metaphorik.de 17/2009

Herausgeberteam - Editorial staff - Équipe éditoriale
Hildegard Clarenz-Löhnert / Martin Döring / Klaus Gabriel / Katrin Mutz /  Dietmar Osthus / Claudia Polzin-Haumann / Judith Visser

ISSN 1618-2006 (Internet)
ISSN 1865-0716 (Print)

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Vorwort 17/2009

Pünktlich zum Ende des ersten Jahrzehnts des 21. Jahrhunderts erscheint nun die siebzehnte Ausgabe von metaphorik.de. Wir sind froh, erneut programmatische und empirische Beiträge zur Metaphernforschung versammelt zu haben. Empirie, theoretische Reflexion und auch die Bilanzierung von Forschungsaktivitäten sind Gegenstand der präsentierten Forschungen.
Gemeinsam ist allen Beiträgen die Beschäftigung mit Metaphern und metaphorischen Modellen; der Reiz dieser Ausgabe besteht sicher in der Wahrnehmung unterschiedlicher Blickwinkel auf die Metapher, wobei die wechselseitigen Bezüge zwischen den Beiträgen z.T. über die Beschäftigung mit metaphorischem Sprechen hinaus gehen. Die Beiträge zeugen einmal mehr von der großen Internationalität nicht nur der Metaphernforschung im Allgemeinen, sondern auch der Rezeption von metaphorik.de im Besonderen.
Sieben Beiträge aus sechs Ländern und drei Kontinenten mögen zu einem produktiven, weiterhin internationalen Forschungszweig beitragen. Mit dem Inkrafttreten des Lissabon-Vertrags hat die Europäische Union einen neuen institutionellen Rahmen gewonnen. Der Vertrag selbst ist das Ergebnis der langwierigen, von zahlreichen Verzögerungen und juristischen Problemen geprägten Verfassungsdebatte. Gleich zwei Studien widmen sich dem metaphorischen Rahmen des Europa-Diskurses. Barbara Brandstetter befasst sich mit den kognitiven Metaphern zur Schilderung der – auch wieder metaphorisch titulierten – 'europäischen Konstruktion'. Michael Kimmel wiederum fokussiert in seinem Beitrag die eigentliche europäische Verfassungsdebatte. Der europäische Zusammenhalt spiegelt sich – so ließe sich schlussfolgern – auch in der textuellen metaphorischen Kohärenz des Europa-Diskurses.
Nicht nur der Ernst der europäischen Politik ist von Metaphern durchzogen, sondern Metaphern sind ebenfalls eine Quelle des Humors. Marta Dynel geht der Frage nach, welches humoristische Potenzial in metaphorischen Verwendungen steckt und wie dieses entsprechend humortheoretisch zu erklären ist. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Humor ein relevanter, von Methodenpluralismus geprägter ernsthafter Gegenstand der Metaphernforschung ist.
Die Beiträge von Glen McGillivray und Wu Yuanqiong verbindet die umfassende Reflexion über Modelle und Methoden. Glen McGillivray liefert einen wertvollen, umfangreichen Forschungsbericht zum metaphorischen
Konzept der "theatricality", womit er indirekt an eine wichtige Fragestellung von metaphorik.de 14/2008 anknüpft. Wu Yuanqiong wiederum setzt sich mit dem Verhältnis zwischen Metaphern und kulturellen Modellen auseinander.

Zwei Rezensionen beschäftigen sich mit neuen Forschungsbeiträgen, in denen es zum einen um die in der Metapherntheorie immer wieder diskutierten Fragen von toten und lebendigen Metaphern geht, zum anderen - erschienen in einem Sammelband - um Metaphern in Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Literatur.
Unser großer Dank gilt auch bei dieser Ausgabe Kerstin Sterkel, Tanja Oberhauser und Katharina Leonhardt in Saarbrücken sowie Annika Hohmann in Essen für umfangreiche Arbeiten an Layout und formalen Korrekturen.
Unseren Lesern wünschen wir ein gutes Jahresende und einen guten Start ins neue Jahrzehnt, in dem metaphorik.de auch weiterhin die Metaphernforschung begleiten möchte.


Essen, im Dezember 2009
Hildegard Clarenz-Löhnert
Martin Döring
Klaus Gabriel
Katrin Mutz
Dietmar Osthus
Claudia Polzin-Haumann
Judith Visser

 

English

 

 


The present 17th volume of metaphorik.de represents the final issue of the first – and now closing – decade of the 21st century. The interest in research on metaphor is still high and we are happy that the articles in thisissue cover a wide scope ranging from programmatic to empirical studies: They provide important empirical insights, reflect on theoretical aspects and present a timely account on the state of the art in the field of research on metaphor.
All articles converge into the analysis of metaphor and metaphorically motivated models of thought displaying different perspectives on metaphor and – to some extent – touching aspects which go well beyond the role of metaphor in speech and language. All articles, furthermore, demonstrate that metaphor is an international research topic and that metaphorik.de receives increasing attention as it is shown by the present seven articles written in six countries and stemming from three continents.

The inception of the so-called Treaty of Lisbon contributed to the development of a new and sometimes highly contested institutional and binding legal framework which was heavily disputed among members of the European Union. The treaty itself is the outcome of a tedious process characterising controversies about Europe and – most recently – the European constitution.
These controversies offer an excellent opportunity for the analysis of underlying metaphorical frameworks which the first two papers of this volume set out to investigate. Barbara Brandstetter’s study analyses the
construction of Europe from the perspective of cognitive semantics while Michael Kimmel’s article examines the metaphorical dimensions in discourses on the European constitution. Both papers show that the idea of Europe heavily relies on a metaphorically motivated coherence of metaphorical frameworks underlying and characterising the overarching discourse on Europe.
Marta Dynel’s contribution clearly shows that metaphor is – besides political debates – also a basic ingredient in humour. She aims at detecting the humorous potential of metaphor from the perspective of different theories of humour. Her analysis shows that the investigation of metaphor and humour requires the application and fruitful combination of different methods – a ‘pluralism of methods’ so to say – to do justice to the relevance and complexity of metaphor in humour.

The articles written by Glen McGillivray and Wu Yuanqiong ponder on metaphorical models and methods. Glen McGillivray provides a valuable and comprehensive report which considers previous research on the metaphorical concept of ‘theatricality’ implicitly referring to a central problem addressed in the special issue on the ‘theatrum-metaphor’ in metaphorik.de 14/2008. Wu Yuanqiong’s contribution brings up the relation between metaphors and their relevance for cultural models in Chinese.

The two reviews are concerned with research recently provided on dead and living metaphors – a still very important topic in research on metaphor – on the one hand and the relevance of metaphor in philosophy, science and literature on the other hand.
We finally would like to thank all authors for putting so much effort and time into this issue. Special thanks – again and again and again and again… – to Kerstin Sterkel, Tanja Oberhauser, Katharina Leonardt (all University of Saarbrücken) and to Annika Hohmann (University of Duisburg-Essen) for their enormous help. Last but not least, we also would like to thank our readership for their continuing encouragement: We very much hope that you will stay with metaphorik.de during the next decade. Merry Christmas, good holidays and a successful year 2010!

