"Metaphors and Corpus Linguistics" -- some question marks
This is going to be a "back to the roots of this blog" post, concerned with liz-exam topics, more specifically: metaphor theory (Barbara: I have just printed out your posts on Lakoff/Johnson and Musolff, the first of which you posted almost exactly 2 years ago :-) ). I am struggling a bit with one of the books on my list and I would be really glad to hear your opinion on a few points.
The book in question is Metaphor in Corpus Linguistics, by Alice Deignan (2005). She intends to give an overview of research in conceptual metaphor theory, argues for the need of a corpus approach to the topic, and presents some results of her own analyses. How accurate her account of conceptual metaphor theory is, I cannot yet judge properly, but I have not stumbled over any obvious inconsistencies. Her presentation of corpus linguistics is (to say it nicely) a bit biased with regard to the specific corpus and software she herself used (corpus linguistics for her consists of the calculation of concordances, based on searches for (inflected) word forms). But that is not my main concern. What I find really confusing is her classification of word occurrences into "literal" and "metaphorical". Unfortunately, she does not explain which criteria she uses for this distinction (I think in one passage she states that the classification was surprisingly clear and easy -- which already made me suspicious). For the verb "move" she presents the following examples:
literal: "When Gordie's condition stabilised, his father moved the family to Southern California."
metaphorical: "That was the first music I heard live that really moved me." (p. 149)
Reading this I wondered whether there might not be a certain amount of metaphoricity involved in the first of these sentences. What I had expected as examples for the literal use was something like "Has someone moved my book?" (Oxford advanced learner's dicitionary), but not the meaning of "change the place where one lives".
Even more confounding I found the following classification of plant*:
Literal uses
Literal, noun: "... buy well-nurtured plants from the garden shop."
Literal, verb: "In the old days when you planted a crop there were loads of weeds."
Factory: "The plant will be shut down for two weeks."
Place a bomb: "No group has yet said that it planted the bomb."
Place other concrete object: "The women planted themselves in front of the stalls and crossed their arms to wait."
Place with intent to deceive: "They had planted drugs in our bags."
Place a kiss: "[He] planted a smacker on each of her cheeks."
Metaphorical uses
Place idea: "What happened planted seeds of doubt in some minds."
Spy: "He was a plant."
(p. 177)
Now, I do not see why "to plant drugs" or "plant a bomb" should be less metaphorical than "plant" in the sense of a spy. Or more precisely: how and where a clear line between literal and metaphorical uses should be drawn. As I said, she does not address these problems. In one section she alludes however to the problem that metaphors are also involved in processes of word formation and development of new word meanings. She takes the position that it does not make sense to speak of metaphor when a certain expression is nowadays exclusively used in a metaphorical sense and therefore does no longer invoke the (original) literal meaning. Her example is "scapegoat", for which she argues that the former metaphorical mapping on humans has now simply become the standard meaning of the term. Such "dead metaphors" should therefore not be treated as metaphors. There is however one methodological problem in here argumentation. In an earlier section, she proposes as a criterion for dead metaphors less than 1 occurrence of the literal meaning in 1000 occurrences. In her corpus are however only 218 occurrences of "scapegoat". Thus, it could well be possible that the literal sense of the word is still more frequent than 1 in 1000, since she has not observed 1000 occurrences. Moreover, as far as I can see her corpus does not contain any religious texts, which would be the most probable domain for encountering the literal use. Apart from these methodological problems, the case of "scapegoat" is different from "move" and "plant*" since for the the latter two terms literal occurrences are not rare (I suppose that also for "move" more basic literal meanings could be found). And even if one argues that "change the place where one lives" is a new meaning of the word "move" which is no longer metaphorical (in the sense that language users do not evoke a more basic meaning), it is still not clear whether the metaphorical use of "move" in connection with emotions is derived from this sense or rather from the more basic sense.
