Metaphors in Everyday English

Torda Gábor
Anglisztika

Konzulens: Dr. Ajtay-Horváth Magda PhD

2014
 Abstract

The present paper shows the development of the concept of metaphor since

Aristotle’s first definition until the interpretations provided by cognitive linguists in the

second half of the 20th century. In the ancient philosophies metaphor was considered an

ornamental device, appropriate for poetry only. This classical view radically changed in the

twentieth century and since then numerous conceptualizations have been proposed to

reinvent the notion of metaphor. Recent studies in cognitive science by Zoltán Kövecses

and George Lakoff have shown that metaphors are a fundamental part of human cognition.

Their dynamic structure helps us to better understand abstract scientific concepts, trigger

emotions, and enrich our everyday language. This work provides an overview of the

process of metaphor comprehension through various theories. Furthermore, by applying the

method of comparison, I analyse some conventional English metaphors and their Hungarian

counterparts in support of the idea that metaphor is omnipresent in our everyday language;

however, their mapping can be influenced by cultural factors.

 Table of Contents

1. Introduction ........................................................................................ 1

2. Defining Metaphor ............................................................................. 3

3. Why Metaphors Are Used .................................................................. 10

4. How Metaphors Work ........................................................................ 11

4.1 What Is Considered Metaphoric ..................................................................... 12
4.2 The Problem of Metaphor Comprehension .................................................... 13
4.2.1 The sequential view ................................................................................. 13
4.2.2 The direct view ........................................................................................ 15
4.2.3 The combined view ................................................................................. 16
4.3 The Problem of Asymmetry in Metaphors ..................................................... 18
4.4 The Problem of Feature Selection .................................................................. 19

5. Contemporary Models of Metaphor ................................................... 21

5.1 Structure-mapping .......................................................................................... 21
5.2 Attributive Categorization .............................................................................. 22
5.3 Conceptual Metaphor ...................................................................................... 23

6. Comparison of English and Hungarian Metaphors ............................ 27

6.1 Past Experiences ............................................................................................. 28
6.2 Source-target Mapping Variations .................................................................. 30
6.3 Language Peculiarities .................................................................................... 31

7. Conclusion .......................................................................................... 33

References ................................................................................................................. 34
 1. Introduction

Throughout centuries metaphor has been considered a privileged, secondary type

of language, accessible only to poets, writers and other creative people. This view, first

advocated by Aristotle, was dominant up until the early 1900s. Metaphors are frequently

used in literature, for instance in Shakespeare’s famous lines:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages….

Traditional philosophical views did not treat metaphor as a central concern in the

human perception of the world. However, over the last few decades studies have shown

that this phenomenon is omnipresent in our everyday language, with power that goes

beyond the extensive literary usage. Ordinary people think metaphorically as well. They

use it every day, instantly, consciously or unconsciously, because it is pervasive in

language and thought. This revolutionary theory of meaning within the fields of

linguistics and philosophy was formulated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Lakoff

& Johnson, 1980).

This shift in the conception of metaphor has led many cognitive scientists to make

advancements in creating the most comprehensive and accurate models of the metaphor.

From philosophers to linguists, everyone agrees that people must understand not only

literary meanings, but a speaker’s intended meanings as well. The difference lies in the

interpretation of the various models of metaphor.

This work is dedicated to presenting the primary models of metaphor

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comprehension—from a philosophical and linguistic perspective—in support of the thesis

that metaphor is omnipresent in our everyday language. Following the theories, I will

analyze some common English metaphors and their Hungarian counterparts according to

cognitive views in a contrastive manner.

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 2. Defining Metaphor

Metaphor is a fundamental part of language and apparently as old as language

itself. It can be found in one of the earliest surviving works of literature, The Epic of

Gilgamesh. While the ancient Romans emphasized the importance of similes, the Greeks

preferred using metaphors. The English word comes from the Greek metapherein,

meaning to transfer (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.). According to some rhetoricians, metaphor

is one of the master tropes, alongside metonymy, synecdoche and irony.

Since antiquity, metaphor has been the most researched trope, and for this reason

several theories have been constructed that date back to the early times. The first and

narrow definition is attributed to Aristotle. He discusses the relationship of metaphor and

language and the role of the former in communication primarily in two of his works,

Poetics and Rhetoric. His definition is the following in Poetics: “Metaphor consists in

giving the thing a name that belongs to something else” (Aristotle, trans. 2009, XXI).

Aristotle classifies metaphor as an implicit comparison, a property of language, which is

discussed in terms of a noun. According to his views there are eight kinds of nouns: the

ordinary word, the strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental word, the coined word, the

lengthened-out word, the curtailed word and the form-altered word. His early definition

considered metaphor as a privileged use of words, only accessible to creative people, and

nonexistent in everyday language. He summarizes this sentiment as follows: “[T]he

greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt

from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive

perception of the similarity in dissimilars” (Aristotle, trans. 2009, XXI).

Until the development of contemporary views on metaphor comprehension,

rhetoric had been the basic field of enquiry for scholars. As a consequence, any serious

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study of the subject almost required citing the works of Aristotle. This focus on rhetoric

had been the dominant view for over two millennia.

The turning point came in 1936, when Ivor Armstrong Richards published The

Philosophy of Rhetoric, influencing contemporary theoretical studies. His work breaks

away from the traditional, ornamental theory, which governs only the lexical level of

metaphors and concerns the whole text on an abstract semantic level. He rejects

Aristotle’s beliefs and argues that it is not a sign of genius to comprehend and use

metaphors. According to Richards, metaphoric thinking does not require any special

knowledge: “That metaphor is the omnipresent principle of language can be shown by

mere observation. We cannot get through three sentences of ordinary fluid discourse

without it …” (Richards, 1936, p. 92).

