“Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen: Summary and Critique

“Metaphor and Literary Comprehension” by Gerard Steen first appeared in Poetics, Volume 18, in 1989 (pp. 113–141, North-Holland).

"Metaphor And Literary Comprehension" By Gerard Steen: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen

“Metaphor and Literary Comprehension” by Gerard Steen first appeared in Poetics, Volume 18, in 1989 (pp. 113–141, North-Holland). Steen proposes a comprehensive discourse-theoretical framework for understanding metaphor in literary texts. He distinguishes three major functions of metaphor—expressive, transactional, and interactional—which align with the three dimensions of discourse: linguistic, cognitive, and communicative. A central concern of the essay is how the literary status of discourse alters the cognitive processing of metaphor. Steen contends that the reader’s literary attitude, shaped by socio-cultural conventions like the Esthetic (E) and Polyvalence (P) conventions, fundamentally transforms the way metaphors are identified, comprehended, and appreciated. He builds on models from cognitive psychology and literary theory (notably the Empirical Study of Literature, or ESL) to argue that metaphor understanding in literature is not merely a linguistic or stylistic feature but a dynamic cognitive event shaped by reading context and reader behavior. Importantly, Steen proposes testable hypotheses distinguishing implicit and explicit metaphor processing in readers, contributing to empirical literary research and bridging a gap between cognitive science and literary theory. His essay remains vital for scholars interested in metaphor, literary pragmatics, and discourse processing, asserting that metaphor in literature is both a site of cognitive richness and a reflection of deeper socio-cultural reading practices.

Summary of “Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen

🔍 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).
✳️


🎭 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).
📡


📖 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).
🌀


🔁 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).
🔍


🧩 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).
🔮


🧭 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).
🔍🧠💖


🔄 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).
🧭


🧪 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).
🧠🔗📚

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen
📘 Theoretical Term 📖 Explanation📎 Reference from Article
Discourse Theory 🔀A multi-dimensional approach to language involving linguistic (textual), cognitive, and communicative structures.“All discourse can be treated as a congeries of three kinds of structures… language, cognition, and communication” (p. 115).
Expressive Function 🗣The linguistic function of metaphor as a compact and evocative form of formal expression.“Language as a formal entity has only one function in discourse, i.e. an expressive one” (p. 117).
Transactional Function 🧠The cognitive role of metaphor in creating conceptual links between unrelated domains.“The direct connection… between two conceptual entities or domains…” (p. 119).
Interactional Function 🤝The social/communicative impact of metaphor—how it shapes relationships and discourse tone.“Its role in the domain of literary or non-literary communication” (p. 119).
E and P Conventions 🎨📚Esthetic (E) and Polyvalence (P) reading conventions that frame literary interpretation.“The Esthetic convention… The Polyvalence convention…” (p. 123).
Literary Attitude of Reading 🎭A cognitive mode of reading marked by openness to metaphor, ambiguity, and deeper engagement.“Understanding metaphor in a literary way… influenced by the adoption of a literary attitude of reading” (p. 114).
Analogical Processing 🔗Reasoning strategy that draws comparisons between domains; essential for metaphor interpretation.“The principle of analogy… is explosively exploited rather than restricted [in literature]” (p. 125).
Metaphorical Analogy 🔍Analogical comparison between dissimilar domains that underpins metaphor formation.“Metaphorical analogies do not involve terms from similar domains” (p. 126).
Allegory 🏛️An extended metaphor or analogy with two structurally distinct yet connected layers of meaning.“Allegory… has two separate meanings rather than one…” (p. 130).
Polyvalence 🌀The literary feature where multiple interpretations of a metaphor (or text) coexist.“Polyvalence in literary metaphor may be due to… a series of vehicle interpretations” (p. 128).
Vehicle Interpretation 🚗Cognitive processing of the metaphor’s source domain to evoke layered or image-rich meanings.“Vehicle interpretation… necessary to invoke the image aspect of the metaphor” (p. 127).
Focus Interpretation 🎯Interpretation focused on the metaphor’s topic without extending to the vehicle/source domain.“Metaphor in literature is characterized by explicit vehicle-interpretation…” (p. 127).
Explicit vs. Implicit Processing 👀🤔Differentiates between conscious (explicit) and subconscious (implicit) identification, understanding, and judgment.“Two cognitive types of identification… explicit and implicit…” (p. 136).
Identification, Comprehension, Appreciation 🔎🧩❤The three core cognitive steps in processing metaphor: recognizing, interpreting, and evaluating it.“The three related processes… composing the cognitive function of metaphor” (p. 120, also p. 133).
Textual Surface Strategy 📜A literary reading tactic focusing on formal features like style, diction, and metaphor for deeper meaning.“Point of view, tone, diction, and style… metaphor should be included in this list” (p. 124).
Figurative Event A fictional realization of metaphor within the text’s world, blending literal and figurative meaning.“Turns a clock metaphor for God into a giant clock that is a real danger…” (p. 130).
Double Vision 👓Simultaneous awareness of both literal and metaphorical meanings in a single expression.“Double perception of floating on the waves and riding a horse” (p. 127).
Contribution of “Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen to Literary Theory/Theories

🔀 📚 Discourse Theory Expansion

  • Contribution: Steen integrates metaphor into a three-dimensional discourse model (language, cognition, communication), broadening literary theory beyond structuralist/textual confines.
  • Reference: “All discourse can be treated as a congeries of three kinds of structures… language, cognition, and communication” (p. 115).
  • Theory Link: Enriches Discourse Analysis and Text Linguistics in literature by aligning with Prague Structuralism and socio-cognitive frameworks.

🎭 🧠 Reader-Response Theory Enrichment

  • Contribution: Emphasizes reader’s active construction of meaning in metaphor interpretation, especially through the E and P conventions.
  • Reference: “Understanding metaphor in a literary way may be highly influenced by the adoption of a literary attitude of reading” (p. 114).
  • Theory Link: Deepens Reader-Response Criticism by introducing attitudinal variation in metaphor recognition and appreciation.

🌀 📖 Empirical Literary Studies (ESL) Advancement

  • Contribution: Positions metaphor within the Empirical Study of Literature (ESL), promoting testable hypotheses and reader-based research.
  • Reference: “The ESL theory of understanding literary texts… offers some opportunities… for locating metaphor in literary discourse” (p. 114).
  • Theory Link: Aligns with Siegfried Schmidt’s ESL framework and supports experimental psychology in literary studies.

🔗 💬 Cognitive Poetics and Stylistics

  • Contribution: Introduces analogical processing as central to literary metaphor interpretation, bridging psychology and poetics.
  • Reference: “Analogical processing… is responsible for the specifically literary comprehension of metaphor” (p. 114).
  • Theory Link: Builds on Cognitive Poetics, reinforcing metaphor as a tool for mental model construction and not just rhetorical flourish.

🔍 🎯 Structuralist vs. Post-Structuralist Dialogue

  • Contribution: While grounded in form (structure), Steen critiques pure formalism by emphasizing reader agency, function, and polyvalence.
  • Reference: “Not all metaphors in literature are understood in a literary way by definition…” (p. 139).
  • Theory Link: Offers a bridge between Structuralist poetics (e.g., Jakobson) and Post-Structuralist variability.

🤝 📜 Literary Pragmatics Integration

  • Contribution: Reframes metaphor as a pragmatic device influenced by social context, genre expectations, and communicative conventions.
  • Reference: “The social function of metaphor… is achieved by the adherence to general literary discourse conventions” (p. 132).
  • Theory Link: Strengthens Literary Pragmatics, connecting with work by Jonathan Culler and Van Peer.

👀 🧩 Reception Theory: Micro-Processes Focus

  • Contribution: Introduces granular distinctions—explicit vs. implicit identification, comprehension, and appreciation—in metaphor reception.
  • Reference: “We need to distinguish between the implicit and explicit identification… comprehension… appreciation” (p. 138).
  • Theory Link: Adds psychological nuance to Reception Theory by tracking real-time cognitive behavior during reading.

⚙️ 🔄 Methodological Contribution to Literary Theories

  • Contribution: Proposes a methodologically rigorous, interdisciplinary approach combining psycholinguistics, discourse theory, and empirical testing.
  • Reference: “Such obstacles need not prevent us… from formulating tentative programs of research” (p. 139).
  • Theory Link: Catalyzes a research-based turn in literary theory, moving beyond speculative criticism.
Examples of Critiques Through “Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen
📘 Literary Work🧠 Steenian Critique Focus
🧝‍♂️ The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. TolkienMetaphors like “the Ring” function as polyvalent literary signs. Through Steen’s E and P conventions, readers engage in analogical interpretation that uncovers layered moral, political, and existential meanings.
🐋 Moby-Dick by Herman MelvilleThe whale acts as a metaphorical domain inviting analogical reasoning. A literary attitude foregrounds its cognitive tension as both a natural being and metaphysical symbol, embodying Steen’s expressive and transactional discourse functions.
📜 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. EliotSteen’s concept of vehicle interpretation explains the metaphor “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” as a double-vision moment, fusing mundane imagery with existential despair.
🐎 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest HemingwayThe metaphor of the marlin and sea becomes allegorical under a literary attitude, aligning with Steen’s discourse theory. Holyoak’s analogical reading expands the struggle into metaphors of artistry, dignity, and mortality.
Criticism Against “Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen

🔍 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.


 Representative Quotations from “Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen with Explanation
🔖 Quotation📘 Explanation
🌟 “Three important functions of metaphor are distinguished: the expressive, the transactional and the interactional…” (p. 113)This foundational classification anchors metaphor in discourse theory. Expressive refers to formal expression, transactional to cognition, and interactional to communicative impact.
💬 “The assumption of a difference between a linguistic and a cognitive side to metaphor is precisely why it is necessary to distinguish between three functions…” (p. 117)Steen stresses the importance of separating metaphor’s linguistic form from its cognitive and social effects, allowing a multidimensional approach to metaphor analysis.
🔍 “Metaphor is a formal entity belonging to the domain of text… a potential formal stimulus on the behaviour of readers.” (p. 117)This defines metaphor not only as a textual feature but as a stimulus for reader engagement, paving the way for empirical study.
🎭 “Literary comprehension is approached as a special and specific subtype of understanding metaphor in general…” (p. 118)Steen positions literary reading as a specialized discourse behavior, shaped by cultural conventions like the Esthetic (E) and Polyvalence (P) conventions.
🧠 “Understanding metaphor in literature may be highly influenced by the adoption of a literary attitude of reading…” (p. 118)This quotation highlights how reader attitude, shaped by context and genre, plays a critical role in how metaphors are processed in literary texts.
🧭 “We assume that the understanding of metaphor in literary texts is influenced by the adoption of a literary attitude of reading.” (p. 123)The cognitive response to metaphor is not fixed but depends on whether readers approach the text literarily or non-literarily.
⚖️ “Explicit identification will be investigated as the attribution of a meta-statement concerning the perceived metaphorical nature…” (p. 136)Steen emphasizes the difference between implicit and explicit recognition of metaphor, which helps empirically analyze how metaphors are processed.
🌀 “Polyvalence in literary metaphor may be due to a literary exploitation of the implications arising from a single metaphorical statement.” (p. 128)Steen explains how multiple interpretations from one metaphor are a hallmark of literary reading, driven by the polyvalence convention.
🎨 “The polyvalent nature of literary meaning… is what makes literary allegory such a rich store of meaning…” (p. 127)Allegory is shown to function like metaphor on a broader scale, allowing for multiple simultaneous interpretations in literary discourse.
🔬 “Empirical research in understanding metaphor in literary texts needs to be grounded in a discourse theory of metaphor.” (p. 139)The closing argument affirms the essay’s goal: to bridge empirical study and literary theory via a systematic discourse-based framework.
Suggested Readings: “Metaphor And Literary Comprehension” By Gerard Steen
  1. Steen, Gerard. “Literary and Nonliterary Aspects of Metaphor.” Poetics Today, vol. 13, no. 4, 1992, pp. 687–704. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1773294. Accessed 16 Apr. 2025.
  2. Steen, Gerard. “Metaphor and literary comprehension: Towards a discourse theory of metaphor in literature.” Poetics 18.1-2 (1989): 113-141.

“The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue: Summary and Critique

“The Motive for Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue first appeared in 2014 in the journal Raritan, Volume 33, Issue 3.

"The Motive For Metaphor" by Denis Donoghue: Summary and Critique

Introduction: “The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue

“The Motive for Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue first appeared in 2014 in the journal Raritan, Volume 33, Issue 3. In this landmark essay, Donoghue explores the philosophical and poetic motivations behind the use of metaphor, drawing on classical rhetoric, literary criticism, and the metaphysical musings of poets such as Wallace Stevens and William Butler Yeats. Central to Donoghue’s argument is Quintilian’s notion that metaphor is both a natural and essential gift—something that lends grace and necessity to language by ensuring that nothing remains unnamed. The essay traces metaphor’s dual nature as both a linguistic necessity and an aesthetic desire, emphasizing its ability to reshape reality through imagination. Drawing from Stevens’s poetry, especially his eponymous poem “The Motive for Metaphor,” Donoghue argues that metaphor functions as a form of resistance—shrinking from the hard, fixed “primary noon” of reality in search of mutable truths and imaginative escape. The piece is notable in literary theory for its synthesis of rhetorical history, poetic analysis, and philosophical speculation. It positions metaphor not merely as ornamentation, but as a vital cognitive and spiritual operation, underscoring its central role in both literature and the human effort to know and name the world.

