisi 2009; Hidalgo-Downing and Kraljevic Mujic 2011). This study attempts to provide further development of the cognitivist approach to metaphor by (1) bearing in mind its possibilities of interaction with metonymy within the same cognitive environment, and (2) studying alternative manifestations of verbal metaphor in advertising. Although advertising is intrinsically a case of multimodal discourse where the verbal and the visual modes usually interact, scholars have generally disregarded this fact. Moreover, this article provides marketing experts and creative designers with insights on how meaning is created or, in this case, with basics to warn lay audiences against misleading messages. I will deal only with two cognitive operations: multimodal metaphor in interaction with a metonymic complex (for an extensive revision of such mechanisms, see Ruiz de Mendoza and Pérez 2003, Ruiz de Mendoza 2011; for an application, see Pérez Hernández, 2011). Within this framework, I tackle the following issues: (1) which parameters rule the interaction between metaphor and metonymy; (2) the degree with which the visual and the verbal components contribute to the identification of the multimodal metaphor and/or metonymy; and (3) how this multimodal interaction enhances the positive image of the product or brand in a greenwashing advertisement. The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows: first, I briefly overview the main standpoints of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT, Lakoff and Johnson 1980; later relabelled as Contemporary Theory of Metaphor, CTM, Lakoff 1993) in multimodal use. Furthermore, I discuss the appropriateness of some of the analytical tools provided by Ruiz de

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Mendoza and his collaborators in their cognitive approach to metaphor and metonymy (cf. Ruiz de Mendoza 2000, 2011; Ruiz de Mendoza and Díez 2002; Ruiz de Mendoza and Pérez 2003, 2011). Second, I address the criteria in the gathering of the corpus and the methodology of analysis. Due to space constraints I have analysed in depth only one case study, wherein I claim there is a multimodal metaphor in interaction with metonymy of the verbo-pictorial type (for an extensive analysis of this type in several case studies, see Pérez-Sobrino 2011, in press). Finally, I summarize the main proposals of this work and I put forward potential research topics that may require further study.

1. Metaphor and Metonymy at work in advertising Metaphor is a very productive tool for advertising inasmuch as it engages audiences in inferential activities. This array of inferences constitutes all the positive values ascribed to the product. Therefore, metaphor does not only expand the evocative possibilities of advertising beyond the advertisement, but also constrains the correct interpretation of the product by means of a well-defined set of interpretable inferences. The publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (1980) steered a new direction in research on metaphor by emphasizing the centrality of metaphor to human cognition. Human beings are systematically claimed to perceive, understand and experience abstract concepts (such as TIME, LOVE and ARGUMENT, among others) in terms of concrete phenomena (such as MONEY, JOURNEY and WAR, respectively). Nevertheless, cognitive scholars have traditionally restricted their studies to the exploration of the linguistic manifestations of metaphor (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1993; Kövecses 2005). The neglecting of alternative manifestations of metaphor necessarily limits the progress in CMT research, since the exclusive focus on the linguistic realm fails to account for other levels of cognition modelling, such as the visual, the audial, the olfactorial and the gestural. What is more, it still prevents research from making use of such powerful mechanisms of analysis in multimodal contexts, namely printed advertising, commercials, films, music or Internet sites. Similarly, the account for alternative manifestations of metonymy has been out of focus in mainstream CL research. The difference between metaphor and metonymy has been the centre of an intense discussion over the past years, when metonymy draw scholars’ attention as a conceptual device (e.g. Barcelona 2000; Dirven and Pörings 2002; Ruiz de Mendoza 2000, 2002; Ruiz de Mendoza and Díez 2002; Benczes, Barcelona and

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Ruiz de Mendoza 2011). In brief, both tropes are generally understood in terms of the two-domain model, as stated by Ruiz de Mendoza and Díez: “In the two-domain model of metaphor and metonymy each of these two related phenomena is described as a mapping or set of correspondences from a source domain to a target domain” (2002, p. 491). In connection with their view, the generally acknowledged difference between metaphor and metonymy is the number of domains involved in the mapping: metaphor involves a B IS A mapping, where the two terms put in correspondence (the source domain, A; the target domain, B) through the mapping belong to different conceptual domains (e.g. CAREER IS A JOURNEY, as in “I am on my way to success”); while in metonymy the A FOR B mapping is made within the same domain (e.g. AUTHOR FOR WORK, as in “Shakespeare is easy to read”). In one of the most recent developments of metonymy theory, Ruiz de Mendoza has proposed two categories of metonymy in terms of target and source, which seems to fit adequately in the study of multimodal combinations occurring in advertising. Regarding the metonymic relationship that can be established between the matrix (or most encompassing) domain and one of its sub-domains (Ruiz de Mendoza 1999, 2000; Ruiz de Mendoza and Díez 2002), they suggest two categories of metonymy: (a) SOURCE-IN-TARGET metonymy, where the subdomain (source) affords access to the matrix domain (target) through an expansion process (e.g. WORK FOR AUTHOR, as in “He is so Shakespeare”, where “Shakespeare” stands for “the manner in which Shakespeare used to write” in order to qualify a person); and (b) TARGET-IN-SOURCE metonymy where, conversely, a reduction process highlights a sub-domain (the target) over the whole matrix domain (source) (e.g. AUTHOR FOR WORK, as in “Shakespeare is easy to read”, where “Shakespeare” stands for “the work written by Shakespeare”). See Fig. 1 for a schematic overview of the structure underlying both cognitive operations. Except for the pioneering work carried out by Forceville (2009b), Uriós-Aparisi (2009) and Hidalgo-Downing and Kralievic-Mujic (2011), scientific research has mostly focused on the verbal manifestations of metonymy. As argued above, I believe that the revived interest for the linguistic manifestations of metonymy deserves to be transposed to the non-verbal context.

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Fig. 1. CAREER IS A JOURNEY metaphor and WORK FOR AUTHOR / AUTHOR FOR WORK metonymy.

Furthermore, as Fig. 2 illustrates, two metonymic models can also interact through double or chained (more than two) expansion processes, as in “His sister heads the policy unit”, “head” as BODY PART stands for LEADER which stands for ACTION OF LEADING) or through reduction processes (as in “Wall Street is in panic”, where PLACE stands for INSTITUTION which stands for PEOPLE WHO WORK THERE) (Ruiz de Mendoza and Díez 2002). Additionally, metonymic complexes can combine both expansion and reduction processes. As Ruiz de Mendoza expands (2007, p. 16) there are a domain reduction and a domain expansion in “The Shakespeare is on the top of the shelf”, where AUTHOR STANDS FOR WORK – reduction – FOR MEDIUM – expansion; the alternative domain expansion plus domain reduction can be found in “He has too much lip”, where INTRUMENT STANDS FOR ACTION – expansion – FOR ABILITY – reduction. Fig. 2 and 3 below summarize these four types of combinations of the interactional of two metonymies working together.

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Fig. 2. Double metonymic expansion process and double metonymic reduction process.

Fig. 3. Domain expansion and reduction and domain expansion and reduction metonymic processes.

In particular, the interaction of two metonymic models through metonymic expansion as a recurrent device is of special relevance for the study of multimodal metonymies, where “the perceptual targets and sources are highly specific” (Forceville 2007, p. 26). Billboards and commercials show situational scenarios, where all the details are supplied by advertisers and are generalized by audiences to abstract messages. The awareness of the patterns of combination of metaphor and metonymy in multimodal context provide us with an insightful approach to the possibilities of meaning creation. As explained by Hidalgo-Downing and Kraljevic-Mujic (2011, p. 158), “in this process, the function of metonymy is that of motivating metaphor by highlighting aspects of the source and target domains thus providing a perspective on how the new

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product is accessed by the audience”. The highlighting function of metonymy has a communicative and functional motivation, since the choice of determined metonymy (source domain) instead of the entity to which it metonymically refers (target domain) necessarily shows certain salience or identifiable point of view (as argued by Forceville, 2009b, p. 58).

2. Toward a definition of multimodality The excessive focus on verbal manifestations of metaphor necessarily limits our knowledge on CMT. Metaphor hinges directly on our thought, thus being just subsidiary a matter of language. Besides, it is worthy of mention that we access information from our world through five different senses, i.e. sight, hearing, taste, olfactory, touch. As a result, our encyclopaedic knowledge stems from a composite input of information that is combined in our minds and stored as multimodal information in memory. This shift of trend towards multimodality in metaphor theorization has its roots on the pioneering work carried out by Forceville (1996, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009a, 2009b). Following Forceville, a multimodal metaphor can be defined as “a metaphor whose target and source are rendered entirely or predominantly in two modes” (Forceville 2009, p. 23). Therefore, the metaphor and metonymies of my case study will be considered multimodal, since all of them are represented through text and pictures that are relevant for the construction of a positive image of the product/brand. Additional support for the pervasiveness of multimodality in advertising is, as noticed by Forceville (2007, p. 25): “a specific mode (here: images, text and sound) can contribute to (1) the identification of the metaphor as well as (2) help cue to features that are to be mapped from source to target”. That is to say, even when the two metaphorical terms are rendered through pictures, the text may still be relevant to cue the proper identification of the visual terms, or to characterize them as source or target domain. Therefore, there would be a preliminary distinction on the function of modes, which would differentiate between (1) representing the terms of the metaphor and (2) cueing relevant features for the metaphorical mapping to take place. In my view, there must be some other possible roles to be played by modes in advertisements: for instance, (3) conveying additional information that complements and reinforces the multimodal metaphor or merely (4) repeating what it has already been clearly stated. The more elements working at different levels, the more

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powerful and impacting message the advertisement will convey. Hence, advertisers could count on the more probability to stick the product to their target audience’s memories.

3. Analysis The structure of the analysis is as follows. I begin with a description of the advertisement, which is followed by the identification and characterization of the terms of the multimodal metaphor. In so doing, I have followed the approach suggested by Forceville (1996), who addresses three important questions to be asked of anything to be qualified as metaphor: (1) what are the two terms of the metaphor, and how do we know?; (2) which one is the source and which one the target domain?; and (3) which features are mapped from the source domain to the target domain and what are their implications for the overall construction of the advertisement’s message? Finally, I conclude by making some remarks about the features involving some sort of greenwashing claims. The advertisement under consideration is part of a series releasing a new version of Diet 7UP, all of them claiming that the soft drink now contains fewer artificial ingredients than other soft drinks. In this version (here not reproduced due to lack of permission), a big can of 7UP is hanging from a tree branch occupying the majority of the right half of the billboard. It seems that the can is occupying the place of a lemon, since there are three additional lemons and leaves hanging from the same branch of the tree. The richness in details of the pictured can contrasts with the plain green background. There are a couple of additional regular tree branches, yet represented in a lower level of salience: one small branch on the upper-left side of the advertisement (depicted with two hanging lemons), and a third blurred one which fades out in the background. One might supposed there is another 7UP can hanging from this latter branch, given that there is a vague red area in the spot where a lemon should be instead. Since it is purposely represented out of focus, it is difficult to say and therefore does not seem pertinent for the proper understanding of the persuasive message. The visual elements are combined with a textual component (in yellow and green letters). The following paragraph is placed over the plain green background on the lower-left side of the billboard, precisely in the space between the big 7UP can on the right side and the small branch on the upper-left margin.

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At first sight we know that the advertised product, which normally stands for one of the terms of the metaphor, is the new Diet 7UP CAN (the explicit visual item, which is also referred to by the textual component). With respect to the identification of the other metaphorical domain, the pictorial context is responsible for the cueing of the absent element: we know that the absent element is a LEMON because there are other lemons hanging from the same tree branch as the 7UP can. As usual in most advertisements, the metaphorical target matches with the explicit term of the metaphor, namely, the 7UP CAN, while the source domain stays implicit in the advertisement, the LEMON in this case, thereby illustrating the 7UP CAN IS A LEMON metaphor. The absence of pictorial context would have here resulted in a nonmetaphorical statement. In other words, the pictorial surroundings are precisely the ultimate cue to elicit the absent pictorial term of the metaphor, given that both the shape and colour of the 7UP CAN are kept intact2. The total removal of the lemon from the advertisement paves the way to a full substitution by the 7UP can in the lemon tree scenario. Yet a 7UP CAN and LEMON are not inherently subsidiary, this advertisement has made the can to become dependent on the pictorial surroundings by means of an enrichment process. As Ruiz de Mendoza notices (2011, p. 108), conceptual integration by enrichment takes place when the conceptual configuration incorporates another configuration which is inherently subsidiary or becomes subsidiary. In connection with his view, this formal operation is necessary for the conceptualization of can in terms of lemon to take place. Fig. 4 offers a schematic overview of how conceptual integration works: the target domain 7UP CAN entirely substitutes the source domain LEMON. By means of this cognitive process, consumers do not only ascribe all the characteristics that define a natural LEMON to 7UP CAN, but perceive the soft drink as if it were an actual fruit.

2

In other words, there is not any trace of the pre-existent conceptual structure of LEMON. Notice that the degree of integration between the two elements would have increased if, for example, a lemon would have been represented with a 7UP logo over its yellow skin, or if some leaves would have been attached to the top of the 7UP can.

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Fig. 4. Conceptual substitution by enrichment in Example 1

Notice that the textual part of the advertisement, “Diet 7UP, now more lemon lime taste”, only steers our interpretation of the advertisement towards a new recipe of 7UP whose taste resembles a lemon more than before, but which still is a soft drink. However, the conceptual integration referred above triggers important pragmatic implications over the conceptualization of the target domain, i.e. 7UP CAN. The visual metaphor which highlights the similarity between LEMON and 7UP CAN engages audiences in the understanding of the can of 7UP as if it were a real fruit, where the aluminium stands for the fruit skin and the soft drink corresponds with the taste and texture of a lemon. Furthermore, it implies that drinking 7UP reports the same healthy benefits to our organisms as natural lemon juice does. With regard to the functions of the different modes, it has already been pointed out that visuals represent the pictorial target (the can of 7UP) and cue the source domain (the lemon). In this connection, the information provided by main title “Now 100% natural” and the closing of the text “Pick one up today” likewise cue the metaphorical understanding of the picture. They highlight the necessity of making a connection between the drink and something purely natural (and somehow suggesting by the adverb “now” that former versions of 7UP were not). Accordingly, the rest of the verbal ingredients reinforce the idea of understanding the can in terms of a lemon: “Diet 7UP, now more lemon lime taste”. It could be seen as a reward to viewers who invest such an effort in interpreting the visual information. To close, new information regarding the distinctive features of Diet 7UP are conveyed through the rest of text body, “The famously crisp, refreshing taste of 7UP is now better than ever, because it’s been stripped of the artificial stuff found in most other soft drinks”.

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However, the text plays an additional and vital role related to the generalization of the highly specific visual scenario to the intended advertiser’s message. In other words, the textual part triggers an array of metonymies which warrants the correct interpretation of the visual metaphor. By means of the textual component, the viewer is aware that the metaphorical target domain CAN (represented visually) stands for BEVERAGE which in turn we could say it stands for the whole BRAND (referred as to in the text). Furthermore, as already mentioned, it is usual for double metonymic expansion processes to take place in both the source and target domains of visual metaphors in advertisements. Thus, the same holds for the case of the LEMON in the metaphorical source domain: the pictorial context helps viewers to generalize from LEMONS to FRUITS. The pervasive green colour in this advertisement (can, lime fruits, leaves, background, and letters) is also the colour of chlorophyll, defining pigment of nature, and consequently cues this last metonymic expansion from FRUITS (or GREEN elements) to NATURE (a metonymy of the PROPERTY FOR MATERIAL type). The GREEN FOR NATURE FOR NATURE-FRIENDLY metonymic complex involves a first metonymic expansion, from GREEN FOR NATURE (i.e. PROPERTY1 FOR MATERIAL) and subsequently a metonymic reduction, from NATURE FOR NATURE-FRIENDLY (i.e. MATERIAL FOR RELATED PROPERTY2). This last step involves a misleading consideration of 7UP as being healthy to the same extent as natural fruits are. The positive feelings toward the consumption of a natural product are unconsciously triggered by our knowledge of the world (natural products are beneficial toward our general well-being: they are healthy, therefore we gain control over our bodies and make us happier3). See Fig. 5 for a schematic overview of the cognitive processes involved.

3 As Lakoff and Johnson put forward (1980, p. 17), GOOD IS UP gives an UP orientation to general well-being, and this orientation is coherent with special cases like HEALTH IS UP (He's at the peak of health. Lazarus rose from the dead. He's in top shape. As to his health, he's way up there. He fell ill. He's sinking fast. He came down with the flu. His health is declining. He dropped dead). “Primary metaphors” (as later labeled by Grady 1997) are the most basic and stable metaphors and therefore determine an important part of our conceptual system.

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Fig. 5. Schematic representation of the interaction patterns between metaphor and metonymy

The choice of this metaphor is not fortuitous whatsoever. Diet drinks are traditionally said to be unsavoury in comparison to soft drinks because they contain sweeteners instead of sugar. Additionally, since diet drinks contain gas, preservatives and artificial colourings, they are considered artificial to the same extent as regular soft drinks in comparison to natural juices. However, this advertisement releases deceptive information contradicting traditional beliefs on diet soft drinks, by misleading references to ‘7UP’ as a natural or ‘green’ product by means of multimodal metaphor in interaction with metonymy. Both the visual and the textual elements render information in this direction. The visual aspects present the most ostensive signs of greenwashing, since they put 7UP at the same level as a natural product. Other elements which strengthen this deceptive identification can also be found on the heading in cap letters “100% natural” and the sentence “Pick up one today”. In the same line, the pervasive colour green in both background, leaves, and letters emphasizes the “naturalness” of the new soft drink.

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In brief, it is interesting to notice that the utterly visible components of the advertisement (picture, green background and letters in caps) are the elements that entail greenwashing statements on the new Diet 7UP. In a lower level of salience, we can find either non-metaphorical messages such as “now more lemon lime taste”, in small letters (which faithfully accounts for the real change on the soft drink recipe), or ambiguous or vague statements such as “stripped of the artificial stuff found in most other soft drinks”.

Conclusion Over the course of this chapter my aim has been to show how a comprehensive study of the cognitive mechanisms involved in meaning creation can help advertisers to design more powerful campaigns in terms of communicative effects. In so doing, I have analysed in depth a case study, where I tried to highlight how the interaction between multimodal metaphor and metonymy may enhance the covert communication in advertising discourse. Since consumers would perceive a direct association between a soft drink and a fruit as untrue, the 7UP IS FRUIT metaphor needs to be complemented with an additional cognitive operation. I have claimed that advertisers activate the conceptual domain of NATURE in an intermediate step to characterize positively their product. More specifically, this strategy has been analysed as the metonymic complex GREEN FOR NATURAL FOR NATURE-FRIENDLY. The present contribution intends to bridge the gap between some of the areas of Cognitive Semantics that are still to be comprised within a holistic frame, which encompasses Conceptual Theory of Metaphor and Metonymy and their patterns of interaction in a multimodal context. Nevertheless, due to space constraints, I have not attempted to make an extensive survey of all the possibilities of interaction between metaphor and metonymy in, neither between the verbal and the visual modes. Further research is also required in other advertising environments, such as TV commercials, where there might be changes with respect to printed advertising. The combination of visual and textual elements with sounds in a dynamic environment offers a promising field to continue the exploration of a conceptual theory of multimodal metaphor.

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References Barcelona A. (ed.) (2000). Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A cognitive perspective. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Barthes, Roland. (1986). “Rhetoric of the image”. In: The Responsibility of Forms. Oxford: Blackwell: 21–40. Benczes R., Barcelona A. and Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez F.J. (eds.) (2011). Defining Metonymy in Cognitive Linguistics: Towards a Consensus View. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Dirven R. and Pörings R. (eds.) (2002). Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Forceville C. (1996). Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London/New York: Routledge. —. (2005). “Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive Model of Anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie”. Journal of Pragmatics, 37 (1): 69–88. —. (2007). “Multimodal metaphor in ten Dutch TV Commercials”. Public Journal of Semiotics, 1: 19–51. —. (2008). “Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor in Commercials”. In: Mc Quarrie E.F. and Phillips B.J., eds. Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe: 272–310. —. (2009a). “The role of non-verbal metaphor sound and music in multimodal metaphor”. In: Forceville C. and Uriós-Aparisi E., eds. Multimodal Metaphor. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 383– 400. —. (2009b). “Metonymy in visual and audio visual discourse”. In: Ventola E. and Moya A.J., eds., The World Told and the World Shown: Multisemiotic Issues. London: Palgrave-McMillan: 56–74. Kövecses Z. (2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff G. (1993). The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In: Ortony A., ed. Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 202 – 251. Lakoff G. and Johnson. M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hidalgo-Downing L. and Kraljevic Mujic B. (2011). “Multimodal metonymy and metaphor as complex discourse resources for creativity in ICT advertising discourse”. In: Gonzálvez-García F., Peña Cervel M.S. and Pérez Hernández L., eds. Metaphor and metonymy revisited beyond the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 153–178.

