Transcript The Mechanics of Metaphor: Discussing Austerity

The Mechanics of Metaphor:
Discussing Austerity and
Political Crisis
Patrick Hanks
Research Institute for Information and Language Processing,
University of Wolverhampton;
Bristol Centre for Linguistics, University of the West of
England
[email protected]
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Questions addressed in this talk
• What role does figurative language play in journalistic
reporting—in particular, reporting the Euro crisis and the
austerity measures supposedly intended to deal with it?
– Case studies from The Guardian of 27 Feb. 2013
• How does figurative language work? What is its
function?
• Why do people use metaphors, similes, and other forms of
figurative language?
• How is it structured?
• How is a metaphor different from a literal meaning?
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How to study metaphor?
• Speculation based on introspection and
intuition?
• Text linguistics?
• Analyse corpus evidence?
– But then how do we know what bits of
evidence from the corpus to select?
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Metaphor is a contrastive
notion
• Can there be metaphors if there are no
literal meanings?
• Are metaphors really just similes with the
preposition ‘like’ omitted?
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Media
• Text metaphors
• Pictorial metaphors
– Especially in cartoons and advertisements
– Cf. presentations of Tsaknaki and Tziafa, also
Negrea-Busuioc, this workshop
– Cf. also Charles Forceville (1994), ‘Pictorial Metaphor
in Advertisements’ in Metaphor and Symbolic Activity
9: 1.
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Apparatus: some different kinds of
figurative language
• Conceptual metaphors
– GOOD is UP; LIFE is a JOURNEY; POLITICS is a
GAME; AUSTERITY is a MAD DOG; AUSTERITY
is a (POISONOUS) MEDICINE; etc.
– “Our ordinary conceptual system is fundamentally
metaphorical in nature.”—Lakoff and Johnson (1980)
• Linguistic metaphors (and similes)
– Conventional
– Novel
– Extended metaphors, e.g. Mr Panks as a tugboat in Dickens’ Little
Dorrit.
• [Not forgetting metonymy; zeugma, hyperbole; irony, sarcasm; etc.]
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Case studies
• The Guardian, 27 February 2013
• Front page lead story by Ian Traynor, John Hooper, and
Philip Inman: EU in turmoil as Italy halts austerity plan
• Comment page feature by Simon Jenkins: Italy’s voters
may yet shake the whole European system
– Subsequently re-titled: Beppe Grillo’s antics may yet shake the
whole European system
[In each case, the headline, the subheading, and subsequently the
whole story were re-written several times during the course of the
day. My analysis is based on the printed texts pubished on paper
on the day of issue.]
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Some conventional metaphors in
these two articles
• Poll fallout hits markets / Poll fallout hits markets / Poll fallout hits
markets
• Budget cuts aimed at saving the Euro
• ... retooling the European economy
• The governing stalemate in Rome …
• ... caretaker prime minister Mario Monti
• ... spending cuts and tax rises dictated by the Eurozone would grind to
a halt
• Fears that the deadlock will lengthen Italy’s near two-year recession and
spill over into the rest of the Eurozone …
• Italian ... rejection of spending cuts and tax rises opened up a stark new
fissure in European politics …
• … risking a re-eruption of the Euro crisis
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Conceptual metaphors in these
articles?
• AUSTERITY is an (unexploded) BOMB/VOLCANO/
EARTHQUAKE
• GOVERNMENT is a GAME OF CHESS
• A country’s ECONOMY is a PROCESS
• What about:
– Re-tooling the economy? (The ECONOMY is a
FACTORY (or a MACHINE))
– Budget cuts? (The ECONOMY is ROAST MEAT??)
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Metaphor and creativity
• The outcome [of the Italian election] is an antidote … to the
dogma of austerity that now has Europe’s economy by the
throat. The only way of loosening its grip is through the
ballot.
• The message is forget Keynes and take the medicine, even if
it’s poison.
• His [Beppe Grillo’s] knockout blow was the ballot.
• … Change will only come … with “a sharp blow to the
head” … from a blunt instrument. That instrument is the
ballot.
• Darling of the bankers’ ramp, he [Mario Monti] was SuperMario.
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Conceptual metaphors
These texts can be interpreted in terms of several pervasive
conceptual metaphors, including:
– AUSTERITY IS A MAD DOG.
– POLITICAL REMEDIES ARE MUCH-NEEDED MEDICINE (AN
ANTIDOTE TO RABIES).
