• open scratch
• http://www.etymonline.com
Pétur hjá Tolla 1 Oct 2008
Metaphor
Lakoff and Johnson
• There is no painless way to get inflation
down. We now have an excellent
foundation on which to build.
• Her career was in ruins.
Lakoff and Johnson
How do they define ‘metaphor’?
Source and target?
Ever heard of a mixed metaphor?
Lakoff and Johnson:
… why they annoy me!
• Literal vs. figurative language?
Lock (below) says: ‘All language is troped, which is to
say that no word has precisely one “literal” meaning.’
The traditional approach:
(Etymonline): ‘Technically, in rhetoric, [a trope is] a
figure of speech which consists in the use of a word or
phrase in a sense other than that which is proper to it.’
Lakoff and Johnson:
… why they annoy me!
The traditional standpoint:
• There is ‘literal’ language which really means what it
says, AND WHICH IS ORIGINAL AND PRIMARY
• and there is ‘figurative’ language, which is derived
from ‘literal language’, and is ‘poetic’ and
‘secondary’.
Lakoff and Johnson:
… why they annoy me!
’s approach:
• If anything, it’s the other way round: troped, poetic
language is primary, ‘literal’ language derived.
• But Lock says: ‘All language is troped, which is to
say that no word has precisely one “literal” meaning.’
• We´ll come back to this.
Lakoff and Johnson:
… why they annoy me!
• Literal vs. figurative language?
• Dead metaphors?
Dead metaphors?
Lakoff and Johnson seem to have decided that “dead
metaphors” are no longer metaphoric – no longer tropes.
(Tolli Handout 1)
Following Barfield, Lock, Lecercle and others my
contention in this lecture will be that an understanding
of what ‘dead’ metaphors are is fundamental to our
understanding of figurative language.
Dead metaphors?
‘ … one of the first things that a student of etymology…
discovers for himself is that every modern language
… is apparently nothing, from beginning to end, but
an unconscionable tissue of dead, or petrified
metaphors.’
(Barfield, see below)
• Dead metaphors (catachresis) seem to constitute the
material of living language.
• All these terms are dead metaphors:
metaphor
dead metaphor
literal
figurative
fact and fiction
trope
verse
metaphor - translation
• Gk. metaphora "a transfer," especially of the
sense of one word to a different word, lit. "a
carrying over," from metapherein "transfer, carry
over," from meta- "over, across" (see meta-) +
pherein "to carry, bear"
• transfero, I transfer, -tuli –(t)latum
• PIE *tel-, *tol- "to bear, carry" Atlas "the Bearer"
of Heaven;" L. tolerare "to bear, support," latus
"borne;" O.E. þolian "to endure;" Icel. þola
From Lock’s Key to Reading
http://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/
Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf
Linguistic Tropes
All language is troped, which is to say that no
word has precisely one ‘literal’ meaning.
The meaning of ‘literal’?
From Lock’s Key to Reading
http://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/
Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf
Linguistic Tropes
All language is troped, which is to say that no
word has precisely one ‘literal’ meaning.
From Lock’s Key to Reading
http://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/
Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf
Linguistic Tropes
The ways in which meanings deviate can be
classed under two broad headings:
Metaphor and Metonymy.
From Lock’s Key to Reading
http://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/
Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf
Metaphor works on the principle of likeness;
Metonymy works on the principle of contiguity
– no necessary likeness. The Crown. England
collapses.
A particular form of metaphor is the simile,
indicated by the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’.
Simile is explicit metaphor. Most metaphor is
implicit: the face of the clock, and its hands.
From Lock’s Key to Reading
http://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/
Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf
Metaphor works on the principle of likeness;
Metonymy works on the principle of proximity.
A common form of metonymy is synecdoche, or
the proximity of containment (whether container
for contained, part for whole, or vice versa): pass
the bottle, pass the salt; lend us a hand; use your
head; a grin without a cat.
