Literary and Nonliterary Aspects of Metaphor

7/29/2019 Literary and Nonliterary Aspects of Metaphor

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Literary and Nonliterary Aspects of MetaphorAuthor(s): Gerard SteenSource: Poetics Today, Vol. 13, No. 4, Aspects of Metaphor Comprehension (Winter, 1992), pp.687-704Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773294

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Literary nd NonliteraryAspectsof MetaphorGerard Steen

LiteraryStudies, Free University, Amsterdam

Abstract The difference between literary and nonliterary metaphor, from apsychological point of view, has received more attention since the early 1980s.In particular, Dedre Gentner's structure-mapping theory of metaphor hasbeen the basis for a number of stimulating insights in this matter. The presentcontribution aims to develop these views in light of the newly advanced empiri-cal study of literature. In particular, a systematic distinction is made amonglinguistic, psychological, and social aspects of metaphor in order to identify anumber of issues pertaining to literary metaphor more clearly than was pos-sible before the advent of such empirical studies. An encompassing discourseview of these aspects is presented, which facilitates a discussion of the rela-tions between metaphor and analogy, between the cognitive structure and thefunction of metaphors, and between metaphor and various types of discourse.

1. Introduction: Metaphor in Cognitive Psychologyand in the Empirical Study of LiteratureDedre Gentner (1982, 1983) has offered an interesting account ofstructural and processing differences between literary and nonliter-ary metaphors based on the view that there are different structuralproperties to literary and nonliterary metaphors, which are also re-flected in their processing. In particular, Gentner has found that liter-This research was carried out with the financial support of NWO-contract 301-180-023 of the Dutch Foundation for Scientific Research, for "Metaphor in Litera-ture." I wish to thank Dedre Gentner for making available to me the stimuli andresults of her rating experiment, mentioned in Gentner (1982). I am also indebtedto Elrud Ibsch and Lachlan Mackenzie for their comments and suggestions.Poetics Today 13:4 (Winter 1992). Copyright ? 1992 by The Porter Institute forPoetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/92/$2.50.


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688 PoeticsToday 13:4ary metaphors seem to be typically richer than, for instance, scientificmetaphors, which, by contrast, are typically clearer than literary meta-phors. She claims that literary metaphor is therefore usually under-stood as having an expressive function, whereas scientific metaphoris thought to have a predominantly explanatory function. As thesedistinctions are matters of degree, this is a fruitful starting point forfurther investigations into the structure and function of metaphor inliterature and in other types of discourse.Gentner's suggestions accord well with recent developments in lit-erary theory. Traditionally, literary critics have approached metaphorfrom an interpretative rather than a psychological perspective, butnow attempts are being made to break away from this approach and toestablish connections with psychology and the social sciences at large.For example, Mark Turner (1987; cf. Lakoff and Turner 1989) hasextended the perspective of cognitive linguistics to an analysis of liter-ary metaphors. More fundamental and far-reaching from a literary-theoretical point of view, however, is the recent advent of an empiricalstudy of literature (e.g., Schmidt 1980; cf. Ibsch, Schram, and Steen1991). In that framework, the critical-theoretical interpretation of lit-erary texts has been abandoned as the central aim of investigationand has been replaced by psychological explanations of the cognitiveprocesses that underlie the understanding of literary texts as litera-ture by all kinds of readers. At heart, this is a theory of literature asdiscourse, incorporating textual, psychological, and social aspects ofliterary reading with a view to achieving social-scientific descriptionand explanation. My own work aims to describe the role of metaphorin this context (e.g., Steen 1989, 1991). Although I cannot do justicehere to the complexities of the theoretical issues involved, what followsis a sketch of the basic idea.

Siegfried Schmidt (1980) has proposed that there are two conven-tions characteristic of literary discourse, the so-called aesthetic andpolyvalence conventions. These can provide a theoretical frameworkin which to explain Gentner's findings. Since both aesthetic qualityand polyvalent meaning are intimately tied to the role of metaphorin literary texts, one might expect, from the point of view of literarytheory, that metaphors would notably demonstrate the conventions ofliterary reading rather than those of nonliterary reading. Gentner'sfindings constitute an initial confirmation of these general expecta-tions. In her terms, the cognitive structure of literary metaphors istypically richer than the cognitive structure of scientific analogies:relatively more, and more diverse, attributes and predicates charac-terizing the vehicle domain are mapped onto the topic domain in lit-erature than in scientific writing. This can be explained by appeal tothe opposition between the discursive conventions of polyvalence and


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Steen * Aspectsof Metaphor 689monovalence underlying literary and nonliterary discourse, respec-tively. Gentner connects this difference between literary metaphorsand scientific analogies to the distinction between what she calls "ex-pressive metaphor" and "explanatory analogy," respectively. In thisconnection, Schmidt's view of the aesthetic function (as opposed toa factual function) of literary discourse may be easily extended tometaphor: Gentner's "expressive metaphor" has an aesthetic function,while her "explanatory analogy" has a factual one. At first glance,these independent theories, one derived from cognitive psychologyand the other from the empirical study of literature, apparently leadto similar conclusions about the place of metaphor in literature.Gentner's structure-mapping theory has much to offer the literarytheorist interested in the nuts and bolts of analogical reasoning asit occurs during metaphor comprehension. However, the discourse-oriented approach to literature of the empirical researcher can alsoilluminate some aspects of metaphor processing that remain unac-counted for by Gentner. My purpose here is to discuss some aspectsof Gentner's structure-mapping approach to literary metaphor froma discourse perspective in order to point out the compatibility of theseapproaches and to clear up some misunderstandings and problems.

