Day: April 14, 2025

🔹 1. Bridging Cognition and Discourse in Metaphor Theory

• Contemporary metaphor theory attempts to reconcile the cognitive and discursive approaches to metaphor.
• Embodied metaphor is not just a mental construct, but also socially and communicatively emergent.
  👉 “Metaphor… as socially emergent cognition, not just as private concepts buried inside people’s heads.” (Gibbs 2014a: 34–38)

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🔸 2. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT): Foundation and Critiques

• CMT redefined metaphor as conceptual, not just linguistic, challenging the view of metaphor as decorative.
  👉 “Metaphor as a ubiquitous conceptual figure… part of the shared tacit knowledge of speakers.”
• Critics argue CMT is too static and fails to capture metaphor’s messy, contextual usage.
  👉 “Metaphor in language use [is] relatively more messy – or perhaps rather dramatically enriched.”

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✅ 3. Role of Multimodality and Gesture

• Gesture and multimodal research connect cognition and discourse by studying metaphor across bodily, visual, and verbal channels.
• These findings support a view of metaphor as dynamic, embodied, and interactive.
  👉 “Communicative events are by default constituted by expressions from multiple semiotic channels.”

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🌱 4. Primary vs. Complex Metaphors

• Primary metaphors are rooted in embodied experience (e.g., importance is size, affection is warmth).
  👉 “Primary metaphors… arise from bodily experience”
• Complex metaphors (e.g., life is a journey) are culturally shaped analogies that may be built from primary metaphors.
  👉 “Primary metaphors… motivate or constrain complex metaphors by providing deeply embodied point-wise connections.”

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🧠 5. Multilevel Model of Metaphor

• Metaphor operates across multiple levels:
  1) Neurophysiology → 2) Cognition → 3) Discourse → 4) Language systems → 5) Culture → 6) Evolution.
• Language reflects cultural and bodily experience and distributes cognition across individuals and time.
  👉 “Culture can be seen as a potent, cumulative reservoir of resources for learning, problem solving, and reasoning.” (Theiner 2014)

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🔁 6. Dynamic Systems and Distributed Cognition

• Social interaction creates emergent metaphorical meaning—beyond individual minds.
  👉 “The synergy emerging from individuals co-acting as a group… enslaves the behavior of individual actors.”
• Dynamic metaphor use depends on context, group interaction, and cultural embedding.

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🎭 7. Metaphor in Real-Time Face-to-Face Interaction

• Metaphors evolve dynamically in discourse and are shaped by co-participants.
  👉 “The full functionality of a metaphor emerges from repeated occurrences of token expressions.”
• Example: Journey and bridge metaphors used during reconciliation dialogues show how deeply metaphors are tied to shared social narratives.

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💬 8. Metaphor Activation: Dead or Alive?

• Some metaphors become “dead” or inactive in comprehension unless context revives them.
• However, primary (correlational) metaphors may remain mentally active even in conventional forms.
  👉 “Correlational metaphors never retire.” (Casasanto 2013)

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🧪 9. Embodied Simulation Hypothesis

• The strongest claim: understanding metaphors involves re-enacting sensorimotor experiences (simulation).
  👉 “Metaphorical simulations may generally be less detailed and specific than simulations of literal, non-abstract meanings.”
• Still under debate due to mixed neurocognitive evidence.

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🔍 10. Toward a Unified Theory

• The chapter calls for an integrative socio-cognitive model that merges the strengths of both traditions.
  👉 “Understanding what metaphor is requires a thorough understanding of what it does.”

🔄 Redefining Metaphor as Both Cognitive and Discursive

Hampe challenges the traditional literary view of metaphor as merely poetic or rhetorical.
🗨️ “Metaphor as part of thought, but as socially emergent cognition, not just as private concepts buried inside people’s heads.” (Hampe, p. 3)
✅ Contribution: Moves beyond metaphor as ornamentation, placing it at the core of conceptual and cultural cognition — relevant for analyzing metaphors in literature as cognitive and communal acts.