He introduced the basic terminology of the two parts of a metaphor, the tenor and

the vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which the attributes are transferred. The vehicle is

the object whose attributes are borrowed. The common characteristic is called the ground

of the metaphor. To illustrate this he gives the classic example of the leg-of-the-table

metaphor: In this case the vehicle is the human leg, and the table is the tenor. However, a

table does not walk with its legs. The legs only hold it up. In such a case we can talk about

common characteristics.

Prior to Richards there had been no distinguishing terms for these two halves of a

metaphor. However, the following phrases had been used to convey a similar meaning:

“The original idea and the borrowed one; what is really being said or thought of and what

it is compared to; the underlying idea and the imagined nature; the principal subject and

what it resembles” (Richards, 1936, p. 96). The other important aspect of his work is its

prompting of the development of the interaction view, that is, the semantic interaction

between the tenor and vehicle. It means: “when we use a metaphor we have two thoughts
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of different things active together and supported by a single word, or phrase, whose

meaning is a resultant of their interaction” (Richards, 1936, p. 93). Richards gave a

cognitive value to metaphors and thus influenced a new generation of theorists, among

them the philosopher Max Black, who put forward the interaction view of metaphor.

Richards’s insights form the basis of Black’s interaction theory.

Black discusses mainly three views of metaphor: substitution, comparison and

interaction. He considers the comparison view a special case of the substitution view.

“[T]he substitution view regards the entire sentence that is the locus of the metaphor as

replacing some set of literal sentences; while the comparison view takes the imputed

literal paraphrase to be a statement of some similarity or analogy, and so takes every

metaphor to be a condensed or elliptic simile” (Black, 1993, p. 27).

Out of the three views, Black’s interaction theory is the most influential, and the

only one Black himself accepts. He wanted to break away from the previous

oversimplified comparison-based, traditional accounts of metaphor, which considered

metaphors as elliptic similes. The interaction view claims that metaphor does not work at

the level of word combination, as posited by the previous comparison-based Aristotelian

view, but rather at a deeper level, composed out of the interactions between the

conceptual structures. The emphasis is on the interaction between systems rather than

upon things and ideas, as in Richards’s view.

Black argues that a metaphorical statement has two distinct subjects, a principal

and subsidiary subject (Black, 1993, p. 27). The cognitive content is the result of their

interaction, and the common ground is what he calls “the system of associated

commonplaces.”

He introduces another pair of terms as well, the constituents of the metaphorical

utterance: the metaphorical focus and the literal frame. Compared to Richards’s tenor and
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vehicle, in this case two sets of terms are needed and there exists a dynamic correlation

between the subjects and the two poles of the metaphorical utterance. They can be

interchangeable. In his work, Black focuses on a particular type of metaphor, where the

principal subject coincides with the frame (Black, 1954, p. 286). It happens in the case of

a metaphorical definition of a subject, where the focus is a predicate noun. An example is

the classic Man is a wolf metaphor: Here, the principal subject, Man, coincides with the

frame and interacts with the subsidiary subject, wolf, which coincides with the focus.

Black argues that Man is seen through wolf and uses the metaphor of a screen. Construing

the meaning of this metaphor, language users apply the conventional knowledge

associated with wolves to serve as the “smoked glass” through which they see men.

“Suppose I look at the night sky through a piece of heavily smoked glass on which

certain lines have been left clear,” Black (1954) writes.

Then I shall see only the stars that can be made to lie on the lines previously

prepared upon the screen, and the stars I do see will be seen as organized by the

screen’s structure. We can think of a metaphor as such a screen and the system of

“associated commonplaces” of the focal word as the network of lines upon the

screen. We can say that the principal subject is “seen through” the metaphorical

expression or, if we prefer, that the principal subject is “projected upon” the field

of the subsidiary subject. (p. 286)

The rhetorician I. A. Richards heavily influenced Black, but the most important merit of

Black’s work is that he rediscovered metaphor for philosophy.

There are radical theories as well (though these are not to be confused with the

Radical Metaphor theory developed by W. M. Urban, whose analysis of meaning resulted

in his discovery that “a second stage of language is developed which is metaphorical in its

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nature. This second stage contains the fundamental method of natural speech

construction”) (Shibles, 1971, p. 27). Donald Davidson takes a radical twist and denies

that metaphors have any second or metaphorical meaning: “[M]etaphors mean what the

words, in their most literal interpretation, mean, and nothing more” (Davidson, 1984, p.

245). He is against the semantic interpretation of a metaphor, especially the one

formulated by Black. For him metaphor is a perlocutionary act that cannot be explained

within semantics or pragmatics.

The pragmatic study of metaphor has been heavily influenced by John Searle, who

studies metaphor as part of the speech act. He sees metaphorical utterances as indirect

speech acts. His pragmatic inference is the following: “To have a brief way of

distinguishing what a speaker means by uttering words, sentences, and expressions, on the

one hand, and what the words, sentences, and expressions mean, on the other, I shall call

the former speaker's utterance meaning, and the latter, word, or sentence meaning.

Metaphorical meaning is always speaker’s utterance meaning” (Searle, 1979, p. 84).

Similar to Davidson, Searle denies metaphorical sentence meaning. On the other hand, he

argues that metaphorical utterance meaning is genuinely a part of linguistic

communication. By formulating the problem of metaphor comprehension, Searle (1979)

investigated the following main questions in a landmark article: “How do metaphorical

utterances work, that is, how is it possible for speakers to communicate to hearers when

speaking metaphorically inasmuch as they do not say what they mean? And why do some

metaphors work and others not?” (p. 83). The chapter in this thesis dealing with metaphor

theories will cover these questions as well.