2. Reformulations:FromStructure-Mappingo DiscourseTheoryThe aim of this section will be to cast Gentner's (1982) insights in adifferent mold by applying the discourse-theoretical distinctions in-voked above. I define "discourse" as the use of linguistic objects (texts,metaphors) by real people (readers) in particular socially constructedcontexts (for instance, in literary versus scientific text comprehension).From this starting point, I propose the following reformulations ofGentner's contribution.Gentner places metaphor and analogy on a par and relates them towhat she believes are their natural communicative habitats, literatureand science (ibid.: 107). However, I will argue that this is a misleadingand problematic division of labor, given the scope of the terms meta-phorand analogy. Gentner's sense of parity is aptly expressed by her as-sertion that "many (perhaps most) metaphors are predominantly rela-tional comparisons, and are thus essentially analogies" (Gentner 1983:162). First, "essentially"suggests that analogies are in some sense moreimportant than metaphors, which was not the point of departure inGentner (1982). However, her assertion also implies that metaphorsare somehow different from analogies, which, unfortunately, is notfurther elaborated (but cf. Gentner 1983: 162; see also the discus-sion below in section 3). Both implications can be approached from anangle that will allow us to formulate the relationship between meta-phor and analogy as a more systematic one.


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690 PoeticsToday 13:4Let us assume that metaphors and analogies involve non-literal com-parisons, which in turn need to be distinguished from literal compari-

sons and abstractions (Gentner 1983: 159-62; cf. Gentner and Clem-ent 1988). Indeed, one of the merits of the structure-mapping theoryis its having formulated these three kinds of domain comparisonsas points along a continuum (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Moreover,the systematic relationship among comparison, analogy, and literal ornon-literal meaning has also been asserted by Andrew Ortony (1979),George Miller (1979), and Keith Holyoak (1982). Thus, there seemsto be a fair degree of consensus about the relationship among theseconcepts.However, I prefer to retain a terminological distinction between theformal or linguistic expression of a non-literal comparison, on the onehand, and its cognitive representation, on the other. That is, (linguis-tic) metaphors involvenon-literal (psychological) comparisons, or ana-logical reasoning, somewhere in their processing (cf. Ortony 1979),but it is less felicitous to say that (linguistic) metaphors are non-literalcomparisons (or analogies). On the other hand, a statement such asthe hydrogenatom is like the solarsystem (1)

does indeed involve analogy, but in linguistic terms it still remains ametaphor or, more correctly, a simile, rather than an analogy. Thedistinction that Gentner (1982) wants to capture with the systematicopposition of metaphor and analogy can be explained more fruitfullyin another way.In fact, Gentner's shifting terminology, from "literary metaphor" to"expressive metaphor" and from "scientific analogy" to "explanatorymetaphor," actually suggests the real nature of the problem. Theseshifts imply a conflation of two distinct aspects of discourse: (1) the typeof discoursen which (linguistic) metaphor occurs, that is, literary or sci-entific discourse, and (2) the cognitive unction that may be attributed tometaphor within a particular type of discourse, that is, explanation or(charged) expression. (I will hereafter refer to "charged expression"as "evocation" in order to distinguish this cognitive function of meta-phor from the general function of all language as that of expression.)Allow me to elaborate briefly on these notions.The concepts of scientific and literary discourse are socially con-structed, that is, defined as domains of discourse in which people canparticipate by means of various capacities or roles: as readers or asproducers of texts, for instance. Types of discourse are defined at amacro-social level through aesthetic and polyvalence conventions or,on the contrary, through factual and monovalence conventions. Theseconventions embody the aims, needs, and abilities of people as theyparticipate in a particular domain of discourse. However, explanation


