John Woollard	| University | Education | Metaphor | PGCE | CBLT | ~jw7 |

Chapter 1 From rhetoric to physiology - a literature review  

This first chapter of the literature review directly addresses the research questions:

what is a metaphor?

how are metaphors used in everyday language? and

how are they used to be emotive, stimulating and illustrative?

From the early works of Aristotle to the most recent contributions of Lakoff, the rôle of metaphor in rhetoric and literature is considered. The research question asks “how are metaphors used in everyday language?” The tropes of the English language (metonymy, synecdoche, simile, analogy) are explained and exemplified. A model of metaphor categories is described using the constructs of colour, position, space and time and the relationship between metaphor and physiology is considered. Finally, a discussion of the “wrongness” of using metaphor is presented - this is later returned to in the analysis of teacher responses.

The literature review reveals the connections being established between the physiologists’ work at the level of neuron, synapse and dendrites and the ideas related to embodiment, semantics, artificial intelligence, cognition and language. The review establishes the importance of metaphor across a range of disciplines within physiology, linguistics, cognition and psychology.

From different perspectives, metaphor can be seen to be a variety of things.

Metaphor is related to our cognition, our understanding and our thinking. It is with metaphor that cognitive scientists explain how thinking is structured through categorisation of conceptual structure and image schema.

Metaphor is a powerful trope of language and communication. Language is an expression of our understanding or, arguably, our understanding is established through language. The metaphor is an important tool for explaining the relationship between language and learning.

Metaphor is related to literature and rhetoric. It is an artistic device to enable more colourful and stimulating writing and speech. It is a means of conveying meaning at a level not possible by the literal use of words.

Metaphor is related to everyday life and language. It is a natural trope engaged in without conscious effort and interpreted without angst or difficulty. Metaphor is the vehicle for our conversational wanderings whether that is plodding through a description, stumbling through an interview or stepping through an argument. As the previous sentence show, we use terms that are not literally true but bring colour to our speech and writing. The world of computers is full of everyday metaphor, much of it flavoured by the technology. However, in addition, metaphor plays a different and important rôle.

Metaphor is related to the design of computer software and the human computer interface. The metaphor is exploited in a conscious and even artificial way to support the computer user when dealing with new facilities and new presentations of computer functionality. Metaphor is seen to be an important tool of the computer scientist and the design of the human computer interface (HCI).

Chapter contents: 2.1        Overview and introduction      2.2        In the beginning…       2.3        Rhetoric and literature…         2.4        Model, product, theme…         2.5        Metonymy, synecdoche, simile, analogy         2.6        Metaphor and cognition          2.7        Metaphor and everyday language       2.8        Using metaphor as a tool…     2.9        Physiology and metaphor…    2.10      When metaphor is wrong…     2.11      Summary and definition of metaphor

1.1             Overview and introduction

The storyline of this review begins in the beginning with Aristotle’s thoughts and a consideration of the traditional view of rhetoric and literature. The rhetoric application of metaphor does have cognitive implications and the discussion moves towards understanding. The “model, product, theme” terminology is adopted and described in terms of the other nomenclature found in the literature. Other tropes of the English language are discussed, and an initial identification of metaphor categories is made. Finally, in this chapter the physiological aspects of metaphor are considered and the wrongness of metaphor use is discussed.

The metaphor extends our ability to describe new and unknown situations. It has a particular place in the world of computers including the metaphoric “being or located”, virtual physical activity, the image schema containers and the naming of objects and functions. The integrated metaphor is described through the example of the internet called the “information highway”. It, the metaphor, implies the constructs, systems and relationships of highways we drive along. We can describe other aspects of our use of the internet in terms of the highway with its policing systems, checkpoints and tolls. This is described later as the model-product relationship (Figure 3) within a metaphor theme and is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 2 the information superhighway metaphor theme

The other important aspect of metaphor is the assertion that it is part of the structure of knowledge and understanding. The following premises were first articulated by George Lakoff in 1980 and later in his book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things:

·         thought is embodied - conceptual systems are directly grounded in perception, body movement and experience;

·         thought is embodied - it is represented by physical connexions between cells of the brain;

·         thought is imaginative - it goes beyond the physical experience and employs metaphor, metonymy and mental imagery;

·         imaginative thought is embodied - categories are embodied in the same way as experiences;

·         thought has gestalt properties - a structure can have more than one meaning;

·         conceptual structures can be described using cognitive models.

These principles are adapted directly from George Lakoff (Lakoff, 1987: xiv). This work, as described later, underpins category and image schemata.

It is at this point that our consideration of metaphoric language and thought, our understanding of computer systems and processes and our ability to ensure that learners have a better understanding of those processes come together. There is a deeper and more profound reason why this study may have implications for human knowledge. The author and the science are at a very early stage of development in these ideas. Perhaps this is the start of the “brave new world” where human understanding is fully complemented by computer understanding. Perhaps our understanding of the cognitive, linguistic, gestalt and physiological properties of metaphor will direct advances in artificial intelligence. The metaphor may be the key to the development of computers that think like humans.

1.2             In the beginning…

Aristotle’s Rhetoric, translated by WR Roberts (1952) in The works of Aristotle: Rhetorica, De rhetorica ad Alexandrum, Poetica relates that Aristotle believed metaphors to be implicit comparisons based upon analogy and that they equate to the comparison theory of metaphors. This is pertinent to computer based metaphor. In Poetica, Aristotle defined metaphor as giving “a thing a name that belongs to something else” thus emphasising the “lie” associated with metaphor. In paraphrasing Plato’s definition of a myth, Carolyn Pinkard describes metaphor as “lies that tell the truth” (Pinkard, 2000). Aristotle’s definition draws upon the analogy aspect when two things are alike in such a way that one can take the name of another. The computer device for disposing of unwanted files has the given name of another object, the recycle bin. The familiarity of the ideas associated with “recycling” gives a perceived familiarity and understanding of the functions of the computer device. A consideration of the way the computer feature properly emulates that of a recycling bin, what other more distinct functions it possesses and the implications of the iconic representation will be made in the next chapter .

Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” recounts that men were fastened to the walls of a cave in such a way that they could not see out of it. Their heads were fixed in a position that permitted them to see only straight ahead at the walls of the cave. There they could see only shadows created by fires built behind them. In this way the men who tended the fires could govern what the prisoners saw. Over time the men became convinced that the shadow figures made up all the content of the world. They became sure that the shadows they saw were the only reality (Pinkard, 2000: 10). Plato acknowledges that myths are stories purportedly true but actually false, but tell a truth. The cave myth warns us to take care that we are seeing the reality and not just shadows of the reality and what we can see is the whole truth and not just a small part of the truth.

