Category: Theory Article Summaries

🎨 Metaphor as a Tool for Inventing Narratives

“Metaphors serve as a basis for inventing narratives” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 47).
Rather than viewing metaphors as mysterious cognitive mechanisms, Sheehan emphasizes that metaphors help create new ways of understanding and interpreting reality through narrative construction.

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🌟 The Shift from How Metaphors Work to How They Are Used

“The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to discuss how we use metaphors” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 48).
Sheehan critiques the traditional semantic and cognitive approaches, insisting that metaphor theory should focus on use (rhetorical-pragmatic) instead of mechanism (semantic-linguistic).

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🔥 Meaning Lies with the Interpreter, Not the Text

“The meaning of Abbey’s metaphor is dependent completely on the interpreter’s prior experiences and beliefs” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 48).
Sheehan argues that metaphoric meaning is generated not by the author or phrase itself but by the reader’s own interpretive framework and experiential background.

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🎯 Metaphor as a Device for Perspective Shifting

“A metaphor is a rhetorical device for altering one’s perspective” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 49).
Following thinkers like Burke and Rorty, Sheehan underlines how metaphors encourage audiences to reconceptualize phenomena from fresh angles, effectively changing how we experience the world.

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🧩 Critique of Orthodox Theories (Interaction and Substitution Models)

“The debate over metaphor has been almost exclusively over ‘how metaphors work'” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 52).
Sheehan critiques both neo-Aristotelian and interactionist models, claiming they erroneously assume metaphors work differently than literal expressions.

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🛠️ Davidson and Searle: Metaphor Belongs to Use, Not Meaning

“Metaphor belongs exclusively to the domain of use” (Sheehan quoting Davidson, 1999, p. 53).
Drawing on Davidson and Searle, Sheehan highlights that metaphors do not possess hidden meanings but function by creatively prompting new interpretations within normal linguistic usage.

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🔄 Hermeneutic Circle in Interpreting Metaphors

“Understanding is always an invention of the interpreter” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 56).
Using Gadamer and Heidegger’s hermeneutic circle, Sheehan argues that interpreting a metaphor involves a dynamic, ongoing negotiation between the interpreter’s expectations and the evolving context.

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🧠 Identification, Invention, and Narration: The Process of Metaphor Interpretation

“All three of these stages—identification, invention, and narration—are part of a broader hermeneutic act” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 57).
Sheehan introduces a three-stage model of metaphor use: first, recognizing the metaphor; second, inventing its meaning; and third, integrating it into a broader narrative.

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📚 Metaphors as Foundations for Scientific and Cultural Narratives

“The whole works of scientific research… are hardly more than the patient repetition… of a fertile metaphor” (Burke quoted in Sheehan, 1999, p. 60).
He shows how metaphors like “nature is a machine” have historically shaped major scientific paradigms and cultural understandings.

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🌀 Conclusion: Metaphors as Pragmatic Instruments

“A metaphor is a tool that can be used to guide or change perspective” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 64).
Ultimately, metaphors are valuable not for their semantic properties but for their rhetorical power to transform perception and meaning-making.

📜 1. Contribution to Hermeneutics

• Contribution: Sheehan expands hermeneutic theory by positioning metaphor interpretation as an inventive act rather than a semantic decoding process.
• Reference: “The interpreter’s understanding of a metaphor is dependent completely on his or her inventions of meaning within a contextual narrative” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 55).
• Impact: Connects metaphor theory with Gadamerian hermeneutics, emphasizing interpretation as situated, evolving, and contextual rather than uncovering objective meaning.

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🔄 2. Contribution to Rhetorical Theory

• Contribution: Reorients metaphor studies within rhetoric, focusing on how metaphors are used persuasively rather than on internal cognitive mechanisms.
• Reference: “If rhetoric is primarily about how words are used to achieve particular ends, then a rhetorical view of metaphor should concern how people use them, not how they work” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 48).
• Impact: Revives classical rhetorical concerns (use, persuasion, audience impact) over formalist concerns (structure, internal relations).

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🔍 3. Contribution to Deconstruction/Poststructuralism

• Contribution: Challenges the literal/figurative binary by arguing that metaphors are not ontologically different from literal statements.
• Reference: “Metaphors gain meaning much like other parts of natural language” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 54).
• Impact: Aligns with Derrida’s poststructuralist critique that meaning is always deferred and that distinctions between “literal” and “figurative” are unstable.

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📖 4. Contribution to Narrative Theory

• Contribution: Frames metaphors as foundational for inventing narratives that structure human experience.
• Reference: “Metaphors serve as a basis for inventing narratives” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 47).
• Impact: Supports narratological approaches by showing how metaphorical language generates evolving story-worlds and frameworks of meaning.

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🧠 5. Contribution to Cognitive Linguistics (Critical)

• Contribution: Critiques and complicates cognitive theories (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson) by emphasizing the situated, contextual invention over universal cognitive mechanisms.
• Reference: “Metaphor runs the same linguistic tracks that the plainest sentences do” (Sheehan quoting Davidson, 1999, p. 64).
• Impact: Shifts attention from hardwired cognition to interpretive negotiation, aligning metaphor use with rhetorical and social practices rather than universal cognitive operations.

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🎯 6. Contribution to Phenomenology

• Contribution: Emphasizes the lived experience of interpreting metaphors, grounded in personal, situated horizons of meaning.
• Reference: “The interpreter negotiates among her prejudices, the words of the text/speaker, and the overall contextual narrative” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 57).
• Impact: Resonates with phenomenological hermeneutics (e.g., Heidegger and Gadamer) where meaning arises from existential engagement with the text.

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🖋️ 7. Contribution to Interpretation Theory

• Contribution: Redefines interpretation as a creative act rather than a discovery of pre-existing meanings.
• Reference: “Meaning is wholly dependent on its use to invent a meaning that coheres with the interpreter’s contextual narrative” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 60).
• Impact: Supports interpretive pluralism — multiple valid readings depending on varied contexts and backgrounds.

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🔥 8. Contribution to Pragmatics

• Contribution: Locates metaphor meaning in social-pragmatic usage rather than internal textual properties.
• Reference: “Metaphor is something brought off by the imaginative employment of words and sentences” (Sheehan quoting Davidson, 1999, p. 53).
• Impact: Backs pragmatic literary theories emphasizing meaning as an effect of communicative action in specific situations.

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🌍 9. Contribution to Cultural Studies

• Contribution: Shows how metaphors evolve into cultural meta-narratives that shape collective experience and ideology.
• Reference: “Dead metaphors like ‘time is money’ have become cultural themes woven into Western narratives” (Sheehan, 1999, p. 62).
• Impact: Demonstrates that culture itself is constituted by sedimented metaphors, aligning metaphor theory with cultural semiotics.

❗ 1. Overemphasis on Reader Subjectivity

• Critics argue that Sheehan’s insistence on the interpreter’s invention of meaning risks radical relativism, where any interpretation could be justified without constraint.
• Concern: Without any anchor, interpretations could become untethered from textual evidence or authorial intent.

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🧩 2. Neglect of Cognitive Dimensions of Metaphor

• Cognitive linguists (like Lakoff and Johnson) might object that Sheehan underestimates the deep cognitive structures that make metaphors meaningful across cultures.
• Concern: Metaphor is not purely invented situationally; it also taps into shared conceptual systems.

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📚 3. Undermining the Literary Craft of Metaphor

• By treating metaphors as mere tools for narrative invention, Sheehan risks flattening the artistry and specific craft of how metaphors are constructed by writers.
• Concern: Authors’ deliberate choices and stylistic innovations may be overlooked in favor of focusing only on reader response.

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🧠 4. Insufficient Engagement with Historical Contexts

• Critics from New Historicism or Cultural Studies could argue that Sheehan’s model ignores the socio-political contexts in which metaphors are created and interpreted.
• Concern: Meaning isn’t invented solely by individuals but is deeply shaped by power structures, ideologies, and history.

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🔍 5. Reduction of Metaphor’s Epistemological Power

• Philosophical critics could argue that Sheehan downplays metaphors’ ability to reveal new aspects of reality, reducing them to narrative tricks.
• Concern: Metaphor isn’t just about “inventing” stories; it can also disclose truths not otherwise articulable in literal language.

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⚡ 6. Ambiguity in Distinguishing ‘Literal’ and ‘Metaphorical’ Use

• Although Sheehan critiques the literal/figurative divide, he doesn’t provide a clear methodology for distinguishing when a metaphor is being used metaphorically or literally.
• Concern: Readers may be left without guidance on how to responsibly identify and interpret metaphors.

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🚪 7. Closure Against Scientific and Linguistic Advances

• By largely rejecting semantic/cognitive models, Sheehan could be seen as closing the door to useful insights from neuroscience, psychology, and computational linguistics about metaphor.
• Concern: A hermeneutic-only view might isolate literary theory from interdisciplinary developments.

