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Mind, Metaphor and
Language Teaching
Randal Holme
10.1057/9780230503007preview - Mind, Metaphor and Language Teaching, Randal Holme

Mind, Metaphor and Language Teaching
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2016-01-21

Also by Randal Holme
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Mind, Metaphor and
Language Teaching

Randal Holme

© Randal Holme 2004
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Mind, metaphor and language teaching/Randal Holme.
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1. Language and languages – Study and teaching. 2. Metaphor.
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Contents
List of Tables and Figures viii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction xii

1 The Study of Metaphor 1
Early perspectives 1
The rehabilitation of metaphor 3
The problem of knowing when something is a
metaphor or not 5
Metaphor and relevance theory 6
The cognitive view of metaphor 9
Conceptual metaphor: how metaphors share
common themes 10
How we shape abstract concepts with the
metaphors we use to grasp them 11
The lack of a clear distinction between the
metaphorical and the literal 14
Metaphors as a transfer of meaning from
one domain to another: mapping and blending 17
How abstract meaning is conceptualised through
metaphor and image schema 22
Some of the conceptual metaphors that produce abstract
language are culturally-specific and some are universal 24
Grammar as originating in metaphor over time 25
Conclusions 27
2 Using Figurative Language 28

The language of metaphor 29
Stretching the domain 29
What categories mean 30
What teachers and students can do with their
understanding of categories 37
Achieving greater freedom with meaning:
describing things as other than themselves 44
Layering 49

vi Contents
Metaphors looking for a meaning 52

Conclusions 56
3 Teaching the Language and Structure of Metaphor 59

Metaphor and parts-of-speech 60
Metaphors that identify themselves: grammatical
metaphor 66
Elliptical similes 78
Marked metaphors 89

Conclusion 93
4 Allegory and Analogy: Teaching with Extended

Metaphors 98
Allegory 98
Analogy 100
Analogues, models and writing instruction 109
Teaching with analogy: conclusions 118
5 Teaching Lexis through Metaphor 120

Bridging the gap between learning theory and
language theory 120
Using metaphor to teach abstract meaning 124
Metaphor teaches students about language 126
Using metaphor in the construction of discourse 129
Expressing deductive and inductive arguments 138
Cause-and-effect paths 142
Conclusion 147
6 Metaphor and the Teaching of Grammar 150

Phrasal verbs 155
Tense and time 166
Reference 168
Expressing time 172
Conclusions 178
7 The Metaphor of Learning 180

Linguistic theories of language acquisition 182
There is no reliable way to distinguish acquired
language knowledge from learnt language knowledge 182
Generative theories of SLA 184
The modular mind 189
Cognitivist and generative positions 191
Student errors, CBT (cognitive blend theory) and
the remodelling of second-language learning 193

Contents vii
Towards a blend-structure model of

second-language learning 196
Cognitive blend theory (CBT) and language learning 197
How a CBT model can account for language learning 208
A blend-structure model of language learning:
understanding and correcting student errors 211
Conclusions 219
8 Conclusions 221

Cognitive not social relevance 221
Cultural empathy 222
Affective is effective 223
A kinaesthetic pedagogy: understanding the
physical basis of meaning 224
A construction-based pedagogy: exploiting the
spatial construction of meaning 224
A participatory pedagogy 226
Bibliography 229
Index 237

List of Tables and Figures
Tables
3.1 Proverb matching 67

3.2 Grammatical metaphor: the subject as a ‘charged head’ 76
3.3 Grammatical metaphor: a table to help students with

nominalised structures 76
Figures
1.1 An application of Fauconnier and Turner’s 1998

cognitive blend model: the landship and the
conceptualisation of the battle tank 20
2.1 How British supermarkets are rebuilding food categories 38
2.2 Blackboard diagram: ‘strange and dark place’ as a
metonym for ‘path’, ‘wood’ and ‘sunset’ 49
3.1 Exploring the language of sense perception 62
3.2 Using grammatical metaphor: actions impacting
on actions 73
3.3 Grammatical metaphor and the creation of textual
cohesion 77
3.4 Blends in the classroom: Koestler’s Buddhist monk 85
4.1 Analogical structure 102
4.2 Galileo’s analogy as a blend 102
4.3 Argument essay structure 111
4.4 Text frame showing a model research article
introduction (text from Mei Yi Lin, 2001: 19) 112
4.5 Applying genre models as blend structures 113
4.6 Argument structure modelling: from horizontal to
vertical argument 115
5.1 Teaching abstract lexis through concrete metaphors:
‘substantial’ arguments 125
5.2 Understanding the origins of words: from plough
furrow to dock 128
5.3 Using mind-maps to show metaphorical themes in text 132
5.4 Argument structure metaphors: setting ’em up to
knock ’em down 134
viii