The early works of Aristotle and Plato reflect and underpin much of the 20th century use of metaphor. More recent analyses of language emphasise the naming of one object to describe another. John Sowa (1983) in his Conceptual structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine describes a metaphor as a normal means of adapting existing words to new situations. An example is the use of firewall; the name and its meaning existed in general use well before its usage to describe a hardware/software resource that protects a system from external damage. However, Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind (Ryle, 1949: 14) describes it differently as the presentation of the facts of one category in the idioms appropriate to another, for example, describing prose instructions in the form of a list or the diagrammatic representation of a concept. His ideas are underpinned by the concept of categories which lead to the classification of metaphor; this is considered later in this chapter. Another definition of metaphor made by Nelson Goodman in The Structure of Appearance suggests it to be “a whole set of alternative labels, a whole apparatus of organisation that takes over new territory” (Goodman, 1976: 72-74), the alternative labels being textual, diagrammatic or pictorial. Gareth Morgan, in his treaty on organisational metaphors, describes them as “a primal force through which humans create meaning by using one element of experience to understand another” (Morgan, 1998: 4). These ideas, which describe the source of metaphor as being one of linguistic manipulation, are later questioned when the physiological basis (the embodied mind) is considered. However, these ideas form an understanding of metaphor and its occurrence in everyday language and teaching methodologies. Further ideas are developed by John Carroll who relates metaphor to the cognitive representation of computing (Carroll, 1982).Those considerations include the desktop interface and the common software such as spreadsheets, painting programs, database management systems and the word processor.

Word processing has the underlying concept of a scroll (Carroll, 1984). Early word processors (of the graphic user interface) had icons to reflect this metaphor including the word processors Impression and Ovation (Computer Concepts, 1994). All word processors until recent times (c1995) were based upon the facility of a single sheet of writing material extending downwards in an apparently limitless way with clear start and end points. Pagination only takes place at the point of printing when the computer automatically chops-up the text into pages based upon the specifications of the printer. The earliest word processors, for example Wordwise, introduced some limited control over the output (for example, force a new page) but essentially what you saw was a flowing screen of text and not what you got when printing. More recent WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) word processors enable the user to see the page layout before printing (print preview ). Some users even prefer to work in WYSIWYG format although the software designer’s default remains a presentation based upon an ancient scroll.

In contrast to word processing, desktop publishing software is based upon a different metaphor. Desktop publishing, like several other genres of programs, is based upon a page-turning metaphor. The software can be imagined to be an exercise book where each page of the book is accessible and information is placed on a particular page, in a particular position. There is not a continuity of text flowing from one page to the next (although this can be made to appear to happen). The emphasis is upon single page design and the user turning the page to get to the next display. This metaphor is extended in multimedia authoring programs such as Illuminatus and Toolbook (Helander, 1997; Madsen, 1994).

1.3             Rhetoric and literature…

In this section the metaphor is analysed in terms of “manipulation of the use of words” through the spoken “utterance” or the written text. This emphasis upon words is described by IA Richards in his Philosophy of Rhetoric. He provides the definition “the traditional theory ...made metaphor seem to be a verbal matter, a shifting and displacement of words, whereas fundamentally it is a borrowing between and intercourse of thoughts, a transaction between contexts. Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison, and the metaphors of language derive” (Richards, 1936: 96). Importantly, this reflects the all-embracing role of metaphor in everyday language and conceptual understanding. This is the connection between metaphor used as “common parlance” and the metaphor as a model for our perception of the understanding process. For example, many computer users will comfortably use the phrase “burning a CD” – simply because they have heard someone else using the phrase – it is common parlance. Our exposure to the science fictions of James Bond and others gives the impression that the laser light is intense, powerful and associated with heat. The metaphoric phrase “burning a CD” is accepted by computer users because it fits with the literal image of the laser. The burning process is perceived to be irreversible – a one-way journey. This example shows two aspects of metaphor. The first is one is “of enabling understanding”. The association of combustion (a well known phenomenon) with placing information on a CD implies a one-way event and a sense of permanence. Incidentally, the term “saving” to a CD was not used as this had connotations of less permanence because traditionally saving implied that it could be resaved and, importantly, deleted. The metaphoric use of “burning a CD” carried with it a good deal of meaning.

Another aspect of metaphor that “burning a CD” exemplifies is that of the potential for error and misconception. Technology has moved on and CD writing has changed. The activity undertaken is not one of combustion or even intense heat. The reality is that the light from the recording device changes the nature of crystals that are suspended in the plastic of the compact disc (Knott and Waites, 2000: 131).  “The melted crystals along the track flow into the amorphous phase which is then “frozen-in” by cooling the layer quickly. The reflectivity of the amorphous areas is much lower than that of the crystalline areas which gives rise to the peak-and-trough pattern along the recording track (just as the lands and pits produce the pattern on a regular CD). During rewrite, some amorphous areas along the track are returned to the crystalline phase by an annealing process (heating at a temperature below the layer's melting point for a somewhat longer period). Others are converted to the amorphous phase by heating above the melting point. This process can be repeated more than a thousand times and some media manufacturers claim the number is even higher” (M&M Productions, 2003). The innocent phrase “burning a CD” now can prevent new users or learners from immediately comprehending the truth. They may have the misconception that it is a permanent and a one-way process.

IA Richards purports that our communication is limited by misunderstanding. He shows how, through discourse, there is a continual synthesis of meaning, or “principle of metaphor”, and through comprehension of the way meaning changes in discourse that we can better control and animate our use of words, and so decrease misunderstanding (Richards, 1936).

