from linguistic to conceptual metaphor in five steps-libre

56 FRANK BOERS

Kovecses, Zoltan. 1995. "The Container Metaphor of Anger in English, Chinese, Japanese and Hungarian". From a Metaphorical Point of View: A Multi-disciplinary Approach to the Cognitive Content of Metaphor, ed. hy Zdravdo Radman, 117-147, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press;

-------- 1990. "The Invariance Hypothesis: Is Abstract Reasoning Based on ｉｭ｡ｧ･ｾ＠Schemas?" Cognitive Linguistics 1. 5-38.

Miller, Arthur I. 1995. Imagery and Metaphor: The Cognitive Science Con" nection, ed. by Zdravko Radman, 1995. 199-224.

Rigotti, Francesca. 1995. The House as Metaphor, ed. by Zdravko Radman, 4191-446. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Roediger, Henry L. 1980. "Memory Metaphors in Cognitive Psychology". Memory & Cognition 8. 231-246.

LINGUISTIC TO CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR IN FIVE STEPS

GERARD STEEN Tilburg University and Free University Amsterdam

does the cognitive linguist get from linguistic metaphor to conceptual ｾｴ｡ｰｨｯｲ＿＠ Is there a procedure for the determination of conceptual metaphor when ｾｴ｡ｰｨｯｲｩ｣｡ｬｬ｡ｮｧｵ｡ｧ･＠ has been encountered? These are the questions that are idressed in this chapter, which aims to build a bridge between linguistic and onceptual metaphor by proposing a series of five analytical steps. Together they

the beginning of a procedure for conceptual metaphor identification in

The procedure is meant to constrain the relation between linguistic and nceptual metaphor. It has sometimes remained an act of faith that particular .. taphors in language reflect particular metaphors in thought. This does not mean

there is no linguistic support for the existence of conceptual metaphors. And there are many clear cases in which the name of a particular conceptual

is used in a linguistic expression, as can be demonstrated by a brief at the by now classic list of references Lakoff & Johnson (1980), Johnson Lakoff (1987), Turner (1987), Lakoff & Turner (1989), and Lakoff(1993).

these clear cases serve the purpose of demonstration; they have not been ｾｴ･ｭ｡ｴｉ｣｡ｬｬｹ＠ and exhaustively collected. from large stretches of discourse, but

have been selected for ｴｨｾｩｲ＠ persuasive power. Now that the theory of ｬｾ･ｰｴｵ｡ｬ＠ metaphor has been firmly established as one important component of

theory of metaphor, providing one of the main inspirations to cognitive ｾｧｵｬｓｴＱｃｓ＠ as a general approach to language, it is time to reverse the perspective.

the question arises how stretches of discourse can be said to express conceptual metaphors as opposed to others, and this is a difficult issue.

presupposes a generally accepted procedure of deriving conceptual metaphors lipguistic metaphors encountered in on-going discourse, and that is currently

available. Most readers will be familiar with some of the examples of metaphorical

ｾｲｲ･ｳｰｯｮ､･ｮ｣･ｳ＠ between conceptual domains such as the following:

58 GERARD STEEN

THE LOVE-AS-A-JOURNEY MAPPING The lovers correspond to travelers. The love relationship corresponds to the vehicle. The lovers' common goals correspond to their common destinations one the journey. Difficulties in the relationship correspond to impediments to travel. (Lakoff,1993:207)

But from the present perspective, these are at best the output of the last step of the envisaged procedure, and this would probably only hold in ideal cases. What I am interested in is to explicate the assumptions that lead linguists to arrive at such conceptual mappings in departing from metaphorical expressions in discourse. This chapter is a logical reconstruction of these assumptions in an attempt to reach agreement about the steps that are inevitable when one goes from linguistic to conceptual metaphor identification.

It is noteworthy that this explication can be related to a number of theoretical issues which were previously discussed in the seventies, before the advent of conceptual metaphor theory as we now know it (Cohen & Margalith, 1972; Van Dijk, 1975; Reinhart, 1976; Cohen 1993; Miller 1993). In retrospect, most of these references can be seen as attempts to make the jump from linguistic to conceptual metaphor in one way or another, but they failed to do so in an optimal manner because of the lack of a well-developed conceptual theory of metaphor. The time is now ripe to return to these issues in order to put conceptual metaphor theory on a firmer linguistic footing. It is ironic that cognitive linguists are going out of their way to show that linguistic metaphor is fundamentally conceptual, but that in doing so, they have neglected the method for showing how they get from linguistic metaphor to conceptual metaphor in the first place.

