Developing, testing and interpreting Deliberate Metaphor Theory

Abstract

The idea that there is a distinction between the deliberate and non-deliberate use of metaphor is controversial(e.g., Gibbs, 2011; Charteris-Black, 2012). According to the dominant view of metaphor, metaphor works automaticallyandunconsciously(e.g.,Gibbs,2008).Asaresult,deliberatemetaphorusesoundslikeanimpossibility,a‘vacuousidea’even (Gibbs, 2011), and is reminiscent of the traditional views of metaphor in poetics and rhetoric (Gibbs, 2011). To thispredominantly theoretical debate, Gibbs (this volume) has now added an experimental study, which is presented as afailed test of deliberate metaphor theory.I have been graciously offered an opportunity by the editor of this journal to offer a response to this study in order toadvanceresearch,theoreticalandempirical,ondeliberatemetaphortheory.Iwillgratefullydosobybrieflypresentingmyviewsof the ways inwhich deliberatemetaphor theory(from now on: DMT) canbedeveloped, tested andinterpreted. Myconclusion will be that Gibbs’ test fails because it is an inadequate conceptualization and operationalization of thepredictions of DMT.1. Developing DMTDeliberatemetaphoruseistheintentionaluseofametaphorasametaphor.Anexamplemaybefoundinthefollowingquotation from Time Magazine (Steen, 2013: 182):Imagineyourbrainasahousefilledwithlights.Nowimaginesomeoneturningoffthelightsonebyone.That’swhatAlzheimer’s disease does. It turns off the lights so that the flow of ideas, emotions and memories from one room tothe next slows and eventually ceases. And sadly -- as anyone who has ever watched a parent, a sibling, a spousesuccumbtothespreadingdarknessknows--thereisnowaytostopthelightsfromturningoff,nowaytoswitchthemback on once they’ve grown dim. At least not yet.Theauthorexplicitlyasksthereadertosetupacross-domain mappinginthefirstsentenceofthisexcerpt,‘‘Imagine yourbrain as a house filled with lights’’, and then develops aspects of the cross-domain mapping in a number of ways insubsequent utterances. Since linguists assume that all language use is intentional, including regular metaphoricallanguageuse,thisexplicit,expressuseofmetaphorasmetaphorisdoublyintentional, whichiswhyIhavesuggestedwecallthisuse‘deliberate’(Steen,2008,2010,2011a,b,c,2013,2015).Deliberatemetaphorusemustbedifferentiatedfromall other metaphor use, which is non-deliberate: those metaphors are not presented as metaphors to the addressee, butare simply (but intentionally) used as the available language means to talk about a wide range of topics.Thevalidityofthedistinctionisreflectedbytheappropriatenessofresponseslike‘‘Whydidyouusethatmetaphor?’’or‘‘That is a nice image’’ to metaphors used deliberately, such as the one in our Time Magazine excerpt. By contrast, thistypeofresponsedoesnotmakesensewhenmetaphorsareusednon-deliberately,theextremecaseofwhichwouldbealltemporal and abstract uses of prepositions, whose basic sense is typically spatial but whosemetaphorical sense for time