Nicholas Burbules (1997) asserts that metaphor is a comparison, an equation, between apparently dissimilar objects, inviting the listener or reader to see points of similarity between them while also inviting a change in the originally related concepts by “changing over” previously unrelated characteristics from one to the other. Ronald Baecker and others (Abrams, 1998) suggest metaphor is an invisible web of terms and associations that underlie the way we speak and think about a concept. For Roland Barthes, the literal and figurative readings and meanings work together to give a text its multilingual nature. Metaphor is a tool for rendering a text more plural (simultaneously having more than one meaning), since with more synonyms and “forms of language”, the text is multiplied in both depth and meaning: “The excess of metaphor... is a game played by the discourse. The game, which is a regulated activity and always subject to return, consists then not in piling up words for mere verbal pleasure (logorrhoea) but in multiplying one form of language... as though in an attempt to exhaust the nonetheless infinite variety and reinventiveness of synonyms, while repeating and varying the signifier, so as to affirm the plural existence of the text” (Barthes, 1993: 17). Annette Lavers writing in the preface to Roland Barthes work (Barthes, 1993: 7) confirms “first and foremost… is linguistics, whose mark is seen not so much in the use of a specialized vocabulary as in the extension to other fields of words normally reserved for speech or writing, such as transcription, retort, reading, univocal… also associated with a rediscovery of ancient rhetoric.” Although this natural or spontaneous use of metaphor is bound to happen in computing lessons as much so as anywhere else in rhetoric and dialogue, it is not the focus of this study. The study is not merely concerned with metaphor arising as a result of classroom dialogue. It is concerned with those metaphors that support student learning arising from the teachers’ planning and pedagogic processes and those metaphors presented in the curriculum specifications and text.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED, 2003) defines metaphor as that ”figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is properly applicable”. In its simplest form, metaphor is seen to be the borrowing of language that describes one object to be used to describe another object. However, that description denies the complexities of that relation, the nature of the objects and the contexts within which the metaphors exist. A seminal piece of work which draws together the different strands of thinking, redefines their context and acts as a starting point for developments into the current phase of thinking is that edited by Andrew Ortony (Ortony, 1979). It is the rôle metaphor has in the relationship between language and understanding that is important. The initial premise is that there is a dichotomy existing between the “science” of explanation of the physical reality and the “relativism” of the cognitive reality. The objective world is not directly accessible, but is constructed on the basis of the constraining influences of human knowledge and language and the claim that metaphor is the device through which all cognition takes place.

1.4             Model, product, theme…

A metaphor is describing one thing in terms of another. It uses the features of one to explain the features of the other. The linguistic use of the metaphor, in which a word, for example, eat, which is defined with respect to one kind of thing, food, is used in the context of a completely different kind of thing, for example, knowledge, as in “devours knowledge”, “laps up the details” but only returns “tit bits of information”. This is an exemplification of a metaphor. The linguistic approach is to consider that “knowledge” is treated semantically as if it were the same as “food”. The metaphor exists as a model - (usually) a concrete basis or ground - and a product - (usually) a concept or tenor. This is the basis of the metaphor theme. The theoretical, objective or conceptual differences that occur between the tenor and the ground form the tension within the metaphor. Alternative descriptive titles for aspects of metaphor are used. Richards (1936) used tenor and vehicle; Ryle (1949: 16-23) category mistakes; Turner and Fauconnier (1995) used source, target and ground; Andrew Goatly used vehicle, topic and ground (Goatly, 1997: 9) and Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999: 47) source target concept. Mary Hesse prefers primary and secondary system and describes the interaction as the “domain of the explanandum” (Hesse, 1965: 250). She supports the idea (also citing the work of Black, 1962: 37) that it is not the metaphor that creates the associations but that the associations created by the mind are the metaphor. This observation has significant bearing upon the use of the words metaphor, metaphoric and literal in the definition of metaphor used in this research.  John Lawler uses the idea of theme. “The abstract phenomenon of metaphor and the instantiation of a metaphor are the abstract and concrete poles of the uses of the word metaphor. In between them is one other sense of the word, one that's very important because it represents the cognitive mapping that we use when we use metaphors, and because it controls or licenses the actual instantiations. I call this in-between level the Metaphor Theme and it is this that is frequently meant when people talk about metaphor” (Lawler, 1987: 414).

IA Richards (1936) in the Philosophy of Rhetoric describes a “standard terminology for the components of a metaphor:  Tenor: the original concept. Vehicle: the second concept “transported” to modify or transform the tenor. Ground: the set of features common to the tenor and the vehicle. Tension: the effort demanded to span the gap between the tenor and the vehicle”

In the recent work of Turner and Fauconnier (1995), the description of metaphor moves onward from the model/product, domain/target description to one of blending two concepts to portray a single other. Described in a customary view of conceptual metaphor, it carries structure from one conceptual domain directly to another, from the “source” to the “target”. Each approach provides its own elucidation to the form and structure of metaphor. However, this research endeavours to interpret each within the framework of theme, model, product and tension (see Figure 2. ) This is notwithstanding the implications of the conclusions of George Lakoff in 1999 which dispute the model-product (source-target) similarity (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 119) which his earlier works supported. The rejection of the strict source target-model and the functions of relation are clearly articulated by Hoyt Alverson (Fernandez, 1991: 100). There is a justified argument for considering metaphor as simply analogy. However, Hoyt goes on to say “it may well be that the derivation of the meaning of one domain of experience from that of another, more “primitive” pre-conceptual one by a process of functional or relational mapping is the explanation of metaphor”. Support for George Lakoff’s conclusions regarding conflation of the target/concept relationship include Christopher Johnson’s study of MacWhinney’s work with a boy called Shem. That analysis looked for the conflation of the “know” and “see” concepts – that is, knowing is seeing as in “I see what you are saying”. This process of first associating the domains through juxtaposition experience of the words and then use of the words giving them similar meaning is explained physiologically as “the conflations are instances of coactivation of both domains, during which permanent neural connections between the domains develop” (Johnson, 1997: 343). 

 

A metaphor (theme) exists when the name of a familiar or primitive artefact, system or concept (model) is used in reference to a novel artefact, system or concept (product). Discontinuities between the model and product are tensions. http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wjw/metaphortheme.gif

 

Figure 3 the metaphor theme is the relationship between a model and the product

This model of metaphor has limitations as it does not reflect all aspects of metaphoric instantiation. A telling commentary by Eddy Zemach explains that “most theories of metaphor do not make a distinction between… …concept networks and the realms”. He asserts and evidences that when a two part model is proposed there are difficulties in identifying similarities. “As long as the interaction is limited to the source and the target concept networks, only similarity-based metaphors can be accounted for” (Zemach, 1997). However, providing that the “metaphor theme” is appropriately emphasised and that the connections are seen as being only directional in the first instantiation of the metaphoric utterance, then this model (illustrated above) can be the basis of discussion for the research.

