Introduction

In the now classic essay “Metaphor” (Black, 1962b), Max Black considers and rejects various formulations of the “substitution view” of metaphor, according to which every metaphorical statement is equivalent to a (perhaps more awkward, or less decorative) literal statement. Black devotes most of his critical attention to a special case of the substitution view, the “comparison view,” according to which a metaphor consists in the presentation of an underlying analogy or similarity. It is clear from Black's discussion that he understands the comparison view as entailing that every metaphorical statement be equivalent to one in which some quite definite respect of similarity or analogy is presented, and that successful communication via metaphor involves the hearer understanding the same respect(s) of similarity or analogy as the speaker.

Black argues that, except perhaps in cases of catachresis – the use of metaphor to remedy gaps in vocabulary – the comparison view is inadequate. As an alternative, Black proposed the adoption of an “interaction view” of metaphor. According to this view, metaphors work by applying to the principal (literal) subject of the metaphor a system of “associated implications” characteristic of the metaphorical secondary subject. These implications are typically provided by the received “commonplaces” about the secondary subject. Although Black's position has many facets, it is clear that, at a minimum, it differs from the comparison view in denying that the success of a metaphor rests on its success in conveying to the listener or reader some quite definite respects of similarity or analogy between the principal and secondary subjects: metaphors are, on Black's view, more open-ended (this is not his terminology) than the comparison view would suggest.

FORMULATING THE PROBLEM

If you hear somebody say, “Sally is a block of ice”, or “Sam is a pig”, you are likely to assume that the speaker does not mean what he says literally, but that he is speaking metaphorically. Furthermore, you are not likely to have very much trouble figuring out what he means. If he says, “Sally is a prime number between 17 and 23”, or “Bill is a barn door”, you might still assume he is speaking metaphorically, but it is much harder to figure out what he means. The existence of such utterances – utterances in which the speaker means metaphorically something different from what the sentence means literally – poses a series of questions for any theory of language and communication: What is metaphor, and how does it differ from both literal and other forms of figurative utterances? Why do we use expressions metaphorically instead of saying exactly and literally what we mean? 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?

In my discussion, I propose to tackle this latter set of questions – those centering around the problem of how metaphors work – both because of its intrinsic interest, and because it does not seem to me that we shall get an answer to the others until this fundamental question has been answered.

Formulating the problem

If you hear somebody say, “Sally is a block of ice,” or “Sam is a pig,” you are likely to assume that the speaker does not mean what he says literally but that he is speaking metaphorically. Furthermore, you are not likely to have very much trouble figuring out what he means. If he says, “Sally is a prime number between 17 and 23,” or “Bill is a barn door,” you might still assume he is speaking metaphorically, but it is much harder to figure out what he means. The existence of such utterances – utterances in which the speaker means metaphorically something different from what the sentence means literally – poses a series of questions for any theory of language and communication: What is metaphor, and how does it differ from both literal and other forms of figurative utterances? Why do we use expressions metaphorically instead of saying exactly and literally what we mean? 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?

In my discussion, I propose to tackle this latter set of questions – those centering around the problem of how metaphors work – both because of its intrinsic interest, and because it does not seem to me that we shall get an answer to the others until this fundamental question has been answered.

The chapter is concerned with metaphor and focusses specifically on war metaphors in political discourses. The cognitive mechanisms at work in metaphor are described with an emphasis on frames as the unit of conceptual organisation that gets mapped in political metaphors. Recent experimental studies demonstrating the framing effects of metaphor are discussed. The war frame is described to include discussion of intertextuality as a means of accessing it. Three case studies are then presented exploring war metaphors in discourses of Covid-19, Brexit and immigration. Analogies with the first and second world wars in particular are highlighted and critiqued. The chapter defines and discusses extreme metaphors illustrated through examples in which immigrants are compared to animals and closes with a discussion of how readers may resist extreme metaphors.

Expands on metaphor, which has long been a key issue for scholars of religious language and discourse, given its prevalence across traditions and religions in religious text and talk relating to the ineffable. The chapter unpacks theories of metaphor that understand it both as a cognitive function and as emerging in the dynamic interaction of individuals.

Metaphor seems most at home in poetry. Many would say it provides poetry’s best and most distinctive furniture. Those two sentences each contain a metaphor, and the two metaphors are similar (poetry is a home, and has furniture in it), but the sentences are not parts of poems, as far as I know, and they even sound rather prosaic. So we cannot make a case that metaphor is the unique defining feature or common denominator of poetry, for there are poems without metaphors, or at least without any expressions that stand out as metaphors, and there is plenty of metaphor-rich prose. In fact, as Nietzsche insisted long ago, and Lakoff and Johnson and many other scholars have argued in detail in recent years, metaphors are pervasive in ordinary speech, and many of the ones that strike us in poetry are variants or extensions of the basic ones we use, usually without thinking about it, all the time. Still, most readers and writers would agree that metaphor counts as one of the characteristic features of poetry, one of the most salient of poetry’s “family resemblances.” In a “prose poem,” for example, where meter, rhyme, and even line have been abandoned, what keeps it a “poem,” many would say, is its density of figurative language, and especially metaphor.