The pragmatic view of metaphor has become very influential in the field of

psycholinguistic research. From Aristotle’s first definition through Searle’s speech act

theory, metaphor has been viewed entirely differently. However, many questions remain
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open and many of the answers have come in the form of cognitive scientific views of

metaphors. Since the 1970s, cognitive linguists and psychologists have been fully aware

that metaphors are not only a matter of words, but rather are central to thought and action

and everyday language as well. All the upcoming models and hypotheses have been

influenced by Max Black, and Richards indirectly. Further research in the field has

centered on the following three major issues:

• Stages of metaphor comprehension

• Asymmetry in metaphors

• Feature selection

To solve these controversies, the new cognitive interpretation has led to the

formation of various theories, hypotheses and models of metaphor over the last few

decades. One of them is Ortony’s salience imbalance model. He uses the notion of

salience to solve feature selection and the asymmetry in metaphors. The essence of this

model is that metaphors are comprehended in terms of shared features. There are

particular comparison pairs between tenor and vehicle. Out of the four possible variations,

only the low-high combinations typify metaphoric comparisons. An example is the

following sentence: John's face was like a beet. The simile involves a match between

features that is not salient in the subject, John, but salient in the predicate, redness

(Ortony, 1993, p. 417). This model is a step forward to creating an accurate model of

metaphorical mapping, but lacks an explanation of how features are selected in the

comparison.

After the salience imbalance theory we can consider three fundamental theories of

metaphor that still hold their own today. One of them is the structure-mapping model

formulated by the psychologist Dedre Gentner. Her model treats metaphor as an instance

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of analogy, based on the comparison view. Glucksberg and Keysar developed their model

based on categorization; it is called the attributive categorization model. The third widely

acknowledged cognitive theory is Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor theory.

There have been various other interpretations but the last three are the most

influential and viable in the fields of cognitive linguistics and psychology. The focus of

my paper is Lakoff’s conceptual theory because his work was the first to explicitly state

that metaphors are pervasive in thought, action and everyday language as well.

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 3. Why Metaphors Are Used

There are many ways to experience the world and metaphors play an important

role in all of them. Metaphoricity is a universal process. It happens in all languages and at

all levels. They help us to better understand abstract scientific concepts, trigger emotions,

and enrich our everyday language. According to Black, “Metaphors are generally used to

describe something new by reference to something familiar” (Ortony, 1993, p. 420). As

Ortony argued, “Metaphors are not just nice, they are necessary” (Ortony, 1993, p. 420).

He formulated three hypotheses regarding why people use metaphors. The first suggests

the direct and compact form of a metaphor can capture the essence of a particular

experience. The second, the inexpressibility hypothesis, emphasizes that metaphors allow

us to express ideas that are difficult or even impossible to express in literal language. The

third points to the role of metaphor as a tool for presenting ideas through vivid images

more memorably than literal language can allow.

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 4. How Metaphors Work

Aristotle considered metaphor as indicative of genius, ornamental, appropriate for

poetry only, and too puzzling for philosophical or scientific discourse. According to his

comparison view, in which X is Y, metaphors are understood by implicitly converting

them into elliptical similes. This classical view was replaced in the twentieth century and

since then numerous conceptualizations have been proposed to reinvent the notion of

metaphor.

In contrast to Aristotle’s view, recent studies in cognitive science have shown

(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) that Metaphors are a fundamental part of human cognition.

Metaphors are able to process large amounts of information automatically and they can

also be used to communicate abstract scientific ideas. Contemporary cognitive linguists

believe that cognition is built up from concrete to abstract, and concrete domains function

as source domains for metaphorical processes involved in creating abstract domains. On

the other hand, cross-cultural researchers and anthropologists document the metaphors

language users actually use. These researches reflect the way in which people use

language according to different cultural backgrounds.

During the process of rethinking the classical view several questions have been

left unanswered: What, for instance, is metaphoric? And how do we perceive metaphors?

In the following chapters I will evaluate these central problems in metaphor

comprehension.

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4.1 What Is Considered Metaphoric

In order to define what is metaphoric, it is first helpful to contrast it with what is

not. The most important merit of Searle’s account of metaphor is that it defines this

contrast by characterizing literal meaning. If we did not have an account of literal

meaning, then metaphorical utterance meaning would not say much. “[I]n literal utterance

the speaker means what he says; that is, literal sentence meaning and speaker’s utterance

meaning are the same” (Ortony, 1993, p. 87). As I have mentioned, according to Searle,

metaphorical meaning is always speaker’s utterance meaning, the conveyed meaning. So

the general problem is to distinguish between the speaker’s utterance meaning and literal

sentence meaning.

Searle summarizes some aspects of literal utterances. First, in a literal utterance

the speaker means what he says. Second, literal meaning is context-free and can only be

determined relative to a set of background assumptions. To give an example, the sentence

The cat is on the mat can only be interpreted as literal if we have some background

assumptions, e.g. the cat and the mat are not floating in space and gravitational forces

exist. However, in a more recent work Searle (1983) argued that literal meaning is not

context-free and it is impossible to list all of the background assumptions (p. 145). Third,

the notion of similarity plays an essential role in any account of literal predication.

