METNET

DISCOURSE AND METAPHOR (I)

Paul Chilton

Centre for Research in Language and Communication

University of East Anglia

How are metaphors integrated in discourse processing?

How are metaphors integrated in discourse analysis?

Problems in metaphor identification

A discourse processing model

• Two cases:

1 post-cold war “containment” texts (Chilton 1996)

2 Tennyson poem, “Now sleeps the crimson petal…”

(Steen 2002)• A model of discourse processing (implied in the above)

processing discourse is in the mind not text

The “tier model” if discourse processing

problem of the “hermeneutic tier”• Issues for Conceptual Metaphor Theory

1 Kennan’s Long Telegram, 1946(2) [All this] indicates that Soviet party line is not based on any objective analysis of situation beyond Russia's borders; that it has, indeed, little to do with conditions outside of Russia; that it arises mainly from basic Inner-Russian necessities… They have always feared foreign penetration, direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned the truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within...

(3)(b) … efforts will be made to advance official limits of Soviet power... other points may at any time come into question, if and as concealed Soviet political power is extended...

(3)(d) [Soviet policy toward ‘backward peoples’ based on theory of ‘vacuum’] will favor Communist-Soviet penetration. Thus we may expect to find Soviets asking for admission everywhere to trusteeship arrangements...

1 Kennan’s Long Telegram, 1946

Historical context: post-World War II:

• Soviets occupy much of Eastern Europe… • Truman wonder what to do…how to conceptualize the situation and how to respond. Cognitive uncertainty kin the State Department.• George Kennan: US chargé d’affaires in Moscow embassy

winter 1946: Kennan sent a ‘long telegram’ to US State Department

• copies circulated around government offices by Secretary of State Byrnes, and US diplomatic missions overseas• became basis of US foreign policy doctrine of “containment”• containment doctrine lasted from 1946 to 1990s and beyond

Why analyse this text?

Historians claim it was significant influence on US foreign policy

Granting this, what was special about the taxi? How did it work?

Analyst need not assume in advance that metaphors are significant

Guiding questions:

what makes the global text coherent conceptually?

are metaphors a contributory factor?

do they generate inferences?

do they lock into cognitive frames that give them

ideological/cultural coherence for the speech communit?

in particular: are there “sustained metaphors”?

cf. Werth’s “megametaphors”

(2) [All this] indicates that Soviet party line is not based on any objective analysis of situation beyond Russia's borders; that it has, indeed, little to do with conditions outside of Russia; that it arises mainly from basic Inner-Russian necessities… They have always feared foreign penetration, direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned the truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within...

(3)(b) … efforts will be made to advance official limits of Soviet power... other points may at any time come into question, if and as concealed Soviet political power is extended...

(3)(d) [Soviet policy toward ‘backward peoples’ based on theory of ‘vacuum’] will favor Communist-Soviet penetration. Thus we may expect to find Soviets asking for admission everywhere to trusteeship arrangements...

Can we identify metaphors in this kind of text?

We can start by considering propositional structure (cf. Steen and others) …

The formal procedure is similar to Steen’s but adopts a layout that makes it easier to see relationships between elements of propositions, across propositions.

[All this] indicates that Soviet party line any objective analysis of situation is not based on

beyond Russia's borders; (It) (indicates) that It conditions outside of Russia has, indeed, little to do with (it) (indicates) thatit basic inner-Russian necessities arises mainly from …They foreign penetration, direct have always feared

contact between Western world and their own,

(they) (have always) feared what [X would happen if Russians the truth about world without learned … or ifforeigners truth about world within... Learned. ]

….efforts will be made to X official limits of Soviet power advance …other points may at any time come into

question, if and as concealed Soviet is extended…political power Soviet policytoward ‘backward Communist-Soviet penetration will favor. Thuspeoples’ we [clause] may expect to find Soviets admission everywhere to trusteeship asking for

arrangements...

