| Contents > Mis-Perception: Metaphor as a metaphor for the reception of fictional narratives by Russ Swinnerton |
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Competing concepts concerning metaphor
I might at this point mention two competing concepts concerning the cognitive processes underlying metaphor: ‘embodiment’, reflected in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work on symbolic representation, in Metaphors we live by (1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh (1999); and conceptual integration, or ‘blending’, following the work, termed cognitive rhetoric, by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier.
Lakoff and Johnson’s thesis states that metaphoric thinking evolved from bodily or biological origins, the concept captured nicely by F. Elizabeth Hart as “human brains/minds structure their conceptual representations of the world by way of the body’s perceptual interactions within that world.” (Hart, 2006, p. 230). This explanation of the metaphoric origins of language, and indeed the use of metaphor as a metaphor for understanding its underlying cognitive processes, is superficially attractive:
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Metaphor is also universal because linguistic meaning gains its natural structure from this metaphoric, or episodic, connection, which is determined by the very events that language tries to describe. This gives us a nice continuity with the ancient mammalian capacity for social event perception to language. Our experience base is still the same as it is in other social mammals….Our dependency on metaphor exposes the vestigial mammalian cognitive system that drives our use of language. (Donald, 2001, pp. 283)
But as Richard van Oort argues convincingly, drawing on Deacon’s concepts, language (and metaphor) derive from the evolution of a symbolic capability in culture. While embodiment might play a part in the evolution of the cognitive processes underlying language, symbolic representation could only emerge in a social context when the meaning of the symbol is shared and distributed within culture:
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If we want to explain the origin of what we take to be universal human categories, for example, metaphor and narrative, then we are going to have to bite the bullet and explain what the anthropological function of these categories is. But in order to do that, we need to take seriously the fact that symbolic representation is irreducible to the causal mechanisms of biological function. Instead, positively speaking, we need to recognise that the only explanations available to us lie in the functioning of the historical institutions of human culture itself. (van Oort, 2003, p. 290)
Turner’s work, by contrast, allows for a symbolic-representation-first interpretation. Blending is “the mental operation of combining two mental packets of meaning – two schematic frames of knowledge or two scenarios, for example – selectively and under constraints to create a third mental packet of meaning that has new, emergent meaning.” (Turner, 2002, p. 10) Thus, blending includes the process of creating and interpreting metaphor, but extends to other types of non-metaphoric combination. The concept provides illuminating insights into hidden assumptions and blendings that contribute to metaphoric meaning.
Metaphor as a metaphor for Narrative
Let’s pause for a brief refresher on semiotics. Three often-used categories of symbolic representation, of the relationship between signifier and signified, are as follows:
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a. icon (the sign has an actual resemblance to the item signified, like a photo)
b. index (the sign has a causal relationship with the item signified, like smoke and fire)…
c. symbol (the sign has an arbitrary, conventional relationship with the item signified, like red for danger)
Deacon acknowledges Peirce’s insight, that modes of reference can be understood in terms of levels of interpretation. That is, more complex forms of reference build on simpler forms, so that symbolic relationships build on indexical relationships, and these in turn can build on iconic relationships. (Deacon, 1997, p. 69–101)
In describing the iconic relationship between signifier and signified, Deacon identifies a psychological shortcut that is at the heart of symbolic representation:
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The interpretive step that establishes an iconic relationship is essentially prior to this, and it is something negative, something that we don’t do. It is, so to speak, the act of not making a distinction. (Deacon, 1997 p. 74)
This introduces the ‘mis-perception’ of my title: the key to symbolic representation is to be aware of the differences, but to move past them to recognise the similarities. This is the heart of our recognition of the similarities to our own condition rendered in narrative, and a possible explanation regarding why that recognition can invoke such a ‘real’ experience:
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The ability to interpret a narrative as a sort of simulated experience often requires the generation of complex mental imagery. Powerful mental images can elicit a vicarious emotional charge that makes them capable of out-competing current sensory stimuli and intrinsic drives for control of attention and emotion, resulting in a kind of virtual emotional experience….This suggests that our most social cognitive capabilities may serendipitously grow out of the learning and attentional biases of the prefrontal bias that made symbolization tractable in the first place. (Deacon, 1997, p. 430)
Deacon goes on to suggest why narrative ‘works’ more effectively than memory in stimulating emotion:
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My imagistic and emotional experience in response to the episodes described in a novel is distinct from that of anyone else, though all readers will share a common symbolic understanding of them. The “subjective distance” from what is represented confers a representational freedom of thought processes that is not afforded by the direct recall or imagining of experiences. (Deacon, 1997, p. 451)
One of Deacon’s more interesting insights concerns the apparent ease with which young children acquire languages, not because of an innate language instinct, but because languages have evolved to reflect the way children learn; as Deacon suggests, languages need children more than children need languages. (Deacon, 1997, p. 109) Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, I am interested in following up the similarly natural way children acquire an ‘adult’ sense of narrative. If narrative can be considered as a higher-order symbolic framework that builds on (and influences) the symbolic relationships of language, then the application of Deacon’s hierarchical symbolic representation model may offer further insights into the reception of narrative.
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| Contents > Mis-Perception: Metaphor as a metaphor for the reception of fictional narratives by Russ Swinnerton |