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🧠 Advancing Embodied Approaches to Literary Language

The text links bodily experience to metaphor comprehension and production in both speech and writing.
🗨️ “Primary metaphors… constituted by conceptual correspondences that arise from bodily experience.” (p. 7)
✅ Contribution: Aligns literary metaphor with embodied cognition — supporting analysis of physicality, emotion, and sensorimotor grounding in figurative literary expressions.

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🌐 Bridging Literary Discourse and Cognitive Science

The chapter invites interdisciplinary convergence, drawing literary scholars into socio-cognitive metaphor theory.
🗨️ “It is high time for metaphor theory to integrate the major insights yielded by these… complementary strands of inquiry.” (p. 3)
✅ Contribution: Reorients literary theory toward integrated cognitive-discursive models, expanding the scope of metaphor analysis in texts and cultural contexts.

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🧩 Enriching Literary Interpretation with Multilevel Metaphor Analysis

Introduces a framework for metaphor at levels from language systems to evolution.
🗨️ “A model… ranging from the bodily foundations… to the evolutionary scale.” (p. 11)
✅ Contribution: Equips literary scholars with a multilevel toolkit to interpret metaphors dynamically—across character, narration, genre, and cultural tradition.

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🧶 Introducing Dynamic and Contextual Metaphor Usage

Emphasizes how metaphors emerge and shift meaning within discourse events.
🗨️ “Patterns of metaphor… shift in meaning, depend on interaction and vary across genres.” (p. 6)
✅ Contribution: Grounds literary metaphor in real-time, socially interactive contexts—offering tools to analyze metaphor across scenes, dialogue, and reader response.

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🧬 Highlighting the Cultural and Linguistic Embodiment of Figurative Language

Metaphors vary across languages and cultures but are shaped by shared bodily and linguistic experience.
🗨️ “Transparent metaphors… do not die because their original vehicles are so basic and universal to our experience.” (p. 10)
✅ Contribution: Enhances cross-cultural literary analysis by linking metaphor universals and variations to cultural embodiment and linguistic systems.

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🌀 Complex Metaphor as Cultural Narrative Structure

Complex metaphors like life is a journey are seen as stable yet adaptable frames in literary and public discourse.
🗨️ “Enduring conceptual metaphors present ‘stabilities’ that ’emerge’ in bigger groups and over larger timescales.” (p. 15)
✅ Contribution: Supports narrative theory and cultural critique—analyzing how recurring metaphors scaffold ideologies, character arcs, and worldview in literature.

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🖐️ Foregrounding Gesture and Performance in Metaphor Theory

Expands metaphor beyond verbal language to include multimodal and gestural dimensions.
🗨️ “Gestures… are produced as part of the cognitive processes that underlie thinking and speaking.” (p. 11)
✅ Contribution: Encourages performance-based literary criticism (e.g. drama, spoken word) to consider how metaphor is embodied and enacted in gesture and tone.

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🧭 Modeling Metaphor as Emergent in Interactive Literary Discourse

Metaphors in conversation, including literature, are emergent, co-created, and situated.
🗨️ “Systematic metaphors… emerge from repeated occurrences over the course of a social interaction.” (p. 16)
✅ Contribution: Invites reinterpretation of dialogue, dramatic interaction, and reader-response as collaborative metaphorical meaning-making.

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📚 Literature as a Site of Multimodal Metaphor Activation

Even conventional metaphors retain potential for reactivation, recontextualization, and embodiment.
🗨️ “The fact that a speaker uses a conventional metaphor… does not entail its source-domain content remains inactive.” (p. 20)
✅ Contribution: Empowers literary scholars to read layers of metaphorical depth, even in cliché or conventional metaphors, reinterpreting them as contextually reawakened.

