metaphor as emotive change: a triangulated approach to thought, language, and emotion relatable to...

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Rhetoric Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, 44–63, 2013 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0735-0198 print / 1532-7981 online DOI: 10.1080/07350198.2013.739493 LEA P OVOZHAEV Kent State University Metaphor as Emotive Change: A Triangulated Approach to Thought, Language, and Emotion Relatable to Aristotelian Sensate Perception From Aristotelian logic and sensate perception to Lakoffian rational and experi- ential meaning-making, I merge theories: Metaphor is emotive change, a use of language that expresses emotion and evokes emotion, which can inform behav- ior and persuade. The power of metaphor is in the physiological relationship between reason and emotion in the brain, supported by recent research from Alice Flaherty, neurologist and writer. Metaphors are sensory experiences, images brought-before-the-eye, which effect persuasion as rhetorical tools in argument. I argue that emotion-language-thought is in dialectical relationship, expressed by metaphor. [T]he greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor . . . [It is] a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. ––Aristotle, Poetics 22 Introduction Metaphor is commonly defined as a comparison between two things, based on resemblance or similarity, without using “like” or “as.” Aristotle is said to have defined it as the act of “giving the thing a name that belongs to some- thing else” (21). The Greek word for metaphor means to carry something across. 1 44

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Page 1: Metaphor as Emotive Change: A Triangulated Approach to Thought, Language, and Emotion Relatable to Aristotelian Sensate Perception

Rhetoric Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, 44–63, 2013Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0735-0198 print / 1532-7981 onlineDOI: 10.1080/07350198.2013.739493

LEA POVOZHAEV

Kent State University

Metaphor as Emotive Change: A TriangulatedApproach to Thought, Language, and Emotion

Relatable to Aristotelian Sensate Perception

From Aristotelian logic and sensate perception to Lakoffian rational and experi-ential meaning-making, I merge theories: Metaphor is emotive change, a use oflanguage that expresses emotion and evokes emotion, which can inform behav-ior and persuade. The power of metaphor is in the physiological relationshipbetween reason and emotion in the brain, supported by recent research from AliceFlaherty, neurologist and writer. Metaphors are sensory experiences, imagesbrought-before-the-eye, which effect persuasion as rhetorical tools in argument. Iargue that emotion-language-thought is in dialectical relationship, expressed bymetaphor.

[T]he greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor . . . [It is] asign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perceptionof the similarity in dissimilars.

––Aristotle, Poetics 22

Introduction

Metaphor is commonly defined as a comparison between two things, basedon resemblance or similarity, without using “like” or “as.” Aristotle is said tohave defined it as the act of “giving the thing a name that belongs to some-thing else” (21). The Greek word for metaphor means to carry something across.1

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Diomedes, the fifth-century hero in Greek mythology, is attributed with thisdefinition: “The transferring of things and words from their proper signification toan improper similitude for the sake of beauty, necessity, polish, or emphasis” (ArsGrammatica). Kenneth Burke defines metaphor as “a device for seeing somethingin terms of something else. It brings out the thisness of a that, or the thatness ofa this” (503). John Searle argues, “[M]etaphorical meaning is always a speaker’sutterance meaning” (250).

In what follows I define metaphor as emotive change. Furthermore, my argu-ment is based on the definition of emotion as physiological, or brain-based, and asa phenomenon wed to logic. Therefore, feeling and thinking are not distinctly sep-arate but always inform one another, and metaphors “work” (or effect thought andfeeling) because of a whole-body relationship that is aptly addressed in pairingconcepts to suggest feeling and thought. For example, a dying friend recently toldme that her illness is a nightmare. This simple metaphor (a mere cliché) commu-nicates both thought and feeling and makes a unique statement by which I inquireabout her understanding and feeling in relationship to her illness. My friend’smetaphorical entailments develop communication of her understanding as wellas her emotional response to the perceived situation. For example, she says thatshe continues to have a dream that if she puts money in a cup, then she will live.I respond to her with silence, willing that she develop the metaphor. She movesto another subject. She does not need to eat, only to fill the cup. I could haveasked if she wants the nightmare to continue as a way to encourage her to log-ically respond to her feeling, perhaps realizing that the nightmare was not whatshe wanted to continue to endure.

My argument here is that metaphor is a pragmatic means to specifyingthought and feeling as it manifests for an individual. I further argue that listeningto another’s metaphors and responding improves communication in most contextsbecause the metaphor often expresses the speaker’s affective response, allowingthe hearer/reader to know how s/he feels. In what follows I highlight the relation-ship among thought-language-emotion in theories of metaphor, particularly fromancient philosopher Aristotle and contemporary scholars Lakoff and Johnson, andsubmit that metaphor is a timeless rhetorical tool that effects changed feelings-thoughts. Though not demonstrated here, I hypothesize that because emotion andreason are evoked simultaneously, metaphors can be effective arguments and thuslead to changed behaviors.