Glucksberg (1998), the developer of the attributive categorization theory, argues

similarly to Searle by stating:

In figurative language, the intended meaning does not coincide with the literal

meanings of the words and sentences that are used. Because literal and figurative

meanings do not coincide, figurative language has traditionally been considered

derivative from and more complex than ostensibly straightforward literal

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 language. (p. 39)

Before Searle, authors had taken literal meaning so much for granted that they assumed

everyone knew how it worked. This led to descriptions of metaphorical utterances that

failed to distinguish them from literal ones.

In recent years, the development of cognitive sciences has proved the traditional

literal-metaphorical assumptions to be false. Searle’s traditional account of metaphor

comprehension starts from the literal interpretation, and when a sentence does not make

sense literally, then and only then comes the metaphoric stage. The contemporary view is

the opposite. Those concepts not comprehended via the system of conceptual metaphor

might be called literal.

4.2 The Problem of Metaphor Comprehension

The contemporary cognitive view of metaphor is intended to account for common,

everyday uses of metaphor. It is also important to note that metaphors are omnipresent not

just in everyday language but also in numerous academic disciplines. As a result of these

realizations various studies have been conducted to deal with different aspects of

metaphor comprehension. The most important question is: How do we perceive

metaphors in comparison to literal statements? There are three different basic theories of

language processing. These are the sequential, the direct, and the combined views.

4.2.1 The sequential view

Traditional theories of metaphor were mainly two- or three-process theories. It

was believed that a metaphor demands greater cognitive skills to be understood than

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literal sentences. According to the pragmatic theory, people first look for the literal

meaning of an utterance. The next step is to determine whether the literal meaning makes

sense in the context. If it does not make sense in context, then the non-literal

interpretation process is initiated (Searle, 1979, p. 84). In pragmatic views, understanding

metaphors such as Encyclopedias are gold mines requires going beyond the literal.

Encyclopedias are not holes in mountains where gold can be found, so this sentence

cannot be understood directly. Instead, metaphors are implicitly converted to comparison

statements such as Encyclopedias are like gold mines and then interpreted literally.

The standard pragmatic view has three fundamental implications. First, the literal

interpretation has unconditional priority because literal meanings are always computed

before any figurative meanings, and the latter involves a sequential process. The second

implication is that metaphor understanding is optional. If the literal meaning of a sentence

does make sense in a given context, people will not go beyond the literal meaning.

Finally, the ground of a metaphor is the result of an implicit comparison (Glucksberg,

1998, p. 39).

However, this view was proven to be incorrect by a revealing experiment. In their

research Glucksberg, Gildea and Bookin (1982) showed that such implications are false.

Metaphor understanding is not optional and is processed as quickly and automatically as

literal language, and metaphors are understood directly, not via an implicit comparison

(Glucksberg et al., 1982).

Their metaphor interference technique offers a way to detect early processes in

metaphor comprehension. In the experiment, participants were shown three kinds of

statements: class-inclusion statements that are true (e.g. Some birds are robins), false

class-inclusion statements (e.g. Some birds are apples) and metaphorical statements (e.g.

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Some jobs are jails). The listeners were asked to judge whether the statements were

literally true or false. As expected, participants could quickly classify literally true

statements as true, and false statements as false. However, they were significantly slower

rating metaphors as literally false. The conclusion was that participants interpreted the

metaphorical statements automatically and metaphorically. Therefore the subsequent

literal interpretation in turn required more processing time. The results proved the two-

and three-process theories false. According to these theories, a statement must be

interpreted literally first, and if it does not make sense in the context, an alternative

figurative interpretation process is initiated. This metaphor interference technique was a

strong evidence for the early metaphor comprehension.

4.2.2 The direct view

The indirect processing conception has been replaced by the direct (parallel) view,

one of the contemporary views of metaphor comprehension. It has the following main

implications: Understanding metaphor is identical to understanding literal language, and it

does not involve a special process or a greater effort. Literal language has no priority over

non-literal language. Figurative language can be processed directly, without having to

activate the literal meaning first (Giora, 1997).

The classic experiment of Glucksberg, Gildea, and Bookin was the first significant

step towards the direct process model. Other empirical studies have been conducted in this

field as well by Keysar (1989), Gibbs (1984), or Coulson and Van Petten (2002).

According to the traditional theories (Searle, 1979), metaphor interpretation

requires a triggering condition, such as a violation of a discourse rule. Keysar (1989)

argues that rule violation is not a necessary condition; metaphoric meaning is activated

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automatically, independently of any trigger. Gibb’s direct access view suggests that

listeners need not automatically analyze the complete literal meanings of linguistic

expressions before accessing pragmatic knowledge to figure out what speakers mean to

communicate (Gibbs, 2002, p. 460). He argues that metaphor comprehension requires the

same processes as literal language comprehension.

In Coulson and Van Petten’s (2002) experiment, event-related brain potentials

(ERPs) were recorded from adults as they read sentences that ended with words used

literally, metaphorically, or in an intermediate literal mapping condition. The authors

compared the continuity claim (that literal and non-literal language processing occur in

the same time course and involve the same processing mechanisms) and the equivalence

claim (that metaphoric language is no more difficult to comprehend than literal language).

Their findings were consistent with the continuity claim and revealed that literal and

metaphoric languages share some processing mechanisms, but inconsistent with the

equivalence claim that comprehension of metaphoric language is no more difficult than

literal language. In their opinion, greater cognitive efforts are needed for metaphor

comprehension but literal and figurative interpretation requires the same amount of time

(Coulson & Van Petten, 2002).

4.2.3 The combined view

The indirect (sequential) and the direct (parallel) views are the two contrasting

theories. However, there are other views that make a variation out of them. The most

influential is the combined view, which propagates the graded salience hypothesis. It was

developed by Rachel Giora (1997), who argues that metaphor comprehension may

involve different processes according to the type of metaphors involved (novel or

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conventional). Previously, in most empirical studies that had supported the direct view,

only conventional, everyday metaphors had been used. Those studies set aside novel

metaphors; therefore their results can be questioned.