1.5             Metonymy, synecdoche, simile, analogy

To help define metaphor it is also necessary to define those aspects of language that appear close to metaphor or are a subset of metaphor including the important tropes of: metonymy, synecdoche, simile and analogy. This section also considers myths and mixed metaphors.

metonymy

Metonymy is the rhetorical or metaphorical substitution of one thing for another based on their association or proximity. Metonymy is an aspect of language where the name of an object or concept is replaced with a word closely related to or suggested by the original, for example, Downing Street for the Prime Minister’s advisers – “a Downing Street statement outlined…”. “Bill Gates” is used to represent a Microsoft product. We might say that “she’s in computers” meaning that she is employed in the computer industry or “new software will solve the problem” meaning the state of using new software. These are examples of metonymy. Metonymy and metaphor are different kinds of linguistic structure (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 36). Metaphor is principally a way of conceiving of one thing in terms of another whereas metonymy is letting one thing stand for another in name only. As Roman Jacobson explains, metonyms are based on realistic connections; we say "he is fond of the bottle" (meaning, he likes alcohol) because there is a connection between alcohol and bottles (alcohol is stored in bottles). This is not a literal statement; a literal statement would simply have been: "He is fond of alcohol" (Jakobson, 1988).

synecdoche

Synecdoche is the naming of a part for the whole or a whole for the part (Fass, 1997). I have “a new set of wheels” meaning the whole car. In further exemplification, a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword) (The American Heritage, 2000). Asking a computer teacher how many keyboards do they have is interpreted as asking – how many computer systems. The words “keyboard” or “processor” is used to represent the whole computer system; the word “title” in “how many titles do you use?” represents the whole of a software package. A keyboard is not a computer system but because of their association, one is used to represent the other. There is an important consideration. Metaphor is derived from similarity: metonymy and synecdoche are derived from contiguity (Lodge, 1990) or a physical association. As soon as discourse deviates from strictly literal, denotative reference, it will tend to do so either in the form of metaphor and simile, or in the form of metonymy and synecdoche. The computer “desktop” is metaphoric; there is a similarity between the conventional desktop and the screen of the computer represented by parallels in the function. We can conceive or understand similarities. However, the keyboard being synecdochetically associated with the computer does not signify such parallelisms; there are no parallels in the function between a keyboard and a computer.

simile

Simile identifies through comparison, links or connection that are the same in two separate objects. The categorization theory (Glucksberg and Keysar, 1989) contends that metaphors are stronger than similes giving an example that when a metaphor corrects a simile - as in “Jack isn’t just like a rock, he is a rock!”  it is stronger in several respects. The simile makes a statement about a possible number of samenesses between the two objects (Jack and a rock). It does not imply a totality of sameness. The metaphor states an absolute sameness between the two and therefore gives cognitive permission to extend the comprehension of Jack’s characteristics by considering all known characteristics of a rock. For example, protection of children from unsavoury aspects of the internet is a walled garden. It is not like a walled garden – it is totally different but like the conventional walled gardens, there are many identically perceived aspects (Woollard, 1999). Metaphors must be systematic in the sense that they must be communicable from speaker to hearer in virtue of a shared system of principles (Searle, 1979: 113). The principles outlined by John Searle are abbreviated to: (1) single salient similarity; (2) contingent continuity; (3) false association; (4) cultural (natural) association; (5) being the condition of; (6) similar in meaning; (7) of relationship; (8) metonymy and synecdoche (Searle, 1979: 116-118). These principles are described later in relation to the computer metaphors.

analogy

Analogy is a form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects. This is the fundamental assumption of metaphor. That is, metaphoric relationships are stated through utterances without qualification or explanation as in “Jack is a rock”, “the children are protected in the walled garden”. Analogy is an explicit relationship; the relationships are “said” to be analogous. For instance, in linguistics there are analogies in constructing grammar. The past of “hide” is “hidden” and the past of “speak” is “spoken”. The past of “hock” would be, if it existed, “hocken”. These are analogous morphological constructions. Words or morphemes are re-formed or created on the model of existing grammatical patterns in a language. In more general terms, analogy is a resemblance of relations; an agreement or likeness between things in some circumstances or effects, when the things are otherwise entirely different. Thus, learning enlightens the mind, because it is to the mind what light is to the eye, enabling it to discover things before hidden (WorldNet, 1997) is a stated analogy between light and eye and knowledge and brain. “This explanation has shed light on the subject” is a metaphoric utterance. It is not literally “shedding light” and there is not a hint of analogy. This can be summarised:

This tautology reflects the feature of metaphor that there is no indication that they, the model and the product of the metaphor, are similar. In metaphor they are the same. For example, the written code of a program is the program as much as the presence of electrons in a circuitry is the program or the image on a screen is the program. One is metaphor of the other.

Further, the interest shown by some to differentiate the difference between metaphor and analogy has little benefit o this study.  George Scatchard wrote “the compounds of iron… [are] carried in our blood plasma by globulin… which is stored as ferric hydroxide by ferritin much as water is held by a sponge” (Scatchard, 1949: 660) is analogy because one is considered to be like another. He did not say “ferritin is a sponge for storing ferric hydroxide” (illustrated in Figure 3. ) But, for the learner, both have equal meaning. The understanding that:

·         ferritin is a container;

·         ferritin has a capacity that is relatively large;

·         ferritin absorbs quantities of ferric hydroxide; and

·         ferritin releases the ferric hydroxide easily when required.

Whether the teacher uses analogy or metaphor has little significance in the communication of meaning or understanding.

The gestalt property (see the “When metaphor is wrong” below) is:

Figure 4 gestalt properties of the concept sponge

The image above can be ferritin holding ferric hydroxide or a sponge holding water.

mythology

Myths are those narratives, passed on from person to person with little change, that, like all metaphor, are not literally true. Myth is a system of communication; it is a message. Roland Barthes’ (1915 to 1980) treaties in modern culture apply the term of myth, not to physical and abstract objects, but to forms. His descriptions encompass narratives about such diverse issues as wrestling, holiday cruises, soap powders and detergents, toys and steak and chips. He explores the conceptual meanings that develop behind those terms and how they influence our understanding of the world. Myths are not myths as a property of their content but as a property of the nature of the communication and so anything and everything can become a myth. He explains “A tree is a tree. Yes, of course. But a tree as expressed by Minou Drouet is no longer quite a tree, it is a tree which is decorated, adapted to a certain type of consumption, laden with literary self-indulgence, revolt, images, in short with a type of social usage which is added to pure matter” (Barthes, 1993: 109).  And, of course, the world of computing is not without its own myths. Consider Microsoft - immediately there will a reaction from within any group of computing specialists pertaining to the instability of the operating system. That reaction has achieved mythological status. There are cultural acceptances, for example, that it is acceptable to be bad at maths and computing but not at reading or sex. There is the scary myth. A computer can be used to find out your medical records because they are on a computer; the underlying idea here is that computers are powerful, mysterious, and omnipresent and they are, therefore, very threatening. These examples show that myths are a form of metaphor. Myths are culturally based because they widely known by a group of people. They are largely unconscious in nature and, like all metaphors, are literally false, or even ludicrous, when spelled out.