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Steen * Aspectsof Metaphor 691and evocation are terms that define the cognitive functions of meta-phors used within these domains of discourse. The capacity of meta-phors to explain and to evoke may be explicable by reference to thefactual and monovalence conventions, on the one hand, and the aes-thetic and polyvalence conventions, on the other, but, as is also shownby Gentner, this connection is not necessary. One may neverthelessexpect a correlation between the cognitive function and the discoursestatus of metaphors. Moreover, the distinct cognitive function of meta-phors as explanatory or evocative presupposes the cognitivestructureof metaphors as analogies. Therefore, it is incorrect to call the sci-entific phenomenon "analogy" and the literary one "metaphor": thedifferences that Gentner is trying to capture need to be formulated inother terms.In this reformulation I will make use of the discursive aspects oflinguistic objects, people, and social contexts introduced above. I pro-pose that the linguisticlevel of analysis pertains to the identification ofnon-literal meaning that is based on resemblance; such metaphoricalexpression is described by means of terms like metaphorand analogy(called "simple analogy" in Gentner 1982: 108), referring to the rhe-torical figures traditionally so called (other such concepts being simileand extended comparison, to name only two). The psychological evel,or that of individual behavior, pertains to domain comparison; this isanalyzed in terms of the conceptual activity of non-literal understand-ing, which is presumably based on analogical reasoning. Conceptualclarity and richness may be the result of these processes, the cognitivefunction of which may be to explain or evoke ideas. Other cognitivefunctions of metaphor that belong in this category are persuasion (see,e.g., Bosman 1987; Graesser, Millis, and Mio 1989), giving informa-tion, and so on. Finally, there is the sociallevel, or the context in whichliterary or nonliterary communication is achieved. An investigation ofthis aspect of metaphor amounts to its description in terms of what-ever conventions prevail in a particular kind of discourse. Althoughwe are predominantly concerned with literary and scientific discoursehere, journalistic, political, and other types of discourse would serveas well. In sum, we have distinguished four different discursive aspectsof metaphor in literature and other types of discourse (see Table 1).This simple picture becomes much more complicated when we addsuch features as simile and extended comparison to the first column,imaginable to the second, persuasive and informative to the third, andjournalistic, religious, political, and so on to the fourth. Indeed, otherparameters may need to be added to the dimensions. For instance,there are at least two distinct linguistic parameters besides the one per-taining to the classification of figures of speech: grammatical scope ofthe metaphor (Dirven 1985; Graesser, Millis, and Mio 1989) and de-


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692 PoeticsToday 13:4Table 1 Discourse Dimensions of Metaphor

linguistic psychological socialstructure functionmetaphor rich evocative literaryanalogy clear explanatory scientific

gree of deviance from conventional usage (Lakoff and Johnson 1980).Also, two other psychological parameters that have to be consideredbesides the cognitive ones of structure and function are the affectiveand moral parameters: affective features could be "beautiful," "pleas-ant," "subtle,"and so on, while examples of the moral parameter couldbe "critical" and "political"(Johnson and Taylor 1981; Bosman 1987).All of these parameters may contribute to the literary or nonliterarycharacter of a metaphor.These suggestions are supported by my own empirical work intwo metaphor-rating studies (Steen [in press]). In one study, 96 meta-phors from English-language literary and journalistic texts were ratedon a semantic differential containing thirty metaphor attributes, rang-ing from "clear" and "explanatory" to "beautiful" and "political." Inthe other study, 164 Dutch metaphors from literary and journalis-tic sources were rated on a similar semantic differential. Both studiesyielded evidence for the identification of a number of the discursiveaspects discussed above by means of factor analysis. In particular, thelargest metaphor factors could be identified as pertaining to concep-tual clarity or difficulty, positive or negative affective value, and politeor impolite communicative manner. Moreover, literary metaphorsturned out to differ from journalistic ones on all of these counts: theywere typically rated as less clear, more positive, and less polite thanjournalistic metaphors. Thus the approach summarized in Table 1 issupported by empirical evidence.

3. Confirmations:Discourse-Theoretical olutionsto Structure-MappingProblems3. 1. ExplanatoryAnalogies ThatDo Not ExplainThe suitability of the discourse approach laid out in the previous sec-tion is further evinced by its capacity to account for two other, ratherodd phenomena which are in the structure-mapping theory: the exis-tence of "explanatory analogies" that are not one-to-one relationships(Gentner 1983: 158), and the observation that the mapping rules for"metaphors" are apparently less regular than those for analogy (ibid.:162). From a discourse-theoretical point of view, both types of devi-


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Steen * Aspectsof Metaphor 693ance are produced by the confused distinction between metaphor andanalogy based on discourse status and cognitive function, as shownabove, rather than on the more fruitful distinctions among linguistic,psychological, and social levels of analysis. I will briefly indicate thediscourse-theoretical alternative to the first problem before we turn tothe second, which raises a more fundamental issue.In a note, Gentner acknowledges that there are exceptions to therule that "most explanatory analogies are 1-1 mappings," in whichthe number of nodes projected from the base equals the number ofnodes at the receiving end in the target domain (ibid.: 158n). Theseexceptions are probably the less clear mappings discussed in Gentner(1982), such as the Freudian series of metaphorical correspondencesamong "faeces,""baby,"and "penis"in connection with anal eroticism.

The case for this correspondence ncludeslinguisticevidence:the phrase"togive someone a baby," howingthe correspondencebetweenbabiesandgifts; phenomenologicalevidence that faeces are the infant's irstgift, andthat money,as a latergift, comes to be equatedwith faeces;and evidencefrom shared attributesand first-orderrelations,such as that faeces, penisand babyare all solid bodies that forciblyenter or leavethrougha mem-branouspassage. (Ibid.: 126)Here, analogical clarity is less than optimal, and therefore, explana-tory or predictive power is low(er). These are the "scientificanalogies,"which are indeed "metaphors," in Gentner's (1982) title.From my perspective, this is confusing. For one thing, if the linguis-tic example is a metaphor at all, it is so for a different reason, thatis, solely on account of its linguistic surface structure. It is irrelevantto our linguisticjudgment that such metaphors have a relatively richand a fairly unclear cognitive structure, which is Gentner's criterionfor calling them metaphors. This cognitive structure does, however,bear on the cognitive function of evocation or explanation, but not inthe way that Gentner proposes. Instead, such rich but less than clearmetaphors in scientific discourse may indeed be suggestive of someexplanatory function, but this is presumably due to their presencein scientific discourse, where they may at the same time suggest anevocative function on account of their cognitive structure. This analy-sis is thus better able to account for the odd existence of "explanatoryanalogies" that cannot be called "explanatory" in the strict sense ofprecisely predicting the implications for one domain on the basis ofanother. This analysis can do so by separating the structural aspect ofthe analogy (which is not explanatory but rich) from both its cognitivefunction (which may be expressive as well as explanatory) and its socialstatus (which is presumably explanatory, given the discursive purposeof scientific texts). It is the relative weight of the aspects of cognitivestructure and social status that determines whether a predominantly


