Ordinary discourse, including political and marketing discourse as well as casual conversation, is full of stories, some quite short, some quite long. Many of these stories report actual events from the teller’s experience, or from someone else’s experience. Stories are often used metaphorically, in much the same way that religious teachers and social commentators use allegories and fables, as a way of commenting on actual events or making a point. Sometimes these everyday metaphorical stories resemble parables or fables, in that the teller develops the vehicle story fairly elaborately, but in other cases the vehicle story is sketched quite briefly, and the audience is left to fill in the details. As with allegories and parables discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, the mapping of vehicle onto topic may be explicitly stated, but it is often only implied. Metaphorical stories are particularly common in persuasive discourse such as political speeches and advertising, but they appear in many contexts including scientific writing and ordinary casual conversations.
In the “glass ceiling” story from her 2008 concession speech near the end of the Democratic Presidential primary campaign, discussed in detail in Chapter 1, Hillary Clinton built on a now common metaphor for the way covert sexism can limit women’s career opportunities (now extended to all disfavored classes). She expanded the metaphor into a story about attempting to “smash through the glass ceiling” as a vehicle for characterizing her own campaign and for expressing both the frustration felt by her and her supporters and her own hope for future success. She did not explicitly map the vehicle story onto the topic of her campaign, but by shifting to a journey metaphor (“the path will be a little easier next time”) and by directly addressing her supporters (“thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it”), she made the mapping clear.
A similar example comes from Tony Blair’s speech to the 2005 British Labour Party conference at Gateshead. In the opening segments of the speech, Blair used several expressions based on the commonplace journey metaphor for politics, which was already implied by the Labour Party theme, “forward, not back” (for a detailed discussion, see Ritchie, Reference Ritchie2008; for a detailed comparison of Blair’s use of these and other key terms with other metaphorical uses found in ordinary English discourse, see Deignan & Semino, Reference Deignan, Semino, Cameron and Maslen2010). Blair briefly introduced an organization metaphor for government, asserting that his role is that of a “servant of the people,” then asserting that his “boss” is, not the Labour party or its dissident members, but “the British people.” This metaphor served indirectly to address an incipient revolt among members of the party who, along with a large portion of the British electorate, had become disaffected with Blair’s leadership, in part because of some of his economic policies but particularly because of his support of the war in Iraq. After musing about the early days of his tenure as prime minister, Blair explicitly addressed this disaffection by developing the nation is a family metaphor (Lakoff, Reference Lakoff1996) into a “marital spat” story that resonates both with a common plot of comic strips and situation comedies and with a scenario common to political rhetoric (Ritchie, Reference Ritchie2008; Deignan & Semino, Reference Deignan, Semino, Cameron and Maslen2010):
So after the euphoria, came the steady hard slog of decision-making and delivery. And the events that tested me. And the media mood turning, and friends sometimes being lost as the big decisions mounted, and the thousand little things that irritate and grate, and then all of a sudden there you are, the British people, thinking: you’re not listening and I think: you’re not hearing me. And before you know it you raise your voice. I raise mine. Some of you throw a bit of crockery. And now you, the British people, have to sit down and decide whether you want the relationship to continue. If you decide you want Mr Howard, that is your choice. If you want to go off with Mr Kennedy, that’s your choice too. It all ends in the same place. A Tory Government not a Labour Government.
Several of the words and phrases marked as metaphorical in this passage imply stories that are not elaborated; like the allegories discussed in Chapter 4, metaphorical stories often accompany or include other metaphors. “Steady hard slog” develops the common work is a journey conceptual metaphor in a way that characterizes it as a particularly tedious and unpleasant “journey.” “Decision-making and delivery” builds on the conceptual metaphor decisions are objects and characterizes executive work in terms of a story about making and delivering some kind of object.