🔍 Criticism Against Hampe’s Socio-Cognitive Model

• 🧭 Overcomplexity of Multilevel Integration
  The attempt to unify cognitive, discursive, cultural, and evolutionary scales into one dynamic model risks becoming too broad and unwieldy to be practically applicable or testable.
  (cf. pp. 10–12, “levels from neurophysiology to evolution”)
• 🧱 Unclear Operationalization of ‘Embodiment’
  While advocating for embodied cognition, the chapter does not clearly distinguish between different degrees or types of embodiment (e.g., neural vs. social). Critics may argue that the term is used too loosely.
  (cf. pp. 13–14, discussion of Casasanto’s and Soliman & Glenberg’s views)
• 🎭 Neglect of Literary and Aesthetic Metaphor
  The focus is on empirical and conversational data. Aesthetic, poetic, and literary metaphor is rarely engaged with, limiting the theory’s relevance to literary studies, despite its potential.
  (cf. general focus on discourse and gesture analysis, pp. 5–6, 16–18)
• 📉 Underestimates the Role of Individual Creativity
  The emphasis on group interaction and distributed cognition may downplay the role of individual metaphorical innovation and artistic agency in meaning-making.
  (cf. pp. 12–13, on “soft-assembled” group dynamics)
• 🎲 Empirical Evidence for Simulation Hypothesis Is Inconclusive
  While Hampe references Bergen and Gibbs’ metaphorical simulation hypothesis, neurological evidence remains mixed and far from conclusive, especially for abstract metaphors.
  (cf. pp. 20–21)
• 🔁 Bidirectionality Challenges CMT Assumptions
  The chapter accepts new findings showing bidirectional metaphor processing (e.g., warmth → affection and vice versa), but this contradicts earlier unidirectional CMT claims, creating a theoretical tension.
  (cf. pp. 9–10, Casasanto and Lakoff debates)
• 🌍 Western-Centric Embodiment Claims
  Although Hampe acknowledges cultural variation, the reliance on English and Indo-European examples may limit the universality of her claims about primary metaphors.
  (cf. pp. 14–15, e.g., knowing is seeing vs. hearing in Aboriginal languages)
• 🎯 Vague Causality Between Embodiment and Discourse
  While the chapter emphasizes interplay, it often fails to specify causal mechanisms — how exactly embodied schemas shape discourse and vice versa remains under-explained.

🔄 Rejection of Metaphor in Literature

• 🔹 Deleuze rejects metaphor as central to literary expression:

“The general rejection of metaphor that informs Deleuze’s work on literature can be more precisely defined as a theory of free indirect discourse” (Marks, 1997, p. 234).

• 🔹 Metaphor is seen as “disastrous for the study of language”, only a secondary effect of indirect discourse:

“Metaphors and metonymies are merely effects… they presuppose indirect discourse” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 76; quoted in Marks, 1997, p. 238).
🌈 (Theme: Against Representation)

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🗣️ Free Indirect Discourse as a Literary Principle

• 🟣 Free indirect discourse is key to Deleuze’s literary philosophy:

“It is no longer metaphor… it is free indirect discourse” (Deleuze, 1986, p. 73; in Marks, 1997, p. 239).

• 🟣 It reflects the multiplicity of voices in literature, enabling a zone of indiscernibility between narrator and character:

“Literature is a matter of becomings… a zone of indiscernibility” (Marks, 1997, p. 234).
🌈 (Theme: Multiplicity & Enunciation)

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🌍 American Literature as a Model

• 🟢 Deleuze privileges American literature for its experimental and deterritorialized character:

“Anglo-American literature is somehow ‘superior’… a literature of flight, rupture, deterritorialisation” (Marks, 1997, p. 235).

• 🟢 Writers like Whitman, Melville, and Kerouac illustrate the “line of flight” and “open road” ideology, resisting interpretation:

“Whitman’s essential message was the Open Road… the bravest doctrine man has ever proposed to himself” (Lawrence, 1964, quoted in Marks, 1997, p. 233).
🌈 (Theme: Deterritorialization & Experimentation)

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🧠 The Impersonal Force of Literature

• 🔴 Writing becomes impersonal; the self is dissolved:

“Literature is characterised by ‘the force of the impersonal’” (Deleuze, 1993, p. 13; cited in Marks, 1997, p. 234).