This does not seem to isolate relevant metaphors, on the principle of semantic anomaly between arguments and predicates (‘clash’)

metaphors do occur in PRED column but these are conventionalised and do not seem to relate to textual coherence

e.g. be based on, arise from, come into question

Note, however that several of these have to-do with causal relations or explanations, and their rather vague non-logical nature may reflect something of the nature of the text's inferential processes

However, they are not to do with the conceptual content of Argts and Preds, and can’t in themselves lead to an global conceptual model of the text

Consider presupposed propositions ….

[All this] indicates that Soviet party line any objective analysis of situation is not based on

beyond Russia's borders; E situation Russia’s borders beyond Russia borders have(It) (indicates) that It conditions outside of Russia has, indeed, little to do with E conditions Russia outside of(it) (indicates) thatit basic inner-Russian necessities arises mainly from …E necessities inner-Russian (be)They foreign penetration, direct have always feared

contact between Western world and their own,

(they) (have always) feared what [X would happen if Russians the truth about world without learned … or ifE truth world without aboutE world (Russia) without (=outside of)foreigners truth about world within... learned. ]E truth world within aboutE world (Russia) within

This is a little more interesting because it reveals the existential presuppositions about the text world constructed by the LT.

But there is nothing that can be called metaphorical, at least that can be detected by looking for semantic anomaly.However, the discourse analyst should be suspicious about the recurrent and clearly patterned antithetical conceptual elements…These lexical recurrences are ‘smeared’ across the entire text, not necessarily in any syntactic pattern…

Question: is there an Image Schema or Cognitive Frame driving this conceptual content? And if so can they be regarded as metaphorical? i.e. are they involve in some metaphorical mapping?

Lexical scanning of text suggests candidate schemas, leading to hypothesize:CONTAINER e.g. border, inner, outer…FORCE e.g. pressure, force, drive, exert…FLUIDS e.g. flow, stream, current..MACHINES e.g. apparatus, drive, mechanical …PATH e.g. path, toward, along, forward …

In what sense might we have metaphor here?

e.g. CONTAINER turns out to be mapped onto RUSSIA and more generally onto COUNTRY

• CONTAINER image schema is spatial, the preps and adverbials in the text are spatial

Countries are not three dimensional physical containers

• CONTAINER focuses on some properties rather than others

• May not be recognised as metaphors, because the mapping has become historically conventionalised in IR discourse

The conceptual relevance of CONTAINER schema is supported if it coheres with other image schema/metaphors

A second approach to identification of relevant metaphors…

consider the possible lexical manifestations of image schemas (and other Cog Frames) across the text, independent of propositional

organisation…

CONTAINER IMAGE SCHEMA, ‘Long Telegram’

[All this] indicates that Sovietparty line is not based on anyobjective analysis of

Inside boundary outsidesituation beyondRussia's borders; that it has, indeed, little

to do with conditions outside of Russia;

that it arises mainly from basicInner-Russian necessities…theyHave always feared foreign penetration,

direct contact betweenWestern world and theirown,

feared what would happen ifRussians learned the truth about world without

or if foreigners learned truth

about world within... (3)(b) efforts will be made to advance official limits of Soviet power... other points may at any time come intoquestion, if and as

concealed Soviet political power is extended

Question:

How to operationalise this kind of identification with a corpus and concordancer?

Work with an a priori set of lexical items that typically manifest the elements of an image schema structure:

e.g. in, inside, within, core… / border, limit, line…/out, outside…

Has this been done?

Next step: Check for other candidate image schemas

• FORCE, PATH

• In fact, analysing the text in the format adopted leads to identification of coherent overlaps between different image schemas

FORCE is lexically linked with pressure exerted by FLUIDS

FLUIDS linked with PATH and CONTAINER

FLUIDS mapped metaphorically onto POWER

MACHINE also mapped onto POWER concept

MACHINE mapped onto PATH

This network provides inferencing space for conceptualizing doctrine of ‘containment’ …

PERSON CONTAINER FORCE PATHvalues inside mechanics sourcefeelings boundary hydraulics obstacleBeliefs outside goal=SU Once a given party line

line has been laid down,

the whole Soviet government machine, including the mechanism of diplomacy, moves inexorablyalong the

prescribed path,like a persistent toy automobile wound up and headed in agiven

direction, stopping only when it meets some

unanswerable force. The individuals who are components of this machine are

unamenable to argument or reason which comes to them from

outside sources.