mixed metaphor

Mixed metaphor is both cliché and an important form of communication. There is a perceived wrongness to “mixing one’s metaphors”. The observation that a statement is a mixed metaphor degrades its value – it is an abusage of the English language (Partridge, 1947). However, the mixing of metaphors may indeed bring out a better understanding of a concept or thing. In terms of John Searle’s principle descriptors (Searle, 1979: 116) it can be described as “S is P” but with “P being R-ish” in nature. “There is no chance of pupils getting through the firewall of this particular garden!” S, in this case, is the restricted worldwide web environment. P is the walled garden, R being the firewall. P is the walled garden within which the children’s experiences are protected from the negative influences of the worldwide web as a whole. Alexander Bain states the brevity of the metaphor renders it liable to the vice called mixed metaphors but it could be claimed that it is not the fault of the brevity [of the metaphor] but the inarticulate nature of the user” (Bain, 1887: 165-167). A better defence is that the congregation of two metaphor schemes to underpin one relationship indeed strengthens the understanding.

1.6             Metaphor and cognition

Metaphor is seen in the earlier section, Rhetoric and Literature, as a linguistic device. It is also considered to be a fundamental vehicle of understanding, of cognition. It is the tenet of this work that the metaphor is a means to understanding, that it is important in the cognitive process and it is a tool to be exploited in the teaching process. The next section deals with the terms used in describing metaphor and their use. Alongside that analysis of metaphor is also a description of other tropes that are associated with metaphor and a closer analysis of the cognitive and physiological explanation of the metaphor.

categories of metaphor

George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s work since the late 1970’s is important in identifying metaphor types. They propose that a limited number of analogies can account for most of the metaphors in everyday use. Their assertion is that our ordinary use of language is largely structured by metaphoric and metonymic principles which exhibit directionality. Human beings systematically characterise abstract ideas, thoughts, religious beliefs, political and ethical situations in terms of bodily movements and bodily functions. The primary claim of their position is that these metaphors and the directionality are not arbitrary, but instead are a natural outgrowth of the manner in which our minds are constituted. This physiological approach is discussed below. The placement of metaphors into several theoretical categories arises from the formalised work of Andrew Ortony, Mark Johnson and George Lakoff (Ortony, 1979; Lakoff and Johnston, 1980) and articulated by Lee Ratzan with these examples:

·         spatial   I fell into a depression.

·         ontological   A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

·         personification   Life is cheating me.

·         metonymy   She is into dance.

·         synecdoche   Cars are choking our roads.

·         literal   The Turnpike is very heavy this morning.

·         homonymic   I am in the room and I am in love.

·         poetic embellishment   “She was my English rose”           (Ratzan, 2000)

Computer related examples include the spatial metaphor “I am moving into computers”. “The gatekeeper barred my access through the firewall” is personification of a mechanical device. “Network traffic is heavy at the start of lessons” is literally untrue - it does not possess weight. A homonymic example is “you are in a computer room and you are in a user group”. Finally, this is poetic embellishment; it is an example of computer generated poetry that includes metaphoric phrases. “Thrown smoothly over blue he assaults the shore with vaulting glee” (Hinckle, 2003).

against categorisation

There are established arguments for and against categorising metaphors and devaluing the importance of the categories. Victor Kennedy argues that the common features of metaphors are more significant than the category and argues against the categorization theory of metaphors. He uses recent developments in the application of theory to metaphor, including the topics of vagueness (versus explanation), emergent features, the indefiniteness of a grouping, and shifts in the order of terms in the metaphor to test the general and implicit weaknesses of the use of metaphor (Kennedy, 1999).

Despite Victor Kennedy’s arguments against, the categorisation helps establish a structure into which new metaphors can be placed pro tem as part of the process of observation and reporting. An important area that forms the basis of metaphor usage is the representation of something abstract by something physical. It is natural that we should apply the four physical terms “cold”, “warm”, “hard”, and “soft” to more abstract domains. Since, for example, physically soft surfaces are comfortable and hard ones uncomfortable, we sometimes use “hard” and “cold” and their synonyms to express comfort and discomfort in a moral or psychological sense, as in the expressions “a hard blow” (referring to a misfortune) or “softening the blow” or “hard luck” (Melnick, 1999). Software is manageable, changeable and malleable where hardware is tough, fixed and unchanging.

image schemas

There is growing evidence and assertion from cognitive linguistics and experimental psychology that a substantial portion of language is encoded in the mind in the form of spatial representations that are grounded in perception and action (Richardson et al, 2001: 873). Daniel Richardson goes on to cite recent work which has documented the mapping between spatial linguistic terms and the mental representation of space including Hayward and Tarr, 1995; Carlson-Radvansky, Covey and Lattanzi, 1999; Schober, 1995. There are established consistencies in the ways in which spatial language is produced and comprehended.  It is a natural expectation that when language refers directly to spatial properties, locations, and relationships in the world, those linguistic representations will have similar format. The rationale is more problematic when language represents concepts that have no apparent spatial property such as “hatred” or “normalisation”. Much work in cognitive linguistics has in fact argued that many linguistic and conceptual representations (even abstract ones) are based on metaphorical connections to spatially laid out “image schemas”. Daniel Richardson cites support from Raymond Gibbs, George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker and Talmy (Gibbs, 1996; Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1987; Talmy, 1983). His work analyses the images produced to represent “argument” and “respect” and shows that “argument” is represented by horizontal opposing arrows and “respect” is consistently represented by an inclined line uni-directional line. It is suggested that this shows clear links between the conceptual and the spatial.

Mark Johnson in The Body in the Mind outlines the rationale for their strong relationship between image and concepts (Johnson, 1987). Evidence for the schemata arises in several areas. The first is that we can manipulate images in ways that require more than simple memory of a detail-rich image such as rotating and then matching shapes. Secondly, by drawing out the established metaphors that “theory is a building” or “argument is a war” the visualisation of those images acts as the carrier for those metaphors. It is also suggested that the existence of polysemy, that is, the multiple related meanings for a single word supports the existence of a schema which could be based upon an image structure. Mark Johnson’s argument rests upon the observation that understanding moves from the concrete and physical to the abstract and non-physical (Johnson, 1987: 107) and the importance of “seeing” in understanding. Mark Johnson proposes a number of schemata which will be described below (Johnson, 1987: 126).