• 🔴 Great writers are “symptomatologists,” revealing signs and flows rather than telling personal stories:

“They may themselves be physically frail… overwhelmed by the life that traverses them” (Marks, 1997, p. 234).
🌈 (Theme: Impersonality & Affects)

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🌀 Characters without Identity

• 🟡 Characters like Bartleby and Nashe resist psychological or moral interpretation:

“Bartleby’s ‘I prefer not to’… hollows out a zone of indiscernibility” (Marks, 1997, p. 237).
“Nashe… remains obscure… describing Nashe’s enigmatic inner world” (Marks, 1997, p. 237).
🌈 (Theme: Subject Dissolution)

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🎥 Application in Cinema

• 🔵 Deleuze extends free indirect discourse to cinema (e.g., Cinema 1 & 2):

“Cinema’s perpetual destiny… from objective perception to subjective perception” (Deleuze, 1986, p. 72; in Marks, 1997, p. 239).

• 🔵 Directors like Godard and Antonioni use free indirect discourse to displace the viewer’s position and create polyphonic narratives.
  🌈 (Theme: Media Crossovers)

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🌿 Landscape, Percepts, and the Earth

• 🟢 Deleuze argues that art is geophilosophical, rooted in the earth, not metaphor:

“We are not in the world, we become with the world… everything is vision, becoming” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 169; in Marks, 1997, p. 243).

• 🟢 Lawrence and Melville show how landscapes “see” and affect the subject, dissolving individual consciousness:

“The landscape sees as much as the subject… the mind is a membrane” (Zourabichvili, 1996, cited in Marks, 1997, p. 243).
🌈 (Theme: Percepts & Territory)

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📚 Polyphony and Democratic Expression

• 🟣 Literature allows the coexistence of voices, especially in American literature:

“Whitman is… a poet of polyphony” (Marks, 1997, p. 236).
“The novel contains… polyphonic, and plurivocal compounds” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 188; in Marks, 1997, p. 239).
🌈 (Theme: Plurality & Minor Literature)

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🌌 Affects and Percepts in Literary Creation

• 🔴 Literature creates percepts and affects, not metaphors:

“Percepts aren’t perceptions… affects aren’t feelings, they’re becomings” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1995, p. 137; in Marks, 1997, p. 241).

• 🔴 Melville and Kafka are cited as creators of perceptual intensities, not interpreters of meaning.
  🌈 (Theme: Becoming & Intensity)

🌀 Poststructuralism & Anti-Hermeneutics

• 🔸 Challenge to traditional interpretation and hermeneutics: Marks emphasizes Deleuze’s resistance to interpretation in favor of flows, becomings, and intensities, destabilizing meaning as fixed or representational.

“Abandon interpretation in favour of ‘fluxes’ or flows” (Marks, 1997, p. 234).

• 🔸 Marks positions Deleuze as part of a poststructuralist rejection of metaphor and symbol in favor of immanence and literal becoming.

“Metaphor… has no real significance… all language is indirect, or ‘oblique’” (Marks, 1997, p. 238).
🌈 (Contribution: Critiques metaphoric language and interpretive models)

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🎭 Narratology / Voice Theory

• 🗣️ The paper significantly contributes to narrative theory through its analysis of free indirect discourse as central to literary enunciation.

“Free indirect discourse… blurs the distinction between narrator, character and author” (Marks, 1997, p. 239).

• 🗣️ This challenges classic narratology’s rigid distinctions between first-person/third-person or author/narrator/character, suggesting instead a polyvocal or plural mode of storytelling.

