The Power of Metaphor: Examining Its Influence on Social Life by Edited by Mark J. Landau

by Mark J. Landau

This book explores the possibility that people understand abstract social concepts using metaphor, which from this perspective is not simply a matter of words. Rather, it is a cognitive tool that people routinely use to understand abstract concepts (such as morality) in terms of superficially dissimilar concepts that are relatively easier to comprehend (such as cleanliness). Although observations on metaphor's cognitive significance date back to Aristotle, the development of a formal theoretical framework, labeled conceptual metaphor theory, has stimulated systematic empirical study on metaphor's role in social psychological phenomena primarily over the past decade. This book summarizes current knowledge and integrates recent developments for readers interested in the topic of metaphor and, more broadly, in the cognitive underpinnings of social life. Some topics covered include * overcoming many of the empirical limitations confronting linguistic analyses of conceptual metaphor * how metaphoric influences guide perceptions of other people and the self and judgments of right and wrong * relying on metaphor when constructing memories of social stimuli * the role of metaphor in judgment and decision making * how exposure to metaphor in mass political communication influences observers' attitudes toward social and political issues

Hardcover

First published November 1, 2013

Reviews

[Otto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Psychologists have long sought the means to interrogate conventional accounts of human cognition that posit rational mental processing, such as viewing morality as “objective and external to the human experience, either…divine codes of conduct or universal principles” (p. 109, chapter 6) or rational choice theories of decision making (chapter 5). As a computer, the Cartesian mind is the operating system which processes all cognitive activity operating with hardware, namely the human body, that merely houses the software but does not participate in thinking (p.114). A variant is the popular belief that our logic and emotion are lodged separately in the brain’s left and right hemispheres (p. 141). In the face of such an entrenched dualism, experimental psychologists are now fully engaged in an exploration of the embodied metaphor hypothesis about corporal cognition, conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). Their approach is foundational, and this volume is a valuable compilation of their work for linguists interested in extra-linguistic advances of CMT.

The breadth of critical experimental psychological scholarship on CMT is eye opening. This volume provides a wide review of the pertinent psychological issues, provides a set of references that otherwise might be hard to find, and poses questions that linguists might not consider. Beyond the detail and significance of metaphoric representation in thought, and the cognitive particulars of how metaphors are processed, the topics covered in this volume include psychological accounts of the perception of individuals (chapter 3), interpersonal group relations (chapter 8), political communication (chapter 9), and emotional thought (chapter 10). Other chapters explore whether metaphors are useful for memory in ways that traditional schema and category accounts do not address (chapters 4 and 5). Finally, one scholar critically evaluates the experimental evidence for the mental metaphor theory (chapter 12). Spoiler alert: the evidence is decidedly mixed.

With CMT, experimental psychology’s extensive scholarship and modeling of human cognition can be profitably reconsidered. Social psychology explores CMT with two main strategies. One is a “transfer” strategy: if people in fact use an embodied source domain such as CLEAN to understand or experience MORALITY, then some sort of analogous “transfer” of cleanliness elements can be expected. The psychologists look for measurable behavior, for example, whether or not subjects who had been primed with moral conflicts issues chose to wash their hands or to accept an antiseptic wipe as a gift (p. 91). In another example, Western views of morality as external and rational lead to predictions that statistically reliable reactions to embodied metaphoric stimuli should not occur. But they do, with weighty cognitive and social implications. Another focus is human perception. Experimental subjects clearly demonstrate the influence of non-linguistic metaphor. When exposed to bright colors, they evaluate positive affect words more rapidly than when they are exposed to dark colors; when primed with dark colors they evaluate negative affect words more quickly. Likewise subjects merely holding a warm drink judge a target person as more friendly and trustworthy, while when clutching a cold drink they judge the same person as more aloof and suspect (p.10). CMT has a ready explanation of such effects, while traditional social psychological models do not.

The second, “alternative source” strategy tests whether priming of various source semantic domains for the same target, e.g. IMMIGRATION AS DISEASE, AS FLOOD, or AS INVASION, lead to divergent conceptual processing of the target. In the communication and journalism literature this is called framing. In one reported study, US citizens were the experimental subjects. They were primed to view bacteria as harmful, and then were asked to consider two unrelated texts, one that referred to the NATION AS BODY metaphor, ‘growth spurt’, and one that framed the nation in non-metaphoric terms—although the authors did not provide the latter stimulus. With the first stimulus, the “heightened concerns with bodily contamination led them to express more hostility toward immigrants”, while the second stimulus “did not influence [their] immigration attitudes” (p. 272). In short, with these two experimental strategies, psychologists are reconsidering orthodox cognitive models of everything from basic perception, categorization, group evaluation, social interaction, to political issue framing. Heady stuff for a 15-year-old theory with a linguistic pedigree (Lakoff & Johnson 1999)!