My recourse to these sources has one consequence which may be misleading and which has to be circumvented from the beginning. Some or most of the examples discussed by theorists in the seventies were not of the conventional kind that have since become popular in the literature. In present-day terms they might be seen as one-shot and often poetic metaphors rather than systematic conceptual metaphors. Moreover, I do not address the question whether my illustrations of metaphor are actually found in other expressions of a similar kind, which is the generally accepted approach to establishing conceptual metaphors in cognitive linguistics. These may be surprising features of a chapter titled "From linguistic to conceptual metaphor in five steps." However, I believe that they are actually immaterial to the purpose of this particular contribution, which is to reconstruct how the linguist gets from linguistic metaphor to conceptual metaphor. For methodologically speaking, the linguist has no a priori knowledge whether a

FROM LINGUISTIC TO CONCEPtuAL METAPHOR IN FIVE STEPS 59

particular expression is to be counted as a one-shot metaphor or as a systematic metaphor: he or she first has to identify metaphorical expressions and determine what the conceptual nature of the metaphorical expression in question is. Only once this has been achieved, can the metaphorical concept be examined as to its possible relation(s) with other metaphorical concepts, which then leads to a decision about one-shot conceptual metaphoricity versus systematic conceptual metaphoricity. Such a comparison across metaphors presupposes that the other metaphorical concepts have also been collected from discourse analysis in the same fashion. What I am focusing on, then, is the procedure for collecting such metaphorical concepts with the purpose of examining their systematic relations. If one insists on regarding as conceptual metaphors only those metaphors which are systematic (as opposed to one-shot metaphors), which I do not, then a sixth step will have to be added to the procedure, saying that the output of the first five steps is to be compared across large numbers of metaphors in order to establish more or less systematic groups of metaphorical concepts, labeling the largest systematic groups as conceptual metaphors.

I have to add one more caveat from the beginning. I wish to emphasize that I am dealing with metaphor analysis, not metaphor understanding. Metaphor analysis is a task for the linguist who wishes to describe and explain the structure and function of language. Metaphor understanding is a cognitive process which is the object of investigation of psycho linguists and discourse psychologists who are conducting behavioral research. This chapter does not deal with behavior. This does not mean that it cannot make use of theories of metaphor understanding for the identification of specific stages in the analytical procedure; on the contrary, it would be odd if there were no connection between understanding and analysis. However, metaphor analysis is a goal-and norm-related activity in the pursuit of data collection. It is the intentional technical identification of conceptual metaphors from metaphorical language in discourse. This chapter is concerned with a logical reconstruction of the discrete steps involved in that activity.

The logical reconstruction may then be transformed into a procedure for practical use in linguistic research. From the perspective of the cognitive linguist, who is interested in the analysis of discourse and the way it reflects concepts and cognition, it is essential that there is such a procedure for relating linguistic metaphor to conceptual metaphor in a reliable fashion. Ultimately, the cognitive linguist has to begin with stretches of discourse and determine which linguistic expressions are metaphorical and related to which conceptual metaphors, and this is no trivial matter. However, such a procedure is also important for constructing the link between cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics, in which precise descriptions of literal and nonliteral materials are needed for the development of well-controlled linguistic stimulus materials. Manipulating texts and expressions

60 GERARD STEEN

with a view to activating particular conceptual metaphors requires the same solid foundation in linguistic methodology.

1. Metaphor focus identification The first step of the procedure involves the identification of metaphorical

expressions in discourse. This naturally involves the theoretically thorny issue of the definition of metaphor itself. As it is the purpose of this contribution to present a procedure for conceptual metaphor identification, which in itself more or less presupposes that We know what a metaphor is, I will cut a long story short and make the following assumption. It seems best to adopt the most widely accepted definition of metaphor that is currently available, the Lakoffian one of metaphor as a set of correspondences between two conceptual domains, with linguistic metaphor deriving from conceptual structures. The presence of two domains is intended to capture the fact that we are dealing with nonliteral similarities between entities and relations at some level of the analysis, which rules out other types of mappings like metonymies.

The first step consists of identifying metaphorical expressions in discourse, and we now need to become more precise about the nature of this operation. For it is not true that identifying metaphorical expressions is tantamount to identifying linguistic metaphors. I will now show that when expressions are identified as metaphorical, it is the focus of the metaphor that we are dealing with, and this is only one part of the complete metaphor. In effect, it depends on a number of factors what one will call the complete metaphor in the first place. This observa-tion needs to be explained with reference to a number of familiar but sometimes elusive concepts in metaphor theory.

One of the more interesting discussions in this respect is Reinhart (1976), who has aligned some of the classic theories of metaphor such as Richards (1936), Beardsley (1958), and Black (1962). The main point of interest at present is best introduced by comparing the following metaphors, discussed by Reinhart (1976):

(1) I have seen the mermaids riding seawards on the waves (T.S. Eliot, 'The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock')

(2) The royal court is going to hunt

As an aside, the actual line from Eliot does not contain 'the mermaids' but 'them' , but Reinhart has explicated the anaphoric pronoun for expository purposes.

Reinhart explains that the focus of the metaphor in (1) is riding on. The focus of the metaphor in (2), which is about 'lions stalking their prey' (1976:391, fn. 8), is the royal court. Together, (1) and (2) illustrate that the focus is the

FROM LINGUISTIC TO CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR IN FIVE STEPS 61

linguistic expression used nonliterally in the discourse. This means that the focus expression activates a concept which cannot be literally applied to the referents in the world evoked by the text. The concept RIDING-ON cannot be literally applied to the relation projected between the entities referred to by MERMAIDS and WA YES,

and the concept ROYAL COURT cannot be literally applied to the entity referred to by LIONS. It will be noted that referents can be entities, relations, and attributes in some situation evoked by the discourse.