I harken back to Aristotle (and Aristotelian rhetorician Sara Newman), movemy way up to contemporary scholarship, and then consider recent neurologicalresearch by writer Alice Flaherty. Newman asserts that in recent times metaphorshave been shown “to activate cognitive mechanisms on the part of their listen-ers” (1). However, for Aristotle, metaphor was an element of style, and argument

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was systematic including the use of style. Newman (among other contempo-rary metaphor scholars such as John Kirby) argues that Aristotle’s theory is notincompatible with today’s cognitive theories on metaphor. Though Lakoff andJohnson argue their theory is antithetical to Aristotle’s classical view, Kirby pointsout that both theories account for the pervasive, everyday nature of metaphor.Furthermore, both theories consider groups of words as meaning-sets, which sug-gests that Aristotle (though not aware) would not have been antagonistic to theargument that cognitive processes allow for new concepts to be expressed andsuggested. The classical and contemporary cognitive views also agree that timeand place uniquely effect rhetoric. Language is changing because persuasion isdependent upon culture. Kirby and Newman both argue that Aristotle did not sep-arate the literal from the metaphorical but saw language as semiotic with a sign,object, and interpretant (relatable to contemporary theories on interaction, com-parison, and substitution). In fact, they argue, Aristotle notes that sometimes theonly semiotic course is to metaphor, as it represents the most persuasive avail-able means and can even be the most logical and clear way of saying something,depending on the interlocutors and their context.

There has been much discussion on cognition and language, and Flahertydemonstrates the ways in which emotion is a physical brain state relating to cre-ativity and illness. My argument is informed by contemporary studies of metaphorand studies of neurology and language by scholars such as Antonio Damasio,Jordynn Jack, and Alice Flaherty who demonstrate with scientific data the inter-relationship of thought-language-emotion. However, using a rhetorical frame, myargument is not on the workings of the brain but the effects of metaphor incommunication and the consequences of language use. I argue that metaphoris reflective of mental activity (such as emotion and logic) and is brain-based.Metaphor as a rhetorical tool merges concepts and therefore generates new feel-ings. Understanding thought-language-emotion as parts of the rhetorical situationin a writing classroom makes metaphor an important consideration in the teachingand practice of writing.

For Aristotle neither belief nor judgment is involved in metaphorical lan-guage, but it is rather a physical, sensate experience. Metaphor constructsnew meanings that generate new feelings, which affect the physical senses.Furthermore, seeing (as this is Aristotle’s focus) influences metaphor in actu-alizing linguistic ideas. A. J. Richards argues that metaphor does not alwayshave an image, that it may be an abstraction, countering what the Romanticsargued about metaphor drawing together concrete with the abstract. Richards’sargument is that what is most important about language is the way in whichwords bring meanings that images alone do not have. This is important to mytriangulated approach in this article concerning the interdependent relationship

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between thought-language-emotion as an embodied phenomenon. While manyscholars are familiar with Aristotle’s work in general and some also with the per-spective I offer, in this article I aim to navigate through what Aristotle says aboutmetaphor and what has been made of his discussion, and to consider ancient per-ception of metaphor in light of today’s use and study of metaphor. Aristotle has anindelible imprint on Western understanding of metaphor, and I relate what seemsto be his understanding of the persuasiveness of metaphor with widely knowncontemporary scholars Lakoff and Johnson as a way to ground my analysis intothe past and present uses of metaphor.

Ancient Perceptions of Metaphor

Aristotle laid the foundation for much of Western thought on metaphor,style, and audience. Through his concept of “bringing-before-the-eyes,” Aristotleargued that metaphors are logical arguments effecting sensate perceptions.Scholars have responded to the foundational underpinnings of Aristotelianthought on metaphor as systematic, logical, and sensate by addressing metaphorand cognition, metaphor and belief and judgment, and metaphor and emotion.Predominant contemporary metaphor scholarship stems from a rationalist frame-work that assumes an analogical structure whereby metaphors are structurallyaligned (concepts paired represent informal logical structures between thoughtand language). Some contemporary scholars such as Anne Buttimer argue thatmetaphor appeals to emotion, aesthetic sense, memory, and will as much as itdoes to intellect. Lakoff and Johnson argue that conceptual metaphors are wedto culture. My argument draws together varied perspectives on metaphor withwhat I perceive as a shared focus among theories. Despite how and why onepresumes the following occurs, metaphors effect emotive change. This mattersbecause metaphor can be a useful heuristic for changing behaviors, one’s ownand by the course of persuasion, others’.

As referenced by studies in neurology, it has been argued that emotion isbrain-based and works in tandem alongside logic. The West has excluded emo-tion because it is subjective rather than objective, also excluding imagination forthe same reason. In his preface to The Body and the Mind, Mark Johnson claimsthat without imagination, nothing in the world could be meaningful. We couldn’tmake sense of experiences or reason toward knowledge of reality. Furthermore,he proposes that rationality is imaginative (that the way a person reasons dependson subjective experience, and it is not universal and “objective” truth but, rather,reality as an individual knows it). Metaphors, he claims, are pervasive, irreducible,imaginative structures of human understandings, and they influence meanings andrationales. Metaphors effect understanding and feeling simultaneously because

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of their embodied suggestions that depend on lived experience in the world.Furthermore, behaviors stem from the manner of thought and feeling commu-nicated. For example: you are a goon, I say to my four-year-old who refuses hissocks and pants and going to school. I think of a sweet, green monster; I feelimpatience and love; he acts like a goon, and I respond with a laugh and a nudge.Clearly a playful metaphor, it is still an argument pairing unlike things and effect-ing both emotion and new thoughts that call forth behavior. Without logic (torecognize the illogical association and make me laugh) and a sense of feeling,the metaphor does not work. Metaphor effects emotions and births new thought;however, even if the metaphor you are a goon is used again, the concept and feel-ing would continue to develop and communicate, based on the relationship sharedwith my son and the language used to communicate that relationship (which is themanifestation of my thoughts and feelings for him).