Summary of “The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue

·  🔸 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) ✴

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue
📌 Term Explanation🔖 Reference/Quotation
🧠 MetaphorA natural, imaginative act of naming that both expands language and transforms perception.“It ensures that nothing goes without a name” (p.182)
📖 CatachresisA strained or improper metaphor that stretches or abuses meaning, yet remains rhetorically valid.“To speak of ‘forced metaphor’ is not to degrade its manifestations” (p.185)
🔍 ResemblanceStevens’s preferred foundation for metaphor, based on likeness; Donoghue critiques it as too vague to sustain theory.“In some sense, all things resemble each other” (p.198)
🌀 AllegoryAn extended metaphor that takes on narrative and moral form—what Fontanier calls “prolongée et continue.”“Allegory is its narrative form…” (p.185)
🎭 ProsopopoeiaA figure of speech in which non-human entities are personified—often emerging from overextended metaphors.“Catachresis is already turning into prosopopeia…” (p.185)
🔧 Concrete UniversalA Hegelian concept in which abstract ideas are made materially present; Ransom uses it to frame metaphor’s real-world function.“It becomes a Concrete Universal when it has been materialized…” (p.187)
🧬 ImaginationThe mental faculty that powers metaphor, allowing us to reshape reality through poetic transformation.“Metaphor creates a new reality…” (p.188)
💫 DecreationFrom Simone Weil: the spiritual undoing of created reality, which metaphor helps initiate as aesthetic escape.“Modern reality is a reality of decreation” (p.191)
🔗 SimilarityOften aligned with resemblance, but critiqued by Goodman for lacking objectivity and explanatory power in metaphor theory.“Similarity… is relative, variable and culture-dependent” (p.199)
🗣️ RhetoricA system of language arising from human insufficiency; metaphor is its central figure—both noble and doomed.“The axiom of all rhetoric is the principle of insufficient reason” (p.184)
🎇 TransformationThe creative operation by which metaphor changes how we see and name reality; tied to imagination and perception.“The object… turned freely in the hand…” (p.205)
🧩 The ‘X’Represents the unyielding, dominant force of the world or moral universals that metaphor cannot dissolve.“The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X” (p.186)
🖋️ Poetic AuthorityStevens often relinquishes control, letting language guide itself—challenging the notion of the poet as a final authority.“There are words / Better without an author…” (p.193)
🎨 Aesthetic EscapeMetaphor as a method of fleeing fixed, literal meaning in favor of poetic freedom and subjective truth.“Metaphor alone furnishes an escape” (p.191)
📜 IdealismA philosophical stance—prevalent in Stevens’s poetic moods—that assumes consciousness can transform external reality.“In most of his moods he was a Hegelian” (p.189)
Contribution of “The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue to Literary Theory/Theories

  • 🧠 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)


  • 🌀 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)


  • 🎨 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)


  • 🔧 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)


  • 🧩 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)


  • 🗣️ 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)


  • 📖 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)


  • 🔍 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)


  • 🧬 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)


  • 📜 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)

Examples of Critiques Through “The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue
🔹 Symbol & Literary Work🧠 Critique via Metaphor Theory🔖 Reference from the Article
🦌 “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz” – W. B. YeatsDonoghue analyzes Yeats’s line “one a gazelle” to show metaphor as essence-transference, not mere comparison. It evokes a luminous unity between image and being.“The girl’s nature goes over into the nature of a gazelle as if both came from one luminous source” (p.183)
🌳 “The Motive for Metaphor” – Wallace StevensThis poem is Donoghue’s central text, used to explore how metaphor resists fixed meaning (“X”) and serves as aesthetic escape, yet ultimately fails to resolve existential or epistemological tensions.“Nothing in the poem defeats the final ‘X'” (p.206)
🥄 “Someone Puts a Pineapple Together” – Wallace StevensDonoghue critiques this poem for its bizarre metaphors, especially the “bisqued mountain,” as extreme cases of metaphor stretching meaning. They test the limits of metaphor as imaginative creation.“An Alp, a purple Southern mountain bisqued with the molten mixings of related things” (p.202)
🌞 “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” – Wallace StevensDonoghue interprets Stevens’s metaphors (e.g., “chrysalis of all men”) as efforts to unite subjective perception and external form, though often open-ended and unresolved.“The self, the chrysalis of all men / Became divided in the leisure of blue day…” (p.203)
Criticism Against “The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue
  • 🧩 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.

  • 🔄 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.

  • 🎨 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.

  • 📏 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.

  • 🧠 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.

  • 🌐 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.

Representative Quotations from “The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue with Explanation
🔹 Quotation🧠 Explanation
“It ensures that nothing goes without a name”: a beautiful, caring motive.Metaphor satisfies a human need to name and give meaning—language becomes an act of care and completeness.
“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.”Stevens sees metaphor as a means to liberate perception from the dullness of habitual reality.
“Metaphor creates a new reality from which the original appears to be unreal.”Metaphor doesn’t mirror the world—it transforms it, reshaping how we perceive and interact with reality.
“The motive for metaphor, shrinking from / The weight of primary noon.”Metaphor serves as a retreat from the harsh clarity of objective truth, favoring imaginative ambiguity.
“We live in a place / That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves.”This expresses existential dislocation, suggesting metaphor as a tool for self-integration and understanding.
“Metaphor alone furnishes an escape.”Ortega y Gasset’s concept, cited by Donoghue, emphasizes metaphor’s power as a vehicle of liberation from oppressive realism.
“A metaphor incurs resistance from our sense of absurdity and is indifferent to shame.”True metaphor challenges logic and comfort—it transforms language through audacity and creative force.
“The whole world is less susceptible to metaphor than a tea-cup is.”Stevens humorously points to the challenge of expressing large concepts through metaphor versus simple ones.
“Similarity does not explain metaphor or metaphorical truth.”Citing Goodman, Donoghue dismantles the naïve belief that resemblance underlies metaphor—it’s often the other way around.
“Too much as they are to be changed by metaphor, / Too actual…”Metaphor may sometimes fail—when reality is too concrete to be poetically transformed.
Suggested Readings: “The Motive For Metaphor” by Denis Donoghue
  1. DONOGHUE, DENIS. “The Motive for Metaphor.” The Hudson Review, vol. 65, no. 4, 2013, pp. 543–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43489263. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  2. O’Donoghue, Josie. “‘A Fling of Freedom.'” The Cambridge Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1, 2015, pp. 69–77. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43492472. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  3. Donoghue, Denis. “The Motive for Metaphor.” Metaphor, Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 182–208. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wps2d.9. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.

“The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto: Summary and Critique

“The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto first appeared in The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language Sciences (2015), published by Cambridge University Press.

"The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors" by Daniel Casasanto: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto

“The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto first appeared in The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language Sciences (2015), published by Cambridge University Press. This influential chapter presents the Hierarchical Mental Metaphors Theory (HMMT), a compelling extension of conceptual metaphor theory, offering a dynamic and layered explanation for how humans use spatial structures to conceptualize abstract domains like time, pitch, and emotional valence. Casasanto challenges the previously dominant view that mental metaphors are universal and fixed, arguing instead that they emerge from both universal patterns of embodied experience and language-, culture-, and body-specific influences. By proposing that mental metaphors are organized hierarchically—beginning with broad, often innate or early-learned “superordinate” metaphor families, which are later shaped by individual experiences—Casasanto demonstrates how metaphors can be simultaneously deeply ingrained and remarkably flexible. This nuanced framework significantly impacts literature and literary theory by providing cognitive underpinnings for metaphorical thinking, influencing how we understand meaning-making, interpretation, and the variability of metaphor across cultures, languages, and individuals. HMMT also opens new pathways for analyzing literary texts, offering a scientific grounding for reader-response variability and the embodied basis of metaphorical language.

Summary of “The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto

🔍 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) 🌐.


📚 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) 👶.


🧭 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 🏗️.


🎵 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) 🎧.


👶 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 🔄.


🕓 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) 🔄🕰️.


👐 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) ↔️.


🧤 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 🕹️.


🔁 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 🌍🧠.


🌐 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 🔄🌏.

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto

🔣 TermDefinitionExplanation / Role in ArticleReference & Usage
🧠 Mental MetaphorA mapping between non-linguistic mental representations (e.g., from space to time).Central concept. Distinct from linguistic metaphors; mental metaphors shape how people think about abstract concepts like time, pitch, and emotion.“People often think in ‘mental metaphors’… even when they are not using any metaphorical language.” (p. 46)
🗣️ Linguistic MetaphorA metaphor expressed through language, such as “a long vacation.”Contrasted with mental metaphors. Linguistic metaphors can reinforce mental metaphors over time.“The term ‘mental metaphor’ is used contrastively with ‘linguistic metaphor’…” (p. 46)
🏛️ Hierarchical Mental Metaphors Theory (HMMT)A theory that conceptual metaphors exist in superordinate families, with individual mappings strengthened over time via experience.Casasanto’s main theoretical contribution. Explains both universal origins and individual flexibility in mental metaphor use.“Even our most basic mental metaphors are constructed over multiple timescales…” (p. 48)
🧩 Superordinate Family of MappingsA category of related source–target mappings that share a common structure.Under HMMT, all metaphorical mappings belong to a broader conceptual family (e.g., space–time or space–pitch).“Cross-domain mappings…are members of a superordinate family of mappings.” (p. 48)
⚖️ Competitive Associative LearningA cognitive process where activating one association strengthens it while weakening competitors.Describes how one metaphorical mapping (e.g., “pitch is height”) becomes dominant over others.“Activating a mapping strengthens…and weakens the competing source–target mappings.” (p. 48)
🔄 OverhypothesisA general conceptual rule above specific hypotheses within a metaphor family.Used to describe higher-level abstraction that governs mental metaphor patterns, such as “space maps to time.”“The overhypothesis could be: ‘Progress through time corresponds to change in position along a spatial path.’” (p. 56)
🧬 Core KnowledgeInnate, possibly evolutionarily developed understanding (e.g., of spatial and numerical relations).Explains how infants exhibit metaphorical thinking (space–pitch, space–number) prior to language exposure.“These relationships…could be part of infants’ innate ‘core knowledge’.” (p. 48)
📉 Dispreferred MappingA metaphorical mapping that exists but is not dominant due to lack of reinforcement.Important in explaining flexibility: such mappings can be reactivated later (e.g., via training or new contexts).“Dispreferred mappings…are weakened but not lost.” (p. 60)
🦾 Motor Fluency HypothesisSuggests that ease of action on a body side leads to associating that side with positive valence.Forms the basis for body-specific mental metaphors, e.g., right is good for right-handers.“Greater motor fluency leads to more positive feelings…” (p. 58)
Contribution of “The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto to Literary Theory/Theories

📘 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.

🧠 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.

✍️ 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.

🌏 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.

📚 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.

🗣️ 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.

🧤 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.
Examples of Critiques Through “The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto

📘 Work🔍 Metaphorical Mapping🧠 HMMT-Based Critique💡 Theoretical Insight
🕰️ Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia WoolfTime as Space (e.g., “waves of time,” “moving forward”)Woolf’s stream of consciousness maps time as a fluid, spatial experience, resonating with Casasanto’s idea that spatial metaphors scaffold temporal thought.Reflects culture-specific time metaphors (English, left-to-right) and supports reader-response variability through dynamic timelines (p. 55–56).
🦋 The Metamorphosis by Franz KafkaSelf as Form (body as metaphor for identity)Gregor’s transformation illustrates how bodily changes reshape cognition and emotion, aligning with Casasanto’s body-specific metaphors (p. 57).Embodied experience drives conceptual change—bodily distortion = metaphorical shift in social and existential identity.
🎭 Hamlet by William ShakespeareEmotion as Space (e.g., “downcast,” “deep sorrow”)Hamlet’s vacillations between “high hopes” and “low moods” show how valence is spatialized, consistent with Casasanto’s motor fluency hypothesis (p. 58).Highlights embodied cognition in classic literature—right-hand/left-hand imagery becomes metaphorically charged.
🗺️ Things Fall Apart by Chinua AchebeCultural Time as Spatial ProgressionAchebe contrasts linear (colonial) vs. cyclical (Igbo) metaphors of history. Casasanto’s theory explains how readers from different cultures may activate different mappings (p. 56).Validates HMMT’s use in postcolonial analysis—mental metaphors shaped by linguistic and cultural practices.
🎶 Song of Myself by Walt WhitmanSelf as Expansive Space (“I contain multitudes”)Whitman’s language relies on spatial metaphors of self as infinite, layered—matching Casasanto’s idea of flexible metaphor families.Supports embodied poetics: metaphorical “sprawl” represents internal diversity and changing self-concept (p. 48–49).
📖 Beloved by Toni MorrisonMemory as Space (“rememory,” “steps back”)Characters move physically and emotionally through past trauma. The spatialization of time and emotion fits Casasanto’s flexible timeline mappings (p. 53–54).Aligns with trauma theory and HMMT: metaphorical remapping reflects disrupted but reconfigurable timelines.
🌀 To the Lighthouse by Virginia WoolfTime as Flowing Path (“The waves fell; withdrew”)Woolf’s narrative structure aligns with Casasanto’s idea that metaphors of time are nested hypotheses, varying across individuals (p. 56).Offers insight into reader-driven narrative processing, grounded in flexible mental timelines.
🌄 The Waste Land by T.S. EliotDisorientation in Space-TimeThe fragmentation and directionlessness of the poem echo HMMT’s idea of weakened or competing metaphor mappings due to conflicting cultural schemas (p. 59–60).Literary fragmentation = metaphorical instability—supports HMMT’s memory-network competition model.
Criticism Against “The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto

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.

🧪 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.

🧠 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.

📏 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.

🔁 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.

🔤 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.

Representative Quotations from “The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto with Explanation

🔵 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.


🟢 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.


🟣 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.


🔴 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.


🟡 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.


🟤 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.


🔶 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.


🔷 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.


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.


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.

Suggested Readings: “The Hierarchical Structure of Mental Metaphors” by Daniel Casasanto
  1. Casasanto, Daniel. “The hierarchical structure of mental metaphors.” Metaphor: Embodied cognition and discourse (2017): 46-61.
  2. Gärdenfors, Peter. “Mental Representation, Conceptual Spaces and Metaphors.” Synthese, vol. 106, no. 1, 1996, pp. 21–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20117475. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  3. Tilford, Nicole L. “Complex Metaphors.” Sensing World, Sensing Wisdom: The Cognitive Foundation of Biblical Metaphors, Society of Biblical Literature, 2017, pp. 173–98. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1p0vjz8.13. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  4. Fienup-Riordan, Ann. “Metaphors of Conversion, Metaphors of Change.” Arctic Anthropology, vol. 34, no. 1, 1997, pp. 102–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40316427. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.

“Metaphor” by Max Black: Summary and Critique

“Metaphor” by Max Black first appeared in 1954–1955 in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 55, published by Wiley on behalf of the Aristotelian Society.