More recently, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Philosophy in the Flesh have extended their philosophy that perhaps nearly all speech is underpinned by a system of unconscious metaphor. There has been a development from the original idea that metaphor is the basis of understanding to the consideration that metaphor is also a usually unconscious influence upon attitudes and value judgments. George Lakoff describes these as embodied concepts - metaphor is the reflection of patterns of neurological connections. There are four main aspects: colour, position, space and time.

image schema of colour

Norman Holland describes a psychoanalytical approach to metaphor (Holland, 1999). For example, attitudes towards racial difference are affected by the metaphorical associations of white and black (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). The use of blacklist, when describing web pages that are prohibited by the filtering software in a walled garden, may be considered to be less than politically correct because of the metaphoric relationship between black (skin colour) and black (bad/wrong/amoral).  

George Lakoff’s explanation of colour-related metaphors brings together: the consideration of the external features (wavelength of light); the sensory aspects (limitations of cornea, rods and cones); the “neural circuitry” from eye to brain and the physiological representation of that information. Our mental processes associate the sensory data with the blue concept which has manifested itself by the mind. “Thinking of colour as merely the internal representation of the external reality of surface reflectance is not merely inaccurate, it misses most of the function of colour in our lives” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 25). The perception of colour is embodied in a similar way to that of other image schema. Vilayanur Ramachandran describes one of the goals of cognitive neuroscience as developing conceptual links between brain anatomy, neurophysiology, and phenomenal experience. Using the concept of synaesthesia, he illustrates how the study of certain neurological syndromes and brain-damaged patients can illuminate fundamental principles of the organization of the normal human mind (Ramachandran, 2001). One of these features of synaesthesia is that a colour concept is related to another concept. A person might report that Wednesday is orange, edges are red or the squeal of brakes is blue. Terry Regier identifies, in his analysis of the works of Kay, Berlin, Merrifield, McDaniel and others (Regier, 1996: 16-17), that colour has cross-cultural standards and the embodiment of the concepts of colour within neurology are based upon a model similar to that of other metaphoric image schema. This work reinforces the idea that connections between our physical experiences (perceptions), our neurological structures and our “understanding” of concepts are all important.

image schema of position

The source-path-goal schemata has several features: an object that moves, a starting point, a goal (destination), a route from source to goal, a trajectory of motion, the position of the object at a given time and the direction of object at a given time. There are associated adverbs: over, beneath, next to, before, during and nouns: front, back, start, course, programme, schedule, agenda, end, penultimate, order. There are a number of images and iconic representations of the position image schema including: the symbol for a ship’s muster station, the road traffic sign for stop, the start and end shapes of a flow chart, chevrons at a sharp bend, function buttons on media player software and so on.

image schema of space

Spatial concepts are described in terms of the container schema (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 31) and chronological in terms of a timeline or source-path schema (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 32). Both are extremely important in conceptualising the fundamentals of computing. Two primary examples are the concepts of backup and archiving. Container metaphors include aspects of: the internet; web pages/sites; memory and stacks.  As described in the next section on everyday language, “memory is a container metaphor” is evidenced through utterances like: “putting it [a file] into memory”; “the size [memory] of a computer”; “poking into memory”.

image schema of time

It is the argument of current cognitive philosophers that understanding is embodied. “Reason and conceptual structure are shaped by our bodies, brains, and modes of functioning in the world. Reason and concepts are therefore not transcendent, that is, not utterly independent of the body… our most fundamental concepts - time, events, causation, the mind, the self and morality - are multiply metaphorical” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 128). Time as a concept has many parallels which will have the same underlying embodiment as similar concepts. For example, time is like money. We spend, use, waste and invest both time and money and the embodiment is reflected in natural utterances where one will act as the metaphor for the other. “Don’t waste my time by spending too much invested in other things.” In a similar way computer memory is like time. We use and have time/memory. We also run out of time and memory.

There is an alternative perception of time. In the example above, time is a resource or a quantity. It is also a passage or a flow. Time is a journey and is metaphorically associated with the path schema. The timing of a computing lesson can be represented as a journey or a time-line. Figure 4. below indicates the 5 principle phases: entry and logging-on, introduction or scene-setting, the body of the lesson, warming-down and plenary and the final exit from the computer room.

Figure 5 lesson time-line

“The lesson is a voyage with a beginning as pupils board the train; we settle them and prepare for the journey telling them of the interesting places we shall visit. Towards the end we will prepare them for disembarkation, re-telling stories of the places visited and experiences” (Woollard, 2002c).

Further schemas are described by Mark Johnson including those listed in Figure 5.

(Johnson, 1987: 126)

Figure 6 image schemata

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that much of our linguistic and conceptual structure is shaped by a relatively small number of conceptual metaphors which draw primarily on source domains structured by bodily experience. Basic bodily experience, such as that of object manipulation with containers, generates inferential patterns which are then projected to make sense of more complex domains of experience. Research on the conceptual metaphors of the human computer interface, for example, has shown the extent to which the desktop metaphor successfully exploits basic patterns of bodily experience (Rohrer, 1995).

basic-level categories

George Lakoff describes basic-level categories as - when considering an object it becomes a basic-level if it is high enough in the taxonomy to be representational of some objects below it, and it is low enough to be represented by a mental image“(Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 26). Mark Johnson describes our everyday understanding of the world and our experiences of it as of two types; basic-level categories being one and image schema being the other (Johnson, 1987: 208). It is the basic-level that we categorise objects. For instance, we experience the object and can visualise the concept “chair”. A subordinate category object is “rocking chair” and furniture is the superordinate category. Chair can be represented by a single mental image (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 26) but not furniture making chair a basic-level category. Figure 6. below represents the basic-level categorisation of the object “PC” with the superordinate category (computing devices) and subordinate devices (tablet, laptop, tower…). The PC is a basic-level category. The iconisation of basic-level category objects is common in computing.

Figure 7 basic-level categorisation of a PC

The icons  (Microsoft XP™) and  (Microsoft ME™) apply equally to a laptop, tablet or handheld computer.