Essen, December 2009
Hildegard Clarenz-Löhnert
Martin Döring
Klaus Gabriel
Katrin Mutz
Dietmar Osthus
Claudia Polzin-Haumann
Judith Visser

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Seite 3

Behälter, Clubs, Kreise und verschiedene Geschwindigkeiten. Metaphern für die Konstruktion Europas

Barbara Brandstetter

Abstract


The introduction of the euro in the European countries was the project of the century. In the 1990s the project was emotionally discussed, particularly the further integration. In 1994 the French prime minister, Edouard Balladur, presented his ideas of the future integration of the European Union in form of concentric circles. A few days later, the Christian Democrat parties in Germany published a concept of a central core. Metaphors play a key part in the debate about the European Union and the European Monetary Union.  Metaphorical language helps politicians and journalists to express highly complex issues like the European Union in a comprehensible way for the public. Without metaphors politicians wouldn’t be able to express their ideas of the further European integration. The paper presents an analysis of the use of metaphors in Belgian, Swiss, German and French newspapers in the 1990s. Do European journalists use the same metaphors to describe the ideas of the further European integration?

Die Einführung des Euro war ein Jahrhundertprojekt, das in den beteiligten Ländern sehr emotional begleitet wurde. Metaphern kommt in der Berichterstattung zu komplexen Themen wie der Europäischen Union (EU) und der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion (WWU) eine entscheidende Bedeutung zu. Ohne Metaphern wie „Kerneuropa“, ein „Europa der konzentrischen Kreise“ oder ein Europa der „verschiedenen Geschwindigkeiten“ wäre es Politikern und Journalisten nicht möglich, ihre Integrationsvorstellungen anschaulich darzustellen. In der folgenden Untersuchung werden Sprachbilder analysiert, die Politiker und Journalisten in den neunziger Jahren in deutsch- und französischsprachigen Medien verwenden, um neue Konzepte für die weitere Integration der EU und WWU zu beschreiben. Greifen die Berichterstatter aus unterschiedlichen Ländern zu ähnlichen Metaphern, um Vorstellungen zu Europa darzustellen?
 

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Seite 7

Behälter, Clubs, Kreise und verschiedene Geschwindigkeiten

Metaphern für die Konstruktion Europas

Barbara Brandstetter, Berlin (brandstetter.barbara@web.de)

Abstract

The introduction of the euro in the European countries was the project of the century. In the

1990s the project was emotionally discussed, particularly the further integration. In 1994 the French prime minister, Edouard Balladur, presented his ideas of the future integration of the European Union in form of concentric circles. A few days later, the Christian Democrat parties in Germany published a concept of a central core. Metaphors play a key part in the debate about the European Union and the European Monetary Union.1 Metaphorical language helps politicians and journalists to express highly complex issues like the European Union in a comprehensible way for the public. Without metaphors politicians wouldn’t be able to express their ideas of the further European integration. The paper presents an analysis of the use of metaphors in Belgian, Swiss, German and French newspapers in the 1990s. Do European journalists use the same metaphors to describe the ideas of the further European integration?

Die Einführung des Euro war ein Jahrhundertprojekt, das in den beteiligten Ländern sehr emotional begleitet wurde. Metaphern kommt in der Berichterstattung zu komplexen Themen wie der Europäischen Union (EU) und der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion (WWU) eine entscheidende Bedeutung zu. Ohne Metaphern wie „Kerneuropa“, ein „Europa der konzentrischen Kreise“ oder ein Europa der „verschiedenen Geschwindigkeiten“ wäre es Politikern und Journalisten nicht möglich, ihre Integrationsvorstellungen anschaulich darzustellen. In der folgenden Untersuchung werden Sprachbilder analysiert, die Politiker und Journalisten in den neunziger Jahren in deutsch- und französischsprachigen Medien verwenden, um neue Konzepte für die weitere Integration der EU und WWU zu beschreiben. Greifen die Berichterstatter aus unterschiedlichen Ländern zu ähnlichen Metaphern, um Vorstellungen zu Europa darzustellen?

1. Einleitung

1.1 Historische und politische Grundlagen

Die Einführung des Euro war ein Jahrhundertprojekt. Auf dem Gipfeltreffen in Maastricht im Dezember 1991 verständigten sich die Staats- und Regierungschefs auf das Ziel einer Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion und auf die Bedingungen, die die einzelnen Länder erfüllen müssen, um an dem Währungsverbund teilnehmen zu können. In den folgenden Jahren kreiste der politische Diskurs vor allem um verschiedene Konzepte, wie EU und WWU

1 Metaphors in the language of newspapers has long become an object of critical reflection specially for linguists (Schäffner (1993, 1995, 2001), Musolff/Schäffner/Townson (1996), Mautner (2001), Musolff (2000, 2001, 2004)).

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gestaltet werden könnten. Im Spätsommer 1994 legte der konservative französische Premierminister Edouard Balladur in einem Interview mit der französischen Tageszeitung Le Figaro seine Vorstellungen dar, wie eine weitere Integration Europas in Form „konzentrischer Kreise“ aussehen könnte.2 Die CDU/CSU-Fraktion veröffentlichte wenig später ihre umstrittenen Thesen („Schäuble-Lamers-Papier“) zu einem „Kerneuropa“.3 Sowohl das Konzept Balladurs als auch der Vorschlag der Union sahen vor, dass die europäischen Staaten künftig in der Integration mit unterschiedlichen Geschwindigkeiten voranschreiten sollen.4 Das Zentrum sollte ein „harter Kern“ bilden, der sich nach den Vorstellungen Schäubles und Lamers aus Frankreich, Deutschland und den Benelux-Ländern zusammensetzen sollte. Das EU- Gründungsmitglied Italien sollte nicht zum „Kern“ gehören:
„Daher muß sich […] der feste Kern von integrationsorientierten und kooperationswilligen Ländern, der sich bereits herausgebildet hat, weiter festigen. Zu ihm gehören z. Zt. fünf bis sechs Länder. Der Kern darf nicht abgeschlossen, muß hingegen für jedes Mitglied offen sein, das willens und in der Lage ist, seinen Anforderungen zu entsprechen“ (CDU/CSU Fraktion, Überlegungen zur Europäischen Politik, 1. September 1994).
Das Vorhaben der weiteren Integration, das in einer Gemeinschaftswährung und letztendlich auch in einer politischen Union münden sollte, wurde in den betroffenen Ländern emotional rezipiert und kontrovers diskutiert. Schließlich ging es um die Preisgabe nationaler Souveränitäten zugunsten Europas. Die Staaten debattierten über Konvergenzkriterien, den Stabilitätspakt, die Ausrichtung der Geldpolitik der Europäischen Zentralbank (EZB), die Teilnehmer am Währungsverbund und darüber, wer EZB-Präsident werden soll.

2 Interview in Le Figaro vom 30.08.1994, präzisiert in Le Monde vom 30.11.1994.

3 Vgl. hierzu „Überlegungen zur europäischen Politik. Strategiepapier der CDU/CSU“ vom

01.09.1994.