🔵 Extended metaphors serve as self-reinforcing arguments.

“Each instantiation of the metaphorical mapping in the text may function as a confirmation of the overall relevance of the main core mapping.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: Each new use of the metaphor strengthens the main idea, making it seem increasingly true through repetition and coherence.

🟢 Extended metaphors build the speaker’s credibility (ethos).

“The recognition of an extended metaphor’s sophistication and relevance […] can benefit the speaker’s perceived competence.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: If the metaphor appears clever and fits well, it reflects positively on the speaker’s intelligence and trustworthiness.

🟣 Extended metaphors help satisfy epistemic vigilance filters.

“Extended metaphors may fulfil the requirements of epistemic vigilance and lead to the stabilisation of a belief.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: Because they seem internally consistent and well-supported, they pass the audience’s mental checks for truthfulness and reliability.

🔴 Comprehension leads to belief in metaphorical communication.

“We will focus on the relationship between understanding and believing and accordingly try to highlight the importance of comprehension with respect to beliefs.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: The more a metaphor is understood, the more likely it is to be accepted as representing reality.

🟠 Extended metaphors can blur into literal beliefs.

“The metaphor may cease to be perceived as one, turning what was at first metaphorically construed into a representation about an actual state of affairs one can believe to be true.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: Over time, the audience may forget it was a metaphor and treat the metaphorical idea as literal truth.

🟡 Despite higher processing costs, they provide rhetorical rewards.

“Extended metaphors are demanding in terms of effort […] but their cognitive cost has to be offset by some sort of benefit.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: Although complex metaphors are mentally taxing, they are justified if they yield strong persuasive or epistemic effects.

🔵 Coherence across instances builds stronger arguments.

“The various occurrences of an extended metaphor in a text can be argumentatively used so as to function as a set of justifications for the metaphor.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: When a metaphor is consistently woven through discourse, each use reinforces and justifies the overall narrative.

🟢 Extended metaphors imitate analogical argument structures.

“The more you instantiate your target domain in terms of your source domain in an argument, the stronger the argument.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: Like analogies, metaphors gain strength when their logic is applied consistently and across multiple examples.

🟣 Plausible repeated mappings boost metaphor relevance.

“The more plausible the metaphorical mappings exploited in an extended metaphor are […] the more its overall perceived relevance increases.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: Logical, believable connections between metaphor and reality make the audience more likely to accept the metaphor as fitting.

🔴 Extended metaphors can activate confirmation bias.

“Extended metaphor could be thought to cognitively function as an argument meant to ‘de-metaphorise’ the metaphor.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013)
💬 Comment: As more evidence is presented, audiences may favor information that supports the metaphor, reinforcing belief without skepticism.

🔵 🎯 Cognitive Poetics and Cognitive Literary Theory

• 📖 The article links metaphor processing to cognitive effort and epistemic effects, directly contributing to cognitive approaches in literary theory.
• 🗨️ “We will consider possible perlocutionary effects of metaphoric creativity, in particular as to what regards belief fixation…” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013, p. 22)
• 👉 Shows how literary metaphors aren’t only decorative but also cognitively shape understanding and belief systems.

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🟣 🎯 Rhetorical Theory (Neo-Aristotelian Rhetoric)

• 📖 The paper revives Aristotle’s notions of ethos, pathos, and logos, especially showing how extended metaphors enhance speaker ethos.
• 🗨️ “Well-thought extended metaphors… can positively influence the speaker’s perceived image.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013, p. 37)
• 👉 This connects metaphor to rhetorical persuasion, enriching the study of persuasive strategies in literary and political discourse.

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🟠 🎯 Structuralism (through Conceptual Mapping)

• 📖 Their use of conceptual domains and mappings fits structuralist models where meaning emerges from systematic correspondences between structures.
• 🗨️ “The metaphor maps systematically establishes correspondences between representations…” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013, p. 5)
• 👉 Strengthens the idea that meaning in literature is relational, structured through recurring metaphorical patterns.

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🟡 🎯 Relevance Theory in Literary Pragmatics

• 📖 By applying Relevance Theory to literary metaphors, they bridge pragmatics with literary studies.
• 🗨️ “Relevance is therefore defined here in terms of balance between processing effort and cognitive effect.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013, p. 12)
• 👉 This encourages a pragmatic lens for studying how metaphors achieve literary impact based on cognitive processing.

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🟢 🎯 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

• 📖 Their analysis of metaphor as a political tool (e.g., USA as Empire) aligns with CDA’s interest in how language shapes ideology.
• 🗨️ “The extended metaphor functions as an argumentative device geared towards the validation of epistemic claims.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013, p. 32)
• 👉 Suggests that literary metaphors are political instruments, influencing public belief, not merely aesthetic flourishes.

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🔴 🎯 Post-Structuralism (De-metaphorisation Process)

• 📖 The fading of metaphor into literal belief connects to post-structuralist ideas about the instability and transformation of meanings.
• 🗨️ “Extended metaphors may lead their addressee to eventually abandon the metaphorical construal altogether…” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013, p. 24)
• 👉 Emphasizes how literary language undermines or redefines stable categories over time.

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⚪ 🎯 Argumentation Theory in Literature

• 📖 Positions metaphors not just as stylistic devices but as arguments that structure reader belief, linking to Toulmin’s model and Perelman’s New Rhetoric.
• 🗨️ “Extended metaphors are ideally suited to contribute material that can be used for argumentative purposes.” (Oswald & Rihs, 2013, p. 18)
• 👉 Enhances literary theory by showing how narratives subtly argue, not just narrate.

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🌟 Summary:

Steve Oswald and Alain Rihs offer a multi-theoretical impact — their work helps literary theory shift toward seeing metaphors as cognitive, rhetorical, discursive, ideological, and argumentative forces, not mere aesthetic ornaments.

🌟 Metaphor Is Primarily Conceptual, Not Linguistic

Lakoff challenges the classical view that metaphor is a matter of language, showing instead that it’s rooted in thought. Metaphors are cross-domain mappings in our conceptual system, not just rhetorical flourishes (Lakoff, 1987) 🧠. This reconceptualization moves metaphor from the poetic margins into the very core of everyday language use.

“The locus of metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in terms of another” (🌈 p. 203).

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💡 Everyday Language Is Richly Metaphorical

Contrary to traditional views, Lakoff argues that ordinary language is saturated with metaphor. Expressions like “He fell in love” or “We’ve hit a dead-end” are not poetic but conventional and rooted in deeper conceptual structures. This finding dismantles the binary of “literal” vs. “figurative” language.

“Ordinary everyday English is largely metaphorical, dispelling once and for all the traditional view” (🟦 p. 204).

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🚀 Conceptual Metaphor Theory: Cross-Domain Mappings

A conceptual metaphor maps a source domain (concrete) onto a target domain (abstract). For example, in LOVE IS A JOURNEY, the love relationship (target) is conceptualized in terms of a physical journey (source), as in: “Our relationship is off the track”.

“The metaphor involves understanding one domain of experience, love, in terms of a very different domain of experience, journeys” (💜 p. 207).

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📘 Metaphors Govern Reasoning and Inference

Metaphors are not just expressive—they guide reasoning. When people say “We’re stuck in this relationship”, they rely on travel-related inferences (e.g., fixing a vehicle, turning back) to reason about love.

“Such correspondences permit us to reason about love using the knowledge we use to reason about journeys” (🧡 p. 208).

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🌀 Metaphors Are Not Individual Words, but Cognitive Structures

Lakoff emphasizes that metaphors are not the words themselves but the mappings that sanction their use. Many metaphorical expressions stem from the same conceptual metaphor—e.g., dead-end, crossroads, off track—all from LOVE IS A JOURNEY.

“It is the ontological mapping across conceptual domains… the language is secondary” (💚 p. 209).

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🔁 Basic Abstract Concepts Are Metaphorical

Even core concepts such as time, causation, states, purposes, and categories are metaphorically structured. For example:

• TIME IS MOTION: “Christmas is coming up.”
• CATEGORIES ARE CONTAINERS: “Put it in a different category.”

“Most basic concepts… are normally comprehended via metaphor—concepts like time, quantity, state, change…” (🟥 p. 213).

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🛣️ Event Structure Is Metaphorically Understood

Lakoff introduces the EVENT STRUCTURE METAPHOR, where:

• States = locations
• Changes = movements
• Causes = forces
• Purposes = destinations

These structures govern expressions like “We’ve made it this far” or “We’re going nowhere”.

“States are locations… Causes are forces… Purposes are destinations” (💙 p. 221).