The twin concept related to focus is frame, which I will define, with Reinhart and others, as the immediate linguistic environment of the metaphor focus. In (1), the frame is waves, according to Reinhart (1976:385). However, Reinhart does not explicate the linguistic frame of (2). This is probably because (2) is a special class of metaphor: the focus is not non-literal in relation to the rest of the linguistic expression, is going to hunt; there is no semantic tension between focus and frame. The kind of metaphor exemplified by (2) is purposefully left aside in Reinhart's attempt at ordering the theoretical concepts for the analysis of metaphor. As we shall see below, a cognitive linguistic approach which includes linguistic and conceptual as well as other discourse aspects of analysis is better equipped to handle these issues.

There are some important issues in Reinhart's discussion of focus and frame, as well as of other notions like tenor and vehicle, and some of them will return later. But our present concern is the first step in the conceptual metaphor identification procedure. It may now be appreciated more fully that the first step is largely concerned with metaphor focus identification, not linguistic metaphor identification as a whole. The reason is this. Many metaphor foci may be related to a literally used concept which is explicitly expressed in the metaphor frame, as in the case of (1); however, there is also a good number of metaphor foci located in metaphor frames without a linguistic expression of the literal concept of the metaphor, as in (2). When both literal and nonliteral concept are present in the frame, it is possible to identify a complete linguistic metaphor in the first step of the analysis. However, when the literal concept is not expressed in the frame, the linguistic metaphor cannot be identified in the first step; then it is only the focus that is identified in the first step. These are implicit metaphors (Steen 1999) and they need explication through propositional analysis, which clarifies to which concept the nonliteral concept expressed by the focus is applied. Fdr instance, . words like scene, shit, heat, and so on are often used metaphorically without the literal concept to which they are applied being expressed expiicitly in the discourse. As it is the metaphor focus that can be identified throughout all classes of metaphor in the first step, this is why step 1 of the procedure is called metaphor· focus identification.

62 GERARD STEEN

2. Metaphorical idea identification Now that we have a metaphor focus as a result of step 1, the question arises

to what other kind of element the focus applies. As a matter of principle it cannot be the linguistic frame, as the linguistic frame merely provides a linguistic background in which the focus is a nonliteral expression which mayor may not stand out as the case may be. In other words, the focus is not a focus on account of its relation to the linguistic frame, as we have observed, for it may even exhibit a literal relation to the frame, as was shown by (2). What does make a focus into a focus is the fact that it expresses a concept which is to be related to another concept to which it cannot be applied in a literal fashion: 'riding on' cannot be literally applied to 'mermaids' doing something to 'waves', and 'the royal court' cannot be literally applied to 'lions'.

The other, literal, concept has been variously referred to as the tenor or the topic or the principal subject of the metaphor, but I will call it the literal part of the metaphorical idea. As not all literal parts of metaphors are explicitly expressed in discourse, as is the case for (2), they sometimes have to be inferred. This is why metaphor identification is a matter of concepts, propositions, and reference. As these are general aspects of discourse analysis which are not limited to metaphor, and propositional analysis was specially designed to cater for them, it is now time to turn to propositional analysis. Propositional analysis was developed independ-ently of the study of metaphor and also aims to bridge the gap between discourse and conceptualization (see the contributions to Britton & Black, 1985; in particular Bovair & Kieras, 1985).

Consider the following propositional analysis of (1), a personal, notational variant of mine of the technique used by Bovair & Kieras (1985):

(3) I have seen the mermaids riding seawards on the waves PI (SEEIp2)

P2 (RIDE-ON MERMAIDS w AYES)

P3 (DIRECTION p2 SEA WARDS)

This analysis of (1) is maximally consistent with the one of Reinhart (1976), even though I can see that at least one other analysis is possible, namely one in which P2 merely consists of (RIDE MERMAIDS) and at). additional P4 is needed to capture that (ON p2 WA YES). However, since this difference is immaterial to my argument, I will not unnecessarily increase the complexity of the exposition and leave this point aside.

Irrelevant details aside, (3) is a linearly and hierarchically ordered list of propositions, each consisting of a predicate and one or more arguments. The list captures the meaning of (1) as a series of minimal idea units, or propositions, and


presents the structural relations between the concepts contained by the idea units. All of this is relatively uncontroversial in discourse psychology (Britton & Black 1985; Perfetti & Britt 1995; but cf. Garnham 1996).

The metaphorical idea that is present in T.S. Eliot's line is found in proposition P2. The nonliteral part of the metaphorical proposition is the concept RIDE-ON, which functions as a predicate, and it can be seen to apply to two other concepts, MERMAIDS and WA YES. They are conceptualizations of the literal referents in the projected text world about which something is said in a metaphori-cal manner, namely that they are in a relation ofthe one 'riding on' the other. This relation could also have been conceptualized in a literal manner, for instance by means of FLOATING, which would have yielded a literal expression. This is also accounted for by Reinhart's definition of focus:

Given a metaphorical expression Fj[Ej] Ej is the focus if it is possible to substitute Ej for Ej, so that Fj[Ej ] is a literal expression and Fj[Ej ] is similar in meaning to Fj[EJ (1976:391)

Whereas RIDING-ON does not refer literally to the presumed relation between the entities of mermaids and waves in the projected textworld, FLOATING does and produces a similar meaning.