– (ITALIAN) POLITICS (AT THIS TIME OF POLITICAL CRISIS) IS
VIOLENT AND HARMFUL, PERHAPS EVEN CRIMINAL,
ACTIVITY.
– POLITICIANS (IN PARTICULAR MARIO MONTI) ARE
BANKERS’ TOYS / TOYBOYS.
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Super-Mario Monti
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Structural analysis of similes
• My grandma has eyes like Superman’s, they bore
right through you. – Sue Townsend (1982), The
Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.
–
–
–
–
–
Topic: Adrian’s grandma’s eyes
Vehicle: Superman’s eyes
Event or state (verb): [having eyes]
Shared property: They bore right through you
Comparator: like
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Does such structural analysis
work for metaphors, too?
• Leaving the euro is the key that unlocks the
prison door.
–
–
–
–
–
Topic: [The Italian people/economy]
Event or state: leaving the euro
Shared property: [escape from a bad situation]
Comparator: -Vehicle: key that unlocks a prison door
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More structural analysis
• ... the dogma of austerity that now has Europe’s
economy by the throat.
– Topic: the dogma of austerity
– Vehicle: [mad dog that attacks and bites people]
– Event or state (verb): has Europe’s economy by the
throat
– Shared property (implicit): [does harm to people]
– Comparator: –
• This seems rather forced. Does not work very well.
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How many conceptual metaphors
can you have in one article?
• What is/are the underlying conceptual metaphor(s)
in the following sentences from the same articles?
– The Italian economy had to be waterboarded.
– Leaving the Euro is the key that unlocks the prison
door.
– Leaders (and their bankers) claim that austerity is a
“necessary” punishment.
– Despite being outside the Euro straitjacket, Britain…
– A classic vicious circle: sooner or later, austerity
becomes an end, not a means: obsessive selfflagellation.
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Another attempted analysis
• The Italian economy had to be waterboarded. It
shrank by at least 2.2% last year.
– Topic: The Italian economy
– Vehicle: [prisoners tortured by the Khmer
Rouge, the CIA, and other quasi-criminal
government agencies]
– Event or state: It shrank by at least 2.2%
– Shared property: [forced to suffer]
– Comparator: -18
Creativity
• These finance ministers are like Aztec priests. If the blood
sacrifice fails to deliver rain, there must be more blood.
• ...They [Europe’s leaders] are doing it [imposing austerity,
which will result in economic depression] to themselves,
voluntarily, in obeisance to the gods of confidence, who
long ago abandoned them.
• Economists are to modern government what doctors were
to tobacco companies, as good as the last fee.
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Structure (4)
• These finance ministers are like Aztec priests. If the
blood sacrifice fails to deliver rain, there must be more
blood.
• ...They [Europe’s leaders] are doing it to themselves,
voluntarily, in obeisance to the gods of confidence, who
long ago abandoned them.
• [ Conceptual metaphor: AUSTERITY has become a
RELIGIOUS BELIEF]
• Economists are to modern government what doctors
were to tobacco companies, as good as the last fee.
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Some first conclusions, tentatively
• Similes have linguistic structure.
• Many metaphors (including most of those in these
articles) depend on an underlying conceptual
structure.
• The relationships (cognitive/linguistic;
metaphor/simile) are still very unclear.
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What‘s the different between
metaphorical and literal meaning?
• Is the most frequent sense necessarily literal?
– No! Consider backfire, launch.
• Historical priority?
– No! Consider awful, ardent, camera, ... literal.
• Concrete, not abstract?
– Yes – if there is a concrete sense (but cf. idea).
– A word can have two or more literal senses (with no
resonance between them): cf. subject, object.
• Absence of cognitive resonance with some other „literal“
sense of the same expression?
– Metaphors resonate. Literal uses don‘t.
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How are similes different from
metaphors?
• Similes have an explicit comparator (like, as ... as,
resemble, etc.).
• Similes often have comparatively little semantic content.
• They are often just attention-getting devices, designed to
wake the reader up and get his/her attention.
• As outrageous as possible
• The vehicle is often irrealis (scream like a banshee, [an
event] like a fairy story, skin like a princess, ...)
• Also used to explain the new (unfamiliar situation) in
terms of the given (pre-existing knowledge).