List of Tables and Figures ix
5.5 Writing metatext with the metaphors: ‘knowledge

is sight’ and ‘the author is a guide to their own text’ 136
5.6 Explaining empirical thought: some statements need
support from the world and some support each other 144
5.7 Explaining theoretical and empirical thought:
self-supporting statements vs statements that seek
support in the world 146
5.8 Metaphor and idiom: the effect of culture on a

universal schema 148
6.1 Model of a construction grammar 153
6.2 Teaching phrasal verbs through the schema
represented by the particle ‘up is dynamic’ 160
6.3 Teaching phrasal verbs through the schematisation
of the particle ‘up is achieved movement’ 162
of the particle ‘up is more and more sometimes good’ 163
of the particle ‘up is an end point’ 164
of the particle ‘up is an end point’ 165
6.7 Teaching phrasal verbs with the schematisation of the
particle ‘up is bringing lost objects to the surface’ 165
6.8 Teaching the present continuous as an adjective that
frames an action 167
6.9 Teaching the definite article as schemas branching
from a prototypical instance of use 168
6.10 Metaphor showing the indicative nature of the
definite article 171
6.11 The possession schema: mind as a storehouse of
continuing actions 174
7.1 Approach path errors: how errors reflect constraints
that are of reducing generality 195
7.2 Blend-structure model showing the perception of a
second-language phonology: step 1 202
7.3 Blend-structure model showing the perception of a
second-language phonology: step 2 203
7.4 Blend-structure model of language learning showing
metalinguistic interference 204
7.5 Blend-structure model of an XYZ sentence 205
7.6 Blend-structure model showing a failed category
connection 206

x List of Tables and Figures
7.7 Blend-structure model showing a failure of basic syntax 207

7.8 Blend-structure model of language learning: modifying
interlanguage with metasyntax 208
7.9 Blend structure language learning: cueing the
wrong register 212
7.10 Blend structure errors: how the meaning of ‘blood’
governs transitivity 213
7.11 Blend structure approach to errors: right image

schema, wrong category 215
7.12 Using the event-is-location metaphor to help students
construct and use English infinitives 216
7.13 Image schematic approaches to correction: ‘keep up with’ 217
7.14 Image schematic approaches to correction:
schematising ‘up with’ versus ‘up to’ 218
8.1 A time-line showing the English tense system 225

Acknowledgements
I would like to extend particular gratitude to Professor Mike Byram for

his advice, interest and support during the first phases of this project. I
want to acknowledge the help of numerous colleagues and students
who have made this experimentation possible and have helped with

their insights and comments. I also want to express my gratitude to my
mother, Anthea Holme, for her help with the correction of some early
drafts. Finally, I would like to express particular thanks and gratitude to
my wife, Virgolina, and to my three children, Kim, Amelia and
Christopher, for giving me the time to write and compile this book.
RANDAL HOLME
xi

Introduction
The last few decades have seen an upsurge of research interest in

metaphor and figurative language. This interest has also become part of
a larger enquiry into the relationship between language and other
processes of mind, an enquiry that is producing the field known as cog-

nitive linguistics. This book is very much a product of this new interest
and its rapidly expanding literature. However, the book’s primary objec-
tive is not to add to that already extensive body of research; my concern
here is to explore the relevance of this knowledge for another related
area, that of language teaching.
In linguistics, or any other area of enquiry, pure and applied knowl-
edge may interrelate in one of three ways:
1 A theoretical enquiry may be triggered by an applied need.