“All discourse is indirect… many voices in a voice, murmurings, speaking in tongues” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, quoted in Marks, 1997, p. 238).
🌈 (Contribution: Advances polyphonic and hybrid narrative theory)

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🌍 Minor Literature / World Literature

• 🌐 The article develops Deleuze & Guattari’s concept of “minor literature”, showing how American literature functions as a destabilizing, experimental space.

“American literature is a minor literature ‘par excellence’… its fragmentary nature lends itself to collective statements” (Marks, 1997, p. 236).

• 🌐 By doing so, Marks contributes to the growing theoretical interest in non-canonical, transnational, and politically minor writing.

“American literature creates something schizophrenic from the neurosis of the Old World” (Marks, 1997, p. 236).
🌈 (Contribution: Reinforces minoritarian aesthetics and postcolonial resonance)

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🧩 Affect Theory

• ❤️ Marks connects Deleuze’s theory of affects—intensities beyond emotion or cognition—with literary practices.

“Affects aren’t feelings… they’re becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them” (Marks, 1997, p. 241).

• ❤️ This influences the affective turn in literary theory, where emotion, sensation, and intensity replace interpretation and psychological realism.

“Literature creates percepts and affects, not metaphors” (Marks, 1997, p. 241).
🌈 (Contribution: Deepens affect theory’s engagement with literary form)

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🌄 Ecocriticism / Geophilosophy

• 🌿 Marks shows how Deleuze’s geophilosophy proposes a new relationship between literature, subjectivity, and environment: the landscape sees.

“The landscape sees as much as the subject… the mind is a membrane rather than a searchlight” (Marks, 1997, p. 243).

• 🌿 This moves beyond anthropocentric readings to consider how geography, materiality, and affect form literature.

“Art is the Earth’s song… becoming is geographical” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, cited in Marks, 1997, pp. 241–243).
🌈 (Contribution: Contributes to ecocritical, materialist approaches in literary theory)

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🧠 Experimental Literary Form & Modernism/Postmodernism

• 📚 By exploring authors like Whitman, Melville, Kafka, Beckett, and Lawrence, Marks aligns Deleuze with the tradition of modernist and postmodern experimentation.

“Great writers… invent ways of living, of surviving, resisting, and freeing life” (Marks, 1997, p. 234).

• 📚 This supports a non-linear, fragmented understanding of literature where logic and character dissolve into flows and becomings.

“The American writer must write spontaneously in fragments, or ‘specimens’” (Marks, 1997, p. 236).
🌈 (Contribution: Links modernist experimentation with Deleuzian ontology)

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🎬 Intermedial Theory / Cinema Studies

• 🎞️ Marks shows how Deleuze’s literary theory overlaps with cinematic theory, especially through Cinema 1 and Cinema 2.

“Cinema’s perpetual destiny is to make us move from an objective perception to a subjective perception” (Marks, 1997, p. 239).

• 🎞️ This contributes to intermedial studies, where literature, cinema, and art share aesthetic functions—e.g., the indirect discourse of the image.

“Free indirect discourse is an aesthetic cogito to which cinema is ideally suited” (Marks, 1997, p. 234).
🌈 (Contribution: Connects narrative techniques across media)

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🧬 Materialism / Assemblage Theory

• 🧩 Marks presents literature not as symbolic but as a material assemblage of affects, language, subjectivity, and sensation.

“Speaking in tongues… the molecular assemblage of enunciation” (Marks, 1997, p. 238).

• 🧩 This reinforces non-representational theories of literature that align with new materialism and assemblage thought.
  🌈 (Contribution: Develops a non-human-centered, assemblage-based literary materialism)

⚖️ Philosophical Overreach

• 🧠 Too abstract for literary analysis: Critics may argue that Marks, by channeling Deleuze’s philosophy, often departs from grounded textual analysis, making the paper more philosophical than literary.

📍 Focuses more on Deleuze’s ontology than the works themselves.

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📉 Marginalization of Metaphor

• 🔍 Neglects metaphor’s productive role: The paper follows Deleuze in rejecting metaphor wholesale, but this can be seen as reductive, especially when metaphor is a cornerstone of literary aesthetics.