“The media mood turning” is somewhat ambiguous; it suggests the conceptual metaphor politics is a journey or perhaps news reporting is a journey, in which case the media (as a single institution) is a ‘traveler’ who ‘changes direction.’ However, the word “turning” is also used to describe a process in which milk or some other food-stuff begins to spoil (‘turns sour,’ literally sour in the case of milk, but mood, including the collective mood of the media, is also frequently characterized as ‘sour’). This usage of “turn” is itself based on an implied journey metaphor, but it suggests a richer meaning for “the media mood turning,” with much more intense perceptual simulations. “The big decisions mounted,” based on importance is size and more is up, implies a story about large objects piling up. All of these small metaphorical stories contribute perceptual simulations to the larger story about the early years of Blair’s leadership, and establish the background for the story-metaphor that begins about halfway through the passage.
“The thousand little things that irritate and grate” presents actions or habits as objects, specifically, as ‘objects with a rough and pain-inducing texture.’ This marks a transition from a brief history of Blair’s relationship with the voters into a metaphorical vehicle story about an interpersonal disagreement, by implication a fight between spouses, which serves as a metaphor vehicle to express something about the political disagreement (the topic of the metaphor).
“The thousand little things that irritate and grate” could fit easily into a story about either a political or a domestic relationship (or in a literal usage, into a story about camping in the desert or wearing uncomfortable clothing). Similarly, “there you are, the British people, thinking: you’re not listening and I think: you’re not hearing me” can be interpreted as a literal statement about Blair’s meetings with constituents as well as his addresses to “the British people.” It can also be interpreted as a metonym or metaphor based on attending to is listening / understanding is hearing – which can be applied either to the topic story about political discourse or to the ensuing topic story about a bit of domestic violence. The transition to an interpersonal dispute is implied by “you raise your voice. I raise mine” (more / louder is up), and the transition to a story about a domestic dispute becomes explicit with “Some of you throw a bit of crockery” (insults are objects).
In contrast to the typical allegory or fable, Blair provides an explicit mapping of the vehicle story (a marital fight with the potential ending of divorce and remarriage) onto the topic story (the dispute within the Labour Party with the potential ending of electing a new party leader) by referring in several places to “you, the British people,” culminating in “you, the British people, have to sit down and decide … If you want to go off with Mr. Kennedy.” He then brings it back to the context of the political meeting by adding as a coda “It all ends in the same place. A Tory Government not a Labour Government.”
There is an interesting contrast between Blair’s earlier use of the organization metaphor, in which the people are his “boss,” and his use of the family metaphor, in which he presents the ‘wife’ with an ultimatum: “sit down and decide.” Popular culture typically represents the wife as throwing dishes; this implied mapping of citizens onto ‘wife’ is reinforced by “go off with Mr. Kennedy.” In any event, Blair explicitly states that the decision about continuing the relationship is up to “you, the British people.” The prime minister / ‘husband’ whose actions led to the fight clearly has no intention of changing, contradicting the implications of the “boss” metaphor and at the same time reinforcing the traditional model of gender roles that is implied by the pop culture “throwing crockery” story, and mapping these onto the party leader’s relationship with citizens in general and the party in particular.
The passage ends with a transition from a metaphorical story based on politics is marriage to a metaphorical story based on politics is a journey, with “It all ends in the same place.” As with the opening phrases, “things that irritate and grate” and “you’re not listening,” this transition is immediately preceded, and facilitated, by an ambiguous phrase that can apply to either vehicle or topic story. A wife thinking about leaving her errant husband might decide literally to “go off with Mr. Kennedy,” but if the voters elect Mr. Kennedy as prime minister, they will “go off with Mr. Kennedy” metaphorically but not literally.
