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hrjSo there I am at the end of an intense multi-departmental meeting at work affecting one of my investigations, and in frustration I declaim, "Sometimes the assay is valid and yet the elephant is still purple." It was something I came up with on the spur of the moment. I've been finding myself doing that with increasing frequency: trying to break through communication gaps with a colorful (literally) and unexpected metaphors. Sometimes it's clear what I'm trying to convey; sometimes (as with the purple elephant) it needs a bit more unpacking. In the case of the purple elephant, the underlying communication is, "If your QC assay meets all the criteria for an acceptable process, and yet the test result that it produces is completely implausible in the face of everything else we know, maybe we need to re-visit what it means for an assay to be 'valid'." If you have a purple elephant in front of you, stop arguing that everyone knows that elephants aren't purple and that there's no mechanism by which an elephant could become purple.
Everyone's used to thinking of metaphors as colorful figures of speech, like the purple elephant. But the metaphors we need to watch out for are the ones that sneak in under the radar. The ones that both represent and shape our thought processes about how the world works. Because, in the end, they are still figures of speech (or figures of thought) and not a literal, true representation of the world and our experience in it.
Today's random blog was a prompt from a friend on facebook who suggested that I tackle, "sports metaphors and why not to use them." I wasn't able to get further clarification before writing this, so I have to go with what it sparks on its own.
One of the things my PhD research covered is metaphor theory. (Along with historic linguistics and medieval Welsh and prepositions and assorted other things.) I sometimes have fun claiming that I'm a doctor of metaphor. But while the linguistic study of metaphor can include poetic figures of speech, the field I studied in (cognitive linguistics) looks more at how metaphor communicates and structures meaning, and how that meaning is processed in both productive and destructive ways.
As a brief example, one of the systematic metaphors used in English (and keep in mind that not all cultures and languages share the same metaphors) is that events and activities of all sorts can be represented as physical motion through space. And, as a special case, that purposeful activity can be represented as an intentional journey through space. So we talk about "taking the first steps", about "encountering roadblocks", about "veering off on a tangent". Our activities have "goals", our co-workers can be "fellow travelers" (yes, I'm aware of the political history of that one), we may struggle with a "steep learning curve" (because it's harder to get some place if you're climbing a hill than walking on the flat). And on an even more abstract level, we talk about future states as some place you are "going" to. (Compare "I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow," with "I'm going to bake bread tomorrow.") Ease and difficulty, complexity and simplicity, cooperation and hindrance. All these things are familiar to us from moving through the world, and they make a convenient way of expressing our experience of less physical experiences. Pretty innocuous, right?
But one of the things that cognitive linguistics can demonstrate experimentally (by studying things like reaction time, differential responses, pupil dilation, and other things not under the experimental subject's voluntary control) is that the use of different metaphoric representations of a concept affects how we think about that concept. And, unlike the purple elephant, if the metaphor is so deeply ingrained in our thinking that we don't need to process it consciously, or have it explained, then those effects on our thinking may also go unnoticed. We may mistake a "figure of speech" for a law of nature.
Take, for example, one of the current and popular metaphors in English for the experience of anger. "Boiling mad", "all steamed up", "under pressure", "need to blow off steam", "blow his top", "simmering rage". When the examples are brought together, it becomes clear that we have a mental model for anger that represents it as a steam boiler. The person experiencing the emotion is a solid container for water; incidents that provoke anger are the application of heat; the degree of heat and the effects it has on the water correspond to the intensity of the anger.
If all this were just a descriptive mechanism, that would be one thing. But then we move from describing the experience of the emotion to reasoning about appropriate actions to take in response to that experience. If a steam boiler becomes very hot, the steam creates internal pressure that must either be used for productive work (driving an engine--although notice how this part of the model is rarely invoked), or must be reduced (by opening a safety valve, "blowing off steam"), unless we want to have an industrial disaster where the body of the boiler is breached violently by the internal pressure ("blowing up", "blowing its top"). So if someone is angry, we reason, it's ok to allow them to act out and punch a wall, or yell, or throw things, because the alternative is for them to "explode".
Furthermore, we reason, anger/steam-pressure is the inevitable result of external input. If you heat the boiler, it will experience internal pressure. The boiler has no choice or agency. It's all the fault of the heat source. So, using this metaphor, the angry person isn't responsible for their anger, it's all the fault of the external forces that provoke that anger.