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🧭 Metaphors Form Inheritance Hierarchies

Metaphors are organized hierarchically. For instance:

1. EVENT STRUCTURE METAPHOR
2. ➝ A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY
3. ➝ LOVE IS A JOURNEY, CAREER IS A JOURNEY

Each lower level inherits from and is structured by the metaphor above it.

“The LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor inherits the structure of the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor” (🟨 p. 224).

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🔄 Duality: Location vs. Object-Based Metaphors

Every metaphor has a potential dual. For example:

• STATES ARE LOCATIONS (e.g., in trouble)
• ATTRIBUTES ARE POSSESSIONS (e.g., have trouble)

Both share the idea of co-location, highlighting how metaphorical thinking can take different structural forms.

“States and attributes are also special cases of the same thing—what can be attributed to someone” (🟪 p. 226).

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🎨 Image Metaphors and the Invariance Principle

Image metaphors (like “Her waist is an hourglass”) map one mental image onto another. The Invariance Principle states that image-schematic structure (like paths or containers) is preserved in metaphoric mappings.

“The metaphor is conceptual; it is not in the words themselves, but in the mental images” (🔷 p. 230).

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📚 Generic-Level Metaphors and Proverb Interpretation

Generic-level metaphors allow us to map specific instances to general structures, explaining how proverbs (e.g., “Blind blames the ditch”) work. They rely on preserved causal, temporal, and event schemas.

“Generic-level structure… is exactly image-schematic structure” (🔶 p. 234).

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🧠 Abstract Reasoning Is Image-Based

Lakoff’s most radical conclusion is that abstract thought is grounded in image-schemas. Our capacity for logic and inference emerges from metaphorically extended spatial and bodily experience.

“Abstract reasoning is a special case of image-based reasoning” (⚫ p. 229).

🧠 1. Cognitive Literary Theory

🔍 Contribution: Lakoff radically repositions metaphor from a figure of speech to a core cognitive mechanism that shapes how we think, perceive, and reason—including in literature.
📌 Key Reference: “The locus of metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in terms of another.” (Lakoff, p. 203)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Supports Cognitive Poetics (Tsur, Stockwell) and Embodied Cognition in literary analysis, where metaphor is seen as structuring narrative and character psychology.

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🧱 2. Structuralist & Post-Structuralist Revisions

🔁 Contribution: Challenges structuralist separation between literal and figurative language, asserting that everyday language is saturated with metaphor.
📌 Key Reference: “The discovery of this enormous metaphor system has destroyed the traditional literal-figurative distinction.” (Lakoff, p. 205)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Offers a post-structuralist critique of the arbitrary sign, suggesting metaphor is grounded in cognitive mappings, not in pure linguistic play.

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🔄 3. Reframing Reader-Response Theory

👁️ Contribution: Emphasizes the reader’s conceptual system as key to interpreting metaphor—what readers “understand” is shaped by shared conceptual metaphors.
📌 Key Reference: “The metaphor is not just a matter of language, but of thought and reason.” (Lakoff, p. 209)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Enhances Reader-Response Theory (Fish, Iser) by adding a cognitive layer—interpretation arises from experiential metaphors, not just textual gaps or reader projection.

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🎨 4. Enriching Poetic and Literary Analysis

🎭 Contribution: Shows that poetic metaphors, like those in Dylan Thomas or Wallace Stevens, are built upon conventional everyday mappings.
📌 Key Reference: “The study of literary metaphor is an extension of the study of everyday metaphor.” (Lakoff, p. 203)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Redefines Formalism/New Criticism by relocating metaphor’s richness from poetic novelty to cognitive familiarity; also bridges New Historicism, which examines how metaphor reflects broader cultural cognition.

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🛠️ 5. Tool for Allegory and Symbolism Analysis

🔑 Contribution: Introduces conceptual metaphor mapping as a powerful analytic tool for understanding allegory, symbol, and myth.
📌 Key Reference: “There is a single general principle… part of the conceptual system underlying English.” (Lakoff, p. 208)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Useful for Myth Criticism (Frye, Campbell), understanding how symbolic narratives (e.g., life-as-journey) structure plot and character arcs.

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🌉 6. Bridging Literature and Philosophy of Language

🔧 Contribution: Directly critiques philosophers like Searle and classical theories of metaphor, offering an empirically grounded alternative.
📌 Key Reference: “What we had called propositional structure is really image-based inference.” (Lakoff, p. 229)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Connects with Philosophy of Literature, challenging analytical distinctions between metaphor and truth-functional language.

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🖼️ 7. Broadening Symbolic Interpretation in Literature

📐 Contribution: Introduces Image Metaphor (e.g., “her waist is an hourglass”) as a unique, non-propositional literary device rooted in visual-spatial cognition.
📌 Key Reference: “Image metaphors… map the structure of one domain onto the structure of another.” (Lakoff, p. 230)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Advances Iconic and Visual Theories of Literature, enhancing how we interpret symbolic and imagistic language beyond mere simile.

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🌐 8. Foundation for Conceptual Narratology

🚶 Contribution: The Event Structure Metaphor (states = locations, causes = forces, goals = destinations) offers a way to analyze plot and narrative causality.
📌 Key Reference: “States are locations. Changes are movements… Purposes are destinations.” (Lakoff, p. 221)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Contributes to Narratology (Propp, Genette) by mapping narrative elements onto embodied experience.

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🔄 9. Reorienting Tropes in Rhetoric and Style

🔁 Contribution: Demonstrates how metaphorical systems structure idioms, clichés, and stylistic expressions, revealing their deep cognitive roots.
📌 Key Reference: “Many of the metaphorical expressions… are idioms… not arbitrary, but motivated.” (Lakoff, p. 212)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Recontextualizes Classical Rhetoric and Stylistics, viewing them through the lens of cognitive motivation.

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🧬 10. Expanding Theories of Symbolic Inheritance

🏗️ Contribution: Introduces metaphorical inheritance hierarchies (e.g., LOVE IS A JOURNEY ← LIFE IS A JOURNEY ← EVENT STRUCTURE), mapping complex cultural and literary motifs.
📌 Key Reference: “Metaphorical mappings do not occur isolated… they are organized in hierarchical structures.” (Lakoff, p. 223)
📚 Theoretical Connection: Aligns with Intertextuality and Archetypal Criticism, illuminating how metaphorical networks span genres and traditions.

🔴 🔍 Overemphasis on Universality
Lakoff’s theory assumes many metaphors (e.g., “TIME IS MOTION”, “LIFE IS A JOURNEY”) are universal, but cross-cultural linguistic studies show that metaphorical frameworks differ significantly between languages and cultures (e.g., in Chinese or Aymara, future is not always “ahead”).

🟡 🔄 Cognitive Reductionism
Critics argue the theory reduces complex literary or poetic expressions to fixed conceptual mappings, such as “LOVE IS A JOURNEY”, ignoring nuance, irony, and stylistic ambiguity present in creative literature.

🟠 🧱 Static Mapping Critique
The notion of fixed cross-domain mappings is criticized as too rigid. Real-life metaphor use often involves dynamic, context-sensitive constructions, not always aligning with pre-set metaphors.

🟢 📏 Inadequate Account of Novelty
While Lakoff acknowledges image metaphors and novel expressions, some scholars argue the theory underrepresents creative, one-off metaphorical innovations in literature and speech (cf. Ricoeur’s “living metaphors”).

🔵 📚 Neglect of Aesthetic Dimension
Lakoff’s focus is primarily cognitive and conceptual. Critics in literary theory (e.g., Eagleton) claim that this ignores the aesthetic, emotional, and cultural dimensions that make metaphor powerful in poetry and prose.

🟣 🧠 Challenges in Psychological Validation
Some psycholinguistic studies suggest that people don’t consistently rely on metaphorical reasoning in real-time understanding, challenging Lakoff’s claim that metaphor is central to everyday cognition (McGlone, 2007).

⚫ ⚖️ Literal-Figurative Dichotomy Remains Debated
Although Lakoff dissolves the traditional literal vs. metaphorical distinction, other theorists argue some form of it remains useful, especially for distinguishing novel metaphors from conventional lexicalized expressions.

🟤 🖼️ Weakness in Explaining Visual/Multimodal Metaphor
Lakoff’s theory is primarily linguistic and does not robustly extend to visual, gestural, or multimodal metaphors, which are crucial in film, art, and digital media.