It is likely that most members of the audience were familiar with the pop culture depiction of a marital spat that includes throwing dishes, which was at one time a staple of a certain genre of comedy. Those who were familiar with the scenario are likely to have experienced a simulation in which Blair is blended with and seen as a firm (or perhaps stubborn and self-righteous) husband facing an angry and perhaps somewhat hysterical wife. Mapping changing leaders onto “going off with …” would also be likely to activate simulations of divorce and adultery, complete with the attendant emotions – anger, bitterness, etc. Metaphorically expressing the challenge to his leadership as a pop culture ‘marital spat,’ with the comic overtones reinforced by characterizing fundamental political disagreements as “throwing a bit of crockery,” discredits the political opposition and belittles their concerns (Deignan and Semino arrive at a similar conclusion). Comparing Blair’s use of terms like “crockery” and the phrase “passion and hunger” with the appearance of these words and phrases in a large collection of English discourse, Deignan and Semino found that Blair’s usage, while drawing on themes or scenarios familiar enough to be recognizable by members of his audience, was also rather atypical, which could have the effect of enhancing attention to both his wording and the implied metaphorical stories.
This set of interwoven metaphorical stories has a coda: Ritchie (Reference Ritchie2008) observes that Blair’s use of the ‘marital squabble’ scenario (and his somewhat atypical use of “throwing crockery”) and his casting the dissident party members in the role of a discontented housewife effectively denigrated their legitimate concerns about the direction his leadership was taking and belittled the importance of the political issues involved. Deignan and Semino reach a similar conclusion. A few months after the 2005 general election, which the Labour Party won, Blair was ousted from his position as party leader and prime minister; Labour suffered a resounding defeat at the next general election. It is entirely plausible that Blair’s use of the “throwing crockery” story to disparage the concerns of dissatisfied voters and backbench Labour Party members, and the political attitudes implied by this story, both contributed to these subsequent defeats.
Metaphors Expanded into Stories
Contrary to the view that familiar metaphors become completely lexicalized, so that the metaphorical meaning is processed directly as a secondary meaning of the word or phrase, speakers are often quite inventive in transforming common metaphors into stories, sometimes quite elaborate stories. One example appears in an informal focus group conversation among scientists (at a daylong meeting about communicating science to the general public; for details, see Ritchie & Schell, Reference Ritchie and Schell2009). The participating scientists worked in the same lab and were on quite friendly terms, as demonstrated by teasing and joking throughout the session. In response to a comment about the need to be continually alert to the power of public officials over research funds, one participant, Jack,1 remarked, “Ya. There really is no more ivory tower.” This remark itself implies a story in which there once was an “ivory tower” and maps it onto a story in which it was once but is no longer possible to conduct basic research with no worries about funding. About a minute later, another participant echoed this metaphor, and a complex collaboratively developed story ensued:
Larry: Jack said something, one way of … of capturing part of that, ah, change of role is ah, no more ivory tower. It’s probably, we’re, we’re not there now … it’s probably not too far in the future.
Jim: I’ve never really seen the ivory tower. (Laughter)
Larry: You haven’t. They never did let you in did they?
Jack: Is that what you dream about, in the night, Jim? Ivory tower you just go to sleep and the first thing you get is the seven million dollar grant from … to do whatever you want from the MacArthur Foundation? and you go up into the ivory tower. What the, open pit, unstable wall
Jan: Ya the unstable.
Larry: Ya, instead of the ivory tower, we’re in an unstable foundation.
This passage contains several brief metaphorical stories blended into a whole. Larry’s initial statement expands time is space and change is a journey into a story in which these scientists (and by implication the entire science community) are ‘traveling’ toward a time/‘place’ where scientists will no longer be free to pursue topics that interest them without worrying about funding. Jim’s quip builds on this story, but implies that the conditions expressed by the “ivory tower” metaphor have already vanished. Larry’s comeback picks up on the “tower” metaphor to construct a different story, about Jim’s attempt to gain entry into the privileged status of doing ‘pure science.’ Jack then develops a third story, a story within a story in which securing a prized research grant is contained within a story about Jim’s dreams. Finally Jack transforms the structure metaphor implicit in “ivory tower” as a critique of the group’s shared dependence on unreliable (“unstable”) funding (Ritchie & Schell, Reference Ritchie and Schell2009).