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Pérez Hernández L. (2011). “Cognitive Tools for Successful Branding”. Applied Linguistics, 32 (4): 1–21. Pérez Sobrino P. (2012). “The Green Chain of Being. Multimodal metaphor and metonymy in interaction in Environmental Advertising”, in press. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez F.J. (2000). “The role of mappings and domain in understanding metonymy”. In Metaphor and metonymy at the Crossroads. A. Barcelona (Ed.), 109–132. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. —. (2002). “From semantic underdeterminaton, via metaphor and metonymy to conceptual interaction”. Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, An International Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies, 6 (1): 107–143. —. (2007). “High level cognitive models: in search of a unified framework for inferential and grammatical behavior”. In: Kosecki K., ed. Perspectives on Metonymy. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang: 11–30. —. (2011). “Metonymy and cognitive operations”. In: Benczes R., Barcelona A. and Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez F.J., eds. What is Metonymy? An Attempt at Building a Consensus View of the Delimitation of the Metonymy in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 103–124. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez F.J. and Díez O. (2002). “Patterns of conceptual interaction”. In Dirven R. and Pörings R., eds. Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 489–532. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez F.J. and Pérez Hernández L. (2003). “Cognitive operations and pragmatic implication”. In: Panther K. and Thornburg L., eds. Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing. Amsterdam and Filadelfia: John Benjamins: 23–50. —. (2011). “Conceptual Metaphor Theory: myths, developments and challenges”. Metaphor and Symbol, 26: 1–25. Uriós-Aparisi E. (2009). “Interaction of multimodal metaphor and metonymy in TV commercials: Four case studies”. In: Forceville C. and Uriós-Aparisi E., eds. Multimodal Metaphor. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 95–118. Velasco-Sacristán M. and Fuertes-Olivera P. (2006). “Olfactory and olfactory-mixed metaphors in print ads of perfume”. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 4 (1): 217–252.

CHAPTER SIX METAPHOR USE IN FINANCIAL REVIEWS A LANGUAGE IN CRISIS; LINGUISTIC CHANGE AND METAPHORICAL PATTERNS IN EU FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEWS (2004-2010)

OLGA DENTI AND LUISANNA FODDE

Introduction The present global and political economic situation has been profoundly influenced by the 2007-2009 financial crisis. This crisis started in the USA and was caused by risky and sometimes illegal actions that led to a rise in subprime mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, and the following decline of securities supporting such mortgages. As a result, a number of influential financial institutions, such as Lehman Brothers, went bankrupt in the period immediately after August 2007. Financial crises, like all financial events involving the global economy, are habitually and strictly reported in the official documents issued by central banks and other official organisations (ECB, World Bank, IMF, among others). The FSRs, which authoritatively represent this type of documents within the European Union, are published twice a year (June and December) by the European Central Bank and provide a synopsis of the “possible sources of risk and vulnerability to financial stability in the euro area” (http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/fsr/html/index.en.html). Financial stability is a condition in which the financial system, made up of financial intermediaries, financial markets and financial market infrastructures, is capable to endure distress, which could cause disturbance in the financial intermediation process thus “impair[ing] the allocation of savings to profitable investment opportunities” (ibidem). A stable financial system shows undisturbed relocation of resources from savers to investors, accurate risk assessment, pricing and management,

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and the ability to cope with financial and real economic unforeseen events. Therefore, the concept of financial crisis identifies a condition in which the balance between the features of the financial system is not upheld. Therefore, a condition of instability may consequently result. Forecasting, identifying and monitoring possible sources of risk and vulnerability in the financial system is fundamental for future financial and economic stability. The European Central Bank and the Eurosystem (the ECB and the National Central Banks that have adopted the euro) retain a critical role in reaching a robust financial system and ensuring financial stability. The present paper aims to analyse how business discourse may be affected by emerging crisis phenomena. The main research question will be: how is the 2004-2010 world financial crisis reflected in or deviated by language metaphors and metaphorical patterns? Our corpus comprises a series of EU FSRs, published between 2004 and 2010. Both a quantitative (using Wordmith Tools 5.0), and a qualitative analysis will be carried out, the latter aimed at identifying how metaphorical expressions are lexicalized in these texts (Partington 1998; Deignan 2005). In doing this, the present paper will attempt to highlight, on the one hand, how the metaphorical denseness so typical of business discourse undergoes systematic and dramatic changes in the presence of financial turmoil and, on the other, the textual/linguistic, discursive and genre-specific elements present in the corpus (Levinson 1983; CaldasCoulthard and Coulthard (eds.) 1996; Fairclough 2001; Gee 2005). The issue of metaphors and metaphoric language in business and financial discourse has been investigated thoroughly over the last years (Henderson 1994; Boers 2000; Charteris-Black 2000; Gotti 2003; White 2003, Crawford Camiciottoli 2004; Kövecses 2005; Giannoni 2009). Metaphors in this type of discourse, where the dramatic force of the events discussed is particularly salient, may trigger more interest and satisfaction on the part of the audiences involved, thus drawing their attention further on specific issues. The quantitative analysis carried out will show that the most numerous trend verbs used in the FSR corpus belong to the category of dead metaphors, also termed crystallized (Greco 2009, p. 199), fossilized (Partington 1998, p. 118), or frozen and historical, among other definitions. In business discourse, the category of dead metaphors also includes orientational metaphors, expressing upward or downward trends, based on spatial orientation (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 14). Moreover, what may be called less dead and more organism metaphors appear throughout the corpus, signalling the typical richness and sophisticated style of financial discourse.

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The choice of the time lag mirrors both the documents availability, as the December 2004 is the first publication, and the need to compare a noncrisis span (2004-2007) to a period of crisis (2007-2009) in order to observe the evolution of the language. In particular, three periods were identified: the pre-turmoil period (also the pre-Lehman period, December 2004-June 2007 FSRs); the turmoil period (December 2007-June 2009 FSRs); the post-turmoil period (also post-Lehman period, December 2009-June 2010 FSRs). Because of the amount of relevant data and the size of our corpus (over one million, three hundred thousand words), which is continuously revealing new and diverse information, the present research is to be considered in progress.

1. FSR as a genre of financial English There is a tight relationship between a specialized text and its structure. This involves a number of mutual correlations between the conceptual, rhetorical and linguistic features that characterize the text itself. A genre provides a conventional framework and affects all the textual characteristics, constraining their conceptual and rhetorical development which determine the linguistic choices made as the text unfolds. The quality of textual organization and the identification of the pragmatic function of each section of the reviews, e.g. informative, evaluative, predictive, etc., form standard sequences that reflect the specialist’s theoretical or practical activities (Gotti 1991, 2005). The text genre mirrors those structures and communicative purposes shared by the specialist members of a specific discourse community: in our FSR corpus the financial markets protagonists belong both to a specialist community and to the public at large, i.e. the European Central Banks and the Eurosystem, as well as investors and savers. Therefore, a tight relationship exists between the FSRs and an external audience, who has “the opportunity of reacting to the product of the expert originators and influence them to modify their texts so that these become more userfriendly” (Trosborg 2001, pp. 27-28). Following Hymes (1986) and conceiving communication as a genre of events rather than as a genre of texts, the combination of visual resources, or text-external factors (Bhatia 2008, pp. 161-162), such as repeated chapters and paragraphs, headings and structures, lists, colours, the intermingling of texts, graphs and tables, synergically arranged either horizontally or vertically, have been investigated to understand the construction of the text social and pragmatic functions. Here intertextuality plays a fundamental role as a textual-mapping device (Bhatia 1993, p.

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141), relating one part of the text to another one within the same document (Chart section at the end of each FSR) or to a different one. The most important outcome is the reduction of information load and lexical density, of syntactic complexity, and a more easily readable document. Moreover, considering FSRs as a mixed genre (Bhatia 2002, pp. 1012), interdiscursivity (Bhatia 2008, p. 162), i.e. the borrowing and allocation of lexico-grammatical and semiotic resources, as well as discoursal strategies, across discourse communities and genres, has been taken into account, as not only professional expertise but also sociopragmatic factors are to be considered for their interpretation and understanding, especially on the part of non-experts. The FSRs have been examined analysing their institutionalised textual features “in the context of specific institutional and disciplinary practices, procedures and cultures to understand how and why the members of this financial discourse community build, interpret and use them” (Bhatia 2002, p. 6). Therefore, Bhatia’s theoretical applied genre analytical model (2002, pp. 16-18) has been employed to analyse the economic/financial discourse of the FSRs under three perspectives: textual organization, context and participants, and communicative function. In particular, each FSR is organized into sections: 1. Table of Contents; 2. Foreword (in the first issue) or Preface (in the following issues); 3. Chapter I (Overview) – III, which give details of “the main endogenous and exogenous trends and events that characterized the operating environment of the euro area financial system over the past year” (Foreword, FSR December 2004, p. 8), including the most important sources of risk and vulnerability; 4. Chapter IV, which addresses particular financial stability issues; 5. Glossary (since December 2007), which makes the whole document more intelligible and user-friendly for the non-expert reader; 6. Statistical Annex, which includes Boxes, Charts and Tables. The Preface, the same throughout the corpus, a 222-word short onepage piece of text, defines financial stability, explains the aim of the review and qualifies its indirect authorship, giving strength and jurisdiction to the information provided in the documents: The analysis contained in this review was prepared with the close involvement of, and contribution by, the Banking Supervision Committee (BSC). The BSC is a forum for cooperation among the national central

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banks and supervisory authorities of the European Union (EU) and the European Central Bank (ECB) (Preface, FSR all issues).

The Overview gives a general outline of the period under consideration (the 6 months preceding the issue of the review), and a brief outlook of the future situation. Because of its content, function, linguistic/discursive strategies, political and technical evaluations/stance, the Overview has been considered as representative of each FSR. All Overviews deal with each financial situation independently and clearly: non-financial institutions, banks, insurances, capital markets and household markets. Moreover, the euro-area and outside-euro-area situations are addressed separately. The authoritativeness of the report, its aim and the relationships among the market protagonists are again addressed in the Preface: The purpose of publishing this review is to promote awareness in the financial industry and among the public at large of issues that are relevant for safeguarding the stability of the euro area financial system (FSR all issues: 9).

Therefore, the addressors, the highest European financial official authorities, are overtly identified on one side, and, on the other, the addressees, the audience, the public at large, savers and investors, lenders and borrowers, but also the expert BSC, ECB, EU, central banks, insurance companies and financial markets. Also the main communicative functions of the reviews are clearly expressed. They are informative documents, providing a background on the global financial and economic situation; evaluative, as they assess the events described; and predictive, as they forecast future measures and actions.

2. FSRs in numbers From the quantitative point of view, our corpus of biannual FSR issues, published between December 2004 and June 2010, accounts for a total of 1,328,295 words (calculated with Wordsmith Tools 5.0), as exemplified in Table 1:

Chapter Six

88 FSR corpus (2004-2010) total text file

tokens

types

type/token ratio (TTR)

standardised TTR

Overall

1328295

15635

1,382151961

34,32307816

financialstabilityreview200412en.txt

74950

5551

8,430916786

37,03107452

financialstabilityreview200506en.txt

88868

5108

6,575017929

35,14886856

financialstabilityreview200512en.txt

116011

5386

5,501700878

33,39050674

financialstabilityreview200606en.txt

111106

5250

5,48927784

34,59369659

financialstabilityreview200612en.txt

114440

5739

5,86114645

34,85965729

financialstabilityreview200706en.txt

124441

5986

5,735529423

33,49516678

financialstabilityreview200712en.txt

133581

5914

5,233674526

33,22555542

financialstabilityreview200806en.txt

107993

5616

6,139986515

34,28038025

financialstabilityreview200812en.txt

109738

5489

6,018442154

33,94494629

financialstabilityreview200906en.txt

115880

5682

5,818263531

34,0991478

financialstabilityreview200912en.txt

115985

5844

5,867646694

34,65738297

financialstabilityreview201006en.txt

115302

5717

5,778599739

34,54608154

Table 1. FSR corpus (2004-2010) total Although the entire corpus has been taken into consideration as far as the quantitative and qualitative analysis is concerned, in order to make a choice on the most significant words and expressions to be taken into account for our purposes, as above mentioned, we decided to use the Overviews of each FSR to select the most recurrent and significant lexical items which make up our keyword list. Such a research choice is justified by the fact that the Overviews provide a thorough indication of the aims, recommendations and results of the financial period under consideration, and that, because of their length (between 7 to 10 pages each, 3,706 to 4,826 words) and organization, they may be considered a prototypical and executive sample of the genre. Therefore, the quantitative data related to the Overviews sub-corpus can be summarized as follows:

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FSR Overviews Sub-corpus (2004-2010) text file

tokens

types

type/token ratio (TTR)

standardised TTR

Overall

54662

3496

6,445665359

41,73403931

overview04.12.txt

4426

1059

24,20018196

41,34999847

overview05.06.txt

3706

939

25,53712273

41,03333282

overview05.12.txt

4407

970

22,13601112

40

overview06.06.txt

4780

1042

21,91838455

41,04999924

overview06.12.txt

4579

1045

22,89156532

41,84999847

overview07.06.txt

4435

1075

24,33778572

41,95000076

overview07.12.txt

4825

1239

25,76419258

43,84999847

overview08.06.txt

4826

1218

25,41205978

44,42499924

overview08.12.txt

3941

990

25,43679428

41,16666412

overview09.06.txt

4693

1049

22,66637802

40,875

overview09.12.txt

4574

1064

23,42064667

41,57500076

overview10.06.txt

5470

1196

22,13994789

41,43999863

Table 2. FSR Overviews Sub-corpus From the tables above, several observations can be inferred. First of all, the type/token ratio, which identifies the text lexical density, seems to stress a high value ranging from 5.23 to 8.43, for the entire FSR corpus, while ranging from 21.91 to 25.76 for the Overview sub-corpus. Such difference is surely due to the fact that the higher the number of words the lower the lexical density. However, such remarkable difference between the two groups of text is also a confirmation of the lexical variety of the Overviews, which strengthens our choice of selecting them to represent the whole documents. For a more accurate analysis, we also considered the standardized t/t ratio which calculates the ratio for every 1,000 word group in the corresponding word list. The result is a running average based upon consecutive sequences of text made up of 1,000 words each. The arising comparison is consequently more homogeneous and meaningful and thus confirms even more the same qualitative difference between the two text types and the higher representativeness of the Overviews.

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2.1 The analysis of the Keywords The investigation of the keyword evolution was articulated into the three different periods above-mentioned: pre-turmoil (or pre-Lehman), turmoil, and post-turmoil (or post-Lehman). In order to have a good and thorough perspective on the quantity and quality of crisis lexis employed in the FSRs, the keywords were contextualized within the financial/economic definition of the word crisis, looking for synonyms or multi-word expressions with the same meaning. Some British and American dictionaries (Oxford dictionary online; Cambridge dictionary online; MerriamWebster dictionary online) were consulted. None of them supply a oneword equivalent for crisis nor does an initial skimming of the documents reveal many examples of such synonyms. The results of the first word count from Wordsmith Tools 5.0 showed that the word crisis is not particularly representative in the corpus. In fact, it is placed in the 332nd position with 539 occurrences, while its plural is 764th, with 216 instances. Therefore, the words risk, debt, default, volatility, concern, liability, shock, vulnerability, stress, turmoil, negative, uncertainty, adverse, imbalance, pressure, problem, deterioration, deficit, burden, reversal, turbulence, both in the singular and the plural, were chosen among the most frequent and significant keywords for the present study. Table 3 exemplifies the results above in the three periods under consideration identified around a single historical turning point, i.e. the financial crisis burst in August 2007:

Metaphor Use in Financial Reviews

WORD

June06 Dec06

91

Dec04

June05

Dec05

Risk

602

619

806

837

824

June07 Dec07 June08 Dec08 June09 Dec09 June10 1063

999

795

739

631

719

839

Debt

154

210

304

246

184

275

254

200

152

225

215

274

Default

70

98

87

141

127

261

135

150

185

222

168

152

Volatility

45

98

84

98

142

261

146

119

95

109

115

121

Liability

64

56

96

53

55

31

57

34

35

67

46

65

Shock

43

16

31

89

38

86

48

37

46

74

52

61

Vulnerability

36

46

100

54

65

63

55

36

34

30

49

51

Stress

15

8

26

114

23

37

72

45

57

58

58

52

Concern

41

46

52

71

58

65

61

65

51

51

45

91

Turmoil

0

0

1

3

2

9

128

143

121

83

39

10

Negative

32

35

51

51

31

39

53

39

53

68

32

48

Uncertainty

15

24

36

28

30

40

72

51

30

57

48

81

Adverse

17

32

32

35

69

36

51

30

29

47

39

57

Imbalance

19

47

52

37

37

31

19

17

12

15

34

72

Pressure

29

26

28

34

28

18

17

26

42

42

32

33

Problem

15

36

29

23

25

18

46

41

36

25

36

18

Deterioration

12

15

29

27

28

18

31

32

35

47

35

26

Deficit

22

34

29

27

42

13

8

18

20

17

13

39

Reversal

3

7

6

19

27

37

29

29

20

22

28

25

Burden

27

21

48

25

22

29

16

18

9

8

13

15

Turbulence

7

3

3

3

30

30

49

55

37

4

14

8

Table 3. Results December 2004-June 2010 Such a list allows an initial observation of the trend evolution of the lexis suggesting a situation of crisis and trouble. Both quantitatively and qualitatively some significant differences result. The word with the highest frequency is risk (9,473 tokens), with a value far higher than the other keywords. The next most frequent item is debt (2,693 tokens), followed by default (1,796), and volatility (1,430). All other items are below 700 instances. The extremely high value of the term risk is linked to its financial conventional concept as a negative factor, as danger. However, its connotation also entails the idea of opportunity and reward (Bernstein and Damodaran 1998, p. 58). Therefore, risk is representative of the time span being considered as it designates both the danger of financial risks taken by investors and their possible dangerous consequences when badly managed. As for the diachronic analysis of our data, in the pre-turmoil period a generalized positive attitude is recognized, established in all Overviews up to the middle of the year 2007, i.e. the Review immediately preceding the financial crisis started in August 2007. In the turmoil period, the reviews published after the crisis reveal a more negative attitude toward the future

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economic situation, although counterbalanced by some cautious positive notes. The two reviews of the post-turmoil period show signs of improvement in their diagnosis of the financial situation and include recommendation for the future. The lexical evolution of our keyword list in the three periods can be easily observed in the graph below:

Table 4. Lexical evolution of the keyword list The most striking observation of Table 4 is that all the lexical items are more concentrated in the turmoil period. The peak corresponds to the span June-December 2007, which constitutes the dividing line of our two main historical divisions, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

3. Lexical choices in crisis discourse: appetite, disease, weather, and hunt The present section aims to present some interesting lexical choices found in our corpus and to consider them as characteristic of this genre. The choice of peculiar lexis is particularly evident in the use of metaphorical expressions. The issue of metaphors and metaphoric language in business and financial discourse has been covered thoroughly over the last years (Henderson 1994; Boers 2000; Charteris-Black 2000; Gotti

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2003; White 2003; Crawford Camiciottoli 2004; Kövecses 2005; Giannoni 2009). Metaphors in this type of discourse, where the dramatic force of the events discussed is particularly salient, may trigger more interest and satisfaction on the part of the audiences involved, thus drawing their attention further on specific issues. As elsewhere noted (Fodde and Wallis, forthcoming), and as expected, the quantitative analysis carried out showed that the most numerous trend verbs used in the FSR corpus belong to the category of dead metaphors, also termed crystallized (Greco 2009, p. 199), fossilized (Partington 1998, p. 118), or frozen and historical, among other definitions. Conventionally, a dead metaphor is a figure of speech that has lost its strength and imaginative effectiveness. In business discourse, the category of dead metaphors also includes orientational metaphors, expressing upward or downward trends, based on spatial orientation (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 14). Such straightforward, half-metaphorical expressions are still very much used in business discourse and the quantitative analysis carried out for the entire corpus confirms such phenomenon: growth (67, freq. 2206), growing (584, freq. 305); high (117, freq. 1418), higher (146, freq. 1160); low (150, freq 1,141), lower (250, freq 715); rise (329, freq 542) + rising (393, freq 448). These results also attest what specialists of corpus analysis often point out, i.e. that “up is not always, or even predominantly better” (Partington 1998:113), which is also confirmed by the concordances of the upward orientational metaphors for our corpus. Additionally, the same quantitative analysis reveals that what may be called less dead and more organism metaphor appears throughout the corpus, signalling the typical richness and sophisticated style of financial discourse. As is well-known, and as already noted, organism metaphors in business discourse (“business is organism”) have been studied for a long time (e.g. Henderson 1982; Boers 2000; Gotti 2003; White 2003, among others). In our corpus, we found an abundant use of such organism metaphors. The first and foremost is represented by the appetite and vulnerability metaphors, combined with the most frequent word in our keyword list:

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Total Freq Dec04 June05 Dec05 June06 Dec06 June07 Dec07 June08 Dec08 June09 Dec09 June10 risk and vulnerability/ies

