can be reconciled by means of direct, unmediated relational similarities. By this reckoning, metaphors are made from the same stuff as scientific analogies: one observes a pattern of relationships in one domain, the tenor or target domain, and is reminded of a parallel set of relationships in another, the vehicle or source domain. But, as argued by the structure-mapping school of analogy [Gentner, 1983], a good analogy is more than a set of observed correspondences between domains. Rather, these correspondences—systematically linking two different conceptual structures—are just the starting point of an analogy. Having anchored elements of the source domain to the target domain, these correspondences then guide the transfer of additional material from the source into the target. For example, the Bohr/Rutherford analogy of atomic structure views the nucleus of the atom as occupying a relationally parallel position to the sun in a solar system, so that the electrons that orbit around the nucleus are the nanoscopic equivalent of the planets that orbit around the sun. Having established these correspondences, the analogy can now suggest a causal explanation for the orbit of electrons, by importing the causal explanation for the orbit of planets around a sun: for, just as the sun keeps speeding planets in orbit via a cosmic force, gravity, a comparable force must be attracting speeding electrons to stay in orbit around a nucleus. Gentner argues that many metaphors also work in this way: a source is chosen because of its analogical parallels to the target, and because it contains additional conceptual material that a speaker also wishes to assert of the target. A listener unpacks the metaphor by uncovering much the same parallels, and by then using these as a guide to the transfer of additional material from the source.
Consider again the metaphor “marriage is slavery.” A systematic analogy between marriage and slavery will identify abusive behaviors in both domains and create mappings between the protagonists and agonists of these behaviors. Thus, abusive husbands may be slave-owners and abused wives their slaves, while matchmakers can be mapped to slave dealers, family homes to plantations, wedding rings to shackles, marriage licenses to ownership papers, etc. A particular mapping is systematic if its elements are well-connected to each other, especially if they are connected via parallel causal relationships that explain how the various parts of a domain influence other parts of the same domain. Having established correspondences between ideas in the source and target domains, an analogy can now transplant onto the target any relationships that link these ideas in the source domain, to provide new insights as to the cause of these behaviors in the target domain. For instance, slave owners beat their slaves while abusive husbands beat their wives. But slave owners beat their slaves because they believe they own them, and see them as mere physical objects to mistreat as they see fit. By analogy, abusive husbands may beat their wives because they, too, believe they own them, and because they, too, view them as mere physical objects.
Any model of metaphor that hinges on the identification of a common genus, whether it has the simplicity of Aristotle’s earliest scheme or the sophistication of Glucksberg’s category inclusion model, operates by reducing the specific to the generic. Such approaches are best suited to the generation and interpretation of familiar metaphors, or to apparently novel metaphors that dress up old conceits in new ways. In contrast, the structure-mapping approach does not aim to see, or need to see, the generic in the specific, and so, ceteris paribus, is just as capable of seeing the analogical proportions between the source and target ideas of a truly original metaphor as it is for those of a wholly conventional pairing. However, this also means that the analogical approach will fail to capture the sense of familiarity that one experiences when faced with a timeworn combination of ideas, just as it must fail to capture the thrill that accompanies a truly original pairing. Of course, even the most hackneyed metaphor was once fresh and novel, and, although time does not change the substance of our metaphors, it does change the way we see them, and perhaps even the way we process them.
With two alternate approaches to choose from, each of which is better suited to a different kind, or historical stage, of metaphor, it makes sense to view these not as competing but as complementary approaches. As proposed by Bowdle and Gentner [2005] in their career of metaphor hypothesis, fresh metaphors that do not obviously instantiate a familiar conceit are more naturally understood as analogies. Structure-mapping analysis allows listeners to identify the parallel relationships in source and target domains that contribute to a new metaphor, thus allowing them to abstract from the source those parts of its meaning that are most likely to contribute to other metaphors. As speakers become habituated to a given metaphor, and to other metaphors that use the same source for similar ends, they come to think of the source as a vehicle for those parts of its conceptual structure that are transferable across domains. In effect, they form an abstracted representation of the source that ultimately allows the metaphor, and similar metaphors with the same source, to be understood in category inclusion terms.
The earliest account of metaphor, as offered by Aristotle, acknowledges that metaphor is a complex phenomenon that calls for a varied approach. Although any mixed model that recognizes the career of metaphor will inevitably lack the parsimony of a one-size-fits-all approach, it is surely preferable to tailor our models to the phenomenon than to cut the phenomenon to fit our models.
2.5.1 DOMAIN REPRESENTATIONS IN METAPHOR AND ANALOGY
As much as language unites us in our use of words to describe the world to each other, we are all free to think what we will about the world, or at least those aspects of the world that interest us the most. Different speakers may thus employ very different representations of the same domains, leading to strong disagreements about the most natural interpretation of a metaphor or an analogy involving those domains. Consider this exchange from the film Jurassic Park, between the owner and operator of the park (Hammond) and a mathematician (Malcolm) who has been tasked with evaluating the park:
John Hammond: All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.
Here we see Hammond attempt to mitigate problems with his park by comparing them to the teething difficulties experienced in perhaps the most prototypical theme park of all, Disneyland. His representation of both domains (Disneyland and Jurassic Park) is thus high-level and generic, and so the resulting analogy lacks detail. If it is not so very different from an analogy comparing Amazon.com to Barnes and Noble, this blandness speaks to Hammond’s larger goal in using this analogy. In response, Malcolm focuses on the specific problems at hand (namely, the hungry dinosaurs running amok all about them), and so brings to mind a very specific representation of Disneyland to suit the very specific representation of Jurassic Park that circumstances have forced upon him. Had Malcolm made an additional joke about both parks suffering very different kinds of teething problems, this pun would require an even more detailed representation of the source and target domains (e.g., technical glitches in the representation of Disneyland could map to the problems wrought by the dinosaurs’ sharp teeth in the representation of Jurassic Park). Analogies and metaphors that are used to persuade are not simple one-shot efforts at communication. Rather, as argued in Cameron [2007], they form part of a larger framework of negotiation and alignment that allows speaker and listener to focus on the same aspects of a domain (or to at least see the other’s point of view). As highlighted by this example, the representation of the domains in an analogy (and thus any metaphor based on an analogy) is open to negotiation by the speakers during the formation and interpretation of the analogy. It is not realistic to assume that these representations are pre-formed before the analogy is made and simply retrieved from memory to participate in a process of structure mapping. Rather, it seems more accurate to suppose that the search processes required by analogy involve more than a search through the space of possible alignments between two representations, but also a search through the space of possible representations to align.
2.6 CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR THEORY
Black and Davidson each tell us that the meaning of metaphor