Larry’s initial statement appears to have been intended to elaborate the story-metaphor mapping implied by “no more ivory tower” by layering the implied journey and time is space metaphors (“we’re not there now … it’s probably not too far in the future”) and mapping it onto a story about the way government and other external support for research is changing: the vehicle story implies a ‘journey’ both toward the “ivory tower” and toward a time (metaphorically, a ‘place’) where the “ivory tower” has disappeared. But Jim’s quip altered the vehicle story by implying that, by the time he ‘began the journey,’ the “ivory tower” had already ‘disappeared,’ with the implication that he had never experienced a situation in which he did not have to struggle for research funds.
Larry’s reply has the overt quality of a teasing put-down: “never did let you in” implies that Jim had perhaps sought ‘admission’ and had been found unworthy or unqualified. The language, “let you in,” literally refers to entry into a place (the “ivory tower”) but is also consistent with being admitted to or excluded from some exclusive or elite place or organization (a group / status is a location in space). Jack’s question “Is that what you dream about, in the night,” appears initially to have been intended as an elaboration of Larry’s teasing put-down. However, he continued the story about Jim’s dream, blending the vehicle and topic stories into a “dream”/aspiration story in a way that is possible only in dreams, and extended the resulting fantasy as a metaphor for the situation they all face as scientists trying to do basic research in a government-funded laboratory, and bringing Jim back into the group (Ritchie & Schell, Reference Ritchie and Schell2009). It is likely that these transitions were accompanied by and facilitated by perceptual simulations – a visual simulation of an ivory tower, accompanied by activation of factual knowledge about science funding, a visual simulation of Jim, standing forlornly in front of the locked door of a tower, accompanied by a simulation of relevant emotions, simulations of dreaming and of the experience of receiving a ‘no-strings’ research grant, and finally simulations of a tower built on crumbling foundations.
Another example of a transformed idiomatic metaphor appeared in a conversation among a group of four African American men about public safety and police-community relations (for details, see Ritchie, Reference Ritchie2010). The speaker, Willard, had made several remarks critical of lax child discipline in homes and schools, and about the failure of community members to hold adolescents accountable for their anti-social activities. After another speaker made a long speech critical of police officers’ rough treatment of people they arrest on suspicion of committing a crime, Willard replied with a story metaphor based on a creative transformation of a commonplace idiom, ‘we’re all in the same boat’: “it’s like someone in a boat and saying, ‘Well look I’m just gonna put a hole in the boat so I can get me some water.’ No, everybody goes down. Everybody goes down.”
In this passage the vehicle story is abbreviated; listeners are expected to fill in the result of knocking a hole in the boat and understand why “everybody goes down.” The topic story and the vehicle-topic mapping are also left unspoken, to be filled in by the listeners: If juvenile delinquents are allowed to disrupt (“put a hole in”) the moral, legal, and social norms and institutions that make civil life possible (“the boat”), then everyone in the community will suffer the consequences (“go down”). The ability of audience members to enter into the story world of the vehicle story (a person sitting with other people in a boat and deliberately putting a hole in the boat) and blend it with the topic story is vital to the effectiveness of this story.
In a 2003 public meeting about an incident in which police officers shot and killed Kendra James, an unarmed African American woman (Ritchie, Reference Ritchie2011a; Ritchie & Cameron, Reference Ritchie and Cameron2014), a participant created a metaphorical story by ironically contrasting the meaning of the conventional metaphor, “blind justice,” with the literal meaning of blind. The speaker had just criticized the district attorney for failing to seek an indictment of the police officer who shot Ms. James, and contrasted the district attorney’s aggressive presentation of incriminating evidence in other criminal cases with his neutral presentation of evidence in the James case as well as in other recent excessive use of force cases. He wrapped up this criticism as follows:
Somebody said that ‘justice is blind,’ but we as Portland citizens, we need to know, or I need to know, that our elected and sworn officials are not taking advantage of her or us just because she’s blind.
Here the speaker contrasted the customary idiomatic understanding of the metaphor “blind” as implying a disregard for irrelevant individual characteristics with a very different understanding of the metaphor as implying that one ignores or refuses to “see” blatantly manifest faults or crimes, and develops the literal meaning of blind into a story about officials who “take advantage of” the visually disabled goddess – and, by implication, get away with crimes that she is unable to see. The potential simulations, with the ironic contradictions and negations, are illustrated in Figure 6.1.