Giora emphasizes the importance of salience (i.e. conventionality, familiarity,

frequency), which governs literal and non-literal language use. Ortony’s salience

imbalance theory is similar with respect to using salient properties. If a word has two

meanings, the more conventional, popular or frequently used meaning is the most salient.

According to this theory, instead of the literal–metaphoric split, the salient–non-

salient division is what matters. The graded salience hypothesis posits that the salient

meanings should be processed first, independent of the given context. Less-salient (novel)

metaphor understanding requires a sequential process, whereby the more salient (literal)

meaning is processed first. Furthermore, novel interpretation must be more difficult to

derive. Novel metaphors such as “Her wedding ring is a ‘sorry we’re closed’ sign” are

non-salient, and are slowed in processing due to having to reject the literal meaning of the

phrase first. On the other hand, conventional metaphors, whose literal and metaphoric

interpretations are equally salient, require parallel processing (Giora, 1997).

Bowdle and Gentner (2005) also support these claims. According to them, both

direct or indirect metaphor comprehension is possible. Thus, conventional metaphors are

usually understood by direct categorizations, and conventional similes are often processed

as direct comparisons. For novel metaphors, comprehension may be either direct or

indirect depending on grammatical form. Whereas novel similes are processed as direct

comparisons, novel metaphors are processed as indirect comparisons. Additionally, a

conventional metaphor will require less cognitive effort than a novel type for mappings

between a target and a metaphor category, resulting in easier interpretation and faster

processing of conventional metaphors (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005). The reason for this,
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according to Bowdle and Gentner (2005), is that

[C]onventional metaphoric categories will contain fewer predicates than the literal

concepts they were derived from, and a higher proportion of these predicates can

be mapped to relevant target concepts. Therefore, aligning a target with a

metaphoric category will be computationally less costly than aligning a target with

a literal base concept. (p. 211)

4.3 The Problem of Asymmetry in Metaphors

Another phenomenon related to metaphors is asymmetry. In a metaphoric phrase,

the use of a vehicle affects the tenor in some way. The information is directionally

projected from the vehicle to the tenor. In a nominal metaphor such as This job is a jail,

ideas like discipline that are associated with the vehicle, jail, are projected to the tenor,

job. However, the transfer in the reverse direction—This jail is a job—does not impart the

same message, and often leads to a meaningless phrase or a change in meaning. For

example, My surgeon is a butcher implies he or she is clumsy; on the other hand, My

butcher is a surgeon implies cutting precisely. This inherent asymmetry in metaphors is

addressed differently by the two basic metaphor-processing models. The processing, also

called mapping, can be based on the model of comparison or categorization.

Ortony considered this asymmetry a distinctive feature of metaphoricity in his

salience imbalance theory (Ortony, 1979, p. 179). He argues that nonliteral similarity

statements will tend to be much less reversible than literal similarity statements.

According to him, metaphors are directionally asymmetric. However asymmetries also

occur in literal similarity statements as well. Eleanor Rosch (1973), known for her work

on categorization, was able to demonstrate directional preferences based on her prototype

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theory. In her experiment, out of the two alternatives “Pink is virtually red” was preferred

to “Red is virtually pink.” This evidence proves that asymmetry is not specific to

metaphors (Rosch, 1973).

To conclude, unidirectionality or asymmetry seems to be a necessary element for

metaphorical mappings. The only question is where in the mapping this asymmetry

appears in the various contemporary models of metaphor. It is also important to note that

reverse or bidirectional metaphors do exist, although they are not regular in contemporary

metaphor studies.

4.4 The Problem of Feature Selection

The last key concept in all metaphor theories is feature selection. Tenor and

vehicle share many of the same features. The question is: How are only a few of many

shared features selected in metaphor creation and others are not? To return to a previous

example, butchers and surgeons have much more in common than just how precise they

are. For instance, they both usually wear white and have an occupation, among many

other features.

In Ortony’s salience imbalance model metaphors are comprehended in terms of

shared features. Out of the four possible variations, only the low-high combinations typify

metaphoric comparisons. Unlike similarities, which typify a high-high match, in

metaphors the shared features are of high salience in the vehicle, but of low salience in the

tenor. Therefore not every shared feature of the tenor and the vehicle is included in an

interpretation.

To address most of the aforementioned problems such as asymmetry or feature

selection, a new wave of metaphor theories has emerged in the last few decades. The most

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influential and viable models, which still hold their accounts as of today, are the structure-

mapping, the attributive categorization, and the conceptual metaphor theories.

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 5. Contemporary Models of Metaphor

Attempts to answer the problems above have come in the form of cognitive

scientific views of metaphor, with typical representative fields including cognitive

psychology and cognitive linguistics. “What characterizes twentieth-century philosophy is

the view that language must be given careful consideration and not treated as a mere

shadow of an idea or be merely something taken for granted as has usually been the case”

(Shibles, 1971, p. 1).

Since the 1970s cognitive linguists and psychologists have become fully aware

that metaphors are not only a matter of words, but rather are pervasive in everyday

language and thought as well. The cognitive linguistic theory of metaphor was developed

in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s (1980) widely read book Metaphors We Live By,

which inspired many of the studies that followed. However, their model could not

successfully capture all aspects of the controversies. For instance, their conceptual

metaphor theory overemphasized the universality of some of the metaphorical structures

they found, and lacked in defining diversities. As a result, besides Lakoff and Johnson’s

conceptual metaphor theory, two contrasting models have been developed: the structure-

mapping and attributive categorization models. Metaphor comprehension today is usually

interpreted through these three models.