Figurative language

Prototypical figurative language will be characterized here as language use where, from the speaker's point of view, conventional constraints are deliberately infringed in the service of communication, and from the hearer's point of view, a satisfactory (i.e. relevant) interpretation can only be achieved if conventional constraints on interpretation are overridden by contextual constraints.

What is the motivation for figurative uses of language? Here we need to distinguish the speaker's motivation for using an expression figuratively, and the hearer's motivation for assigning a figurative construal to an expression. Briefly, a speaker uses an expression figuratively when he/she feels that no literal use will produce the same effect. The figurative use may simply be more attention-grabbing, or it might conjure up a complex image not attainable any other way, or it may permit the conveyance of new concepts. As far as the hearer is concerned, the most obvious reason for opting for a figurative construal is the fact that no equally accessible and relevant literal construal is available.

The major types of figurative usage are metaphor and metonymy. Metaphor and metonymy both involve a vehicle and a target. Metaphor involves an interaction between two domains construed from two regions of purport, and the content of the vehicle domain is an ingredient of the construed target through processes of correspondence and blending. For instance, in (1) (from Patricia Cornwell's Black Notice) the speaker's mental processes are presented as having simultaneously the character of thoughts and small sinister creatures:

Chapter 11 begins with a discussion of the constraints of language and how metaphor helps to overcome these constraints and expand the expressive power of language.It briefly summarizes traditional theories of metaphor comprehension, followed by conceptual metaphor theory and perceptual simulations.Extensions of conceptual metaphor theory that imply a code model are discussed and critiqued.Then I introduce and illustrate an approach to metaphor analysis that begins with the speaker’s experience as expressed in the text.The chapter discusses grammatical metaphors, metaphorical stories, playful metaphors, and multimodal metaphors.It discusses the processing and comprehension of metaphors, and closes with a discussion of the contribution of metaphor to social structure and personal identity.

The analysis of the categories of system and writing attempted in this book might ultimately have followed any of a number of possible paths through Derrida's texts. The rhetorical coherence and continuity of Derrida's work makes it possible to depart from different sets of linguistic associations and still arrive at what would basically be the same formal structure. Expressed in system-cybernetic language, Derrida's discursive system is itself highly overdetermined or equifinal. Despite this ‘looseness’ or ‘play’ in Derrida's system, and hence the difficulty in reducing it to a set of isolable concepts, the formal rigour of his argument remains undiminished; and despite the differences in style and subject matter that characterize his published work of the past thirty years, his theory of system and writing remains remarkably consistent. The following description recapitulates some of the main elements of this theory.

FOR ACADEMICS WORKING IN PUBLICLY FUNDED third-level institutions in Britain, the twenty-first century announced itself as the age of impact. In 2002, the Arts Council England published a report entitled Measuring the Economic and Social Impact of the Arts calling for “arts impact research” and an “arts impact agenda.” In 2008, the British Academy launched a report entitled Maximising the Impact of Humanities and Social Science Research in which the humanities in particular were encouraged to justify their value in terms of their social and economic “impacts.” Such reports are designed to influence public policy, and they suggest that impact currently serves as a key metaphor in the debate about culture and its effects. It is used to establish the importance of cultural entities or processes and deployed as a tool to measure their role in society — with the main aim of placing them in direct competition with social and economic initiatives for public and private funding. While other national contexts may currently favor different metaphors, the concept of “impact” serves as a salient example of ways in which metaphors shape our thinking about the role of cultural artifacts in society.

Where a more philosophically inclined age might favor a truth-oriented focus on the inherent “nature” or “essence” of a cultural phenomenon and seek to define its “boundaries” in order to situate it in a given taxonomy, our more rhetorically oriented times are concerned above all with effect in the public space and place the highest value on emotional impact. Like “reception,” the concept of “impact” focuses not on origin or inherent structural features, but on the target context. Unlike reception, which foregrounds the receiving human beings and may connote passivity, impact suggests a dynamic physical force and foregrounds an event that brings two objects into contact with each other. Where reception may be gradual, rationally controlled, and selective, impact has a sudden effect that will tend to bypass the rational faculties and be apprehended emotionally or viscerally. The prominence of the metaphor in the current discourse about culture is due to the fact that it seems well suited to proving the powerful effect of culture in a highly contested public space — though the persuasiveness of the proof arguably weakens in direct correlation to the rising currency of the metaphor.