4 Vgl. hierzu Schauer (2000:22ff.): „Dem Modell des Europa mehrerer Geschwindigkeiten liegt ein Konzept zugrunde, welches innerhalb des einheitlichen institutionellen Rahmens differenzierte Integration zulässt und über einen auf objektivierbaren Kriterien basierenden Automatismus verfügt, welche à la longue eine uniforme Integration garantiert.“

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1.2 Metaphern im Europadiskurs

Metaphern haben in diesem Diskurs eine entscheidende Bedeutung. Sprachbilder strukturieren nicht allein die Sprache, sondern auch das Denken und das daraus resultierende Handeln.5 Den Metaphern kommt in der Berichterstattung über das umstrittene Jahrhundertprojekt WWU daher neben ihrer kognitiven auch eine besondere kommunikative und argumentative Funktion zu. Ohne Metaphern würden Politikern häufig die Worte fehlen, um ihre Vorstellungen und Konzepte für die europäische Integration adäquat artikulieren zu können. Journalisten könnten komplexe und abstrakte Sachverhalte wie die Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion für die Leser ohne Sprachbilder nicht leicht verständlich darstellen.6 Analysiert wird in der vorliegenden Abhandlung die Berichterstattung in den neunziger Jahren in der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung (FAZ), Le Monde, der Neuen Züricher Zeitung (NZZ) und Le Soir.7 Methodologische Grundlage bildet die kognitive Metapherntheorie, die 1980 von Lakoff und Johnson mit ihrem Aufsatz Metaphors we live by mit begründet wurde.8 Der Fokus liegt auf Sprachbildern, die die Redakteure verwenden, um Konzepte für die weitere Integration der EU und der WWU darzustellen. Greifen Journalisten in Belgien, Deutschland, Frankreich und in der nicht in den Entstehungsprozess der Gemeinschaftswährung involvierten Schweiz zu ähnlichen Metaphern, um über den Integrationsprozess zu berichten? Kann von einem Europa der Metaphern gesprochen werden?

5 Die These von Lakoff und Johnson lautet, „daß wir Menschen den gesamten Bereich unserer alltagsweltlichen Erfahrungen mittels Metaphern definieren und strukturieren, und zwar in systematischer Weise, so daß ein ‚conceptual system‘ entsteht, das unsere Denk-, Erfahrungs- und Handlungsweisen lenkt“ (Hülzer 1987:220).

6 Lakoff (1992:463): „Abstractions and enormously complex situations are routinely understood via metaphor.“

7 Der vorliegende Aufsatz ist ein gekürzter, überarbeiteter Auszug aus: Brandstetter, Barbara (2009): Gemeinsames Europa? Die Metaphorik von Wirtschaftsberichten in deutsch- und französischsprachigen Printmedien. Die Untersuchung erstreckt sich auf den Zeitraum von

1993, dem Inkrafttreten des Maastricht-Vertrags, bis einschließlich 1999, der Einführung des

Euro als Buchgeld. Es wurden insgesamt 532 Artikel analysiert.

8 Lakoff/Johnson (1980).

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2. Die Behälter-Metaphorik

2.1 Konzepte für die europäische Integration

Der Behälter-Metaphorik kommt in den neunziger Jahren in der Berichterstattung eine entscheidende Rolle zu, um neue Konzepte für die Gestaltung der Europäischen Union zu beschreiben. Mit dem Behälter-Schema können Politiker wie Journalisten die Zugehörigkeit zu einer Gruppe sowie Außenseiterpositionen anschaulich und leicht verständlich darstellen. Die Politiker diskutierten ein Europa der „variablen Geometrie“, der
„konzentrischen Kreise“, ein „Kerneuropa“ sowie ein „Europa à la carte“. Dem Gros der Europa-Konzepte liegt die Struktur des Behälter-Schemas zugrunde, das – wie Jäkel9 bemerkt – zwar sehr einfach, aber nicht detailarm ist. Behälter haben eine Innen- und Außenseite, einen Kern- und Randbereich, sie können offen, geschlossen, voll oder leer sein.10
Journalisten thematisieren in ihren Artikeln zur WWU insbesondere die Aspekte ‚Innen – Außen‘ sowie ‚Kern – Rand‘ des Behälter–Schemas. Mit Hilfe der Metaphorik aus dem Herkunftsbereich ‚Behälter‘ verdeutlichen Politiker wie Journalisten sehr anschaulich, welche Länder in die EU und später in die WWU „eintreten“und somit in der Integration voranschreiten dürfen und welche zunächst noch „außen“ vor bleiben müssen.
EU und WWU werden in der Berichterstattung als zwei unterschiedlich große Behälter dargestellt, die nach dem Prinzip russischer Puppen, den Matroschkas, ineinander verschachtelt sind. Nur wer in der EU ist, hat – sofern er die Konvergenzkriterien erfüllt – auch die Möglichkeit, sich Zutritt in den nächsten Behälter, die WWU, zu verschaffen.

2.2 Ein harter Kern, Klassen und Ränge

Intensiv diskutiert wurde die weitere Integration Europas Anfang der neunziger Jahre. Im Spätsommer 1994 legte der konservative französische Premierminister Edouard Balladur in einem Interview mit Le Figaro seine Vorstellungen dar, wie eine weitere Integration Europas in Form

9 Jäkel (1997:189, 190).

10 Vgl. hierzu auch Jäkel (1997:288): „BEHÄLTER-Schema: Begrenzung/Hülle (OFFEN/GESCHLOSSEN) – Innenraum (INNEN-AUSSEN-Orientierung); Zentrum – Peripherie – Inhalt (VOLL/LEER).”

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„konzentrischer Kreise“ aussehen könnte.11 Wenig später veröffentlichte die CDU/CSU-Fraktion im Deutschen Bundestag ihre umstrittenen Thesen zu einem „Kerneuropa“ und einem Europa der „variablen Geometrie“. Das Zentrum sollte ein „harter Kern“ bilden, der sich aus Frankreich, Deutschland und den Benelux-Ländern zusammensetzen sollte.12
Die Journalisten greifen die von den Politikern in die Debatte eingebrachten Metaphern „variable Geometrie“, Europa der „zwei Geschwindigkeiten“ sowie „Kerneuropa“ in ihren Artikeln auf.13
(1) Thesen der CDU/CSU-Fraktion über ein „Kerneuropa”-Konzept und eine „variable Geometrie” mit unterschiedlichen Integrationsstufen beim weiteren Auf- und Ausbau der Europäischen Union haben in Bonn und auch bei einigen Partnerstaaten Deutschlands für Aufregung gesorgt. (Neue Züricher Zeitung, 6.09.1994, 1)
(2) Les Six, donc, mais avec une exception de taille: l'Italie. Ce qui réduit ce
noyau“ dur au couple franco-allemand et aux trois pays du Benelux. (Le Monde, 5.09.1994, 1)
(3) Mais Jean-Luc Dehaene estime que la CDU a eu tort de désigner nommément les membres supposés d'un éventuel „noyau dur“, à savoir l'Allemagne, la France et le Benelux. (Le Soir, 8.08.1994, 7)
Obwohl die ‚Offenheit‘ des „Kerns von der CDU/CSU von Beginn an betont wurde, lösten die Vorschläge eine heftige Debatte aus, vor allem über die Frage, welche Länder von Beginn an in den „Kern“ gehören und welche sich zunächst mit der „Randposition“ zufrieden geben müssen. Vor allem die französischen Journalisten kritisierten, dass Italien nicht zum „Kern“ gehören soll (Beispiel 2). Kritik kam jedoch auch vom belgischen Ministerpräsidenten