2 Theoretical knowledge may partially engage with the applied from
the outset. This engagement may motivate the development of both.
3 A theoretical endeavour may be undertaken without any concern for
its potential application.
In language teaching, the first case is plain. Teachers want to explain

when a grammatical structure is used in English, and this need for a lin-
guistic rule of thumb will trigger a search for the evidence on which that
rule should be based. The applied need will thus launch a theoretical
enquiry.
The second case may be best demonstrated by the example of SFL (sys-
temic functional linguistics). SFL tries to set out how, in a given social
context, a particular meaning creates a particular use of language.
Communicative teaching engages with this type of analysis because it
needs a sense of linguistic form as a response to the type of meaning we
want to communicate.
The third case highlights how other forms of linguistic enquiry have
been almost eager not to engage with language teaching. For example,
Generative Linguistics had as its motivation the deduction of the rules
by which language is produced; rules are deduced according to a consis-
tent, scientific method. The abstract and symbolic nature of their for-
mulation means that they can have little interest for a student who
needs an easy explanation as to why one form will be used and not
xii

Introduction xiii
another, yet this has not stopped scholars from asking how generative
linguistics should affect their approach to language teaching and learning.
Like the search for a generative grammar, the exploration of metaphor
was not stimulated by any applied need. Unlike generative grammar, it
did not begin as a search for the larger problem of how languages are
acquired, produced and understood; it began more as the study of a lin-
guistic conundrum. However, this interest in solving a vexing and
peripheral linguistic puzzle has developed into a larger enquiry about

how meaning, itself, is constructed. Although occurring outside the
frame of pedagogy, research into metaphor has dealt with the relation-
ship between language, cognition and knowledge construction. It has
revealed principles in language structure that may also open a window
onto the processes through which language is learnt. Some applied lin-
guists have already started to ask how teachers might make use of
metaphor studies. This book will carry forward that enquiry; it will look
at some of the work already done, then ask how such studies can com-
bine into a wider perspective that will change the way language teachers
think about what they do.
Chapter 1 will survey the development of the field of metaphor stud-
ies. It will be the only chapter without explicit pedagogical relevance.
However, it will provide the necessary background for the discussion of
applications that will come after.
Each of Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 elaborates on a different aspect of
metaphor research, asking how this informs language teaching, both
from a practical and a theoretical perspective. I will unfold the practical
study as a series of pedagogical episodes or narratives of classroom
events. In line with qualitative procedure (see for example Silverman,
1985 and 1993), my objective is not to treat the instances described as a
basis for generalisation about how language students should be taught
or about how they will respond to a given technique; my objective is to
recount what occurred when certain techniques were tried out with a
class. Teachers should use the narrative as the basis of their own impro-
visation not as a prescription for how to proceed. In these narratives, I
will take on the role that Richards and Lockart (1996: 2) characterise as
that of a reflective teacher, recalling the ‘interactions that occur in a class-
room and the exploitation of the learning opportunities that these offer’.
Chapter 2 looks at metaphor as it appears in language. It asks how far
metaphor can be identified by formal linguistic means, and it considers
whether metaphor is a form of language use that students can be taught
to recognise and produce, either adding to their larger language compe-
tence or forming a particular type of competence itself.

xiv Introduction
Chapter 3 will consider how some types of metaphor may be better

termed analogies and others allegories. I will show how analogy forma-
tion is a vital skill for students and teachers alike, often determining
both how teachers communicate knowledge to students, and how stu-
dents grasp what is communicated. I will also argue that because anal-
ogy is central to the way we construct many types of argument, its
formation and expression should be taught to students who require
higher-level language skills.

Chapter 4 will ask whether we might find it easier to identify what
metaphor is if we place it beside another type of figurative language use,
metonymy. My exploration of metonymy will again show how figures
of speech are not some unusual use of language but show how we build
conventional or literal meanings in language. Metonymy also reveals a
link between culture and the construction of meaning, and such a link
has considerable interest for language teachers.
Chapter 5 will look more closely at cognitive theories of metaphor. It
will discuss how metaphor is the mechanism through which we grasp
abstract meaning in language and will ask how this can change the way
we teach vocabulary.
Chapter 6 will extend the analysis of how metaphor shapes abstract
concepts to a discussion of grammatical meaning. It will ask how far the
cognitive analysis of grammar can impact upon the classroom.
Chapter 7 will depart from the pattern of the previous five chapters to
launch a wider discussion about how cognitive theories of language and
metaphor can change the way we look at theories of second language
acquisition and learning. It will do this first with a theoretical discussion
that will look for support in some of the errors that students produce.
Chapter 8 will draw wider conclusions about how our understanding
of metaphor should change the way we perceive language-teaching
methodology. It will set out the impact of this research as requiring a
methodology that puts cognitive before social relevance, demands cul-
tural empathy, is affective, kinaesthetic and visual while encouraging a
pedagogical style that is participatory rather than facilitative.