78

8

6

14

6

6

5

2

5

5

7

9

5

risks and vulnerabilities

57

2

6

16

6

2

2

6

3

4

4

4

2

risk appetite

201

0

1

2

42

10

75

19

12

8

5

17

10

appetite

246

4

5

5

46

15

75

32

17

10

7

20

11

 Table 5. Use of organism metaphors What seems interesting to note in Table 5 is that, again, the concentration of such expressions occur in the central critical period, between June 2006 and December 2007. The lexical dynamics of these metaphors is confirmed by the results of the clusters analysis where the expressions frequently occur in combination with the market protagonists of our discourse: Investor/s risk appetite; appetite for risk; measuring investor risks; appetite among investors; investors’ appetite; investors’ risk appetite. The recurrence of the cluster risk and vulnerabilities, which is often accompanied by the noun source/s, is technically due to the fact that the forecast and identification of risk and vulnerability sources is one of the main issues of financial stability (www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/fsr/html/ind ex.en.html). Equally impressive is how investors are depicted in what we have called the hunt metaphors. Not only do they show an aggressive appetite for funds, they are also eager to find what they want more, i.e. yield: N Concordance 22 23

to be explained by an ongoing institutional investors. Coupled with the

24

needs. Despite an aggressive global

25

markets benefited from an aggressive

26 27

of credit risk. As a result of the the demand for medium to with the

hunt for yield by international

investors,

hunt for yield, this has led to a wider hunt for yield, yields in the euro area hunt for yield in an environment

of ample

hunt for yield, the supply of capital for hunt for yield becoming

increasingly

28

the main cause for concern about the

hunt for yield is the fact that it seems

29

estate, as part of a broadening of the

hunt for higher yielding, and

30

appetite may exhibit some signs of the

Table 6. Use of hunt metaphors

hunt for yield phenomenon

in the

to

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Out of 41 instances, 11 were found in the Overviews. In particular, all instances of hunt collocate with yield according to different clusters: hunt for yield, the hunt for, of the hunt, hunt for yield in, aggressive hunt for, a hunt for. What is also interesting is the concgram analysis (Table 7), which shows the collocational patterns of the word yield (in this case) as doublets, triplets or quadruplets (Sinclair 2004, p. xxvii): N

L2

L1

Centre

R1

R2

R3

1

OF

THE

HUNT

FOR

YIELD

IN

2

WITH AGGRESSIVE

3

AN

4

THE

A

Table 7. Concgram analysis, collocational patterns of the word yield More frequent, though not less relevant to our research on crisis lexis, are the so-called business-as-disease metaphors, as exemplified in the examples below: (1) a. “Anaemic domestic demands” (FSR: June 2005); b. “This contagion occurred…” (Dec 2007, p. 14); c. “To depress house prices” (June 2008, p. 13); d. “Measures designed to alleviate strains….” (June 2009, p. 13); e. “…a number of hazardous contagion channels and adverse feedback loops” (FSR June 2010, p. 9). Besides the non-consequential use of the word recovery, which has lost its metaphorical strength in business discourse, all the other medical metaphors are indicative of a critical and dramatic situation and signal a correct lexical choice on the part of the writers. The word contagion, in particular, is very frequent, as the following frequency table shows: Total Over.Freq. Dec04 June05 Dec05 June06 Dec06 June07 Dec07 June08 Dec08 June09 Dec09 June10 Freq contagion 363 7 62 7 83 18 12 4 11 5 8 25 64 64

Table 8. Frequency of the word contagion

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Most of the times, the word contagion appears in collocation with the word risk (contagion risk, contagion risks, risk of contagion, 111/363) and in one article is even defined as (2) “the transmission of an idiosyncratic shock affecting a bank or possibly a set of banks, and its transmission to other banks” (Dec 2004, p. 117). Here, we cannot fail to note how the entire sentence is metaphorically dense with medical lexis. Unlike the majority of keywords selected, its frequency at the beginning of the crisis is lower, probably due to the fact that the risk of contagion, and the contagion itself, had already taken place before the bust, further increasing afterwards. From a crisis point of view, other categories of metaphors are worth mentioning, such as the business-is-weather ones. Though common in other discourse types, weather or meteorology metaphors are excellent rhetorical devices to describe critical situations and dramatic events: (3)

a. “Waves of intensity” (June 2009, p. 12); b. “To weather the possible materialization of the risks” (June 2009, p. 15); c. “Perturbing” (June 2008, p. 18 ); d. “… a macroeconomic environment clouded by downside risks..” (Dec. 2009, p. 12); e. “Inclement asset price dynamics” (FSR Dec. 2006).

In his seminal works, Lakoff describes how metaphors play a crucial role in conceptual and linguistic organisation, aiming at constructing a system of shared cultural values and concepts (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987). Our study of metaphors in the corpus of Financial Stability Reviews is still in progress. However, from the first results obtained it seems evident that the metaphors we found confirm the same intent: they help in the articulation and comprehension of very critical and subtle concepts and increase the dramatization of their portrayal. The metaphorical expressions presented in this section may be undoubtedly regarded as pleasant and sophisticated rhetorical devices. They are employed as concentrated items of language, to ensure clarity and immediacy. They attract the reader’s attention for their wit and shrewdness. The presence of such rhetorical devices is also a reflection of the communicative organization and purpose of the FSRs, which is aimed at attracting both ordinary readers and specialists. These metaphors are

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meant to allow readers to associate the co-text, represented by the abstract concepts found in the FSRs, to more familiar and commonly understood ideas (Fodde-Wallis forthcoming; Greco 2009, p. 208).

Conclusion The present study has tried to highlight, both diachronically and synchronically, the linguistic changes and the metaphorical patterns characterizing the Financial Stability Reviews, published by the European Central Bank between 2004 and 2010, emphasizing whether the lexical choices follow the same trend and pattern as financial events. In other words, the paper has tried to answer the first and foremost research question: how is the 2004-2010 world financial crisis reflected in or deviated by language metaphors and metaphorical patterns? In order to answer this question, first of all the FSRs were classified as a genre of financial discourse, following what was prescribed by the main experts of genre analysis. Textual and non-textual features, which enhance the communicative function of the text (Swales 1990, p. 45) results are clear, intelligible and unambiguous, taking into account the different target readers. The second aim was to take out a very important section of the FSRs, the Overviews, and consider them as a prototypical, executive summary of the present research. This move allowed us to introduce a historical division of the corpus and to determine a keyword list of crisis lexis. This procedure gave the first comforting result on the lexical diachronic evolution of the corpus. As a matter of fact, the lexical items chosen were observed to be more concentrated in the turmoil period. The peak corresponds to the span June-December 2007; that is, the period immediately preceding and following the financial turmoil, which constitutes the dividing line of our two main historical sections, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The second period, from December 2007 to June 2009, is represented by a higher frequency of negativity, and by a characteristic and frequent appearance of mitigation rhetorical devices. The third and shortest historical period in the corpus, consisting of only two issues, shows a return to positivity. They include a declaration of modest profitability and strengthened financial performance, though these phenomena remain relatively weak. They also include some heart-felt recommendations at the end. Our considerations on the quantitative outcomes on the one hand confirmed that the language of crisis fully reflects the historical period of

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world financial turmoil, on the other gave way to some qualitative results which confirmed our research goals. In fact, our lexical and pragmatic choices from the FSR corpus proved to be extremely interesting in determining how language may testify historical phenomena, even in specialized discourse. In the present paper this is confirmed by our insights on the frequency of the word risk and its combining forms in association with appetite and vulnerabilities, together with the metaphorical findings. Our results so far also confirmed that some lexical and rhetorical choices present in the FSRs could be regarded somehow as a characteristic of this particular genre. Given the size of the corpus – over one million words – and its high qualitative content still to be thoroughly analysed, our research is still to be considered in progress, as stated at the beginning of the present study.

References Primary Sources 12 Financial Stability Reviews published by the EU in the period December 2004 – June 2010: http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/fsr/html/index.en.html

Secondary Sources Bhatia V.K. (1993). Analysing Genre. Language Use in Professional Settings. London and New York: Longman. —. (2002). “Applied genre analysis: a multi-perspective model”. Ibérica, 4: 3௅19. http://www.aelfe.org/documents/text4-Bhatia.pdf. —. (2008). “Genre analysis, ESP and professional practice”. English for Specific Purposes, 27: 161௅174. www.sciencedirect.com. Bernstein P.L. and Damodaran A. (eds.) (1998). Investment Management. New York, Toronto: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Boers F. (2000). “Enhancing Metaphoric Awareness in Specialised Reading”. English for Specific Purposes, 19: 137௅147. Caldas-Coulthard C.R. and Coulthard M. (eds.) (1996). Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Charteris-Black J. (2000). “Metaphor and vocabulary teaching in ESP”. English for Specific Purposes, 16: 149௅165.

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Crawford Camiciottoli B. (2004). “Metaphor as Evaluation in Business Studies Lectures”. In: Anderson L. and Bamford J., eds. Evaluation in oral and written academic discourse. Roma: Officina Edizioni: 53௅71. Deignan A. (2005). Metaphor and Corpus Lingusitics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Del Lungo Camiciotti G. (1998). “Financial News Articles and Financial Information Letters: a Comparison”. In: Bondi M., ed., Forms of Argumentative Discourse. Per un’analisi linguistica dell’argomentare. Bologna: CLUEB: 195௅205. Fairclough N. (2001). Language and Power (second revised edition). London: Longman. Fodde L. and Wallis C.E. (forthcoming). “Business metaphors in The Economist Newsletter: a case for authentic materials in L2 classrooms”. Rivista Italiana di Linguistica Applicata. Roma: Bulzoni Editore. Gee J.P. (2005). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London: Routledge. Giannoni D.S. (2009). “Disciplinary Values in English Academic Metaphors”. Linguistica e Filologia, 28: 173௅192. Gotti M. (1991). I Linguaggi Specialistici. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. —. (2003). Specialized Discourse: Linguistic Features and Changing Conventions. Bern: Peter Lang. —. (2005). Investigating Specialized Discourse. Bern: Peter Lang. Greco S. (2009). “Metaphorical headlines in business, finance and economic magazines”. Linguistica e Filologia, 28: 193௅211. Henderson W. (1982). “Metaphor in economics”. Economics, 18: 147௅157. —. (1994). “Metaphor and economics”. In: Blackhouse R.E., ed. New Directions in Economic Methodology. London: Routledge: 343௅367. Hymes D. (1986). “Models of the interaction of language and social life”. In: Gumperz J. and Hymes D., eds. Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. Oxford: Blackwell: 35௅71. Kövecses Z. (2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff G. and Johnson M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levinson S.C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Partington A. (1998). Patterns and Meanings (Using Corpora for English Language Research and Teaching). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sinclair J.M. (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. (2004). Trust the Text: Language Corpus and Discourse. London: Routledge. Swales J. (1990). Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: CUP. Trosborg A. (2001). “The notion of genre considered within a business communication approach”. In: Eschenbach J.A., Schewe T., eds. Über Grenzen gehen – Kommunikation zwischen Kulturen und Unternehmen (Crossing Borders – Communication between Cultures and Companies). Festschrift für Ingrid Neumann, Halden, Norway: Høgskolen i Østfold. Rapport, 3: 21௅33. White M. (2003). “Metaphor and Economics: The Case of Growth”. English for Specific Purposes, 22 (2): 131௅149. http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/fsr/html/index.en.html (last accessed on February 6, 2011) http://www.evancarmichael.com/WomenEntrepreneurs/4531/Complacency--A-Business-Killer.html (last accessed on February 6, 2011) http://www.ecb.int/pub/fsr/html/index.en.html (last accessed on February 6, 2011)

CHAPTER SEVEN METAPHOR USE IN POLITICS THE POLITICAL METAPHOR BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

STEFANO DI PIETRO

Introduction The emergence of the multi-medial dimension, which resulted from technological development, has affected political languages more deeply than other languages in recent times. The analysis of political communication should now include the verbal/linguistic code as a limited part of the political phenomenon. What has been called “Political Language” now, more than ever, should be properly called “Political Communication”. Everything that happens worldwide, thanks to new media, reaches the dimension of what can be called “Communicative Event” or “Media Event”. A joke made by the Prime minister, a gesture in a picture, a spot on the television or any image can have an important role in the deep semiotic processes of the viewer. Every single occurrence can contain a deep message, communicate strongly the identity of a political party and even influence the electorate. To gain power in a democracy the candidates need to be elected and, for at least this simple reason, it is necessary to reach as many people as possible. Democracy is about consensus which is a primary manifestation of “the contract” between the politician and the electorate, a characteristic that has been enhanced in the second part of the last century (Gensini 2004 for a review). The politician is “reached by the people” even before he tries to reach them intentionally. Modern mass media place him in a multi medial dimension, representing every aspect of his political action and personal life.

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Therefore effective Political communication must describe all the phenomena that are brought in front of the eyes of the electorate. To achieve this ambitious purpose different conceptual tools are needed: instruments and theories that would give the right prominence to the numerous phenomena that now should be included in a political communication analysis, such as theories on the understanding and development of language, theories of cognition, and theories of emotional knowledge and expression. All the dynamics through which man gives meaning to messages not just limited to linguistic expressions but to a wide concept of “sign” whatever would be his contextual dimension. Therefore Political communication theory today has to take into account a part of the human nature that is essentially the proprium of mankind on his being in the world and his co-existence with others in a cultural and natural environment. In the present chapter we will show through some case studies, taken from recent events in Italian and American politics, the effects of metaphor on politics, enhancing our understanding of this phenomenon through insights from the Cognitive and Mind Sciences.

1. Metaphor’s role in a linguistic turn Metaphor in this context has a leading role. This figure of speech has been protagonist of one the most important turns of the last decades. We will try to summarize it from a philosophical-linguistic perspective. In the period when the studies of metaphor were being rediscovered, the mathematical theory of communication was still strong in the field, and it was affecting not only the theory of communication between artificial systems but also the modelling of human communication processes (e.g. Shannon 1948). We know well that human communication cannot be reduced to a correspondence between significant and significance. The existence of conceptual metaphors, cognitive devices with their own heuristic value, together with all other phenomena typical of human language and communication, has put in evidence the limit of old models to describe this crucial part of human experience. This is very different not only from artificial systems but also from the communication systems of other evolved animal species different from Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Gensini 2008). In short, we could state that conceptual metaphors cannot be included in a view of the semiotic process described as linear and disembodied (Lakoff 1987; 1999). This claim had worked as an antidote in the 1970s against the first generation of cognitivists and it assumed an important role in the development of the second generation of cognitivism

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which rediscovered the embodied and imaginative nature of the human being (Lakoff 1980, Johnson 1987; Gensini 2008). A short summary of the claims on metaphors of two of the most influent and prophetic philosophers on the subject creates a historical context that will shed light on the importance of metaphor as a cognitive tool and its role in human understanding. The idea of metaphor as a cognitive and embodied device, and the rich number of philosophical implications to this claim, have already been discussed by philosophers and linguists in tempi during the history of ideas. In particular, in the thought of Aristotle and Vico we can recover some very important claims, their highly prominent and modern idea about this topic has been pointed out numerous times (e.g. Gensini 1995, 2005; Danesi 1995, 2001). Unfortunately, these ideas about metaphor, as well as a well-built perspective on language and cognition, have been subject to a period of oblivion in modern and contemporary age, obscured by an influential tradition that perhaps originated with Descartes’ and Functionalism. Aristotle in Rhetoric and in Poetic wrote extensively on the concept and use of metaphor. He enlightens its crucial role in language of this “tropos” that he describes as a linguistic phenomenon of great importance (Aristotle 1998; 2010). His conception of metaphor is strictly connected to his idea of the relationship between Rhetoric and Dialectic in which the first has an important role. Rhetoric is described as the “counterpart of the dialectic” (antìstrophos) (Aristotle 2010, p. 3) and gives to the enthymeme (enthyméma), the so called “rhetoric syllogism” based on probable premises (éndoxa), the capacity of inquiring scientific truths, refuting opponents and defending from charges and critics. Aristotle seeing metaphor as an enthymeme claims his effectiveness not only in the lexis but also in relation with the syllogistic schema in logic in which it gains his dianoetic consistency. To be effective, metaphors – Aristotle states– have to produce new knowledge and have to be built from what is not evident. Metaphor, moreover, gives style clearness, charm, and distinction as nothing else can: and it is not a thing whose use can be taught by one man to another. Metaphors, like epithets, must be fitting, which means that they must fairly correspond to the thing signified: failing this, their inappropriateness will be conspicuous: the want of harmony between two things is emphasized by their being placed side by side. (Aristotle 2010, p. 154)

Vico, even more prophetic, considers metaphor of primary importance in relation with his conception of ingenium and the inherently physical

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nature of our perception that is surprisingly close to what has been called in recent times “embodied cognition”, concept that could be considered the most deeply modern aspect of his thought. All the first tropes are corollaries of this poetic logic. The most luminous and therefore the most necessary and frequent is metaphor. It is most praised when it gives sense and passion to insensate things, in accordance with the metaphysics above discussed, by which the first poets attributed to bodies the being of animate substances, with capacities measured by their own, namely sense and passion, and in this way made fables of them. Thus every metaphor so formed is a fable in brief. This gives a basis for judging the time when metaphors made their appearance in the languages. All the metaphors conveyed by likenesses taken from bodies to signify the operations of abstract minds must date from times when philosophies were taking shape. The proof of this is that in every language the terms needed for the refined arts and recondite sciences are of rustic origin (Vico 1948, p. 116).

Vico considers metaphor as the major “body” of languages, as a generative cell that produces meaning and makes them grow (Cf. Gensini 2005). His conception of metaphor is strictly connected with the Ingenium, which the Italian thinker defines as a peculiar characteristic of the philosophers that consists in “recognizing likeness” (Cfr Di Cesare 1986): And the order of human ideas is to observe the similarities of things first to express itself and later for purposes of proof. Proof, in turn, is first by example, for which a single likeness suffices and finally by induction, for which more are required. Socrates, father of all the sects of philosophers, introduced dialectic by induction, which Aristotle later perfected with the syllogism, which cannot proceed without a universal. But to undeveloped minds it suffices to present a single likeness in order to persuade them; as, by a single fable of the sort invented by Aesop, the worthy Menenius Agrippa reduced the rebellious Roman plebs to obedience. (Vico 1948, p. 122)

The Ingenium is close to what Vico defines as the capacity of making “good” metaphors. Such is, he states, the capacity to catch ideal similarities, to unify different things and to create correlations to preexisting things in different directions (Cf. Vico 1971). Thanks to these analogies a human being is capable of experiencing reality by organizing world knowledge intuitively: “L’ingegno, “facultas [...] in unum dissita, diversa coniungendi” (Vico 1971, p. 117). This capacity of “metaphorizing”, both fantasy and ingenium, faculty that belongs to the mind but that has his roots in the body. Acting in the opposite way of the analytical intellect,

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which starts from the “pure mind”, ingenium moves from the body and from the animus “disturbed and moved” unifying heterogeneous data by seeking to bind similarities and create “uniformity” (Gensini 2008). The capacity of the ingenium to get analogies between different things creates a metaphor that for Vico is a complex model of signification: “It is another property of the human mind that whenever men can form no idea of distant and unknown things, they judge them by what is familiar and at hand” (Vico 1948, p. 54). Thanks to this device, the linguistic metaphor is placed at the heart of the epistemological process in which the body and the language cooperate to produce meaning. (Cfr. Di Cesare 1986).

2. George Lakoff: conceptual metaphor as a political tool In recent times the discoveries on cognitive science applied in cognitive linguistics bring back at the centre of the philosophical discussion the theme of metaphor. The theory of conceptual metaphor by George Lakoff and Marc Johnson is certainly one of the most interesting of recent times, especially due to his close linking to the notion of “embodied cognition”. The application of his theory to political communication represents one of the most interesting aspects of Lakoff’s research. The success of a book like “Don’t think of an Elephant” is connected to his relevance of this work in the context of modern mass communication-in particular with the evolution of the use of the image. Recovering Vichian themes could bring one to focus on what we can call “embodied metaphors”, which Lakoff, quoting the work of his colleague and former student Joseph Grady1 (1997), subscribes to “primary metaphors”. Primary metaphors are born out of experiences in early life, which are to him, cognitive devices motivated by embodied cognition. These kinds of metaphor, deeply rooted in our conceptual system, link two different conceptual domains: one related to our bodily experiences in the world with another more abstract domain. One of the most encountered metaphors that we may call “embodied” is “affection is warmth” which connects “affection” (e.g. emotional experiences like love or emotional characteristic of a person) with the temperature of the human body (e.g. “you are a cold person, this person is heated” etc.). George Lakoff and his group of researchers recently worked on the theory of “simulation semantics” that describes the process of understanding as strictly related to 1

Lakoff cites Grady’s work for the Phd Dissertation at Berkeley University, which he advised together with Eve Sweetser in Lakoff and Johnson 1999. See also Grady and Johnson 2002.

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an imaginative processing thorough our sensory-motor system in the brain. Recent experimental work demonstrated that the pre-motor cortex of the brain plays a crucial role in understanding linguistic expressions related to physical action (e.g. grab that cap. Gallese and Lakoff 2005; Gallese 2009 and much other work). In the following case study we will apply this model together with other studies on cognition and language to “syncretic texts” with the aim of partially representing the complexity and richness of all the phenomena that are part of political communication.