The conceptual basis of this approach is clarified by considering the other metaphor and its propositional analysis:

(4) The royal court is going to hunt PI (REF COURT LIONS) P2 (HUNT COURT) P3 (MOD COURT ROYAL)

The crucial proposition is PI, where it is clarified that one concept in S2, COURT, refers to another concept, LIONS, which is available from the previous (or ｾＹＱＱｯｷｩｮｧＩ＠ discourse, be it co-text or context. This explicit and immediate form Qf reference assignment between arguments is standard procedure in Bovair & Kieras' (1985) method of propositionalization, and is aimed at ensuring referential coherence between concepts in consecutive sentences, especially when different expressions are used about the same entities in a projected text world. Of course

'tthis is precisely what is needed to solve the problem of cases like (2) for the theory ｴｾｦ＠ metaphor: in order to be able to interpret the main idea unit P2 correctly, it is

. 'fji\st necessary to clarify potentially confusing elements such as 'court' when there ,,110 literal entity of that kind in the projected text world. This is the function of

which thereby automatically identifies a complete metaphor: it relates the

64 GERARD STEEN

nonliteral concept COURT to the literal concept it is supposed to apply to, LIONS,

by means of the specially designed predicate 'REF' , and reveals that the metaphor of (2) is Pl. All of these observations are intended to capture the propositional structure of the language: they are not meant to be read as claims about compre-hension or other forms of processing.

Propositional metaphor analysis can apply to all kinds of metaphors. It also lays bare how metaphors can differ from each other with respect to important dimensions of conceptual structure. For instance, Miller (1993 :387) discusses the metaphor a watchdog committee. I did not find it coincidental that he presented the metaphor in precisely this form, and ran an automatic Microconcord search of the Times corpus of approximately 1,000,000 words coming with that program. There were 10 occurrences of watchdog in all, and they were all metaphorical in the above sense. What is interesting is the formal variation between the instances. There was one case of Miller's structure, a watchdog organisation. It exemplifies an explicit metaphor, because it contains both the literal and the nonliteral concept of the underl:ying proposition. It is also a reduced metaphor, in that the linguistic structure is not equivalent to a proposition itself, but is a nominal phrase. (A full version of this metaphor would be something like: the committee is a watchdog, which is not likely to be found in genuine discourse, as is shown by the results of this search.) The metaphor is also simple, in that there is no additional material attached to the nonliteral concept itself. This should be contrasted to the following class: the National River Authority, the new watchdog/or the water industry, and the Audit Commission, the local authority financial watchdog. In the latter case, the concept WATCHDOG is modified by additional concepts, such as NEW, turning the metaphorical focus into a complex structure needing more than one proposi-tion. Another class of metaphor may be illustrated by a national watchdog and an independent watchdog: these are implicit metaphors, because the literal concept to which WATCHDOG is applied is not expressed in the text; and they are complex metaphors, because WATCHDOG does not stand by itself. Half of the ten watchdog metaphors were of this kind. The only example of an implicit and simple metaphor was found in a headline: watchdog may be too fierce; contextual assumptions about the use of words in headlines apparently have relaxed the need for adding information to the nonliterally used concept WATCHDOG which was exem.plified by all of the other cases. Propositional analysis is hence a valuable tool in metaphor classification and raises consequential questions for interpreta-tion and processing (Steen to appear).

Propositional metaphor analysis also clarifies some interesting aspects ofthe previous discussion of Reinhart (1976). In accordance with Reinhart and the theorists she discusses, the use of propositional analysis emphasizes that the nature of metaphor is conceptual and that the analyst can only access it through

! Ii i i


the idea unit of the proposition rather than some rank of linguistic form, be it the word, the phrase, the clause, or the sentence. The complete metaphor is only identified when the appropriate literal and nonliteral concepts in the proposition have been identitied. Metaphor identification, even linguistic metaphor identifica-tion, is fundamentally a matter of conceptual analysis. It deals with the concepts referred to by the words and is at the core of a functional approach to language.

What is more, the complete metaphor is not always expressed as a complete metaphor in the surface of the discourse: there are metaphors which are only signalled by means of their focus expression, and their literal part has to be inferred by means of propositionalization (implicit metaphors). Propositional metaphor analysis hence also throws into relief the nature as well as the limited role of the notion of frame: frames are nothing but the immediate linguistic environment of the focus and hence do not always help in setting off the focus as a nonliteral expression, as in (2). Frames have to receive a semantic and pragmatic interpretation in terms of reference and intentions before metaphorical idea identification can succeed, and this requires going beyond the surface of the frame: metaphorical idea identification (step 2) has to follow after metaphor focus identification (step 1). If many linguists were still uncomfortable with sQch an approach in the seventies, the advent of discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, and related functional studies of language use is now alleviating this problem.