🔹 Main Ideas of “Metaphor and Literature” by Earl R. MacCormac:

• 📌 Metaphor is foundational to literature and creativity, acting as a crucial tool for expressing meaning beyond literal language. Literature without metaphor would become dull and unimaginative (⭑ MacCormac, 1972, p. 57).
• 📌 Philosophical suspicion toward metaphor has lessened over time. While once seen as imprecise, metaphor is now recognized as essential in both philosophy and science (⭑ p. 57–58).
• 📌 Scientific concepts like “force” or “mass” are metaphors and are not linguistically precise terms, highlighting metaphor’s role in the formation of theories (✦ p. 58).
• 📌 MacCormac proposes a “tension theory of metaphor,” where meaning arises from the tension between literal absurdity and figurative insight. Metaphor creates a moment of disruption that compels the reader to reflect “as if” the statement were true (⭒ p. 59).
• 📌 The article differentiates two types of metaphor:
  • Epiphor: based on analogy; reveals hidden but relatable meanings (✧ p. 60).
  • Diaphor: introduces new, often imaginative meanings that cannot be reduced to familiar analogies (✧ p. 61).
• 📌 Metaphors evolve: they may begin as diaphors, become expressive epiphors, and ultimately turn into dead metaphors or symbols in ordinary language (⭐ p. 62).
• 📌 MacCormac introduces the concept of “root metaphors”—deep metaphoric structures (e.g., “the world is a machine”) that underlie entire philosophical or literary worldviews. These root metaphors shape how entire texts or scientific paradigms are interpreted (✪ p. 63–64).
• 📌 Myths arise when root metaphors are taken literally. Myths can be found in science, literature, religion, and philosophy when hypothetical metaphors are mistaken for truth (✹ p. 67–69).
• 📌 Symbols in literature are born from metaphors, especially epiphors, and become emotionally charged archetypal symbols through repetition (✸ p. 64–66).
• 📌 Metaphors should be understood as linguistic symbols, not just psychological phenomena. Reducing all metaphor to cognitive response oversimplifies their structural role in meaning-making (✦ p. 66).
• 📌 The article calls for a critical awareness of metaphor’s role in constructing meaning, cautioning against confusing metaphorical frameworks with literal reality (✴ p. 69–70).

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🔍 Implications for Literary Criticism (per MacCormac):

• ✅ Metaphors cannot be paraphrased without losing their unique meanings—especially diaphors (✦ p. 70).
• ✅ Root metaphors and conveyance metaphors must be distinguished. The former underlie whole works; the latter function within narratives (✪ p. 64).
• ✅ Ordinary language itself is built from dead metaphors, highlighting how pervasive and foundational metaphor is in human thought (✦ p. 60).
• ✅ Myths should not be eliminated outright, but critically examined as historically contingent metaphorical systems (✹ p. 68).
• ✅ Literary meaning is not solely internal to the text—reader experience and broader metaphorical structures also inform interpretation (✧ p. 64–65).

🧠 1. Structuralism

• 🔹 Emphasizes that metaphor is a linguistic structure that organizes meaning through patterns and associations (⭑ MacCormac, 1972, p. 59).
• 🔹 Introduces the concept that ordinary language is structured by “dead metaphors”, showing how metaphors shape language systems (⭑ p. 60).
• 🔹 By analyzing metaphor as a structured interaction between “tenor” and “vehicle” (Richards), the article aligns with structuralist focus on binary relationships (✦ p. 59).

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🔮 2. Reader-Response Theory

• 🔹 Argues that the recognition of metaphor depends on the reader’s awareness of absurdity and interpretive ability (✧ p. 59).
• 🔹 Claims that metaphors gain meaning only through the reader’s ability to imagine or connect to experience, especially in the case of diaphors (✧ p. 61–62).
• 🔹 Suggests that interpretive response is essential to moving metaphors from tension to comprehension (✧ p. 62).

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📘 3. Formalism / New Criticism

• 🔹 Acknowledges the internal function of metaphor in constructing literary unity, especially when rooted in a dominant image (✪ p. 63).
• 🔹 Discusses metaphors that carry the thematic structure of a work (root metaphors), which are central to formalist close reading (✪ p. 64).
• 🔹 Challenges New Criticism slightly by arguing that not all meaning is internally contained within a work’s structure (✪ p. 64–65).

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🌍 4. Phenomenology / Hermeneutics

• 🔹 Describes metaphor as an experiential bridge, where the reader’s own perception fills the gap between literal absurdity and figurative meaning (✸ p. 59–60).
• 🔹 Suggests that understanding metaphor is a phenomenological act that involves the transformation of experience into insight (✸ p. 61).
• 🔹 Root metaphors provide hermeneutic frameworks for interpreting literary worlds and philosophical systems (✸ p. 63–64).

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🧬 5. Post-Structuralism / Deconstruction

• 🔹 Identifies the instability of meaning in metaphors—especially diaphors—which resist paraphrase and final interpretation (✴ p. 70).
• 🔹 Argues that literal and figurative are not absolute categories, since dead metaphors blur the boundary (✴ p. 60–61).
• 🔹 Challenges the idea of a stable referent, showing that metaphor often undermines the clarity of language (✴ p. 69).

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📚 6. Archetypal and Symbolic Criticism

• 🔹 Tracks how metaphors evolve into archetypal symbols with emotional resonance, e.g., “water” representing life (✹ p. 64–65).
• 🔹 Connects metaphor to universal human expressions, consistent with Jungian and mythological criticism (✹ p. 65).

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⚙️ 7. Philosophy of Language / Analytic Literary Theory

• 🔹 Contributes to theoretical philosophy of metaphor, extending ideas of Max Black and I.A. Richards into literary application (⭑ p. 59).
• 🔹 Discusses metaphor in terms of linguistic functions, meaning variance, and ostension (⭑ p. 60; ⭑ p. 61).
• 🔹 Establishes that literary and philosophical language share metaphorical logic, rejecting strict literalism in analytic traditions (⭑ p. 67).

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🧱 8. Myth Criticism

• 🔹 Defines myth as a literalized root metaphor, warning that myth arises when metaphor is mistaken as objective truth (✦ p. 67–69).
• 🔹 Suggests that myths pervade all fields, from literature to science, when metaphor is misinterpreted as fact (✦ p. 69).
• 🔹 Encourages a critical approach to metaphor to avoid mythologizing knowledge and ideology (✦ p. 69–70).

❗ Criticisms Against “Literature and Metaphor” by Earl R. MacCormac:

• ⚖️ Overemphasis on Philosophy Over Literary Practice
  ▪️ MacCormac heavily draws from philosophical traditions (e.g., Aristotle, Max Black, Stephen Pepper), sometimes sidelining close textual analysis or literary nuance.
  ▪️ Critics may argue that this makes the theory less practical for analyzing complex literary texts in detail.
• 🌀 Ambiguity Between Epiphor and Diaphor
  ▪️ The distinction between epiphor (based on analogy) and diaphor (suggesting new meaning) is insightful but can become conceptually blurry.
  ▪️ In many cases, metaphors contain elements of both, making rigid classification difficult (⭑ MacCormac, 1972, p. 61–62).
• 🧩 Lack of Engagement with Historical or Cultural Contexts
  ▪️ The theory largely treats metaphor as a universal linguistic process, neglecting how cultural, historical, or socio-political factors shape metaphor usage and reception.
• 🗺️ Limited Scope of Literary Examples
  ▪️ The article relies mostly on Western canon examples (e.g., Donne, Frost, Dryden), potentially narrowing its cross-cultural applicability.
  ▪️ It does not test the theory on non-Western or postmodern literature where metaphor might function differently.
• 🏗️ Abstract Treatment of Myth and Reality
  ▪️ MacCormac’s claim that myths are merely literalized root metaphors (p. 67–69) could be seen as reductive.
  ▪️ It overlooks the deeper symbolic, religious, or communal functions of myth in human culture.
• 🔄 Resistance to Internal Meaning Theories
  ▪️ MacCormac challenges Northrop Frye’s idea of internal literary meaning (p. 64), but his alternative may not satisfy formalists who value textual coherence and self-containment.
  ▪️ Some may argue that he dismisses valid interpretive strategies too quickly.
• 🔍 Insufficient Practical Methodology for Criticism
  ▪️ The article offers a theoretical framework but lacks clear, repeatable steps for applying it in literary criticism.
  ▪️ Readers may struggle to operationalize his concepts without more methodological guidance.
• 💬 Minimal Dialogue with Contemporary Literary Theorists
  ▪️ While the work is grounded in philosophical and linguistic traditions, it engages less with contemporary literary theorists (e.g., Barthes, Derrida, Eagleton), missing inter-theoretical dialogue.

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🧠 Summary:

While “Literature and Metaphor” is foundational in positioning metaphor at the center of meaning-making in literature, its philosophical abstraction, binary metaphor classifications, and lack of cultural contextualization leave room for criticism. Scholars seeking more culturally grounded, politically aware, or text-specific analysis may find MacCormac’s framework limited in scope.

🔍 Discourse-Theoretical Approach to Metaphor

• 🧩 Metaphor must be understood within the broader framework of discourse, which encompasses language (text), cognition (comprehension), and communication (social interaction).