📍 “Against metaphor” stance may ignore how metaphor generates complexity and ambiguity in literature.

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📚 Selective Canon

• 📘 Overemphasis on Anglo-American and male writers: While celebrating “minor literature,” the essay paradoxically centers canonical white male authors (Melville, Whitman, Lawrence, etc.), overlooking more diverse minoritarian voices.

📍 Limited representation of gendered, racialized, or non-Western ‘minor’ literatures.

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🌀 Ambiguity in Methodology

• 🧩 Conceptual slippage: Terms like becoming, assemblage, and percept are used evocatively but can feel vague or underdefined in a literary context, making application difficult for close reading.

📍 Lacks methodological clarity for literary critics unfamiliar with Deleuzian vocabulary.

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📽️ Overextension into Cinema

• 🎬 Cinema analysis diverts from literary focus: The integration of Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 insights, while illuminating, might distract from the core argument about literature, creating a diffuse theoretical field.

📍 Blurs the boundary between literary and cinematic analysis, potentially weakening focus.

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🧭 Directionless in Application

• 🔄 Non-linear, deterritorialized structure: Although this mirrors Deleuzian logic, the article’s structure can appear unanchored, making it challenging for readers seeking cohesive literary theory.

📍 May feel like a “rhizome” of ideas without clear critical payoff.

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🧓 Lack of Contemporary Examples

• ⌛ Few modern or experimental texts beyond 20th-century canon: Despite theoretical openness, the essay focuses on earlier works (Melville, Beckett, etc.) and lacks strong engagement with contemporary or avant-garde literature post-1990s.

📍 Missed opportunity to apply Deleuze to newer postmodern or digital literature.

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🤖 Inaccessibility

• 🧬 Heavy jargon and reliance on Deleuzian idiom: The density of Deleuzean terminology may alienate readers not already versed in poststructuralism or continental philosophy.

📍 Difficult for entry-level students or general literary scholars to engage with.

1. CDA’s Neglect of Metaphor

• While CDA has focused on structures like passivization and nominalisation, metaphor has been underexplored.

“Metaphor, on the other hand, has been largely neglected in mainstream CDA” (Hart, 2008, p. 91).

• Yet metaphor is central to how ideology and social reality are constructed.

“Metaphor is ‘central to critical discourse analysis since it is concerned with forming a coherent view of reality'” (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 28, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).

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🔹 2. Metaphors as Ideological Tools

• Metaphors shape our understanding and privilege certain perspectives.

“Metaphors are ideological… in so far as they ‘define in significant part what one takes as reality'” (Chilton & Lakoff, 1995, p. 56, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).

• They serve both the interpersonal and ideational functions of language.

“Metaphors also play an important role with regard to both the interpersonal and the ideational function of language” (Hart, 2008, p. 91).

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🔹 3. Call for Cognitive Approaches in CDA

• CDA needs a cognitive dimension to explain how discourse produces social knowledge.

“Discourse is produced and interpreted by human individuals interacting with one another” (Chilton, 2005a, p. 23, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).

• Cognitive linguistics and CDA both deal with language, cognition, and culture, making the former suitable for metaphor analysis in CDA.

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🔹 4. Critique of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)

Hart identifies three major incompatibilities between CMT and CDA:

a) Problem of Focus

• CMT is too abstract and introspective, relying on imagined examples.

“The data CMT presents… are often not attested but rather appeal to native speaker intuition” (Hart, 2008, p. 92).

b) Problem of Motivation

• CMT sees metaphor as an unconscious product of embodiment, ignoring speaker intention.

“Metaphors are ‘chosen by speakers to achieve particular communication goals'” (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 247, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 93).

c) Problem of Relation

• CMT posits that linguistic expressions merely reflect internal thought structures, while CDA sees discourse as constructing thought.