11 Schauer (2000:33) bemerkt hierzu: „Seiner Konzeption zufolge sollte die Europäische Architektur aus drei konzentrischen Kreisen bestehen: einer Basisorganisation (EG/EU), einer besserstrukturierten Organisation auf währungspolitischer wie auch auf militärischer Ebene und einem dritten Kreis außerhalb der EU, der KSZE.“

12 Vgl. hierzu „Überlegungen zur europäischen Politik. Strategiepapier der CDU/CSU“ vom

1.09.1994: „Hierfür sollte die Methode ‚variable Geometrie‘ oder ‚mehrere Geschwindigkeiten‘ trotz erheblicher rechtlicher und praktischer Schwierigkeiten sowie wie möglich durch den Unionsvertrag bzw. das neue verfassungsähnliche Dokument sanktioniert und institutionalisiert werden, da die Methode andernfalls auf intergouvernementale Zusammenarbeit beschränkt bliebe und Tendenzen eines ‚Europa à la carte‘ fördern könnten.“

13 Vgl. hierzu Bühler (1965:286): „Die Metapher ist eines der wichtigsten Mittel zur Schöpfung von Benennungen für Vorstellungskomplexe, für die noch keine adäquate Bezeichnungen existieren“.

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Jean-Luc Dehaene, obwohl Belgien trotz hoher Staatsverschuldung14 nach Vorstellung der CDU/CSU-Fraktion von Anfang an Mitglied des „Kerns“ sein soll (Beispiel 3). Im deutschsprachigen Korpus wird „Kern“ wie in Beispiel (1) häufig in Substantivkomposita in Kombination mit dem Morphem „Europa“ verwendet. Ein entsprechendes Pendant findet sich in den französischsprachigen Zeitungen nicht.
Das Konzept eines „Kerneuropa“ offenbart neben ‚innen – außen‘ ein entscheidendes weiteres Merkmal des Behälter-Schemas: IMPORTANT IS CENTRAL und UNIMPORTANT IS PERIPHERAL.15 Ein „Kerneuropa“ impliziert, dass es in der EU und WWU Länder erster und zweiter „Klasse“ gibt.16 Das Prinzip der Gleichbehandlung aller europäischen Partner wäre aufgehoben. Länder, die der „ersten“ oder „A-Klasse“ angehören, dürfen in der Integration schneller voranschreiten und die weitere Richtung vorgeben. Andere Länder würden in die minderwertigere „B-“ oder „C-Klassen“ eingestuft, die sich am Rand und somit in einigem Abstand zum gewichtigen
„Kern“ befinden und daher auch weniger Einfluss auf Entscheidungen des
„Kerns“ haben. In Beispiel (4) wird die negative Konnotation der „B-Klasse”
durch das Verb „absteigen“ verstärkt.17
(4) Italien will als Gründungsmitglied nicht in die B-Klasse absteigen, Spanien fühlt sich […] als ein geborenes Mitglied der A-Klasse, und Frankreich will Italien und Spanien in der Kerngruppe sehen, … (Neue Züricher Zeitung, 15.09.1994, 25)
(5) Es entsteht unweigerlich eine Zwei-Klassen-Union. (Neue Züricher

Zeitung, 30.11.1996, 1)

(6) Italiens Ministerpräsident Berlusconi hatte sich bereits am Montag von Bundeskanzler Kohl die Versicherung geben lassen, daß Deutschland keineswegs Italien in die zweite Klasse Europas zurückstufen wolle. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7.09.1994, 1)

14 Belgien wies zu dieser Zeit mit 135% sogar eine höhere Gesamtverschuldung auf als Italien mit 125,5%. Erlaubt waren laut Maastricht-Kriterien lediglich 60% (Quelle: Europäisches Währungsinstitut 1998).

15 Johnson (1987:124).

16 Musolff (2001:183): Ein Europa „mehrerer Geschwindigkeiten“ würde ein „overtly hierarchical element into the picture of the EU“ einführen.

17 „Absteigen“ ist eine Metapher aus dem Herkunftsbereich ‚Skala‘. MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN und NEGATIV IST UNTEN. Vgl. hierzu Baldauf (1997:152 und 164).

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Neben dem Sprachbild der „Klasse“ bedienen sich die Journalisten der sprachlichen Bilder von „Rang“ bzw. „rang“ und „Liga“. Die Lexeme siedeln sich in einem oszillierenden Bereich zwischen den Bildspenderbereichen
‚Sport‘ und ‚Behälter‘ an. Wie im Sport erreichen nur die Top-Länder mit entsprechenden Leistungen einen Platz im „ersten Rang“ oder der „Liga A“. Alle anderen werden, wie Italien in Beispiel (7) auf die hinteren „Ränge“ bzw. in die „Liga B“ verwiesen:
(7) Der Vorschlag, der in Italien auf großes Aufsehen stieß, wurde allgemein aufgefaßt als Bestreben, Italien innerhalb Europas in die Liga B zu relegieren. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5.09.1994, 15)
(8) L'Autriche doit tout faire pour «ne pas être reléguée au deuxième rang au sein de l'Union européenne» et souhaite faire partie du «noyau dur» de la future construction après son adhésion le 1er janvier prochain, … (Le Monde, 8.09.1994, 4)

2.3 Unterschiedliche Geschwindigkeiten

Das Kern-Schema verknüpfen Journalisten in ihren Artikeln über die weitere Integration häufig mit dem Weg-Schema.18 Die Länder, die dem „Kern“ angehören, können in der europäischen Integration schneller voranschreiten. Die Länder außerhalb des „Kerns“ können mit dem vorgelegten Tempo nicht mithalten. In diesen Beispielen verbindet sich das Type aus dem Herkunftsbereich ‚Weg‘ ÜBERLEGENHEIT IST RÄUMLICHER VORSPRUNG19 mit dem Type IMPORTANT IS CENTRAL. Diese Kombination verdeutlicht eindrucksvoll die Überlegenheit der von Beginn an an EU und WWU teilnehmenden Länder. Wie wichtig es den Ländern war, nicht in den „deuxième rang“ verbannt zu werden, wird an Beispiel (8) deutlich. Danach müsse Österreich alles tun, um dem „noyau dur“ von Beginn an anzugehören.
(9) Die CDU/CSU-Fraktion im Deutschen Bundestag will die europäische Einigung mit Vorschlägen voranbringen, die eine Festigung der aus Deutschland, Frankreich und den Benelux-Ländern bestehenden

18 Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt auch Schäffner (1996:54).