3. Case Study: Bersani and Obama and the use of embodied metaphors Herein we will analyse two expressions used by two political leaders while talking about the recent economic crisis respectively in Italy and in the United States. The first example is taken from the posters of the party “Partito Democrtico” guided by Pierluigi Bersani2 that used the expression “Oltre” (tr. Beyond). This metaphorical expression is processed in the brain trough embodied simulation that consists in mentally pass through an obstacle (Gallese and Lakoff 2005; Feldman 2008). Secondly we will analyse a sentence spoken by President Obama: “we should stand in someone else’s shoes”, that implies an embodied simulation but with some substantial differences. This way we will show differences between the communication strategy of two important leaders of the left wing party in Italy and in the United States respectively. Recent PD (Acronym of “Partito Democratico” the largest Left Wing Party in Italy) Posters have been widely discussed and criticized in Italy. Oliviero Toscani, a well-known photographer and advertising expert publicly made fun of his colleagues who designed the poster: “This poster looks like an epitaph more than advertising, black and white, could be a written tomb …more than beyond I would say beyond life. PD seems dead and Bersani the dear extinct”3. The concept expressed in the headline of four different posters is the idea of “going beyond”, metaphorical expression that implies a complex inferential structure. The very minimal visual shows Bersani in black and 2

Leader of the most important party, as numbers of electoral support, of the left wing opposition. 3 Oliviero Toscani from L’Espresso online, 18 March 2011. In the original Italian version there is a linguistic joke between “oltre” (beyond) and the expression “oltretomba” that means (afterlife)

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white, sleeves rolled up, a reverb of the last spot “let’s roll up our sleeves”, expressing happiness and determination certainly in a very restrained way; the closed mouth showing a weak smile together with the effect of black and white transmit a coldness effect that seems to be in contrast with the concept that wants to be expressed by the poster4. The message as we said is focused on the idea of going beyond, used in four different posters with different headlines, maybe the most known is: “Beyond the crisis (economic crisis), there is the courage of the companies”. Just the expression “beyond the crisis” contains two very common conceptual metaphors: “Life is a journey” and “Crisis is an entity” (Lakoff 1980; Lakoff and Johnson 1999 for a review). Recent research in Cognitive Linguistics showed that the comprehension of this metaphorical expression will be guided by mental simulation that is organized and structured by image-schemas (Talmy 1975; Johnson, 1987) pre-conceptual structures that are embodied in our reasoning by the interaction with the physical environment (e.g. embodied construction of reality). Through this structure our perceptions are organized and made coherent (Evans and Green 2006 for review). The theory of image-schema derives from research on Gestalt psychology. Image-schemas are defined as virtual structures that permit the comprehension and the action in the world. Those structures permit also the metaphorical mapping between abstract to physical domain, and then make understandable complex concepts trough simple physical experiences. It is extremely common for metaphors to take image schemas as their input. A great many metaphorical models use a spatial domain as their source domain. Among the most common source domains for metaphorical models are containers, orientations, journeys (with paths and goals), vertical impediments, etc. (Lakoff 1987). Italian political leader, Pierluigi Bersani, evokes the "life is a journey" metaphor in his poster. This metaphor is embodied because of the image schema of the journey. To understand this sentence in our mind we create a virtual scenario in which there is a landmark, in this case represented by “crisis”, and a trajectory that will “go beyond” it, passing at a certain height. In this scenario there will be a journey (life) that will go from A to B. In the middle of this virtual path there is an entity (the economic crisis) and the subject will go beyond this entity to reach a point B (the courage of the companies). But what is the subject of this description? It is used an impersonal form, “the courage” which is an abstract subject. In this case,

4

For a survey of recent studies on expression of emotions: cfr. Ekman and Friesen 2003, Ekman 2003.

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because of such an abstract and not well defined subject, during the mental simulation we could experience a sense of undetermined perspective: in some sense this expression could even disorient us. We believe that the use of the “embodied metaphor” that triggers the mental simulation is a right and efficient choice but at the same time is important to respect “the metaphorical coherence”. All single expressions used, in particular if in public speaking or political campaigning, are very important and every choice on the language used could influence the understanding and meaning that the electorate would get out of it. Using an explicit subject for example, a first plural for instance, would have been possible to guide the comprehension of the utterance and trigger the metaphorical simulation better than leaving this sense of uncertainty.

4. Embodied metaphors as vehicle for communicate values Moving to the American context we can see how President Obama on the other hand has used more than once the sentence “we should stand in someone else’s shoes”, which has been repeated numerous times in his public speeches5: “It is at the heart of my moral code and it is how I understand the Golden Rule -- not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but as something more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes” (Obama 2006). Even though the inferential structure of this sentence is simple it has numerous implications and there is a precise reason of why it has been used and why it has been a great idea to use it. First, this expression contains a figure of speech, “the metonymy”, which maps the domain of the “shoes” to the “person”. Another metonymy in the sentence connects the shoes with the “journey of life” thorough which we “walk”. This sentence is particularly effective because it summarizes and expresses in a very clear and syncretic way the empathic moral view that is at the basis of the Democratic Party: Anyone who puts pure empathy first will empathize with the other fully, put himself in the other’s shoes, and therefore not want the other to experience harm-illness, weakness, poverty, misery, deterioration, and so on. It is in this way that nurturant parent morality keeps in touch with questions of individual human flourishing and hence keeps from losing touch with the foundation of all abstract, metaphorical morality (Lakoff 2002). 5

It is indeed a recurring expression in Obama’s public speeches. For a review, cf. http://progressivespirit.com/empathy/Obama/SpeechIndex.htm

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As Lakoff repeated often in his numerous works on this subject, the way we reason about politics, as with other important domains of experience, is metaphorical. The conceptual metaphor we use for government in particular is the family model (cf. Lakoff 2004 for a review). There are two family metaphors that represent the relation between the government and the people. Two different moral views, different ideas of the family that – thanks to a conceptual mapping – represent the way people relate to government, look for in an incoming president and relate to the power dynamics. These two ideas of a Nation represent the moral view of Conservative and Democratic Party, left and right wing. The Conservative Party uses a strict father morality and the Democratic Party a nurturing parent model. The strict father gives orders, punishes and transmits the personal interest as a social value; the nurturing parent tries to explain, instead of giving orders and teaches a strong idea of community in which empathy is central. In this context we can clearly see how this expression is ascribed in Democratic moral view. Moreover, the expression used by President Obama gains particular evidence if we relate it to recent discoveries in the cognitive and mind sciences. This message in fact seems very well built if we analyse recent discoveries about how we get meaning out of a political message. Recent discoveries of the National Institute of Health underline the growth of neural activity in the brain in the limbic system related to positive emotions in correspondence with a moral action (e.g. helping another person) (Moll et al. 2006). Antonio Damasio in the field of neurology gave great contributions for the study of decision making. He discovered a structure in the brain that he called “somatic marker” that connects the dramatic dimension of a narrative with the limbic system. He showed evidence that the activation of the part of the brain related to emotional response is crucial for making any important decision, so important in fact that the decision making process is more damaged if a patient has a stroke in that part of the brain (Damasio 1995). Taking into account that political communication is always related to decision making, it is clear that a message that is capable of provoking emotional response would be more effective, especially on the election day. Another important research finding in this context gives more evidence of the power of the sentence used by the President of the United States. Drew Westen, a clinical psychologist of the Emory University, did extensive research on the relation of emotions and vote preferences (Westen 2008 for a review). In his recent book he quoted a research of Yale University where it had been shown that basing interviews on the

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emotions felt in relation to a candidate is a great indicator of Voter preference. In some cases the number of right predictions made in this way was higher than the ones made by directly asking Voters of their preferences (Abelson et al. 1982). An expression like the one used by President Obama, which is a strong call for empathy, is particularly effective if we take into account the research in neurology about mirror-neurons and their relations to language understanding. The Mirror-Neuron System is a simulation mechanism that happens in the brain discovered by Italian scientists at the University of Parma. They showed that some particular kinds of neurons called mirrorneurons, that are active when we perform an action, are active when we see an action performed by a person in front of us (in particular this mechanism runs in the parieto-frontal cortex of the brain). This kind of activation occurs also in the limbic system (Iacoboni et al. 2005). The activation in this area would explain why, when we see a person experience activation in the limbic system (e.g. feeling emotions), we often “empathize” (Iacoboni 2006). If we take these discoveries all together we could see the strong influence of the expression “we should stand in someone else’s shoes” used by Obama for his public discourses. Clearly, this speaks to “the hearts of the people” but what we have determined here is that it also speaks at the same time, and perhaps more strongly even, to our brain.

Conclusion Through the analysis of these political messages we have seen how the words of a political leader, in particular the ones of Obama, especially if metaphorical, can condense a strong meaning if they are chosen carefully and in harmony with how the human mind is shaped, and especially in regards to how humans process information and assign meaning to linguistic expressions. The creation of a message should take into account all the complexity of the semiotic process, the numerous elements of background that are part of the message and the complex inferential structure that comes from a simple expression and leads to the understanding of a deep moral view. What is condensed in a multi medial spot brings us back to the binomial of “communication and rhetoric”, at the antiquity of the Greek and western reasoning on language. A deep analysis of these phenomena will bring us to the profound movement in the social mentality and the constant revolution of the relationship between politics and society.

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References Abelson R.P., Kinder D.R., Peters M.D., Fiske S.T. (1982). “Affective and semantic components in Political Person Perception”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42: 619௅630. Aristotle (1999). Politics. Kichener: Baoche Books. —. (1998). Poetics. Orange Street Press. The Internet Classics Archive: http://sparks.eserver.org/books/poetics.html —. (2010). Rhetoric. Harlzleton, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series. Damasio A. (1994). Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam Publishing. Danesi M. (1995). Giambattista Vico and the Cognitive Science Entreprise. New York: Baltimore. —. (2001). Lingua, metafora, concetto. Vico e la linguistica cognitiva. Bari: Modugno. Di Cesare D. (1986). “Sul concetto di metafora”. Bollettino del centro di studi vichiani, 16: 325௅334. Di Pietro S. and Wehling E. (2011). “La glorificazione di Silvio. Un’analisi dei ‘frames religiosi’ nei discorsi pubblici di Silvio Berlusconi”. In: Comunicazione Politica, 3: 321௅342. Ekman P. and Friesen W.V. (2003). Unmasking the face. Cambridge (MA): Malor Books. Ekman P. (2003). Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Evans V. and Green M. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Feldman J. (2006). From Molecule to Metaphor. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Gallese V. and Lakoff G. (2005). “The Brain’s Concepts: The role of the sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge”. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 21: 3௅4. Gallese V. (2009). “Mirror neurons, embodied simulation and the neural basis of social identification”. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 19: 519–536. Gensini S. and Martone A. (ed.) 2002. “Ingenium propria hominis natura”. In: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Vichinani. Napoli: Liguori: 7–27. Gensini S. (2004). Fare Comunicazione. Roma: Carocci. —. (2005). “Linguaggio e natura umana: Vico, Herder e la sfida di Cartesio”. In: Cacciatore G., Gessa Kurotschka V., Nuzzo E., Sanna

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M. and Scognamiglio A., eds. Il corpo e le sue facoltà G.B. Vico. Laboratorio dell’ISPF, www.ispf.cnr.it/ispf-lab, II, 1. —. (2007). “La mente retorica. Su alcuni tipi di comunicazione”. In: D’Alessandro L., ed. Il gioco dell’intelligenza collettiva. Milano: Guerini: 99௅118. —. (2008). “Comunicazione e cognizione”. In: Terzo Millennio. Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana. —. (2010). “Vedere il simile? In margine ad Aristotele, Poetica (21-22)”. In: Gagliasso E. (ed.), Metafora del vivente. Milano: Franco Angeli: 29–38. Grady J. (1997). Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. Ph.D. dissertation. Berkeley: University of California. Grady J. and Johnson C. (2002). “Converging evidence of the notions of Subscene and Primary Scene”. In: Dirven R. and Pörings R., eds. Metaphor and Metonimy in comparison and contrast. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 533–554. Iacoboni M., Molnar-Szakacs I., Gallese V., Buccino G., Mazziotta J.C., Rizzolatti G. (2005). “Grasping the intentions of others with one's own mirror neuron system”. PLoS Biology, 3 (3): e79. Iacoboni M. (2006). “The Mirror System and the consequences of its dysfunction”. Nature, 7: 942–951. Lakoff G. and Johnson M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. (2002). Moral Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant. Know your values and frame the debate. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing. —. (2008). The Political Mind. New York: Viking. Johnson M. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moll J., Krueger F., Zahn R., Pardini M., De Oliveira-Souza R., Grafman J. (2006). “Human Fronto-mesolimbic Networks Guide Decision About Charitable Donation”. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, 42: 15623–15628. Obama B. (2006). The Audacity of Hope. New York: Crown Publisher. Shannon C. (1948). “A mathematical theory of communication”. The Bell System Technical Journal, 27: 379–423, 623–656. Vico G.B. (2008). La scienza nuova. Milano: R.C.S. Libri. Westen D. (2008). La Mente Politica. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

CHAPTER EIGHT METAPHOR USE IN EDUCATION A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO INVESTIGATING LANGUAGE USE IN A SPECIFIC FIELD OF STUDY

JOHN C. WADE

Introduction This chapter examines some uses of metaphor in educational discourse. A brief overview of metaphor is provided, where two main ideas are examined, firstly that metaphor is to be found deeply embedded in our way of thinking and acting, and secondly metaphor can be exploited in shaping our way of thinking about and acting upon a problem (Hypothesis 1). The second section of the chapter illustrates an approach to analysing the specific characteristics of language genres through the use of corpora. The construction of a corpus and exploitation of the linguistic data contained within it are outlined and, finally some of the drawbacks of this approach are described. The third section of the chapter investigates metaphor in educational discourse. It was decided to focus attention on one underlying metaphor, which we hypothesised could be EDUCATION IS A JOURNEY (Hypothesis 2). The data collected is described and analysed and conclusions concerning the findings of the study are presented.

1. Views on metaphor There is much debate about the use of metaphor in everyday language (Cameron and Low 1999). Within the space of this chapter a lengthy overview of metaphor theory is not possible, but some considerations are necessary in order to define metaphor within the context of this study.

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In its most generally accepted sense a metaphor is a figure of speech or “trope” (Leech and Short 1981, p. 139) which implies a comparison between one thing and another: “Treating X as if it were, in some ways, Y.” (Low 1988, p. 126). This means that we need to take into account three distinct elements in the comparison, usually labelled in literary studies as tenor (the subject under discussion), vehicle (the chosen analogy) and ground (those qualities which the first two have in common) (Wales 1989, p. 474). For instance, in Lakoff and Johnson’s seminal work Metaphors We Live By, they examine, among many others, the metaphor AN ARGUMENT IS A JOURNEY (ibid. 1980, p. 90) in which the topic (tenor), an argument, is likened to a journey (vehicle). In common (ground) these two elements can have a beginning (DEPARTURE), they go forward (HORIZONTAL MOVEMENT) and they can arrive at a conclusion (DESTINATION). Unlike a simile, where we state that X is in some ways similar to Y, in metaphor we affirm that X is Y (Pinker 2008, p. 262). In this sense the vehicle is of great importance, because it can be based on a conscious choice and it colours the message we intend to transmit. It is for this reason that LOVE IS A JOURNEY (Cameron and Low 1999, p. 79), but at the same time one could also say LOVE IS FIRE. Here, Cameron and Low (ibid.) make a useful distinction between two types of metaphor: conceptual and linguistic. In the former case, the metaphorical reference may be more obscure, an underlying metaphor which reflects our way of thinking about a problem, so if LOVE IS A JOURNEY then a relationship, for example, can “arrive at a crossroads” (ibid., p. 79). The linguistic metaphor, on the other hand, might be more direct as in The Doors song Light My Fire, where LOVE IS FIRE with its more explicit sexual connotations. Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p. 3) take the view: that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

This raises the question of whether metaphor affects our way of thinking subconsciously or whether speakers use metaphors consciously and are thus able to extend them. The latter means that the characteristics of the metaphor are inferred by speakers, who understand the relationships which go together to form the whole (Pinker 2008: 248, 253). Underlying metaphors, commonly more or less obscure in a first surface level reading, represent, therefore, a kind of shared cultural knowledge which opens our understanding of the world in which we live. Nevertheless, the underlying metaphor can be extended in more overt forms in the conceptualisation of

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specific problems, on condition that the speakers share the same underlying metaphorical perception of the problem in question. Boyd (1993, cited in Pinker 2008, p. 257), for example, reasons that: the use of metaphor is one of the many devices available to the scientific community to accomplish the task of accommodation of language to the causal structure of the world.

In this way we might view metaphor as a means of “framing” a problem. Schön (1979, cited in Block 1999, p. 135) sees metaphor from two viewpoints. Firstly, as a “product” which he defines as a “frame” or “a way of looking at things”. Secondly, as a “process” through which “new perspectives on the world come into existence”. In this chapter it is hypothesised that metaphor is used in educational discourse for framing specific problems (product) but it may also contribute to shaping and putting into practice educational policy (process) (Hypothesis 1). The following sections examine how corpora can be used in analysing the specific characteristics of language use in a particular area, before moving on to the question of metaphor in educational discourse.

2. Corpora and language research The subject of this chapter represents only one aspect of an on-going study into educational discourse, which covers such areas as specialised terminology and word formation (cf. Bauer 1983), recurrent morphosyntactic patterns (cf. Leech and Short 1981), textual cohesion (cf. Halliday and Hasan 1976) and wider discourse patterns in text structure (cf. Swales 1990). The aim of the study is twofold: a)

To identify the main characteristics if educational discourse. Education in itself covers a vast area, up to now largely neglected in linguistic studies, subsuming such disciplines as pedagogy (e.g. teaching; learning; testing), psychology (e.g. child development; learning disorders; discipline issues), sociology (e.g. background; modern society; mobility), politics and administration (e.g. governance; accountability) and, ultimately, the New Technologies (e.g. e-learning; distance learning; networking). b) The data gathered and analysed can then be used in the production of EAP (cf. Swales ibid.) or ESP (cf. Hutchinson and Waters 1987) teaching materials for, in this specific case, Italian students on degree courses in Educational Studies (cf. Wade 2006).

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For the purposes of this chapter, in the first phase of this exploratory study it was decided to create a relatively small Education Corpus based on 101 conference papers (approximately 600,000 words of text) available online at the University of Leeds British Education Index. For the purposes of a wider study further genres need to be added and it is intended to employ data from online newspapers and academic articles published in specialised journals. The reason for this choice is to find a balance (Hunston 2002, p. 28) among different ways of talking about education. While the academic text will tend to be more measured, the media text tends to be more colourful, often mixing formal and informal registers. Therefore, it becomes difficult to identify a “standard” form of educational discourse, since the language used can be influenced not only by the variety of disciplines within education (see above), but also the specific house style of the publication, the individual style of the writer, political inclinations or the distinction between native and non-native speakers of English (in the Corpus used here 47% of the data was produced by non-native speakers1, mostly from Scandinavian countries or Eastern Europe). Consequently, a broad overview of different text types provides a clearer picture of educational discourse in its broadest sense. Meyer (2002, p. 55) describes the creation of a corpus as a three-stage process, starting with the collection of data, as outlined above, then proceeding to the computerisation and annotation of the data. Once the material has been collected, it needs to be converted into a standard format and checked for errors. This is a laborious process, but useful also for familiarising oneself with the contents and formulating initial hypotheses about the peculiar characteristics of the text type(s) which are the object of study. For the purposes of this study the KWIC (Key Word in Context) tool is used. This tool allows us to index the lemmata (Hunston 2002, pp. 17-18), or related word forms (e.g. educate, educator, education, educational etc.), in the corpus and then select them for analysis. Selected lemmata are displayed in the concordance box of the KWIC tool which also allows a variable number of words in each concordance line. Each concordance line is assigned a code number (BEI – British Education Index, number of 1

Here, there is also the question of establishing whether the speaker uses English as a second or foreign language, or if the article has been translated from the first language. This raises the question as to the overall validity of data contained in a corpus in terms of its linguistic homogeneity. This study, for example, is examining the language of education and not, necessarily, language variation, although this would also be an interesting path to follow.