“In CDA… linguistic representation in discourse can determine, to some extent, conceptual representation” (Hart, 2008, p. 94).

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🔹 5. Introduction of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT)

• CBT focuses on online meaning construction through multiple input spaces.

“Blending can ‘compose elements from the input spaces to provide relations that do not exist in the separate inputs'” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 48, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 96).

• The blend is not just a reflection but a site of cognitive activity, where meaning, reasoning, and emotion coalesce.

“Blended spaces are ‘sites for central cognitive work: reasoning… drawing inferences… and developing emotions'” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 115, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 97).

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🔹 6. Selective Projection and Ideological Framing

• Not all knowledge is projected into the blend—what’s left out is often ideologically significant.

“Speakers may choose to recruit particular structure in order to promote a certain perceived reality” (Hart, 2008, p. 96).

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🔹 7. Entrenchment and Social Cognition

• Frequent metaphorical blends become entrenched and shared socially, reinforcing dominant ideologies.

“Integration networks built up dynamically can become entrenched and available to be activated all at once” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 103, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 97).

• Such entrenched blends function as social cognitions in Van Dijk’s model.

“Entrenched conceptual blending networks are precisely the mental representations and processes of group members” (Hart, 2008, p. 97).

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🔹 8. Three Types of ‘Discourse’ and Metaphor’s Place

• Drawing from Foucault and Fairclough, Hart distinguishes:
  • Discourse (concrete): actual talk/text
  • Discourse (collective): sets of related statements
  • Discourse (abstract): systems of knowledge/practice
• Metaphors travel across all three:

“Synchronically, current conventional uses of metaphor reflect entrenched conceptual blending patterns…. Diachronically… they give rise to entrenched conceptual blending patterns” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).

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🔹 9. Case Study: BNP Immigration Metaphors

• Hart analyses metaphors in the British National Party 2005 manifesto to show how metaphor supports racist and exclusionary discourse.

a) Immigration as Water

• ‘Flood of asylum seekers’ uses the topoi of number and danger, making immigrants seem overwhelming and threatening.

“The conceptualisation of an ongoing ‘flood of asylum seekers’ immediately warrants… restrictive immigration policy” (Hart, 2008, p. 100).

b) Nation as Container

• Britain is conceptualised as a full container, suggesting that no more immigration can be ‘absorbed’.

“Britain is full up…” (BNP quote, cited in Hart, 2008, p. 101).

c) Nation as House

• ‘Shut the door’ metaphor frames the nation as private property, evoking ownership and the right to exclude.

“Entry into which only takes place with the permission of the resident” (Hart, 2008, p. 101).

• These metaphors employ a referential strategy (us vs. them) and an evaluative strategy (threat, invasion, dilution).

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🔹 10. Conclusion: Toward a Full Framework

• Hart’s approach, using CBT within sociocognitive CDA, enables the microlevel analysis of metaphors with ideological consequences.
• However, he acknowledges the need for quantitative analysis to identify widespread metaphorical patterns.

“A complete and lucid framework requires quantitative analysis across different discourse genres” (Hart, 2008, p. 102).

🔍 🧩 Bridging Linguistics and Literary Criticism

• Hart integrates cognitive linguistics with critical discourse analysis, offering literary theorists tools to unpack how metaphor constructs ideology in poetic and narrative texts.

“Metaphors are ideological… in so far as they ‘define in significant part what one takes as reality'” (Chilton & Lakoff, 1995, p. 56, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).

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🧠 🌀 Expanding the Interpretive Scope of Metaphor

• Unlike classical metaphor theories focused on rhetorical ornamentation, Hart’s framework treats metaphor as a cognitive and discursive act—deepening literary analysis beyond figurative style.

“Metaphor is ‘central to critical discourse analysis since it is concerned with forming a coherent view of reality'” (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 28, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).

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📦 🧠 Applying Mental Space Theory to Literature

• Hart’s use of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) allows readers to visualize meaning construction in narrative or poetic metaphor, emphasizing how emergent structure reshapes understanding.