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694 PoeticsToday 13:4evocative or explanatory function is attributed to the metaphors inquestion.

Observe that this approach also leaves room for the opposite ques-tion, which is more interesting to the literary scholar: Can meta-phors in literature-rather than "literary metaphors"-also have anexplanatory function? Consider these remarks by Gentner on a relatedissue: "Literary metaphors differ in clarity. Any attempt to generalizeabout expressive versus explanatory analogy must take into accountwriters like Shakespeare and Donne, whose analogies are often ele-gantly worked out" (ibid.: 123). Two comments are in order here.First, the opposition that Gentner employs between explanation andcharged expression or evocation, which in her approach is almost in-herently tied to the language games of science versus literature, can, inmy opinion, only be seen as a relatively recent historical development:the distinction made between literature and science on the basis oflanguage was less easily drawn in the days of Shakespeare, and it wasnot until nearly the end of the seventeenth century that philosopherslike Hobbes and Locke warned against the use of unruly metaphorsin science. Moreover, even today, some types of discourse, such asNew Journalism, literary criticism, and certain kinds of anthropologyand history, exhibit a considerable overlap of function. Both litera-ture and science, therefore, have room for other cognitive functionsof metaphor besides their typical contemporary ones of evocation andexplanation, respectively, both synchronically and diachronically.This also means that, from a literary-historical perspective, it isnot merely individual genius that needs to be taken into account, asGentner appears to suggest in her remarks, quoted above. The poeticsof the period as a whole are fairly crucial as well, including the poeticsin relation to the role of metaphor in science. In other words, somemetaphors may have an explanatory function indeed, even thoughthey are part of literary texts. The literary character of metaphor is notrestricted to evocation. If Gentner admits all this in principle (ibid.:127), the influence of such discourse types and genres, including theirhistorical development, is nevertheless not adequately demonstrated.3.2. Metaphor and IrregularMapping: TheCognitive ViewAnother advantage of the framework of discourse is revealed whenwe turn to the apparent problem of the irregular mapping rules for"metaphor," as opposed to the regular ones for "analogy" (Gentner1983: 162). Given the generally acknowledged overlap between meta-phor and analogy, Gentner has presented a remarkable puzzle here,and one that is further complicated by Gentner's failure to make herview of the relation between analogy and metaphor explicit. In thepassage under consideration, two aspects of metaphor are highlighted


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Steen * Aspectsof Metaphor 695in comparison with analogy. First, metaphors are often just attribute/attribute comparisons, or "mere appearance matches." One examplethat Gentner gives is using such a statement asshe'sa giraffe (2)to convey that "she" is tall. Gentner asserts of such metaphors, "Al-though they can be appealing and locally useful, their explanatorypower is sharply limited" (ibid.: 161). The second aspect of meta-phor in relation to analogy is that, if metaphors can be analyzed asanalogies, then "the mapping rules tend to be less regular than thosefor analogy" (ibid.: 162). Gentner is apparently alluding here to boththe rich scientific (Freudian) metaphors, which are deemed to havea literary quality in that respect, and to rich literary metaphors byShakespeare and Donne.Before we examine the notion of regularity to which Gentner ap-peals in her work, it may be useful to point out, first, that there is aneglected relation between the two aspects of metaphor highlightedabove, "mere appearance matches" and less regular analogical map-pings. It is not that "mere appearance matches" cannot be analyzed asanalogies; they can be, but they do not result in interesting analogies.The above-mentioned example of the giraffe in (2) may be analyzed asshe:tall:: iraffe:tall. (3)As will be realized, (3) confers the notion of "typical height" from thegiraffe onto the female: there is no literal comparison here, for "she"cannot be as tall as a giraffe. George Miller (1979) as well as RobertSternberg, Roger Tourangeau, and Georgia Nigro (1979) have alsostudied such appearance matches from an analogical perspective.Therefore, I see no reason to exclude "mere appearance matches"from the realm of analogy.Gentner excludes these from analogy on the basis of their lackingpredicates, which have to be mapped from one domain to another.Why this crucial distinction is drawn between the function of predi-cates and the function of attributes is not made clear. That attribute/attribute comparisons are not regarded by Gentner as requiring ana-logical reasoning is probably due to the apparently trivial nature ofanalogy in her example, as compared with other instances. However,attribute selection for mapping is not at all trivial in less conventionalcases (see Sternberg, Tourangeau, and Nigro 1979).Gentner's denial of "mere appearance matches" as analogical is alsopresumably related to her criterion for regular mapping, that is, thenotion of systematicity. Without going into technical details, we canat least describe "the systematicity principle." According to Gentner(1983), there is a tacit preference for coherence in analogy: "Apredi-


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696 PoeticsToday 13:4cate that belongs to a mappable system of mutually interconnectingrelationships is more likely to be imported into the target than is anisolated predicate" (ibid.: 163). Thus, inthe atom is a solarsystem (4)two sets of interconnected predicates characterizing the solar systemare mappable to the atom:

a. DISTANCE (sun, planet) (5)b. ATTRACTIVE FORCE (sun, planet)c. REVOLVES AROUND (planet, sun)d. MORE MASSIVE THAN (sun, planet).