From Lock’s Key to Reading
http://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/
Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf
A large amount of metaphor works by
personification (prosopopoeia), the
comparison of the inhuman to the human: body,
corporation, legs, chest, trunk, head and foot
(capital, pedestal).
From Lock’s Key to Reading
http://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/
Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf
Most of the time metaphor and metonymy pass
unnoticed. This, the daily waking slumber of the
communicating mind, we call catachresis. When
our attention is drawn to a trope, we are enjoying
literature, and attending to language.
catachresis
kata-khresis = abusio
“The use of a word in a context that differs from
its proper application.” This figure is generally
considered a vice; however, Quintilian defends
its use as a way by which one adapts existing
terms to applications where a proper term does
not exist.
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/
catachresis
Catachresis is usually interpreted as abusio, the
misuse or abuse of metaphor; but Lock and other
writers today use the term in its meaning “make
full use of, thoroughly employ”. This usage is in
accordance with the etymology of the word:
catachresis
kataa-khresis, from kata-khraomai, make full
use of, apply, use to the uttermost, use up,
misuse, abuse
kata down, from above. Khrao, to furnish
what is needful.
kata-khresis = ab-usio > ‘abuse’
Owen Barfield, 1898-1997
“The first and last Inkling”
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams
“He towers above us all.” (C.S. Lewis)
Owen Barfield, 1898-1997
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Poetic Diction: A Study In Meaning (Faber & Gwyer 1928)
Romanticism Comes of Age (1944) essays
This Ever Diverse Pair (1950) as G. A. L. Burgeon
Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960's (1963)
Saving the Appearances: a study in Idolatry (1965)
Unancestral Voice (1965)
The Silver Trumpet (Eerdmans 1968)[1]
Speaker's Meaning (1971) c.1967
History, Guilt, and Habit (Wesleyan University Press, 1981)
What Coleridge Thought (1971)
The Rediscovery of Meaning, and other essays (1977)
History in English Words (1985) with a foreword by W. H. Auden
Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis (1989) edited by G. B. Tennyson
Owen Barfield, 1898-1997
• Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928)
• Saving the Appearances: a study in idolatry
(1965)
• History, Guilt, and Habit (1981)
• What Coleridge Thought (1971)
• The Rediscovery of Meaning, and other essays
(1977)
• History in English Words (1985) with a foreword
by W. H. Auden
Owen Barfield, 1898-1997
• Poetic Diction: a study in meaning
(1928)
• Saving the Appearances: a study in
idolatry (1965)
• The Rediscovery of Meaning, and other
essays (1977)
– ‘The Rediscovery of Meaning’
– ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
Poetic Diction: a study in meaning
(1928)
Chapter III Metaphor
Chapter IV Meaning and Myth
Poetic Diction: a study in meaning
(1928). Chapter III Metaphor
… one of the first things that a student
of etymology… discovers for himself is
that every modern language … is
apparently nothing, from beginning to
end, but an unconscionable tissue of
dead, or petrified metaphors. 63
Poetic Diction: a study in meaning
(1928). Chapter III Metaphor
If we trace the meanings of a great many
words … about as far back as etymology
can take us, we are at once made to realize
that an overwhelming proportion, if not all,
of them referred in earlier days to one of
these two solid things – a solid, sensible
object, or some animal (probably human)
activity. 63-4
Poetic Diction: a study in meaning
(1928). Chapter III Metaphor
abstract – abs trahere “afdraga”
centre L. centrum "center," orig. fixed point of
the two points of a compass, from Gk. kentron
"sharp point, goad," from kentein "stitch," from
PIE base *kent- "to prick" (Etymonline)
goad, broddstafur til að reka naut
Poetic Diction: a study in meaning
(1928). Chapter III Metaphor
Look up abstract terms in
http://www.etymonline.com
inspiration
pleasure
idea
nature
circle
truth
Does it make sense to say that “circle” is an
abstract term?