And yet, anger is not steam pressure. An angry person is not a boiler under pressure. Expressing anger is not the release of hot pressurized gas. None of this is "real". And one of the easiest ways to realize this is to contemplate how people talked and thought about anger before the industrial revolution. Before accidents involving over-pressurized steam boilers were something people had familiarity with.
So…sports metaphors. Team sports are a familiar experience and a rich source of descriptive metaphor. You're playing on the same team. It's important to score goals. Scoring goals results in defeating the other team. You have a game plan. There are rules of the game that everyone agrees to; if they don't then they aren't playing the same game. Not following the rules is cheating. There are referees who get to make judgments about whether something is cheating or not. Some people are on the field and others are on the sidelines. Some people are athletes and others are spectators.
All of that is language about sport itself. But we all take that language (and the underlying concepts that it represents) and apply it to a lot of concepts and activities that are not sports. And when we do that, we may be reasoning about those "target concepts" in ways that are meaningful to the sport, but not to the target. It's always a good idea to think about the language we're using, to recognize when we're applying metaphoric thinking, and to step back (there's a metaphor again!) and consider other ways we could talk--and think--about the topic at hand.
Metaphoric thinking isn't something to try to erase or eliminate. It isn't "bad". I'm not going to argue that one shouldn't use sports metaphors. But the specific metaphors we use can trick us into drawing unexamined conclusions and mistaking those conclusions for some sort of cosmic truth. I don't know if that's what my prompter was thinking about, but it's where I took it.
Everyone's used to thinking of metaphors as colorful figures of speech, like the purple elephant. But the metaphors we need to watch out for are the ones that sneak in under the radar. The ones that both represent and shape our thought processes about how the world works. Because, in the end, they are still figures of speech (or figures of thought) and not a literal, true representation of the world and our experience in it.
Today's random blog was a prompt from a friend on facebook who suggested that I tackle, "sports metaphors and why not to use them." I wasn't able to get further clarification before writing this, so I have to go with what it sparks on its own.
One of the things my PhD research covered is metaphor theory. (Along with historic linguistics and medieval Welsh and prepositions and assorted other things.) I sometimes have fun claiming that I'm a doctor of metaphor. But while the linguistic study of metaphor can include poetic figures of speech, the field I studied in (cognitive linguistics) looks more at how metaphor communicates and structures meaning, and how that meaning is processed in both productive and destructive ways.
As a brief example, one of the systematic metaphors used in English (and keep in mind that not all cultures and languages share the same metaphors) is that events and activities of all sorts can be represented as physical motion through space. And, as a special case, that purposeful activity can be represented as an intentional journey through space. So we talk about "taking the first steps", about "encountering roadblocks", about "veering off on a tangent". Our activities have "goals", our co-workers can be "fellow travelers" (yes, I'm aware of the political history of that one), we may struggle with a "steep learning curve" (because it's harder to get some place if you're climbing a hill than walking on the flat). And on an even more abstract level, we talk about future states as some place you are "going" to. (Compare "I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow," with "I'm going to bake bread tomorrow.") Ease and difficulty, complexity and simplicity, cooperation and hindrance. All these things are familiar to us from moving through the world, and they make a convenient way of expressing our experience of less physical experiences. Pretty innocuous, right?
But one of the things that cognitive linguistics can demonstrate experimentally (by studying things like reaction time, differential responses, pupil dilation, and other things not under the experimental subject's voluntary control) is that the use of different metaphoric representations of a concept affects how we think about that concept. And, unlike the purple elephant, if the metaphor is so deeply ingrained in our thinking that we don't need to process it consciously, or have it explained, then those effects on our thinking may also go unnoticed. We may mistake a "figure of speech" for a law of nature.
Take, for example, one of the current and popular metaphors in English for the experience of anger. "Boiling mad", "all steamed up", "under pressure", "need to blow off steam", "blow his top", "simmering rage". When the examples are brought together, it becomes clear that we have a mental model for anger that represents it as a steam boiler. The person experiencing the emotion is a solid container for water; incidents that provoke anger are the application of heat; the degree of heat and the effects it has on the water correspond to the intensity of the anger.
If all this were just a descriptive mechanism, that would be one thing. But then we move from describing the experience of the emotion to reasoning about appropriate actions to take in response to that experience. If a steam boiler becomes very hot, the steam creates internal pressure that must either be used for productive work (driving an engine--although notice how this part of the model is rarely invoked), or must be reduced (by opening a safety valve, "blowing off steam"), unless we want to have an industrial disaster where the body of the boiler is breached violently by the internal pressure ("blowing up", "blowing its top"). So if someone is angry, we reason, it's ok to allow them to act out and punch a wall, or yell, or throw things, because the alternative is for them to "explode".
