The Experience of Metaphor

          I was glad to find out we were reading Metaphors in this class.  I had referenced it in one of my papers last semester in Rhetorical Theory, but never got a chance to read the whole thing.  I’ve enjoyed the read thus far, but have been stumbling a bit on what seems to be some sort of broken English scattered throughout the pages.  Not that the material is incomprehensible or anything, but it does make me stop and re-read the sentences.  Other than that, much of what Lakoff and Johnson have contributed and discussed has been interesting to analyze.  The authors have bolstered the idea I’ve always had that language—especially metaphor—is really quite mathematical.  Different combinations yield various results and the word equations are endless.  Why are people who consider themselves writer-types good with words and not with numbers?  Of course there are a few anomalies, but people usually seem to fall into one of two categories.  It’s odd to me.

            The authors start off the book with a basic, understandable definition of metaphor before throwing their more intricate concepts at us.  The text reads, “[t]he essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (05).  This is pretty much how I always looked at metaphor before I read this particular wording, but their use of the word experience is troubling, but intriguing.  I say troubling because the authors later discuss how metaphors exist that we cannot experience—like foot of the mountain—and suggest these are not alive.  This definition confuses me a little in terms of how the authors discuss metaphor throughout the book, but I still feel as though I can be on board with the initial concept of metaphor laid out here.  Metaphor is anchored in experience, inclusive of metaphors’ prior use and gradual adoption.

            Another curious suggestion came with the authors’ division of meaning from context.  The text reads, “[t]he part of the metaphor that says linguistic expressions are containers for meaning entails that words (and sentences) have meanings, again independent of contexts and speakers” (11).  It’s hard for me to separate meaning from context.  Words are just letters thrown together in order to give meaning a place to reside?  The only way I can see this being true is that when language was created, words were invented to stand in for different meanings.  That makes sense, but I don’t think meaning could ever be extracted from words so engrained in our culture.  Perhaps words were originally containers for meaning, but now they seem to be reflections of what is known and can never be emptied of that.  I can only half-agree with Lakoff and Johnson in this regard.

            Speaking of culture, I enjoyed reading chapter five again (the one I used last semester).  The text reads, “[i]ndividuals, like groups, vary in their priorities and in the ways they define what is good or virtuous to them.  In this sense, they are subgroups of one.  Relative to what is important for them, their individual value systems are coherent with the major orientational metaphors of the mainstream culture” (24).  I like the idea that culture plays a big role in how metaphor is used and/or valued in individual daily life.  I also like the idea that metaphor can also be used to connect distant subcultures that are themselves members of the same mainstream, but claim their own identity.  Mainstream can be the death of individuality, but it can also be its conductor.  It’s a bit of a dichotomy.

            The authors touch on what confused me in the opening chapter regarding living metaphors at the end of today’s reading.  The text reads, “[i]t is important to distinguish these isolated and unsystematic cases from the systematic metaphorical expressions, […or], reflections of systematic metaphorical concepts that structure our actions and thoughts” (55).  Metaphors we live by—like taking two different paths—control what we do physically or think mentally.  According to the authors, these kinds of metaphors systematically interact with other metaphoric concepts, thus making them living metaphors.  What still confuses me is removing experience from metaphor altogether.  Would that not remove the very essence of metaphor and what it is used for?  How can one use metaphor if they are not alluding to a previous experience?  Are these so-called non-living metaphors only words, or empty containers as the authors might suggest?  I’m curious to clear up my confusion in further reading of this book.