PERSON CONTAINER FORCE PATH=SU [The Kremlin’s]

main concern is tomake sure that it has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the basinof world power. But if it finds unassailable

barriers in its path,it accepts these philosophically…The main thing is that there should always be pressure,

unceasing constant pressure toward the desired  goal...  

INFERENCES DRAWN….PERSON(=US) CONTAINER FORCE PATHIn these circum-stances it is clearthat the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union mustbe that of long-term, patient but firm And vigilant containment of Russian expansive

tendencies... In the light of theabove, it will clearly be seen that the Soviet pressure

against the free institutions of the western world

Is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of

constantly shifting...points …

Soviet Union

person containr forces path

insecure:needs a container

cause power-oriented

mentallysick

moving (‘flowing’

‘driven’, etc.)

treatclinically

exertingpressure

on perimeter on point

counterforce needed

‘contain’ the

patient

‘contain’ the expanding power (‘fluid’, etc.)

OBSERVATION 1 inferencing

• The interlinked conceptual metaphors provided a conceptual framework in which policy makers could makes sense of a complex and unknown geopolitical situation and draw inferences about policy and action

• Possible chain of inference:

-- countries=containers entails inside/outside/boundary-- CONTAINER combined with PATH entails expansion,

penetration, contraction-- power= fluid evokes Cog Frame to do with FLUIDS, entailing:

fluid in a container exerts pressure, fluids can escape containers, or cause containers to expand, fluids can flow into other containers (= countries)…fluids exerting pressure have to be held in their container by counter-pressure

• Also possibly evoked: Countries = bodies/persons = containers• Plus cognitive frame: what to do with irrational (insane) persons:

contain them by force In general: inferencing is done in SD and then you map back into TD

OBSERVATION 2 discourse, metaphor and literalization

• Discourse in sense of discourse developing over time, and as not confined to one communication event

• Multiple events: the LT, discussions in State Department and other US offices, the X-Article

• LT and X-Article show the metaphorical origins of the term ‘containment’

• The term ‘containment’ is eventually not perceived as metaphorical in the speech community where it becomes current, Cf. Richard Rorty on metaphor

• Cognitive discourse analysis retraces the process

2 METAPHOR IDENTIFICATION IN POEMS• Steen’s approach (“five steps”) has effect of fragmenting metaphorical coherence processes

• Steen does, however, acknowledge that more complex combinations of metaphors need to be accounted for

• The approach here: partly coincides with Steen’s, butmakes assumption that a discourse processor will continue interpretation of the poem in search of conceptual coherence, enriched coherenceunder relevance constraints

i.e. when trade-off between processing effort and cognitive effects reaches a value set by processors needs or wants

• Steen’s five steps seem to limit the process to isolated metaphorical expressions whose relevance to the text’s coherence is not established• my main question, as for Kennan texts: What are the image schemas and Cog Frames that enable an analyst to construct an optimally coherent conceptualization of the text?

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leavesA shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,And slips into the bosom of the lake:So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slipInto my bosom and be lost in me.

Steen’s metaphor identification test

Now sleeps (4) the crimson (0) petal (0), now (0) the white (0);Nor waves (3,4) the cypress (0) in the palace (0) walk (0);Nor winks (4) the gold (3) fin (0) in the porphyry (0) font (0):The fire-fly (0) wakens (0): waken (1) thou with me.

Now (0) droops (1) the milkwhite (2) peacock (0) like a ghost (4),And like a ghost (3,4) she glimmers (4) on to me.

Now (0) lies (2) the Earth (0) all Danaë to the stars (0),And all thy heart (1,2) lies (3,4) open (4) unto me.