Language is context dependent. For example, hypothetically speaking, myson is twenty, living at home, and not working. He is eating my favorite choco-late out of the freezer and leaves crumbs on the counter I’ve just wiped. Throughclenched teeth I mutter, you are a goon, and my metaphor has a different mean-ing here. The meaning is attached to the affective response, which, in this case, isirritation different from the feeling of frustration with my toddler. Philip Eubanksargues that metaphors are fundamentally responsive, rhetorically constituted, andtheir meanings and effects are context dependent. Deborah Tannen defines com-munication as shared meaning, as well as perceiving coherence and one’s sensein the world. By such a definition, communication is not only between people butconcerns a subjective sense of self in meaning construction.

While today metaphor connotes meaning transfer, new seeing, and newunderstanding (elaborated further on), Aristotle’s notion of “bringing-before-the-eyes” relates seeing and action by way of the appropriate metaphor. An experiencewith language could bring pleasure or pain, and pleasure was experienced byeliciting knowledge. Newman addresses the joy-pain concept:

For Aristotle, each emotion elicits pleasure or pain; this affect is reg-istered as a change in the appropriate organ which is associated witha judgment or belief. This means that in metaphorical situations asin the case of perception, per se, pleasure reflects the audience’ssensory response to a mean whose recognition is brought about by“bringing-before-the-eyes.” (19)

Furthermore, mixed emotions, such as feeling both pleasure and pain, demon-strate complications that exist in physical and emotional tensions: desire, denial,guilt. Mark Turner and Gilles Fouconnier discuss the blending of contraries

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within a body of scholarship on metaphors and tension. Metaphors allow for in-between states of thought and feeling, mixed ideas and feelings that might becalled confusion, yet serve an integral role in deeper-level thinking. Thought-language-emotion is a cycle of experience hinged upon perception. Metaphorbrings together unlike ideas in this cycle and presents them as alike in someways. The audience perceives sensate experience and registers pleasure and/orpain. Therefore, it can be argued that while metaphor was not cognitive forAristotle, language served to evoke emotion as a physical experience (what wenow call embodied) and mental images. To Aristotle, both images and emotionsare rhetorically useful.

Aristotle was trying to categorize rhetoric, to systematize the use of languageand persuasion. Regarding metaphor, his discussions in On Rhetoric become moreambiguous and less categorical. States of mind were understood as temporary, andbecause the emotions could change, rhetoric that was persuasive would system-atically evoke the orator’s desired response. To Aristotle this was perceived lessas manipulation and deceit but as effective rhetorical art. Importantly, then, emo-tion was neutral and merely used for the greater purpose of persuasion. Aristotleaccords the poets as the first to study performance and language and commentson how their art has changed (a colloquial tone, from tetrameters to iambic meter)and will continue changing according to what seems most linguistically beauti-ful to a people (3.2.1404a). The poets pulled on the heart strings, using fear andpity to coerce. But an effective rhetor would be sincere, have his audience’s bestinterest in mind, and demonstrate sound knowledge of a subject, according toAristotle. Unlike some of the rhetors of his time, Aristotle argued that metaphorcould be more than mere ornament (as used by the poets). Still, he categorizedmetaphor explicitly as ornament, though with less elevation or extreme languagethan poetry, which meant that metaphor could be a means to “proper” lexis orlanguage. There were four kinds of metaphor for Aristotle (the other three hecalls synecdoche or metonymy): genus to species, species to genus, species tospecies, or from analogy––and analogy was the most pleasurable because it wasthe most instructive. There was no concept of a “figure of speech” in ancient times.Meaning transfer that was most precise was best. Seeing something in a differentway was learning, which was pleasure. Furthermore, for Aristotle, metaphor wasan implicit enthymeme––a rhetorical syllogism––which worked from the endoxaof a time and place in assuming something generally agreed upon as true andattaching a new thing to it. Consequently, meaning transferred and extended.

Metaphor affected the senses and led to persuasive power. Again, metaphorwas a means to persuasion, though clarity and logic could be embodied alsoin metaphor, and these were the predominant linguistic objectives for Aristotle.Even emotion was operationalized, for him (enthymemes). He observed that “all

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people carry on their conversations with metaphors and words in their native andprevailing meanings” (1405b). Language should be used naturally and not super-fluously, and metaphors would best communicate by relating things that wereneither too different nor too alike (1412b)––which points to Aristotle’s instructionto be moderate in speech and writing, carefully pairing things to evoke confidenceand understanding. For example, Aristotle illustrates the state of mind for thosewho feel confident if they have often succeeded (and not suffered) or have escapeddangers (and not suffered) by way of metaphor. He explains, those who are at seaduring a storm and are experienced and those who are at sea in a storm and find thenecessary resources will both feel confident (1383b). His assessment of people ingiven situations and states of mind is generalized and speaks to common humanpatterns of behavior, which places responses and appropriate language within amean between extremes.