Figure 6.1 “Blind Justice”
An example of a different sort comes from Cameron’s (Reference Cameron2007) analysis of the “Reconciliation dialogues” between Pat Magee, a convicted IRA terrorist, and Jo Berry, whose father was killed by a bomb planted by Magee. Berry read a poem she had written, based on a conventional “building bridges” metaphor in reference to their collaborative attempt to overcome the ‘gaps’ between the Irish Catholic and Protestant communities. Magee transformed the “bridge as connector” metaphor, with its implied story, into a very different sort of story. In immediate response to the poem he pointed out that a bridge has “two ends”; later he further transformed the metaphor by pointing out that bridges can “create distances” and “become barriers” (Ritchie, Reference Ritchie2013; more detailed discussion in Chapter 7).
People often collaborate in developing metaphorical stories. In the “ivory tower” example, one person introduced the metaphor in a way that implied but did not elaborate a metaphorical story and other participants quickly picked up on the idea and developed different aspects of the story. A similar example comes from another conversation about police-community relations from the same series. The participants in this conversation were four “new left” activists, apparently good friends before they were brought together for this conversation. All four exhibited a somewhat subversive sense of humor; one participant in particular, Tyler, made jokes and teases throughout the conversation.
In this conversation, as in the other conversations in the series, the talk turned several times to situations in which police officers injured or killed unarmed civilians, often apparently as a result of failing to follow proper procedures. Several times during the conversation, police officers were described as “public servants.” On one occasion, Tyler elaborated on this metaphor, leading to the following exchange:
Tyler: “Cops are more like a servant, like a waiter or waitress, right? So if they fuck up, they say, oh, I’m really sorry. You want to talk to my boss or manager?”
Deke: “If you’re a cop and you screw up at work, like you pepper spray a baby, or you shot someone who didn’t deserve … it is just weird. Stakes are a lot higher than they are in our jobs.”
Tyler: “I’m sure. If a waitress approached you with saying, oh I’m really sorry, you said ‘over medium’, but I got you ‘over easy’. Cops just fucking pepper sprayed your baby, even more so, right? [Laughter] … They feel a sense of ‘it’s a tough job,’ but fuck, you know, we all have tough jobs. You should be held accountable at all levels.”
Here, a commonplace story about working/eating in a short-order café is introduced as a metaphor for the expectation that people, including police officers, should be accountable for their mistakes. (From the transcript it appears that at least one of the participants had worked as a food server.) Although it is possible that a baby has, at one time or another, been the victim of police use of pepper spray, there is no evidence in the transcript that Tyler was referring to any actual incident. “Pepper spray a baby” could be understood as a blend of hyperbole with metonym, or it could be understood as a metaphor for any and all forms of police violence. The story about the waitress’s rather mild mistake is contrasted here with an exaggerated (and potentially also metaphorical or at least metonymic) story about accidental police violence, with the two stories tied together by the unifying metaphor “we all have tough jobs” and the discriminating metaphor “at all levels,” which recognizes the status and responsibility difference between food servers and police officers while insisting on their similarity with respect to accountability.
This passage continues with a disruption by another participant, Celeste, that leads into a collaborative transformation of the metaphorical story into an absurd fantasy:
Michael: Of course, the fallacy of that assumption … the waitress is doing something blatantly crazy unethical,
Celeste: Some places you get tipped more for that.
Michael: Like, I love that sauce. [Laughter]
Tyler: You guys have the best soup. [Laughter]
Celeste: We do.
Deke: Think about that next time you order from the W––-.
Here it appears that Michael intended the first statement as a continuation of the serious discussion. However, by violating the story frame and treating the metaphorical story as a literal story, Celeste opened an amusing fantasy story. Demonstrating that he did not resent the sudden shift from serious to playfully irreverent, Michael joined and built on the fantasy story, followed by the other participants.