19 Vgl. hierzu auch Baldauf (1997:145): „Wollen zwei Individuen oder Gruppen dasselbe Ziel erreichen, beschreiten sie also denselben Weg von A nach Z, so wird Überlegenheit als räumlicher Vorsprung konzeptualisiert, der einen von beiden dem angestrebten Ziel näher bringt als den Gegenspieler.“

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Kerngruppe der Europäischen Union (EU) vorsehen. (Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, 2.09.1994, 1)

(10) Pour lui, l'Europe de demain sera bien „à géométrie variable“ et l'Allemagne entend bien faire avancer les choses au sein d'un „noyau dur“. (Le Soir, 8.09.1994, 7)
(11) Was bedeutet es für die Länder, die nicht teilnehmen, weil für sie die Eintrittshürden trotz aller Interpretationen und Aufweichbestrebungen zu hoch sind: Werden sie von den Währungskern-Ländern wirtschaftlich abgehängt? (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1.07.1995, 14)
In den Beispielen (9) und (11) wird die Metapher des „Kerns“ mit Verben aus dem Herkunftsbereich ‚Weg‘ kombiniert, um zu verdeutlichen, dass das von den Politikern in die Diskussion eingebrachte Konzept die europäische Integration „voranbringt“ bzw. „faire avancer les choses“. Fortschritt hat eine positive Konnotation, die somit auch auf das Konzept eines „harten Kerns“ abfärbt.20
Die Journalisten verwenden neben dem ‚Kern-Schema‘ die von der
CDU/CSU-Fraktion in die Debatte eingeführte Metapher eines Europas
„mehrerer Geschwindigkeiten“, um die Überlegenheit der
„voranschreitenden“ Staaten im Integrationsprozess darzustellen.21 Im September 1994 findet sich in allen vier Zeitungen eine Vielzahl entsprechender Belege. In den Beispielen (12) und (13) werden - wie in den Beispielen (9) und (11) - Metaphern aus dem Herkunftsbereich ‚Weg‘ („vitesses“, „Geschwindigkeiten“) mit Sprachbildern aus dem Bereich
‚Behälter‘ kombiniert („exclus“, „Eintritt“):
(12) La plupart des exclus ont évidemment dénoncé, à des degrés divers, cette vision sectaire d'une Europe à deux vitesses qui ne pouvait que ressusciter les vieilles rancœurs. (Le Soir, 8.09.1994, 7)
(13) Dieser Plan sieht zwar mindestens zwei Geschwindigkeiten vor; der Eintritt in die dritte Stufe wird aber in erster Linie vom Erreichen von Kriterien abhängig gemacht ... (Neue Züricher Zeitung, 8.09.1994, 23)

20 Vgl. hierzu 19.

21 Vgl. zur Debatte eines Europas verschiedener Geschwindigkeiten Schauer (2000:22ff.):

„Das Erreichen oder die Beibehaltung einer einheitlichen Integrationsstufe ist der wichtigste Faktor dieses Konzepts, wobei der Einheitlichkeit des Acquis hohe Priorität eingeräumt wird“. Vgl. hierzu auch Trenz (2005:333): „Die Imagination eines Europas der mehreren Geschwindigkeiten ist aber auch mit einer klaren Parteinahme verbunden, …“

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(14) Sein Plädoyer für ein Europa der verschiedenen Geschwindigkeiten speist sich offenkundig aus zwei Vermutungen: erstens, daß nicht alle europäischen Staaten […] das Tempo der Einigung in allen Politikfeldern mitmachen könnten oder mitmachen wollten. Zweitens, daß die bestehenden Institutionen und Verfahren, die bislang nur in kleinen Schritten den jeweiligen politischen und wirtschaftlichen Erfordernissen angepaßt wurden, … (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
2.09.1994, 4)
Von großer Bedeutung war für Politiker und Journalisten im September 1994, ob die in dem CDU/CSU-Papier geäußerten Punkte die Meinung der deutschen Regierung widerspiegeln oder ob sich Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl von dem Konzept distanzieren würde.22 Kohl vermied in seiner Stellungnahme explizit, von „mehreren Geschwindigkeiten“ oder „variabler Geometrie“ zu sprechen. Er bediente sich sprachlicher Bilder aus dem Herkunftsbereich der ‚Schifffahrt’, um ein Fortkommen mit unterschiedlichen
„Geschwindigkeiten“ darzustellen:23
(15) Nous voulons que les choses avancent que Maastricht soit poursuivi en
1996, mais il y a une chose que nous ne voulons pas: nous ne voulons en aucun cas que le navire le plus lent freine le convoi du développement européen, a declaré le chancelier. (Le Soir, 8.09.1994, 7)
(16) Kohl sagte, die Europäische Union solle möglichst viele Länder umfassen, aber „das langsamste Schiff darf nicht den Geleitzug aufhalten. Wir wollen vorankommen.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
6.09.1994, 1)
(17) … das langsamste Schiff darf nicht den Geleitzug stoppen, so
Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl. (Neue Züricher Zeitung, 15.09.1994, 25)
Kohl vertritt die Meinung, dass es sich die EU, die als „Geleitzug” in Richtung Integration unterwegs ist, nicht leisten kann, wegen eines langsamen „Schiffs” aufgehalten zu werden. Wie der Kommentator Hansrudolf Kamer am 7. September 1994 in der Neuen Züricher Zeitung bemerkt, bringt „das Bonner Diskussionspapier […] sachlich kaum etwas Neues und verweist eigentlich

22 In einer Rede an der Universität in Leiden wies John Major die Idee zurück und argumentierte, ähnlich wie in George Orwells „Animal Farm“, „some would be more equal than others“ (Musolff 2001:184).

23 Das Bild des Konvois verwendet Kohl bereits in früheren Jahren. So weist Musolff (1996:180ff.) die Metapher in einem Interview in der Financial Times mit Kohl am 4.01.1993 nach.

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nur auf das, was bereits besteht: das ‚Europa der verschiedenen
Geschwindigkeiten‘“.24

2.4 Konzentrische Kreise, Geometrie und ein Europa à la carte

Das Sprachbild eines Europas der „konzentrischen Kreise“ findet sich ausschließlich im Jahr 1994. Nach Balladurs Vorstellungen sollte die Europäische Architektur aus drei konzentrischen Kreisen bestehen: einer Basisorganisation (EG/EU), einer besserstrukturierten Organisation auf währungspolitischer und militärischer Ebene und einem dritten Kreis außerhalb der EU, der KSZE.25
(18) In dem fehlenden rechtlichen Zwang, dies zu tun, unterscheidet sich das Modell der konzentrischen Kreise aber vom Europa der zwei (oder mehreren) Geschwindigkeiten. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6.09.1994,
5)
(19) Premierminister Balladur hat am Mittwoch im Ministerrat das Europa- Papier der CDU/CSU kritisiert, in dem ein „harter Kern“ von EU- Mitgliedern für die Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion und einer für die Sicherheitspolitik vorgesehen ist, obwohl dieses Papier einige Übereinstimmungen mit seinen eigenen Vorstellungen über ein künftiges „Europa der drei Kreise“ zeigt. (Neue Züricher Zeitung,
8.09.1994, 2)
(20) Autant les interventions de M. Balladur sur l'avenir de l'Union, notamment sur l'élargissement et la „géométrie variable“, sont restées théoriques, autant le document présenté par le parti du chancelier jeudi présente les choses avec rudesse, de désignant nommément les rares pays élus pour faire partie du „premier cercle“. (Le Monde, 5.09.1994, 4)
Weder das Konzept noch die Metapher können sich durchsetzen. Nach 1994 verschwindet das Sprachbild der „konzentrischen Kreise“ wieder aus der Berichterstattung in den untersuchten deutsch- und französischsprachigen Zeitungen.