“Discourse can be treated as a congeries of three kinds of structures… language, cognition, and communication” (p. 115).
✳️

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🎭 Three Functions of Metaphor

• 💬 Expressive function (linguistic): Metaphor serves as a formal device to concisely express what would otherwise be lengthy or indirect.

“‘Julia is the sun’ is formally much more pointed than the lengthy alternatives” (p. 119).
✍️

• 🧠 Transactional function (cognitive): Metaphor helps us relate and understand conceptual domains that are typically unrelated.

“Lovers are not often seen in terms of heavenly bodies, excusez le mot, but Shakespeare manages…” (p. 119).
🧠

• 🤝 Interactional function (communicative): Metaphors influence the flow and interpretation of communication, shaped by genre and social context.

“This force may be vivid or flat, surprising or banal… esthetically pleasing or displeasing” (p. 119).
📡

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📖 Literary vs. Non-Literary Reading

• 🧾 Understanding metaphors is shaped by the type of discourse—literary or non-literary—and the attitude of reading the reader adopts.

“Understanding metaphor in a literary way may be highly influenced by the adoption of a literary attitude of reading” (p. 114).
🎭

• 🧠 A literary attitude activates Esthetic (E) and Polyvalence (P) conventions, focusing on multiple meanings and aesthetic value rather than factual clarity.

“The Esthetic convention… implies the suspension of criteria such as true/false… The Polyvalence convention induces subjectively satisfactory comprehension processes…” (p. 123).
🌀

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🔁 Role of Analogical Processing

• 🔗 Analogy is central to metaphor comprehension in literature, where it is not just a problem-solving tool but a method of layered interpretation.

“The principle of analogy… is explosively exploited rather than restricted [in literature]” (p. 125).
🧪

• 🧙 Allegory is seen as extended metaphorical analogy, but not all literary metaphors are allegorical.

“Allegory… has two separate meanings rather than one… metaphor also may have more clearly or vaguely distinct meanings than one” (p. 130).
🔍

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🧩 Polyvalence of Literary Metaphor

• 🎨 Literary metaphors tend to be polyvalent—open to multiple interpretations—due to vehicle elaboration and contextual layering.

“Polyvalence in literary metaphor may be due to… a series of vehicle interpretations” (p. 128).
🧷

• 🧠 This results in a richer, multidimensional understanding as readers extract overlapping or even conflicting meanings.

“Metaphors may be refunctionalized as literary signs… producing symbolism and other effects” (p. 130).
🔮

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🧭 Identification, Comprehension, and Appreciation

• 📌 Steen proposes a three-part model of how metaphors are processed:
  1. Identification – Recognizing the presence of a metaphor
  2. Comprehension – Constructing meaning
  3. Appreciation – Valuing or evaluating the metaphor

“Identification of metaphor may be… metatextual elaboration… comprehension may lead to… alternative frames… appreciation may be part of polyvalent elaborations” (p. 134).
🔍🧠💖

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🔄 Explicit vs. Implicit Processing

• 👀 Steen distinguishes between explicit and implicit versions of all three processes, arguing that literary reading fosters explicit awareness of metaphor.

“Explicit identification… a meta-statement concerning the perceived metaphorical nature…” (p. 136).
⚖️

• 📢 For example, explicit vehicle interpretation (recognizing and analyzing the metaphor’s source domain) is more likely in literary contexts.

“Experienced readers… emphasize vehicle interpretation… inexperienced readers tend to overlook this aspect” (p. 137).
🧭

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🧪 Empirical and Cognitive Approach

• 🧬 Steen emphasizes the need for empirical testing of his hypotheses via cognitive psychology (e.g., think-aloud protocols) and interdisciplinary work.

“Such obstacles need not prevent us… from both formulating tentative programs of research…” (p. 139).
📊

• 🧑‍🔬 He encourages bridging gaps between psychological models of language comprehension and literary theory, advocating for discourse-based analysis.

“Many metaphors in literary texts need not be understood in a literary way… hence a general discourse theory is required…” (p. 139).
🧠🔗📚

🔍 Over-Theorization Without Empirical Evidence
While Steen emphasizes empirical methodology, the paper remains largely theoretical. Critics may argue that Steen falls short of offering actual data to validate his discourse-functional claims (Steen, 1989).

🧩 Ambiguity in Discourse Typology
The tripartite model of expressive, transactional, and interactional discourse functions may be seen as overlapping or too loosely defined, especially when applied across diverse literary genres.

⚖️ Lack of Engagement with Post-Structuralism
Steen’s cognitive approach is rooted in formalist and psychological models, which can appear reductive or incompatible with post-structuralist or deconstructive theories that resist fixed interpretation or “functions” of language.

🎭 Neglect of Cultural and Historical Context
Critics might argue that the model downplays the role of socio-historical context in shaping metaphorical meaning, focusing instead on cognitive processing as if it were universal and ahistorical.

🧠 Cognitive Bias and Reader Homogenization
The psychological framing assumes a somewhat uniform cognitive process across readers, which may ignore diverse interpretive communities or the variability of reader responses rooted in identity and context.

📚 Insufficient Focus on Non-Metaphorical Literary Devices
By centering metaphor, the paper potentially marginalizes other poetic and rhetorical strategies equally central to literary comprehension, such as irony, metonymy, or ambiguity.

🌀 Conflation of Literary Attitude and Literary Value
Steen’s reliance on the E and P conventions implies that readers can “switch on” a literary mode of reading. Critics may question whether such a clean switch exists, or whether this oversimplifies how texts are actually read and valued.

·  🔸 Metaphor as a Natural and Noble Act of Naming:
Drawing from Quintilian, Donoghue opens by stating that metaphor is a natural human gift:

“It is both a gift which Nature herself confers on us… [ensuring] that nothing goes without a name” (p.182) ✴
This framing treats metaphor not as a mere rhetorical flourish, but a fundamental linguistic and existential impulse.

·  🔸 Metaphor and the Liberty of the Mind:
Metaphor emerges from the freedom of the imagination, striving to give things their “proper names,” though often failing.

“The source of metaphor is the liberty of the mind among such words as there are” (p.184) ✴

·  🔸 Metaphor as Both Resource and Failure:
Metaphor reflects the inadequacies of language, and thus, its use becomes a noble but doomed attempt to make sense of a deficient world.

“Rhetoric… is a glorious failure, and the cry of metaphor is doomed” (p.184) ✴
“We cry out to change the world by giving things their proper names—but often we fail” (p.184) ✴

·  🔸 Allegory and Catachresis: Extensions of Metaphor:
Metaphor gives rise to allegory and to its extremes, catachresis—abused or “forced” metaphors that reveal linguistic limits.

“Allegory is its narrative form… Catachresis is the figure of its abuse” (p.185) ✴
“Something monstrous lurks in the most innocent of catachreses” – Paul de Man (p.185) ✴

·  🔸 Metaphor as Escape from Literal Reality:
According to Wallace Stevens (via Frye), the motive for metaphor is to escape the oppressive weight of objective reality, “the weight of primary noon.”

“The motive for metaphor, shrinking from / The weight of primary noon” – Stevens (p.186) ✴
“To defeat or evade the force of the world, it must resort to the imaginative capacity of the mind” (p.188) ✴

·  🔸 Interpretive Differences: Frye vs. Ransom:
Frye sees the metaphor as a bridge between mind and world; Ransom views it as a poetic solution to inexpressible moral feelings.

Frye: “The only genuine joy… is in those rare moments when you feel that… we are also a part of what we know” (p.187) ✴
Ransom: The metaphor avoids “the dreary searching of your own mind” (p.187) ✴

·  🔸 Stevens’s Hegelian Idealism and Artistic Desire:
Stevens’s poetic vision resonates with Hegel’s aesthetics, where art “lifts the inner and outer world into his spiritual consciousness.”

“The universal need for art… is man’s rational need to lift the inner and outer world into his spiritual consciousness” – Hegel (p.189) ✴

·  🔸 Art and Metaphor as Acts of Decreation:
Donoghue invokes Simone Weil and Picasso to show how metaphor contributes to a modern aesthetic of undoing the real, transforming or annihilating it.

“Modern reality is a reality of decreation” (p.191) ✴
“A poem is a horde of destructions” – Stevens (p.191) ✴

·  🔸 The Danger of Bad Metaphors:
Metaphors have the power to undermine themselves—a bad metaphor, Donoghue notes, can “murder” a good one.

“He must defy / The metaphor that murders metaphor” (p.191) ✴

·  🔸 Repetition, Association, and Stevens’s Reluctance to End:
Stevens’s poetry exhibits an additive and associative structure—where metaphors are strung together without clear hierarchy.