This segment is one of several in which this group shifted abruptly between serious talk about the topic, police-community relations, and lighthearted banter. Here, the banter involved treating a metaphorical story as true. In another exchange from the same conversation, the banter involved role-playing and treating the conversation as something entirely different (Ritchie, Reference Ritchie2010).
Tyler: Are you a cop? Are you a cop?
Celeste: No.
Tyler: Are you a cop?
Celeste: No.
Tyler: That’s three times, okay. We’re cool.
In this exchange, Tyler initiates a minidrama in which the group is engaged in a dangerous and subversive conspiracy and Celeste is suspected of being an undercover agent. The sequence ending with Tyler’s closing comment about “three times” is based on the common belief among political radicals (and users of illegal drugs) in the United States, that testimony of an undercover police officer will not be admitted in a criminal trial if the officer has denied being a police officer three times. Ritchie and Zhu (Reference Ritchie and Zhu2015) show that this is a type of GM (Chapter 3 and Halliday, Reference Halliday, Martin and Veel1998), in which one type of interpersonal interaction (jocular teasing) is “transcategorized” into and presented as another type of speech act, a hostile test of identity.
Metaphors Based on Truncated Stories
Sometimes speakers tell stories in a more or less canonical form, providing details about motivation, objective, setbacks encountered and overcome, and ultimate accomplishment of the objective. More often, part or all of this is either well-known by the listeners or can be easily inferred: speakers frequently omit large parts of a story, relate events out of time order, or merely allude to the narrative implications of a metaphor (see Chapter 7).
During the 1988 U.S. presidential campaign, Texas Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower asserted that “George Bush was born on third base (but) he thought he had hit a triple.” This remark blends two metaphorical stories from the game of baseball, in which a triple refers to a hit that allows the batter to run all the way to third base. “Hit a triple” metaphorically maps onto Bush’s frequently repeated story about how he made his own fortune, consistent with the story, commonplace in the United States, about ‘working one’s way up from the bottom.’ Being “born on third base” maps onto a story topic about being born in a family with substantial resources in wealth and social and political connections and relying on all of that ‘social capital’ to have a successful career. The contrast between the two metaphorical stories maps onto contrasting career success stories; together they blend into a single implicit story about a member of the moneyed elite pretending to be an “ordinary person” for the sake of political advantage.
As Jim Hightower’s quip illustrates, a phrase is often used deliberately to index a story in a way that contrasts with or comments metaphorically on another story, which is either the topic of the metaphor or associated with the metaphor. Both Presidents Bush liked to characterize themselves as ‘self-made men’ (a central metaphor in U.S. politics since the founding of the republic), even though both actually came from quite privileged backgrounds (George Bush Sr. was the son of former Senator Prescott Bush, a wealthy banker and son of a wealthy industrialist: the family has enjoyed a position of social, political, and financial privilege for several generations). It is reasonable to assume that the business successes of each were greatly abetted by “social capital” (the family name and social connections) and probably by financial capital – money invested by or borrowed from family members. Thus, George Bush was metaphorically “born on third base,” although he claimed to have “hit a triple,” i.e., to have made his own way by moving to Texas and earning millions in the oil industry. This is an example of a vehicle story that metaphorically maps onto a topic story.
Just as the “knock a hole in the boat to get me some water” story discussed earlier transforms the stock metaphor “we’re all in the same boat,” “born on third base” exploits and transforms a familiar metaphor field, in this example life is baseball, which provides the basis for many common metaphorical expressions. Someone who failed entirely (at courtship or other endeavors) ‘struck out’ or alternatively, ‘didn’t even make it to first base.’ Adolescents commonly refer to different stages in sexual activity as ‘bases,’ leading to actual intercourse (‘a home run’). A person who achieves a great success at anything is said to have ‘hit a home run’ or ‘hit it out of the park.’ A person who achieves a slightly less than complete success may be said to have ‘hit a triple’ or ‘hit a double.’ The harsh criminal laws passed in California and other states during the 1970s and 1980s that sent people to prison for life after the third felony offense were labeled ‘three strikes and you’re out,’ implying a metaphorical story in which a series of successful pitches (in a baseball game) is mapped onto a series of minor felony convictions (in law enforcement).