1
The Study of Metaphor

Early perspectives
Although current scholarly interest in metaphor dates largely from the

late 1970s, it would be wrong to imagine that metaphor excited negligi-
ble concern prior to this. Metaphor became part of the enquiry into how
we use language to express thought and emotion almost at the moment
that the enquiry began. Aristotle (1927) is now cited as the originator of
the comparative theory of metaphor, holding that a metaphor is a compar-
ison between two terms that is made in order to explore the nature of
one (Gibbs, 1994). Thus, to say that ‘love is a rose’ is to compare an emo-
tion, ‘love’, to a flower possessed of a seductive scent and form that is pro-
tected by thorns. ‘Love’ can thus be expressed as beautiful, seductive and
dangerous by being compared to a flower that has the same properties.
Aristotle also touches upon the capacity of metaphor to name what is
not named, or to serve the ‘human urge’ ‘to articulate what is as yet
unarticulated’ (Cooper, 1993: 40). He discusses how the sun ‘casting
forth its rays’ has no name, unlike ‘casting forth of seed’ which is called
sowing, hence we may come to speak of the sun ‘sowing its flames’
(Derrida, 1972). Aristotle therefore identified two key attributes of
metaphor:
1 The transformation of a conventional meaning through its compari-

son to something else.
2 The use of a transformed meaning to represent a phenomenon which
may be otherwise unnamed (Ricoeur, 1975: 104).
Aristotle also expressed the interest of classical rhetoricians in metaphor

as a device that persuades and moves an audience. In the Western

2 Mind, Metaphor and Language Teaching
rhetorical tradition, metaphor was also seen as able to help a speaker to

remember the order of their subject matter, as a mnemonic in other
words. To express the nature of one thing through that of another was
to make it memorable. Thus a speech could be seen as a building with
different rooms storing different topics while the speech-maker imag-
ined themselves opening one door after another in order to reveal a
room’s contents (Yates, 1984). The speech-maker creates a series of
metaphors. The speech is a building, and each point made represents

the contents of a room.
Since the seventeenth century and the philosopher Renee Descartes, the
deductive method has become central to Western thought. Accordingly,
an argument is valid when a statement follows logically from the one that
has preceded it. Thus if the first statement of an argument is true, all others
will be true, provided that each can be deduced from the one before.
This Cartesian tradition found metaphor a difficult or even dangerous
topic. Cartesian thought assumes that the premise of an argument can fix
the meaning of words in the way that the value of a mathematical symbol,
x, can be assigned an unchangeable value, as x ⫽ 2 for example. Therefore
in a very simple equation x ⫹ y ⫽ 3 we can determine the value of y as
long as we assign a value to x. However, if the value of x changes from
2 to 3, for example, then the value of y will also change. Equally, if we say
that x might be 2 or it might be 3, then we can say the same thing about y.
One insecure value makes our larger argument insecure. Metaphor intro-
duces exactly this type of insecurity. It raises the possibility that words can
suddenly acquire new meanings, calling into question an argument
which is founded on meanings that were thought to be fixed.
The Empirical tradition that arose in England slightly later also found
metaphor difficult. Empiricism tries to verify its arguments through what
happens in the world. It therefore needs a language that represents things
as they are and not as one mind reports them to be. Metaphor threatens
the possibility of such a language with the involuntary interference of the
mind that argues. It suggests that a given event can be accorded different
interpretations by different figures of speech. It disrupts the possibility of
a univocal discourse where things render themselves into words as single
unmediated meanings.
The German philosopher Hegel (1770–1831) recognised how our use
of language was often metaphorical. Metaphor was difficult to avoid and
its ubiquity made even common meanings insecure and philosophical
argument difficult. Hegel therefore distinguished between a type of
metaphor whose meaning was fixed and one which would introduce
something new and could corrupt philosophical discourse. The first

The Study of Metaphor 3
kind was dead metaphor. An example of a dead metaphor would be the

use of the word ‘ruin’ in ‘she ruined my career’. Ruins are collapsed
buildings. A career cannot be reduced to a smashed dwelling so ‘ruined
my career’ is metaphorical. Yet we use this expression so often that we
do not recognise it as unusual and might not normally class it as a
metaphor. Hegel argued that a dead metaphor has its meaning secured
by the passage of history (Cooper, 1986). Live metaphor declares its
unusual and often poetic nature as when we say ‘Juliet is the sun’ while