While the volume is carefully edited, the chapter writers employed their disciplinary discourse, retaining technical terminology about cognition, memory, emotion, etc. Given the excellent range of topics, queries and findings, the editors missed a prime opportunity to promote their scholarship to a scholarly audience unfamiliar with the experimental cognitive psychology lexicon. Nor is there a glossary for notions such as: valence ‘normative social valuation’ (p.51); demonstration effect versus process variable ‘[metaphor-based] human subject response’ versus ‘components involved in cognitive processing’ (p.54); mediating variable ‘component of cognitive processing’ (p.55); stimulus content, i.e., an actual memory used as an experimental stimulus (p.68); and encoding specificity ‘easier memory recall when the initial encoding conditions are replicated’ (p.71). Along the way some passages demand repeated re-readings; at numerous points throughout the volume a well-chosen photo or well-designed figure would have certainly merited the proverbial word count. Most distressing is the absence of statistical measures of the findings that these social scientists discerned, which limits the critical reader’s ability to interpret the strength and consequence of their truly remarkable discoveries (Tables 5.1 and 5.2 excepted).

In a thirteen-chapter volume authored by 22 individuals, overlapping citations and reported findings are to be expected. Moreover, the editors duly note conflicting experimental findings, such as that subjects who wash their hands have been found to tend to make both more lenient and harsher moral judgments (pg.276); this is par for a rapidly expanding field.

At multiple points in the text the experimental psychologists exploring CMT could have profitably consulted linguists, because while the idea of embodied metaphor is easy to grasp, CMT can be tricky to manipulate. Experiments that maintain a clear distinction between linguistic and extra-linguistic metaphor seem relatively sound. However, those more liable to criticism deal with topics involving all three dimensions: cognitive, linguistic and communicative metaphor (Steen 2008). Since these socially engaged topics are vital, such as intergroup relations and political communication, it would be a shame if the predictable linguistic challenges of CMT vitiate the findings of an otherwise well-designed experiment. The experimental pitfalls include designing stimuli that are truly non-metaphoric (as in the immigration study noted above), cross-language metaphor translation, etymologies and tracking the so-called ‘career’ of metaphors (Bowdle & Gentner 2005). Other empirical linguistic concerns (chapter 2) include locating multimodal instantiations of metaphor, considering the consequences of isolated examples, describing conceptual metaphor mappings, hierarchizing metaphors, and interpreting the rhetorical intent of communicated metaphor. In one instance, Italy-based researchers conducted an important project on the use of dehumanizing metaphor in intergroup relations. They sought to contrast the use of metaphors with and without an animal source domain. However, they reported employing the English term shrewd as one of its non-animal terms. This slip-up might have occurred because the Italian term toporagno ‘shrew’ is not metaphorically related to commonly used adjectives for ‘shrewd’, avveduto, scaltro or scafato. In another chapter, a group of authors conflated linguistic and communication metaphors, which weakened an otherwise interesting chapter on a metaphor-based framing model of political communication. These shortcomings underscore the necessity of collaborations with linguists. This volume is a worthwhile introduction to the provocative work experimental psychologists have undertaken; linguists will appreciate their fascinating findings, methodological strengths, and the inherent language-based liabilities. I hope it prompts linguists to shoot an email to their Psychology department colleagues or vice versa, because CMT will thrive as a truly cross-disciplinary scholarship grows around it.


REFERENCES
Bowdle, Brian F., & Dedre Gentner 2005. The career of metaphor. Psychological Review 112:193¬–216.
Lakoff, George, & Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Steen, Gerard 2008. The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol 23.4:213¬–241.

[Juan Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

Habilitar lo abstracto en una experiencia corpórea concreta a través del lenguaje. Ese, nada más y nada menos, es el poder de las metáforas. Un poder de encuadramiento narrativo y persuasivo que moldea la forma en que razonamos, sentimos y decidimos

Este libro, editado por Mark Landau e integrado por aportes clave de autores como Daniel Casasanto, Raymond Gibbs y otros referentes de la psicología cognitiva y social, ofrece un recorrido riguroso por el impacto de las metáforas en dominios como la memoria, la toma de decisiones, la moralidad y la comunicación política.

Ideal para quienes investigamos el papel del lenguaje en la cognición encarnada y en la construcción de sentido común.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection of essays on the top of cognitive metaphor theory but written for academics and not the lay reader. Average readers may find this book dry, but accessible.

Worth a look but not deeply convincing.