However, feelings for Aristotle did not connote what they often do today,and this has wide implications for metaphor (particularly as I argue that thought-language-emotion are inseparable). For him parts of thinking were strictlyseparated, and he didn’t clarify logic with respect to pathos or emotions. Aristotleconsidered the reason for an emotion (or emotions), one’s state of mind, andthe audience’s response to the argument effected with emotion. In other words,his was a dynamic, systematic analysis that allowed for emotive elements butnot as ends in and of themselves. Kennedy exemplifies this point: “Emotions inAristotle’s sense are moods, temporary states of mind––not attributes of characteror natural desires––and arise in large part from perception of what is publicly dueto or from oneself at a given time. As such, they affect judgments” (115). Thus,emotions as sensate experiences (contingent on one’s perception) could persuade.Though this is not an argument Aristotle would have made in this way, the per-suasion is nevertheless there in his perception of metaphor and argument and ishelpful to re-appropriate in light of current scholarship and writing practices.

Newman discusses Aristotle’s approach to metaphor as a sensate experi-ence regulated by changing behaviors as a result of pleasure/pain. Newman’sperspective is an interesting analysis of perception as physical and independentof judgment, value, or belief. She encapsulates Stephen Everson’s Aristotle onPerception: “For Aristotle, then, perception is a response to external stimuli reg-istered in an organ that does not mobilize mental activities involving judgment, orbelief, or truth-values on the part of the perceiving individual.” For Aristotle per-ceptual knowledge depends on particulars, and is not universal, and is not wisdom.Newman argues Aristotle’s point that we use sensate perceptions to understandthe world but that the higher order of knowledge is one’s “awareness of percep-tion” (21). These experiences happen not through an organ in the body, whichaffects the sense perception, but by the “psuche”––which regulates all the body.

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The soul, Greek psuche, is to Aristotle what actually is and what can be––thepotential of becoming, affected by sense perception, which always latches on toan image. Beyond just recognizing things, it is through the psuche that one expe-riences what something is and does. Newman writes, “However difficult it is to‘translate’ into contemporary terms what Aristotle’s notion of sensation entails, itis not about awareness beyond the material impact of the perception on the organ”(22). There is then concrete, logical reality (the body) even in metaphysical con-cepts such as belief, soul, and understanding. Therefore, by bodily experience ofan image in the mind and a physiological sense response, the mind, heart, andsoul are discussable and rooted in physical reality. Furthermore, knowledge ofconcepts such as the mind, heart, and soul are experienced personally and con-structed socially by communication of the experience, which is, again, sharingmeaning.

Contemporary theorists Raymond Gibbs Jr., Paula Lima, and Edson Francozoargue that metaphor is patterned bodily experiences that serve as source domainsfor cross-linguistic metaphorical mappings. They conducted a study on hungerand desire, finding metaphors of desire map upon expressions of hunger (forexample, I was starved for touch). Unlike the Romantics, they argue thatmetaphors illustrate latent connections and are not necessarily making new con-nections. Metaphors revitalize language not by new associations but by recallingforgotten ones. Furthermore, in their theory on embodiment and metaphor theyargue that expressions come from common, everyday felt sensations of the bodyin action. From these experiences image schemas (experiential gestalts that con-tinue to change) emerge from sensorimotor activity. Unlike the argument for setschemata, image schemas are not static, universal, or logical propositions.

Aristotle appreciates the physical body and the effects language has onit. He did not have a dialogic understanding of language, which means thatthe rhetor acted upon the audience in a monolithic manner. For Aristotle arhetor before an audience using language presents images that affect sensoryperceptions. Newman argues that J. Lallot misrepresents Aristotle’s intentionswhen he suggests: “‘[B]ringing-before-the-eyes’ captures audience attention,uniting metaphor, audience, and speaker in a meaning-making process” (4). Whilethis is what metaphor does in a general sense, “bringing-before-the-eyes” is notcognitive, involving belief or judgment, but a “perceptive capacity” on the partof the rhetor. I agree with scholars such as Newman and Kirby who argue thatAristotle’s theory is compatible with today’s cognitive theories, but some scholarshave taken Aristotle out of the context of his time, place, and point of view.

“Bringing-before-the-eyes” pronounces the cooperation between a speaker/writer and audience and distinguishes Aristotle’s theory on language in gen-eral, metaphor specifically, as more than mere emotional appeal. Metaphor is

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emotive change possible with communicated thoughts others and the rhetorengage simultaneously.

Classical Greece and Rome and Rhetorical Tradition

“Bringing-before-the-eyes” was a physical emotive state and elicited degreesof pleasure and pain effective in ancient times when people experienceda relationship between mind and body (take the obvious example of oralrhetoric). In 400–300 BCE, Socrates (469–399), Plato (428–348), and Aristotle(384–322) were the great thinkers of Western civilization. Rhetoric was the meansto quickly and skillfully pitch one’s position, to argue both sides, and respond toargument. Rhetoric was useful and not a game; it required the rhetor to antici-pate opponents’ views and to systematically respond to them. Rhetoric was nota science but persuaded the masses by informal reasoning: not logical, but withan informal rhetorical logic manifested in the enthymeme, a rhetorical syllogism.In this way, assuming a premise and transferring meaning to another thing, peo-ple think the informal argument logical. (It may be argued that metaphor reduceslogic, but metaphor can extend logic and pairs concepts, complicating ideas andeffecting degrees of pleasure and/or pain.) By nature people are logical (ofteninformally so, as explained) and emotive. While the division between logic andemotion is false, it is furthermore necessary to see that emotion and logic arephysiologically interdependent. Again, as these states are brain-based, it is fromthe relationship of reason and feeling that language arises.