"Metaphor" by Max Black: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Metaphor” by Max Black

“Metaphor” by Max Black first appeared in 1954–1955 in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 55, published by Wiley on behalf of the Aristotelian Society. In this foundational article, Black challenged traditional views of metaphor as merely decorative or stylistic devices, arguing instead for a more complex, cognitive function through what he famously termed the “interaction view.” The paper critiques earlier substitution and comparison theories of metaphor—where metaphor is seen either as a stylistic replacement for literal terms or as a condensed simile—and instead proposes that metaphors create meaning by enabling a dynamic interplay between two conceptual domains: the “principal subject” and the “subsidiary subject.” According to Black, a metaphor works by importing a system of “associated commonplaces” from the subsidiary subject and projecting it onto the principal one, reshaping how the latter is perceived and understood. This process not only alters our understanding of the subject at hand but can also redefine the associations attached to the metaphor itself. Black’s work has had profound implications in literary theory, philosophy of language, and cognitive linguistics, especially influencing thinkers like I.A. Richards and later George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. His theory remains pivotal in understanding metaphor not as a mere flourish of language, but as a central mechanism in thought and meaning-making.

Summary of “Metaphor” by Max Black

🔵 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).


🟡 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).


🟢 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).


🔴 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).


🟣 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).


🟤 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.


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).


🟥 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).


📌 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
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Metaphor” by Max Black
📌 Symbol🏷️ Term🧠 Explanation
🔵 FocusThe metaphorical word or phrase used non-literally in a sentence.“Let us call the word ‘ploughed’ the focus of the metaphor” (p. 276).
🟡 FrameThe literal part of the sentence/context surrounding the metaphorical focus.“The remainder of the sentence… the frame” (p. 276).
🟢 Principal SubjectThe main topic of the metaphor—the thing really being talked about.“A metaphorical statement has two distinct subjects—a ‘principal’ subject and a ‘subsidiary’ one” (p. 291).
🔴 Subsidiary SubjectThe source domain that lends its qualities to describe the principal subject.“…the principal subject, Man… and the subsidiary subject, Wolf” (p. 287).
🟣 Interaction ViewThe core theory: metaphorical meaning arises from the interaction between principal and subsidiary subject systems.“The meaning is a resultant of their interaction” (p. 286).
🟤 Associated CommonplacesThe shared cultural assumptions or stereotypes linked to the metaphor’s source term.“To call a man a ‘wolf’ is to evoke the wolf-system of related commonplaces” (p. 288).
Filter/Screen MetaphorA metaphor acts like a lens or filter, shaping what aspects of the subject are visible or emphasized.“The metaphor selects, emphasizes, suppresses, and organizes…” (p. 292); “seen through the metaphor…” (p. 288).
🟥 CatachresisUse of a metaphor to fill a gap in vocabulary where no literal term exists (e.g. “leg of a table”).“Metaphor plugs the gaps in… vocabulary… a species of catachresis” (p. 280).
🟧 Substitution ViewA metaphor is merely a replacement for a literal expression.“…use of that expression in other than its proper or normal sense” (p. 279).
🟪 Comparison ViewA metaphor as a condensed simile, implying likeness between two things.“The metaphor is a comparison implied in the mere use of a term” (p. 284).
🔷 Extension of MeaningMetaphor causes a semantic shift, changing or broadening a word’s meaning.“The frame… imposes extension of meaning upon the focal word” (p. 286).
Semantic vs. PragmaticMetaphors involve both semantic content and contextual/pragmatic use, including intention and emotional tone.“There is… a sense of ‘metaphor’ that belongs to ‘pragmatics’, rather than to ‘semantics'” (p. 278).
🟩 Metaphor as Cognitive ToolMetaphor is not decorative; it’s a way of thinking, discovering, and organizing knowledge.“A powerful metaphor… fails to give the insight that the metaphor did” (p. 293).
Contribution of “Metaphor” by Max Black to Literary Theory/Theories

🔵 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.


🟣 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.


🟢 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.


🔴 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.


🟡 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.


🟤 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.


🟠 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.


🟣 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.


Summary of Key Theories Influenced
TheoryInfluence Type
StructuralismInteraction view of meaning systems
Cognitive PoeticsMetaphor as mental model
PoststructuralismDestabilization of literal meaning
Reader-Response TheoryCultural commonplaces and interpretation
Speech Act TheoryContextual meaning creation
HermeneuticsLanguage as disclosure
Analytic AestheticsLegitimization of metaphor in philosophy
Examples of Critiques Through “Metaphor” by Max Black
📘 Literary Work Key Metaphor🧠 Critique Using Max Black’s Theory🧩 Relevant Concepts
🔵 George Orwell – Animal Farm“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”The metaphor of “animals” functions as the subsidiary subject that transfers a system of political oppression and hierarchy onto the principal subject—governance and ideology. It organizes meaning beyond decoration.🔁 Interaction View
🟤 Associated Commonplaces
🔴 Principal/Subsidiary Subjects
🟣 Toni Morrison – BelovedThe ghost of Sethe’s daughter as trauma personifiedThe ghost metaphor evokes haunting as a system of inherited trauma and repressed memory. It reshapes the reader’s understanding of slavery’s psychological afterlife, working as a semantic filter for the narrative.🔁 Interaction View
🟤 Associated Commonplaces
🟣 Filter/Screen
🟢 William Blake – The Tyger“Tyger Tyger, burning bright…”The metaphorical “burning” constructs the tiger as a fusion of beauty, danger, and divine creation. The metaphor transforms a natural image into a vehicle for metaphysical awe and questioning.🔵 Focus & Frame
🟠 Semantic Innovation
🔁 Interaction View
🔴 William Shakespeare – Macbeth“Life’s but a walking shadow…”Life is metaphorically filtered through the idea of a “shadow”—empty, ephemeral, and ghost-like. This metaphor highlights nihilism, shaping the audience’s perception of futility and illusion.🔁 Interaction View
🟤 Associated Commonplaces
🔴 Principal/Subsidiary Subjects
Criticism Against “Metaphor” by Max Black

🔺 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.

Representative Quotations from “Metaphor” by Max Black with Explanation
SymbolQuotation (from the article)Explanation
🌟“When we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word, or phrase, whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction.”This is the core idea of Black’s “interaction theory,” emphasizing that metaphor blends two domains to produce a unique, integrated meaning.
🔍“To call a sentence an instance of metaphor is to say something about its meaning, not about its orthography, its phonetic pattern, or its grammatical form.”Black highlights that metaphor is a matter of semantics (meaning), not surface linguistic features, challenging purely formalist approaches.
🧩“Understanding a metaphor is like deciphering a code or unravelling a riddle.”This underscores the interpretive complexity of metaphor, often requiring deep contextual understanding and creative inference.
🔁“The metaphor selects, emphasizes, suppresses, and organizes features of the principal subject by implying statements about it that normally apply to the subsidiary subject.”Black explains how metaphor shapes perception by transferring associative features from one concept to another.
🎭“We must not forget that the metaphor makes the wolf seem more human than he otherwise would.”He reminds us that metaphor not only transforms the subject but also reframes the metaphorical source in the process.
🔧“Metaphors can be supported by specially constructed systems of implications, as well as by accepted commonplaces; they can be made to measure and need not be reach-me-downs.”Black differentiates between conventional and innovative metaphors, asserting that new metaphors can be creatively built.
🎼“The implications of a metaphor are like the overtones of a musical chord; to attach too much ‘weight’ to them is like trying to make the overtones sound as loud as the main notes.”This analogy highlights the nuanced, layered nature of metaphorical implications and the importance of interpretive balance.
🧭“The rules of our language determine that some expressions must count as metaphors; and a speaker can no more change this than he can legislate that ‘cow’ shall mean the same as ‘sheep’.”Black stresses that metaphor has objective recognition within language norms, not just subjective usage.
⚖️“There is, in general, no simple ‘ground’ for the necessary shifts of meaning; no blanket reason why some metaphors work and others fail.”This calls attention to the unpredictability and contextual sensitivity of metaphorical success.
🔮“Metaphor is not a substitute for a formal comparison or any other kind of literal statement, but has its own distinctive capacities and achievements.”Black rejects the substitution theory, asserting metaphor’s unique cognitive and rhetorical power.
Suggested Readings: “Metaphor” by Max Black
  1. BLACK, Max. “More about Metaphor.” Dialectica, vol. 31, no. 3/4, 1977, pp. 431–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42969757. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  2. DONOGHUE, DENIS. “The Motive for Metaphor.” The Hudson Review, vol. 65, no. 4, 2013, pp. 543–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43489263. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  3. Sobolev, Dennis. “Metaphor Revisited.” New Literary History, vol. 39, no. 4, 2008, pp. 903–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533122. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  4. Gibbs, Raymond W. “When Is Metaphor? The Idea of Understanding in Theories of Metaphor.” Poetics Today, vol. 13, no. 4, 1992, pp. 575–606. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1773290. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.

“Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe: Summary and Critique

“Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe first appeared in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

"Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory" by Beate Hampe: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe

“Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe first appeared in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2017). This foundational chapter critically maps the evolving terrain of metaphor studies, focusing on the interplay between embodiment and discourse as twin dimensions shaping contemporary metaphor theory. Hampe’s work responds to the longstanding division between cognition-centered and communication-centered perspectives in metaphor research, arguing instead for a dynamic, multidimensional socio-cognitive model. Rooted in both cognitive science and discourse analysis, the chapter explores how metaphor operates not merely as a conceptual structure in individual minds—as posited by Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT, Lakoff & Johnson, 1980)—but as a socially emergent phenomenon embedded in real-time, multimodal communication. It integrates findings from gesture studies, corpus linguistics, and social psychology to show how metaphor is embodied and discursive, formed through primary experiential correlations (e.g., “affection is warmth”) and enacted across varied socio-cultural contexts. The chapter’s importance in literary theory lies in its challenge to traditional, static conceptions of metaphor as mere rhetorical device; instead, it opens up literature and discourse to be read as living sites of metaphorical meaning-making, deeply grounded in embodied, social, and dynamic systems. By bridging disciplinary divides, Hampe positions metaphor not only as a tool of thought but also as a fluid, context-sensitive act of interaction—transforming how metaphor is understood across the humanities and cognitive sciences.

Summary of “Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe

🔹 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)

🔸 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.”

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.”

🌱 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.”

🧠 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)

🔁 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.

🎭 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.

💬 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)

🧪 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.

🔍 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.”
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe
🔣 Concept🧾 Explanation📖 Reference Usage
🧠 Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)A framework suggesting metaphors are systematic mappings between conceptual domains, deeply rooted in thought, not just language.“Metaphor as a ubiquitous conceptual figure… part of the shared tacit knowledge of speakers.” (Hampe, p. 4)
💪 EmbodimentThe grounding of cognitive processes, including metaphors, in bodily and sensory experiences; central to embodied cognition theories.“Primary metaphors… arise from bodily experience.” (Hampe, p. 7)
🌱 Primary MetaphorBasic, directly embodied metaphors arising from recurring sensorimotor correlations (e.g., affection is warmth, similarity is proximity).“Each connects a sensorimotor experience (source) with a subjective concept (target) in a ‘primary scene.'” (p. 7)
🧩 Complex MetaphorMetaphors composed of several primary metaphors; they are culturally enriched and context-dependent (e.g., life is a journey).“Primary metaphors… motivate or constrain complex metaphors.” (p. 8)
🤝 Socio-Cognitive ModelA proposed integrative model that unifies cognitive and discourse perspectives, emphasizing the multimodal, interactive nature of metaphor.“Metaphor theory cannot but profit from an approach that accounts for findings yielded by multiple methodologies.” (p. 2)
🔁 Metaphor ScenarioA discourse-based concept highlighting recurring narrative structures tied to metaphorical framings in specific sociocultural contexts.“The notion of metaphor scenario anticipates this by actively invoking a conception of public discourse…” (p. 15)
🔍 MetaphoricityA term describing the degree to which an expression is perceived as metaphorical, ranging from “dead” to “vital” or “waking.”“Varying degrees of metaphoricity… ‘dead,’ ‘buried,’ ‘awake,’ ‘walking.'” (p. 19)
🔄 Multidimensional ModelA layered perspective of metaphor that spans neurophysiology, cognition, discourse, language systems, culture, and evolution.“A model… ranging from bodily foundations to cultural and evolutionary time scales.” (p. 11)
🌀 Complex-Dynamic SystemsA theoretical lens treating metaphor and cognition as emergent, adaptive, and socially distributed across multiple interacting levels.“Social interaction… ‘enslaves’ the behavior of individual actors.” (p. 13)
⚙️ Metaphorical Simulation HypothesisThe strongest embodiment hypothesis, claiming metaphor comprehension involves reactivating sensorimotor experiences associated with the source domain.“Comprehension… involves ‘re-living’ relevant source-domain experiences.” (p. 21)
🗣️ Deliberate MetaphorA concept suggesting that some metaphors are consciously chosen to direct attention to the metaphorical framing during communication.“Vital… metaphors are bound to deliberate metaphor use.” (p. 19)
🧶 Systematic MetaphorRecurrent metaphorical expressions that emerge across discourse events, indicating a shared conceptual pattern between interlocutors.“Functionality… emerges from repeated occurrences of token expressions.” (p. 16)
🧬 Hierarchical Mental Metaphors TheoryA model proposing that metaphorical associations can be layered and influenced by cultural, linguistic, and experiential feedback loops.“Associative learning… strengthens correlations more frequently activated.” (p. 14)
Contribution of “Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe to Literary Theory/Theories

🔄 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.


🧠 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.


🌐 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.


🧩 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.


🧶 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.


🧬 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.


🌀 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.


🖐️ 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.


🧭 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.


📚 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.