Eric Havelock, A Preface to Plato 1963
Poetic Diction: a study in meaning
(1928). Chapter III Metaphor
Anatole France
L’âme possède Dieu dans la mesure où elle participe à
l’absolu
The soul possesses God to the extent that she
participates in the Absolute
Le souffle est assis sur celui qui brille, au boisson du
don qu’elle reçoit en ce qui est tout délíé
The breath is seated on something shining, in the
container of the share it receives in what is completely
untied.
example
genos in Homer = “family, race”
Plato also “sex, gender”
Xenonphone use the word to mean “type”
genus, genetic, kyn, kind, konr, kona etc
SKIP:
example
• genus
– (pl. genera), 1551 as a term of logic (biological sense dates from
1608), from L. genus (gen. generis) "race, stock, kind," cognate
with Gk. genos "race, kind," and gonos "birth, offspring, stock,"
from PIE base *gen-/*gon-/*gn- "produce, beget, be born" (cf.
Skt. janati "begets, bears," janah "race," jatah "born;" Avestan
zizanenti "they bear;" Gk. gignesthai "to become, happen;" L.
gignere "to beget," gnasci "to be born," genius "procreative
divinity, inborn tutelary spirit, innate quality," ingenium "inborn
character," germen "shoot, bud, embryo, germ;" Lith. gentis
"kinsmen;" Goth. kuni "race;" O.E. cennan "beget, create;"
O.H.G. kind "child;" O.Ir. ro-genar "I was born;" Welsh geni "to be
born").
SKIP:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Trojan War 12th or 13 cent ?if factual
Homer 9th or 8th cent
Hesiod around 700
Socrates 469 -399
Plato 428-347
Xenophon born ?431, historian,
Memorabilia (defence of Soc).
• Aristotle 384-322
Summary so far
• Abstract words seem to have concrete
original meanings
• The further we go back in time, the more
‘alive’ these ‘dead’ metaphors seem to be.
• In other words, the older the language, the
more figurative it seems to be.
• Isn’t there a paradox here somewhere?
paradox
•
•
•
We assume a time when mankind was a
thinker of simple material thoughts, and
had no figurative language.
Then suddenly, humans started thinking
abstract thoughts and became poets to
express these thoughts.
Isn’t there a paradox here somewhere?
Universal Metaphor Index (!)
High
Low
Long, long, long
long ago
paradox
•
•
•
The paradox occurs when we make a
distinction between literal and figurative
language.
This distinction leads us to assume that
metaphor is derived language,
and that non-metaphoric, ‘literal’
language is original and fundamental
‘literal’ language without
metaphor
Cf Lock (above):
All language is troped, which is to say that no
word has precisely one ‘literal’ meaning.
Barfield, Lock, Lecercle, etc,. question the
existence of literal language.
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of "Literal”’
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
I.A Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1936
–
–
vehicle (literal or surface meaning)
tenor (the figurative meaning)
• To what extent do these terms correspond to L
and J’s “source” and “target”?
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
• Dead metaphors (Lock: catachresis)
• Repeat:
Following Barfield, Lock, Lecercle and others
my contention in this lecture will be that an
understanding of what ‘dead’ metaphors
are is fundamental to our understanding of
figurative language.
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
‘Etymologically, we find a kind of graduated
scale in the relationships between vehicle and
tenor’ in the following 4 words: (35)
v and t clearly distinguished
• outsider
the v ‘rank’ still in use
• noble
the v ‘rank’ hardly in use
• gentle
the v ‘sharp stone’
• scruple
(scrupulus) has disappeared
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
The traditional view:
4 stages
1. literary meaning → material object
2. concomitant meaning → vehicle and tenor
3. substituted meaning → the vehicle is vanishing
4. final stage → new (altered) literal meaning
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
Barfield:
• ‘born’ literal
• ‘achieved’ literal
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
Examples:
pneuma → anima → âme
spiritus ‘wind’ → spirit
‘breath …. soul’
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
‘Tens of thousands’ of such abstract words.