Propositional analysis also raises an interesting question about the scope of the frame: in Reinhart's analysis of (1), the frame is riding X, which in effect is the next grammatical level up in comparison to the focus (the waves). However, as is shown by the propositional analysis, other reaches of the frame may be imagined as well, ranging from the clause through the utterance to the sentence:

(5) a. riding on the waves b. riding seawards on the waves c. the mermaids riding on the waves d. the mermaids riding seawards on the waves e. I saw the mermaids riding seawards on the waves

This is no mere terminological or technical matter, for it determines whether one says that (1) contains the metaphor 'riding on the waves' or, for instance, 'mermaids riding on the waves'. I would prefer the metaphorical proposition as the indicator of the complete metaphor, as it embodies the turning point between language and conceptualization, as we shall see in a moment. What is important to point out here is that such decisions have effects on the coding and counting of metaphors of varying linguistic structures in corpus analysis, precise operational

66 GERARD STEEN

definitions being required for the reliable annotation of data. This is precisely one of the issues that a procedure for metaphor identification needs to resolve.

3. Nonliteral comparison identification The output of step 2 is a proposition in which we have a nonliterally used

concept (expressed by the linguistic focus identified in step 1) that is related to one or more literally used concepts identified in step 2 which evoke the relevant literal referent(s). The literally used concept(s) may be explicitly expressed in the frame or may have been inferred by the analyst from co-text or context. The input of step 3 is hence a metaphorical idea in the form of a proposition with literal and nonliteral concepts.

We have assumed that metaphors are sets of correspondences between conceptual domains in which nonliteral similarity or comparison plays a pivotal role. Therefore we need to work from the metaphorical proposition towards a conceptual representation of the mapping between the two conceptual domains involved. The next step in our procedure is hence to begin to set up the compara-tive structure that is implicit in the nonliteral mapping between domains for every conceptual metaphor. There is an excellent source for this objective in Miller (1993), who presents a sophisticated view of the comparison theory and has been unjustly neglected in conceptual metaphor theory.

ｔｨｾ＠ essential point of Miller's contribution is that '[R]econstruction of the implied comparison is a critical step in understanding a metaphor' (1993:381). That metaphors imply comparisons is shown by the postulation of conceptual metaphors like LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LIFE IS A GAME, and so on. Metaphors in discourse hence require 'reconstructing the conceptual basis of the comparison' (1993:382) in order to be interpreted. This statement begs some fundamental questions about on-line comprehension behavior, but it certainly holds true for the off-line analysis of the relation between linguistic and conceptual metaphor, with which we are concerned here.

When an author uses a metaphor, Miller (1993:384-5) says, 'The claim is [ ... ] that he had a general concept --resemblance, comparison, analogy--that we are trying to appreciate. Such concepts have a structure, and S 1 makes that structure explicit.' S 1 is the general form of all comparison statements, and encompasses nonliteral and metaphorical c'omparison statements:

(6) S1. SIM[F(x), G(y)]

This is a conceptual analysis of similarity and comparison, as Miller repeatedly emphasizes (1993:377; 381; 382; 385; 389). Miller shows that it allows for an analysis of metaphorical propositions as nonliteral analogies with conceptual


elements left out, and he proposes three specific rewrite rules which transform metaphorical propositions into nonliteral comparisons. That is also why he requires propositional analysis as providing the input for his analysis of the underlying comparisons (1993:375-6): metaphorical idea identification (step 2) has to precede nonliteral comparison identification (step 3). Let us examine how this works in practice.

The metaphorical proposition of (1), (RIDE-ON MERMAIDS WAVES), may be rewritten as a nonliteral comparison with the following structure:

(7) (RIDE-ON MERMAIDS WAVES) -> (3F) (3y,y ') {SIM[F(MERMAIDS, WAVES), RIDE-ON

(y, y')]}

A paraphrase of this formal notation of the conceptual structure of the implied comparison would be the following: there is an activity (or relation) F and two entities y and y' such that there is a similarity between mermaids and waves' doing F' on the one hand and y riding on y' on the other. The input of the rule is the output of our step 2, while the output of the rule is the automatic product of Miller's rewrite rules.

Miller adds, 'The first step in interpreting [such a] comparison would be to find appropriate values for the missing terms' (1993:384). This will be our step 4, nonliteral analogy identification. To jump ahead, in the present case we may fall back on the analysis suggested by Reinhart (1976:388-90):

(8) (RIDE-ON MERMAIDS WAVES)-> SIM[FLOAT(MERMAIDS,WAVES),RIDE-ON (JOCKEY,

HORSE)]

Filling in the missing terms in this manner will be step 4 of the procedure, and fleshing out the resulting analogy into a full-blown nonliteral mapping, step 5. For now, we have to Goncentrate on step 3, identifying the underlying comparison.

The derivation of the comparison statements from the metaphorical propositions created by step 2 is highly mechanical. Miller introduces three general rules which automatically create comparison statements from proposi-tional input, for three classes of metaphors: nominal, verbal, and sentential. (Actually Miller uses the term 'predicative', but to the linguist this is misleading, for the nominal part of a metaphor like 'Man is a wolf is also used predicatively.) The rules are as follows:

(9) a. M1. BE (x,y) -> (3F) (3G) {SIM [F(x), G(y)]} b. M2. G(x) -> (3F) (3y) {SIM [F(x), G(y)]} c. M3. G(y) -> (3F) (3x) {SIM [F(x), G(y)]}

68 GERARD STEEN

Although the structure of the comparison statements is complete, not all of the concepts of the comparisons are known: the unknown ones are thematized, as it were, by the two existential propositions preceding the comparison structures. For instance, in the nominal metaphor 'Man is a wolf, also discussed by Miller (1993:382), the underlying comparison suggests that there is a property of men such that it is similar to some other property of wolves. It is the task of step 4, nonliteral analogy identification, to attend to these unexpressed properties and fill them in at the appropriate slots of the incomplete comparison statement generated by rule MI. However,. the derivation of the incomplete nonliteral comparison statements themselves is much less interpretive, for it follows from the analysis of a stretch of discourse as containing a metaphorical proposition of a particular type, nominal, verbal, or sentential.