 

1.7             Metaphor and everyday language

“Metaphor is the omnipresent principle of language” is the assertion of IA Richards. It reflects the influence of 18th and 19th century writers on rhetoric and his own analysis of writing: fictional, rhetorical and scientific. “We cannot get through (even so much as) three sentences of ordinary fluid discourse without it…. Even in the rigid language of the settled sciences, we do not eliminate or prevent it without great difficulty” (Richards, 1936).

Metaphor is a feature of everyday language. George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s treaty Philosophy in the Flesh substantiates the assertion that all speech is underpinned by a system of unconscious metaphor. As James Lawley explains “embedded metaphors are especially important because they often indicate how the speaker is “mentally doing” the abstract experience they are describing” (Lawley et al, 2000: 12). He asserts that the pervasive use of metaphor embedded in everyday speech is a reflection of the underpinning embodiment of metaphors in physiology.

Donald Schön talks about metaphor as being both:

a certain kind of product, a perspective or frame by which things can be structured and also

a process by which new things can be perceived, “new perspectives on the world come into perspective” (Schön, 1979: 254).

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson state “we have found that most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphoric in nature. And we have found a way to begin to identify in detail just what the metaphors are that structure how we perceive, how we think, and what we do” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 4). George Lakoff showed how much of our thinking and acting can be explained by common metaphors. They have shown that much of our everyday language, including what we would ordinarily call literal language, is structured by conventional metaphors (Lakoff, 1987).

1.8             Using metaphor as a tool…

A technological example given by Donald Schön illustrates powerfully the value of metaphor to aid thinking about a situation. Some years ago researchers were considering the properties of natural and synthetic paint brushes in an attempt to understand the reasons for the differences in performance. Someone observed “You know a paintbrush is a kind of pump!” (Schön, 1979: 257) A brief explanation of how the action of the bristles as they are bent is to force paint onto the surface justifies the claim. The observer was thinking of the paintbrush as a pump and so able to articulate its actions. This new understanding of a paintbrush being a pump leads to further developments in the theory of paintbrushes and the enhancement of the design of synthetic bristles. This use of metaphor brought illustration of the situation and therefore a method by which further understanding could be established. The general case of understanding a thing by calling it another is central to this work. In the case of the researchers, they cannot, at first, map the elements and relations in “pump” and “paintbrush” onto one another. They cannot see paintbrush as pump. The cognitive work involves the participants in attending to new features and relations of the phenomena, and in renaming, regrouping, and reordering those features and relations (Schön, 1979: 276). The conflation is illustrated in Figure 7. The metaphor is therefore seen to be emotive, stimulating and illustrative. This example meets the definition of metaphor presented by Mark Johnson “…a pervasive mode of understanding by which we project patterns from one domain of experience in order to structure another domain of a different kind” (Johnson, 1987: xiv).

Figure 8 paintbrush is a pump metaphor        

Andrew Ortony suggests three main effects of metaphor use:

·         introduce colourful imagery into what otherwise would be an ordinary (or plain) expression (decorative);

·         convey information inexpressible, or at least not easily communicable by ordinary language (explanative); and

·         express something more concisely than possible with ordinary language.

Each effect is admirable but each has the potential for misconception and error (Ortony, 1975: 45).

1.9              Physiology and metaphor…

In this section the physiological explanation of metaphor is considered. The phrase “the embodied mind” is used by those cognitive scientists (Johnson, Lakoff, Rohrer, Rosch, Thompson, Varela and others) to signal the importance of the relationship between the physiology, the structure of knowledge and language. Important work in this area has taken place at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, USA under the Neural Theory of Language Project (NTLP, 2004) including the development of a paradigm that bridges the gap between the consideration of metaphor by linguists and the findings of neuroscientists working at the physiological level.

As early as the late 1940s scientists were postulating theories relating brain physiology to understanding. Donald Hebb suggested that learning could be based upon in changes in the brain based upon neuron interaction. Frank Rosenblatt built a simple device called a “Perceptron” which emulated neuron like components which had a capacity for recognition (Rosenblatt, 1962). William Ashby carried out studies of the dynamics of large systems with random interconnections showing that they exhibit coherent global behaviours.  From these early ideas have arisen many theories that relate brain physiology to knowledge and understanding.  An interesting strand of development is that of “connectionism” (Feldman and Ballard, 1982) and more recently called Parallel Distributed Processing (Rummelhart, 1986) described by Francisco Valera and others as “with a whole army of neurallike, simple, unintelligent components, which, when appropriately connected, have interesting global properties. These global properties embody and express the cognitive capacities being sought” (Valera et al, 1991: 87).

This embodiment of understanding is a parallel to the ideas of the physiological embodiment of metaphor. Computational neuroscience is concerned with the modelling the brain by considering the circuitry of axons and dendrites. Cognitive systems are seen to be built, not by starting with symbols and rules but, by starting with simple components that dynamically connect to each other, in other words, neurons and clusters of neurons. Within the cognitive system there is global cooperation that spontaneously emerges when the states of all participating “neurons” reach a mutually satisfactory state. In such a system there is no need for a central processing unit to guide the entire operation. This model of embodiment is called in various works self-organization, emergent or global properties, network dynamics, non-linear networks, complex neural systems, or synergetics (Valera et al, 1991: 88).

Tim Rohrer describes embodiment as “constituted and constrained by the kinds of organization reflected in the biological, anatomical, biochemical, and neurophysiological characteristics of the body and the brain” (Rohrer, 1995: 2). He draws together the threads of philosophical, cognitive and neurophysiological ideas regarding metaphor by citing evidence from the study of different groups of brain damaged patients (Winner and Gardner, Brownell et al, Beeman et al, Keysar). He also draws on the arguments, recalled earlier, of George Lakoff (1987) and Mark Johnson (1987) that our ordinary use of language is largely structured by metaphoric and metonymic principles relating spatial movements, bodily functions and sensory perceptions to non-physical concepts. For example, understanding is seeing, sorrow is a heavy load and you are my heart throb. A primary claim of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's position is that these metaphors are not arbitrary but are a natural “outgrowth of the manner in which our minds and brains are constituted” (Lakoff, 1999).

Figure 9 interconnections between the neurosciences, cognitivism and metaphor

There are exciting developments in the connections between biologically based computers, computer algorithms based upon neural network models, creating computer models of brain activity and describing brain activity in terms of neural structures such as metaphor. Figure 8. illustrates interconnections between the neurosciences, cognitivism and metaphor.