Progress, tendency, culture, democracy, liberality,
inhibition, motivation, responsibility
- these are ‘now just “literal” words – the sort of words
we have to use, when we are admonished not to speak
in metaphors.’ (38)
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
Barfield rejects this view of the origin of metaphor.
Scenario:
‘I am a primitive man, who has just become aware of a
sort of immaterial something within me, but I have no
word for it. In my experience up to now, it is not even
the sort of thing for which there are words. What I have
got available is a bunch of strictly literal labels for
things like sun, moon, cloud, rock, river, wind, etc.
None of these words has any immaterial overtones at all
[or else they could not be ‘born’ literal]. The word
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
wind, for instance, simply means what we today call air
or oxygen, the physical stuff which keeps on coming
into or going out of me. I now take the step of
substituting my word for, and with it my thought of,
wind for my wordless thought for the sort of something.
That is the picture.’ p.40.
- Metaphor-making is a common way to express new
thoughts in modern society – figurative language comes
easy to us. but ‘what we are trying to imagine now is the
first metaphor in a wholly literal world.’
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
…. ‘what we are trying to imagine now is the first
metaphor in a wholly literal world.’
An impossible scenario; because ‘consciousness and
symbolization are simultaneous and correlative.’ (40)
We are asked to believe that the new concept of ‘spirit’
came into being in primitive man’s mind without a
symbol, and so he used another existent symbol for it.
This existing symbol was a vehicle, and the new tenor
must have been conceptually separable from its vehicle.
- Bullshit! (vehicle = moooo, tenor = smelly language)
Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’
in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays
Alternative: there were already some connotations in the
word wind which primitive man recognized. Wind was
the life of the world; inside him was the same life.
From its very beginning, the word ‘wind’ was a vehicle
with a tenor.
If everything – the forest, the stones, the sunset, the
animals – were part of the same reality that man was
part of – if everything was alive, concepts were already
metaphorical from the beginning.
Universal Metaphor Index
High
(revised version)
Long, long, long
long ago
Low
Today
Barfield’s conclusions:
‘Literalness is a a quality which some words have achieved in the
course of their history; it is not a quality with which the first
words were born.’ (41)
Most words which signify objects began life as vehicles with
tenor – if they are literal now, it is because they have lost their
tenor.
‘Just as our immaterial language has acquired its literal meanings
by dropping the vehicular reference, so our material language has
acquired its reference by dropping the tenorial reference.’ 41
Barfield’s conclusions:
Examples:
Spirit originally meant the wind in the forest and in ourselves. It
has lost the material meaning.
Heart was originally the pulsating organ in the breast with its
connotations of emotion. In medical language today it has lost its
immaterial meaning, but we retain this meaning day to day: ‘No
one has the heart to tell him she has run off with Steve.’ We call
this metaphorical usage, and if we keep to this terminology we
must also say that the word heart also has this metaphorical
meaning from the very beginning of language.
Barfield’s conclusions:
The implicationalist vs. the explicationalist view of metaphor:
• explicationalist: normal language is literal: there is ‘some sort
of unclouded correspondence’ (43) between an external reality
and literal language. All metaphors have a literal vehicle
(Lakoff’s source) and a figurative tenor (L’s target) which can
be detached from each other. Any metaphor can also be
expressed with ‘literal’ language.
• implicationalist: normal language is metapahorical, and always
was.. ‘What we call literalness is a late stage in a long-drawnout historical process’ (43).
Barfield’s conclusions:
And finally:
‘If the word on its very first appearance was already a vehicle
with a tenor, then the given affinity which I suggested between
the concept of wind and the concept of spirit must have been
“given” in the nature of things and not by some kind of friction in
language.’ 42
‘.. the mind of man is not , as Coleridge put it, “a lazy onlooker”
on an external world but itself a structural component of the
world it contemplates.’ 42
Next on the agenda
The role of literacy in this development.