4. Nonliteral analogy identification The fourth step handles the reconstruction of the complete nonliteral

comparison statement by inferring the implied concepts for the empty slots. Miller calls this the reconstruction of the comparison, but I would like to call this nonliteral analogy identification. It would serve well to suggest what step 4 adds to the previous steps of (1) metaphor focus identification, (2) metaphorical idea identification, and (3) nonliteral comparison identification: by filling in the empty slots of the comparative structure produced by step 3, the incomplete nonliteral comparison'statement is turned into a full-blown nonliteral analogy in step 4.1£ step 3 turns complete propositions into comparisons between two incomplete propositions by means of rules Ml through M3, step 4 fills out each of these incomplete propositions into complete ones. Nonliteral analogy identification (step 4) has to follow after nonliteral comparison identification (step 3).

. The term nonliteral analogy identification also suggests that the aim of the entire undertaking is still to obtain reliable analyses of metaphorical language. Our frame of research is the kind of claim that a particular stretch of language is an expression of a specific conceptual metaphor, and if such claims are to be upheld, we need to be able to support them with reliable identification procedures at every stage of the analysis. In other words, the step from incomplete nonliteral comparison statements to complete nonliteral analogies is supposed to be one of identification, in which interpretation is to be kept under firm control: We are to pi<;:k out the underlying analogy that may plausibly be conjectured to play a guiding role in interpreting the incomplete comparative structure produced in step 3. In this connection it may be disheartening to find Miller issuing the waming that 'there can be no uniquely correct comparison statement' (1993:384). Somewhat later, he writes, '[T]he search for suitable values to convert [an incomplete comparison statement to a nonliteral analogy, GS] is, strictly speaking,


a matter of interpretation' (1993 :384). But Miller is right, and, what is more, there is no contradiction between these warnings and our undertaking. Even if our goal is one of analysis and identification, it will be good to remember that there are objective limitations imposed on our pursuit and that interpretation needs to be kept on the leash.

It is fortunately possible to say a little more about the actual procedure of nonliteral analogy identification. For this purpose it is useful to return to Reinhart (1976), whose main pointwas to introduce a distinction between focus and vehicle identification and interpretation as two distinct aspects of understanding metaphor. These two aspects may now be put to use in the identifieation of the nonliteral analogy. I will begin with focus interpretation, but this does not mean that this reflects the actual order of proceeding.

Let us examine another of Reinhart's examples. She discusses another metaphor from T.S. Eliot's 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', reproduced under (10):

(10) The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes

Reinhart offers the following analysis of the focus:

In this metaphor, the focus is rubs its back upon, since we can substitute another expression for it, e.g. touches, swirls against, or comes up against, to yield a literal expression, such as The yellow fog that touches the window panes. (1976:391)

Let us examine how this analysis fares in our procedure and how it can be inserted into step 4. If we follow Reinhart in identifying the focus as she does, we rediscover this in the following list of propositions produced by step 2:

(11) The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes PI (RUB FOG BACK)

P2 (UPON pI PANES)

P3 (MOD PANES WINDOW)

If we combine all of these propositions and take 'rub its back upon' as a complex verbal group used in a nonliteral fashion, we need Miller's rule M2 to create the following incomplete comparison statement as step 3:

(12) Rub back upon (fog, window panes) -> (:3F) (:3y, y') {SIM [F(fog, window panes), rub back(y,y')]}

70 GERARD STEEN

To fill this in, as part of step 4, we require the operation of Reinhart's focus interpretation. It is nothing but the search for the predicate F which is needed to cement the relation between the fog and the window panes in the first incomplete proposition of the comparison. The choice of 'touch' by Reinhart is one possible option (although it is metaphorical, too). This would fill out the empty slot on the literal side of the equation quoted as (12). Reinhart comments:

Focus-interpetation assigns a reading to the focus expression which is a matter of selecting those properties associated with the focus expression which are relevant to the context. Thus among the properties of rubbing one's back, the properties of physical contact and of being in movement are consistent with the context of Eliot's metaphor, hence they can be selected. This procedure provides a rough understanding of what the metaphor is about, or what the actual situation which is being depicted is (the fog swirling against the window panes), and how it ties in with the wider context of the metaphor. (1976:391-2)

Focus interpretation produces a partial but basic understanding of the metaphor. In Miller's terms, it deals with 'the cast of characters in the reader's concept of the text' (1993:382). Note the comparable referential style in Reinhart's passage, when she uses 'what the metaphor is about, or what the actual situation which is being depicted is.'