Now (0) slides (4) the silent (0) meteor (0) on, and leaves (1)A shining (0) furrow (4), as thy thoughts (1) in me.

Now (0) folds (2) the lily (0) all her sweetness (3,4) up,And slips (2,4) into the bosom (4) of the lake (0):So fold (4) thyself, my dearest (0), thou, and slip (3,4)Into my bosom (1,0) and be lost (4) in me.

Problem here is not that the 14 content words (out of 45) are not metraphors, the problem is

content words don’t seem to be involved in metaphor

the metaphors identified don’t seem to contribute much if anything to

the conceptualisation of the poem’s meaning

The problem therefore is how to identify relevant metaphors, i.e. relevant to the conceptual coherence of the text as a whole

The flaw seems to be that the 5-step approach is entirely bottom-up and sequential (though Steen elsewhere appears to recognise that the procedure ahs to be move between different levels)

BUT it is worth looking at the propositional content for a moment…

the crimson petal, sleeps now the white (petal) (sleeps) now the cypress nor waves in the palace walkthe gold fin nor winks in the porphyry fontthe fire-fly wakens thou waken with me.the milkwhite peacock droops now(the peacock) (be milkwhite)(the milkwhite peacock) (be) like a ghost andshe glimmers on to me(she) (be) like a ghostthe Earth lies now(the Earth) (be) all Danaë and… to the stars all thy heart lies (all they heart) (open) (be) unto me the silent meteor slides on now…(the silent meteor) a…furrow leaves and(a furrow) (be) shining asthy thoughts (a shining furrow) (leave) in me.the lily all her sweetness folds up now… (the lily) slips and into the bosom of

the lake(the lake) (bosom) (has) Somy dearest…thou thyself fold and(my dearest… thou) slip into my bosom… (I) (bosom) (have) and(my dearest…thou) be lost in me

PRED

ARG2

ARG1

CONJ/ADJ

PrepP

Observations on the propositional analysis …This type of layout of the propositional structure makes it very easy to make a number of observations

• the propositional structure is scarcely relevant to cohesion and coherence• connectives are limited to ‘and’ which ids evidently not logical conjunction• The only temporal adv is “now” and this contributes minimally temporal sequence; there are no temporal conjunctions; the tenses are all in simple present, even for non-stative verbs, with an odd kind of “commentary” meaning”

• It is hard to see how a coherent conceptual structure (meaning) for the poem can be processed on the basis of the sequence of propositions• However, readers presumably assume coherence in the text, so how does the reader get it?

--- non-syntactic links (rhetorical parallelisms)--- cognitive frames needed for lexical processing--- image schemas, whose elements may lexically instantiated

non-content expressions, spatial prepositions--- uses pragmatic competence to enrich literal meaning by implicature

Focussing on the second half of the poem …

Parallelisms: metaphorical mappings in vertical columns…

the Earth lies now(the Earth) (be) all Danaë and… to the stars all thy heart lies (all thy heart) (be) open unto me

the silent meteor slides on now…(the silent meteor) a…furrow leaves and(a furrow) (be) shiningthy thoughts (a shining furrow) (leave) as in me.

the lily all her sweetness folds up now… (the lily) slips and into the bosom

of the lakemy dearest…thou thyself fold and(my dearest…thou) slip into my bosom(my dearest…thou) be lost in me

NB spatial non conten words ‘un/to’ and ‘in/to’

In other words, we have potential metaphorical mappings between:

Earth

thy heart

Lily folds up sweetness into bosom of lake

Thou fold thyself into my bosom

But this still does not provide a coherent meaning unless we include Danae in the analysis

This can only be done by assuming meaning of Danae is in its cognitive frame

the Earth lies (the Earth) (be) all Danaë to the stars all thy heart lies (all thy heart) (be) open unto me female (implicature) (implicature) male, Zeus

speaker

the lily all her sweetness folds up(the lily) slips into the bosom

of the lakemy dearest…thou thyself fold(my dearest…thou) slip into my bosom(my dearest…thou) be lost in me

male (implicature) (implicature) female speaker

Cog Frame:Zeus—in form of gold stars—penetrates Danae—impregnates god mortalmale female

Image schemas contribute to multiple mappings

UP DOWNZeus, male, sky, me/thou Danae Earth, female, me/thou

CONTAINEROutside through boundary insideZeus, male, me/thou slip/slide into Danae, lake, female, me/thou

lily slips into lake

General point…Combination of non-propositional parallelisms, image schemas, the Zeus-Danae schema, the male-female schema, implicated concepts...May produce conceptual coherence that accounts for the general air of eroticism in the poem. This does not exhaust the interpretive potential.

Theoretical relevance…Analysis requires combination of propositional analysis, analysis of non-propositional mapping potential, cognitive frames, image schemas

CONCLUDING IDEAS… Towards a theoretical framework of metaphor identification in discourse

Discourse Processing Model

The “tier” model

Phonological tiers:

segmental structure

syllabic structure

prosodic structure

Jackendoff (2002), tiers in conceptual structure:

descriptive tier (roughly ARG, PRED, quantifiers)

referential tier (referents, anaphora, realis/irrealis)

information structure (topic/focus)

Discourse Processing/Analysing Tiers?

Discourse processing tiers • Parse sentences: phono-syntax• Interpret ellipsis, gapping, embedding structures

etc.• Identify referents and resolve anaphora in

discourse space• Propositional tier (logical form)• Conceptual tier

– Call up cognitive frames/image schemas to conceptualize lexical meanings

– Activate metaphorical mappings

• all under constraint of coherence/relevance

The process is open ended: the relevance criteria depend on situation and cognitive needs of the discourse processor:

Analysis may continue interpretive process into what could be called

• the hermeneutic tier

recognition of metaphor depends on their coherence with global text meaning constructed by the reader

but the global text meaning constructed by the reader depends on the meaning of the metaphors

This is the “hermeneutic circle” --- identification of metaphor depends on their contribution to coherence/ coherence depends on identification of metaphor—more like a spiral

• How far reader spirals depends on ‘relevance’ for specific purposes, either in every speech events or in analysis mode

e.g. might stop when connection is made with belief systems, values systems or ideological systems in a culture

Implications for Conceptual Metaphor Theory

• CMT lacks link to discoursee.g. Moral Politics give NO analysis of text, yet makes important statements about CMs as constraining different discourses (cf Foucault’s sense of term discourse here)

Questions?• What sort of revisions are need to construct a dynamic discourse processing model of CMs?

• What kind of metaphors do discourse processors process?

• Given that analysts can engage in an open-ended process of metaphor identification, how much processing do ordinary language users do, in which situations, for what purposes?

CMT needs to make clearer distinctions and investigate…

• CMs (conceptual metaphors) vs MEs (metaphorical expressions)(i) CM level consists of--- ability to do cross-domain mapping (competence)--- some stable mappings -- some innate, or early development?--- Ability (competence) to do m-entailments (inferencing)--- a constrained set of SD inputs: image schemas, cog frames?(ii) metaphoricity in discourse:--- entrenched metaphors that can be re-activated by co-text

stimuli (e.g. ‘pressure’, ‘containment’)--- activation spectrum: under coherence and relevance for a

particular discourse some potential mappings may be activated, others not

--- schema-frame recovery (border, invokes inside/outside)--- novel metaphors:

new SD-TD correspondences new m-entailments of old mappings

--- mega-metaphors: implicated schemas and mappings recovered under expanded coherence/relevance constraint at hermeneutic tier

References

G. Steen (2002) ‘Identifying Metaphor in Language: A cognitive Approach’, Style, Fall

P. Chilton (1977) The Poetry of Jean de La Ceppède: A Study in Text and Context, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

P. Chilton and G. Lakoff (1995) ‘Metaphor in Foreign Policy Discourse’ in C. Schäffner and A. Wenden (eds.), Language and Peace, Dartmouth, Aldershot

P. Chilton (1996) Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common European Home, Peter Lang, Berne and New York.