1.10        When metaphor is wrong…

A similarity is drawn between metaphor and gestalt images where the same figure/thing can be seen in two contrasting ways. This indicates a caution that needs to be taken. If the illustration (Figure 9. ) below is that of a vase then the observer is mistaken to think otherwise. In the same way, the metaphor can imply a meaning that is not true.
 

Figure 10 gestalt characteristics of metaphor

blinds mankind to the real truth

Perhaps the original research question relating to metaphors being emotive, stimulating and illustrative should be extended to include the word wrong. Perhaps it should read “How are metaphors used to be emotive, stimulating, illustrative and wrong?”

The theme of the wrongness of metaphor continues when considering Plato’s attitude to poetry and the use of metaphor in rhetoric. Plato viewed poetry and rhetoric with suspicion and banned poetry from his Utopian Republic because it gives no truth of its own, stirs up the emotions, and thereby blinds mankind to the real truth (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 189-190). Aristotle in his work Topica was wary of the ambiguity and obscurity of comparison (metaphors) but acknowledged their value. However, poetry survived. The literary application of the metaphor enables writers to express feelings of love, hope, wonder and pain through the physical, practical and everyday experience. The metaphor means that when we are at a loss for words then the substitute can be used.

philosophers against metaphor

In a piece entitled “Philosophers against Metaphor” (as quoted in the Introduction) H Horsburgh writes that, “with the decline of metaphysics, philosophers have grown less and less concerned about Godliness and more and more obsessed with cleanliness, aspiring to ever higher levels of linguistic hygiene. In consequence, there has been a tendency for metaphors to fall into disfavour, the common opinion being that they are a frequent source of infection.” (Horsburgh, 1958: 231) This piece of writing is, in modern eyes, interestingly metaphoric with its play upon cleanliness, hygiene and infection. It is not unlike the modern-day negative associations created with the use of virus vocabulary when discussing software that automatically carries out functions. Horsburgh argues that the metaphor is a means by which a greater understanding can be achieved. The rejection of metaphor (at the start of the 20^th century) is motivated by a desire for clarity but he illustrates this through the example “the insistence on light be made an instrument of darkness. The rehabilitation of metaphor can therefore be regarded as a small part of the work which must be done if this campaign is to be brought firmly under control” (Horsburgh, 1958: 245). This is evidence of the tension that exists when considering the role of metaphor in philosophy, linguistics and cognition.

lies that tell the truth

Using metaphors can be considered to be lying. Like most science educators I tell lies. The best demonstration I've seen of the phases of the moon took place in a darkened lecture theatre with 90 would-be teachers seeing a Heath Robinson driven globe, a football and a torch. The presenter speaks, “…and this [pointing to the torch] is the sun and this [pointing to the football] is the moon,” and for the next minute in the minds of sane adults, that truth is solid and the learning is secured. The football encircles the globe in the beam of the torch. The phases of the moon are revealed. The house lights go up and the spell is broken. The sun and moon are just a torch and an ordinary football but the phases of the moon are “understood”. This is an instance of "lies that tell the truth" (Pinkard, 2000).

untrue statements that are not lies

Another example from science education is the description of the atom and its “shells” of electrons. The inner shell is complete with just 2; the other shells require 8. Learners’ experience is usually limited to the idea that shells are hard spherically shaped objects. We describe how atoms “share” electrons so that they can get a full complement. The covalent bond is described as a collaboration as strong as any human work. Other atoms give up or receive electrons in a cooperative way to become ionic. We place almost human-like features upon the atoms (anthropomorphism). We do this because the inexpressibility of some concepts in mere nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs forces the use of other cognitive devices to help our learners understand. Davidson (as cited in Coyne, 1995: 262) refers to metaphor groupings as untrue statements that are not lies. Perhaps the admission “Like most educators I tell lies” is perhaps wrong and should be reported “Like most educators I tell untrue statements that are not lies”. When it is said “a spreadsheet is a set of small boxes that are arranged in a (2-dimensional) grid and each box can…” when in fact it is a (1-dimensional) linked list of values, it is not a lie – it is just untrue. It is a metaphor we use to help learners understand long before we consider linked lists. Metaphors by “their power of extension” (Ratzan, 2000) have the power to trap the unwary by promoting faulty logic (Cooper, 1997).

1.11        Summary and definition of metaphor

From Plato’s rhetoric with no real truth and Aristotle’s ambiguity to Cooper’s faulty logic, there is significant evidence from the literature to suggest that metaphor may not be a panacea for learning but could in fact have negative consequences. However, the body of evidence in support of the metaphor acting as a vehicle for cognitive awareness (understanding) is growing. The late 1970s saw the turning point in the amount of literature supporting the notion of the ubiquitous metaphor, its use in everyday language and the role it plays in understanding.

Metaphors exist in many fields of contemporary philosophical thought including language and communication, literature and rhetoric, cognitivism and physiology. The current premise within cognitive science is that understanding is an embodied feature of physiology and that metaphor is a major structure of that embodiment. However, metaphor is also an aspect of the everyday language we use and is described in a number of ways using a range of terms. Figure 10. illustrates the various aspects of metaphor discussed.

This thesis will take as its definition a model-product structure of metaphor theme with associated tensions. Metaphor is any description or utterance that is not the literal truth and, based upon the work of Nelson Goodman, metaphors are sets of alternative labels or reorganisations including diagram, model and algorithm.

The other tropes of the English language associated with metaphor are described to more clearly sharpen our image of metaphor by describing that which is and which is not metaphor.

The categorisation of metaphor accepted as the basis for future discussion is based upon an embodied physiological model postulated by Christopher Johnson, Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, James Lawley, Terry Regier, Mark Turner and others. The description of computer-based metaphor focuses on the image schemas such as: container, surface, source-path-goal, link, part-whole, near-far, centre-periphery, up-down, front-back, linear as described by George Lakoff and how the understanding of concepts can be represented by the image schema.

Figure 11 a collage of the diagrammatic, metaphor theme and exemplar image schema

Metaphor has two facets - it is that which naturally occurs as a result of subconscious cognitive activity and appears as utterances and acknowledgements of understanding. The other aspect of metaphor is that constructed device that is used as a means of explanation.

The description of the use of the metaphor in the teaching of computing and the description of the metaphors themselves will rely heavily upon the image schema, the associated use of other tropes of language and the rhetorical use of the metaphor theme in everyday language. The next chapter, metaphor in the world of computing, continues the literature review by considering the particular role the metaphor plays in the development and use of computing.

Last updated: 09 October 2004 Back to the top of the page