Metaphor is a means for rhetoricians to investigate ontological and episte-mological inquiries by acknowledging the interplay of thought-language-emotionthat is at the heart of belief and reason in constructing knowledge. Aristotle’sancient understanding of metaphor may be relatable to studies of language inour day as we look for body-mind correlates that offer fuller accounts (if notexplanations) for experience and meaning-making. Perhaps we evade ontologicalquestions, redirect attention to what is seemingly logical, or at least empirical.Nonetheless, there will remain subjective responses to realities, and metaphor isa heuristic that can reveal and shape various perspectives.

Returning to the classical era, metaphor was meaning (though not neces-sarily meaningful), and it was contextual, as it is today. Of particular note (andas an illustration of the informal logic of man) is the irony of the supposedlynegative meanings of metaphor and the pervasive use of metaphor. For example,Plato considered figurative language deception, though his infamous metaphor ofthe cave and perception of reality and the charioteer as the soul clearly illus-trates that despite his sentiment on metaphor, he used it. He did so becausemetaphor persuades an audience to rethink and refeel according to the rhetor’s

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wishes. Furthermore, metaphors are often used unconsciously in one’s attemptto persuade. Language often results in speakers/writers using metaphor to argue,without intending to be “artful.” The informal logic of man is in the felt-need andaccurate response to use metaphor because it is a tool that reflects the triangu-lation of thought-language-emotion. It might also be argued as a product that iseffected by the triangulation of thought-language-emotion. The distinction here isconsciousness of one’s use of metaphor.

George Kennedy defines rhetoric as a form of mental or emotional energyused to persuade an audience to the rhetor’s position (7). While intentionality isoften conscious, such “energy” may also be intuitive, unconscious, and metaphor-ical. Again, it is clear that metaphors are also contrived consciously and withvaried purposes; however, my focus here examines metaphor in argument, fromAristotle to present day. Rhetoric might also be discussed, with a wide sweep,as the art of persuasion––with teachable skills or techniques (such as the use ofmetaphor). Though Edward Schiappa notes the following definition is a contem-porary re-appropriation, John Paulakos moves “toward a sophistic definition ofrhetoric” and offers “the notions of rhetoric as art, style as personal expression,the timely, the appropriate, and the possible,” suggesting that man is becomingand this process is informed by language and used as response to what is every-where around him (65). This agrees with Aristotle who perceived rhetoric as aboutpersuasion in the context of time and place. For example, there were a number ofAristotelian contexts for rhetorical activity: deliberative (future, public, and polit-ical), juridical (past, courts), epideictic (present, ceremonial praise, and blame).Aristotle attempted to codify rhetoric and its processes: invention, arrangement,style, memory, and delivery. Ultimately, Aristotle was responding to teaching pre-ceding his work, namely Plato’s and Isocrates’. Plato argued rhetoric could be aknack, teachable by way of systematic definition and skills. Definitions of rhetoricbuild upon each other. This is important to note in regard to Aristotle’s sense ofmetaphor and current-day discussions in which embodied language is suggestiveof dialectical relationships that had been, perhaps, assumed but not named. Today,many are discussing such relationships with language and body and often doingso via metaphor studies.

Today, language is perceived as epistemic and metaphoric, but the ancientunderstanding of metaphor was to transfer meaning and elicit insight by draw-ing things together. It was then possible to name the previously unnamed thing.As Aristotle discusses in Poetics, metaphors worked when clear, kind, not toopoetic––when meaning was a blend of the common and elevated language.Certainly, this suggests metaphors are particular to cultures and work uniquelywithin them––for example, a goat stuffed into a basket in my kitchen by someRussian friends newly immigrated to the States. This was funny to them. I didn’t

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see the humor when they pointed and laughed over who was a goat one night. Theimage of a goat as representative of anything beyond an animal was something Ihad not dealt with, nor had my family and American friends.2 Therefore, I didn’tfeel as they did––though their thinking, feeling, and foreign language communi-cated their perspective. As a result, despite a lack of mutual understanding, I felttheir humor and was persuaded to consider their way of thinking against my own.

Current Perceptions of Metaphor

Today, language and thought are perceived as cooperative (consider workfrom Lev Vygotsky, Silvia Scribner, and Kuang-Ming Wu, among others).Metaphor is not an ornament of speech, but, according to many metaphor schol-ars, cognitive scientists, empirical researchers, neurologists, and others studyingthe brain, metaphor reflects the conceptual patterns in the physical brain. Thougha figure of speech and emotive ornament, metaphor is also arguably cognition,understanding, meaning construction, expression, and dialectical communication.While there appears to be a common center, the spokes turning the thought-language-emotion wheel shoot apart. Interests in metaphor range from GeorgeLakoff and Mark Johnson’s argument that “human thought processes are largelymetaphorical . . . that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structuredand defined” (6), to Jerome Feldman’s study of metaphor as “[t]hought [which] isstructured neural activity” (1), and Jeanne Fahnestock’s research on metaphors inscience, relating through cognition (or her “one mind hypothesis”) (viii), and onto arguments of cultural and historical embedding in and by way of metaphor.