knowing she cannot be.
A more recent term for some dead metaphors is lexicalised metaphor.
By this we mean that the metaphorical meaning has become an estab-
lished feature of the lexicon, as when we talk about ‘emotional bonds’
and, do not for a moment think we mean cords. The process is called
lexicalisation.
The rehabilitation of metaphor
In The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Richards (1936), made one of the twentieth

century’s first significant studies of metaphor. Richards’ contribution was
to see metaphor as an ‘omniscient principle of language’ rather than as a
marginal construct that threatened the integrity of logical argument
(ibid.: 92). He saw metaphor as constructed out of a tension between two
terms, the tenor and the vehicle. In a metaphor such as the following:
1 Life is a game of chess.
‘life’ is the tenor, or what the metaphor is primarily about, and ‘a game
of chess’ is the vehicle, or the term that carries metaphor’s descriptive
force. The metaphor arises from the tension between the differences in
the meanings of these two parts. Thus the tenor, ‘life’, has a quite differ-
ent meaning to the vehicle, a ‘chess-game’. This difference of meaning
is what allows metaphor to draw attention to the hidden attributes of
the terms with which it deals.
Richards’ (1936) views on the importance of metaphor were largely
ignored by his contemporaries, and the mistrust of formal philosophers
continued to influence even those who took an interest in the topic. Black
(1962, 1993) considered that metaphor was central to human self-
expression but that it was nonetheless a departure from normal language
use. Black argued that a metaphor such as 1, above, is different from a lit-
eral statement because the vehicle, ‘a chess game’, is not the phenomenon
that it is said to be. Chess is no longer a game. It describes our existence.

Black’s larger and more enduring contribution was the interactional

theory of metaphor (1962). This theory sees a metaphor as being about two
subjects: ‘a primary’ and ‘a secondary’ one. The adoption of the idea of
two subjects raises the key point that both parts of the metaphor
contribute to the kind of meaning that is created. According to a tradi-
tional analysis we might say that in Shakespeare’s ‘Beauty’s a flower’, the
vehicle, ‘a flower’, is the metaphor and ‘beauty’ means ‘beauty’. But,
according to Black, the two subjects, ‘beauty’ and ‘flower’ interact in order

to extract from each other the compatible meanings on which the
metaphor is based. We can see this more clearly if we examine the
metaphor in 2:
2 Women are angels wooing. (Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida)
Basically, both the terms, ‘angels’ and ‘women who are being wooed’
carry what Aristotle called endoxa, or ‘current opinions’ shared by the
speech community as to the possible meanings of a given term (Black,
1993: 28). For example, no speech community at any time has conceived
of women in courtship as being winged creatures who may literally take
flight. However, suitors traditionally revere the women they woo. As
sacred beings, angels are also revered, at least according to the endoxa of
the Christian, Muslim and Judaic speech communities. Therefore
women wooing can be angels, but they cannot be everything an angel
is. A primary subject, ‘women wooing’ fails to extract a key aspect of the
secondary one, ‘angels as winged beings’ and leaves others, ‘reverence
and beauty’. Therefore we can conclude that Shakespeare intends that
when women are being courted, men treat them as objects of great
beauty and reverence.
Example 2 also shows up some of the difficulties of Black’s analysis.
‘Women wooing’ cancels out such features as ‘winged and immortal’
because ‘women wooing’ cannot be these things and leaves ‘objects of
reverence’. Yet in order to do this, we must already know what ‘women
wooing’ are. Interactional theory forces the conclusion that metaphors are
finally uninformative, drawing our attention to what we already know.
Black’s (1993) other contribution lies in his argument that the primary
and secondary subjects achieve an isomorphic relationship within the frame
of their basic dissimilarity. To understand what is meant by an isomorphic
relationship, we should consider how ‘temperature’ and ‘the mercury in a
thermometer’ affect each other. ‘Temperature’ and ‘mercury’ are concep-
tually different; temperature is abstract and mercury a physical entity or
a metal. Yet the behaviour of one clearly reflects the behaviour of the

other. When the temperature rises by a given amount, the mercury will
expand by a given amount. Temperature and mercury change in lockstep.
Ricoeur (1975) saw a metaphor as aspiring to an isomorphic relation-
ship between its topic and vehicle. ‘Mercury is heat’ or ‘heat mercury’
because beneath their fundamental difference, ‘heat’ and ‘mercury’
achieve a relationship of near perfect symmetry. In Shakespeare’s
‘beauty is a flower’, ‘beauty’ and ‘a flower’ retain their differences yet are
fated to affect each other, as heat does mercury. The wilting of the flower