24 Mit Inkrafttreten des Maastricht-Vertrags hatte sich Großbritannien „opts-out“-Klauseln ausbedungen, um an der späteren WWU und dem geplanten Kapitel zur Sozialpolitik nicht teilnehmen zu müssen. „Theses opt-outs marked an officially recognized difference between Britain and other EU countries that invited an interpretation in terms of different INTEGRATION SPEEDS being favoured by member state governments“ (Musolff 2004:49).

25 Vgl. hierzu Schauer (2000:33).

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Neben einem „Kerneuropa“, einem Europa „variabler Geometrie“ verwenden Politiker wie Journalisten – wenn auch deutlich seltener – das Bild eines Europas „à la carte“. Danach soll jeder Staat eigenhändig entscheiden, in welchen Bereichen er an der europäischen Integration teilnehmen möchte – ähnlich einer Bestellung im Restaurant, in dem jeder sein Menü anhand der Speisekarte nach seinem Gusto zusammenstellen kann.26 Dieses Konzept stieß sowohl bei der deutschen als auch bei der französischen Regierung auf Ablehnung.27 Es wurde vor allem von Großbritannien favorisiert.
(21) Genügend Sicherungen gegen ein übertriebenes Europe à la carte sind im Amsterdamer Vertrag eingebaut. (Neue Züricher Zeitung, 19.06.1997,
3)
(22) In der Zielsetzung gleich ist das Modell „Europa à la carte“. (Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, 6.09.1994, 5)

(23) Le patronat français se prononce contre une Europe à la carte où chaque
Etat choisirait les règles qu'il respecterait ou non. (Le Monde, 12.12.1995,
2)
(24) Au contraire, l'Europa „à la carte“ suppose que certains États membres décident une fois pour toutes de ne pas participer à certaines politiques communes, comme par exemple la Grande-Bretagne ... (Le Soir,
8.09.1994, 7)
In keiner der vier Zeitungen werden die neuen Europakonzepte jedoch detailliert erläutert. Dies erklärt auch die Anführungszeichen in der Bericht- erstattung – insbesondere bei den Konzepten der „variablen Geometrie“, der
„konzentrischen Kreise“ und eines Europa „à la carte“. Lediglich
„Kerneuropa“ taucht nach einigen Tagen in den vier Zeitungen nicht mehr in Anführungszeichen auf. Die in die Debatte von Politikern eingebrachten und von den Journalisten verwendeten Metaphern zeigen anschaulich, wie
„sachliche Informationsdefizite […] mit Metaphern kompensiert“ werden.28
Da die Konzepte nicht erläutert werden, bieten die sprachlichen Bilder eine

26 Vgl. hierzu Stubb (1996), zitiert in Schauer (2000:30f.): „[T]he culinary metaphor of a Europa à la carte allows each Member State to pick and choose, as from a menu, in which policy area it would like to participate, whilst at the same time maintaining a minimum number of common objectives.“

27 Vgl. hierzu die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung vom 6.09.1994: „[Der SPD-Politiker] Glotz sagte, man könne kein Europa machen, „wo sich 16 Leute zu einer Bergtour verabreden, fünf aber von Anfang an erklären, bei der ersten Steigung würden sie nicht mitklettern“.

28 Vgl. hierzu Gil (1998:97).

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Plattform an Interpretationsmöglichkeiten für die Zeitungsleser – und eine Grundlage für Missverständnisse.29 Das Problem thematisiert die belgische Zeitung Le Soir: „On parle tantôt d’Europe, à plusieurs vitesses‘, tantôt d’Europe ‚à la carte‘ sans trop savoir ce que recouvrent ces expressions.“30 So kritisiert Edouard Balladur beispielsweise das Konzept der CDU/CSU- Fraktion, obwohl seine Vorstellungen über ein künftiges „Europa der drei Kreise“31 große Übereinstimmungen mit dem Lamers-Schäuble Papier zeigen.32 Ähnliches beobachtet Musolff (1996:16) in einer Rede John Majors in Leiden am 7. September 1994. Der Premier kritisierte das Konzept eines Europas der „konzentrischen Kreise“. Dabei hatte er wenige Monate vor der Veröffentlichung des Diskussionspapiers selbst ein „multi-track, multi-speed, multi-layered Europe“ gefordert.33

2.5 Clubs für die Teilnahme an der Währungsunion

Nach dem Jahr 1994 dreht sich die Diskussion überwiegend um die Frage, welche Länder an der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion34 teilnehmen dürfen.

29 Vgl. hierzu Musolff (1996:16): „Although the metaphors of different ‚courses’, ‚tiers’,

‚circles’ or ‚speeds’ of political integration in Europe were at that time clearly designated as having ‚international’ status, their pragmatic-political meanings seemed to differ substantially in different languages.”

30 Le Soir, 8.09.1994, Seite 7.

31 Der französische Premierminister äußerste erstmals in einem Interview in Le Figaro am

30.08.1994 seine Vorstellungen von einem Europa der konzentrischen Kreise. Schauer (2000:33) bemerkt hierzu: „Seiner Konzeption zufolge sollte die Europäische Architektur aus drei konzentrischen Kreisen bestehen: einer Basisorganisation (EG/EU), einer besserstrukturierten Organisation auf währungspolitischer wie auch auf militärischer Ebene und einem dritten Kreis außerhalb der EU, der KSZE.“

32 Vgl. hierzu die Neue Züricher Zeitung (8.09.1994, Seite 2): „Premierminister Balladur hat am Mittwoch im Ministerrat das Europa-Papier der CDU/CSU kritisiert, in dem ein ‚harter Kern‘ von EU-Mitgliedern für die Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion und einer für die Sicherheitspolitik vorgesehen ist, obwohl dieses Papier einige Übereinstimmungen mit seinen eigenen Vorstellungen über ein künftiges ‚Europa der drei Kreise‘ zeigt“.

33 Nach Musolff (1996:25) lassen sich diese Missverständnisse nur auf einem Weg beseitigen:

„The only way […] seems to me to lie not in a stigmatization of these terminologies or metaphors, but in explaining and discussing them up to a point when their implications for political recipes have become clear to all those sitting round the European table.“ Vgl. Hierzu auch Reeves (1996).

34 Die Währungsunion wird von Politikern und Journalisten häufig als „Kern“ der Europäischen Union und als „Chefsache“ beschrieben. Vgl. hierzu Reichenbach et al. (1999:64).