5.1 Structure-mapping

Several empirical studies have supported the structure-mapping model of

metaphor processing. Influenced by Lakoff, Gentner and her colleagues approached

metaphor from a cognitive psychology perspective. Their results have confirmed that the

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structure-mapping model can interpret metaphors accurately. This model can also be used

to describe novel metaphors, which had been mostly excluded from previous metaphor

models (Lai, Curran & Menn, 2009).

This model treats metaphor as a kind of analogical comparison. Metaphor involves

mappings between the vehicle and the tenor. Cognitive scientists usually refer to the

vehicle as the base or source, and to the tenor as the topic or target. This model is also

based on a comparison view, like most of the metaphor models; however, it deploys a

much more sophisticated comparison process than Black’s or Ortony’s models. Structure-

mapping describes metaphor as a directional process in which a stable, familiar base

domain provides inferential structure to a less clearly specified target. But metaphor is

also described as a process of finding commonalities, an inherently symmetric process. In

this second view, both concepts may be altered by the metaphorical comparison. Whereas

most theories of metaphor capture one of these aspects, structure-mapping captures both

sides of metaphor processing. This predicts an initially role-neutral processing stage of

symmetric alignment, followed by directional projection of inferences (Wolff & Gentner,

2011). Thus, in structure-mapping, processing starts out as symmetrical and ends as

directional. “This theory differs from other approaches in postulating that the

interpretation rules for analogies and relational metaphors are based on predicate

structure, rather than on feature salience or mental distance” (Gentner, 1986).

5.2 Attributive Categorization

From Aristotle to cognitive scientists, metaphor has been viewed mostly as an

implicit comparison. The comparative view postulates that the source and target of a

metaphor may belong to the same category. However, Glucksberg and Keysar have taken

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an almost entirely different approach to metaphor. They argue that metaphor should be

considered an implicit category statement rather than a simile: “When metaphors are

expressed as comparisons, that is, as similes, they are interpreted as implicit category

statements, rather than the other way around” (Glucksberg & Keysar, 1993, p. 422).

According to the concept of class-inclusion, the target of a metaphor is a member

of a category defined by features, which can be represented by the source domain. For

example, in the metaphor My lawyer is a shark, the target, My lawyer, is placed in the

category of aggressivity of which the source, shark, is a salient representative. Although

My lawyer is a shark makes sense, My shark is a lawyer does not. According to this

model, the inherent asymmetry cannot be explained by the comparative view, and

explaining this asymmetry was one of Glucksberg and Keysar’s primary goals.

The categorization view has not been widely accepted by theorists because some

degree of comparison is still necessary to decide which features represent the category

into which the target is placed.

5.3 Conceptual Metaphor

The third significant cognitive theory of metaphor was formulated by George

Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Their conceptual metaphor theory—first described in their

book Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980)—comes out of the field of

cognitive linguistics. One of the main areas of research inside cognitive linguistics is

cognitive semantics. In the latter field, Lakoff and Johnson have investigated the

relationship between experience, the conceptual system, and the semantic structure

encoded by language. They define metaphor as mapping across conceptual domains. They

were the first to explicitly state and propagate the idea that metaphors are pervasive in

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thought, action and everyday language. This phenomenon structures our perceptions and

understanding of the world: “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both

think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 3).

According to this theory, most of our fundamental concepts are various kinds of

metaphors:

• Orientational metaphors are related to spatial orientation (up-down, in-out, front-

back, on-off, etc.). For example Happy is up, sad is down. In the English
language, the concept happy is oriented up, leading to expressions like You are in
high spirits. Up and high usually refer to good things in English-speaking cultures,
for instance high status.

• Ontological metaphors associate activities, emotions and ideas with something

concrete, such as a person or an object. For instance, the phenomenon of inflation
is conceived of as an entity—e.g., We need to combat inflation. Metaphors
involving personification are the most obvious examples of this type.

• Structural metaphors are based on other two types, which allow us to understand
an abstract concept in terms of another sharply defined concept. The mapping is
from concrete to abstract. Some examples are Rational argument is war, Labor is
a resource, or Time is a resource.

Traditional theories considered metaphor as a matter a language only. For Lakoff,

it is central to thought. He also makes a distinction between “metaphor” and

“metaphorical expression.” The former refers to cross-domain mappings in the conceptual

system; the latter refers to a linguistic expression that is a surface-level realization of such

a cross-domain mapping.

To describe his idea, Lakoff gives examples of conceptual metaphors like

Argument is war.

This conceptual metaphor is reflected in our everyday language by a variety of

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metaphorical expressions:

• Your claims are indefensible.

• He attacked every weak point in my argument.
• His criticisms were right on target.
• I demolished his argument.
• I've never won an argument with him.
• You disagree? Okay, shoot!
• If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.
• He shot down all of my arguments.

In an everyday language situation there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an

argument—with its constituent conceptions of attack, defense and counterattack—reflects

this. “It is in this sense,” argue Lakoff and Johnson (1980), “that the ARGUMENT IS

WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform

in arguing” (p. 5).

Besides Argument is war, Lakoff and Johnson have documented many large-scale

metaphoric systems in everyday language, such as Love is a journey, Ideas are food or

Life is a container. A conceptual metaphor includes a source domain, from which we

draw metaphorical expressions (war), and a target domain, which we try to understand

(argument). The source-to-target interaction is called mapping.

