Essay on INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOCULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY
The history of linguistics and philosophy contains different views on the nature of metaphor and its function from understanding of a metaphor as a linguistic expression and a rhetorical means to hyperbolizing its role in man’s cognition of the world. Modern science recognizes the metaphor as the tool and the result of the interpretation of reality, a way and the fact of thinking; metaphor gets a definition as not merely linguistic but a conceptual phenomenon.
From a formal point of view, the metaphorical transfer consists in using words (phrases, sentences) intended to denote certain objects (situations) of reality to name or characterize other objects (situations) based on a conditional sameness of the predictive signs attributed to them. At the level of the structural pattern of a sentence, the metaphorical transfer is expressed in the use of the structural pattern that describes a particular extralinguistic situation to refer to the situation of a different kind. From a content-related point of view, according to linguists and cognitologists, metaphor at any level is a cognitive/conceptual mapping of one area of human experience over another (Landau, Meier, Robinson, 2013).
As the basic objects of analysis in metaphorology researchers (G. Lakoff, M. Johnson et al.) distinguish three groups of cognitive structures of metaphorical expansion:
- Source domain (war, theatre, man, inanimate nature, plants, animals, sport, disease, monarchy, family, school, etc.);
- Target domain (politics, parties, states, the President, elections, parliament, economy, laws, inflation, terrorism, etc.);
- Basic cognitive structures (ours/theirs, us/them, good/bad, etc.) (Lakoff, Johnson, 2003).
Here are some explicit examples of metaphors cited by Max Black (1962):
- The chairman plowed through the discussion.
- A smoke screen of witnesses.
- An argumentative melody
- Blotting-paper voices (Henry James)
- The poor are negroes of Europe (Sebastian Roch Nicolas de Chamfort)
- Light is but the shadow of God (Sir Thomas Browne)
- Oh dear white children, casual as birds, Playing amid the ruined languages (Auden)
In this way, when we use a metaphor, we have in mind two thoughts about two different things with these ideas interacting with each other within a single word or an expression, the meaning of which is the result of this interaction. Let us analyze an example from this standpoint: “The poor are negroes of Europe” (Chamfort). According to substitutional point of view, the statement implicitly says something about poor people of Europe. But what exactly? Is it that they are the oppressed class, the eternal challenge to officially proclaimed ideals, that poverty is indelible and inherited trait? According to a comparative point of view, this expression contains a comparison between the poor and illiterate (taking into account the time when the statement was made). In contrast to both of these points of view, Richards (2004) would say that our thoughts about the poor Europeans and American negroes interact and penetrate each other to generate a new meaning.
This means that in this context the focal word “negroes” gets the new meaning of which we cannot say that it completely coincides with its literal meaning, or that it is equal to the literal meaning of any other word allowable in this context. New context (“frame” of the metaphor) causes the expansion of the meaning of the focal word. Richards implies that for a metaphor to work, the reader must constantly be aware of the expansion of the meanings and refer to the old and new meaning simultaneously (Black, 1962; Richards, 2004).
Peter Newmark, known in linguistic circles as a translator-practician, in his “Textbook of Translation” highlights two functions of the metaphor: connotative and aesthetic (cited in Geary, 2012). Connotative function refers to the ability of metaphor to describe in more detail both specific and abstract concepts, to express ideas brighter and deeper characterize the quality of the described object. And it is important to correctly assess whether the semantic domain of a metaphor is positive or negative. Let us consider the following sentence: “German bosses of the 1990’s were Jack Welches of Germany”. What did the author have in mind comparing the heads of major German companies to Jack Welch? We know that in 1999, Jack Welch was voted the manager of the century. Thus, the metaphor has obvious positive overtones. We can paraphrase the sentence as follows: “Talented managers headed the major German companies.” Aesthetic function, in turn, refers to the ability of metaphors to have aesthetic impact on the reader, interest and surprise (Geary, 2012).
In many areas of social communication, for example, in politics, metaphor serves as an important means of cognition and explanation of the world, an effective means of pragmatic impact on the consciousness of the mass audience.
Thus, opposition in the Bundestag (German Parliament) uses a metaphor for the negative characteristics of the Kanzler Merkel’s performance: “Merkel-Regierung hat versagt, sie selbst sei nur noch “Geschäftsführerin” der Regierung” (Merkel’s government is not doing its job, and she is only a manager and not the head of the government) (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). Accepting the metaphorical model proposed by a politician (e.g., the economy is a sick person), we at the same time accept all the consequences that follow from it (for example, the fact that the patient (the economy) can be saved by the doctor (head of the state) and new methods of treatment (economic reforms). Here it is appropriate to recall the well-known term “shock therapy”. To illustrate this, we offer the examples of metaphorical newspaper titles in Germany: “Union und FDP: Die lange Nacht der Gruppentherapie” (CDU and FDP: The Long Night of Group Therapy), “Regierungserklärung zur Energiewende: Eine Herkulesaufgabe” (Government Statement on Energy Policy: a Herculean Task), Ein Maulwurf in der FDP (A Mole in the FDP) (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).
Thus, metaphor is a powerful means to influence or even manipulate the audience. Should a metaphor be considered a lie then? Based on the definition a lie as a statement of the imaginary as the real, and/or the real as the imaginary, we can infer that metaphors state the true, however, in a misleading way. They contain a cipher. Metaphor is a lie, which does not particularly seek to appear as the truth, because both the speaker and listener – as implied – understand that the statement is not the truth (Geary, 2012). They seem to wink at each other and slyly smile, and the listener already begins to look for a different meaning of the said (if the one understands the lies, and has a key to deciphering the metaphor). Both are involved in a social game, because the first innocently lies, and the second solves the riddles.
On a whole, metaphor is not limited to the sphere of language: the very processes of human thinking are largely metaphorical. As a phenomenon of consciousness, metaphor is manifested not only in communication as such, but also in thought and in action, social and political patterns, as well as involves intercultural meanings and conceptual reality.
Do you like this essay?
Our writers can write a paper like this for you!
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading...