Open scratch . Pétur hjá Tolla 1 Oct 2008 Metaphor.

• open scratch• http://www.etymonline.com

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.

How do they define ‘metaphor’?

Source and target?Ever heard of a mixed metaphor?

Lakoff and Johnson

• 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’.


’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.


• 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 metaphorliteral

figurative fact and fiction

tropeverse

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 Readinghttp://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.

http://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf


The meaning of ‘literal’?


Linguistic Tropes





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.pdfMetaphor 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 Readinghttp://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.



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).



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 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

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)


• 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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faber_%26_Gwyer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faber_%26_Gwyer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wm._B._Eerdmans_Publishing_Co.


• 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


• 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


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


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


Look up abstract terms in

http://www.etymonline.com

inspiration nature

pleasure circle

idea truth


Does it make sense to say that “circle” is an abstract term?

Eric Havelock, A Preface to Plato 1963


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

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:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=genus

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=genus

• 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

SKIP:

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

Cf Lock (above):


Barfield, Lock, Lecercle, etc,. question the existence of literal language.

‘literal’ language without metaphor

Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays

Barfield: ‘The Meaning of "Literal”’


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”?


• 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.


‘Etymologically, we find a kind of graduated scale in the relationships between vehicle and tenor’ in the following 4 words: (35)

• outsider

• noble

• gentle

• scruple

v and t clearly distinguished

the v ‘rank’ still in use

the v ‘rank’ hardly in use

the v ‘sharp stone’ (scrupulus) has disappeared

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: • ‘born’ literal

• ‘achieved’ literal


Examples:

pneuma → anima → âme ‘breath …. soul’

spiritus ‘wind’ → spirit


‘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 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


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.’


…. ‘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)


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

Low

Long, long, long long ago

Today

(revised version)

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


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-drawn-out historical process’ (43).


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.

Open scratch . Pétur hjá Tolla 1 Oct 2008 Metaphor.

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