Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- 1 Metaphor, language, and thought
- METAPHOR AND MEANING
- METAPHOR AND REPRESENTATION
- 9 Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social policy
- 10 The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language
- 11 The contemporary theory of metaphor
- 12 Process and products in making sense of tropes
- 13 Metaphor, induction, and social policy: The convergence of macroscopic and microscopic views
- METAPHOR AND UNDERSTANDING
- METAPHOR AND SCIENCE
- METAPHOR AND EDUCATION
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
11 - The contemporary theory of metaphor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- 1 Metaphor, language, and thought
- METAPHOR AND MEANING
- METAPHOR AND REPRESENTATION
- 9 Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social policy
- 10 The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language
- 11 The contemporary theory of metaphor
- 12 Process and products in making sense of tropes
- 13 Metaphor, induction, and social policy: The convergence of macroscopic and microscopic views
- METAPHOR AND UNDERSTANDING
- METAPHOR AND SCIENCE
- METAPHOR AND EDUCATION
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Do not go gentle into that good night.
– Dylan ThomasDeath is the mother of beauty.
– Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning”Introduction
These famous lines by Thomas and Stevens are examples of what classical theorists, at least since Aristotle, have referred to as metaphor: instances of novel poetic language in which words like “mother,” “go,” and “night” are not used in their normal everyday sense. In classical theories of language, metaphor was seen as a matter of language, not thought. Metaphorical expressions were assumed to be mutually exclusive with the realm of ordinary everday language: everyday language had no metaphor, and metaphor used mechanisms outside the realm of everyday conventional language.
The classical theory was taken so much for granted over the centuries that many people didn't realize that it was just a theory. The theory was not merely taken to be true, but came to be taken as definitional. The word “metaphor” was defined as a novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept are used outside of their normal conventional meaning to express a “similar” concept.
But such issues are not matters for definitions; they are empirical questions. As a cognitive scientist and a linguist, one asks: what are the generalizations governing the linguistic expressions referred to classically as “poetic metaphors?” When this question is answered rigorously, the classical theory turns out to be false.
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- Metaphor and Thought , pp. 202 - 251Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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