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Dabei wird die WWU als ‚Behälter’ konzeptualisiert, zu dem nur die Länder
„Zugang“ erhalten, die die Konvergenzkriterien erfüllen. Alle anderen müssen zunächst „draußen“35 und somit „ausgeschlossen” bleiben.
(25) Zu mehr, etwa zur Erörterung des Namens einer zukünftigen Einheitswährung, zur Klärung des Verhältnisses zwischen teilnehmenden und aussenstehenden Währungen […] wird weder die Zeit noch der Wille zum Konsens reichen. (Neue Züricher Zeitung,
26.06.1995, 1)
(26) Nach Meinung von Martino könne nicht Italien wegen seiner zerrütteten Staatsfinanzen aus einer Währungsunion ausgeschlossen bleiben, das in Relation zum Volkseinkommen noch höher verschuldete Belgien aber dabei sein. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5.09.1994, 15)
Die englischen Präpositionen „in“ und „out“ verdeutlichen das Konzept
‚innen – außen’. Im Deutschen und Französischen werden die Präpositionen substantivisch gebraucht und – was etwas verwundert – in der überwiegend Anglizismen meidenden französischen Berichterstattung verwendet. Neben den „ins“ und „outs“ taucht im französischsprachigen Korpus eine dritte Gruppe auf, die der „pré-ins“. Ein diplomatischer Begriff, um die Länder zu benennen, die bereits mehr Konvergenzfortschritte erzielt haben, als die Gruppe der „outs“.
(27) Comment organiser le rapport entre les pays de l'UEM et les autres, les
in et les out? (Le Monde, 1.12.1995, 5)
(28) L'accord conclu par le conseil européen […] prévoit que les pays in […] pourront se réunir pour débattre de sujets d'intérêts communs, mais que les out […] seront en droit de demander que les mêmes dossiers soient examinés au sein du conseil Ecofin ... (Le Monde, 28.04.1998, 5)
Die „Klassen-Gesellschaft“ auf dem Weg zur EU und WWU wird von Journalisten häufig auch in Form verschiedener „Clubs“ bzw. „clubs“ beschrieben, zu denen lediglich ausgewählte Mitglieder Zutritt haben. Die elf Länder, denen die EU-Kommission im Frühjahr 1998 die Teilnahme an der WWU bescheinigt, werden in der folgenden Berichterstattung als „Euro-Klub“

35 Laut Johnson (1987:125) stellt die Verknüpfung der beiden Konzepte ‚Innen – Außen’ und

‚Kern – Rand’ eine Art Regelfall dar: „We almost always superimpose a CONTAINER

schema on our CENTER-PERIPHERY orientation. Where we draw the bounding container will depend upon our purposes, interests, perceptual capacities, conceptual system and values. […] When such a CONTAINER schema is superimposed we experience the center as inner and define the outer relative to it.”

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bzw. „club euro“ oder als „Elferclub“ bzw. „club des onze pays“ beschrieben. Zutritt zu diesem „Club“ sollen auch nach der Einführung des Euro 1999 lediglich Länder erhalten, die dauerhaft solide Staatsfinanzen vorweisen können. Südliche Länder wie Portugal, Italien und Spanien, die zunächst Schwierigkeiten hatten, die Konvergenzkriterien zu erfüllen, werden vor allem Anfang der neunziger Jahre despektierlich als „Club-Med“ – „Club Méditerannée“ – bezeichnet:36
(29) Wenn die Währungsunion fahrplanmässig auf den Weg gebracht werden sollte, könnten die so genannten Club-Med-Länder nur mehr schwerlich draussen gelassen werden. (Neue Züricher Zeitung, 2.06.1997,
7)
(30) Die erhoffte Konvergenz in den Köpfen und das Einpendeln der gegenseitigen Ansprüche im Elferklub hängen nicht zuletzt davon ab, ob die Europäische Zentralbank unabhängig von politischem Druck eine am Ziel der Preisstabilität orientierte Geldpolitik treiben kann. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 30.03.1998, 1)
(31) Le deuxième niveau décrit par M. de Silguy est celui des „in“, c'est-à- dire des pays membres du club euro. (Le Monde, 17.12.1996, 4)
(32) … lorsqu'il entendit parler, au forum de Davos, de l'éventualité d'un retard concerté de l'entrée des pays du sud (les pays du Club med) dans l'euro, pour éviter que les pays à monnaie forte soient tirés par le bas, par les plus instables. (Le Monde, 2.01.1999, 3)
Welche Gefahr nach Meinung einiger Politiker von den „Club-Med-Ländern“ ausgeht, macht Beispiel (32) deutlich. Auf dem Weltwirtschaftsforum in Davos wird dafür plädiert, die „pays du sud“ erst später in den „Euroclub“ aufzunehmen. Andernfalls würden stabile Währungen „nach unten“ gezogen. Die Metapher aus dem Herkunftsbereich ‚Skala‘ („tirés par le bas“) impliziert eine Bewegung nach unten, die negativ konnotiert ist.37
Steht erst einmal fest, welche Länder dem WWU-Club angehören, wird der
„Elferclub“ seinerseits als Behälter konzeptualisiert, in den die
Gemeinschaftswährung, der Euro, eingeführt wird:

36 Die Gesamtverschuldung in Spanien lag 1994 bei 63,1 %, in Italien bei 125,5% und in

Portugal bei 69,6% (Europäisches Währungsinstitut 1998).

37 Vgl. hierzu Baldauf (1997:164): „NEGATIV IST UNTEN“.

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(33) Dementsprechend ändert sich zumindest am vorgesehenen Fahrplan zur Einführung der Währung nichts. (Neue Züricher Zeitung, 19.06.1997,
3)
(34) Damit sei es noch unwahrscheinlicher geworden, daß es zu einer Verschiebung der Einführung der einheitlichen Währung kommen werde. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 10.06.1997, 3)
(35) Jacques Chirac avait tenu pour sa part […] à „confirmer ce que chacun sait, c'est-à-dire notre volonté claire et déterminée de faire en sorte que, en respectant notre modèle social, en assumant notre volonté de lutter contre le chômage et de favoriser la croissance, nous puisons [...] entrer dans la monnaie unique“. (Le Monde, 19.06.1997, 2)
(36) L'introduction de l'euro est une révolution, ... (Le Soir, 4.01.1999, 2)

3. Zusammenfassung

Die vorliegende Analyse zeigt, dass sich Politiker und Journalisten der Behälter-Metaphorik bedienen, um ihre Vorstellungen von der Europäischen Union und der weiteren Integration zu verdeutlichen. Mit sprachlichen Bildern aus dem Bereich ‚Behälter’ lässt sich anschaulich und somit auch leicht verständlich beschreiben, welche Länder „in“ die EU bzw. WWU gehören und welche zunächst „draußen“ bleiben müssen.
Die in die Debatte eingebrachten sprachlichen Bilder eines „Kerneuropa“, eines Europa „mehrerer Geschwindigkeiten“, einer „variablen Geometrie“ oder aber eines Europa „à la carte“ sind in den neunziger Jahren nicht in Sprachlexika zu finden. Wie neu oder fremd dem Zeitungsleser diese Konzepte offenbar waren, zeigt die Tatsache, dass diese Metaphern von den Journalisten zunächst in Anführungszeichen gesetzt wurden.
Doch anders als das „Kerneuropa“ und das Europa „mehrerer Geschwindigkeiten“ können sich die anderen Konzepte und Sprachbilder in der Berichterstattung der folgenden Jahre nicht durchsetzen.38 Nach 1994 finden sich in den Artikeln die Konzepte einer „variablen Geometrie“,
„konzentrischer Kreise“ und eines Europa „à la carte“ – wenn überhaupt – nur
sporadisch. Das mag daran liegen, dass das ‚Kern – Rand’-Konzept eingängiger, anschaulicher und somit auch leichter zu verstehen und zu

38 Vgl. hierzu Rigotti (1994:193): „Im allgemeinen beobachtet man einen langen Zeitraum der Koexistenz mehrerer Metaphernfelder, bevor es einem gelingt, die anderen aus dem Rennen zu werfen.“