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Dictionary definitions of ‘simile’
• (New) Oxford Dictionary of English (1998, 2003):
simile: a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another
thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or
vivid (e.g. as brave as a lion)
• Merriam Webster’s 10th Collegiate (1993):
simile: a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often
introduced by like or as (as in cheeks like roses)
• What the dictionaries don’t say:
What is the relation between simile and metaphor?
How is a simile structured? And what is it for?
The vehicle is often fantastic or unreal (a banshee, a zombie, a fairy tale, a
princess, a demented lighthouse, a broiled frog), not a real-world thing
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The main uses of like, preposition
• To compare: John is like his father
– MrPett had been like a father to him
– (An exclusive set: Mr Pett was not his father)
• To make an ad-hoc set: people like doctors and lawyers
– An inclusive set, i.e. it includes doctors and lawyers
• To report perceptions: looks like, tastes like, smells like,
sounds like, feels like, seems like
– His mouth tasted like the bottom of a parrot’s cage.
– It felt like velvet.
• And to report feelings/emotions:
– I felt like a fool, I felt like hitting him
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Distribution of similes in text
Non-fiction: Jon Lee Anderson: The Fall of
Baghdad (2005). Very factual style, few similes.
Three main clusters:
– pp. 1-21 (8 similes). Saddam’s Iraq. E.g.: He simply
appeared and vanished again -- like the visitation of a
divinity.
– pp. 229-231 (4 similes). Bombs start to fall. E.g.: debris
everywhere, which looked shorn, as if a giant rake had
come along and torn off the top layer of earth.
– p. 279. Battle comes to the city. E.g. a rhythmic noise,
like a great steel drum being pounded mechanically, ...
a huge crackling roar, like metallic popcorn popping.
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Why do people use figurative
language?
• [TO FOLLOW]
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Exploiting conventional metaphor
She fired an opening smile across Celia's desk. (BNC)
• Does this just mean ‘She smiled at Celia’?
• Evidently, it’s more than that.
• It also exploits two conventional metaphors:
Fire the opening shot (in a conflict)
Fire a shot across someone’s bows
Be glad that you are not Celia!
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Davidson’s error
• “All metaphors are false (like lies)”
– The speaker deliberately says something false, to alert
the hearer to some salient property of the topic.
• Donald Davidson (1978): What Metaphors Mean
– So far, so good.
• “All similes are trivially true: everything is like
everything else.”
– Yes, but some things are more alike than others
Davidson seems to assume comparison with real,
experienceable things. But the vehicle of many similes
is not an experiential reality at all.
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Not an experiential Gestalt
• Lakoff & Johnson (1980) claim that cognitive metaphors
are based on “an experiential Gestalt” – i.e. that we
interpret the world in terms of everyday experience.
– Probably not true of all metaphors; certainly not true of similes.
• EXAMPLE: The Italian economy had to be
waterboarded.
– It’s not an everyday experience of anyone, even in America, to
waterboard people, nor to be waterboarded.
– But we do read about people being waterboarded.
– We interpret the world in terms of collective linguistic experience.
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Logical and analogical
• A natural language consists of a puzzling mixture of
logical and analogical procedures
• Neglect of the analogical aspect has led to serious errors
– E.g. the quest for precise definition in ontologies currently being
designed for the Semantic Web
• In ordinary language people make new meanings by comparing
one thing with another and by creating ad-hoc sets
– Not merely by asserting identity
– Nor by conforming exactly to conventional phraseology
– Vagueness is an important principle of natural language
• Danger of confusing language with mathematical logic
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We need to re-examine the relationship
between language and logic
• The theory of norms and exploitations (TNE) argues
that:
• Talk of an "underlying logical form" of an utterance is
pernicious.
• What "underlies" linguistic behaviour is a set of
behavioural regularities -- phraseological patterns.
• One of the many things that people do with these patterns
is to make logics.
• They do other things too – notably, use language patterns
for social interaction.
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A usage-based, corpus-driven
theory of language
• TNE research indicates that language is indeed a rule-governed
system BUT:
• There are two sets of rules, not just one:
1.
2.
Rules for using words normally, “correctly”, boringly
Rules for exploiting normal patterns of word use. Exploitations
include not only metaphors and similes, but ellipsis, anomalous
arguments, irony, etc. etc.
• The two rule systems interact. Today’s exploitation may become
tomorrow’s norm.
– Compare Bowdle and Gentner (2005): ‘the Career of Metaphor’.
• The rules are probabilistic, not deterministic.
• Hanks, P. (2013): Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations. MIT
Press.
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