Examples of Critiques Through “Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe

📘 Literary Work🧠 Embodied & Discursive Metaphor Critique📚 Relevant Concepts from Hampe (with page refs)
🚶‍♂️ The Road – Cormac McCarthyThe journey motif embodies physical and emotional endurance. The father-son bond is expressed through primary metaphors like difficulty is heaviness, affection is warmth. Their bodily suffering and motion foreground embodied cognition in discourse.• Primary Metaphor Theory (p. 7–10)
• Multimodal communication (p. 11)
• Embodied simulation (p. 21)
🪞 Beloved – Toni MorrisonMemory and haunting are embodied as socially emergent metaphors. The ghost becomes a multimodal metaphor for historical trauma and collective memory. This aligns with the idea of distributed cognition and cultural embodiment.• Discourse-level metaphor (p. 16)
• Cultural feedback loops (p. 14)
• Socio-cognitive metaphor dynamics (p. 12)
🌀 Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia WoolfTime is perceived spatially and sensorily via clocks, walks, and inner speech. Metaphors like states are locations, change is motion are non-linguistically embodied, captured through stream-of-consciousness.• Cross-domain mappings (p. 4–5)
• Non-linguistic metaphor (p. 14)
• Levels of metaphor manifestation (p. 10–11)
Moby-Dick – Herman MelvilleThe sea voyage metaphor structures the epistemological quest. Truth is depth, knowledge is navigation are complex metaphors that arise from embodied experience and are activated across narration, action, and gesture.• Simulation of source-domain (p. 21)
• Complex metaphor vs. primary (p. 7–8, 15)
• Blending theory and scenario framing (p. 8, 15)
Criticism Against “Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of

🔍 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.
Representative Quotations from “Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe with Explanation
📝 Quotation 🧠 Explanation
🌉 “It is high time for metaphor theory to integrate the major insights yielded by these as yet largely separate, but ultimately complementary strands of inquiry.” (p. 3)Advocates for a synthesis between cognition-focused and discourse-focused metaphor research.
🧠 “Metaphor need not be stored in minds as passively listed entities… but as socially emergent cognition.” (p. 2, citing Gibbs 2014a)Highlights metaphor as a socially interactive process rather than an isolated cognitive one.
🧭 “The story of contemporary metaphor research cannot be told… without reference to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT).” (p. 4)Acknowledges CMT as the foundational theory from which newer metaphor perspectives emerge.
🧱 “Primary metaphors are assumed to be directly embodied… constituted by conceptual correspondences that arise from bodily experience.” (p. 7)Clarifies how primary metaphors are rooted in direct sensory and bodily experiences.
🔄 “Primary metaphors differ from complex ones… in being much closer to the metonymy pole.” (p. 8)Positions primary metaphors closer to metonymy due to their correlation-based embodiment.
🌐 “A multidimensional model of metaphor should span… from (neuro-)physiology to evolution.” (p. 11)Introduces a comprehensive, layered model that connects body, mind, language, and culture.
🤝 “The gesture as simulated action framework… holds that gestures derive from simulated actions.” (p. 11)Emphasizes the embodied nature of communication, connecting gesture to cognition.
🧬 “Culture can be seen as a potent, cumulative reservoir… ‘ratcheting up’ the insights of previous generations.” (p. 11)Frames culture as an embodied, evolving system that influences cognitive processes.
🔁 “Most of the verbal metaphors in discourse are not processed as metaphors but by categorization.” (p. 19, Steen’s paradox)Suggests that metaphor is often understood implicitly, without deliberate metaphorical thinking.
🔬 “Metaphorical simulations may generally be less detailed than simulations of literal meanings.” (p. 21)Argues that metaphor activates mental imagery, but less vividly than literal expressions.
Suggested Readings: “Embodiment and Discourse: Dimensions and Dynamics of Contemporary Metaphor Theory” by Beate Hampe
  1. Hines, Andrew. “The Aristotelian Paradigm of Metaphor and Its Evolution.” Metaphor in European Philosophy after Nietzsche: An Intellectual History, NED-New edition, vol. 54, Modern Humanities Research Association, 2020, pp. 31–58. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1wsgqxb.6. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  2. Egge, James. “Theorizing Embodiment: Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Comparative Study of Religion.” Figuring Religions: Comparing Ideas, Images, and Activities, edited by Shubha Pathak, State University of New York Press, 2013, pp. 91–114. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.18253675.9. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  3. Ernst, Christoph. “Moving Images of Thought: Notes on the Diagrammatic Dimension of Film Metaphor.” Revealing Tacit Knowledge: Embodiment and Explication, edited by Frank Adloff et al., 1st ed., transcript Verlag, 2015, pp. 245–78. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv371bnj8.15. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
  4. Caracciolo, Marco. “Form, Science, and Narrative in the Anthropocene.” Narrative, vol. 27, no. 3, 2019, pp. 270–89. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26787962. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.

“Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks: Summary and Critique

“Deleuze and Literature: Metaphor and Indirect Discourse” by John Marks first appeared in Social Semiotics in 1997 (Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 233–246), published by Routledge.

"Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse" by John Marks: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks

“Deleuze and Literature: Metaphor and Indirect Discourse” by John Marks first appeared in Social Semiotics in 1997 (Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 233–246), published by Routledge. This article, originating from Loughborough University, critically explores Gilles Deleuze’s contribution to literary theory, especially his interrogation of metaphor and emphasis on free indirect discourse as a foundational aesthetic mode. Marks argues that for Deleuze, metaphor is not primary in literature or language; instead, what underpins literary expression is a polyphonic interplay of voices that aligns with the concept of free indirect discourse—a synthesis of authorial, narrative, and character consciousness. This technique, Deleuze suggests, reveals the impersonal force of language and dissolves the boundary between subject and world, echoing his broader philosophical commitments to immanence and becoming. The article positions American literature—especially Melville, Whitman, and Lawrence—as exemplary in this regard, where narrative forms embody intensities, affects, and percepts rather than representations or symbolic meanings. Moreover, the piece connects Deleuze’s literary insights to his cinematic philosophy, showing how indirect discourse structures both visual and linguistic mediums. In doing so, Marks underscores the significance of literature not as a vehicle of interpretation, but as a site of experimentation, transformation, and ontological rupture. This shift has made Deleuze a pivotal figure in contemporary literary theory, with enduring implications for poststructuralist and affective aesthetics.

Summary of “Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks

🔄 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)


🗣️ 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)


🌍 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)


🧠 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)


🌀 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)


🎥 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)

🌿 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)


📚 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)


🌌 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)
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks

🧠 Theoretical Term / Concept📖 Explanation with Reference
🌀 Free Indirect DiscourseA literary and philosophical mode where the voices of narrator, character, and author blur. For Deleuze, this replaces metaphor as the foundation of literature. It represents a multiplicity of enunciation and is central to both literary and cinematic thought.
🔹 “It is no longer metaphor… it is free indirect discourse” (Deleuze, 1986, p. 73; cited in Marks, 1997, p. 239).
🚫 Anti-Metaphor StanceDeleuze critiques the dominance of metaphor, arguing that it obscures the real dynamics of language. Instead, he sees language as impersonal, material, and indirect.
🔸 “The importance some have accorded to metaphor… proves disastrous for the study of language” (Marks, 1997, p. 238).
🌿 PerceptNot a perception, but a “packet of sensations and relations” that live on independently of the subject. In literature, percepts express the impersonal forces of the world.
🟢 “Percepts aren’t perceptions… they live on independently of whoever experiences them” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1995, p. 137; in Marks, 1997, p. 241).
💓 AffectA becoming or intensity beyond personal emotion. Affects overflow individual subjects and express transformation.
❤️ “Affects aren’t feelings, they’re becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them” (Marks, 1997, p. 241).
🚀 DeterritorializationA process of breaking away from fixed structures or meanings—linguistic, social, geographical. American literature is praised for embodying this dynamic.
🔹 “A literature of flight, rupture, deterritorialisation” (Marks, 1997, p. 235).
🌐 Minor LiteratureLiterature produced from the margins of a dominant language or tradition. Melville and Kafka exemplify this, where expression is collective, deterritorialized, and experimental.
🌀 “American literature is a minor literature ‘par excellence’” (Marks, 1997, p. 236).
👁️ Landscape-Percept / “The Landscape Sees”Literature’s landscapes aren’t metaphors, but percepts. The subject merges with the world. The landscape sees, thinks, and acts.
🌄 “The landscape sees as much as the subject… the mind is a membrane” (Zourabichvili, cited in Marks, 1997, p. 243).
🔧 Assemblage of EnunciationA system where multiple voices, elements, and signifying regimes form a plane of expression. Not confined to grammar or syntax.
🧩 “A molecular assemblage of enunciation… not given in my conscious mind” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 84; in Marks, 1997, p. 238).
🎞️ Cinema and Indirect DiscourseCinema, like literature, uses free indirect discourse to destabilize subject/object boundaries. Directors like Antonioni and Godard “frame thought.”
🎬 “Cinema’s perpetual destiny… from an objective perception to a subjective perception” (Marks, 1997, p. 239).
🌌 BecomingCentral to Deleuze’s aesthetics: not about identity but transformation. Writing, seeing, and feeling are all forms of becoming, not representing.
🔁 “Becoming is an extreme contiguity… without resemblance” (Marks, 1997, p. 242).
Contribution of “Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks to Literary Theory/Theories

🌀 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)


🎭 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)


🌍 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)


🧩 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)


🌄 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)


🧠 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)


🎬 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)


🧬 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)
Examples of Critiques Through “Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks

📚 Literary Work🔍 Deleuzian Critique (via Marks)📝 Explanation
🐳 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville💬 Free Indirect Discourse & PerceptsMelville’s Moby-Dick is seen as an exemplary text of affects and percepts rather than metaphor. Ahab does not represent anything—he becomes the whale. The whale’s whiteness is not symbolic but anomalous and perceptual.
> “Ahab does not identify with the whale, he becomes the whale” (Marks, 1997, p. 240).
📃 Bartleby, the Scrivener by Melville🌀 Zone of Indiscernibility & AggrammaticalityBartleby’s refrain “I prefer not to” introduces a linguistic virus into the narrative, resisting interpretation and psychological analysis. It exemplifies free indirect discourse that collapses categories of affirmation and negation.
> “Bartleby’s… ‘I prefer not to’… creates a void within language” (Marks, 1997, p. 237).
🚗 The Music of Chance by Paul Auster🎲 Contingency & Indirect EnunciationNashe’s journey is a line of flight, where the narrative resists rational causality. His psychology remains opaque, and the narration, while third-person, enters an indirect mode of consciousness aligned with Deleuzian thought.
> “Nashe… describes his enigmatic inner world… reason becomes contingency” (Marks, 1997, p. 237).
🎯 Libra by Don DeLillo🎯 Intensive System & PolyphonyOswald is not a psychological subject but a “dark precursor”—a conduit for heterogeneous series of ideology, information, and paranoia. The narrative is polyphonic, invoking free indirect discourse as both structure and theme.
> “Libra… functions as an example of an ‘intensive system’” (Marks, 1997, p. 240).

🔑 Key Themes Across All Works:
  • 🔄 Rejection of metaphor and symbolic interpretation
  • 🧠 Focus on becoming, deterritorialization, and impersonal forces
  • 💬 Free indirect discourse as a destabilizing narrative technique
  • 🌍 Connection between inner subjectivity and external materiality (landscape, systems, events)
Criticism Against “Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks

⚖️ 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.


📉 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.


📚 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.


🌀 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.


📽️ 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.


🧭 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.


🧓 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.


🤖 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.

Representative Quotations from “Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks with Explanation

🔖 Quotation💡 Explanation
🌀 “Free indirect discourse… testifies to a system which is always heterogeneous, far from equilibrium.” (p. 239)📚 Marks shows that Deleuze sees free indirect discourse as central to literature because it captures multiplicity, flux, and the impersonal force of language. It challenges unified narrative voices and reflects literary chaos and openness.
🚫 “The importance some have accorded to metaphor and metonymy proves disastrous for the study of language.” (p. 238)🔍 Deleuze attacks traditional literary criticism’s reliance on metaphor, emphasizing instead the literal, direct, and impersonal aspects of language as primary.
🧩 “To write is perhaps to bring this assemblage of the unconscious to the light of day… to extract something called my Self (Moi).” (p. 238)🧠 Writing, for Deleuze, is not expression of a stable self but the emergence of an assemblage from unconscious flows—reshaping identity in the process.
🧠 “Literature is characterised by ‘the force of the impersonal.’” (p. 234)🎭 This quote underscores Deleuze’s rejection of autobiographical or expressive models of writing, preferring a depersonalized, non-subjective force.
🧬 “Great writers… are stylists, in that they invent ways of living, of surviving, resisting, and freeing life.” (p. 234)✍️ Literature, through style and invention, is not about describing life but intensifying and transforming it.
🧭 “American literature is a minor literature ‘par excellence’, since its fragmentary nature lends itself to collective statements.” (p. 236)🇺🇸 American literature is viewed as decentralized, non-hierarchical, and thus ideal for Deleuze’s concept of minor literature, resisting totalities.
🌀 “Bartleby’s… ‘I prefer not to’… creates a void within language.” (p. 237)📉 The aggrammatical, noncommittal phrase becomes a literary rupture—disabling narrative closure and fixed meaning.
🌍 “The landscape sees as much as the subject… the mind is a membrane.” (p. 243)🌄 Marks explains how Deleuze inverts subject/object relations: literature is not about perception of landscape, but entanglement with it.
🎬 “Cinema’s perpetual destiny is to make us move from an objective perception to a subjective perception.” (p. 239)📽️ By applying this cinematic logic to literature, Marks shows how free indirect discourse destabilizes perspective, making thought visible in form.
💥 “Affect and percept… overflow subjectivity… they are becomings.” (p. 241)⚡ Affects and percepts are not feelings or observations, but forces that transform the subject, foundational to Deleuze’s aesthetics.
Suggested Readings: “Deleuze And Literature: Metaphor And Indirect Discourse” by John Marks
  1. Marks, John. “Deleuze and literature: Metaphor and indirect discourse.” Social Semiotics 7.2 (1997): 233-246.
  2. Haines, Daniel. “From Deleuze and Guattari’s Words to a Deleuzian Theory of Reading.” Deleuze Studies, vol. 9, no. 4, 2015, pp. 529–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45331832. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.
  3. Deleuze, Gilles, et al. “Literature and Life.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 2, 1997, pp. 225–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343982. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.
  4. Deleuze, Gilles, et al. “What Is a Minor Literature?” Mississippi Review, vol. 11, no. 3, 1983, pp. 13–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20133921. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.

“Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart: Summary and Critique

“Critical Discourse Analysis and Metaphor: Toward a Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart first appeared in Critical Discourse Studies in May 2008 (Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 91–106), published by Routledge.

"Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework" by Christopher Hart: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart

“Critical Discourse Analysis and Metaphor: Toward a Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart first appeared in Critical Discourse Studies in May 2008 (Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 91–106), published by Routledge. This landmark article offers a critical intervention in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by addressing a long-neglected aspect—metaphor. Hart proposes a shift from the widely used Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to the more dynamically responsive Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), arguing that CBT is more compatible with the sociocognitive approach of CDA. The article outlines the limitations of CMT when applied to political discourse, particularly its neglect of speaker intention and its deterministic grounding in embodied experience. Instead, CBT allows for metaphors to be treated as strategic, ideologically charged tools in discourse construction. By examining metaphors in the British National Party’s 2005 manifesto—like the migration-as-flood metaphor—Hart demonstrates how blending metaphors not only reflect but shape public cognition, social structure, and policy justification. This has significant implications for literary theory, especially when applied to poetic texts where metaphor is not merely decorative but politically consequential. For example, in metaphor-rich poetry addressing themes of migration, identity, or nationhood, Hart’s framework enables readers to dissect how conceptual blending reinforces dominant narratives or resists them. Thus, the article contributes a powerful analytical tool for scholars in both discourse studies and literary criticism.

Summary of “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart

1. CDA’s Neglect of Metaphor

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

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

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

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


🔹 2. Metaphors as Ideological Tools

  • Metaphors shape our understanding and privilege certain perspectives.

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

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

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


🔹 3. Call for Cognitive Approaches in CDA

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

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

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

🔹 4. Critique of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)

Hart identifies three major incompatibilities between CMT and CDA:

a) Problem of Focus

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

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

b) Problem of Motivation

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

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

c) Problem of Relation

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

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


🔹 5. Introduction of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT)

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

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

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

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


🔹 6. Selective Projection and Ideological Framing

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

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


🔹 7. Entrenchment and Social Cognition

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


🔹 9. Case Study: BNP Immigration Metaphors

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

a) Immigration as Water

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

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

b) Nation as Container

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

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

c) Nation as House

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

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

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

🔹 10. Conclusion: Toward a Full Framework

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

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


Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart
🧠 Theoretical Term📘 Explanation📌 Reference / Quotation
🧱 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)Examines how discourse structures perpetuate social inequality, often through ideologically embedded language.“Critical discourse analysis (CDA) explores the role of discourse structures in constituting social inequality” (Hart, 2008, p. 91).
🔄 Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)Views metaphor as cross-domain mapping based on bodily experiences; often criticized for ignoring discourse context and speaker intention.“CMT posits relationships between pairs of mental representations” (Hart, 2008, p. 92).
🌐 Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT)A dynamic model of meaning construction where mental spaces blend to form emergent conceptual structures. Favored over CMT for CDA.“Blending can ‘compose elements from the input spaces to provide relations that do not exist in the separate inputs'” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 48, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 96).
🧠 Social CognitionShared mental representations within a group that link discourse and social structure. Central to sociocognitive CDA.“Social cognitions… are shared and presupposed by group members” (van Dijk, 1993, p. 257, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 97).
📦 Mental SpacesTemporary conceptual packets activated during discourse; serve as inputs for blending processes.“Mental spaces are small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 95).
⚗️ Emergent StructureNew conceptual elements created through blending that do not exist in the original input spaces.“The blend inherits partial structure… and has emergent structure of its own” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 96).
🔎 Selective ProjectionThe strategic selection of elements from mental spaces into the blend, shaped by communicative or ideological intent.“Speakers may choose to recruit particular structure in order to promote a certain perceived reality” (Hart, 2008, p. 96).
🧬 EntrenchmentThe process through which repeated blending patterns become cognitively fixed and socially shared.“Integration networks… can become entrenched and available to be activated all at once” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 103, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 97).
🏛️ Discourse (Concrete, Collective, Abstract)Hart distinguishes: (1) discourse as situated talk/text, (2) discourse as recurring patterns, and (3) discourse as systems of knowledge.“Discourse (abstract) dictates the nature of discourse (concrete)… and vice versa” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).
🌊 Topoi (Danger, Number, Displacement)Common argumentative schemes in discourse that justify ideological positions, especially in right-wing and racist rhetoric.“An argumentation schema like this one is defined as topos of number” (Wodak & Sedlak, 2000, p. 233, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 100).
🪟 Container SchemaA conceptual structure with interior, exterior, and boundary used metaphorically to frame nations and inclusion/exclusion.“A container schema has an inherent ‘logic’… interior and exterior defined by a boundary” (Hart, 2008, p. 102).
🎭 Referential & Evaluative StrategiesReferential strategies define in-groups/out-groups; evaluative strategies judge them positively or negatively. Both are used in racist discourse.“Referential strategies are used… evaluative strategy is manifested in negative representation of the out-group” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).
Contribution of “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart to Literary Theory/Theories

🔍 🧩 Bridging Linguistics and Literary Criticism

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

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


🧠 🌀 Expanding the Interpretive Scope of Metaphor

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

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


📦 🧠 Applying Mental Space Theory to Literature

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

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


🎭 🎯 Reframing Characterization and Plot in Ideological Terms

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

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


🏠 🌍 Nation and Identity Metaphors in Literary Texts

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

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


📚 📖 Contributes to Discourse Theory in Literature

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

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


💬 🧭 Enabling Socio-Political Literary Critique

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

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


🧬 🎓 Grounding Literary Ideology in Cognitive Theory

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

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


📈 📊 Toward Quantitative Literary Metaphor Studies

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

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

Examples of Critiques Through “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart

🎨 Literary Work🧠 Critical Discourse Insight via CDA/CBT (Hart)🔍 Key Metaphors / Discursive Strategies
🌊 Chinua Achebe – Things Fall ApartColonial discourse frames African tradition as irrational, chaotic, and destined to “fall apart.” Hart’s framework shows how metaphors of disorder justify colonial control.“Igbo culture” as chaos vs. “colonialism” as order → metaphor of containment, civilisation as light vs. darkness (referential & evaluative strategy)
🧱 Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s TaleMetaphors of fertility, control, and enclosure (e.g., the female body as a container) align with Hart’s container schema and selective projection, reinforcing gender-based power.Wombs as political territory; doors, walls, and eyes evoke container schema and the “nation as house” metaphor (topos of danger + preservation)
🔥 William Blake – LondonBlake critiques state ideology through metaphors of imprisonment and infection. Hart’s concept of entrenched blending reveals how discourse sustains suffering.“Mind-forged manacles” → metaphor for ideological control; plague, cry, and curse reflect evaluative strategies against hegemonic discourse
🐍 Seamus Heaney – PunishmentThe speaker uses metaphors of burial and silence to show complicity in violence. Hart’s idea of metaphor as ideology helps unpack how guilt and justice are shaped by discourse.Bog woman as sacrifice → metaphor of containment and purification; selective projection hides shared societal blame (referential strategy: us vs. victim)

✳️ Key Concepts from Hart Used Across These Critiques
  • 🧠 Conceptual Blending: How mental spaces combine to produce emergent meanings in literary metaphor.
  • 🔎 Selective Projection: What elements are foregrounded or excluded in metaphors to support ideology.
  • 🎭 Referential/Evaluative Strategies: How language positions characters or themes as good/bad, in-group/out-group.
  • 🧬 Entrenchment: How recurring metaphors become ideologically normalized in literary discourse.
  • 📦 Container Schema: Used to explore imagery of boundaries, restriction, purity, and belonging.
Criticism Against “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart

⚖️ Over-reliance on Cognitive Models

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

🔬 Limited Empirical Validation

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

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


🚫 Dismissal of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)

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

📉 Reduction of Metaphor to Ideological Function

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

🌍 Limited Cultural Flexibility

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

🗺️ Under-theorization of Power Structures

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

🧱 Highly Technical Jargon

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

📚 Singular Case Study Focus

  • The BNP manifesto is the sole example in the paper’s application section, raising questions about generalizability. Critics might ask: Can this framework apply equally well to literature, film, or visual art?
Representative Quotations from “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart with Explanation
🎯 Quotation📘 Explanation
🧱 “Critical discourse analysis (CDA) explores the role of discourse structures in constituting social inequality.” (p. 91)This foundational quote defines CDA’s purpose: to reveal how language contributes to power relations and oppression.
🌊 “Metaphors are ideological… in so far as they ‘define in significant part what one takes as reality.'” (Chilton & Lakoff, 1995, p. 56, cited on p. 91)Hart emphasizes that metaphors aren’t neutral—they actively shape perception and ideology, which is central to his analysis.
🧠 “Discourse is produced and interpreted by human individuals interacting with one another.” (Chilton, 2005a, p. 23, cited on p. 91)Highlights the cognitive foundation of discourse interpretation, justifying the use of cognitive linguistics within CDA.
🔄 “CMT posits relationships between pairs of mental representations… [while] BT allows for more than two.” (p. 92)Contrasts Conceptual Metaphor Theory with Blending Theory, showing why Hart favors CBT for richer metaphor analysis.
🔍 “Speakers may choose to recruit particular structure in order to promote a certain perceived reality.” (p. 96)This statement introduces selective projection, a key mechanism by which metaphors support ideological positioning.
⚗️ “The blend inherits partial structure from the input spaces, and has emergent structure of its own.” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113, cited on p. 96)Describes how new, ideologically loaded meanings are constructed during discourse through conceptual blending.
🧬 “Entrenched conceptual blending networks are… the mental representations and processes of group members.” (p. 97)Shows how metaphors become socially shared and naturalized, forming part of collective cognition and discourse.
🧱 “Referential strategies are used… to represent social actors… evaluative strategy is manifested in negative representation.” (p. 99)Demonstrates how metaphor is used to construct identities and values in political and ideological discourse.
🏠 “The nation is conceptualised as a private property… where policymakers have the right to refuse entry.” (p. 101)Analyses metaphors in immigration discourse, using the house/container schema to expose nationalist ideology.
📊 “A complete and lucid framework requires quantitative analysis… to determine which metaphors are used conventionally.” (p. 102)Acknowledges the need for empirical breadth, calling for more data-driven studies to strengthen metaphor analysis in CDA.

Suggested Readings: “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart
  1. Hart, Christopher. “Critical discourse analysis and metaphor: Toward a theoretical framework.” Critical discourse studies 5.2 (2008): 91-106.
  2. Blommaert, Jan, and Chris Bulcaen. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 29, 2000, pp. 447–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/223428. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.
  3. Davidson, Donald. “What Metaphors Mean.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 5, no. 1, 1978, pp. 31–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342976. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.
  4. Chilton, Paul, and Mikhail Ilyin. “Metaphor in Political Discourse: The Case of the ‘Common European House.'” Discourse & Society, vol. 4, no. 1, 1993, pp. 7–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42887835. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.

“Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy: Summary and Critique

“Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke and John M. Kennedy, first published in Metaphor and Symbol in 2004 (Vol. 19, Issue 3, pp. 213–231), offers a rigorous critique of the dominant theory of conceptual metaphor as advanced by Lakoff and Johnson.

"Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought" by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy

“Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke and John M. Kennedy, first published in Metaphor and Symbol in 2004 (Vol. 19, Issue 3, pp. 213–231), offers a rigorous critique of the dominant theory of conceptual metaphor as advanced by Lakoff and Johnson. While Lakoff and Johnson argue that much of abstract thought is rooted in metaphorical projections from embodied experience, Vervaeke and Kennedy contend that such a position risks cognitive reductionism by oversimplifying the richness of abstract cognition. They argue that abstract concepts, such as “argument” or “understanding,” are not conceptual blank slates shaped entirely by metaphor, but possess premetaphoric structure that guides and constrains metaphorical interpretation. Their analysis demonstrates that many metaphors rely not simply on physical experience but on procedural knowledge—a form of cognition grounded in mental operations rather than sensory experience. Moreover, they highlight how spatial mappings (e.g., “understanding is seeing”) are not solely grounded in embodiment but function to reformat abstract information for cognitive processing, enabling structural alignment and salience modulation. In rejecting both strong reductionism and the explanatory insufficiency of conceptual blending theory, they argue for a more nuanced account of metaphor that recognizes the interaction between declarative and procedural knowledge in metaphor comprehension. This has important implications for literary theory, where metaphor is central not just to stylistic ornamentation but to conceptual innovation and interpretation. Ultimately, Vervaeke and Kennedy’s work expands the theoretical landscape of metaphor by asserting that abstract thought is not governed, but informed by metaphor, thereby preserving the autonomy and complexity of abstract reasoning.

Summary of “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy

🔍 1. Critique of Reductionism in Conceptual Metaphor Theory

  • The authors argue that grounding all abstract thought in embodied metaphor leads to reductionism:

“The abstract matter… is being reduced to a more primitive material” (p. 215).

  • They challenge the idea that metaphors fully govern abstract thought, stating:

“The target domain must have considerable premetaphoric structure to constrain the metaphoric selection of features” (p. 217).


🧠 2. Premetaphoric Structure of Abstract Concepts

  • Abstract domains are not blank slates; they influence how metaphors are applied:

“If the target domain were a conceptual blank slate… it is unclear why we would adopt or offer one metaphor over any other” (p. 217).

  • The authors emphasize that metaphoric mapping is guided by prior conceptual understanding.

🔄 3. Limits of Metaphor as Cognitive Explanation

  • Metaphors do not constitute understanding; they enhance or highlight certain aspects:

“The example can be written… as a literal class inclusion statement” (p. 218).
“Our sense… constrains which source domain is chosen for a metaphor” (p. 219).


🔍 4. Metaphor as Reformatting, Not Origin

  • Instead of generating new concepts, metaphors reorganize or reframe existing ideas:

“A metaphor helps to structure pertinent properties in the desired order of salience” (p. 225).
“This structure helps to translate… into a more declarative format” (p. 225).


🌐 5. Role of Spatial Mapping Beyond Embodiment

  • Spatial metaphors are not solely derived from sensorimotor experience; they function as cognitive tools:

“Spatial relations are multimodal and therefore allow for the integration of information” (p. 223).
“Spatial relations… foster the noticing of higher-order invariants and patterns” (p. 223).


🧰 6. Procedural Knowledge as a Basis for Metaphor

  • Understanding abstract domains often relies on procedural, not declarative, knowledge:

“Procedural knowledge… plays a key role” (p. 224).
“Much of this information is encoded procedurally” (p. 225).


🌀 7. Problems with Conceptual Blending Theory

  • The authors reject blending theory as theoretically vague and unfalsifiable:

“Mental space theory can explain everything and thereby really explain nothing” (p. 228).
“Nothing could falsify it” (p. 228, citing Gibbs, 2001).


