Metaphor Is Like Analogy

ABSTRACT In understanding a metaphorical utterance, there is the question of how to use the analogical mapping (if any) associated with the metaphor, once this mapping is known. It is usually assumed that one should translate the situation literally depicted by the utterance into terms of the target domain, and that this requires extending the mapping to source items and structure that are not yet mapped by the analogy. However, this paper argues that it is mistake to think that such extension must generally be done.

Philosophy Compass, 2006

The most sustained and innovative recent work on metaphor has occurred in cognitive science and psychology. Psycholinguistic investigation suggests that novel, poetic metaphors are processed differently than literal speech, while relatively conventionalized and contextually salient metaphors are processed more like literal speech. This conflicts with the view of "cognitive linguists" like George Lakoff that all or nearly all thought is essentially metaphorical. There are currently four main cognitive models of metaphor comprehension: juxtaposition, category-transfer, feature-matching, and structural alignment. Structural alignment deals best with the widest range of examples; but it still fails to account for the complexity and richness of fairly novel, poetic metaphors.

Contemporary reflections on the philosophy of …, 2000

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Language and Literature, 2002

1993

concepts like time, states, change, causation, and pur pose also turn out to be metaphorical. The result is that metaphor (that is, cross-domain mapping) is absolutely central to ordinary natural language semantics, and that the study of literary metaphor is an extension of the study of everyday metaphor. Everyday metaphor is characterized by a huge system of thousands of cross-domain mappings, and this system is made use of in novel metaphor. Because of these empirical results, the word metaphor has come to be used differently in contemporary metaphor research. The word metaphor has come to mean a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system. The term metaphorical expression refers to a linguistic expression (a word, phrase, or sentence) that is the surface realization of such a cross-domain mapping (this is what the word metaphor referred to in the old theory). I will adopt the contemporary usage throughout this chapter. Experimental results demonstrating the cognitive reali ty of the extensive system of metaphorical mappings are discussed by Gibbs (this volume). Mark Turner's 1987 book, Death is the mother of beauty, whose title comes from Stevens' great line, demonstrates in detail how that line uses the ordinary system of everyday mappings. For further examples of how literary metaphor makes use of the ordinary metaphor system, see More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, by Lakoff and Turner (1989) and Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science, by Turner (1991). Since the everyday metaphor system is central to the understanding of poetic metaphor, we will begin with the everyday system and then turn to poetic examples.

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1986

A sample of 204 poetic metaphors was rated along 10 scales by 300 participants (30 different people for each of the scales). The scales were identical to ones previously used in a study invoh,ing ratings of artificially constructed metaphors, and were chosen on the basis of their relevance to current models of metaphor processing. Three major findings emerged. First, the overall pattern of findings was identical to the one obtained earlier using constructed metaphors, and aspects of it provided support for each major metaphor model without completely o~'rming any one of them. Models that attribute an important role to perceptual like processes provided the most succes3ful fit to the dam. Second, all of the 10 scales were positively intercorrelated, although the correlations were generally moderate enough to permit independent experimental manipulations of the variables defined by the different scales. These results, too, are similar to those obtained earlier with constructed metaphors. Third, we identify and discuss some suggestive differences between the results of the two studies.

Lege artis, 2023

Traditional accounts of figurative language consider like-simile and metaphor to be largely equivalent. However, more recent research shows that metaphor expresses a closer association between the two terms of comparison than like-simile. This paper proposes a variety of criteria to understand the similarities and differences between these two figures of speech, among them the abstractness of the resemblance relationship, the greater subjectivity of metaphor, and the role of comparison in contrast to other factors. This discussion casts light on the metaphor-simile equivalence versus non-equivalence debate.