is the loss of beauty. The short-lived nature of the flower is the short-
lived nature of beauty.
The problem of knowing when something is a

metaphor or not
The work of Richards, Black, Ricoeur and the linguist, Jakobson (1971),
though different in nature, contributed to a growing awareness of the
importance of metaphor as a mechanism of meaning-construction in
language. Both Ricoeur and Derrida reject the possibility of language
being a univocal system where each word is endowed with a clear, dis-
tinct and unambiguous meaning that is derived from the world. For
Derrida (1972) the very language of rational philosophy was built out of
metaphor, ‘foundation is a metaphor, concept is a metaphor, theory is a
metaphor and there is no metametaphor for them’.
For Derrida, the consequence is that language constructs the world in
which we operate. Its metaphors and not the world itself build the cate-
gories in which we place phenomena. For formal linguistics and
philosophers such a conclusion is unacceptable. A language that creates
meanings out of itself is not susceptible to logical enquiry because there
is no firm concept of reality against which the value of those meanings
can be assessed. Although working from a quite contrary perspective,
formal linguists such as Davidson (1979), Rorty (1989) or Sadock (1993)
treated metaphor as a suspect topic because they understood how it
could put language outside the bounds of logical enquiry in very much
the way that Derrida had outlined.
Formal approaches to semantics were underpinned by Tarski’s (1956)
concept of a truth-condition where something is true if and only if it is
true. At first sight this may seem circuitous, but when we apply this
analysis we can see how it provides us with a way to determine the types
of meaning we are dealing with. Thus ‘a house is white, if and only if a
house is white’. The statement is validated by whether it accords with
the world to which it refers. Thus, ‘a house is white’ constitutes a literal

statement if it is ‘white’ but might start to deviate from the same if it

were actually a pale grey. ‘White’ would then be extended towards
‘grey’, making a metaphorical reference to a colour. Metaphorical mean-
ing is a violation of a term’s truth conditions and metaphor suggests a
language of semantic flux where a statement cannot be validated by the
world to which it refers.
Yet a truth-conditional analysis is not as problem-free as it first appears.
The philosopher John Searle points out how in the case of the two sen-

tences, 3 and 4, below, we know immediately the truth conditions of 3
but would have considerable difficulty with 4.
3 The fly is on the ceiling.

4 The cat is on the ceiling. (Searle, 1993: 86)
5 Sam is a pig. (Searle, 1993: 105)
Example 4 reveals how a sentence that meets a truth-condition test is

not always easy to understand, whereas one such as 5, which fails a
truth-condition test, can be immediately comprehensible. Our ability to
understand a statement depends upon how easily we can apply our
background knowledge to it, not upon its truth conditions. In the case
of a metaphor such as sentence 5, above, we know immediately that
what Searle calls the sentence meaning and the utterance meaning do not
coincide, ‘Sam’ is a human, not the animal he is asserted to be.
Example 4 also shows that the need to go outside a normal factual
frame of reference in order to find a meaning is not just peculiar to
metaphor. The ‘cat’ in 4 may actually be on the ceiling because a cat
hater has splattered it over the plasterwork. We just have to work harder
and through a longer chain of inferences to understand that. In 5, we
know that Sam is a human being not an animal in the way we know that
cats do not normally adhere to ceilings. Just as we have to search our
background knowledge in order to grasp the adhesive properties of a
splattered cat so do we to evoke the folk wisdom about pigs when we
realise that Sam is actually human.
Background knowledge plays a crucial role in our full understanding
of even literal utterances. Statements are not immediately comprehensi-
ble because they are in accord with their truth conditions and, like 5
(Sam is a pig), not immediately meaningless because they violate them.
Metaphor and relevance theory
A formal linguist proceeds on the assumption that we can understand

what someone else says because we use the same rules to interpret and

produce a given utterance as the speaker. These rules restrict what we

can do with language. If they did not, we would make incomprehensi-
ble statements. The problem with metaphor is that it suggests that
meanings can change in new and unpredictable ways.
An obvious way to move forward from this is to accept that state of
affairs and to regard metaphor as belonging to a territory that the lin-
guist Noam Chomsky (1985) would call epiphenomenal. Chomsky’s
famous early distinction was between our knowledge of the rules with