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article, number of context). This is illustrated in simplified form (the KWIC tool provides longer concordance lines) below in Table 1. Table 1: Concordances with lemma “educate” (British Education Index 2004) BEI101 BEI102 BEI203

ic social and health education programmes are related school and formal education cannot alone equip pers a written plan, an Education Action Program (EAP),

BEI204

ework. Special needs education is a delicate field of

BEI305

elandic culture and education system, and the methods

BEI306

neral and special educators and with other colleagues

BEI307

view inclusion as one educational aim amongst many, p

BEI308 BEI309 BEI3010

particular forms of educational provision, avoiding might select. The educational system is traditionally to the Ministry of Education, have been turned over

The KWIC tool provides a word count, which can be used when studying word frequency, and the key word can be analysed in different collocations, facilitating the identification of word groupings and syntactic patterns. In addition it is also possible to “tag” or label the words in a corpus. If we wish to analyse the grammatical function, for instance, of a lexical item, we tag each example, either using an automatic tagging programme or manually in cases where an automatic programme would be unable to make distinctions. In the ten samples above there are three derivations of the root form “educate” (in order of frequency): “education”, “educational” and “educator”. We can observe that “education” here has two grammatical functions, impersonal singular common noun and “adjectivalized” (Huddleston 1988, p. 111) noun which can be tagged using the following tokens: and . The lexical item “educational” is an attributive adjective, tagged and “educators” is a plural common noun referring to persons, tagged . See Table 2 below.

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and health educationprogrammes are related

BEI102

and formal educationcannot alo

BEI203

ten plan, an EducationAction Program (EAP

BEI204

ecial needs educationis a deli

BEI305

culture and educationsystem, and the methods

BEI306 BEI307 BEI308 BEI309 BEI3010

and special educatorsand with other clusion as one educationalaim amongst many, icular forms of educationalprovision, a might select. The educationalsystem is tradi e Ministry of Education, have

From this small sample we may deduce, for example, that adjectival pre-modification is very common. Manual tagging is particularly useful when investigating the meaning of lexical items. For instance, in a study carried out by Federici and Wade (2007) into the metaphorical meanings of LIGHT in educational discourse, 300 references to light were analysed manually, tagged according to meaning (ILLUMINATION, WEIGHT, UNDERSTANDING, KNOWLEDGE), and then extended automatically to the rest of the corpus which contained 900 references in all. While the approach illustrated above is useful for the analysis of large bodies of text, there are a number of disadvantages: a) The corpus represents language use at a given point in time. In educational discourse, as in other types, language, themes and topics change very quickly, so the data collected may be obsolete even before beginning an analysis. b) It is time-consuming, firstly, because of the need to format and correct the raw data collected. Secondly, the data needs to be annotated, for example in the study mentioned above (Wade and Federici 2007) it was calculated that the manual annotation of 900 contexts required about seven hours of work. To this should be added the final classification of the data in publishable form. c) The distribution of the samples may be irregular. In the above illustration, the samples were selected from three articles in the corpus and six out of ten came from the same article. This has implications which we shall see in the third section of the chapter.

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d) There can be problems with copyright. Permission needs to gained to download and store material, for example from online newspapers and specialised journals. Open access material on the Web can be of dubious quality, since there is little or no refereeing of the content. In the next section we shall illustrate a preliminary exploratory study of metaphor in the language of education, employing the procedures outlined above.

3. Metaphor and educational discourse In recent years work has been carried out on how metaphor is employed in teacher discourse (cf. in particular Cameron 2003), while an examination of metaphorical reference in terms of how we perceive or think about education has been somewhat neglected. As a starting point we could examine those areas which underlie educational policy in general, such issues as how we view knowledge, educational management, teaching and learning, the role of the teacher and learner and the New Technologies in educational processes. These are all areas under examination in our overall project, but within the space of this chapter a detailed discussion is not possible. Therefore, only one aspect of metaphor in educational discourse will be illustrated. The first stage in the research approach adopted here is to formulate an initial hypothesis about how metaphor may be used in educational discourse. Our main interest lies in education policy in modern society and, in particular European Union policy, which needs to confront increasing globalisation, an aging society and rapid technological change. One of the central themes of European policy is that of educating European citizens to contribute to the economic and cultural development of the so-called Eurozone, and if the world is in constant change, then each citizen needs to keep up with the times in order to be a productive member of society. It is for this reason that the idea of “lifelong learning” is recurrent in modern educational literature. The European Universities’ Charter on Lifelong Learning, for instance, outlines some of the principles: Currently the terminology of lifelong learning embraces many concepts – including initial education for disadvantaged groups, continuing education and training for well-qualified graduates, and post-retirement opportunities for cultural enrichment – and is subject to considerable local, regional and national interpretation (European University Association 2008).

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Therefore, the education process might be viewed as being continuous, a form of “journey” through life, a narrative of life experience. Here we might draw a contrast between two views of the narrative life-journey, as described, and illustrated by horizontal lines, at times, interrupted by curious deviations, in Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759-67/1997, pp. 391-392). In the first place there is the straight line, a simple journey from A to B, while in the second place there is a more tortuous path filled with interludes and digressions. Intuition tells us that the latter comes closer to reality, and that if this corresponds to our life-journey, it may also correspond to our lifelong educational experiences. Thus, our starting hypothesis is that EDUCATION IS A JOURNEY, which might not be the mere smooth arrival at a pre-established, institutionalised destination (Hypothesis 2). The second stage of the procedure was to establish a number of keywords associated with the concept of JOURNEY (hereafter capitalised when referring to the metaphor under examination). A dictionary of synonyms and a thesaurus (Manser 1989, p. 198; Kirkpatrick 1987, pp. 127-137) were used for this purpose. These keywords were then analysed using the KWIC concordancer. The initial results are shown in Table 3 below, with the overall frequency, non-metaphorical meanings and metaphorical meanings related to JOURNEY. Table 3: Relative frequencies of keywords Non-metaphorical Keyword way course pathway path track route road journey lane highway trip voyage itinerary

2 3

Frequency 965 475 35 27 23 21 18 14 8 7 6 Ø Ø

2 399 Ø Ø 13 Ø 2 Ø Ø Ø 6 Ø Ø

Here the reference is to a ‘course of action’ or ‘strategy’. Temporal markers referring to ‘the flow of time’.

Metaphorical JOURNEY Other 40 9232 37 393 35 Ø 27 Ø 10 Ø 21 Ø 16 Ø 14 Ø 8 Ø 7 Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø

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The next stage was to analyse the concordance lines generated for each keyword, in order to identify recurrent patterns both with regard to meaning and structure. Unless otherwise stated, the examples below are based on general trends and patterns observed in the corpus data and not direct quotations. The most frequent keyword way initially seemed to be the most problematic. In the CollinsCobuild English Dictionary there are 94 entries and in many cases it has lost its metaphorical meaning of “path” or “route” towards a destination, displaying what Cameron and Low (1999, p. 79) term as the “linguistic frozenness” of idioms rather than true metaphor. It was found, however, that the samples could be grouped in four main areas. These were “non-metaphorical”, “metaphorical” for JOURNEY, and two main idiomatic uses (Examples 1-11) included in the “OTHER” column of Table 3 (See Note 2). It can be used to state the extent to which something is true, pre-modified with a quantifier, which can also be an adjective (Example 3) or noun (Example 4): 1. 2. 3. 4.

in some way in many ways in several ways in a variety of ways

It can also refer to how something is done, followed by a relative clause, with (Example 6) or without (Example 7) the relative pronoun: 5. 6. 7.

in a way which/that the way in which the practitioner acts the way the practitioner acts

In addition, it can also be followed by an infinitive or the preposition “of”, with the same meaning as Examples 5-7, and it is often pre-modified with an adjective (Examples 10,11): 8. 9. 10. 11.

a way to include individuals a way of including individuals a new way of an alternative way of

These uses are by far the most frequent in the corpus and while one could argue that adopting a strategy is choosing a path to follow, the common use of these expressions leads the metaphor to lose its force.

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The uses of way as JOURNEY are comparatively rare. In its literal sense, it is used only twice in the corpus, meaning “to orient oneself”: 12. finding one’s way around

There are figurative uses of this construction, with verbs of “seeking” and “way/ways to”, where “to” is part of the infinitive indicating the purpose of something, or the preposition indicating that there is a destination to be reached. The metaphor is closer to that of JOURNEY, since it can be likened to “choosing a route to take”: 13. find ways to 14. seeking ways to 15. look for ways to

The most overt use, closest to the JOURNEY metaphor is when combined with the prepositions “forward” or “on”, which suggests movement in a particular direction: 16. be a way forward 17. offer a way forward 18. on the way

Example 18 means “during the JOURNEY” and in the corpus it occurs only once in “taking detours on the way” (BEI3906). The most common meaning of the keyword course, which could be interpreted literally as “flow of events”, is “a programme of studies”. In this case it is classified as literal, because through common use it has lost its metaphorical force. It is frequently pre-qualified by an adjective/adjectives or adjectivalized noun(s): 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

short courses BEd degree course PGCE course Professional Initiation Course vocational courses

It can itself be adjectivalized or used in a compound construction, as illustrated in the examples below: 24. course material 25. coursework 26. course design

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27. course goals

Further examples come closer to the JOURNEY metaphor, since they more overtly imply moving along a path using the defining preposition “of”, i.e. defining what is foreseen in the JOURNEY undertaken: 28. 29. 30. 31.

course of study course of training course of instruction in the course of a career

Finally, course is used in a number of expressions which here are defined as temporal markers, since they refer to the flow of time. Although the meaning is clearly metaphorical (They are included in the “OTHER” column of Table 3. See Note 3), again we find that the force of the metaphor has largely been lost, as they have become “idioms” (Leech, Short 1981, p. 80) or common set expressions (compare with Examples 111 above): 32. 33. 34. 35.

as a matter of course during the course of in due course over the course of

The keyword pathway was used exclusively in its figurative sense. The connotation associated with this term is that of a pre-established route and is often pre-qualified by an adjective or adjectivalized noun (Examples 36, 37): 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

career pathways learning pathways academic pathways vocational pathways multiple pathways flexible pathways customised pathways

In all of these cases the plural form of the noun is used, indicating the possibility of making choices, and in Examples 40-42 this flexibility is emphasised by the choice of adjectival modification. This is perfectly in line with European Union policy on education, where emphasis is placed on greater mobility within the Union and greater coordination and

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flexibility of education systems (cf. The European Universities’ Charter on lifelong learning above). Similarly, path is only used in its figurative sense and its meaning is the same. However, it tends to be used more dynamically with verbs of motion, e.g. “go”, or prepositions of movement “with respect to a destination” (Quirk, Greenbaum 1973, p. 147), e.g. “to” and “down”, for example: 43. 44. 45. 46.

on the path to follow the path offer other paths go down a path

In addition, the learner (henceforth intended in its widest sense in school, academic or professional settings) can also find hindrances on his/her JOURNEY: 47. BEI38033 This is a painful path to go down, but one that has been a necessary part of my self-awareness to analyse both my strengths and weaknesses. (Field 2003 online)

Thus, the educational JOURNEY is fraught with dangers and difficulties. As we shall see below, this is a common characteristic of educational discourse when dealing with educational processes. An analysis of track proves to be more problematic, since it can have two distinct meanings. Firstly, “to check” or “to keep under control”: 48. to track 49. to keep track of 50. the tracking of

This has lost its metaphorical meaning, so the examples have been classified as literal. Instead, its second meaning can be similar to “path”: 51. 52. 53. 54.

on different tracks on a track that leads to on the same track stay on track

In all of these examples we have a sense of moving forward. Moreover, it is also possible, as we have seen above, for the learner to find difficulties on the JOURNEY, and the learner can also find him/herself “on the wrong

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track” (BEI840148), while finding oneself in a familiar or “safe” environment involves “going down well-worn tracks” (BEI510146). Much the same can be said of the keyword route, although, while in a literal sense a path, a track or a road are constructed or established, a “route” is planned when we intend to make a journey. Therefore, it is a choice among different options. In the examples it tends to be preceded by an adjective/adjectives (Examples 55, 56, 59), adjectivalized noun(s) (Example 57) or participle compounds (Example 58): 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

different routes to official route for work and study route work-based route alternative routes to

In the samples collected there is also reference to “planning a route” and, indeed, we see here again the idea of moving forward to a possible goal, with the directional preposition “to” (Examples 55, 59) and the preposition of purpose “for” (Example 56), i.e. “in order to achieve something”. The idea of travel is also to be found in the examples with road. It is commonly used with prepositions and verbs (Example 63) of movement where a destination is foreseen: 60. 61. 62. 63.

road to on the road to along the road roads leading to

In addition, there are also verbal forms stemming from the action of “walking” which reinforce the metaphorical impact: 64. gain a foothold on the road 65. tread along the road 66. take a wrong turn in the road

This implies that there are different ways of “walking down the road”, slowly, quickly, carefully, carelessly and so on. Finally, a significant point in the learner’s JOURNEY, where one is required to make a decision, is referred to as “being at a crossroads”: 67. professional crossroads 68. at a crossroads in one’s life

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The keyword journey differs from the previous examples in that it is not confined within the specific boundaries of a path. While it is possible to “keep to a path”, “keeping to a journey” is not conceptually “coherent” (Widdowson 1983:69-71). In the samples from the corpus we find that journey is frequently pre-qualified with an adjective (Example 71), an adjectivalized noun (Example 70) or a gerundive form (Example 69): 69. learning journey 70. research journey 71. reflective journey

Rather than the more institutionalised uses of the previous examples, i.e. the pre-established route, here the reference is more to personal experiences in the sense that it refers to a “journey of discovery”, a form of consciousness raising experience: 72. BEI51012 My journey has taken me from insider to outsider, from native to stranger but my two years within my present research location has drawn me into shared histories and many of the “taken for granted” assumptions of the host group. (Le Gallais 2003 online)

It is also interesting to note that the JOURNEY can also be “mapped” in order to define more clearly the route to be followed: 73. […] forward and backward mapping of learning trajectories. (Biemans and Poell 2003 online)

Among the samples gathered in the present study, reference to lane is more specific, in that it means “a particular pathway different from others”, referring to school provision for special needs learners: 74. a special lane

It should be noted here that we meet an example of uneven distribution, since all of the examples occur in the same conference paper, as do the references to the keyword highway. The author of the paper introduces her argument by referring directly to the metaphor she has chosen to illustrate her argument. A short extract is provided below in order to illustrate how metaphor can be woven into an educational discourse (the italics are mine): Teachers, who focused on giving their disabled students access to the general education curriculum, guided them on their journey along the

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rough highway of society. Teachers, who segregated their disabled students in order to make them fit the school’s bureaucratic structure, or because they believed that all disabled students should follow the same path, or to prepare them for a successful passage into society, encouraged the disabled students to proceed along the special lane leading to the segregated world of disability. The teachers working for group inclusion can be said, at best, to be trying to gain their students a foothold on both roads. The students heading for a nomadic life on the winding paths of the real world had a variety of teachers, some of whom tried to include them in general education classes, others who closed the road to classroom integration completely (Bjarnason 2003 online).

This longer extract has been chosen because it is unusual for an academic paper, since the metaphorical reference is particularly heavily marked or “foregrounded” (Leech, Short 1981: 28), almost as if it were a literary text. Nevertheless, the key conceptual elements in the extract reflect many of the observations made up to this point regarding education as a JOURNEY. They are summarised below in Table 4: Table 4: Key concepts in Bjarnason’s educational JOURNEY Key concepts

Analysis

to be guided on a journey

A journey is not always as smooth as we would wish it to be. In this case the role of the teacher is redefined. Rather than teacher as a source of all knowledge, the metaphor TEACHER AS CARER4 is implicit in guiding the leaner along a path.

gain a foothold on the road

The role of the teacher is to aid the learner in acquiring a sound basis for achieving his/her aims in life.

rough highway

The route which a learner has to take in order to achieve success is insidious and full of hindrances, interludes and digressions, even to the extent of interrupting the educational process.

winding paths close the road follow a path proceed along a lane passage into society head for a nomadic life

In order to achieve goals, the learner has to follow a pre-determined route established by educational policy. There can be a direct, planned pathway which leads to inclusion or a lack of clearly defined strategies leading to exclusion.

4 An aspect of metaphorical reference which will be examined in further studies which are currently underway.

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Bjarnason (ibid.) goes on to say that there is the risk of exclusion for special needs learners and school policy needs to take this into consideration (the italics are mine): No one is predetermined to spend his or her life on the same track, but experiences at school, with its processes of inclusion and exclusion, can stifle or further each and every disabled student’s ability to remain on the current road, move across to the alternative, or wander on in the wilderness.

We still find the JOURNEY metaphor, but while “track” and “road” represent a pre-defined path to follow, the “wilderness” represents the absence of such a pre-defined path, constraining the learner to “wander on” without any guide or reference point for orientation, i.e. there is no clearly defined path to take. The last three keywords did not provide any significant data. The meaning of trip is exclusively literal, as in “field trip” or “school trip”. For voyage there were no examples, although the term was chosen having in mind, for example, the expression “to sail through one’s university career” and itinerary or variants (for example, “itinerate”, “itinerant”, “itineracy”) were not present in the corpus. To sum up our analysis of the corpus-based data so far, we need to look at two distinct aspects of this study. Firstly, the general kinds of patterns which emerge in the way in which language is used to speak of the educational process, and secondly, what implications this has on the application of educational policy today. Our starting point was to examine noun forms referring to the concept of JOURNEY. The head noun is frequently pre-modified with adjectives, adjectival compounds or adjectivalized nouns. These can be grouped together to form more or less complex noun phrases, following the pattern DETERMINER-ADJECTIVAL MODIFIER-NOUN, illustrated in Table 5 below: Table 5: Adjectival modification Det

Adj-Mod

N

a

work-based initial professional development

pathway

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Examination of the data gathered shows that the head noun referring to JOURNEY is often, unsurprisingly, combined with verbal forms and prepositions of movement. Therefore, in the corpus we find “go”, “walk”, “tread”, “follow”, “lead to”, “move”, for example. It is noted that the speed of the process can also be emphasised, since one can “sail through one’s exams”, or “plod through school” or the following example from the corpus (the italics are mine): 75. BEI3807 At times I felt this action research journey was more like a roller coaster than a train ride. (Field 2003 online)

Here, in a personal diary study, we see a contrast between fast (and exciting/dangerous?) and slow (and relaxing/safe?). The JOURNEY can have a clear objective, as with “head for”, or perhaps the learner has no clear guidance, so the verb “wander” is used. From this we may deduce that the JOURNEY has a start and a finish. Thus we can find “starting point”, “outset” or verbal forms like “get underway”. The conclusion of the JOURNEY is usually reaching or achieving an “aim”, “goal”, “target”, “objective”, “outcome” or “destination” (Foskett, Lumby and Maringe 2003 online). The prepositions generally refer to forward, horizontal movement, such as “to”, “on”, “forward”, “along”, “through” and also “up” and “down”. The latter are interesting in that they are also a kind of metaphorical extension (Quirk, Greenbaum 1973, p. 151), where “up” tends to be negative, e.g. “an uphill struggle”, while “down” tends to be used more frequently in educational discourse, for instance, in “going down a path”, implying a smooth, neutral JOURNEY. We have observed that, in general, the JOURNEY goes forward, but it is also possible to “fall behind” or “back track” and therefore the educational process is bi-directional along a horizontal plane. In the first section it was hypothesised that the metaphors underlying educational discourse can be a tool in shaping and implementing educational policy (Hypothesis 1). There have been significant changes in the last decades. As an example we could take two contrasting views as to how policy can be implemented, traditional and modern, eloquently outlined by Dewey’s influential work Experience and Education as long ago as 1938: To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of

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isolated skills and techniques by drill is opposed acquisition of them by means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world […] (Dewey, cited in Kolb 1985: 5).

The contrast is illustrated in Table 6 below, with specific reference to a three key concepts in education: Table 6: Key concepts in educational discourse Key concepts

Traditional

Modern

The education process

Education is viewed as a pre-established route which is inflexible and which has fixed long-term goals, e.g. final evaluation at the end of a course. Boundaries are drawn between formal education and the professional world or what happens after formal schooling has reached its conclusion.

The education process is viewed as more complex, in particular considering rapid changes in modern society. This dictates a flexible approach following different paths and establishing short-term, attainable objectives (King 1991), e.g. continuous assessment, in an on-going, lifelong process (Eraut 1994) .

Role of the teacher

The teacher is viewed as an absolute authority who represents a source of all knowledge with the task of keeping their learners on the pre-established route mentioned above.

The teacher is a guide with the role of facilitating the learning process, through negotiation a encouraging collaboration (Nunan 1992) and selfreflection (Schön 1987) among the learners.

Role of the learner

All learners follow the same path towards established, long-term objectives. In this process they are passive, empty vessels to be filled with knowledge provided by the teacher.

The individual needs of the learners are considered, since, as Gardner (2006) theorises, each learner has his/her own propensities and inclinations. They are active participants in the on-going education process (Kolb 1984).

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If we return to Laurence Sterne (see above), it could indeed be argued here that the traditional approach is something like a straight line, while the needs of learners in modern society dictate a path which is more tortuous and open-ended, i.e. the underlying principles of lifelong learning (Hypothesis 2).