Furthermore, we reason, anger/steam-pressure is the inevitable result of external input. If you heat the boiler, it will experience internal pressure. The boiler has no choice or agency. It's all the fault of the heat source. So, using this metaphor, the angry person isn't responsible for their anger, it's all the fault of the external forces that provoke that anger.
And yet, anger is not steam pressure. An angry person is not a boiler under pressure. Expressing anger is not the release of hot pressurized gas. None of this is "real". And one of the easiest ways to realize this is to contemplate how people talked and thought about anger before the industrial revolution. Before accidents involving over-pressurized steam boilers were something people had familiarity with.
So…sports metaphors. Team sports are a familiar experience and a rich source of descriptive metaphor. You're playing on the same team. It's important to score goals. Scoring goals results in defeating the other team. You have a game plan. There are rules of the game that everyone agrees to; if they don't then they aren't playing the same game. Not following the rules is cheating. There are referees who get to make judgments about whether something is cheating or not. Some people are on the field and others are on the sidelines. Some people are athletes and others are spectators.
All of that is language about sport itself. But we all take that language (and the underlying concepts that it represents) and apply it to a lot of concepts and activities that are not sports. And when we do that, we may be reasoning about those "target concepts" in ways that are meaningful to the sport, but not to the target. It's always a good idea to think about the language we're using, to recognize when we're applying metaphoric thinking, and to step back (there's a metaphor again!) and consider other ways we could talk--and think--about the topic at hand.
Metaphoric thinking isn't something to try to erase or eliminate. It isn't "bad". I'm not going to argue that one shouldn't use sports metaphors. But the specific metaphors we use can trick us into drawing unexamined conclusions and mistaking those conclusions for some sort of cosmic truth. I don't know if that's what my prompter was thinking about, but it's where I took it.
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no subject
Date: 2016-01-28 04:36 pm (UTC)As for sports metaphors, in addition to what you've said I always think that using them is problematic, particularly in business settings, because it introduces a boys-club mentality. Not everybody, particularly women, spent their youth playing sports and using them excludes those who aren't familiar with the rules and norms of sports participation.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-28 06:52 pm (UTC)Now I'm curious
Date: 2016-01-28 06:10 pm (UTC)(Is that easily accessible or is it another thesis?)
Re: Now I'm curious
Date: 2016-01-28 06:54 pm (UTC)Re: Now I'm curious
Date: 2016-01-28 06:57 pm (UTC)Re: Now I'm curious
Date: 2016-01-29 02:12 pm (UTC)Re: Now I'm curious
Date: 2016-01-29 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-28 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-28 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-28 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 05:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-28 09:30 pm (UTC)From Wikipedia:
"Lakoff further argues that one of the reasons liberals have had difficulty since the 1980s is that they have not been as aware of their own guiding metaphors, and have too often accepted conservative terminology framed in a way to promote the strict father metaphor. Lakoff insists that liberals must cease using terms like partial birth abortion and tax relief because they are manufactured specifically to allow the possibilities of only certain types of opinions. Tax relief for example, implies explicitly that taxes are an affliction, something someone would want "relief" from. To use the terms of another metaphoric worldview, Lakoff insists, is to unconsciously support it. Liberals must support linguistic think tanks in the same way that conservatives do if they are going to succeed in appealing to those in the country who share their metaphors."
no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 12:24 am (UTC)George Lakoff
Date: 2016-02-03 06:08 pm (UTC)On the other hand, different scientific fields have different methodologies, and I am unfamiliar with the methodology of linguistics. And authors sometimes dumb down books for the general public by omitting the scientific evidence.
Re: George Lakoff
Date: 2016-02-03 07:00 pm (UTC)Re: George Lakoff
Date: 2016-02-03 11:01 pm (UTC)Come to think of it, I've read about semantic priming in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, which in my opinion is the most insightful book I have ever read.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-29 11:59 am (UTC)In what other realms does one entity "obey" another? Historically, mostly military organizations (at least if you're male, and most of the people writing about this have been).
Ergo God must be a military commander.
Ergo we must be at war.
Ergo there must be an enemy to defeat.
Sports metaphors
Date: 2016-01-31 03:07 am (UTC)