Contemporary scholars such as Stephen Witte and Robert Bracewell pairthought and action. Scholars Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Selfe combinemultimodal and traditional text in the act of composing. Pierre Bourdieu, JamesGee, and John Duffy see orality and culture as integrated in the act of speaking.Modern rhetorical tradition (within which I include writing studies) accounts forthe in-common assumption that thought, language, and activity share a dialecticalrelationship. Of late, scholars’ research on language use and metaphor includesembodied metaphor interpretation (David Ritchie and R. W. Gibbs); metalinguis-tics and linguistics metaphors in various languages (Peter Muhlhausler), as well asstudies on using metaphor comprehension, interpretation, and evaluation in lan-guage acquisition as “schema refreshing” (Jonathan Picken); analysis of metaphorin discourse to “uncover people’s ideas, attitudes, and values” (Lynne Cameron63); and the recent works of Philip Eubanks on understanding metaphors and writ-ing. Eubanks defends the conduit metaphor (language contains meaning; speakersand writers use linguistic containers to send meaning to audiences; and audi-ences remove the unaltered meaning from its container). “Given the direction

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that metaphor theory has taken, we might have expected a growing recognitionthat language operates as it does in our culture partly because we use the ConduitMetaphor to structure our concept of it” (95).

A person’s time and place effects communication on the levels of thought,language, and affective response. How do factors such as culture, multiculturalfamilies, education, and personality (socially constructed and biological) meddlewith language? Conversely, how do metaphors shape thinking in given con-texts? While these rhetorical questions cannot be sufficiently answered here (orelsewhere for that matter), I argue that metaphors as rhetorical tools generatetransferable cognitive frames by relating concepts in a dialectical relationship ofthought-language-emotion, which individuals use to communicate in society.

Conceptual Metaphors: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

In the 1980s George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s empirical research on con-ceptual metaphor responded to a deficit in linguistic and philosophical views on“meaning” and Western culture. They were interested in the role of metaphor inunderstanding one’s self and world. In times past they argued that metaphor hadbeen perceived peripherally but that, in fact, metaphor was key to understandingthe ways people construct meaning. Lakoff and Johnson’s research followed frommutual rejection of objective or absolute truth and related assumptions. Instead,they argued that through human experience and understanding, meaning is made.Their approach in Metaphors We Live By is experiential, and their studies focuson issues of language, truth, and understanding in the context of the everyday.

According to Lakoff and Johnson, conceptual metaphors call to questionthe nature of “meaning, conceptualization, reasoning, and language” and requireempirical evidence beyond “a priori philosophizing.” They believe that the natureof metaphor is not a matter of definition but cognition, which they support fromempirical evidence. Conceptual metaphors are systematic inference patterns fromone conceptual domain to reason about another conceptual domain (they call map-ping). Such mapping is not abstract or arbitrary but based on “bodily experiencesin the world.” Much everyday language is metaphorical. For example, a phrasesuch as “things are looking up” depends on our bodily encounters with the worldand shows how those experiences shape our conceptual frames on a personallevel. Furthermore, cultures have unique perspectives on the world and experiencewithin it. Conceptual metaphors reveal these assumptions.

In short, metaphor is a natural phenomenon. Conceptual metaphor isa natural part of human thought, and linguistic metaphor is a naturalpart of human language. Moreover, which metaphors we have and

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what they mean depend on the nature of our bodies, our interactionsin the physical environment, and our social and cultural practices.(246–47)

Lakoff and Johnson systematically define types of conceptual metaphorsand their functions. Simplifying their discussion here, the basic tenets are asfollows: structural (one concept structured by another: she is a flower); orien-tational (spatial, little noticed, from experience with space in the world: up,down, behind, and so forth); and ontological (being, little noticed, from expe-rience with physical objects, especially one’s own body, ways of viewing events,activities, emotions, and ideas as entities and substances). One tends to think ofstructural metaphors––one thing is another thing––as “metaphor,” but orienta-tional metaphors suggest much about the cultural expectations, values, and normssuch as good is up, bad is down, and their physical, bodily orientation in theworld. These organize fundamental concepts as well as internal and externalsystematicity. Also often unnoticed are metaphors that relate to “being” (ontolog-ical). For example, inflation kills us. Such metaphors are ways to refer, quantify,identify aspects of, see as a cause, act with respect to, and believe we under-stand. Ontological metaphors are used to discuss abstract concepts. Containermetaphors, the visual field (inside/outside perspectives), events, actions, activi-ties, and states (such as being in love), all are ontological metaphors. Additionally,personification, metonymy (referring to one entity and another related to it:“suit” for business man), and synecdoche (part for whole: Browns for ClevelandBrowns) are ontological metaphors. With these various categories, it is easyenough to realize that most all of language is metaphorical. Considering this,analysis of metaphors is a tool to analyze written discourse, to see the ways argu-ments are effected, and, for my purposes in future work, to study thought andemotion.

According to Lakoff and Johnson, conceptual metaphors are culturally andconceptually bound. The language used to talk about concepts is similarly sys-tematic: affected by social, cultural, and physical experience in the world. Partof the metaphorical system is highlighting and hiding, which means one focuseson some aspects and ignores others and develops this focused understanding byway of shared entailments. Without cohering metaphors through shared entail-ments, attributing metaphors can confuse the overarching sense of the writing (orspeech). For example:

Based on the cultural, social, and physical experiences and thus understand-ings one has of argument, one thinks and acts in particular sets of concepts.Because a dance and war are not normally paired together, it would take a specialcase of shared entailments in order to relate the structural metaphors, argument

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BASIC CONCEPT: ARGUMENT

STRUCTURAL METAPHOR: ARGUMENT IS WAR –––––––––––––––––––––––– ATTRIBUTIVE METAPHOR: ATTACK A POSITION

ATTRIBUTIVE METAPHOR: GAIN GROUND

ATTRIBUTIVE METAPHOR: NEW LINE OF ATTACK

STRUCTURAL METAPHOR: ARGUMENT IS DANCE ––––––––––––––––––––––––– STRUCTURAL METAPHOR: PERFORM A POSITION

STRUCTURAL METAPHOR: SWEEP GROUND

STRUCTURAL METAPHOR: NEW LEANING OF AGILITY

Figure 1: Conceptual Metaphors.

is war and argument is dance. In Figure 1, for example, the art of war wouldbe a metaphorical entailment by which dance and war could be understood asrelated, and thus argument as dance and war would highlight new meanings,hiding others.