which we produce language, our competence, and the language that is
produced, our performance. ‘Performance’ is a linguistic epiphenomenon,
or an ethereal product of the knowable and phenomenal nature of com-
petence. To regard metaphor as an epiphenomenon means that we
should treat it as a violation of the semantics of natural language
because it is outside the core competence to which these belong. This
means that we are moving our analysis of metaphor into the area of lan-
guage use. For Chomsky, the question of how we use language is not
worth studying because we simply cannot predict the number and type
of contexts in which that use will occur.
For Grice (1975), the principles that govern our use of language could
be formulated. He therefore deduced the co-operative maxims that
allow meaningful communication between individuals. Two central
co-operative maxims are truthfulness and relevance. Metaphor poses an
immediate problem for the principle of truthfulness because a statement
such as ‘beauty is a flower’ is patently false. ‘Beauty’ is not a flower, it is
a condition that people ascribe to each other and to things in the world.
Because the statement is false, we then ask why we are using the false-
hood. In other words, we ‘seek, a figurative, co-operative intent behind
the utterance’ (Sadock, 1993: 43). Our search for co-operative intent
invokes another Gricean maxim, that of relevance. In the sentence, ‘Sam
is a pig’, we reject the idea that Sam is really a snorting and inarticulate
quadruped because that meaning is not relevant to the idea we mani-
festly want to convey or to the context in which the communication
takes place.
According to Sperber and Wilson (1985 and 1986), the Gricean maxim
of relevance should be perceived not just as one of the several principles
that allow meaningful communication to occur, but as a theory of
mind. Our processes of thought require that we heed the points that are
relevant to us. In forming or interpreting an utterance, we first try to
make the utterance concur with ‘the assumptions’ that we hold about it
(Sperber and Wilson, 1986: 2). A second stage is to search the context for
features that will be relevant to the assumption. Thus, in an interpretation

of the metaphor, ‘women are angels wooing’, we know that ‘women

wooing’ are not ‘angels’. The statement violates our first assumption
about wooing women and angels. We look, therefore, in the context of
angels for the implicatures that are most relevant to the information we
are trying to convey; for example, virtue and sanctity.
Goatly (1997: 142–3) has developed one of the most elaborate views
of metaphor according to the principle of relevance. He treats the dis-
tinction between literal and metaphorical language as existing on a

cline. The point where we find ourselves between the strictly literal and
the demonstrably figurative depends on the number of implicatures
through which we have to work in order to discover the actual meaning.
In an example such as ‘Sam is a pig’, the number will be small. This
would be because ‘pig’ has almost acquired the secondary meaning of
‘greedy, dirty and slovenly’. In a case such as that of 6, below, it is clear
that the number of implicatures would be very great and the issue of rele-
vance would never be totally resolved, making this highly metaphorical.
6 Eternity is a spider. (cited in Cooper, 1986)
Arguably, 6 triggers a search through one implicature after another, with

the mind never being able to determine the most relevant then to rest
there.
Metaphor and relevance theory: cognitive criticisms

The relevance interpretation of metaphor assumes that we begin
by assuming a literal meaning. When the literal interpretation produces
something ridiculous, we move on to a figurative one. A relevance
view would hold that 7 is understood first as 8 and only secondarily
as 9 because the literal meaning of ‘can’ refers to our ability to do
something:
7 Can’t you be friendly to other people?

8 Are you unable to be friendly to other people?
9 Please be friendly to other people. (Gibbs, 1994)
Gibbs (1982, 1983) argued that if relevance theory was true, processing
a metaphorical meaning such as 9 from an utterance such as 7 would
mean we had first to pass through 8. Obtaining meaning 9 would there-
fore need greater cognitive effort and thus more time. Gibbs conducted
a series of reaction-time tests where subjects were given two different
contexts for a sentence such as 8. The first suggested the meaning

should be construed literally, the second, figuratively. Thus, a literal

context was suggested where a psychiatrist implied that their patient
had a condition where they could not be friendly. A non-literal context
was given as one where an adult was trying to correct the behaviour of a
quarrelsome child. The fact that under experimental conditions, sub-
jects took longer to compute the literal meaning than the figurative was
taken as evidence against the adoption of a relevance view of metaphor
processing (Gibbs, 1994).