However, the focus interpretation of back rubbing can only take place if it is also at least partly interpreted as rubbing one's back (see Reinhart's selection of 'the properties of physical contact and of being in movement' in the above quotation). In other words, the second incomplete proposition of (12) also has to be part of the equation. This is the beginning of vehicle'identification. And to construct the full set of conceptual correspondences between the two conceptual domains involved in the metaphor, the second incomplete proposition of (12) leads us into a relatively independent consideration of the source domain. The second incomplete proposition needs to be fleshed out itself, too, primarily by filling in the empty slots of the arguments relating to rubbing one's back. This is not just the beginning but nothing less than Reinhart's vehicle identification.

Reinhart's definition of the notion of vehicle squarely falls within our operation of filling in the missing terms of the nonliteral side of the analogy:

The vehicle is the frame Fj [ ] in which the occurrence of Ej results in a literal expression, Fj[EJ, where Fj[I;] is not similar in meaning to F;[EJ (1976:391)


Reinhart's vehicle is hence identical to the second existential proposition of the incomplete comparison statement quoted above, (::Jy,y'): we need to find a frame consisting of two literal entities which may be related to each other by means of the function 'rub its back upon' so that they form one coherent state of affairs. The resulting proposition is supposed to be similar in a nonliteral fashion to the fog touching the window panes. Reinhart suggests that 'cat' would be a good candidate for the vehicle thus defined, and the poetic context of the line in question provides corroboratory evidence.

There are again many aspects which would deserve further treatment. However, let us conclude this section by pointing out that there is an important difference between the two aspects of step 4. Focus interpretation is usually more richly constrained by the context of the metaphor, in that it involves the construction of a literal proposition against the background of the topic and content of the previous discourse (see Reinhart's remarks above, and compare Miller 1993:394). Vehicle identification does not have this rich contextual constaint--it has to activate prototypical or default knowledge about the source domain. Miller writes: 'usually it is sufficient to take as y whatever the most generic argument G is conventionally predicated of' (1993:393). Indeed, part of the difficulty of vehicle identification is precisely that there may be more than one source domain which can be involved in the interpretation of second completed proposition (cf. Vosniadou and Ortony 1989). This is clearly notthe casefor focus interpretation, in which the conceptual domain is identical to or part of the conceptual domain of the stretch of discourse in which the metaphor is located.

Another crucial aspect is the relation between the two sides of the analogy. Part of the meaning of y may have to be filtered out by its lack of relevance to the literal topic of the metaphor and the discourse. However, many possible assumptions about the source domain can usually be maintained with varying degrees of strength in the context of the target domain: a range of possible values for the empty slots is usually possible, that is, compatible with the textual world, which makes it rather difficult to hit upon the best vehicle for the eventual analogy. That focus interpretation and vehicle identification thus exert a mutual influence on each other when one attempts to align the two parts of the analogy is self-evident and the cornerstone of the interaction theory (cf. Miller 1993:394 and Reinhart 1976:389). This does make step 4 highly dependent on the specifics of every particular metaphor.

5. Nonliteral mapping identification The last step in the procedure is to identify the complete nonliteral mapping.

This is done by filling out the conceptual structure of the two sides of the non literal analogy, the source and the target domain. Other concepts and the

72 GERARD STEEN

relations between them are to be listed for each domain, and their interdomain relations are to be projected. Some of these additions may be motivated semantically whereas others are based on our know ledge of the world in particular domains (cf. Miller 1993:382 and Reinhart 1976:388). The result of this operation is a conceptual network from which the analyst may derive sets of correspon-dences such as those illustrated at the beginning of this chapter (Lakoff 1993 :207).

The transition from analogies to mappings is not given much principled attention by Reinhart and Miller: they seem to relegate it to the domain of interpretation about which they do not offer systematic observations. It is a theme which, to my knowledge, hlfS not been discussed by Lakoff either,except in a negative fashion, as in (1993:210): 'Mappings should not be thought of as processes, or as algorithms that mechanically take source domain inputs .and produce target domain outputs.' One of the more prolific writers in this area, however, is Dedre Gentner (1982; 1983; 1989; Gentner & Jeziorski 1993), who has done experimental research on behavior as well as AI modeling of knowledge structures. She has listed six principles of analogical reasoning which may be used to constrain ·the production of mappings from analogies. However, Gentner (personal communication) has also admitted that the technical analysis of such mappings is still basically an art. I cannot escape the impression that another alternative in this area, Turner and Fauconnier's (1995) conceptual blending theory, fares no better.

Thus the question arises how step 5 of the procedure may be better constrained. Arid indeed, asking this question invite.s reviewing the other steps and inspecting the relation between step 5 and step 4 in particular. For identifying the analogy in step 4 seems to require at least a partial identification of the nonliteral mapping; which is step 5, in order for the proposed analogy to be plausible. To take this further, it might be suggested that identifying the analogy is a kind of summary or abstraction of the nonliteral mapping identified in step 5, and this could lead to the query why step 4 and 5 are not reversed. In other words, one might also entertain an order in which the incomplete comparison statements of step 3 are first fleshed out into conceptual domains with conceptual ｣ｯｲｲ･ｳｰｯｮｾ＠dences and are only afterwards condensed, as it were, into neat explicit analogies.