Conclusion The initial findings of this study provide an interesting starting point for further research in this area. In particular, the corpus needs to be extended to provide a wider selection of texts. Most of the data here goes back to 2003, and thus it needs to be updated and a strategy will need to be developed for overcoming the problem of uneven distribution among the samples. The method used for identifying metaphor will also have to be revised, since, while a focus on noun forms gives us useful insight into rather more obvious metaphorical references, a closer examination of preposition and verb uses can be an aid in understanding metaphor at a deeper, conceptual level (Cameron and Low 1999, p. 80). With regard to the keywords selected in this study, further references have come to light, for example, among others, “passage”, “progress”, “proceed” which will need to be investigated. It is also important to note the limitations of viewing the educational process only as a JOURNEY from A to B. Recently much work has been done on autonomy in learning (Zimmerman 1998), reflective practice in professional training (Schön 1983, 1987) and action research (Mertler 2011). In these cases the path seems to be more of a cycle: PLANNING-ACTION-REFLECTION, where the reflection stage feeds once again into a planning stage. Again, more work needs to be done in this area. A final reflection regards the pedagogical implications of this study. The structural patterns which have emerged provide a very useful basis for the production of English teaching materials for Italian university students on degree courses in Education Studies, focussing specifically on the peculiarities of educational discourse rather than more general EFL syllabi. This concerns, on the basis of the findings of this particular study: specific terminology, complex noun phrases, idioms with “way” and “course”, and, of course, understanding the metaphorical concepts which run through the language of education. From this point of view applied corpus linguistics provides promising prospects for the teaching of English for Specific or Academic Purposes.

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References Bauer L. (1983). English Word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biemans H. and Poell B. (2003). “Investigating competence-based VET in the Netherlands: backgrounds, pitfalls and implications”. British Education Index, http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003380.htm (Accessed 02/03/2012). Bjarnason D.S. (2003). “Students’ voices: How does education in Iceland prepare young people with significant impairments for social inclusion?”. British Education Index. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003410.htm (Accessed 25/02/2012). Block D. (1999). “Who framed SLA research? Problem framing and metaphoric accounts of the SLA research process”. In: Cameron L. and Low G., eds. Researching and Applying Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boyd R. (1993). Metaphor and theory change: What is “metaphor” a metaphor for? In: Ortony A. (ed.) Metaphor and Thought (Second Edition). New York: Cambridge University Press: 481௅532. Cameron L. (2003). Metaphor in Educational Discourse. London: Continuum,. Cameron L. and Low G. (1999). “Metaphor”. Language Teaching, 32: 77௅96. Dewey J (1938). Experience and Education. Indianapolis: Kappa Delta Pi. Eraut M. (1994). Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence. London: The Falmer Press. European University Association (2008). European Universities’ Charter on Lifelong Learning. http://www.eua.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/files/Publications/EUA_Cha rter_Eng_LY.pdf (Accessed 23/02/2012). Federici S. and Wade J.C. (2007). “Letting in the light and working with the Web: A dynamic corpus development approach to interpreting metaphor”. In: Davis M., Rayson P., Hunston S. and Danielsson P., eds. Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference 2007. University of Birmingham, Article #207, http://corpus.bham.ac.uk/corplingproceedings07/paper/207_Paper.pdf (Accessed 25/02/2012). Field J. (2003). “Social capital and lifelong learning: an analysis of survey data”. British Education Index

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http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003377.htm (Accessed 02/03/2012). Foskett N., Lumby J. and Maringe F. (2003). “Pathways and progression at 16+: “fashion”, peer influence and college choice”. British Education Index, http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003252.htm (Accessed 02/03/2012). Gardner H. (2006). Multiple Intelligences: New horizons. New York: Basic Books. Halliday M.A.K. and Hasan R. (1976). Cohesion in English. Harlow: Longman. Hunston S. (2002). Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutchinson T. and Waters A. (1987). English for Specific Purposes: A learning-centred approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. King L. (ed.) (1991). Graded Objectives and the National Curriculum. London: CILT. Kirkpatrick B. (ed.) (1987). The Authorized Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. London: Penguin. Kolb D. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Le Gallais T. (2003). “From native to stranger… and back again? Questions for reflective practitioners”. British Education Index. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003363.htm (Accessed 02/03/2012). Leech G.N. and Short M.H. (1981). Style in Fiction: A linguistic introduction to English fictional prose. Harlow: Longman. Low G. (1988). “On teaching metaphor”. Applied Linguistics, 9 (2): 125௅147. Manser M.H. (ed.) (1989). Chambers Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms. Cambridge: Chambers. Mertler C.A. (2011). Action Research: Improving schools and empowering educators (Third Edition). Thousand Oaks CA: SAGE Publications. Meyer C.F. (2002). English Corpus Linguistics: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nunan D. (ed.) (1992). Collaborative Language Learning and Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinker S. (2008). The Stuff of Thought: Language as a window into human nature. London: Penguin.

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Quirk R. and Greenbaum S. (1973). A University Grammar of English. Harlow: Longman. Schön D.A. (1979). “Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem setting in social policy”. In: Ortony A., ed. Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. —. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. —. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: JosseyBass Publishers. Sinclair J. (ed.) (1995). Collins Cobuild English Dictionary. London: HarperCollins. Sterne L. (1759-67/1997). The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. London: Penguin. Swales J.M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wade J.C. (2006). English for Education. Venezia: Cafoscarina. Wales K. (1989). A Dictionary of Stylistics. Harlow: Longman. Widdowson H.G. (1983). Learning Purpose and Language Use. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zimmerman B. (1998). “Developing self-fulfilling cycles of academic regulation: an analysis of exemplary instructional models”. In: Schunk D.H. & Zimmerman B.J., eds. Self Regulated Learning: From teaching to self-regulated practice. New York: Guilford Press: 1௅19.

CHAPTER NINE METAPHOR USE IN THE WEB THE WINDOW AS A METAPHOR OF THE SPACE IN THE COMPUTERS GRAPHICAL INTERFACES

MAURIZIO GALLUZZO

Introduction The metaphor of the window, generally and more specifically in digital applications, has always aroused great interest. Indeed, in the humanmachine interfaces field, we always work with metaphors. The window metaphor, in particular, – thanks to their rooted social persistence – is destined to last. While we continue to work within these confined spaces, though, Muriel Cooper (1926-1994) in her research activity at MIT in Boston has gone beyond the concept of window to represent the world in a free form. This article is dedicated to her. As often happens in these cases, the most current aspect of research activity cannot be irrespective of the search for the origins of the phenomenon investigated. In this particular case, since computers work with the metaphor of the window, we have investigated the window and its representation, paying particular attention to those forms of representation in which the window is actually a separation element but also an opportunity to break down barriers between the inside and the outside. The window represents the point of the transition between the interior and the exterior, between what we are and what we can just see but we cannot touch. I will present a series of suggestions rather than images, a sequence that speaks for itself and shows the evolution of the concept of window in pictorial representations. In particular, I will focus on some points related to the representation in Western art (Kemp 1990). Without going into a lot of detail about all the paintings, where the window has been represented not only as an environment element, but also as an opportunity for

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“reflection”, I will briefly consider some paintings that have constituted a crucial moment in the collective imaginary of the “window” metaphor.

1. The origins of the “window” metaphor The function the window has in the outside environment is the same one the frame had towards the painting throughout the centuries. In this respect, Matilde Battistini (2000) wrote: Since the outset, the frame appears to play a decisive role in the mechanisms of production and reception of the images, by activating that regulatory and selective function essential to separate the domain of art from the real world. The liminal position and the breaking function between two different forms of reality, i.e. the phenomenal world and the pictorial representation, make the frame an extremely ambiguous object as it is either a “place, or a non-place of an articulation that is never simple and never to be taken for granted, between the space of the work (the inside of the representation), and the space of the viewer (the outside).

The rediscovery of mathematics and geometry, particularly as a form of “truth” and frequently as well as a “spiritual representation” takes us back to the Renaissance, that is to say to the theory and the application of the perspective transformation into a floor-window, not only real, but also symbolic at the same time. By the fifteenth century the linear perspective becomes the only undisputed way of representing reality as if it represents the will of God and His perfection. This record would remain unbroken for at least four centuries. Piero della Francesca himself, in its treaties and in particular in his book De Prospectiva Pingendi (1480), identifies the painting with the perspective, and used “solid geometry” as the basis of his paintings. Moreover, the central perspective introduced another fundamental element: the “reading order” sequence. It is the vanishing point: the central flight became the focus of the whole painting, not only the geometrical centre, but also the symbolic centre of the painting itself. The important element is then at the centre of the composition, in the “perfect” position. Rare, but for this, really interesting to be analysed, are the cases in which the perspective centre, the vanishing point, is placed outside the represented space in the foreground and out of a window, in the landscape itself. The perspective helps the viewer to shift his attention outward, exiting from the window. In a painting by Pietro Perugino exactly this happens: the window is the central symbolic object, the shape, the profile, the nature cut-out. The

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focus of the viewer’s attention is not in the overall outside room, which in this case has a minor role. The main aspect is that the window light illuminates (even symbolically) the human figures that are inside. It sketches the contours of their faces, discovering the true colour of their skin. As Leon Battista Alberti wrote in his treatise De Pictura (1435): “Before painting the surface, I make a large square, as big as I like, with straight angles: which I need to open a window, so as the story can be seen”.

2. The “window” as a metaphor of space Leon Battista Alberti first defined the painting as a window, making it a metaphor which has heavily weighted in Western visual culture. He defined indeed painting as “an open window on the world”, giving the artist the unusual role of a “geometrical operator”, i.e. the one who – thanks to the laws of perspective – could reproduce nature, maybe inventing it or making it similar to how it should have been. This “scientific” method guaranteed to Leon Battista Alberti a way towards the perfection of the representation. His sentence, “an open window on the world”, has taken on an important meaning: it means that the world is represented with absolute accuracy, with maniacal precision. The window then contains what is “true”. Even more interesting are the “windows” opened by Pere Borrell del Caso (1835, Puigcerdà – 1910, Barcelona), the famous Spanish painter, illustrator and engraver, worldwide known for his painting dated 1874 Escapando de la critica (now in Madrid, at Banco de España), a trompel’oeil that frames a blank background, void of life, but from which a human figure comes out. The frame becomes the break between the inside and the outside of the window. Only the title of the painting recalls the vanishing, or better, the escape from criticism in this case. However, its reading could also mean the opposite, that is to say the act of taking refuge inside a closed place in its turn away from the criticism. The depth of the work is essential to appreciate this intersection between the interior and the exterior, in a continuum that helps to interpret the two possible realities. In Flemish paintings the picture becomes a “real” spatial and temporal fragment. Enclosed in the magic rectangle of the frame, there is what happens in a certain place at a certain moment, exactly as in pictures from three centuries later. The reality is represented “without any difference or alteration”. In this evolution of the reading, the painting experienced the most disturbing phenomenon in its history, a sudden phenomenon, which

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calls into question, once and for all, also the documentary role of painting itself, i.e. photography. The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset, in an essay titled Meditations on the frame (1916), then filed in the El Espectador (“The audience”), dated between 1916 and 1934, wrote: The painting, like poetry or music, like any work of art, is an opening into the unreal that magically occurs in our real environment. When I look at this grey wall home, my attitude is, of necessity, a vital utilitarianism. When I look at the picture, I enter into an imaginary fence and I adopt an attitude of pure contemplation. I am, therefore, wall and painting at the same time, two not communicating antagonistic worlds. From real to the unreal, the spirit leaps like from wakefulness to sleep. The work of art is an imaginary island that floats, surrounded on all sides by reality [...]. The canvases are holes drilled in the ideals of changing realities of the Wall: improbability imagines that one looks through the window of the frame. On the other hand, a piece of the city or landscape, seen through the window pane, seems detached from reality and buy a unique heartbeat of ideal.

We shall wait for Marcel Duchamp in his “ready made Fresh Widow”, where the window denied its basic function of seeing through. The painting work starts from a French window and darkens its transparent parts. It prevents the inside-outside relationship, reverses the function and denies it, in order to provoke, but also to ask himself, and make us think about the explicit function of the goods. After him, returning to this theme – dear not only to him but to many surrealists – Max Ernst wrote that, as the role of the poet – starting from the famous Lettre du voyant of Rimbaud (1871) – is to write at the dictation of what you think of him, so the role of the painter is to outline the contours and to project what you see in him. In this case, the artist is the one who creates the frame of what he sees. Maybe an active and passive warped frame, as happens in Surrealism, but always able to place the viewer’s attention on a clearly defined point: a framed point. As Stoichita pointed out in L’instauration du tableau (1993): “While the actual frame is designed to draw a dividing line between “art” and “reality”, the painted frame serves to obfuscate the limit”. The window also has a religious connotation: first of all, indeed, it is at the window that deities appear; furthermore it also represents a place of communication with the light and the sky (a fenestra Coeli); finally it is also the site of each Annunciation (through his glasses pass the rays representing the immaculate conception). So, the window is a gateway between two different worlds: the sacred afterlife and our world.

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On a different side, the window is also the space that the devil uses to enter the house: this representation is often expressed by the courtship of a young woman. Only as a passing nod to the other arts, we must mention the nineteenth-century theatre, which through the stage box becomes the representation place itself, a frame, a window that cuts out another place, another time. The space becomes symbolic and the viewer looks at that “window” which represents the other. Then let us think to the use of the window within the film space, the role it assumes in narration and especially as a magnifying glass on spatially distributed facts. Also films have often shot the window as a central element, as a distribution hub of the whole narrative. Moreover, without going into detail we can remember Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock (1954), Identification of a Woman by Michelangelo Antonioni (1982), and Decalogue 6 by Krsysztof Kielowski (1988). In our research we simply touched on the concept of window in the literature because of its lack of visual representation, but if we think of French poetic literature between 1800 and 1900, we can find numerous window quotes by Baudelaire, Maupassant, Ponge, Proust, Reverdy, Verlaine, Zola, to name only the most famous. And then the theme was also explored by Friedrich Nietzsche, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Roland Barthes.

3. The “window” metaphor in digital technology and computer science Passing from the artistic representation to the instrumental one, the metaphor of the window has powerfully entered into the history of both digital technology and computer science. Information technology and telecommunications are the new form and the new language of interaction between people. Digital communication calls for its own vocabulary, its own syntax, but especially for “a new sheet of paper to write on”: the computer. In computing, the metaphor of the interface is visual and represents the actions transmitted from everyday experience to the virtual world: in other words, the metaphor is used to explain how to open and close the computer window, to look inside of it and use it as a view selector (Steven 1997; Manovich 2002). Computer graphics, after a few vectorial experiments during the Sixties, reached its greatest expansion during the mid-Seventies with the availability of enabling technologies, such as the construction of new RAM memories, graphics cards in high resolution, as well as the

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availability of a general, easy to program technology. Here the role of the operating system is stable enough to allow significant research investments, laying the foundations of modern computer graphics. The aspect that excites researchers the most is the interaction between man and machine. Several experiments are being carried out using pens Light sensor, rather than positioning systems based on the usual coordinates X, Y. In 1968, at Xeros, Douglas Englebart began working on the concept of a windowing system equipped with a totally new pointing system which reads the coordinates of the hand through its rollers connected to an equal number of position’s decoders. He did not have an immediate success, even if he was allowed to continue with the experiment. However, in this way the interface was born and, after 30 years, it still does not seem to have any rivals, except perhaps the use of the touch screen and the natural movement such as in the case of Nintendo DS and Microsoft Kinect. In this case, the window becomes a natural limitation of space: the screen size is the first window, inside of which other-window frames contain the same number of stories, the same number of visual areas. In 1973, Xerox introduces the first computer called the Xerox Alto with a GUI (Graphical User Interface or GUI), which uses the concept of windows, as well as icons, menus and pointers. This product was then too expensive for the market, which also did not yet accept the metaphor as a simplifying opportunity. Also the following computer, called the Xerox Star, entered the market to stay for just a few months. In the early Eighties, Apple, after liberally taking from the Xerox project, launched in the market, Lisa, the first computer with GUI at a low price. Soon after, Apple redesigned the product and in 1984 entered the Apple Macintosh into the market which, thanks to a more appropriate price and the ten years of this market life, became one of the most successful products. Following the great success of the Apple Macintosh, Microsoft introduced an operating system called Microsoft Windows. In 1985, Microsoft tried to conquer the market-friendly graphical interfaces with the first version of Windows. At this point the information becomes dense, intense, parallel, multitasking, thanks to the computer and an interface that has lasted almost four decades. For years, scientists have been attempting to recreate inside the windows the real-life metaphors with the desktop, the working spaces and more recently with the attempt to represent parallel and fantasy worlds, overcoming the hearth physical laws. This is the case in “Second Life”. In the Nineties, a series of studies started in different universities of the world. Among those who have studied the theory and the application of man-machine interface metaphors in depth, a place of honour is reserved

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for Muriel Cooper (see Abrams 1997). Cooper was professor of Interactive media design in the Degree program of Media Arts and Sciences, at the School of Architecture and Planning as well as co-founder and director of “Visible Language Workshop” in the Media Laboratory at MIT, led by Professor Nicholas P. Negroponte. During the fifteen years she was director of the laboratory, she had brought the laboratory to the highest level of global expertise working on all expressions of computational design. Cooper is a significant figure in the field, because she has moved from traditional graphics linked to editing production, to the new digital technologies and after that has developed a particular vision of the digital representation.

Conclusion Technological research for 20 years has been blocked, frozen, satisfied with the results reached, as if it were no longer possible to do more. We had to return to art to be able to imagine again, to build a new collective imaginary, an early representation of reality. Only thanks to films, such as Minority Report, we have been able to free the space and creativity. So, what should we expect from the coming years? We could expect an involvement of technologies entirely different from the projective ones we have used so far, I refer for instance to holography and immersive spaces. In any case, we will not be able to avoid the use of some new metaphors.

References Abrams J. (1997). Muriel Cooper's Visible Wisdom. New York: AIGA. Alberti L.B. (1435). De pictura. Firenze: Polistampa, 2011. Battistini M. (2000). “Le figure della cornice. L’invenzione del quadro di Stoichita e l’arte novecentesca”. Le parole della filosofia, 3. Available on-line at: http://www.lettere.unimi.it/Spazio_Filosofico/leparole/duemila/mbcorn .htm della Francesca P. (1480). De prospectiva pingendi. Strassburg: J.H.E. Heitz (Heitz & Mündel), 1899. Kemp M. (1990). The Science of Art. Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven-London: Yale University Press. Manovich L. (2002). The Language of the New Media. Boston: MIT Press. Ortega y Gasset J. (1916). “Meditations on the Frame”. Perspecta, 26: 185௅190.

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—. (1916-1934). El espectador. Madrid: EDAF, 2007. Rimbaud A. (1871). “Lettre du voyant”. In: Oeuvres Complétes. Paris: Gallimard: 103௅132. Steven J. (1997). Interface Culture. How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate. San Francisco: Harper Edge. Stoichita V. (1993). L’instauration du tableau. Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck.

CHAPTER TEN METAPHOR USE IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS A PROPOSAL FOR THE MEANING OF ERRORS IN THE USE OF CONVENTIONAL METAPHOR

GIORGIO COZZOLINO

Introduction In the last decades, metaphor has been the research object of scholars coming from many disciplines (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Many scholars have indeed focused their attention on aspects related to the production of non-literal expressions and metaphorical comprehension processes. The increasing interest in metaphor theories has been shared by cognitive science, as well as psychology, linguistics and philosophy. Recent research trends in all these areas contributed to broaden the area of metaphor studies, which in the past was generally confined to pure theoretical or literary research fields. In contemporary metaphor theories, a leading thread is the idea of metaphorical process as an essential component of every cognitive activity. From this point of view, it is necessary to identify the main features of the metaphoric process as a cognitive activity having its own functions and its own distinctive rules, i.e. a sort of gestalt/feature process (Morabito 2002). In line with this theoretical hypothesis, we will try to show that recurring mistakes in metaphor use could be used as a test to identify some semantic features of the standard use of conventional metaphors (Pierce and Chiappe 2009). Interestingly, we will analyse the important linguistic phenomenon known as hybridization, which leads to the conflict between two different patterns of metaphor use. The idea stems from the fact that there seems to be recurring errors in the use of metaphors in radio and TV dialogues, but to understand why they can be considered errors in metaphor use (i.e. deviant from standard or conventional metaphor use), it is necessary to first identify their specific

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traits. Indeed, different kinds of errors in metaphor production occur and might even be easily found, but only few are really relevant to obtain specific information on metaphor use (Bazzanella and Damiano 1997). In our experiment we selected different types of errors in metaphor use, according to their features and roles.