“One phrase is instructed to produce another by association” (p.192) ✴
“His sentences tend not to be decisive… he always sees a further possibility” (p.193) ✴

·  🔸 Shrinking from Fixity and Embracing Change:
Stevens shrinks from fixed truths, favoring the fluid, unstable states metaphor enables.

“A poet writes of twilight because he shrinks from noon-day” – Stevens (p.196) ✴

·  🔸 Resemblance as a Core Principle of Metaphor:
Stevens’s metaphors rely heavily on resemblance, which Donoghue critiques as too general to be philosophically sound.

“In some sense, all things resemble each other” – Stevens (p.198) ✴
“Similarity… is relative, variable and culture-dependent” – Nelson Goodman (p.199) ✴

·  🔸 Metaphor Intensifies Reality:
When it works, metaphor heightens our sense of reality, transforming the mundane into the sublime.

“It enhances the sense of reality, heightens it, intensifies it” (p.200) ✴
Example from Ecclesiastes: “The silver cord… the golden bowl… the wheel broken at the cistern” (p.200) ✴

·  🔸 Metaphor vs. Simile:
A metaphor demands total imaginative immersion, unlike simile which allows safe distance.

“A metaphor incurs resistance… and is indifferent to shame” (p.201) ✴

·  🔸 “X” as Final Resistance and Symbol of Limit:
Stevens’s “dominant X” represents the intractable world, the final, unchangeable reality metaphor fails to penetrate.

“Nothing in the poem defeats the final ‘X'” (p.206) ✴

·  🔸 No Final Word on Metaphor:
Donoghue concludes that Stevens’s relation to metaphor is inherently unstable. Each poetic mood shifts the meaning and function of metaphor.

“We can’t expect from Stevens a definitive statement about metaphor” (p.207) ✴
“In such seemings all things are. Metaphor… will do its transforming work another day” (p.207) ✴

• 🧠 Metaphor as Cognitive and Ontological Tool
  Donoghue elevates metaphor beyond ornamentation, presenting it as essential to how humans name, understand, and exist within the world.

“It ensures that nothing goes without a name” – Quintilian (p.182)

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• 🌀 Poetic Language as Idealist Expression
  Stevens’s metaphoric thought aligns with Hegelian idealism, portraying metaphor as a spiritual act uniting inner consciousness and external reality.

“He woke in a metaphor: this was / A metamorphosis of paradise” (p.189)

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• 🎨 Metaphor as Aesthetic Resistance
  Metaphor becomes a form of imaginative protest against oppressive, fixed realities—”the weight of primary noon.”

“The motive for metaphor, shrinking from / The weight of primary noon” (p.186)

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• 🔧 Engagement with Classical Rhetorical Tradition
  Through references to Aristotle, Fontanier, and Quintilian, Donoghue reinterprets rhetorical devices like allegory, catachresis, and simile.

“Allegory is its narrative form… Catachresis is the figure of its abuse” (p.185)

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• 🧩 The ‘X’ as Limit of Language and Metaphor
  The “dominant X” in Stevens’s poem marks the threshold where metaphor fails—where language can no longer transform reality.

“Nothing in the poem defeats the final ‘X'” (p.206)

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• 🗣️ Rhetoric as Anthropological Necessity
  Donoghue, citing Blumenberg, reframes rhetoric not as persuasion but as an existential necessity driven by human lack and insufficiency.

“The axiom of all rhetoric is the principle of insufficient reason” (p.184)

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• 📖 Validation of Radical and ‘Abused’ Metaphors
  Defending even bizarre metaphors like “bisqued mountain,” Donoghue legitimizes catachresis as a productive, imaginative force.

“To speak of ‘forced metaphor’ is not to degrade its manifestations” (p.185)

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• 🔍 Critique of Resemblance as Metaphoric Ground
  Donoghue challenges Stevens’s assumption that resemblance is natural, invoking Nelson Goodman’s view that similarity is culturally constructed.

“Similarity… is relative, variable and culture-dependent” (p.199)

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• 🧬 Metaphor as Creative Ontology
  Metaphor does not just reflect reality—it makes it. It is a poietic act that creates new ways of seeing and being.

“Metaphor creates a new reality from which the original appears to be unreal” (p.188)

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• 📜 Interplay of Modernist Certainty and Postmodern Ambiguity
  Donoghue highlights Stevens’s shifting moods and refusal to settle on a singular metaphoric theory—an openness aligning with postmodern literary theory.

“We can’t expect from Stevens a definitive statement about metaphor” (p.207)

• 🧩 Overreliance on Stevens’s Poetic Authority
  Donoghue hinges much of his theory on Wallace Stevens, potentially narrowing metaphor’s scope across diverse literary traditions.
  ➤ Critics might argue that using one poet’s temperament to frame a general theory of metaphor limits its broader applicability.

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• 🔄 Philosophical Inconsistency
  The essay oscillates between idealism and skepticism, invoking both Hegelian unity and postmodern ambiguity without fully reconciling the two.
  ➤ “We can’t expect from Stevens a definitive statement about metaphor” (p.207) may reflect this unresolved tension.

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• 🎨 Romanticization of Metaphor
  Donoghue tends to elevate metaphor to near-mystical status, emphasizing its aesthetic and existential powers while underplaying its structural or political dimensions.
  ➤ This limits metaphor’s role in critical discourse, including feminist, postcolonial, or ideological critiques.

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• 📏 Neglect of Formal and Linguistic Precision
  Critics may find Donoghue’s acceptance of vague terms like “resemblance” too generous, despite his citation of Nelson Goodman’s challenge to that notion.
  ➤ He critiques Stevens but doesn’t fully abandon slippery conceptual terrain, potentially undermining analytical rigor.

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• 🧠 Underuse of Contemporary Linguistic Theory
  While Donoghue engages with classical and continental thought, he gives minimal attention to modern cognitive or conceptual metaphor theory (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson).
  ➤ This makes the work more philosophically poetic than practically linguistic or interdisciplinary.

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• 🌐 Limited Cultural Range
  The examples and allusions are primarily Western, white, male, and canonical, raising concerns about inclusivity and broader relevance in global poetics.
  ➤ There’s little engagement with metaphor in non-Western traditions or contemporary marginalized voices.

🔍 Mental Metaphors Are Core to Abstract Thinking

“People think about abstract domains like time and goodness metaphorically. This tendency may be universal.” (Casasanto, p. 46)
🧠 Casasanto distinguishes mental metaphors (non-linguistic mappings) from linguistic metaphors, showing that humans often think metaphorically even without language (Casasanto & Bottini, 2014a) 🌐.

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📚 Challenges to Universality and Fixity

“Yet the claims that basic mental metaphors are learned, universal, and fixed are all challenged by experimental data” (p. 47)
🧪 Studies show variability across languages, cultures, and individuals. For instance, newborns already show sensitivity to spatial-numerical mappings, suggesting innateness rather than learning (De Hevia et al., 2014) 👶.

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🧭 Hierarchical Mental Metaphors Theory (HMMT)

“Even our most basic mental metaphors are constructed over multiple timescales, on the basis of multiple kinds of experience.” (p. 48)
🌱 HMMT proposes that metaphors exist in superordinate families—universal but flexible—shaped by ongoing cultural, linguistic, and bodily experiences. Different mappings from the same family can become dominant over time 🏗️.

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🎵 Pitch as an Example of Language-Specific Variation

“Speakers of height languages…incorporate height information into pitch, whereas thickness-language speakers do the same with thickness.” (p. 51)
🎼 Dutch and Farsi speakers conceptualize pitch differently based on the metaphors common in their native language, and brief training in an unfamiliar metaphor can retrain mental mappings (Dolscheid et al., 2013) 🎧.

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👶 Infants Show Both Height–Pitch and Thickness–Pitch Mappings

“Four-month-olds…are sensitive to two of the space–pitch metaphors that are found in languages like Dutch and Farsi.” (p. 53)
👶 Infants possess multiple potential mappings early in life. Language strengthens one metaphor over another, not by creating new ones, but by enhancing the activation frequency of existing ones 🔄.

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🕓 Temporal Sequences Are Culturally Structured

“The direction in which events flow…varies systematically across cultures.” (p. 55)
📆 While sagittal time metaphors (past behind, future ahead) may be embodied, lateral metaphors (left–right) depend on orthographic experience. Mirror-reading even reverses mental timelines (Casasanto & Bottini, 2014b) 🔄🕰️.

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👐 Emotional Valence Tied to Body Dominance

“Right-handers associate positive ideas with right space…left-handers show the opposite.” (p. 57)
💖 The spatial mapping of good vs. bad follows motor fluency. Right-handed people associate “good” with the right, while left-handed people do the opposite. This holds even against cultural conventions (Casasanto, 2009a) ↔️.