However, to raise the question is to answer it. For one needs a kind of searchlight in the construction of the conceptual domains and their relations, which involves a kind of propositional interpretation of the implied comparison. Step 4 provides such a provisional interpretation in the form of an analogy, and this analogy acts as a target for the·construction of the more complex mapping (or mappings, if you follow conceptual blending theory) .. There is hence a special relation between steps 4 and 5, in which step 4 provides a tentative analogy which is rejected or retained depending on the success of the ensuing step 5. This does


not happen anywhere between steps 1 and 4. Step 4 is crucial, because that is where interpretation comes in, albeit as tightly controlled by the aims discussed above as possible, and step 5 acts as a verification of step 4 in spelling out its consequences in a more complex and explicit manner.

It is clear that the last two steps of the procedure form the weakest parts of the chain, with step 5 being the weakest of all. Future research will have to concentrate on strengthening these stages of the analysis. Otherwise, the gap between metaphorical language and conceptual metaphor may never be bridged in a reliable fashion. I will now move on to a brief illustration of the complete sequence of steps.

6. Conclusion I have suggested that the identification of conceptual metaphor in discourse

requires five steps:

(1) metaphor focus identification (2) metaphorical idea identification (3) nonliteral comparison identification (4) nonliteral analogy identification (5) nonliteral mapping identification

These steps are all called identification, because they give an answer to the question 'What is ... ?' The first three questions are easiest to answer: what is the metaphor focus, what is the metaphorical proposition, and what is the metaphori-cal comparison? Question 4 is more difficult to handle, because it involves filling in empty slots in an analogy on the basis of focus interpretation and vehicle identification in mutual interaction. However, context and default language use, respectively, act as guides to provide an answer to question 4. The answer to this question has to be seen as a searchlight for constructing a nonliteral mapping, which then has to be checked against the discourse regarding its appropriateness. This step is the least reliable step in the procedure, while it is essential in order to arrive at metaphors as sets of conceptual correspondences.

Let us return to the watchdog metaphor discussed above. Identifying the focus of the metaphor involved checking that the word watchdog was not used in its literal sense, referring to an animal guarding some property or people. This was not difficult on account of the accompanying information which explicitly signalled that the watchdog was 'The National River Authority' or 'the local authority financial watchdog' . Such explicit lexical signals make focus identifica-tion an easy task, but they are often unnecessary given the overt contrast between the domains of the metaphor focus and the topic of the text.

74 GERARD STEEN

The identification of the metaphorical proposition is not problematic either. It involves constructing the proposition (BE ORGANISATION WATCHDOG) or some variant thereof. As was shown above, there is some additional conceptual variation between the individual cases of the metaphor.

The identification of the nonliteral comparison is done by feeding the proposition into rule MI. This yields the paraphrase "Some property of a committee is like some property of a watchdog."

Identifying the nonliteral analogy next concerns the finding of the properties left open in the nonliteral comparison. I will begin with vehicle interpretation for the sake of showing that there is no predetermined order between the two aspects. Taking the canonical values of what watchdogs usually do, we can suggest that the relevant property is 'guarding property or people' . The property of the committees in question is similar, in that they have to guard the public interest in the economic domain. One case has the following additional information: 'To protect the interests of non-Treasury use of economic data' .

Fleshing out the analogy into a complete mapping involves listing attributes of both committees and watchdogs and attempting to match them. The following provisional list may be entertained:

THE COMMITIBE-AS-WATCHDOG MAPPING

The committee corresponds to the watchdog. The organizational domain corresponds to the yard. The interest or activity at risk corresponds to the property. Malpractice corresponds to trespassing. Monitoring corresponds to watching. WamiQg the public corresponds to barking.

Other aspects can be included, and the list may be adjusted according to context. As I have acknowledged at the beginning of this paper, there may be another

step, which is to compare the analysis of one metaphor with those of others. This would be the last step in determining whether a metaphor is part of a systemati-cally organized set of metaphorical concepts (conventional conceptual metaphors) or not. In our case, the analysis would not be dramatically different for every case of the ten instances of the watchdog metaphor, and we might come to the conclusion that the metaphor is relatively conventional, depending on other

frequencies. There are many other issues which have also had to be left aside. For

instance, etymological and sociolinguistically restricted metaphor may pose special. problems in step 1. Implicit, reduced, complex, multiple, extended, and mixed metaphors provide special challenges to steps 2 and 3 (Steen 1999 and to


appear). Differences between nominal, verbal, and sentential metaphor may cause different situations for step 4. And so on. These and other issues are on the agenda for future research. One specific item is the testing of the reliability of the various steps: specialist informants may be given tasks to carry out steps I through 5, either separately or in a row, with diverging sets of materials in order to reveal more specific difficulties of applying the procedure to real discourse data.

The general conclusion, however, is that we have offered a logical reconstruction of the analytical process, and that it holds a promise for practical use as a descriptive tool in semantics. Again, the procedure does not pretend to model the comprehension process. Moreover, as was suggested above, some steps in the analysis make greater interpretative jumps than others, and this is where cognitive linguists should be aware of alternative explanations of their data and their beliefs in conceptual metaphors. It is hoped that the procedure can pinpoint some of the more risky moments of analysis and that it can help in recording experiences in negotiating these moments.

Author's note I wish to thank Ray Gibbs, Rachel Giora, Lachlan Mackenzie, and Wilbert Spooren for

their acute observations and comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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