Metaphors We Live By has initiated discussions and sparked important studies and

debates among many cognitive scientists. As a linguist and a philosopher respectively,

Lakoff and Johnson could not fully capture metaphor representation outside the field of

cognitive linguistics. There are theoretical arguments against the conceptual metaphor

theory, especially from cognitive psychologists such as Gentner or Murphy (1996).

Murphy argues from a psychological point of view that Lakoff and Johnson do not

provide a detailed psychological model of metaphor representation, and their model lacks

a description of a process model for how such representations would be used in

understanding and thought—aspects that are required in cognitive psychology (Murphy,

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1996, p. 176).

However, the conceptual metaphor model is widely accepted and often cited. The

theory that language users think metaphorically is intuitively appealing to most readers.

The Hungarian scholar Zoltán Kövecses has been greatly influenced by it. In turn, the

universality of metaphors is not an entirely new conception. Nietzsche posited the same

assumption in his essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense—that is, that concepts

are metaphors. Before Lakoff, I. A. Richards also pointed out: “That metaphor is the

omnipresent principle of language can be shown by mere observation. We cannot get

through three sentences of ordinary fluid discourse without it …” (Richards, 1936).

The 1980s saw renewed interest in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on linguistic

relativity. According to this hypothesis, “an individual’s thoughts and actions are

determined by the language or languages that individual speaks” (Gippert, 2014). Lakoff

and Johnson’s theory was greatly influenced by linguistic relativity; they argue that

languages use different cultural metaphors that reveal something about how users of a

particular language think. In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) mention

that their observations on how a language can reflect the conceptual system of its speakers

derive in large part from the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Accordingly, a comparative analysis of metaphors related to the same concept across

different cultures would demonstrate both differences and similarities in conceptualization

by language users. Some metaphors are common to most cultures because they are based

on general human experience. Connecting good with up and bad with down is an example

of a common cultural feature. To test the assumption that specific metaphors might vary

between cultures, some common English metaphors and their Hungarian counterparts will

be analyzed according to cognitive views in a contrastive manner.

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 6. Comparison of English and Hungarian Metaphors

Since the 1980s cognitive linguists have emphasized the importance of the

universal aspects of metaphor. Lakoff stresses the importance of the concepts we live by

and the conceptual system, which is metaphorical in nature. However, the number of

cross-cultural studies dealing with the nonuniversalities has been less significant.

In spite of the universalities, metaphors can vary from culture to culture for

various reasons. Native speakers’ past experience is one of the most important aspects. An

isolated culture that, for instance, has never encountered any cats would probably lack

metaphors related to them. There are also source-target mapping variations and unique

language peculiarities.

The most frequent sources from which metaphors are created are the things, which

surround people in their daily lives. Such figurative expressions are related to weather,

animals, plants, colors, and human body parts. In the case of human body parts and

particularly the head, the metaphorical expressions are created based on various aspects,

including the shape and the position of the head in relation to the rest of the body.

Expressions like head of cabbage, head of state and headmaster work on the same

principle. As I referred to it in the previous chapter good is usually connected with up in

most cultures, therefore people in leading positions are a head of some institutions.

Kövecses (2005) points out that cognitive linguists and psychologists usually pose

questions like “What is metaphor?” and “How does it work in the mind?” In contrast,

anthropologists often ask, “What does metaphor do in particular social-cultural contexts?”

(p. xi). In the following examples I elaborate on the latter issue.

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6.1 Past Experiences

Kövecses (2005) has examined several conceptual metaphors interculturally in his

book Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation (p. 156). One of them is Love is a

journey. This metaphor was introduced by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), who offered

various metaphorical expressions for this conceptual metaphor.

For example:

(1) Look how far we’ve come.

Nézd/látod milyen messzire jutottunk.
(2) We’ll just have to go our separate ways.
Elválnak útjaink.

The Hungarian equivalents seem to be straightforward translations, which are expressed

in much the same way linguistically as in English. However, there are subtle differences

in meaning. In the first sentence, come contrasts with jut. The Hungarian verb jut

emphasizes the effort required to make progress in the relationship, whereas the English

verb come is active and does not refer to difficulties in the progress. In the second

example, two active agents are making a decision, whereas in Hungarian, an external

condition (a fork) forces the agents to make a decision. Kövecses argues that such

differences could be related to a more fatalistic attitude to life in the case of Hungarians.

He has found that “[i]n several examples the American English sentences foreground

active agents and deliberate action of these agents, as opposed to the foregrounding of a

passive relationship and relative passivity of the people participating in the love

relationship in Hungarian” (Kövecses, 2005, p. 158).

The experience of a nation greatly influences the way its people think and use

metaphors. In 1991 the New York Times published an article entitled “Hungarians Are

28
Thriving, Gloomily,” which reported, “Poll after poll shows this nation to be the

gloomiest in Eastern Europe—more unhappy and more fearful about the future than

neighboring countries….” Prime Minister József Antall was also quoted: “A Hungarian

will always see the worst. It comes in part from a peasant mentality, which will never

predict a good harvest” (Bohlen, 1991).

The Prime Minister further mentioned that the motor of American life is optimism,

but Hungarians tend to be pessimistic. The national anthem is inherently pessimistic as

well. Hungarians also have a natural tendency toward melancholy and World Health

Organization statistics reveal that this nation has one of the highest suicide rates in the

world (WHO, 2009).