Gentner explains as follows:One symptomof systematicitys that changing one of these relationsaf-fects the others. Forexample, supposewe decreasethe attractionbetweensun and planet; then the distance between them will increase, all else beingequal. Thus relations(a) and (b) are interrelated.Again, suppose we re-verse relation(d) to state that the planetis more massive han the sun; thenwe must alsoreverserelation(c),forthe sunwouldthen revolvearound theplanet. (Ibid.)

Given these interconnections, such predicates have a good chance ofbeing mapped together from one domain to another. Both uncon-nected predicates and attributes (e.g., HOT, YELLOW,GASEOUS) are lesseasily mapped or ignored altogether. As such, this suggestion seemshighly plausible, but it is not complete.The strained relation between attribute/attribute comparisons andanalogical comparisons in Gentner's sense was also noted by Yesha-yahu Shen (1991), who has proposed a sophisticated integration ofSternberg's and Gentner's theories of both the representation andthe processing of metaphor. Shen argues that Gentner's proposal isunable to account for those metaphors that potentially include predi-cates within their domains, but which require attribute mapping allthe same. Thus, in

Tom is a tortoise (6)BEING SLOW has a greater chance of getting mapped from the tortoiseto Tom than the predicate of EATING VEGETABLES. Referring to the ap-proach by Sternberg, Tourangeau, and Nigro (1979), Shen introducesa diagnosticity constraint, which orders properties (attributes as wellas predicates) according to their relative salience within their respec-tive domains. Shen concludes that, if properties are equally diagnostic,then the systematicity principle determines which properties stand agreater chance of getting mapped, all other things being equal. Thus,on Shen's account, attribute mappings also require analogical reason-ing, and their role in metaphorical mapping is governed by a con-


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Steen * Aspectsof Metaphor 697straint other than the systematicity principle, namely, the diagnosticityconstraint.

From this perspective, let us return to Gentner's statement thatmetaphors have less regular mapping rules. There are two observa-tions to be made. First, it may be the case that, for some metaphors,there are no predicates involved in the mapping because these areeither absent or of low diagnosticity. In that case, however, systema-ticity in Gentner's sense would not be in question since, in her theory,it applies only to analogies and predicates: hence, systematicity herecould not be any greater or less than elsewhere, for there is no stan-dard for measurement. While Gentner would also have to deny thatanalogy itself was involved in the case of attribute/attribute compari-sons, this position could be rejected on the grounds of the work doneby Ortony, Sternberg, Miller, and Shen (cited above). From such aperspective of a partly revised structure-mapping theory, then, "meta-phors" are not less regular than "analogies"; they are simply not sys-tematic at all.However, one further aspect of this argument needs to be men-tioned: there is no reason, as far as I can see, why attributes couldnot also be characterized in terms of systematicity. The representationof tortoises as slow, for example, could be easily expanded to includesuch entailments as their being inefficient, vulnerable, less attractive,and so on. In that sense, slowness is probably a preferable candidatefor mapping than the tortoise's color, brown or green. Systematicity(and, in that sense, regularity) might then be involved after all. Forone thing, it might indeed contribute explanatory power to such ametaphor if the entailments constitute the whole point of uttering themetaphor in the first place, as in a context where (6) is a reply to aquestion likeWhywas Tom not chosen for thejob? (7)

This view might also add to the reasons for "slowness"being of higherdiagnostic value than "brown"or "green."The conclusion of the previ-ous paragraph would then have to be revoked since "mere appearancematches" could also involve systematicity.In sum, from a cognitive point of view, there is no reason to be-lieve that "metaphors" require different or less regular mapping rulesthan "analogies." First, their possible employment of attributes ratherthan predicates does not alone distinguish them from analogies, asattribute comparisons involve analogical reasoning too. Second, to ac-count for hierarchies of mapping preference, Gentner's principle ofsystematicity alone does not suffice. As Shen has demonstrated, wealso need a diagnosticity constraint; regularity in mapping is thus notdetermined only by systematicity, which is Gentner's basis for claim-


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698 PoeticsToday 13:4ing that metaphors are less regular. And third, such a hybrid modelas that proposed by Shen eliminates the need to define systematicityas a principle applying exclusively to predicates, as Gentner does:attributes may involve relations of entailment too. These are threegrounds on which Gentner's claim that metaphors are different fromand less regular than analogies is seriously undermined. The connec-tion between metaphor and literature cannot be established on thebasis of this criterion either.3.3. Metaphor ndIrregularMapping:TheDiscourseViewThe previous section addressed the regularity of mapping in the caseof metaphor from the point of view of systematicity. However, there isanother aspect to be discussed, which Ellen Winner (1988) has notedin commenting on Gentner's work:

Evidence that physicalattributes are more likely to be involved in liter-ary metaphorsthan in scientificanalogies s providedby a study(Gentner1982) in whichpeople rated these figuresin terms of clarity(the precisionof mappingbetweentopicand vehicle)and richness(the sheerquantityofpropertiesmapped).Good scientificanalogieswereratedas high in clarity,bad ones as high in richness.In contrast,good metaphorswere not differ-entiatedfrom bad ones byclarityratingsbutwererated as richerthan badmetaphors.If richermappingstend to includephysicalproperties(which,although not provenby this study,seemslikely),we canonly conclude thatphysicalpropertiesof the vehicleare more likelyto be transferredwhengivena literary metaphor hana scientificanalogy. (Ibid.: 37)Note that, in Winner's terms, "good metaphors" mean "literary meta-phors": these were not established as equivalent by Gentner herself inher rating experiment, where she distinguished between good and badscientific and literary metaphors. However, Winner's emphasis on thedifferent roles played by physical properties in literary and in scientificmetaphor does not go against the grain of Gentner's argument, as canbe seen in Gentner's own statement: "It may be that surface sensoryattributes and first-order relations figure more strongly in expressiveanalogies than in explanatory analogies" (Gentner 1982: 122-23). Letus therefore continue our consideration of these suggestions.Immediately following her remarks quoted above, Winner turns tothe issue of preferred mappings, which we discussed in section 3.2:"The problem becomes, then, how we know when to map a vehicle'sphysical attributes onto the topic and when to map a vehicle's func-tional relations" (Winner 1988: 37). Her solution to this conundrumis twofold. First, she refers to a pertinent article by Jaime Carbonell(1982), according to whom "we may assume that the mapping is rela-tional unless we only know about physical properties of the vehicle"(Winner 1988: 37). This solution captures the general intuition that


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Steen * Aspectsof Metaphor 699most metaphors work by ignoring primary attributes, such as animacy,shape, or color, and by focusing on relational (or predicational) char-acteristics as criteria for the intended metaphorical correspondence.(This might raise a question, though, about cases in which only thephysical properties of objects are known, e.g., Shen's example of thetortoise.) However, Winner's objection to this proposal is basicallythe same as Shen's, that is, that sometimes we do have both types ofinformation, yet we still map only the physical attributes. Winner givesthe example of someone flying over a bare mountain top on which hecould see a bulldozer creating a landing strip, a sight that producedthe painful association of a dentist working on a large molar. And, ofcourse, we have to admit that this type of metaphor isjust as legitimateas the other. The second part of Winner's solution, therefore, is toinvoke the role of context, which guides our selection of the kind ofmapping to be performed: to put it bluntly, if we are interested in at-tributes, we map the attributes; if not, we map the functional relations.This is where her argument concludes.Note that Winner's solution cannot incorporate the diagnosticityconstraint proposed by Shen, which is rather a disadvantage. Thediagnosticity constraint may be relatively less contextually determinedthan Winner's invocation of discourse topic, but it can account fora good deal of the predictability of mapping preferences. However,Shen would, in turn, probably have to agree that in actual practicedomains for comparison, such as Sternberg's, are constructed withan eye toward a certain discourse context, which is Winner's point.This situation would lead to elevating the relative importance of cer-tain properties over others for the particular non-literal comparisonin question. Therefore, the notion of discourse context still cannot beevaded when Shen's theory is applied to practice.My own response to Winner's and Shen's proposals would be totake this discussion one step further and examine all of the discoursecontext, including the relevant discourse expectations that I examinedin relation to the aesthetic and polyvalence conventions for literarydiscourse. Readers know when they are reading a literary text, and ifthey are familiar enough with the kinds of conventions that apply tothat type of (con)text, they will be likely to interpret metaphors in theappropriate way, either relationally or rather more physically. Fromthis perspective, readers may not even need to choose between thesetwo kinds of mapping in the case of literary discourse, but can simplyperform both of them, realizing as much meaning as possible. As aresult, the richness that seems irregular from the perspective of sys-tematicity can appear to be highly regular from the perspective of thepolyvalence convention. Note that neither Shen nor Winner questionsthe goal of reaching one basic interpretation, which in my opinion