🎭 8. Metaphor Evokes Experience, Not Literal Meaning

  • Metaphors trigger cognitive responses rather than merely mapping literal features:

“What the metaphor ‘brings to the fore is the kind of emotions, comparisons, and expectations'” (p. 141, quoting Ritchie).
“The metaphor makes its target more vivid… not by content but by experience” (p. 225).


9. Metaphor Supports but Does Not Define Abstract Thinking

  • Metaphors are powerful cognitive aids, but abstract thought precedes and constrains them:

“Conceptual metaphor does not actually seem to be doing most of the important work in conceptual innovation” (p. 220).
“Metaphor… does not constitute the basis for understanding argument” (p. 219).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy
🧠 Term📖 Definition / Explanation📚 Reference
🔗 Conceptual MetaphorA mechanism where abstract thought is structured through metaphorical projection from embodied experience.p. 213; p. 132–133; Lakoff & Johnson (1980, 1999)
⚖️ ReductionismThe problematic idea that abstract reasoning is wholly reducible to bodily experience, which may oversimplify complex cognition.p. 214–215; p. 217
🧩 Premetaphoric StructureThe claim that abstract domains already contain internal structure that constrains metaphorical projection.p. 217–218; p. 221
🌀 Conceptual Blending TheoryA model proposing that meanings arise from blending conceptual elements of different domains into a new mental “space” — critiqued for being too vague.p. 227–228; Fauconnier & Turner (2002)
🧭 Procedural KnowledgeKnow-how or procedural patterns used in metaphor comprehension, often implicit and hard to verbalize.p. 224; p. 226; footnote 1
🧱 Declarative KnowledgeExplicit factual knowledge that interacts with but is not reducible to metaphorical interpretation.p. 226; Chiappe & Kennedy (2001)
🧠 Cognitive ResponseThe emotional or psychological state evoked by a metaphor, such as a sense of confinement or elevation.p. 139–142
🗺️ Spatial MappingThe widespread metaphorical projection of spatial structures onto abstract domains such as time, causality, and understanding.p. 223–224
🛠️ Structural MetaphorMetaphors that organize entire abstract domains by systematic entailments from source domains (e.g., “ARGUMENT IS WAR”).p. 139–140; Lakoff & Johnson (1980)
🎯 Metaphoric SalienceThe metaphor’s ability to foreground or highlight specific features of a concept, making them more cognitively accessible.p. 225; Giora (2003)
❌ Circularity ProblemThe challenge that metaphor theories may become unfalsifiable if metaphorical explanations recursively justify themselves.p. 216; p. 226; Ritchie (2003a)
🧠💬 Metaphoric ExperienceThe idea that metaphors change our experiential understanding of a concept, affecting how it is felt or processed.p. 141; Ritchie (2003b)
🌉 Procedural SimilarityTransfer of cognitive procedures (rather than just content) from one domain to another, which aids in metaphor comprehension and problem-solving.p. 224; Gick & McGarry (1992); Adams et al. (1988)
Contribution of “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy to Literary Theory/Theories

Cognitive Literary Theory

  • 🧭 Challenges to Embodiment-Centric Readings: The article critiques Lakoff & Johnson’s claim that abstract thought is almost entirely derived from embodied metaphor, arguing instead for premetaphoric and cognitive structures that resist full reduction (p. 213–215, 217).
  • 🧠 Highlights the Role of Procedural Knowledge: It introduces the importance of procedural cognition—nonverbal, ineffable know-how—in metaphor comprehension, providing a broader base for understanding narrative and poetic metaphor (p. 224–226).
  • 📊 Supports Spatial-Cognitive Processing in Texts: By demonstrating how spatial mappings facilitate meaning, the article aligns with how readers interpret spatial-temporal relations in literary texts (p. 223–224).

🔍 Metaphor Theory (within Literary Studies)

  • 💥 Critique of Conceptual Metaphor Theory’s Circularity: The article warns that metaphor theories relying only on recurring metaphor families risk becoming unfalsifiable, weakening literary-critical claims (p. 216–217).
  • 🪞 Reasserts the Agency of Target Domains: It emphasizes that target concepts (e.g., “argument,” “love”) are not passive recipients of metaphorical structure—they constrain and reshape metaphors themselves (p. 217–218).
  • 🌱 Introduces Transmetaphoric Innovation: The authors explore how novel metaphors emerge from dissatisfaction with existing ones, which is essential for understanding literary creativity and metaphorical innovation in poetry and fiction (p. 219–221).

⚖️ Post-Structuralism / Deconstruction

  • Unsettles Binary Oppositions in Metaphor Source–Target Relations: The article resists the strict hierarchy between source (embodied) and target (abstract), opening space for a non-linear, recursive interplay between domains (p. 220–222).
  • 📉 Disrupts Foundations of “Literal vs. Metaphorical”: The critique of direct/indirect knowledge distinctions challenges assumptions about literalism—a key target in deconstructionist critiques (p. 221–222).

🧬 Narratology & Semiotics

  • 🧩 Promotes Multimodal Understanding: Drawing on spatial and procedural mappings, the article connects with narrative structures and how they encode abstract concepts like agency, causality, and time (p. 223–224).
  • 🎭 Acknowledges Salient Performative Impact of Metaphors: The discussion of metaphor “experience” (Ritchie’s term) is akin to reader-response theories that emphasize metaphor’s affective engagement (p. 141–142).

🧠 Philosophy of Language & Hermeneutics

  • 🧱 Emphasizes Preconceptual Constraints in Meaning: Meaning is not only projected from metaphors but also arises from prior, often procedural, structures in thought, echoing hermeneutic emphasis on the “already-understood” (p. 217; p. 220).
  • 🔄 Reframes Understanding as a Bidirectional Process: Rather than a unidirectional flow from metaphor to meaning, the article posits a dynamic interaction—deeply resonant with Gadamerian hermeneutics (p. 220–223).

Examples of Critiques Through “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy
📖 Literary Work 🧠 Conceptual Metaphor Critiqued🔍 Insight from Vervaeke & Kennedy (2004)📚 Critique Application
🕊️ “Ode to a Nightingale” – John Keats“ESCAPE IS ASCENT” or “DEATH IS SLEEP”Procedural knowledge and metaphoric salience structure the experience of the poem beyond embodied mappings (p. 224–225)The speaker’s ascent “on the viewless wings of Poesy” resists full reduction to sensorimotor experience—showing instead how conceptual innovation invites aesthetic wonder and transmetaphoric insight.
🧙 “The Tempest” – William Shakespeare“KNOWLEDGE IS POWER,” “MAGIC IS KNOWLEDGE”Cognitive metaphors are constrained by prior knowledge of social hierarchies and ethics (p. 217–218)Prospero’s use of magic is best understood not only through embodied metaphors, but via the premetaphoric structures of knowledge, control, and colonialism, undermining a purely embodied account.
💔 “Wuthering Heights” – Emily Brontë“LOVE IS VIOLENT WEATHER” or “LOVE IS MADNESS”The authors critique blending theory and favor procedural salience in metaphoric comprehension (p. 224–226)Heathcliff and Catherine’s turbulent love illustrates how affective metaphors, such as storms, activate ineffable emotional knowledge, which drives thematic intensity without needing full metaphorical mapping.
🌌 “The Waste Land” – T.S. Eliot“LIFE IS A WASTELAND,” “TIME IS BROKEN SPACE”Procedural similarity and spatial mapping reformat abstract experiences (p. 223–224)The poem’s fragmented structure and metaphors of ruin are not merely products of bodily experience, but cognitive structures representing postwar disillusionment, decoded via procedural mental models rather than strict metaphoric projection.
Criticism Against “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy
  • ⚖️ Overemphasis on Reductionism Claim
    While Vervaeke & Kennedy argue conceptual metaphor theory is overly reductionist, they may oversimplify the nuanced positions of Lakoff & Johnson, especially by focusing on extreme interpretations and downplaying the flexibility built into the theory.

“We argue that in fact [Ritchie] did not escape the problem” (p. 215)

  • 🔁 Neglect of Embodiment’s Empirical Base
    The authors criticize the embodiment hypothesis as insufficient, yet they do not engage deeply with empirical evidence from neuroscience and psycholinguistics that supports embodied cognition (e.g., Gibbs, 2003).

Their challenge to embodiment relies more on logical critique than empirical falsification.

  • 🔍 Ambiguity in Defining Procedural Knowledge
    The concept of procedural knowledge is central to their alternative, yet they do not offer a clear operational definition or method for measuring it in metaphor comprehension. This makes their theory difficult to test or apply consistently.

“Procedural similarity probably plays a significant role…” (p. 225)

  • 🌀 Dismissal of Conceptual Blending Is Incomplete
    Their critique of conceptual blending theory is valid in parts (e.g., lack of falsifiability), but they overlook blending theory’s success in modeling novel metaphors and creative linguistic constructions, especially in poetry and narrative.

“Conceptual blending theory… fails as a theoretical framework” (p. 227)

  • 🔄 Possible Circularity in Pre-Metaphoric Structure Argument
    Their claim that metaphor relies on pre-existing cognitive structures risks its own circularity: how are these premetaphoric understandings formed if not through metaphorical language itself, especially in early cognition?

“Initial independence sets up the opportunity for metaphor” (p. 220)

  • 🧩 Philosophical Tension in ‘Literal vs Metaphoric’ Distinction
    They rely on the literal/metaphoric divide to argue against metaphor theory but this dichotomy has been widely challenged as unstable in both literary theory and cognitive science (e.g., Davidson, 1978; Black, 1979).

“Literal aspects… have played a significant role…” (p. 218)

  • ⚙️ Limited Scope of Application
    While their model works well in certain scientific or analytic contexts, it may struggle to explain the cultural, affective, and poetic depth of metaphor in literature and myth, where embodied metaphor often flourishes.
  • Dismisses Metaphor’s Generative Role Too Quickly
    By positioning metaphors as interpretive rather than generative, they underplay how metaphors can create new understanding, not just shape or reflect existing structures.

“The metaphor… does not constitute the basis for understanding argument.” (p. 219)

Representative Quotations from “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy with Explanation

🔖 Quotation 📝 Explanation📄 Page Reference
🧠 “Metaphors do not come singly, like hermits. They live in groups.”Emphasizes that metaphors form conceptual systems, not isolated figures—they cluster to shape networks of meaning.p. 215
⚖️ “Metaphors influence the bulk of our thought… They are usually implied rather than directly spoken.”Shows how deeply metaphors are embedded in cognition, often subtly shaping abstract reasoning.p. 215
🛡️ “ARGUMENT IS WAR… we say things such as ‘he attacked my argument’…”Reflects how everyday language frames argumentation metaphorically as combat, a core critique target of the authors.p. 216
🔄 “Any two things are infinitely similar… selection of domains is a very significant problem.”Warns against indiscriminate metaphor selection, insisting that metaphor must be structured by cognitive constraints.p. 217
🚫 “The claim about ‘ARGUMENT’ and personal antagonisms… does not address the central properties…”Points out that the war metaphor misrepresents formal argument by ignoring its logical and procedural rules.p. 219
📉 “Metaphor is not a simple case of categorization or comparison.”Highlights the uniqueness of metaphor—unlike basic comparison, it transfers only certain features, not all.p. 219
🌌 “Metaphors trigger guiding conceptual operations we use in reality-monitoring.”Suggests metaphors prime cognitive functions like attention, relevance filtering, and memory integration.p. 223
🎭 “A metaphor makes its target more vivid… helps to translate procedural into declarative.”Shows how metaphor enhances understanding by making implicit experiences more communicable and vivid.p. 225
🧲 “Metaphor is just one possible source of ideas—it cannot evaluate itself.”Argues metaphors require independent cognitive structures to evaluate their usefulness or truth.p. 227
🧪 “We argue that procedural similarity plays a significant role in metaphor comprehension.”Suggests metaphor works best when cognitive processes (not just properties) align between domains—e.g., how we interact with and navigate conceptual space.p. 228

Suggested Readings: “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy
  1. Vervaeke, John, and John M. Kennedy. “Conceptual metaphor and abstract thought.” Metaphor and symbol 19.3 (2004): 213-231.
  2. Flanik, William. “‘Bringing FPA Back Home:’ Cognition, Constructivism, and Conceptual Metaphor.” Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 7, no. 4, 2011, pp. 423–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24909837. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  3. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77, no. 8, 1980, pp. 453–86. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2025464. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  4. Eubanks, Philip. “The Story of Conceptual Metaphor: What Motivates Metaphoric Mappings?” Poetics Today, vol. 20, no. 3, 1999, pp. 419–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773273. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

“Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Summary and Critique

“Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson first appeared in The Journal of Philosophy in August 1980 (Vol. 77, No. 8, pp. 453–486), published by the Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

"Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson first appeared in The Journal of Philosophy in August 1980 (Vol. 77, No. 8, pp. 453–486), published by the Journal of Philosophy, Inc. This foundational paper challenged traditional views in philosophy and linguistics by arguing that metaphor is not merely a rhetorical or poetic device but a fundamental mechanism shaping human thought, language, and action. Lakoff and Johnson introduced the notion of conceptual metaphor, wherein we understand abstract concepts through more concrete, physical experiences—such as “ARGUMENT IS WAR” or “TIME IS MONEY.” Through extensive linguistic evidence, they demonstrated that our ordinary conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature, thus reshaping discussions in semantics, cognitive science, and literary theory. Their experientialist perspective further suggested that metaphor structures our perceptions of reality, influencing everything from reasoning to emotional experience. The paper’s influence extends across disciplines, positioning metaphor not as decorative language but as a core constituent of human cognition and cultural understanding.

Summary of “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

🔹 Core Argument: Metaphor is Fundamental to Thought and Language

  • Metaphor is not just poetic or rhetorical; it is central to everyday thinking and language.

“We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but in thought and action” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 454).

  • Our conceptual system is metaphorical, shaping perception, behavior, and reasoning.

“If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor” (p. 454).


🔹 Key Conceptual Metaphors

  • ARGUMENT IS WAR: We structure arguments as battles.

“He attacked every weak point in my argument… I demolished his argument” (p. 454–455).
“Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war” (p. 455).

  • TIME IS MONEY: Time is treated as a finite, valuable commodity.