For this reason, it is not surprising that the so-called Suicide Song, “Gloomy

Sunday,” was composed by a Hungarian, the pianist and composer Rezső Seress. It

became well-known during World War II in the United Kingdom and the United States

after the release of a version by Billie Holiday. The original lyrics are depressing, but

unlike Holiday’s version, make no direct mention of committing suicide. The title can be

considered a metaphor for loss, and the English lines maintained the impressive metaphor

black coach of sorrow (bánatom hintaja), which is a key phrase in the tune. An urban

legend alleges that many people committed suicide while listening to Gloomy Sunday.

The fact is that Seress himself did commit suicide and the BBC banned the song; only

instrumental versions were allowed on the radio. This inherently melancholic and

pessimistic nature of Hungarians obviously reflects metaphor usage.

There are also metaphors that use the same source domains, but their meaning is

different in the two cultures. For instance the metaphorical uses of blood in relation to

certain emotions. An increase in blood temperature, as in boiling blood (forr a vére), is

related to anger in English, but in Hungarian it is associated with someone who is

29
passionate and eager to meet somebody. Furthermore, the metaphor in cold blood

(hidegvérrel) has a negative connotation in English (unemotional person), whereas in

Hungarian it conveys a positive meaning (someone who can be precise under pressure).

The aforementioned examples indicate that the existence of the same metaphor in

different cultures does not necessarily imply the same conceptualization. The meaning of

figurative expressions is determined by the culture in which it is used.

6.2 Source-target Mapping Variations

Source-target mapping variations are also common in everyday language use. In

this case, a different set of source domains conceptualizes a target. Greek to me refers to

something that is not understandable. This metaphor was first used in English in

Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. In the Hungarian version (Ez nekem kínai), instead of

Greek, the source domain is China and it refers to the incomprehensible nature of the

Chinese language. Not for all the tea in China works on the same principle. The

Hungarian equivalent (A világ minden kincséért sem) makes use of a more general term

(treasure) as the source domain. Numerous other metaphors related to the source domain

tea are unique to British culture such as Not my cup of tea (Nem nekem való).

Many of the proverbial words of advice begin with Don’t. Possibly one of the

oldest is Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched (Ne igyál előre a medve

bőrére). A variation of this metaphor can be found in most European cultures. This

proverb first appeared in English in Thomas Howell’s New Sonnets and Pretty Pamphlets

(1570) as follows:

Counte not thy Chickens that vnhatched be,

Waye wordes as winde, till thou finde certaintee…

30
In Hungarian, the first recorded use of this metaphor is attributed to Péter Pázmány.

He coined the phrase in a letter to Péter Alvinczi:

Drágán árulja a medvebőrt, maga (noha) a medvéjét sem látta…

In the case of this metaphor as well, different source domains conceptualize the target.

This pair of proverbs date back to almost the same time period, indicating that coining the

equivalent metaphor works on the same principle in all cultures.

6.3 Language Peculiarities

There are also language peculiarities that have no equivalent in another culture. A

person with gardening skills is said to have a green thumb in the United States and the

corresponding British expression is green-fingered. However, in Hungarian there is no

such expression related to gardening skills. Snake oil is a similar phrase in this regard. It

refers to any kind of fraudulent health products or medicine. The origin of the phrase

dates back to the mid 1800s when Chinese labourers gave snake oil to Europeans with

joint pain.

Attila Cserép (2013) collected the metaphorical uses of horse in Hungarian and

English. He mentions several metaphors that have no correspondence in Hungarian and

vice versa. Among them are Horse of a different color, and You can lead a horse to water

but you can’t make him drink. There are also Hungarian horse metaphors without an

English pair, for instance Elver valakit, mint szódás a lovát. The literal translation is: Beat

somebody, like the soda-water carrier his horse.

Kövecses’ idioms dictionary (2001) also lists several metaphors specific to

English language. One of them is When in Rome. This phrase means that when someone

visits another country, he/she should behave like the people in that country. A broader

31
interpretation is to adapt yourself to the customs of the places you visit. This phrase does

not have a related synonym in Hungarian using the same or different source domains.

In spite of the language peculiarities, most of the conventional metaphors work

cross-culturally in English and Hungarian. The difference lies in the source domains

which conceptualize the target domains. These two languages belong to different cultures

of the world, without much contact with each other, although they share similar ways in

conceptualization. For this reason, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggest that metaphors can

vary from culture to culture and linguistic relativity seem to be appropriate as well.

32
 7. Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to present metaphors as an indispensable part of our

everyday communication. Since antiquity, metaphor has been the most researched trope,

and for this reason several theories of metaphor have been constructed. Aristotle considered

it a privileged device, accessible only to creative people. However, Friedrich Nietzsche and

other philosophers held that all language is metaphorical. Such diversities have

characterized historically the development of metaphor.

The turning point was provided by the appearance of the cognitive science. During

the process of rethinking the traditional philosophical views—which hold that metaphor is

not a central concern in human perception of the world and metaphor comprehension is

sequential—recent studies in cognitive linguistics have shown that metaphors are a

fundamental part of human cognition. A classic experiment by Glucksberg also revealed

that metaphor understanding is not optional and is processed as quickly and automatically

as literal language. Metaphoric thinking does not require any special knowledge. Since the

1970s cognitive linguists and psychologists have become fully aware that metaphors are not

only a matter of words, instead, as Lakoff suggests, metaphors are pervasive in thought,

action and everyday language. In cognitive linguistics the importance of the universal

aspects is also emphasized. By using examples from English and Hungarian, I have

compared metaphors from the universal perspective and argued that metaphors in different

cultures reflect a similar thinking pattern and languages may use different figurative

expressions that reveal something about how users of a particular language think.

Metaphoricity is a universal process. It occurs in all the languages of the world, in all strata

of spoken and written communication; because human nature has been the same since the

early days of humankind.

33
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