Lakoff and Johnson refer to Reddy’s conduit metaphor and argue this conceptand related conceptual metaphors (or ways of referring to this notion) accountfor seventy percent of people’s talk on language (10). Some examples: packmore thought into words; don’t force meaning; idea buried in details. Lakoffand Johnson question that words and sentences have standalone meanings. Theyargue that context and people shape conceptualizations, common knowledge inmany contexts such as universities and research institutions studying social sci-ences; however, I wonder how even a small sense of this idea would draw moreanalysis and thoughtful attention to people’s own behaviors and interpretations ofinteractions with the world.

As explained, orientational metaphors deal with space and meanings madefrom associated values and connotations. Whether good or bad is dependent uponcultural and physical experiences in the world as one has come to understand it.Furthermore, it is difficult to unbraid cultural and physical effects of a concept.For example: happy is up/sad is down; conscious is up/ unconscious is down;more is up less is down; good is up/healthy is up. Such concepts are consistent andsystematic in a time and place and directly follow from mind and body experienceand sense of experience in the world.

While it has already been explained that ontological metaphors areon “being,” these are ways of viewing conceptions of persons and things.Personification and metonymy (using an aspect to stand for the whole thing)are tropes used for such metaphorical expressions as fear of school driving mom

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nuts (referring); too much attention thwarts (quantifying); ugly side of the matter(identifying aspects).

While concepts can seem to contradict and not to form an image, coherenceoccurs via general categories with various images, actions, and interactions. Forexample:

structural metaphor: love is a journeyattributive metaphor: car trip (look how far we’ve come)attributive metaphor: train trip (we’re off track)attributive metaphor: sea voyage (we’re foundering)

Conceptual systems are grounded by experience in the world, such as one’sphysical body in space. Additionally, one’s perception of space effects concepts(the actual and the perceived). Physical concepts such as up, and so forth, arepaired with emotions and lead to emergent metaphors, according to Lakoff andJohnson. In this way, the abstract and concrete depict “reality.” Similarly, culturalassumptions, values, and attitudes are designated physically (he was a hard actto follow). There are various domains within the everyday experience Lakoff andJohnson discuss, including spatial, social, and cultural.

From our conceptions come our behaviors. Contrary to Western notions ofcausation that view a split or categorization of cause and effect (of mind andbody), Lakoff and Johnson argue for an experiential gestalt in which directmanipulation (following from conceptualization, which, again, comes from dailyexperience) is the core of causation. Coherence among concepts happens withshared entailments, ideas that relate unlike ideas: an argument is a journey/acontainer––the shared entailment; as we make an argument, more of a surface iscreated. And this example illustrates the ways experiential gestalts relate concreteand abstract, mind and body. In complex coherence across metaphors, ideas willor will not blend depending on the entailments, which are systematic ways weunderstand things and our experiences with them.

From Aristotle’s rhetoric to Lakoff and Johnson’s pivotal research on therelationship between language and thought, I turn to Alice Flaherty’s researchand personal experience as a neurologist and writer. From Aristotelian logic andsensate perception to Lakoffian rational and experiential meaning-making, myconcluding argument brings these theories together. Metaphor is emotive change,a use of language that expresses emotion and evokes emotion, which can informbehavior and persuade. The power of metaphor is in the physiological relationshipbetween reason and emotion in the brain. Metaphor is a rhetorical tool in argumentand it can be persuasive, as it has been from Aristotle to present times.

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Triangulated Mind, Metaphor, Emotion

Metaphors are sensory experiences, images brought-before-the-eye, to effectpersuasion through emotion that is not without reason but in some instancesbeyond it. While I am not able to prove with formal logic that emotion is a brainstate, Alice Flaherty asserts this premise following studies of the brain and per-sonal experiences. Flaherty, a neurologist and writer, researches brain states andcreativity and adds an integral piece to current perspectives on metaphor and cog-nition. As a leading neurologist at a major research hospital, she studies patientswho are highly productive creative writers to individuals suffering various men-tal dysfunctions, including insanity, depression, and her own postpartum mooddisorder. Her study relates to Aristotelian consideration of metaphor as sensateexperience, reflective of pleasure and pain, grounded in the body and expressedby language, but it also has implications for cognition and emotion, which werenot aspects of Aristotelian conception.

Analyzing language through language approximates prelinguistic thoughtsand feelings. Thus my discussion on metaphor can be seen as metaphor, whetherin classical Greece or contemporary America. From Neolithic people to ancientphilosophers, to oral cultures of countless tribes––in Africa, Alaska, and PapuaNew Guinea, and on to instances today as scholars attend conferences and presentideas––language, written and oral, is used to persuade an audience to the rhetor’spoint of view. This is effected by metaphors that convey a sense of things indrawing out relationships, new and established, and conveying a mutual needthrough the “cry out.” Flaherty argues a “need theory of self-expression,” explain-ing that language and writing comes from a biological system for attempting to fillneeds (children, animals, people in foreign language settings). Kennedy contin-ues, explaining that rhetoric is a feature of all human and animal communication.Even as a theory and practice of public address, rhetoric is global (7). The need touse language and to affect ourselves and others by way of it is part of the universalhuman condition.