“The blend inherits partial structure… and has emergent structure of its own” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 96).

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🎭 🎯 Reframing Characterization and Plot in Ideological Terms

• His focus on metaphor as a referential and evaluative strategy can be extended to literature to analyze how characters, spaces, or actions are ideologically positioned.

“Referential strategies are used in discourse to represent… social actors… evaluative strategy is manifested in negative representation” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).

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🏠 🌍 Nation and Identity Metaphors in Literary Texts

• Literary metaphors that depict the nation as a house, container, or bordered space can be critically re-examined using Hart’s framework for entrenched blending and emotional resonance.

“The nation is conceptualised as a private property… where policymakers have the right to refuse entry” (Hart, 2008, p. 101).

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📚 📖 Contributes to Discourse Theory in Literature

• Hart’s distinction among discourse (concrete, collective, abstract) offers literary theorists a way to trace how texts interact with discursive formations, genres, and ideologies.

“Discourse (abstract) dictates the nature of discourse (concrete)… and vice versa” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).

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💬 🧭 Enabling Socio-Political Literary Critique

• His model equips scholars to explore how metaphors shape political worldviews in literary texts, especially in postcolonial, migration, and nationalist narratives.

“Metaphors… contribute to a situation where they privilege one understanding of reality over others” (Chilton, 1996, p. 74, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).

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🧬 🎓 Grounding Literary Ideology in Cognitive Theory

• Hart shows how literary metaphors become socially entrenched and cognitively shared, which aligns with cultural memory studies and the role of entrenchment in interpretive communities.

“Entrenched conceptual blending networks are… the mental representations and processes of group members” (Hart, 2008, p. 97).

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📈 📊 Toward Quantitative Literary Metaphor Studies

• Hart calls for blending qualitative and quantitative analysis of metaphor, paving the way for corpus-based literary criticism.

“A complete and lucid framework requires quantitative analysis… to determine which metaphors are used conventionally” (Hart, 2008, p. 102).

❗ ⚖️ Over-reliance on Cognitive Models

• While Hart successfully integrates Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) with CDA, critics may argue that it over-intellectualizes discourse by framing metaphor primarily as a cognitive phenomenon, potentially neglecting material conditions and historical contexts.

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❗ 🔬 Limited Empirical Validation

• Hart advocates for the cognitive entrenchment of metaphor through discourse, but offers limited empirical data to substantiate how often specific blends occur across genres or populations.

“A complete and lucid framework requires quantitative analysis…” (Hart, 2008, p. 102).

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❗ 🚫 Dismissal of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)

• Some may view Hart’s critique of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) as overly rigid. While he treats CBT and CMT as “competing,” many linguists (e.g., Grady et al.) argue for their complementarity, not conflict.

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❗ 📉 Reduction of Metaphor to Ideological Function

• Hart often ties metaphor directly to ideology and strategy (e.g., immigration discourse), which may risk simplifying metaphor’s poetic, emotional, or ambiguous functions, especially in literature or art.

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❗ 🌍 Limited Cultural Flexibility

• The blending framework as presented is based mostly on Western political discourse (e.g., the British National Party). It may not be as adaptable across non-Western rhetorical traditions without significant modification.

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❗ 🗺️ Under-theorization of Power Structures

• Although Hart discusses social cognition and inequality, his model doesn’t fully address macro-level power systems (e.g., capitalism, patriarchy) in the way traditional CDA (e.g., Fairclough, Wodak) does.

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❗ 🧱 Highly Technical Jargon

• The heavy use of cognitive linguistics terminology (e.g., “mental space integration,” “vital relations,” “entrenchment”) may limit accessibility for scholars outside the field or from humanities/literary backgrounds.

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❗ 📚 Singular Case Study Focus

• The BNP manifesto is the sole example in the paper’s application section, raising questions about generalizability. Critics might ask: Can this framework apply equally well to literature, film, or visual art?