“You’re wasting my time… That flat tire cost me an hour” (p. 456).
“Because of the way that the concept of work has developed… time is precisely quantified” (p. 456).

  • IDEAS ARE FOOD / THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS / LOVE IS A JOURNEY: Metaphors define abstract domains.

“Now there’s a theory you can really sink your teeth into” (p. 470).
“We need to construct a strong argument for that” (p. 470).
“Look how far we’ve come… Our marriage is on the rocks” (p. 470).


🔹 Systematicity of Metaphors

  • Metaphorical concepts form coherent systems, not isolated expressions.

“Metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way” (p. 456).

  • One metaphor (e.g., TIME IS MONEY) entails others (e.g., TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE) through entailment hierarchies.

“TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY” (p. 457).


🔹 Highlighting vs. Hiding

  • Metaphors highlight certain aspects of a concept while hiding others.

“A metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept which are not coherent with that metaphor” (p. 458).

  • Example: ARGUMENT IS WAR hides cooperative aspects of argument.

“We lose sight of the more cooperative aspects involved in an argument” (p. 458).


🔹 Orientational and Ontological Metaphors

  • Orientational metaphors give concepts spatial direction:
    • HAPPY IS UP, SAD IS DOWN → “My spirits rose… I fell into a depression” (p. 462).
    • MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN → “My income rose last year” (p. 463).
  • Ontological metaphors allow us to view activities or emotions as entities or substances:

“The brutality of war dehumanizes us all… His theory has thousands of little rooms” (p. 461–472).


🔹 Cultural and Experiential Grounding

  • Metaphors reflect cultural values:

“The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts” (p. 465).

  • They are grounded in bodily experience (embodiment):

“Our constant physical activity… makes UP-DOWN orientation… centrally relevant” (p. 476).


🔹 Novel Metaphor and Meaning

  • Novel metaphors can create new ways of understanding and guide future actions.

“Metaphors have entailments through which they highlight and make coherent certain aspects of our experience” (p. 481).

  • Example: LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART

“LOVE IS WORK… LOVE REQUIRES COMPROMISE… LOVE IS CREATIVE” (p. 482).


🔹 Critique of Literalist Theories

  • The authors challenge traditional views that restrict metaphor to non-literal language.

“We have tried to show that most of our everyday, ordinary conceptual system… is metaphorically structured” (p. 485).

  • They propose an experientialist theory of meaning and truth, where truth is “dependent on understanding” and metaphor plays a central role.

“A sentence is true in a situation when our understanding of the sentence fits our understanding of the situation” (p. 486).


🔹 Philosophical Implications

  • Metaphor challenges objectivist theories of language and knowledge.
  • Understanding is embodied, metaphorical, and shaped by cultural coherence, not universal logic.
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

🧠 Term / Symbol📘 Explanation📝 Reference Quote
🔄 Conceptual MetaphorUnderstanding one idea or conceptual domain in terms of another. These metaphors structure our thinking.“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (p. 455).
⚙️ Metaphorical StructuringThe way abstract concepts are systematically shaped by metaphor.“The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and consequently, the language is metaphorically structured” (p. 455).
🧱 Structural MetaphorOne concept is structured in terms of another (e.g., ARGUMENT IS WAR).“Let us start with the concept of an ARGUMENT, and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR” (p. 454).
🧭 Orientational MetaphorOrganizes concepts spatially (e.g., UP-DOWN, IN-OUT) based on bodily experience.“We call them ‘orientational’ metaphors because most of them have to do with spatial orientation: UP-DOWN, IN-OUT…” (p. 461).
🧊 Ontological MetaphorTreats abstract experiences (like emotions or events) as objects, substances, or containers.“We understand events, activities, emotions, ideas… as entities or substances” (p. 461).
🌐 SystematicityThe coherence and structured relationships among metaphorical concepts.“Because the metaphorical concept is systematic, the language we use… is systematic” (p. 456).
🧩 Highlighting and HidingMetaphors emphasize some aspects of a concept while concealing others.“A metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects… which are not coherent with that metaphor” (p. 458).
🧰 Experientialist Theory of MeaningMeaning arises from embodied human experience, not abstract truth-conditions.“We are led to a theory of truth that is dependent on understanding” (p. 486).
🔁 Entailment StructureThe internal logic linking different metaphors, where one implies another.“TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY” (p. 457).
🎨 Novel MetaphorNew metaphor not part of our conventional conceptual system, offering fresh perspectives.“LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART… highlights certain features while suppressing others” (p. 482).
🧠➡️💬 Concepts We Live ByMetaphors don’t just shape how we speak, but how we perceive, act, and live.“Our ordinary conceptual system… is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (p. 454).
🔍 Cultural CoherenceMetaphors align with culturally shared values and beliefs.“The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts” (p. 465).
Contribution of “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson to Literary Theory/Theories
🧠 Literary Theory💡 Contribution from Lakoff & Johnson📝 Reference from Article
1. Reader-Response Theory 👓Emphasizes the reader’s embodied experience and how understanding is shaped by conceptual metaphors rather than objective meaning. This aligns with the idea that readers construct meaning.“We define our reality in terms of metaphor, and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphor… We draw inferences, set goals…” (p. 484)
2. Deconstruction 🧩Challenges rigid binary oppositions (e.g., literal/figurative, object/subject) and shows how meaning is inherently metaphorical and unstable, resonating with Derridean critique of fixed meaning.“If we are right… the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor” (p. 454)
3. Structuralism 🧬Highlights systematic structures underlying language and thought via metaphors, akin to Saussure’s idea of sign systems and Lévi-Strauss’s binary structures.“Because the metaphorical concept is systematic, the language we use… is systematic” (p. 456)
4. Poststructuralism 🌀Offers a dynamic and unstable model of meaning, shaped by cultural metaphorical systems, aligning with the poststructuralist view that meaning is never fixed or singular.“There are cultures where time is none of these things… our values are not independent, but must form a coherent system with the metaphorical concepts we live by” (p. 466)
5. Phenomenology 🧍Rooted in embodied experience, showing how metaphors structure perception and interaction with the world—aligns with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on lived experience.“Our conceptual system… is fundamentally metaphorical in nature… concepts structure what we perceive” (p. 454)
6. Cognitive Poetics 🧠📖Directly foundational—this article originates the cognitive approach to metaphor and narrative understanding in literature. Explains how readers and authors use metaphors to make sense of abstract experiences.“Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but in thought and action” (p. 454)
7. Formalism 📐Challenges Formalist separation of form and content, by showing that metaphorical form itself carries conceptual meaning and can’t be isolated from thought.“The metaphor is not merely in the words we use—it is in our very concept” (p. 455)
8. Cultural Criticism / New Historicism 🌍Illuminates how cultural metaphors shape cognition, meaning that literary texts must be interpreted through the lens of their embedded metaphors and cultural coherence.“The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts” (p. 465)
9. Feminist Literary Theory 🚺📚Opens space for analyzing gendered metaphors in literature (e.g., rationality as UP, emotion as DOWN), aligning with critiques of patriarchal language.“RATIONAL IS UP; EMOTIONAL IS DOWN” (p. 463); “MAN IS UP… RATIONAL IS UP” (p. 464)
10. Rhetorical Theory 🗣️Shifts focus from stylistic ornament to cognitive and conceptual basis of rhetoric, redefining metaphor as essential to argumentation, persuasion, and structure.“Our conventional ways of talking about arguments presuppose a metaphor… ARGUMENT IS WAR” (p. 455)
Examples of Critiques Through “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
📖 Literary Work🔑 Key Conceptual Metaphors🧩 Critique via Lakoff & Johnson🔖 Article Reference
🌊 “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville– Life Is A Journey 🛶
– The Mind Is A Container 🧠📦
– The Sea Is Chaos 🌊⚠️
Captain Ahab’s obsession is framed through metaphors of spatial containment and existential journey. His quest is not linear but deeply metaphorical—Ahab “contains” his madness like a sealed vessel. The ocean as chaos resonates with metaphors of unstructured danger.“Ideas are objects… linguistic expressions are containers” (p. 459); “LOVE IS A JOURNEY” as metaphor model (p. 471)
🕯️ “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare– Ambition Is Up 📈
– Death Is Down ⚰️📉
– Life Is A Stage 🎭
Macbeth’s rise and fall embody orientational metaphors: he rises (“vaulting ambition”) and falls (“downward spiral”). The stage metaphor underscores his role-play and self-alienation. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness reflects SADNESS IS DOWN.“HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN” (p. 463); “LIFE IS A STAGE” as implied structural metaphor (p. 470)
🧠 “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf– Time Is A Moving Object 🕰️🚶‍♂️
– Self Is A Container 🪞📦
– Memory Is A Landscape 🧭🌿
Woolf uses fluid time metaphors—moments shift like objects in motion. Clarissa and Septimus both “hold” memories metaphorically, showing the MIND AS CONTAINER. The stream-of-consciousness becomes a metaphorical map of internal journeys.“TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT” (p. 468); “THE MIND IS A CONTAINER” (p. 459); “Experiential gestalts” (p. 476)
🌲 “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost– Life Is A Journey 🛤️
– Choice Is A Path 🚪🛣️
– Future Is Ahead 🔮➡️
The poem literalizes the JOURNEY metaphor to discuss decisions. The diverging roads represent conceptual choice-making paths. The speaker “looks down” the path—spatializes time and consequence as distance and depth.“LOVE IS A JOURNEY” (p. 471); “FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP (AND AHEAD)” (p. 462); “Spatial orientation… frames concepts” (p. 461)
Criticism Against “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

🔍 Partial Structuring Problem

🔸 “The metaphorical structuring of concepts is necessarily partial…” (p. 455)
🔹 Critique: Since metaphors highlight some aspects while hiding others, the theory may oversimplify or mislead if metaphorically “hidden” dimensions are ignored.


🧠 ⚠️ Dependence on Subjectivity

🔸 “Which values are given priority is partly a matter of the subculture you live in…” (p. 467)
🔹 Critique: The subjective, culturally biased nature of metaphor makes generalizing cognitive structures difficult across societies.


🔗 🔄 Overgeneralization of Metaphors

🔸 “Most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature.” (p. 454)
🔹 Critique: Critics argue this claim lacks empirical precision and tends to uncritically universalize metaphor as a dominant mode of cognition.


🧱 🏗️ Structural Rigidity in Metaphor Pairs

🔸 “We talk about attacking a position… defend our own.” (p. 455)
🔹 Critique: Binary metaphor mappings (e.g., ARGUMENT IS WAR) may impose an overly dualist and combative worldview, ignoring more fluid or cooperative interpretations.


📚 🧪 Philosophical Incompatibility with Traditional Semantics

🔸 “No account of meaning and truth can pretend to be complete… if it cannot account for metaphor.” (p. 486)
🔹 Critique: This challenges established truth-conditional theories of meaning, but critics argue that metaphor lacks logical precision and may not suit formal semantics.


🔀 🌀 Vague Boundaries Between Literal & Metaphorical

🔸 “Literal expressions… and imaginative expressions… can be instances of the same general metaphor.” (p. 471)
🔹 Critique: The blurred line between literal and metaphorical language complicates linguistic clarity, making analysis messy or indeterminate.


🚧 ⚙️ Operational Issues in Application

🔸 “Our account… may seem similar to Goodman’s… but we are at odds with Goodman…” (p. 458)
🔹 Critique: The authors reject rival theories but don’t fully develop alternative frameworks or offer rigorous methodologies for identifying metaphors in practice.


🎭 🎨 Inadequate Treatment of Poetic or Creative Language

🔸 “Literal expressions… and imaginative expressions… can be instances of the same general metaphor.” (p. 472)
🔹 Critique: Literary scholars argue that the nuanced, polysemous nature of literary metaphor is not adequately addressed, being reduced to cognitive templates.


🧩 💬 Fragmentation in Understanding Emotion or Abstract Domains

🔸 “No sharply defined conceptual structure for the emotions emerges from emotional functioning alone…” (p. 476)
🔹 Critique: Emotional metaphors (e.g., “LOVE IS A JOURNEY”) are reductionist, potentially ignoring multi-layered emotional realities.

Representative Quotations from “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson with Explanation
🔹QuotationExplanation
🔺“Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”This foundational claim asserts that metaphor isn’t decorative; it shapes everyday cognition and behavior.
🛡️“ARGUMENT IS WAR… We attack his positions and we defend our own.”This illustrates how conceptual metaphors (e.g., argument as war) structure our language and behavior.
“TIME IS MONEY… You’re wasting my time.”Demonstrates how we perceive time as a quantifiable commodity due to cultural and economic systems.
💬“Communication is viewed as sending ideas in containers through a conduit.”Refers to the “conduit metaphor” — a dominant but limiting way we conceptualize communication.
🎯“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”Core definition of conceptual metaphor: it’s about mapping knowledge from one domain to another.
🔍“Metaphorical concepts can keep us from focusing on other aspects… which are not coherent with that metaphor.”Metaphors highlight and hide — they frame perception while excluding other views.
🌡️“HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN.”This orientational metaphor is grounded in physical posture and shows how emotions are spatially conceptualized.
🧱“THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS… The argument collapsed.”Abstract ideas like theories are metaphorically structured as physical entities to make them graspable.
🧠“We claim that most of our normal conceptual system is metaphorically structured.”Reaffirms that metaphor is not exceptional but essential to how thought operates.
🧭“The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture.”Suggests that metaphorical systems align with and reinforce cultural values.
Suggested Readings: “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
  1. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. “Conceptual metaphor in everyday language.” Shaping entrepreneurship research. Routledge, 2020. 475-504.
  2. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77, no. 8, 1980, pp. 453–86. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2025464. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  3. Merten, Don, and Gary Schwartz. “Metaphor and Self: Symbolic Process in Everyday Life.” American Anthropologist, vol. 84, no. 4, 1982, pp. 796–810. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/676491. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  4. Diekema, Douglas S. “METAPHORS, MEDICINE, AND MORALS.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 72, no. 1, 1989, pp. 17–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41178462. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

“A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown: Summary and Critique

“A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown first appeared in Accounting Forum in 2018 and represents a distinctive interdisciplinary contribution to both literary analysis and accounting theory.