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700 PoeticsToday 13:4is precisely what limits the value of their suggestions for literary dis-course. This proves how ingrained the monovalence convention is forordinary discourse, and how important it is to have a type of discoursewhich subverts this typical practice of using monovalence as a defaultoption for coherence. For literary discourse, all that one has to do isshift the criterion for the determination of regularity (in the senseof predicting reader behavior with regard to non-literal analogicalmapping) from monovalent coherence (or systematicity) to polyvalentcoherence (or richness).In sum, one might postulate a tolerance for the mapping of as many(related or unrelated) predicates and attributes as possible in the caseof literary metaphor, and, by contrast, an intentional search for highlysystematic mapping in the case of scientific metaphor. Put differently,there could be a search for richness in literature and a search forclarity in science. This suggests not one but two kinds of regularity,both of which are at least partly based on discourse conventions (poly-valence and monovalence) rather than on the structure of metaphoritself. One convention highlights systematicity, while the other high-lights quantity, but since both aspects are found in all metaphors,discourse attitude may also be a determining factor in the orderingand the relative importance of those structural features.In other words, I can accept the idea that "physical properties ofthe vehicle are more likely to be transferred when given a literarymetaphor than a scientific analogy" (Winner 1988: 37). However, weare not concerned here with literary metaphor, but with metaphorin literature, which is treated as literary by the reader. Indeed, onemight wonder if a general literary-reading attitude might not promotethe perception of richness over clarity, and vice versa: Could not ascientific-reading attitude likewise promote the perception of clarityover richness? (This is certainly suggested by Gentner's [1982] con-clusion with regard to scientific metaphor.) If so, perhaps metaphorin literature is sometimes turned into literary metaphor-indeed, byour very own perceptions.The difference between the cognitive and discourse approaches tothe regularity of mapping rules for metaphor can be summarized asfollows: In the cognitive approach, the goal of understanding meta-phor is implicitly assumed to be monovalence, which is typically ex-emplified by metaphor in a null context. In the discourse approach,however, macro-conventions and contextual motivations are allowedto play a role too, and only after these parameters have been set canthe predictability (or regularity) of the mapping of properties fromone domain to another be analyzed. It turns out that there are at leasttwo criteria for predictability in that connection: one may be diagnos-ticity and systematicity, with an eye toward monovalence, and another


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Steen * Aspectsof Metaphor 701may be sheer richness, with an eye toward polyvalence; the formerbeing characteristic of nonliterary understanding and the latter, of lit-erary understanding. Both are reader-oriented perspectives, but theymay be presumed to affect the assessment of metaphors as either clearor rich.

4. Types of Discourseand Functionsof MetaphorThe influence of such discourse conventions on the perception of thestructure of metaphors is also indicated by Gentner's (1982) discus-sion ofJuliet is the sun. (8)This is a "less regular metaphor," in Gentner's opinion, for she noteswhat she calls a "shift of ground." She writes that (8) works by firstappealing to an opposition between the sun and the moon, which isthen followed by a reference to an opposition between a maid and amistress. Here is the full context of (8):

But, soft! whatlight through yonderwindowbreaks?It is the east,andJuliet is the sun!Arise, fairsun, and killthe enviousmoon,Who is alreadysick and palewithgrief,That thou her maid art far more fair thanshe:Be not her maid,since she is envious;Her vestalliveryis but sickand green,And none but fools do wearit;castit off.(RomeondJuliet, II, i)Gentner's interpretation makes use of two analogies: first, Juliet doesfor her lover what the sun does for the day, namely, brings light; andsecond, Juliet does to her mistress what the sun does to the moon,that is, makes envious and finally vanquishes through superiority.Gentner's discussion of the Shakespearean metaphor amounts to a cri-tique of its overall low degree of clarity, which suggests a need for one,unified underlying analogy.I surmise that it is precisely Gentner's short-circuiting of Shake-speare's playing on unity and variation that betrays her scientist's mindin confrontation with literary metaphor. The transition from the firstmetaphor to the second may seem somewhat tortuous and surprising,but in context can be deemed fairly effective. The second metaphor isagain fairly clear, but it may be somewhat less systematic than Gentnerwould like: "For example, in the maid/mistress domain the fact thata mistress envies her maid need not necessarily imply that the maidshould cast off her livery; there are many equally plausible possibili-ties" (ibid.: 124). The density of this passage as a whole, it seems to me,is characteristic of literary, as opposed to scientific, discourse, which


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702 PoeticsToday 13:4wants its passages well worked out and unequivocally expressed; whilethis may also add to the literary aspect of the metaphor, it does notmake its basic structure more or less systematic.Thus the importance of the regularity of richness for literary read-ing is at least not to be dismissed lightly. Some misconceptions onGentner's part ought to be redressed here in order to clarify how a dis-course approach would deal with these matters. For example, Gentnerclaims that "precisely defining" the relationships among various as-pects of the base and the target in a rich, but unclear and unsystematic,literary metaphor "does not seem to be important, or even appropri-ate; they are intended to be appreciated without too much analysis"(ibid.: 122). Observe that this is quite a normative statement, specify-ing appropriate behavior in terms of culturally sanctioned intentions.From the perspective of a discourse approach, it begs the question ofboth the existence and the range of such a norm. My own position onthis issue is different from Gentner's.The function and effect of the precise meaning of a particular meta-phor in literature, it seems to me, is heavily dependent on the way thatcritics view their profession, on the particular poetics of each author,and on the manner and degree of the public's literary socialization.Indeed, authors have been attacked for sloppy writing at times, whichmeans that critics did take the precise meaning of a metaphor into ac-count. And it need not be only critics who read metaphors that way.Note that, if Gentner's poetics do not coincide with other people'spoetics, this does not necessarily mean that either of them is wrong;it only goes to show that literary discourse has its own intricate rulesand regulations that may, indeed, be highly normative, but whosesocial and historical range and diversity are still relatively unexploredterrains from an empirical perspective.There is another passage from Gentner (1982) that bears on thesame point:

