Metaphor: A Practical Introduction

Excellent book. Provides a clear and concise overview of current understanding of metaphor. Much more accessible than Lakoff's presentation in Woman, Fire, and Dangerous Things, although Lakoff is due significant credit for his seminal work in showing that metaphors are not just linguistic constructs but truly conceptual. Discusses cultural aspects, conceptual metaphor in idioms, restrictions on how metaphors are mapped, and theories of how metaphors relate to each other and metonymy.

This is a great introduction to Metaphor and its practical uses. Although I'm interested in the scientific theory and research aspects of it, I am more interested in using these ideas to help students to become better writers. This book inspired further research, especially works by Lakoff, Turner, Johnson, Black, Pinker and their various collaborations over the years. As a writer, it provided a road map through the labyrinth of understanding and creating quality literature.
Kovecses is a natural teacher, and each chapter builds on the previous with clear accessibility. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in literature, writing or how our minds work. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction is now included in the intermediate fiction writing courses at Writers' Village University for 2008.

The preface of this book says it's about "what has happened in the past two decades in the cognitive linguistic study of metaphor." I hadn't read a book on the subject of metaphor since 1978, so the precision of that comment went totally over my head. I'm writing this review so that the same doesn't happen to you.

The cognitive linguistic (CL) approach to metaphor is based on the work of Lakoff and Johnson (with whom the author of this book has worked, and to whom he dedicates the book). It emphasizes the conceptual, rather than merely linguistic, character of metaphor. It regards metaphor as a "mapping" from a "source (conceptual) domain" to a "target domain". So a statement like "I defended my argument" can be explained by a conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR, where "argument" is the target and "war" is the source. The same mapping also underlies many other expressions (e.g., "He won the argument"). Using one concept to explain many expressions (and even non-linguistic instantiations) is supposed to be a special benefit of the CL approach.

The book seems to be a very comprehensive exposition of the CL theory of metaphor. Metonymy is also discussed quite thoroughly. There are exercises after each chapter, together with a complete answer key. But that's as far as it goes. The CL theory is one theory of metaphor among several, and you won't learn anything about any of the others (other than a bit about "blending") from this book.

Some of book's aplications of the CL approach were pretty neat, including the discussions of complex abstract systems (Ch. 10), pedagogical applications (Ch. 14) and historical semantics and grammar (Ch. 15). But it's hard to tell from this book whether the theory really has the "scientific" quality to which it seems to aspire (as evidenced by, among other things, its mathematical-sounding jargon: "domains", "mappings" etc.)

In particular: The book names hundreds of conceptual metaphors, as if they have some objective existence. But it leaves a lot unexplained. How can you know that a particular conceptual metaphor is the correct one to invoke in a given case, to the exclusion of others or even just in preference to others? (BTW, the exercises often ask you to do just that.) When a name is given to a conceptual metaphor, does this mean that the source domain and its mapping to the target have been verified by historical research? Does the giving of a name suggest, as with the naming of species in modern biology, that some effort has gone into verifying that there really is a distinct species, with specific features that can be reproducibly distinguished? Or are the names more ad hoc, and bestowed according to individual taste (or the taste of Lakoff and his clique)?

The book never addresses such questions, but the author's attributions of conceptual metaphors provide some clue. They're often arbitrary or downright bizarre. For example, he cites "The sight filled them with joy," "She couldn't contain her joy any longer," and "I was bursting with happiness," as examples of HAPPINESS IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER (p. 86). OK, fluids are plausible here, though couldn't one also be filled with solids? Next he mentions "I couldn't keep my happiness to myself," "She gave way to her feelings of happiness," "His feelings of joy broke loose," and "He couldn't hold back tears of joy," as examples of HAPPINESS IS A CAPTIVE ANIMAL (id.). Where is the necessity of invoking a captive animal to explain these? Fluids could do just as well for most of them. Moreover, since we're told (at p. 16) that the "central idea" of the CL school is that the human body is the most important source of conceptual metaphors, excretion seems at least as appropriate a source for these metaphors as a captive animal. However, the author doesn't offer any justification for invoking the captive animal concept over any competing alternatives -- in fact, he doesn't mention any alternatives at all.

Such examples left me with the feeling that the CL theory is just as subjective as literary criticism and other traditional approaches to metaphor, but with an added layer of scientific pretension. That doesn't mean it can't produce occasional insights, but the pretension is irritating -- and misleading. Rather than having the relative rigor found in some branches of linguistics, CL theory of metaphor seems like just a lot of hand-waving (and a bit too much deference to Lakoff & Johnson). I'm not qualified to determine whether this is more a reflection of the theory per se or of the book's exposition of it, but it's disappointing in either case.