1. Methodology In this chapter we present an on-going experimental test oriented to identify different possible mistaken uses of metaphor. This chapter is indeed a proposal about a possible way to use mistakes in metaphors as a way to understand the semantic component of the conventional metaphoric meaning. The participants will vary according to age, gender, geographic area and family status. The experimental design is composed of three phases: a) in the preliminary phase, we ran a pilot study and we collected the data; b) in the second phase, we analysed the pre-test data and discussed the results; c) in the third phase, we verified our preliminary hypothesis in the proper experiment. The preliminary phase was designed to assess the basic knowledge about the most usual metaphoric expressions, including idiomatic expressions or popular common sayings. In addition, another kind of datacollection has been gathered from different media, keeping track of the source used to collect them: Radio, TV or Web source. All the data have been filtered to avoid deliberate wordplays and texts written with the explicit intention of playing with metaphor misunderstandings and obtain forceful literary expressions. Indeed, the kinds of mistaken metaphor use have been limited to unintentional errors, even though there always remained a chance of involuntary comic effects (blunders, misunderstandings, etc.). Therefore, the exclusion of the kind of error we use to consider as a blunder, was an essential premise of the analysis. The blunder case is indeed an unconscious use of common sayings, but the speaker intentionally produces the blunder-sentence as if “it should sound like that”, without voiding the funny effect. The second phase aims at analysing the mistaken non-literal expressions in terms of participants’ lexical knowledge to set up the experimental stimuli of the main experiment. Basically, different kinds of errors have been considered and, in particular, we have focused our attention on hybridization. The following examples illustrate some types of mistakes in non-literal expressions use we have considered in our study:

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1) I will be brief, indeed telepathic (telegraphic)! 2) I am caught between a lock (rock) and a hard place! The standard non-literal meaning expressed by these sentences could be correctly understood, even though the speaker seems to have a very weak lexical knowledge and does not fully master the conventional meaning of the words composing the non-literal expressions. We have identified two groups of most common errors in the use of metaphors. The first group includes the so-called “mixed” or “hybrid” metaphors (Bazzanella and Damiano 1997). This is surely the most interesting kind of error in metaphor use. We can define as “hybrid” a metaphor which combines a primary meaning with a secondary incoherent one. Such a composition leads to a possible ambivalent or ambiguous interpretation. The second group of common errors in metaphor use includes the cases of errors caused by the speaker’s (conscious or unconscious) intention to change and reframe the metaphor, by changing its function or forcing it with terms and inflections which involve vehicles that are different from the conventional metaphor vehicles (Pierce and Chiappe 2009; Casadio 2009).

2. Hybridization Some cases of deviant patterns in metaphor use, described in the previous section, will be useful to clarify whether and to what extent these errors could be meaningful in metaphor understanding. The first kind of error, i.e. the hybridization case, is indeed very interesting as to what concerns the cognitive dimension of metaphor (Landau, Meier and Keefer 2010). This kind of mistaken metaphor contains two different metaphorical processes. As in these examples of Italian idiomatic sentences, the hybrid case is composed by a first part coming from a non-literal conventional use and a second part coming from another non-literal conventional use. 3) Gettare un sasso nel pagliaio (To throw a stone into a haystack) i) Gettare un sasso nello stagno (To throw a stone into a pond) ii) Cercare un ago nel pagliaio (To look for a needle in a haystack)

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4) La scintilla che fa traboccare il vaso (The spark that makes the vase overflow) i) La goccia che fa traboccare il vaso (The drop that makes the vase overflow)1 ii) Fare scintille (To sparkle, to be very bright) There is a glaring error in the use of these conventional non-literal expressions: we cannot define these sentences as a re-use of two different conventional non-literal expressions, but rather these sentences are composed of (i) a main conventional expression conveying the non-literal meaning and (ii) a second non-literal conventional expression interfering with the first one. In the example (3), the incorrect version reduces the strength of the original idiomatic expression because it does not suggest the idea of a disarrangement. In example (4), on the contrary, the incorrect version combines the original meaning that something finally makes you lose patience (the drop that makes the vase overflow) with the idea that something runs amok (the spark that starts the fire). It seems that there is a conflict in the speaker’s mind because of the fact that expressions having two meanings are simultaneously presented: in expression (3), a sudden change (To throw a stone into a pond) and a complicated problem (To look for a needle in a haystack); in expression (4), a similar concept expressed in two different ways. This conflict becomes a single, hybrid non-literal expression. Interestingly, this phenomenon might support the idea of metaphoric dimension as a cognitive world of its own (Landau, Meier and Keefer 2010), because the mistake seems to remain within the process of non-literal meaning understanding. Moreover, our first analysis, based on everyday speech situations, seems to suggest that hybridization has a regularity of occurrence.

3. Reframing metaphors The following examples are instead representative of the second kind of errors that have been considered: 5) To drag out a spider from a finger (correct form: to drag out a spider from a hole) 1

An equivalent English idiomatic expression is “The straw that broke the camel’s back” and an equivalent French idiomatic expression is “La goutte qui fait déborder le vase”.

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6) To lower a white flag (correct form: to raise a white flag) This kind of error is certainly much more tricky: it seems to occur less frequently than hybridization, but it can be easily recognized in certain contexts. In examples (5) and (6), the speaker seems to use just one nonliteral expression: in this case, unlike hybridization, there is no conflict of two different non-literal expressions and the mistake appears to go beyond the semantic field of the conventional expression (Pierce and Chiappe 2009). Therefore, this is a mistake displaying a different image of the nonliteral expression, maybe related to a side of speaker’s personality or perception of the context. A total of sixty participants took part in our pilot study. About twothirds of these were students, mainly non-resident and still living at home with their families, mainly female. One-third consisted of older adults aged from forty to seventy, equally male and female. Education levels were high since all participants had a high school degree and some of them even a university degree. In the last section of the chapter, tentative results from the analysis of pre-test data will be given. First of all, this pilot study aims at testing knowledge and competence required to understand conventional metaphor use. Of course, it is fundamental to know whether there is an effective knowledge of metaphor use in order to identify hybrid and/or reframed metaphors (Casadio 2009). This will be the basis for the main experiment which is in progress: here we present our preliminary results.

4. Experimental task on mistakes in conventional metaphors use The final aim of the main experiment is to analyse the two kinds of errors in metaphor use above mentioned, hybridization and reframing, in order to better understand how conventional metaphoric meaning process works. An experimental test and data-collection concerning errors in the use of conventional metaphors has been started in two different phases. The first phase aims at verifying conventional metaphor knowledge in undergraduate students in Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. The second phase aims at including a quite heterogeneous set of participants, according to age and profession, in order to compare different levels of linguistic knowledge. The main experiment concerns correct conventional metaphor recognition based on a schema of four possible choices: a) correct metaphors, b) hybrid metaphors, c) semantically similar metaphors and d)

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clearly false metaphors. Participants were asked to give a paraphrase for each expression presented in a paper-pencil test. Each paraphrase was then assessed as correct/incorrect according to the conventional non-literal meaning of the related expression. The results show that correct metaphors are more easily recognized than the other alternatives. From a preliminary analysis of the data it seems that conventional metaphors lose their effect over time according to the different mistaken uses and/or contexts of use. The most evident aspect in participants’ answers was the students’ limited familiarity with common ways of speaking: 5-10% of the answers were mistakes, even in cases of correct, conventional metaphors. Another interesting result was that, in terms of meaning, the paraphrase given for a metaphor was not the same for all participants, highlighting that the meaning of widespread conventional metaphors is not always shared, even by native speakers. A second experimental task has been proposed to assess whether the participants were able to identify correct versus hybrid metaphors. The above mentioned schema was randomly presented to participants: a) correct metaphors, b) hybrid metaphors, c) correct metaphor with a semantic analogy with the main conventional metaphor and d) clearly false metaphors. This second test was designed to assess whether regularity in the structure of conventional metaphor could influence the recognition of conventional metaphor as correct. In order to recognize a regular structure in conventional metaphor, participants should have been able to distinguish it from cases of hybrid metaphor, where two different structures are combined. Even though the results were largely predictable, just few tests reported an average of 100% correct answers.

5. Discussion Basically, two versions of the experimental task have been created: one version presented correct metaphors and hybrid/reframed metaphors, while the other version presented a different order, the correct metaphors in the first group will be hybridized in the second one and vice versa. This allowed to better balance the experimental tasks, to prevent the eventual adoption of alternative cognitive strategies to identify the correct use of conventional metaphor. Some examples of the experimental task are given in Table 1.

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Table 1. Example items in the main experiment First group: La scintilla che fa traboccare il vaso (The spark that makes the vase overflow) Gettare acqua sul mulino – To throw water on a mill Gettare un sasso nello stagno – To throw a stone into a pond Camminare sulle braci ardenti – To walk over burning embers

Second group: La scintilla che fa scoppiare l’incendio – The spark that makes the fire breaking out Portare acqua al proprio mulino – To bring water to own mill Gettare un sasso nel pagliaio – To throw a stone into a haystack Fare fuoco e carboni ardenti – To make fire and burning embers

Even though the different kinds of errors in metaphor use were presented randomly in the second part of the main experiment, the correct item was recognized with greater accuracy than the other options. In other words, it seems easier to recognize the correct item compared to the available set of incorrect metaphor uses. The test proposed the same kind of evaluation of the previous one, even though presented in a different manner, in order to avoid a facilitation effect. In this case, a long list of randomly presented metaphors has been presented, in order to avoid a facilitate recognition. Further research is needed and data should also be collected outside the laboratory, in a more ecological context, in order to clarify and explain the influence of deviant metaphors on standard, conventional meaning. Moreover, real life experience is not strictly tied to conventional metaphors but open to other form of metaphor production: for instance, data coming from media source would be very useful to enrich the analysis of possible errors in metaphor use (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). In table 2, we present some collected data useful to set up a linguistic corpus on deviant non-literal language:

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Table 2. Example items of non-literal language errors in media Hybrid expression Guardiamo la trave e non la luna – We look at the beam and not at the moon (journalist, Radio) È uno specchietto di tornasole – It’s a hand mirror of litmus paper (sport journalist, TV) Ciascuno tira acqua al proprio piccolo orto – Everyone pulls water to his small kitchen garden (journalist, Radio) Lo dica una volta per sempre se è dalla parte dei cittadini o dalla parte del coltello ௅ Please, tell people once for all whether you are on the side of citizen or on the side of knife (Mayor of Venice, TV, Tg3 15/09/2011) È la goccia che fa crollare la diga attraverso il buchino – It’s a drop that breaks the dam through the little hole (“Il ruggito del coniglio”, radio show, 17/10/2011) Abbiamo buttato un po’ di carne al fuoco – We have thrown some meat on the fire (“Piazza Verdi”, radio show, Radio Tre, 14/01/2012)

First correct expression Guardare il dito e non la luna – To look at the finger and not the moon

Second correct expression Avere la trave nell’occhio– To have a beam inside the eye

Specchietto per le allodole – Hand mirror for the larks

É una cartina di tornasole – It’s a litmus paper

Ciascuno tira acqua al proprio mulino – Everyone bring water to his mill

Ciascuno coltiva il proprio piccolo orto – Everyone farms his small kitchen garden

Stare dalla parte di – Being on the side of

Avere il coltello dalla parte del manico – To have knife by handle

La goccia che fa traboccare il vaso – The drop that makes the vase overflow

Il buco che fa crollare la diga – The hole that breaks the dam

Buttare giù un po’ di cose – To throw away some stuff

Mettere troppa carne al fuoco – To put too much meat on the fire

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Conclusion The aim of this chapter was to propose a way to verify the lexical competence required to identify correct vs. incorrect uses in non-literal language. In particular, errors in metaphor use could be a test to understand the proper semantic structure of standard, conventional metaphors. Deviant metaphor phrasing could be mainly drawn from personal, direct listening experiences in different contexts, i.e. conversational encounters or media sources. We presented preliminary results on an analysis of errors in metaphor use, which we wish to be a proposal for further investigation. The further proposed step is a comparison between different contexts of use: everyday conversation vs. media. The standard, conventional meaning of non-literal expression could indeed be influenced by new regular (but deviant) patterns proposed via the most common and widespread media.

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Appendix The pilot study designed to assess metaphoric meaning knowledge was based on the following test. Personal data: Age Gender

FƑMƑ

Profession Student

in birth residence Ƒ out of birth residence Ƒ

Place of residence Place of birth Live alone

Yes Ƒ No Ƒ

Live with family

Yes Ƒ No Ƒ

Any others relatives but parents? Brother/Sister Uncle/Aunt Grand Father/Grand Mother

Yes Ƒ No Ƒ Yes Ƒ No Ƒ Yes Ƒ No Ƒ

How many people do you live with? Village (0 – 15.000 inhabitants) Town (over 15.000 inhabitants)

Ƒ Ƒ

First sample sentences to complete: 1) Gettare un sasso – To throw a stone 2) Cercare un ago – To look for a needle 3) Gettare acqua – To throw water 4) Fare di tutta l'erba – To do of all the grass

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5) Buttare il bimbo – To throw the child 6) L'erba del vicino – The grass of the neighbour 7) L'erba cattiva – The bad grass Second randomized sample sentences:

1)

2)

Correct form Gettare un sasso nello stagno – To throw a stone into a pond La goccia che fa traboccare il vaso – The drop that makes the vase overflow

Hybrid form Gettare un sasso in un pagliaio – To throw a stone into a haystack La scintilla che fa traboccare il vaso – The spark that makes the vase overflow

Semantic analogy Gettare un sasso nel fiume – To throw a stone into a river

Clearly false metaphor Gettare un sasso nel fornaio – To throw a stone into a baker

La pioggia che fa traboccare il vaso – The rain that makes the vase overflow

La porta che fa traboccare il vaso – The door that makes the vase overflow

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References Bazzanella C. and Damiano R. (1997). “Il fraintendimento linguistico nelle interazioni quotidiane: proposte di classificazione”. Lingua e Stile, 32 (3): 369௅395. Bazzanella C. (ed.) (2009). La forza cognitiva della metafora. Milano: Franco Angeli. Casadio C. (2009). “Effetto “framing”: come inquadriamo il mondo con le metafore”. Paradigmi, 27: 55௅68. Lakoff G. and Johnson M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. (1999). Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Landau M.J., Meier B.P. and Keefer L.A. (2010). “A metaphor-enriched social cognition”. Psychological Bulletin, 136 (6): 1045௅1067. Morabito C. (2002). La metafora nelle scienze cognitive. Milano: McGraw-Hill. Pierce R.S. and Chiappe D.L. (2009). “The Roles of Aptness, Conventionality, and Working Memory in the Production of Metaphors and Similes”. Metaphor and Symbol, 24: 1–19.

CHAPTER ELEVEN METAPHOR USE IN SIGN SYSTEMS A TWO-STEP MODEL FOR THE UNDERSTANDING OF METAPHOR AND METONYMY

VALENTINA CUCCIO AND SABINA FONTANA

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to integrate the cognitive linguistic theory and the relevance theory, to provide a comprehensive explanation of what metaphors and metonymies are and to explore their interaction. We approach this question through the analysis of metaphors and metonymies in Home Sign systems developed by deaf individuals who have no contact with the Deaf Community. We conclude that there is a complex interplay between metonymies and metaphors as a result of a process of representing the human experience by exploiting iconicity and contiguity relations between sign and referent. Speaking metaphorically and using metonymies are complex abilities that arise in two different steps. In our view, by integrating the cognitive linguistic theory and the relevance theory, we provide a comprehensive explanation of what metaphors and metonymies are and how they interact. On the one hand, the cognitive linguistic theory has a neural explanation in an embodied idea of language (Gallese and Lakoff 2005). The relevance theory, on the other hand, implies socio-cognitive skills like Theory of mind. Both of these prerequisites are needed in linguistic activities.

1. Metaphors: the theoretical background Lately, many scholars have been thinking about metaphors, giving them different definitions and explanations of their relationship with thought. At the extreme points of this very rich debate we can recognize two

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antithetical theories: cognitive linguistics and relevance theory. Currently, if you show that you are sympathetic with one of these theories, you are automatically thought to be against the other (Tendahl and Gibbs 2008). Indeed, these two theories seem to have radically disagreeing conceptions of what metaphors are. On one side, according to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphors are first a matter of cognition and only derivatively a matter of language. In other words, the metaphor is a cognitive device that shapes our conceptual system. We think metaphorically and then we speak metaphorically. Metaphors are primarily built upon our bodily imageschemas. We know the world through our sensorial and motor interactions with it. Thus, we conceptualise the world using our bodily experience as a source domain that we map onto abstract target domains. Hence, our thought is intrinsically metaphorical. On the other hand, in the relevance paradigm, metaphors are considered to be nothing special (Sperber and Wilson 1995). This means that metaphor is a linguistic activity that can be explained using the very same principles of relevance that we use in accounting for any other communicative interaction. Of course, metaphors – being a kind of “loose talk” – are on many occasions particularly suitable in order to reach relevance. According to this view, metaphor is not a matter of cognition. It is a matter of language, ruled by the same cognitive principles as all other linguistic activities. Following Tendahl and Gibbs (2008), we would like to consider these two theories of metaphor as not being in opposition. The aim of this chapter is to show that speaking metaphorically is a complex ability that arises in two different steps. In our view, the cognitive linguistic theory and the relevance theory each describe a different level of this ability. Furthermore, each of these two levels has its own cognitive prerequisites, which are well described by the two different theoretical frameworks. The cognitive linguistic theory has a neural explanation in an embodied idea of language (Gallese and Lakoff 2005). The relevance theory, on the other hand, implies socio-cognitive skills like Theory of Mind (ToM). According to us, both of these prerequisites are needed in linguistic activities: we will try to show that metaphors are primarily a matter of language. Thus, the cognitive linguistic theory and the relevance theory should be integrated in order to give a comprehensive explanation of what metaphors are, and generally speaking, of how language really works. In this chapter we will try to show that metaphors are primarily a matter of language. That is, thought could not be metaphorical without language. We think metaphorically because we have symbolic representations. In fact, even if we know the world through our bodily experience, metaphors imply a different kind of mental representation that are

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symbolic meta-representations. Hence, the embodied theory of language and cognition is very important and helpful in understanding the human mind. However, we think that alone, it does not provide a full explanation.

2. Embodied metaphors The first level of metaphors, in our opinion, are bodily based and already symbolical. Bodily experience, indeed, is our first and primary way of knowing of the world. The idea of a bodily based metaphor has already been presented by authors during the last few centuries such as Vico and Condillac (Danesi 1995, 2001). Today this idea has found renewed interest. Indeed, in many ways cognitive linguists and neuroscientists would like to resist the tradition that places concepts as abstract entities outside of the body and of the brain (Fodor 1988, 2008; Pylyshin, 1984). During the last few decades much experimental data has confirmed the hypothesis that cognition as well as language is embodied. We know that the sensory motor system represents a basic mechanism to structure the semantic content of concepts, that our brains support language as a multimodal system of production (Lakoff & Johnson 2005), that action shares a semantic link with gestures and signs (Capirci, Contaldo, Caselli & Volterra 2005). An especially important discovery widely studied during the last two decades is that of mirror neurons in primates (Rizzolatti, Fogassi, Gallese 2001). This neural mechanism seems to be the basis of the construction of the Self and the understanding of others. Indeed, as Sinigaglia and Gallese (2011) argue, mirror neurons underlie the understanding of our own and of other’s actions. Hence, both the sense of Self and social cognition are deeply rooted in our motor system. Mirror neurons underpin embodied simulation. We put “ourselves in the shoes of others.” Thus, mirror neurons underpin very important aspects of human social cognition and, according to the “neural exploitation hypothesis” (Gallese 2007), they underpin language as well. However, it is worth noting that to stress the bodily foundation of cognition and language does not mean to underestimate the symbolic value of language itself and the effect it has on our cognition. We think that metaphorical thought is possible only if you already have symbolic representations. Indeed, metaphor, in thinking or speaking, is to see one thing, A, as if it were another, B. Both representations of A and B have to be present, distinct and correlated at the same time. Often, only one of A and B is perceptually present. Thus, metaphors seem to need abstract symbolical representations. To think of something as if it were something else seems to entail already abstract symbolic representations.

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In the conceptual theory of metaphors, mental imagery is fundamental for metaphorical thought. In fact, it is mental imagery that allows the formation of abstract concepts (from a source, bodily based, domain to abstract target domains). And, mental imagery is embodied. In fact, according to Gallese and Lakoff (2005): [the] typical human cognitive activities such as visual and motor imagery, far from being of a disembodied, modality-free, and symbolic nature, make use of the activation of sensory-motor brain regions. (Gallese and Lakoff 2005, p. 463).

Thus, in the conceptual theory of metaphors, this basic mechanism allows both conceptual and linguistic meaning formation. However, some passages still remain unclear. In particular, it is not clear how, in the authors’ view, the fact that mental imagery makes use of sensory-motor brain regions can rule out the role of a symbolic representation format. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Moreover, it is not clear how mental imagery can allow counterfactual reasoning (“to imagine worlds that they have or have not been seen before, to imagine doing things that they have or have not done before.”) if our thought is not symbolical. Counterfactual reasoning seems to need a linguistic representation format even if it also includes bodily-based representations. If we examine Lakoff and Johnson’s examples of conceptual metaphors, e.g. “Love is a journey” or “Knowing is seeing”, it is really hard to think of these concepts out of language. In a hypothetical mental experiment, it would be difficult for a wild boy raised in the forest without any contact with other human beings to have the concept of “love” even if his mirror neurons were functioning perfectly. So, mental imagery is embodied but, in our view, the fact that we have symbolic representations affects it. The real challenge, then, is to understand how the bodily-based and the symbolic dimensions interact and coexist in our specifically human mental representations. The study of metaphors can allow us to start addressing this challenge. We believe that metaphors are a product of language. However, our first symbolic meanings are deeply grounded in our motor activities. So, in this first step, metaphors, even though they are already symbolic, are bodily and physical metaphors. We produce metaphors starting from our body and from our physical environment as a source. Hence, as Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have pointed out, we talk of the future as what is in front of us or we talk of a goal as something that we can reach. Moreover, at this step, metaphors are very often the product of a metonymic process. We mean something by representing only a part of it.