The suggestion,then, is thatin expressiveanalogy,a rich collectionof asso-ciationsis valued;while in explanatoryanalogy,an abstract,well-clarified,coherent systemof relations svalued.This fitswithBoyd'sobservation hatfor scienceanalogies,furtherexplicationandanalysis s takenasa commu-nityenterprise,whileliterarymetaphorsare often passedaroundaswholes,theirdissection eft to critics. (Ibid.:123)What we have here is a mistaken analogy: in my opinion, scientificanalogies are related to scientists as literary metaphors are to literarycritics, and both types of metaphor or analogy can be "passed aroundas wholes" by the public. Again, whether this happens or not in eithercase depends on a number of factors: the role of the expert, the im-portance of the metaphor and the text in which it occurs, and thesegmentation or fragmentation of the public. In particular, the di-


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Steen *Aspectsof Metaphor 703verse interests of specific groups within the general public determineif one category of metaphors is treated differently from the other, inliterature as in science. The case of Salman Rushdie is only an extremeexample of the potential variability of the effect of large-scale meta-phor in the field of literature, just as the vehement debate over thecomputer-model metaphor of the human mind is an extreme examplefrom the domain of science. What we need is a sociology of discourse,that is, of the classes, roles, and objectives of those who participate ineach type of discourse.Moreover, distinctions have to be made among the various stages ofa metaphor's impact: in literary reading, ordinary and quick receptionis probably different from repeated reception, which in turn may bedifferent from study or from criticism. If one wants to compare thefunction of a scientific metaphor with that of a literary metaphor, onewill have to follow through with this comparison at all of these levels. Itmay very well be that, at the level of quick and automatic comprehen-sion, their impact does not differ at all. At the most extended level ofstudy, however, their functions may indeed differ, with monovalenceand polyvalence as well as facticity and aestheticism acting as arbitersof their success in science or literature, respectively (cf. the conclusionof Gentner 1982). As long as we lack empirical evidence, however, allthat we say remains only speculative.

ReferencesBosman, Jan1987 "Persuasive Effects of Political Metaphors," Metaphor and SymbolicActivity2(2): 97-113.Carbonell, Jaime1982 "Metaphor: An Inescapable Phenomenon in Natural-Language Compre-

hension," in Strategies for Natural Language Processing, edited by W. Lehnertand M. Ringle, 415-34 (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).Dirven, Rene1985 "Metaphor as a Basic Means for Extending the Lexicon," in The Ubiquityof Metaphor, edited by W. Paprotte and R. Dirven, 85-120 (Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins).Gentner, Dedre1982 "Are Scientific Analogies Metaphors?" in Metaphor:Problemsand Perspectives,edited by D. S. Miall, 106-32 (Brighton, UK: Harvester Press).1983 "Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy," CognitiveScience 7(3): 155-70.Gentner, Dedre, and Catherine Clement1988 "Evidence for Relational Selectivity in the Interpretation of Analogy andMetaphor," in The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, edited by G. H. Bower,307-58 (New York: Academic Press).Graesser, Arthur C., K. Millis, and Jeff Mio1989 "Metaphors in Persuasive Communication," in Comprehensionof LiteraryDis-course: Results and Problemsof InterdisciplinaryApproaches,edited by D. Meutschand R. Viehoff, 131-54 (Berlin: de Gruyter).


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704 PoeticsToday 13:4Holyoak, Keith1982 "An Analogical Framework for Literary Interpretation," Poetics 11(2): 105-

26.Ibsch, Elrud, Dick Schram, and Gerard Steen, eds.1991 Empirical Studies of Literature: Proceedings of the Second International Confer-ence, Amsterdam 1989 (Amsterdam: Rodopi).Johnson, Joel T., and Shelley E. Taylor1981 "The Effect of Metaphor on Political Attitudes," Basic and Applied SocialPsychology 2: 305-16.Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson1980 Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Lakoff, George, and Mark Turner1989 More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press).Miller, George A.1979 "Images and Models, Similes and Metaphors," in Metaphor and Thought,edited by A. Ortony, 202-50 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Ortony, Andrew1979 "The Role of Similarity in Similes and Metaphors," in Metaphorand Thought,edited by A. Ortony, 186-201 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Schmidt, Siegfried J.1980 GrundrifiderempirischenLiteraturwissenschaft.Vol.1, DergesellschaftlicheHand-lungsbereichLiteratur (Braunschweig/Wiesbaden: Vieweg).Shen, Yeshayahu1991 "Constraints on Mappability in Metaphor Comprehension," in Ibsch,Schram, and Steen 1991: 147-55.Steen, Gerard J.1989 "Metaphor and Literary Comprehension: Towards a Discourse Theory ofMetaphor in Literature," Poetics 18: 113-41.1991 "Empirical Research on Metaphor in Literature," in Ibsch, Schram, andSteen 1991: 157-66.In press Understanding Metaphor in Literature (London: Longman).Sternberg, Robert, Roger Tourangeau, and Georgia Nigro1979 "Metaphor, Induction, and Social Policy: The Convergence of Macroscopic

and Microscopic Views," in Metaphorand Thought,edited by A. Ortony, 325-53(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Turner, Mark1987 Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism(Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press).Winner, Ellen1988 The Point of Words: Children's Understanding of Metaphor and Irony (Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Literary and Nonliterary Aspects of Metaphor

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