Book review

Metaphor, Metonymy, and Experientialist Philosophy. Challenging Cognitive Semantics

Haser, Verena. 2005. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Experientialist Philosophy. Challenging Cognitive Semantics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Reviewed by Michele Prandi, University of Bologna at Forlí

This book is a critical discussion of the theoretical presuppositions of cognitive linguistics in the field of metaphor and metonymy, with special focus on Lakoff and Johnson's works. Two layers of reasoning are intertwined in it: the cognitive conception of metaphor and metonymy (Ch. 2, 6, 7 and 8), and its philosophical background (Ch. 4 and 5). Ch. 1 presents an introduction and Ch. 9 the conclusion. Ch. 3 focuses on Lakoff and Johnson's argumentative strategies.

The target of Haser's criticism is the idea that metaphors grow out of a metaphorical conceptual soil, in a sort of spontaneous generation. Reversing Lakoff and Johnson's view, Haser claims that metaphors are not a matter of thought, but a matter of words: "one's analysis should proceed from and relate to linguistic expressions rather than general metaphorical and metonymical concepts" (50). Haser's criticism is very severe but always supported by fine-grained analyses of the quoted passages.

Metaphor and metonymy

Within the cognitive paradigm, metaphor and metonymy are reduced to general cognitive strategies so inclusive as to shade into one another. If we restrict our focus on the interpretation of linguistic expressions, the distinction becomes clear: metonymy "depends on firmly established, or at least presupposed, relations between concepts (or more generally entities)", whereas in metaphors "the relation between source and target concept is not present independently of metaphorical transfer" (43). The presence of a previous relationship is not a matter of conceptual domains, as assumed by most cognitive theories (see for instance Barcelona 2000): concepts belonging to the same domain can be projected onto one another - for instance butchers and surgeons - whereas the most typical metonymies (unlike synecdoches) bridge concepts belonging to different domains. In some expressions, moreover, both strategies are open to the interpreter: when Alcman writes that mountains sleep, for instance, one can see inanimate mountains as the home of living creatures (metonymy) as well as project on them the strange model of living creatures (metaphor).

According to Haser, one limit of cognitive approaches is that they narrow the scope to conventional metaphors at the expense of creative projection (Black 1954). It is only on this condition that a metaphor may look as if it were rooted in a pre-existing metaphorical concept. This idea, which does not justify true metaphorical creation, is inadequate even for conventional metaphors, which are normally rooted in many different and intertwined source domains (184). Owing to polysemy, different senses "linked by family resemblances" "may suggest each] a different source domain and, by implication, a different conceptual metaphor" (p. 182). Moreover, Haser correctly remarks that an independent access to the target domain is a necessary condition for metaphorical thinking, along with a re-evaluation of the role of expression in putting together different concepts: the way we talk about targets justifies the way we think about them (202).

Philosophical background

Cognitive linguistics is often presented as a radical challenge to Western thought. Haser carefully analyses Lakoff and Johnson's arguments against the 'objectivist' philosophy of meaning. According to her, Lakoff and Johnson's interaction with the philosophical tradition is hit by a deep ambiguity: their defence of embodied thought and experientialism is indebted to the whole of Western thought, from Aristotle to Goodman and Putnam via Kant, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Blumenberg, Weinrich and Black (a point stressed by Jääkel 1999). This very tradition, however, is the same they attack. Haser argues that this contradiction is based on ignorance, misunderstandings and misattributions. An example is the recourse to "mental images" and "preconceptual structures" in semantics without discussing well-known objections, in particular by Wittgenstein. As individual and rough psychological contents, mental images cannot justify the availability of shared and fine-grained semantic contents and distinctions.

Argumentative strategies

According to Haser, Lakoff and Johnson instantiate an argumentative style that is widespread among cognitive linguists and in which "rhetoric takes precedence over argumentative accuracy" (121). Polemical aims are never particular proposals of individual authors (100), but such "general labels" as "the descendants of the logical positivists, the Fregean tradition, [or] the tradition of Husserl" (88). These ideas are attacked rather than discussed: "Lakoff and Johnson make ample use of the unfair strategies which they hold are encapsulated in the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor" (71) along with "Appeal to 'authority', 'flattery', 'intimidation', 'bargaining'" (55).

Overall comment

The cognitive approach has the great merit of readmitting metaphor into the mainstream of linguistic research. In the field of semantics, it underlines the anchorage of linguistic meanings in a shared and structured experience of things; more generally, it connects phenomena of the symbolic order to more general cognitive abilities and strategies. When applied to language, this stance gives its best fruits on condition that the specific contribution of linguistic expressions is seriously taken into account. This is the positive side of H's criticism: instead of highlighting cognitive structures and processes at the expense of linguistic expressions, a cognitive stance should enrich linguistic analysis with a further dimension. This is particularly clear in the field of metaphor.

If we take into account the whole range of metaphorical expressions, it is clear that metaphorical concepts are not the ground for metaphors but rather a limit imposed on projection. Projection attains the lowest degree in catachreses (a negative balance projection, so to speak) and the highest in living metaphors, grown out of linguistic expressions that put incompatible concepts together (Prandi 2004: Ch. 11). The transfer of an alien concept into a given conceptual domain makes it possible to project on the target the whole consistent conceptual environment of the transferred concept. The activation of a pre-stored metaphorical concept simply blocks a virtually open projection at a very early stage.

References

Barcelona, Antonio. 2000. Introduction, in Antonio Barcelona (ed., 2000), Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. Cognitive Approaches . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Black, Max. 1954/1962. Metaphor, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55. Repr. in Max Black, Models and Metaphors. Studies in Language and Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 25-47.

Jäkel, Olaf. 1999. Kant, Blumenberg, Weinrich: Some forgotten contributions to the cognitive theory of metaphor. In Raymond Gibbs, Jr. and Gerard J. Steen (eds.), Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Prandi, Michele. 2004. The Building Blocks of Meaning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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