I do not know whether the last passage makes any sense, I fear my confusion confused the text as well... Anyway, I would appreciate any comment on these examples and my (metaphorical) question marks :-)
The book in question is Metaphor in Corpus Linguistics, by Alice Deignan (2005). She intends to give an overview of research in conceptual metaphor theory, argues for the need of a corpus approach to the topic, and presents some results of her own analyses. How accurate her account of conceptual metaphor theory is, I cannot yet judge properly, but I have not stumbled over any obvious inconsistencies. Her presentation of corpus linguistics is (to say it nicely) a bit biased with regard to the specific corpus and software she herself used (corpus linguistics for her consists of the calculation of concordances, based on searches for (inflected) word forms). But that is not my main concern. What I find really confusing is her classification of word occurrences into "literal" and "metaphorical". Unfortunately, she does not explain which criteria she uses for this distinction (I think in one passage she states that the classification was surprisingly clear and easy -- which already made me suspicious). For the verb "move" she presents the following examples:
literal: "When Gordie's condition stabilised, his father moved the family to Southern California."
metaphorical: "That was the first music I heard live that really moved me." (p. 149)
Reading this I wondered whether there might not be a certain amount of metaphoricity involved in the first of these sentences. What I had expected as examples for the literal use was something like "Has someone moved my book?" (Oxford advanced learner's dicitionary), but not the meaning of "change the place where one lives".
Even more confounding I found the following classification of plant*:
Literal uses
Literal, noun: "... buy well-nurtured plants from the garden shop."
Literal, verb: "In the old days when you planted a crop there were loads of weeds."
Factory: "The plant will be shut down for two weeks."
Place a bomb: "No group has yet said that it planted the bomb."
Place other concrete object: "The women planted themselves in front of the stalls and crossed their arms to wait."
Place with intent to deceive: "They had planted drugs in our bags."
Place a kiss: "[He] planted a smacker on each of her cheeks."
Metaphorical uses
Place idea: "What happened planted seeds of doubt in some minds."
Spy: "He was a plant."
(p. 177)
Now, I do not see why "to plant drugs" or "plant a bomb" should be less metaphorical than "plant" in the sense of a spy. Or more precisely: how and where a clear line between literal and metaphorical uses should be drawn. As I said, she does not address these problems. In one section she alludes however to the problem that metaphors are also involved in processes of word formation and development of new word meanings. She takes the position that it does not make sense to speak of metaphor when a certain expression is nowadays exclusively used in a metaphorical sense and therefore does no longer invoke the (original) literal meaning. Her example is "scapegoat", for which she argues that the former metaphorical mapping on humans has now simply become the standard meaning of the term. Such "dead metaphors" should therefore not be treated as metaphors. There is however one methodological problem in here argumentation. In an earlier section, she proposes as a criterion for dead metaphors less than 1 occurrence of the literal meaning in 1000 occurrences. In her corpus are however only 218 occurrences of "scapegoat". Thus, it could well be possible that the literal sense of the word is still more frequent than 1 in 1000, since she has not observed 1000 occurrences. Moreover, as far as I can see her corpus does not contain any religious texts, which would be the most probable domain for encountering the literal use. Apart from these methodological problems, the case of "scapegoat" is different from "move" and "plant*" since for the the latter two terms literal occurrences are not rare (I suppose that also for "move" more basic literal meanings could be found). And even if one argues that "change the place where one lives" is a new meaning of the word "move" which is no longer metaphorical (in the sense that language users do not evoke a more basic meaning), it is still not clear whether the metaphorical use of "move" in connection with emotions is derived from this sense or rather from the more basic sense.
I do not know whether the last passage makes any sense, I fear my confusion confused the text as well... Anyway, I would appreciate any comment on these examples and my (metaphorical) question marks :-)
I can see why you're confused. And no, I don't see why she classifies 'planting drugs' as literal and 'plant'/spy as metaphorical - the former seems as metaphorical as the latter to me. Maybe she implicitly relies on which expressions 'feel' more metaphorical/are not dead metaphors in that (average?) speakers still evoke the 'basic' meaning? Which raises the question of who these 'average' speakers would be and how she'd be able to prove that.
If I remember my conceptual metaphor theory correctly, they argue that any use of a word that is not strictly basic in the sense of basic movements/locations/physicality (I'm sure there's a more precise word...) is metaphorical, i.e. that we start from our most basic and immediate physical experience and then compare everything else to them, i.e. use those experiences as metaphors for everything else. So it doesn't make much sense to say that 'dead' metaphors aren't metaphors - the point of Lakoff/Johnson's theory is that language is basically metaphorical... (again, if I remember correctly).
(They of course run into some of the same problems - where does the bascic, nonmetaphorical concept end and the metaphor start?)