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🧤 Motor Experience Can Reverse Valence Mappings

“Participants who had worn the right glove showed the opposite left-is-good bias.” (p. 58)
🧠 Temporary shifts in motor fluency, like wearing a glove on the dominant hand, can alter emotional metaphors in less than 15 minutes—proving their plasticity and dependence on physical experience 🕹️.

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🔁 Mental Metaphors Are Flexible Yet Stable

“Dispreferred mappings are weakened but not lost and can be adopted quickly with new experience.” (p. 60)
🧬 Even “unused” metaphors persist in memory, enabling people to switch mappings when context shifts (e.g., new languages, scripts, tools). This dual stability and flexibility is a core insight of HMMT 🌍🧠.

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🌐 Cognitive Diversity and Conceptual Plasticity

“By understanding how mental metaphors are shaped…we can better understand the origins of our thoughts.” (p. 60)
🌟 Casasanto concludes that mental metaphors are fundamental cognitive tools shaped by diverse experiences. Recognizing their variability enhances our understanding of thought, culture, and language as dynamic systems 🔄🌏.

📘 1. Expands Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)

🧩 “People think about abstract domains like time and goodness metaphorically. This tendency may be universal.” (p. 46)

• 🌐 Casasanto builds on Lakoff & Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which underpins much cognitive literary theory.
• He advances the theory by showing that metaphorical thinking is not static, but dynamically shaped by cultural, bodily, and linguistic experience.
• Contribution: Helps literary theorists analyze how metaphor use in texts reflects both universal and idiosyncratic cognitive patterns across cultures and individuals.

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🧠 2. Introduces HMMT: A Dynamic Model of Meaning-Making

🪜 “Mental metaphors are constructed over multiple timescales… members of a superordinate family of mappings.” (p. 48)

• 🔄 The Hierarchical Mental Metaphors Theory (HMMT) introduces plasticity into metaphor use, challenging rigid linguistic determinism.
• Literary theorists can apply this to interpret reader-response variation and narrative structures influenced by readers’ embodied or cultural metaphor biases.
• Contribution: Supports reader-centered theories like Reception Theory by explaining why readers interpret metaphors differently.

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✍️ 3. Reframes Embodied Literary Cognition

💡 “Mental metaphors can be fundamental to our understanding of abstract domains, yet at the same time remarkably flexible.” (p. 46)

• Casasanto’s findings back embodied cognition theories in literature (e.g., Scarry, Gibbs).
• They suggest that reading metaphors activates sensorimotor systems, explaining why metaphors feel viscerally meaningful in literary texts.
• Contribution: Strengthens Embodied Poetics and Neuroaesthetics, by grounding metaphor in bodily and cultural experience.

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🌏 4. Offers Tools for Cross-Cultural Literary Analysis

🧭 “Mental metaphors can be language-specific, culture-specific, or body-specific…” (p. 48)

• Casasanto’s research on how language shapes metaphors (e.g., pitch as “high” vs. “thick”) aids Comparative Literature by providing a framework to study how metaphors operate differently in Farsi, Dutch, English, etc.
• Contribution: Supports Postcolonial Literary Theory and Transcultural Criticism by explaining metaphorical variability across linguistic boundaries.

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📚 5. Revitalizes Structuralist & Post-Structuralist Concerns

🧬 “How can they be fundamental…if they can change in a matter of minutes?” (p. 48)

• HMMT challenges the idea of metaphors as fixed semiotic structures, offering a fluid, memory-network-based view.
• This bridges Structuralist attention to patterns with Post-Structuralist focus on instability and play of meaning.
• Contribution: Provides a cognitive underpinning for Derridean différance—mappings are in flux, not fully stable.

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🗣️ 6. Provides Insight into Literary Language Evolution

💬 “Each time people use a linguistic metaphor, the corresponding mental metaphor is activated…” (p. 48)

• This explains how metaphorical language in literature evolves and reshapes cognition itself over time.
• Contribution: Offers Historical Poetics and Stylistics a model to track how metaphorical patterns in texts shape cultural cognition.

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🧤 7. Validates Body-Specific Interpretive Frameworks

✋ “Right-handers associate ‘good’ with the right…left-handers show the opposite.” (p. 57)

• Literary scholars exploring disability studies, gendered embodiment, or queer theory gain from this perspective that bodily difference affects meaning construction.
• Contribution: Adds nuance to embodied literary approaches by introducing body-specific metaphor biases.

❗ 1. Ambiguity Between “Universal” and “Flexible”

Critics argue that the theory struggles to reconcile its claim of universal metaphor families with the radical variability observed across individuals and cultures.

• 🌍 If metaphors are universal (as claimed), why are they so easily reversible in minutes (e.g., with mirrored orthography)?
• ❓ The line between innate mappings and learned cultural variants is sometimes blurred in HMMT, leading to theoretical ambiguity.

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🧪 2. Overreliance on Laboratory Evidence

Many of the cited experiments use artificial settings and brief interventions that may not reflect natural cognitive behavior in real-world contexts.

• 🧫 For example, spatial interference tasks with tones and shapes may oversimplify how people process metaphor in language, art, or literature.
• Critics suggest HMMT may not fully explain deep metaphorical reasoning in complex, real-life scenarios like literature or politics.

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🧠 3. Neglects Social and Power Structures

While HMMT accounts for body, language, and culture, it underplays the role of ideology, power, and discourse in shaping metaphors.

• ⚖️ Critics from poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives argue that metaphors are not just cognitive, but also political and rhetorical tools.
• HMMT lacks engagement with theories from Foucault, Butler, or Bourdieu regarding language, identity, and control.

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📏 4. Limited Scope of Metaphor Domains

The theory focuses mostly on space-based metaphors (e.g., time, pitch, valence), ignoring rich metaphorical domains like morality, love, or nationhood.

• 💘 Metaphors like “love is war” or “the nation is a body” involve emotionally and socially charged concepts that go beyond space–domain mappings.
• HMMT’s hierarchy model might not apply cleanly to multi-domain metaphors or culturally embedded conceptual blends.

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🔁 5. Circularity in Evidence and Explanation

Some scholars argue that HMMT explains metaphor flexibility by invoking metaphor flexibility, creating a tautology.

• 🔄 If all metaphor changes can be explained by metaphor competition, the theory may be unfalsifiable without more predictive power.
• The model risks retrospective explanation rather than offering testable forecasts of metaphor use across populations.

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🔤 6. Language Bias in “Universal” Claims

Critics point out that most empirical studies cited (Dutch, English, Farsi) reflect Indo-European language systems, leaving global linguistic diversity underexplored.

• 🌐 No substantial data from tonal languages (e.g., Chinese), sign languages, or indigenous oral traditions.
• Claims of universality may be premature or Western-centric.

🔵 1.
Quotation:

“People think about abstract domains like time and goodness metaphorically. This tendency may be universal.”
Explanation:
This sets the foundation of the chapter, asserting that metaphor is not merely a linguistic device, but a cognitive universal shaping how humans understand complex, abstract domains through more tangible ones like space.

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🟢 2.
Quotation:

“Mental metaphors are mappings between non-linguistic representations in a source domain and a target domain that is typically more abstract.”
Explanation:
Here, Casasanto distinguishes mental metaphors from linguistic metaphors, stressing that such mappings occur without language, in our internal thought processes.

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🟣 3.
Quotation:

“The specific mappings that get used most frequently or automatically can vary across individuals and groups.”
Explanation:
This illustrates how individual experience, culture, and language can shape which mental metaphors dominate, despite their shared foundational structure.

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🔴 4.
Quotation:

“Even our most basic mental metaphors are constructed over multiple timescales, on the basis of multiple kinds of experience.”
Explanation:
Casasanto argues against static universality, proposing that metaphor development is hierarchical and dynamic, adapting over time through layered experiential inputs.

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🟡 5.
Quotation:

“Activating a mapping strengthens this source–target association and… weakens the competing source–target mappings in the same family.”
Explanation:
This reveals how competitive associative learning guides which metaphors become dominant, explaining both their entrenchment and malleability.

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🟤 6.
Quotation:

“It may be a human universal to conceptualize these domains in terms of space… but the particulars… vary across groups.”
Explanation:
A critical point for cognitive diversity: while spatial metaphors may be universal scaffolds, their expression is culturally and bodily specific.

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🔶 7.
Quotation:

“Speakers of thickness languages like Farsi come to rely on multidimensional spatial schemas more strongly than vertical spatial schemas.”
Explanation:
An empirical insight showing how language experience determines spatial representation in mental metaphors—an example of linguistic relativity at work.

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🔷 8.
Quotation:

“Participants did not abandon a spatial mapping of time; rather they rapidly adopted a different mental timeline.”
Explanation:
Illustrates the flexibility of metaphorical thinking. Even entrenched metaphors can be reversed or replaced with new experience, often within minutes.