The literal baseball story of getting to third base (where the player is prepared to score a run relatively easily) involves skillful and effortful play: hitting the ball quite far and in a way that is difficult to catch, and running fast enough to reach third base before the outfielder can throw the ball in to the infield. The life is baseball metaphor maps this story onto the ordinary story of career advancement, which involves competing for a good entry-level position and working hard so as to work one’s way up into a position (such as a senior management position) in which it will be relatively easy to take the next step to complete career success (Figure 6.2). Being “born on third base” in Hightower’s quip maps onto being born into a position from which success can be obtained with little effort, and “thought he’d hit a triple” maps onto claims to have worked hard like everyone else.
Figure 6.2 life is baseball
In addition to mapping a political story onto a familiar sports story, Hightower’s quip also accomplishes a complex bit of metaphorical framing. “Hit a triple” metaphorically expresses the autobiographical frame preferred by the Bush campaign (Bush achieved his success through hard work and skill); “born on third base” reframes the Bush autobiography in terms of inherited privilege. Moreover, the reframing itself, using the phrase “he thought he had …”), reframes the Bush autobiographical claims as both inflated and delusional.
Metaphorical stories can also help to explain technical or complex concepts. The passage about Alzheimer’s disease from TIME, quoted by Steen (Reference Steen2015) and briefly discussed in Chapter 3, is a good example.
Imagine your brain as a house filled with lights. Now imagine someone turning off the lights one by one. That’s what Alzheimer’s disease does. It turns off the lights so that the flow of ideas, emotions, and memories from one room to the next slows and eventually ceases. And sadly – as anyone who has ever watched a parent, a sibling, a spouse succumb to the spreading darkness knows – there is no way to stop the lights from turning off, no way to switch them back on once they’ve grown dim. At least not yet.
As pointed out in Chapter 3, the opening sentence, “Imagine your brain …” draws attention to the fact that what follows is a metaphor, and also guides the mapping. The vehicle story tells about a house in which someone turns off the lights one by one, so that the house gradually becomes darker. There is no way to stop the person from turning the lights off, and no way to turn them back on. The sentences that tell the vehicle story are intermixed with sentences that explain how it maps onto the topic story; the middle sentence inserts another topic story about a person watching a loved one “succumbing to the darkness.” This metaphorical story is based on a blend of two conceptual metaphors, consciousness is LIGHT / UNCONSCIOUSNESS is darkness and the brain is a house. “The flow of ideas, emotions, and memories from one room to the next slows and eventually ceases” suggests yet a third conceptual metaphor, something like cognition is liquid. In this example, although “spreading darkness” carries some negative emotional valence, most of the emotional impact seems to be provided by the topic story, that is, by “anyone who has ever watched a parent …”
Summary
Metaphorical stories take many forms and serve many purposes. Sometimes, as in the “throwing crockery” example, they serve to characterize the social valuation of an event or, as in the “born on third base” example, to contradict and discredit an opponent’s story. Often metaphorical stories are told as a way of explaining an abstract concept, as in the Alzheimer’s example. Metaphorical stories also serve to establish or reinforce shared identity or values, as in the “glass ceiling” example from Hillary Clinton’s 2008 concession speech, discussed in detail in Chapter 1. Metaphorical stories are often elaborated and embellished as a way of enhancing their entertainment value (and contributing to social bonding), as in the “waitress” example.
Metaphorical stories told in detail appear in many communicative contexts – in this chapter relatively detailed metaphorical stories from political speeches, health communication, and a casual conversation were discussed. Briefer metaphorical stories are probably more common in all of these contexts, if only because the more detailed stories may not hold perceivers’ attention as well. Metaphorical stories are often only implied, or only the bare bones are related, as in the “born on third base” example. At the margins these shade into story metaphors, discussed in Chapter 7, metaphors that merely suggest or index metaphorical stories.