"A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot" by Alistair Brown: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown

“A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown first appeared in Accounting Forum in 2018 and represents a distinctive interdisciplinary contribution to both literary analysis and accounting theory. Drawing from the conceptual theory of metaphor, Brown applies a rigorous typology developed by Perrine (1971) to explore how Eliot’s poem constructs and conveys meaning through various metaphorical forms, particularly those related to accounting. The article argues that Prufrock is rich with accounting metaphors—ranging from explicit (Form 1) to implicit and abstract (Form 4)—that reflect deeper social, psychological, and epistemic dimensions of modern life. Brown suggests that the poem can be read as an intricate account of human experience through an accounting lens, mapping tangible assets, liabilities, and transformative evaluations of the self. This approach challenges traditional boundaries of literary and accounting scholarship, highlighting how metaphor serves as a powerful epistemological bridge between disciplines. By emphasizing metaphor’s role in shaping perception and interpretation, Brown’s study underscores the relevance of poetic texts in critical accounting discourse, affirming Eliot’s poem as both a cultural and metaphorical artefact with implications for understanding reporting, identity, and transformation in the context of modern organizational life.

Summary of “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
  • 🔹 Application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Poetry
    • Brown uses the theory of metaphor as conceptual rather than linguistic, arguing that “metaphor is located in thought rather than in language” (Ritchie & Zhu, 2015, p. 119).
    • This approach positions metaphor as a means of “innovative perspectives and new knowledge of phenomena” (Moerman & van der Laan, 2011, p. 11).
  • 🔹 Accounting Metaphors in Eliot’s Poem
    • The study finds Prufrock “relies on accounting metaphors that use either unstated vehicle concepts, unstated tenor concepts or both to convey dense messages of accounting” (Brown, 2018, Abstract).
    • These metaphors span literal and figurative domains, such as in Form 1 metaphors like “accounting as a gramophone record” (Suarez, 2001).
  • 🔹 Use of Perrine’s Typology of Metaphor
    • Brown employs Perrine’s (1971) four-form metaphor typology—from explicit metaphors (Form 1) to implicit, abstract ones (Form 4)—to categorize metaphor use in the poem.
    • “Form 4 metaphors require the reader to exercise imagination… as the metaphors themselves… appear erratically structured or ambiguous” (Brown, 2018, p. 4).
  • 🔹 Fragments of Accounting Identity in the Poem
    • The poem’s references to tangible assets like “rooms,” “streets,” and “tables” are interpreted as “symbols of a city’s modernity” and “fragments of reporting identity” (Brown, 2018, p. 11).
    • “Oyster-shells” are interpreted as “an early form of account of the environment” (Brown, 2018, p. 6).
  • 🔹 Reporting Sublimity and Spiritual Dimensions
    • Brown highlights how the poem engages with “the selection, storage and presentation of accounting information” (p. 11).
    • The line “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” is described as “a spiritual emblem of accounting” (p. 11).
  • 🔹 Transformative and Aesthetic Accounting
    • The poem is said to “dare to pose and respond to far-reaching questions that might otherwise be side-stepped by time-honoured accounting texts” (p. 2).
    • Lines like “Do I dare disturb the universe?” are linked to the potential for accounting to “penetrate the ‘laws’ of the social universe” (Boland, 1989, p. 591).
  • 🔹 Accounting as a Poetic, Perceptual Act
    • Brown argues accounting metaphors in Prufrock “construct an opaque form of an inverted early nineteenth century Abstract of Liabilities and Assets” (p. 11).
    • This perspective treats poetry as “a form of accounting scholarship that offers fruitful paths for understanding accounting endeavour” (Gray, Guthrie, & Parker, 2002, p. 1).
  • 🔹 Implications for Literary and Accounting Discourses
    • Brown concludes that metaphor “encourages readers to seek innovative meanings of accounting” and helps in identifying “the limitations of measurement pursuits” (p. 11).
    • He calls for “a considerable epistemic shift from one domain to another to expose the hidden meanings of accounting” in literary texts (p. 12).
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
🌟 Theoretical Term/Concept📘 Explanation📝 Referenced Quotation from the Article
🔄 Conceptual Metaphor TheoryViews metaphor as a cognitive process where meaning is transferred from one conceptual domain (source) to another (target), rather than just being a linguistic flourish.“The conceptual theory of metaphor ‘holds that metaphor is located in thought rather than in language’” (Ritchie & Zhu, 2015, p. 119).
🧩 Tenor and VehicleComponents of a metaphor where the tenor is the subject (literal concept) and the vehicle is the figurative image used to describe it.“A metaphor comprises a ‘literal’ term (tenor) and ‘figurative’ term (vehicle)” (Brown, 2018, p. 3).
🧠 Epistemic TransferThe cognitive shift required to interpret metaphors, especially when source and target domains are abstract or unstated.“Considerable transfers of meaning from one epistemic element to another are needed to unlock Eliot’s accounting messages” (Brown, 2018, Abstract).
🌀 Form 4 MetaphorA highly implicit metaphor where neither the tenor nor vehicle is stated explicitly, demanding higher imaginative interpretation.“Form 4 metaphors… appear erratically structured or ambiguous” and require “higher order epistemic transfers” (Brown, 2018, p. 4; Walters, 2004, p. 160).
🏛️ Fragments of Accounting IdentityPartial representations of accounting practices and elements (e.g. balance sheets, timekeeping, assets) embedded within poetic or non-financial texts.“The poem’s references to tangible assets… are interpreted as ‘fragments of reporting identity’” (Brown, 2018, p. 11).
🌈 Aesthetic AccountingThe symbolic or sensuous representation of accounting concepts, emphasizing emotion, art, and subjectivity.“The aesthetic form of metaphor brings signification closer to emotive or sensual experience” (Walters-York, 1996, p. 54).
Transformative AccountingA concept of accounting that explores spiritual, ethical, or societal dimensions, often beyond technical or numerical scopes.“Transformative accounting also accounts for sins and the soul… accounting can be perceived as something sacred” (Brown, 2018, p. 4; Jacobs & Walker, 2004, p. 362).
📜 Reporting SublimityThe poetic or elevated framing of accounting as a medium for storytelling, disclosure, and narrative creation.“Reporting sublimity is often rendered by personal accounts… where words or music reveal song or speech” (Brown, 2018, p. 4).
🎭 Performative ApproachRecognizes that meaning arises not just from what is written, but through how texts are enacted or interpreted by readers.“The fate of any account lies in the actor’s translation” (Catasus, 2008, p. 1007).
Contribution of “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown to Literary Theory/Theories
🎨 Literary Theory📚 Contribution📝 Referenced Quotation from the Article
🔍 Reader-Response TheoryEmphasizes the active role of the reader in constructing meaning. Brown’s analysis invites readers to engage deeply with the metaphorical structure, highlighting the subjectivity of interpretation.“The actor’s processes of translation used in this study are directed towards the purposeful detection and interpretation of accounting-related metaphor-use” (Brown, 2018, p. 3).
🌀 Post-StructuralismSupports the view that meaning is not fixed and is generated through interpretation, fragmentation, and ambiguity. Brown shows how metaphors challenge literal meanings and encourage multiplicity.“Texts may be open to arbitrariness and go beyond one-to-one correspondence” (Brown, 2018, p. 3).
🧠 Cognitive PoeticsIntegrates linguistics and literary criticism, showing how cognition shapes interpretation of literary texts. Brown uses conceptual metaphor theory to show how cognition structures literary meaning.“Metaphors… are constituted by relationships among concepts” and serve “to lend substance to abstract or elusive concepts” (Walters-York, 1996, p. 119).
🧱 New HistoricismConnects literature to its cultural, social, and economic context. Brown examines Eliot’s background in banking and accounting to interpret the poem’s metaphoric imagery.“Eliot may have been exposed to facets of accounting and accountability that ultimately influenced the discourse, signification and textuality of the poem” (Brown, 2018, p. 2).
📖 Interdisciplinary Literary TheoryPromotes integrating methods and insights from other disciplines. Brown’s work bridges literary analysis and accounting theory, opening new paths for interpretation.“The relevance of interpreting the forms of accounting metaphors… is that it draws attention to accounting’s presence in a social and historical milieu” (Brown, 2018, p. 2).
🧚 Aestheticism and SymbolismBrown shows how Eliot’s symbolic and aesthetic language can be interpreted through metaphorical structure, reflecting both sensory imagery and deeper symbolic meanings.“The expressive aesthetic form of accounting renders a prosaic and spiritual account by Prufrock” (Brown, 2018, p. 11).
🕊️ Existential Literary CriticismThe poem is traditionally seen as reflecting existential anxiety. Brown complements this by linking Prufrock’s indecision to metaphors of measurement, liability, and identity.“The eventual absence of non-current property assets… are then overtaken by the intangible liabilities of human anguishes for reflection, re-reflection and self-doubt” (Brown, 2018, p. 11).
Examples of Critiques Through “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
📚 Literary Work🔍 Critique via Brown’s Metaphorical Framework Explanation Using Brown’s Method
🕰The Waste Land – T.S. EliotForm 4 Metaphors & Reporting SublimitySimilar to Prufrock, this poem’s fragmented structure and spiritual decay can be read through metaphors of accounting “liabilities,” “broken time,” and “intangible losses” — highlighting disordered epistemic systems (Brown, 2018, pp. 4, 11).
💔 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott FitzgeraldFragments of Accounting Identity & Aesthetic AccountingGatsby’s lavish lifestyle and obsession with wealth can be viewed as metaphorical “balance sheets” of identity and emotion—symbolizing how self-worth is calculated and presented aesthetically (Brown, 2018, p. 4).
🧭 Heart of Darkness – Joseph ConradTransformative Accounting & Epistemic TransferMarlow’s journey can be analyzed as a metaphorical audit of colonialism’s moral bankruptcy, requiring “epistemic shifts” between imperial rhetoric and inner truth (Brown, 2018, pp. 3–4).
🎭 Hamlet – William ShakespeareForm 3 Metaphors & Existential MeasurementHamlet’s delays and soliloquies can be seen as metaphorical “revisions,” where action is deferred like a financial audit. “Do I dare disturb the universe?” echoes Hamlet’s own paralysis (Brown, 2018, p. 8).
Criticism Against “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
  • 🔸 Overextension of Accounting Frameworks
    The analysis might be seen as forcing accounting metaphors onto a poem not originally intended to carry such meanings, potentially overshadowing its literary, existential, and modernist themes.
  • 🟠 Limited Engagement with Broader Literary Criticism
    Brown focuses primarily on accounting metaphors and gives less attention to well-established literary interpretations, such as psychoanalytic, feminist, or formalist readings of Prufrock.
  • 🔹 Risk of Reductionism
    By interpreting complex poetic imagery through the lens of accounting, there’s a risk of reducing the poem’s rich ambiguity to technical or disciplinary terms, limiting the scope of its literary resonance.
  • 🟡 Speculative Metaphor Interpretation
    The identification of Form 4 metaphors—where neither tenor nor vehicle is stated—can appear speculative or subjective, as it relies heavily on inferred meanings not directly supported by textual evidence.
  • 🟢 Interdisciplinary Accessibility
    While innovative, the highly specialized accounting terminology may alienate readers from literary or humanities backgrounds unfamiliar with accounting theory or jargon.
  • 🔴 Historical Context May Be Overstated
    The argument that Eliot’s accounting-related background significantly shaped Prufrock may be overstated, especially given that he wrote the poem before his formal employment at Lloyd’s Bank.
  • 🔵 Potential Confirmation Bias
    Since the analysis sets out to find accounting metaphors, there’s a chance it selectively highlights lines that suit this interpretation while ignoring those that resist such reading.
Representative Quotations from “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown with Explanation
🎯 Quotation Explanation
🔵 “The poem relies on accounting metaphors that use either unstated vehicle concepts, unstated tenor concepts or both to convey dense messages of accounting.” (Abstract)Highlights how Eliot’s metaphors operate on a conceptual level, requiring deep interpretation to uncover implicit financial imagery.
🟢 “Metaphors… transfer meaning from one epistemic element or domain to another to generate new understandings.” (p. 1)Emphasizes metaphor as a cognitive bridge, aligning with conceptual metaphor theory central to Brown’s framework.
🟣 “Form 4 metaphors… appear erratically structured or ambiguous.” (p. 4)Introduces the most complex metaphor category—neither literal nor figurative terms are named—requiring imaginative leaps.
🔴 “The poem’s references to tangible non-current property assets… are interpreted as fragments of reporting identity.” (p. 11)Links the material imagery in the poem (e.g., streets, rooms) with accounting’s structural components, such as asset classification.
🟠 “Do I dare disturb the universe?” also reminds audiences of the potentiality of accounting… (p. 8)Connects Prufrock’s existential questioning with the transformative, even philosophical, power of accounting theory.
🟡 “Measured out my life with coffee spoons” might be seen as a spiritual emblem of accounting… (p. 11)Reinterprets this iconic line as an understated metaphor for accounting’s obsession with measurement and detail.
🔵 “Accounting’s transformative precepts create symbolic power structures of control over domains of attire and vanity.” (p. 8)Demonstrates how accounting extends metaphorically into cultural, aesthetic, and personal identity domains.
🟣 “Poetry is recognized as a form of accounting scholarship that offers fruitful paths for understanding accounting endeavour.” (p. 4)Reframes poetry as an epistemological tool that can be used for critical insights into accounting practice.
🟢 “The Love Song dares to question accounting’s deeper purpose…” (p. 12)Suggests that Eliot’s work can critique and reimagine accounting beyond numbers—into ethical and philosophical realms.
🔴 “Readers must make a considerable epistemic shift… to expose the hidden meanings of accounting resting behind the poem’s images.” (p. 12)A call to readers to engage cognitively and creatively, as understanding the metaphors demands an interdisciplinary mindset.
Suggested Readings: “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
  1. Brown, Alistair. “A metaphorical analysis of the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot.” Accounting Forum. Vol. 42. No. 1. No longer published by Elsevier, 2018.
  2. Locke, Frederick W. “Dante and T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock.” MLN, vol. 78, no. 1, 1963, pp. 51–59. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3042942. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  3. Lowe, Peter. “Prufrock in St. Petersburg: The Presence of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 28, no. 3, 2005, pp. 1–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25167524. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  4. Jacobs, Willis D. “T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’” The News Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, vol. 8, no. 1, 1954, pp. 5–6. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1346407. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.