Again, relating discussions on metaphor from 2011 to 400–300 BCE withinthe universal context of rhetoric is plausible, I think, by way of a mind-body per-spective, or embodied language model. How one physically feels affects what isthought and expressed. Flaherty argues that emotion is a neurological brain state.While I cannot see the brain, I experience effects from emotions that filter throughthoughts and bodily states (which, again, might be on the continuum betweenpleasure and pain, as Aristotle states). I examine these experiences to determinethe plausibility of her argument.

Two brief examples: Last night there was tension in a cluttered kitchen.Weariness and dark were upon the children and husband. My body was sluggish

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and full and my mind was tight and packed. No writing. This morning was quietand open and light. Body emptier and mind responding, prompted by nerves thatdidn’t suffocate but infused subtle energy. Clearly, a mind-body correlate is easyto accept, but more challenging are the implications of this, particularly for lan-guage use and the effects of persuasion. Flaherty argues that the brain’s temporallobes and limbic system relate in the drive to write and the relationship betweenemotion and metaphor. Metaphor inspires, she argues. For Flaherty, metaphoris a “transfer” of one thing to another thing, a description shared betweenthings.

She discusses the controversy of metaphor’s value since Aristotle. Whileto Plato figurative language was a rhetorical trick, argued in his antipoeticalPhaedrus, Flaherty suggests it was the British empiricists (including ThomasHobbes and John Locke) for whom antimetaphorical writing “reached its apotheo-sis” (225). Ironically, those who argue against metaphor do so by way ofmetaphor. It seems what is pushed against is the notion of falsehood in favor ofcommunicating truth. Yet truth is elusive and only expressible as a sort of reflec-tion of what is beyond human reason and experience (though known in part bythese very means).

Metaphor in its suggestive capacity represents thoughts and feelings.Contrary to some who argue metaphor convolutes truth and logic, it also allowsfor deeper understanding. However, Flaherty argues metaphors can make onefeel she understands by increasing the number of brain regions active in process-ing an idea, for example, by giving “abstract concepts tastes, colors, smells andemotional resonance” (230). While Plato had no conception of brain regions, heshunned figurative use of language in his idealist, absolutist worldview with thebelief that truth might be discerned and that language has the power to veil andunveil. Because of the effects of figurative rhetoric, one’s reason may not havebeen able to escape delusion (interesting to compare this to Lakoff and Johnson’sshared entailments among conceptual metaphors, by which they systematicallydemonstrate that despite hiding and highlighting inherent in all expressions, ideasrelate and together convey sensical meanings). Plato is wrong to presume thatall can be understood and/or communicated. Furthermore, delusion and false-hood can be delivered with rational, “literal” language as well as by suggestionvia metaphor. The real issue is the thought and feeling of the rhetor and whatis intended for the audience, as well as what effect language has on the audi-ence. At the epicenter is the rhetorical purpose of language use. We researchlanguage to see more clearly what has always been behind us illuminating the darkcave.

Metaphors are used in all languages throughout all times. The natureof communication, verbal and nonverbal, oral and literate, is semiotic and

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representational. We approximate dialectical relationships being worked out inour bodies and minds. Words and relationships among words invoke images thatmove others and ourselves toward truths that effect each act. Every day and every-where use of language is proof that there is reason and necessity in our continueduse of metaphors to “bring-before-the-eyes” what is there to see.

Notes

1I appreciate RR reviewers Pat Hoy and Duane Roen for reviewing and offering suggestions forrevision of my manuscript. Additionally, many thanks to Sara Newman for her patience and responseto my inquiries. With her support and guidance, the relativity of rhetoric in everyday life continues tobe seen and studied. Lastly, thank you to Theresa Enos and others at Rhetoric Review who have takenthe time to allow this work publication.

2Recently, I read about being a sheep or goat from an Orthodox Christian perspective. Themessage was developed from a verse in the New Testament: “All nations will be gathered before Him,and He will separate them from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He willset the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His righthand, ‘Come, you blesses of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundationof the world’” (Mat. 25:32). Interestingly, the article that follows attributes negative characteristics tothose who are like goats as ones who: take, exploit, hoard, fear, judge, mock, and as ones who areunsatisfied, selfish, and distrusting of others. With this context, I understand anew the reference thatmy in-laws made to the goat in my kitchen. Meaning changes as one’s knowledge base shifts overtime, and metaphorical expressions evolve, even after they’ve been spoken.

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Lea Povozhaev is a doctoral student at Kent State University. Her dissertation investigates howdoctors and patients communicate with metaphors. She argues that how one feels about addiction expe-riences affects choice. By analysis of metaphorical entailments, she illustrates how language spells outfeeling. Furthermore, feeling alludes to intent. She is concerned with what doctors say and how theirresponse affects patients. She is a published creative writer, and her memoir When Russia Came toStay was published in June 2012 by the Orthodox Research Institute. “Essai—A Metaphor: Perceptionof Possibilities and Writing to Show Thinking” is forthcoming in Critical Social Expressivism. Sheearned an MA and MFA from the University of Akron.