CMT and the 'Work' of Metaphor

Abstract

CMT and the 'Work' of MetaphorI propose to show that, in their Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), Lakoff and his collaborators do not offer a new account of metaphor but rather a wide-ranging representation of analogies, reconstructed on the basis of selected linguistic material (primarily collocations and idioms). Consequently, CMT is valuable not as an explanation of metaphorical language in use, nor a hypothesis about the genesis and development of concepts in individual minds, but primarily as a way to represent the results of unexplored social processes of lexicalization involving metaphor. If one adopts a more 'ecological', situated perspective, this global, post hoc approach may perhaps provide useful material to speculate on the forces that drive meaning extension in history.Keywords: conceptual metaphor, analogy, concept formation, blending, linguistic mentalism, stereotype, primacy of metaphor. INTRODUCTIONAs Black points out (1962: 28-29), '"metaphor" is a loose word, at best, and we must beware of attributing to it stricter rules of usage than are actually found in practice'. Black's point concerns a specific issue: differentiation of similar metaphors in discourse; but it may well be extended to any phenomena that go by this name. Whenever one wants to say something specific about the nature of metaphor, one should try to keep in mind the full range of entities labeled 'metaphorical' and place one's view within this wider horizon (see Section 5 for a sketch of this range). Black's advice is especially pertinent when one undertakes to define metaphor in a way that is strikingly different from standard usage and, at the same time, aims to revolutionize the whole field of metaphor research, as is the case with Lakoff and Johnson's proposal. It seems imperative then to relate their claims to traditional attempts that probe metaphor from different sides. I believe that Lakoff -the spiritus movens of the whole enterprise, 1 who has repeatedly underlined its importance -did not pay enough attention to this necessary aspect of metaphor research, possibly because he was convinced of 1 Lakoff's further cooperation with Johnson centred on their philosophical position called 'experientialism' or 'embodied realism' (Lakoff & Johnson 1999. Regarding metaphor -before veering towards a neuronal account (Lakoff 2008a: 17-38), which is outside the remit of this paper, Lakoff cooperated with e.g. Kövecses (Lakoff 1987a -the case study of 'anger'; cf. Kövecses 1986Kövecses , 1988Kövecses , 1990, Brugman (Lakoff 1987a -the case study of 'over'), and Turner (Lakoff & Turner 1989 CMT AND THE 'WORK' OF METAPHOR | 154discovering an empirical way to explore the phenomenon: a stance not uncommon in science. 2 In this paper, I would like to fill the gap -so far as my competence allows -and find a place within the field for Lakoff's view on metaphor, in the process reinterpreting his description of the project and its findings. I will focus on the cognitive importance of metaphor, as this aspect plays a central role in Lakoff'...