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⚫ 9.
Quotation:

“The fluent region of space is good.”
Explanation:
From the theory of bodily relativity, this quote links motor fluency to valence, showing that bodily asymmetries shape ethical and emotional judgments.

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⚪ 10.
Quotation:

“By seeking to understand common mechanisms… we can better understand the origins of our thoughts, the extent of cognitive diversity, and the dynamism of our mental lives.”
Explanation:
This concluding statement encapsulates the purpose of HMMT: to account for shared cognitive architecture while explaining its adaptive diversity.

🔵 1. Rejection of Metaphor as Mere Ornament

Black criticizes the belief that “addiction to metaphor is held to be illicit,” equating metaphorical expression with frivolity or unclear thinking (p. 273).
🔹 “To draw attention to a philosopher’s metaphors is to belittle him—like praising a logician for his beautiful handwriting” (p. 273).

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🟡 2. The “Substitution View” of Metaphor Is Inadequate

This outdated view treats a metaphor as a coded or poetic stand-in for a literal equivalent.
🔸 “The meaning of [a metaphor], in its metaphorical occurrence, is just the literal meaning of [its replacement]” (p. 279).

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🟢 3. Comparison View Also Falls Short

Metaphors are often falsely treated as elliptical similes: “Richard is a lion” becomes “Richard is like a lion (in being brave)” (p. 284).
🔹 “The metaphor creates the similarity rather than formulates a similarity antecedently existing” (p. 285).

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🔴 4. Introduction of the “Interaction View”

Black’s main innovation: metaphors involve interaction between two subject systems—a “principal subject” and a “subsidiary subject.”
🔸 “A metaphorical statement has two distinct subjects—a ‘principal’ subject and a ‘subsidiary’ one” (p. 291).
🔸 “We can say that the principal subject is ‘seen through’ the metaphorical expression” (p. 288).

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🟣 5. Metaphor as Conceptual Filter

Like looking through tinted glass: metaphor emphasizes, organizes, and suppresses aspects of the principal subject using the implications of the subsidiary.
🔹 “The metaphor selects, emphasizes, suppresses, and organizes features of the principal subject” (p. 292).
🔹 “The chess vocabulary filters and transforms: it not only selects, it brings forward aspects…that might not be seen at all” (p. 289).

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🟤 6. “Associated Commonplaces” Are Central

Metaphors activate culturally shared assumptions or “commonplaces” about the metaphor’s vehicle.
🔸 “To call a man a ‘wolf’ is to evoke the wolf-system of related commonplaces” (p. 288).
🔸 These include ideas like “fierce,” “scavenger,” “hungry,” which shape perception of the man.

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⚪ 7. Cognitive Value of Metaphor Surpasses Literal Paraphrase

Metaphors carry insights that paraphrase cannot match. Literal restatements lose the richness and nuance.
🔹 “The literal paraphrase inevitably says too much—and with the wrong emphasis” (p. 293).
🔹 “It fails to give the insight that the metaphor did” (p. 293).

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🟥 8. Philosophical and Epistemic Importance of Metaphor

Far from decorative, metaphor is a tool for thought. Black defends its role in serious inquiry:
🔸 “A prohibition against their use would be a wilful and harmful restriction upon our powers of inquiry” (p. 294).

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📌 Summary of the Interaction Theory in 7 Points (from p. 291–292)

1. Two distinct subjects: principal & subsidiary
2. Subjects are systems, not just terms
3. Meaning arises from the interaction of systems
4. These involve associated implications (commonplaces)
5. The metaphor organizes perception
6. Involves semantic shifts—sometimes metaphorical
7. No universal rule for what makes a metaphor effective

🔵 Interaction Theory of Metaphor as Cognitive Process
→ Black’s central claim is that metaphor is not just linguistic ornamentation, but a way of knowing, creating meaning by interaction between subjects.
📚 Structuralism / Cognitive Poetics
📝 “The meaning is a resultant of their interaction” (p. 286).
📝 “Metaphor… selects, emphasizes, suppresses, and organizes features…” (p. 292).
✅ This aligns with structuralist ideas that meaning emerges from relational systems, and anticipates cognitive theories that link language and thought.

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🟣 Challenge to Substitution and Comparison Views
→ Black dismantles classical views of metaphor as merely decorative or rhetorical devices (substitutes or comparisons).
📚 Formalism / Classical Rhetoric (critique)
📝 “The metaphorical use of an expression consists… in other than its proper or normal sense” (p. 279).
✅ His rejection of the ornamental view reshapes metaphor as essential to discourse—not an optional flourish, but foundational.

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🟢 Introduction of “Associated Commonplaces”
→ Metaphors draw on culturally embedded “commonplaces,” showing that meaning is socially constructed.
📚 Reader-Response Theory / Cultural Criticism
📝 “To call a man a ‘wolf’ is to evoke the wolf-system of related commonplaces” (p. 288).
✅ Meaning depends on the reader’s cultural background, positioning metaphor as interpretively flexible and subjective.

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🔴 Metaphor as Semantic Innovation (Meaning Creation)
→ Metaphors don’t just reflect meaning—they create it, often producing insights unavailable in literal language.
📚 Deconstruction / Poststructuralism
📝 “It would be more illuminating… to say that the metaphor creates the similarity than to say that it formulates one” (p. 285).
✅ Undermines stable meaning, supporting poststructuralist ideas of fluid, shifting significations.

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🟡 Critique of Rigid Semantics: Emphasis on Pragmatics
→ Meaning is context-bound, tied to speaker intent, tone, occasion, and cannot be dictated solely by linguistic rules.
📚 Pragmatics / Speech Act Theory
📝 “We must not expect the ‘rules of language’ to be of much help…” (p. 278).
📝 “Recognition and interpretation… may require attention to the particular circumstances of its utterance” (p. 277).
✅ Helps literary theorists see how language performs, not just represents, meaning.

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🟤 Metaphor as Epistemological Lens
→ Like a lens or screen, metaphor highlights and conceals—framing perception.
📚 Phenomenology / Hermeneutics
📝 “The metaphor acts as a screen… seen through the metaphor” (p. 288).
✅ Reinforces Heideggerian or Gadamerian notions that language discloses the world, not neutrally reflects it.

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🟠 Valuation of Metaphor in Philosophy and Literature
→ Argues that metaphor is not a fallacy or simplification but a philosophically legitimate tool for inquiry and reflection.
📚 Philosophy of Language / Literary Philosophy
📝 “Metaphors are dangerous—and perhaps especially so in philosophy. But a prohibition… would be a harmful restriction…” (p. 294).
✅ Elevates metaphor from literary fringe to central in philosophical analysis.

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🟣 Bridging Literary Criticism and Analytic Philosophy
→ Black borrows from literary critics to address philosophers’ neglect of metaphor.
📚 Interdisciplinary Literary Theory
📝 “Since philosophers… have so neglected the subject, I must get what help I can from the literary critics” (p. 273).
✅ Encourages cross-disciplinary dialogue, anticipating literary philosophy and analytic aesthetics.

🔺 Vagueness in the “System of Associated Commonplaces”
Black relies heavily on culturally shared assumptions (commonplaces), but critics argue these are not clearly defined or universally shared, making interpretation subjective and unstable.
➡️ “The metaphor works by applying to the principal subject a system of ‘associated implications’…” (Black, 1955, p. 292)

🔻 Potential for Infinite Regress
Critics note that if metaphors themselves contain metaphorical implications (as Black suggests), each metaphor could contain layers of others, leading to an endless chain of interpretation.
➡️ “The primary metaphor…has been analyzed into a set of subordinate metaphors…” (p. 290)

⚠️ Underdeveloped Cognitive Framework
Black touches on the cognitive impact of metaphors but doesn’t fully explore their psychological or neurological processing, leaving a gap that later scholars (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson) attempted to fill.

🟠 Neglect of Audience Diversity
Black assumes a reader who shares cultural knowledge. But in multicultural or global contexts, the same metaphor can evoke vastly different associations, limiting the theory’s universality.
➡️ “A metaphor that works in one society may seem preposterous in another…” (p. 287)

🔹 Ambiguity Between Focus and Frame
While innovative, the distinction between “focus” and “frame” can be blurry in complex texts, making it difficult to apply consistently, especially in layered literary metaphors.
➡️ “Let us call the word ‘ploughed’ the focus of the metaphor, and the remainder of the sentence…the frame.” (p. 276)

🚫 Dismissal of Other Metaphor Types
Some critics argue that Black’s elevation of interaction metaphors inadvertently dismisses valid uses of substitution and comparison metaphors, especially in rhetorical or poetic traditions.

🟣 Not Empirically Testable
The theory is largely philosophical and interpretive, lacking empirical methods or linguistic models that could verify or falsify its claims in practice.

🔹 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.