The cognitive view of metaphor
Gibbs’ conclusion that we can compute the meaning of non-literal lan-

guage just as quickly as the literal was used to support a cognitive or
image-schematic view of metaphor processing. This cognitive view
remains the basis for the largest research endeavour in the field of
metaphor and has amounted to a reorientation of how we treat lan-
guage, the relationship between language and thought, and the nature
of thought itself. The development of a cognitive approach to metaphor
can be considered as having the following strands:
1 The reduction of metaphors as they occur in language to a finite set

of common metaphors that are treated as conceptual or formative of
the meanings with which language must work.
2 A view that we depend on metaphors in order to understand abstract
ideas. The way we treat a topic in any form of scientific or philosoph-
ical enquiry is skewed by the metaphors that we use to describe it.
3 The observation that much language understood as literal is in fact
highly metaphorical and that finally the literal/metaphorical distinc-
tion does not really exist in a definitive sense.
4 The description of metaphors as a transfer of meaning from one
domain to another in a process known as mapping or as the integra-
tion of two meanings in a process known as blending.
5 The understanding that abstract language is entirely metaphorical in
origin and can largely be reduced to a set of mappings that derive
from our experience of our bodies and of the body’s interaction with
the world.
6 The view that some abstract language is a product of culturally specific
conceptual metaphors and that some is a product of universal ones.
7 The observation that like other expressions of abstract thought, the
grammar of language has been structured by metaphors derived from
an awareness of ourselves as embodied creatures. Understanding

grammar means understanding how it has thus evolved by metaphor

over time.
I will now explore each of these points in turn.
Conceptual metaphor: how metaphors share

common themes

Reddy (1993) observed how the vehicles of the metaphorical expres-
sions that we need to talk about a given idea may share the same theme.
Since Aristotle, a common observation in literary criticism was how
poetic metaphors were often used in chains that were linked by a com-
mon underlying theme. We can see this in 10, from Shakespeare’s
Othello:
10 Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt,

And very sea mark of my utmost sail.
Do you go back dismay’d? ‘tis a lost fear:
Man but a rush against Othello’s breast
And he retires. Where should Othello go?
The hero has realised that he must kill himself; he talks about his death
as his ‘journey’s end’. He develops this idea in the second line. His life is
now one of the ocean voyages that made him famous; the journey of his
life has reached its last shore. In the third line the theme changes.
Because he is wielding a weapon and has a fierce reputation, others in
the room are moving back from him. He tells them that their fear is
groundless; he will simply retreat if attacked. Then he reflects how there
is no place for him to retreat to unless it is to death. The metaphor of a
journey and life as a movement is taken up differently within an image
of warfare, with the idea of advance, or ‘the rush’ and retreat. Thus the
same theme links the different images even though the writer exploits it
in different ways through other metaphorical layers, the ocean voyage
or the battlefield manoeuvre.
Reddy’s contribution was to show how such metaphorical themes
structure our everyday use of language. In his analysis of ‘communica-
tion’, he showed how it is often conceived as a ‘conduit’. We discuss
communication as opening or using a channel as in ‘getting through,
coming across, putting across’ or ‘transfer’ as in ‘language transfer’ (ibid.:
189–97). Equally, the message itself is perceived as the container that is
dispatched along the conduit as when we ‘unpack a statement’ or ‘search
in text for a message’. The implications of this discovery were held to be

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List of Tables and Figures viii

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2 Using Figurative Language 28

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Metaphors looking for a meaning 52

3 Teaching the Language and Structure of Metaphor 59

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4 Allegory and Analogy: Teaching with Extended

5 Teaching Lexis through Metaphor 120

6 Metaphor and the Teaching of Grammar 150

7 The Metaphor of Learning 180

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Towards a blend-structure model of

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3.1 Proverb matching 67

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1.1 An application of Fauconnier and Turner’s 1998

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5.5 Writing metatext with the metaphors: ‘knowledge

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7.7 Blend-structure model showing a failure of basic syntax 207

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I would like to extend particular gratitude to Professor Mike Byram for

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10.1057/9780230503007preview - Mind, Metaphor and Language Teaching, Randal Holme

The last few decades have seen an upsurge of research interest in

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1 A theoretical enquiry may be triggered by an applied need.

In language teaching, the first case is plain. Teachers want to explain

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Chapter 3 will consider how some types of metaphor may be better

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Although current scholarly interest in metaphor dates largely from the

1 The transformation of a conventional meaning through its compari-

Aristotle also expressed the interest of classical rhetoricians in metaphor

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rhetorical tradition, metaphor was also seen as able to help a speaker to

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kind was dead metaphor. An example of a dead metaphor would be the

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The rehabilitation of metaphor

In The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Richards (1936), made one of the twentieth

1 Life is a game of chess.

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