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We believe that this first level of metaphor-use requires abstract symbolic communication and a basic ability of mindreading, e.g. the ability to understand that others have communicative intentions. However language itself affects our ability to mindread, empowering it. As a result of this more powerful ability we are, then, able to create even more sophisticated metaphors that entail an even more complex inferential capacity.

3. Metaphors and complex inferential capacities According to many authors, mindreading and meta-representations are a prerequisite for language acquisition during ontogeny. They may have been a prerequisite for the evolution of language as well (Tomasello 1999; Sperber 2000). In this view, language co-evolves with or affects our cognition, contributing in a crucial way to the species-specificity of human being’s cognition. Hence, our ability to understand other minds and our ability to use meta-representations are unique mostly because of this coevolutionary relationship with language. This means that language coevolves with cognitive abilities as well. In fact, when children are able to use symbolic communication, symbolic representations act on human cognition making it more complex. Then, more sophisticated cognitive abilities make an even more complex linguistic communication possible. At this point, simulation theory and the neural exploitation hypothesis on their own are not enough to explain all of our linguistic activities. We should consider other socio-cognitive abilities like Theory of Mind. Turning back to metaphors, after a first step, deeply rooted in our motor system, a simulative account that is only based on mental imagery and the mirror neurons system is not enough to explain creative, novel metaphors. Indeed, very often, imagery and motor simulation are not sufficient to explain how people create and understand metaphors. We need other socio-cognitive skills as well. If we think of a metaphor such as “more is up” we can see how an explanation based on motor simulation and mental imagery can work. However, let’s think about a metaphor like “John is a shark”. Are motor simulation and mental imagery still all we need? In order to understand this metaphor, we need to share some presuppositions with the person we are talking to. We both have to know that sharks have some characteristic features (like being cruel, merciless, and killers and consumers of other living beings), we both have to know that human beings are not sharks (in the sense that they are not fishes) and who John is. Last but not least, we both have to know that we share these presuppositions. After that, the process of metaphor understanding can

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start. The interlocutor can draw inferences from my utterance and “grasp” the meaning I had the intention he grasped. In other words, metaphors are like all other linguistic activities. They require the same cognitive and pragmatic efforts that the ordinary use of language requires. Hence, following the Relevance Theory account of metaphor, we can say that metaphors, from this point of view, are not a special case of linguistic activity. They are subject to the same principles of relevance (cognitive principle of relevance and communicative principle of relevance; Sperber & Wilson 1995, p. 260). Moreover, metaphors live in language and, unlike the conceptual theory of metaphors, they are considered primarily as a matter of language. Nevertheless, often metaphors are allowed to gain optimal relevance because of their “poetic effects”. In other words, the understanding of metaphors can imply extra cognitive efforts that are balanced by the “poetic effects” the metaphors can obtain and that could not be obtained by speaking directly. These poetic effects are mostly driven by what theorists of Relevance have called “loose” talk. This “loose” talk has been identified with the formation of “ad hoc” concepts that allow the broadening (or the narrowing, in some cases) of concepts (Carston 2002). Hence, the production and understanding of metaphors entails pragmatic competences. These pragmatic competences are the product of socio-cognitive human skills and of linguistic and cultural activities together. Thus, coming back to the mental experiment of the wild child, if he made contact with other human beings, we suppose that it would be easier for him to understand “more is up” than “John is a shark” because he is lacking the cultural and linguistic practice that would improve his socio-cognitive skills. Context and systems of beliefs affect the mapping and interrelation between domains. Various studies on metaphors (Ortony 1979; Turner & Fauconnier 1995) have been dealing with the constraints that govern metaphorical cross-domain mapping since not all domains can be mapped onto every other. Hence, different cultures can create different metaphors out of similar experiences. Russo (2004, 2005) argues that in sign languages metaphors are products of prelinguistic experience that possibly do not overlap completely with the hearing community’s ones. Furthermore, iconicity can play a very important role in the metaphor creation process. Iconicity can be frozen or dynamic: in the first case the link between the form and the meaning is lexicalized; in the latter, iconicity appears and disappears following discourse needs and typically is not listed in sign languages dictionaries. Although iconicity and metaphors need different accounts, much research has been devoted to the interplay

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between these two different features (Wilcox 2000, Brennan 2001, Taub 2001). Russo analyses LIS conference and poetry registers and concludes that in LIS vision is a cognitive tool. (...) It is conceptualized as a complex tool for elaborating and transforming knowledge. (...) This seems in line with the more relevant role that visual experience and abilities play for deaf people in everyday understanding and communicative tasks (Russo 2005, pp. 344345).

Iconicity plays a fundamental role in metaphor creation process by mirroring the properties of a blended space where features of both the target and source are projected. It seems that iconic features of signs emerge dynamically during the online process and links two different conceptual domains. Autism has been a strong testing ground for the idea of a connection between metaphors and Theory of Mind. Indeed, subjects with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), having a selective deficit in Theory of Mind, usually do not understand figurative language (Norbury 2005). However, autism is not a suitable testing ground for the model we are presenting. In fact, lately the hypothesis that subjects with ASD have a dysfunction of the mirror neurons system has been considered. Experimental data seems to support the claim of a disordered activity of the mirror neurons system in autistic individuals (Iacoboni & Dapretto 2006). Hence, even the first, embodied level of metaphor understanding could be impaired in these subjects.

4. Metonymies Metonymies are a kind of non-literal language that mostly involve individuals but also categories and that play an important role in language fulfilling referential functions and in mental processes such as reasoning and inferencing. To be understood, they require the ability to integrate the world knowledge with deep semantic analysis beyond the surface of the syntactic structure. An aspect at core of metonymy is contiguity that is explained in terms of the whole range of possible associations between concepts (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) and within the frame of the Idealised Cognitive Models (ICM, Lakoff 1987). Idealised Cognitive Models are composed of complex concepts and general categories and correspond to the conceptual structure available to humans to make sense of their experience.

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According to Lakoff (1987) and Lakoff and Johnson (1980) metonymic models play mostly referential roles and are grounded on a real world semantic contiguity relation which is mapped into a single conceptual organisation. Metonymy is a reference point phenomenon that allows a mental access to an entity via another entity. Nevertheless, Papafragou (1996) argues that a relevance-theoretic treatment of metonymy can shed light into the various effects of metonymy in communication. She maintains that the cognitive linguistics approach has inherent limitations: What previous accounts of metonymy essentially lack is a robust pragmatic criterion that could operate on a variety of encyclopaedic assumptions (including social beliefs) and would guide the comprehension of metonymy in a way consistent with a general account of utterance interpretation. As they stand, associationist models largely ignore problems of interpretation by pushing them off onto the conceptual structure itself: by definition an association is supposed to spring to mind almost automatically (...). (Papafragou 1996, p. 175)

Lakoff’s metonymic model is unable to handle creative metonymic uses and can explain only conventionalised metaphors. In Papafragou opinion, one-off, creative metonymic uses require to be treated by maximizing relevance in cultural contextuality within the relevance-theory framework. In fact, in metonymy, the expression bears the concept for an object or for an individual through some particularly accessible value included in their encyclopaedic entry. Recently, some scholars (Radden & Koevecses 1999) have strongly supported the hypothesis the metonymy is a conceptual phenomenon that often does not even show up in language. They use the framework of the Idealised Cognitive Models (Lakoff 1987) to explain it in terms of connectors operating among elements of a single ICM following the various mapping configuration allowed by their cultural environment. Hence, metonymies are conceptual structures where one conceptual entity defined ‘target’, is made accessible by mean of another conceptual entity named ‘vehicle’. The choice of a particular kind of vehicle is governed by a number of cognitive principles and gives rise to natural default metonymies whose association is not always accessible, and non-default metonymies that are influenced by the context. Therefore, metonymies result from the interaction between gestalt perception, bodily movement, physical experience and cultural learning. However, the various accounts of metaphors and metonymy do not trace clear-cut boundaries between them. Actually, the nature of metaphors and metonymy, as we have seen, has long been quite

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controversial. Metonymy appears to be a category that covers very different phenomena ranging from prototype effects to iconic gesture (Gibbs 1994; Papafragou 1996). In reality, this category does not itself represent a class but a continuum of cases (Papafragou 1996). In metonymies and in metaphors the association is based respectively on similarity or contiguity principles and whether the source-target links are part of the message or not. Barnden (2009) argues that metaphorical links can be regarded as contiguity and conversely, some types of metonymic association include similarity. This seems to prove that there is not a categorical difference between metaphor and metonymy based on sourcetarget associations and by suggesting a possible analysis in dimension, maintains that it is possible to analyse them only at the level of discourse. They are only “pragmatically useful labels in approximate discussion not the legitimate foci for detailed technical attention” (Barnden 2009, p. 26) Finally, we find that the analysis of metaphors and metonymies can be very productive if we apply a three dimensional model of metaphors where linguistic, conceptual and communicative properties of metaphors are analysed in interaction (Steen 2010). In what follows, we are going to look at metaphors and metonymy in the signed system used by deaf isolated subjects in comparison with fully developed sign language used by the Italian Deaf Community1.

5. Home signs systems Various scholars (Kuschel 1973; Kendon 1980; Goldin-Meadow & Mylander 1983; Goldin-Meadow 1999; Yau 1992; Kegl, Senghas, Coppola 1999; Fusellier-Souza 2001; Torigoe & Takei 2002) have analysed Home Sign systems in deaf children and adults. Home signs are gestural systems created and used by children and adults who are born to hearing parents and have not been exposed to a conventional sign language. When hearing losses are so severe that deaf children cannot acquire language properly even with intensive oral training, they use gestures to communicate with the hearing members of their household. Home sign systems have been analysed in many different communities such as Japan, Brazil, Belgium, Nicaragua, Israel, Papua New Guinea, Rennel Island and in Italy (Torigoe e Takei 2002; Kegl, Senghas, Coppola 1999; Fusellier-Souza 2001, 2006; Yau, 1992; Kisch, 2008; Kendon 1980; Kuschel 1973; Fontana, 2008) and have been described as a language-like 1

We capitalize the letter “D” in “Deaf” when we imply the presence of a community. This is not the case of deaf “isolated” people.

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system sharing some properties with conventional sign languages and others with hearing co-speech gestures. The study of these systems called also primary sign languages (Kendon 1980; Fusellier-Souza 2001, 2006) is crucial to understand not only what kind of modifications gestures go through when they are used as the sole means of linguistic expression, but also to investigate which cognitive processes are involved in the fabrication of symbols. Various experiments (Singleton et al., 1995; Goldin Meadow, 1999; Fusellier-Souza, 2001, 2006) show that when gestures become the only means of linguistic expression, speakers immediately create a lexicon of gestural forms (Kendon, 2004). The sign creation path seems to be characterized by contiguity and similarity strategies. Signs are created by reproducing the shape of an object by choosing some inherent characteristic or by selecting by association some traits linked to this object or action. In fact, primary sign languages appear to be in diachronic terms the first step for the emergence of fully developed sign language. In fact, what seemed to have happened in the Al Sayyid Community and partly in Nicaragua (see Polich, 2006; Fusellier-Souza 2001) suggests that primary sign languages represents the first step towards the emergence of a fully developed sign language system which can happen only with the presence of a community and the transmission of the language. Si nous essayons de comprendre les origins des langues des signes actuelles, nous pouvons supposer qu’au depart, le conact entre les different idiolectes des sourds ‘isolées’ amenés a habiter en milieu urbain, a donné naissance à une sorte de dialecte comprehensible entre les locuteurs sourds. (Fusellier- Souza 2001, p. 83)

Primary sign language and fully conventionalized sign language differ in their structure, in the degree of conventionalization and lexicalization. Hence, we think that the analysis of primary sign language systems may allow us to explore the nature of metonymies and metaphors and their relationship with iconicity. We are going to explore the nature of these systems to test our hypothesis and verify whether the first, embodied, level of metaphors is preserved in these systems whereas the more complex inferential level of metaphors is absent because they have no access to linguistic and cultural practice. It is worth noting that in typical development these two steps of metaphor understanding, despite the fact that they develop consecutively, often work together. In language use of a healthy and competent adult speaker, the complex and more inferential level of metaphors predominates but it also exploits a bodily-based representation format.

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Hence it is hard to isolate a pure expression of one of them. The data presented in this paper were collected mainly from the town of Ragusa and other small towns located in the nearby, where one of the authors lives and has been conducting fieldwork. In this area, many old people did not attend special schools nor did they meet deaf people on a regular basis. During the Second World War, these people lived within their hearing family and had no access to a conventional sign language.

5.1 Method 5.1.1 Material Data were collected for a previous study (Fontana 2008) through interviews whose aim was to record old Deaf people’s experience during war times. Fifteen old Deaf people ranged in age from 60 to 95 with a mean age around 73. They were interviewed on their experience of deafness during world war. 5.1.2 Procedure Data were elicited by a questionnaire, although participants were left free to talk as much as they wanted. All interviews were conducted by a Deaf old man who was able to communicate with them and were audiovideo recorded indoors by a young Deaf cameraman. 5.1.2 Participants For the present study we analysed 5 old people as shown in the table below. Participants are all profoundly deaf and did not receive formal instruction or speech training. Most of them have not had any contact with the local deaf community but two out of five occasionally met a deaf member of this community.

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Table 1: Participants selected for the present study

Gender

Age

School

Speech Therapy

Job

1. M 2. F 3. M 4. M 5. M

96 76 73 75 60

No No No No No

No No No No No

Farmer Farmer Farmer Farmer Flowerman

Contact with Deaf Community No Occasionally Occasionally No No

5.1.3 Coding All interviews were glossed in Italian by the investigator with the help of the old Deaf signer, following Fabbretti’s notation system (1997; see table 2) and checked by the investigator and a native signer. Pantomime was codified by describing sequences of handshapes by using the set of handshapes as listed for Italian sign language. We are aware of the fact that this kind of glossing is not able to represent all the peculiarities of a visual system of communication. However, we think that with the support description of handshape, it supported our analysis well for the purposes of the present research, that is description of first and second level of metaphors and metonymy. Table 2: Left/Right hand or Two handed

Left hand___________________________________________________ Right hand________________________________________________ Two handed________________________________________________

5.2 Results Primary sign language systems seemed to come out of an online process of symbols creation, probably in relation to pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors such as the context, the aim of the conversation and finally the addressee. Deaf participants attempt to communicate by depicting the objects, actually performing the action, or pointing to the object. The object can be represented by actually sketching its shape exploiting a similarity relation or by selecting a trait of the entire ‘package’, that is, the entire complex of characteristics/actions/interactions associated to a given referent.

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As previously discussed, this study aimed at exploring the two-step account of metaphor production and the nature of metonymies in a corpus elicited by a questionnaire. The expected outcome was to find only first level embodied metaphors and different kinds of metonymies. We have found two interesting phenomena which go in the direction of our hypothesis: metonymies and orientational metaphors. As shown in table 4, we found that metonymical signs are used quite frequently. For example, four participants out of five choose the part ‘horns’ to refer to the whole ‘cow’. Interestingly, home sign system conceptual mapping is similar to conventional sign language even if deaf participants use the U handshape instead of the LIS Y handshape (Italian Sign Language- LIS). In our data, we found also that home sign system and LIS map similarly other domains such as: UDDERS to refer to ‘milk’, TRIGGER to refer to ‘gun’ although the sign can use different handshapes in the first case (two handed and A handshape opening and closing fist in our data; one handed opening and closing fist in LIS). These elements are made to stand for the whole for their particular salience from the point of view of the signer and appear to work as synecdoche rather than metonymy. We have found that only two metaphors are used systematically by participants 1, 2 and 4. This kind of metaphors seemed to be classifiable as ‘orientational metaphors’ in Lakoff and Johnson framework. The body is used as a metaphorical referent to organize the system of concepts related to time and to superiority/inferiority. In particular, the body is used as a referent to build the time lines forward and backward to refer to the concept of future and past, as in European conventional sign language. Another metaphor that involves the body is related to superiority/inferiority and happiness and sadness which appear to be conveyed not only by the body posture and shoulders position but also by facial expression and eye gaze. Table 3: Metonymies and Orientational Metaphors Metonymies HORNS (cow) BREAST (woman) GUN (trigger) WINGS (plane) UDDERS (milk) SIGN OF CROSS

Orientational Metaphors PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE SUPERIORITY/INFERIORITY

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5.3 Discussion Our starting point has been the recognition that metonymy and metaphor are not only conceptual mechanisms; they also come from a complex interplay with the cultural context where they are created and used. Hence we will discuss Relevance Theory and Cognitive Linguistics as far as metaphors and metonymy are concerned. We have found that the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, in literature exhibits a wide variety of opinion. In primary sign language systems, symbols are fabricated using mainly metonymical process. Metaphors are used less frequently as we have seen. However, our results support the hypothesis of the two levels of metaphor understanding. In fact, as we expected, only the first embodied level of metaphor was found in home sign systems. In Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) framework, these structures appear to be orientational metaphors. They are different from other metaphors because instead of structuring one concept in terms of another, they organize a whole system of concepts with respect to another. They function in correlation with the action of our body in the world. The same orientational metaphors could also be found in the hearing community co-speech gestures and in the Deaf community sign language. This could prove the fact that these kinds of metaphors are embodied and cross-linguistically similar because they are based on our physical interaction with the world. What can vary is the cultural interpretation of the physical world. For example Japanese Sign Language or Urubù Kaapor Sign Language used by the small community of Ka’apor people (where there is a high rate of deafness) in the state of Maranhao, locate past in the front and future in the back of the signer. Orientational metaphors appear to be the first level of conceptualization in that they enable a first understanding of the world through body action and action simulation. In the expression of times lines by making use of the body as a metaphorical referent, we can find a first stage of mapping one domain into another. Other bodily-based metaphors are expected in home sign systems, if opportunely elicited. However, as we expected, no inferential metaphors were found. They require a culture and a shared language. Home sign systems are symbolic but they are not full linguistic systems. We argue, following Armstrong, Stokoe & Wilcox (1995) that some orientational metaphors such as body gestures implying superiority or inferiority are based on gestural primitives shared not only by people but also by primates. This explains the reason why we found in our data many metonymies and orientational metaphors and no inferential metaphors.

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Deaf people can use their body as a source domain to make sense of the world. Metonymy creation seems to require the ability to perceive the association between an A target referent with a B vehicle which is contained in A. Compared to A ‘target’ referent, B is a ‘better’ symbol to convey the meaning of B for a given purpose in a given context. For example, our participants select the trait ‘horns’ (B-vehicle) to convey the meaning ‘cow’ because horns are the most prototypical characteristics of cow in that particular context. They select an element from a ‘package’ of ‘cowness’ that includes the entire complex of potential interaction with ‘cow’ to convey this meaning in the absence of any perceptual support from that referent. Furthermore, the ‘horns’ seem to be the most prototypical or defining member of the category ‘cow’ because as Rosch (1978) has pointed out, it is the most important features shared by the members of that category, while at the same time involving the least overlap with other categories. This could not work in another culture where the category of animals with horns is shared by cows and buffalos. Interestingly, from the same ‘package of cowness’, participants choose another trait to refer to milk, which is ‘UDDER’. Furthermore, metonymic process of sign creation is quite common also in fully developed sign language. LIS and primary sign languages, have chosen the same trait to convey the meaning of ‘cow’ and ‘milk’ although the handshapes are different. The vehicle-B for the target A is chosen following prototypical criteria in relation with encyclopaedic assumption (including social beliefs). In our data, all metonymies appear to be synecdoche since they are based on the association PART-WHOLE. According to Seto (1999) synecdoches are far from being a mere undertype of metonymy. In his opinion it is important to distinguish taxonomies from partonomies in conceptualization to avoid confusing synecdoche with metonymy. Taxonomies are hyponimically relations structured in a given conceptual domain whereas partonomies are ‘part of’ relations in the physical world. Following this categorization, Seto distinguishes C-relations which are based on semantic inclusion by Erelations characterized by spatio-temporal contiguity between entities in the physical world. According to Seto synecdoche is based on C-relations and metonymy functions on E-relations. Following his proposal, the metonymies found in our data are based all on E-relation, that is, on the contiguity of two different entities Deaf participants use to nominalize the ‘part of’ relation in order to communicate with other Deaf people. One interpretation of these data is that metonymy comes about as a result of the abilities of perceiving contiguity, perceiving similarities and re-present the

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inherent characteristics of the referent by imitation and ultimately by simulation (Bates 1979; Arbib 2008; Gallese & Lakoff 2005). For this reason, we argue following Goossens (1990) that there is a metaphormetonymy complex (MMC) which has to be analysed following its functions in pragmatic discourse in relation with a given ‘context’ or system of beliefs. We do not think that focusing only on the search for categorization of metaphor and metonymy and on their role on conceptualization could allow us to shed light on their functioning in online inferential process of utterance interpretation.

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