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verinnerlichen ist als das Bild der „variablen Geometrie“ oder der
„konzentrischen Kreise“. Schließlich handelt es sich bei den geometrischen Formen um zweidimensionale Figuren. In einem dreidimensionalen Kern lässt sich das Konzept von ‚innen – außen’ plastischer darstellen. Die Analyse zeigt, dass sich im öffentlichen Diskurs nur die Metaphern und die damit verbundenen Konzepte durchsetzen, die kognitiv leicht erschließbar und somit eingängig sind.
In der Berichterstattung nach März 1998, als feststand, welche Länder die Gemeinschaftswährung zum 1. Januar 1999 einführen würden, wird die Metapher des „Kerneuropa“ nach und nach durch die Lexeme „Euroraum“ und „Euroland“39 ersetzt. Mit Hilfe der Behälter-Metaphorik werden Konzepte und Ideen für Europa beschrieben, die sich anders weder anschaulich noch leicht verständlich darstellen ließen.
Die neuen Sprachbilder zur weiteren Integration Europas werden von Politikern in die Debatte eingebracht. Journalisten übernehmen diese in der Berichterstattung, ohne die einzelnen Konzepte detailliert zu erläutern, was Interpretationsspielräume lässt und so leicht zu Missverständnissen führt.
Die Metaphorik aus dem Herkunftsbereich ‚Behälter‘ findet sich sowohl in der FAZ, in der NZZ, Le Monde und Le Soir. Ganz gleich, welchem Sprachraum die Autoren entstammen, die Journalisten bedienen sich weitgehend identischer Sprachbilder. Die vorliegende Analyse untermauert somit frühere Studien.40
So wird die These Weinrichs, dass „eine Harmonie der Bildfelder zwischen
den einzelnen Sprachen“ existiert und „[d]as Abendland […] eine Bildfeldgemeinschaft ist“,41 durch die Ergebnisse zweifelsfrei gestützt. Insofern kann durchaus von einem Europa der Metaphern gesprochen werden.

39 Vgl. hierzu Herberg (2001:133): „Euroland. It has been suggested that the economic expert and publicist Claus Noé was the first to use this term” (Die Zeit, 29.10.1998, 28).

40 Schäffner (1993:27).

41 Weinrich (1976:287).

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4. Bibliographie

4.1 Fachliteratur

Baldauf, Christa (1997): Metapher und Kognition. Grundlagen einer neuen Theorie der

Alltagsmetapher, Frankfurt am Main.

Böke, Karin/Jung, Matthias/Wengeler, Martin (edd.) (1996): Öffentlicher

Sprachgebrauch. Praktische, theoretische und historische Perspektiven, Opladen.

Brandstetter, Barbara (2009): Gemeinsames Europa? Die Metaphorik von

Wirtschaftsberichten in deutsch- und französischsprachigen Printmedien, Hamburg.

Bühler, Karl (1965): Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache, Stuttgart.

Gil, Alberto/Schmitt, Christian (edd.) (1998): Kognitive und kommunikative Dimensionen der Metaphorik in den romanischen Sprachen. Akten der gleichnamigen Sektion des XXV. Deutschen Romanistentages, Jena (28.09.-2.10.1997), Bonn.

Gil, Alberto (1998): „Zur Metaphorik der Presseberichterstattung beim spanischen, italienischen und rumänischen Wahlkampf von 1996“, in: Gil, Alberto/Schmitt, Christian (edd.): Kognitive und kommunikative Dimensionen der Metaphorik in den romanischen Sprachen. Akten der gleichnamigen Sektion des XXV. Deutschen Romanistentages, Jena (28.09.-2.10.1997), Bonn, 86-112.

Grewenig, Adi (ed.) (1993): Inszenierte Information: Politik und strategische

Kommunikation in den Medien, Opladen.

Herberg, Dieter (1999): „Der Euro: sprachlich betrachtet“, in: Sprachreport, 4/1999,

2-7.

Hülzer, Heike (1987): Die Metapher. Kommunikationssemantische Überlegungen zu einer rhetorischen Kategorie, Münster.

Jäkel, Olaf (1997): Metaphern in abstrakten Diskurs-Domänen. Eine kognitiv-linguistische Untersuchung anhand der Bereiche Geistestätigkeit, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main.

Johnson, Mark (1987): The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, Chicago.

Lakoff, George/Johnson, Mark (1980): Metaphors we live by, Chicago.

Lakoff, George (1992): „Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify the war in the gulf”, in: Pütz, Martin (ed.): Thirty years of linguistic evolution. Philadelphia, 463-481.

Mautner, Gerlinde (2001): „British National Identity in the European Context.” In: Musolff, Andreas/Good, Colin/Points, Petra/Wittlinger, Ruth (edd.): Attitudes towards Europe. Language in the unification process, Burlington, 3-22.

Musolff, Andreas/Schäffner, Christina/Townson, Michael (edd.) (1996): Conceiving of

Europe. Diversity in Unity, Brookfield.

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Musolff, Andreas (1996): „’Dampfer’, ‚Boote’ und ‚Fregatten’: Metaphern als Signale im ‚Geleitzug der Europäischen Union’“, in: Böke, Karin et al. (edd.): Öffentlicher Sprachgebrauch. Praktische, theoretische und historische Perspektiven, Opladen, 180-

189.

Musolff, Andreas (2000): Mirror images of Europa. Metaphors in the public debate about

Europe in Britain and Germany, München.

Musolff, Andreas/Good, Colin/Poionts, Petra/Wittlinger, Ruth (edd.) (2001):

Attitudes towards Europa. Language in the unification process, Burlington.

Musolff, Andreas (2001): „The metaphorisation of European Politics: Movement on the Road to Europe”, in: Musolff, Andreas/Good, Colin/Poionts, Petra/Wittlinger, Ruth (edd.) (2001): Attitudes towards Europa. Language in the unification process, Burlington, 179-2000.

Musolff, Andreas (2004): Metaphor and Political Discourse. Analogical Reasoning in

Debates about Europe, New York.

Pütz, Martin (ed.) (1992): Thirty years of linguistic evolution, Philadelphia.

Reichenbach, Horst/Emmerling, Thea/Staudenmayeer, Dirk/Schmidt, Sönke (1999):

Integration: Wanderung über europäische Gipfel, Baden-Baden.

Reeves, Nigel (1996): „‚Den festen Kern festigen‘: Towards a Functional Taxonomy of Transnational Political Discourse”, in: Musolff, Andreas/Schäffner, Christina/Townson, Michael (edd.): Conceiving of Europe. Diversity in Unity, Brookfield, 161-170.

Rigotti, Francesca (1994): Die Macht und ihre Metaphern. Über die sprachlichen Bilder der

Politik, Frankfurt am Main.

Schäffner, Christina (1993): „Die europäische Architektur – Metaphern der Einigung Europas in der deutschen, britischen und amerikanischen Presse“, in: Grewenig, Adi (ed.): Inszenierte Information. Politik und strategische Kommunikation in den Medien, Opladen, 13-30.

Schäffner, Christina/Wenden, Anita (edd.) (1995): Language and Peace, Adlershot. Schäffner, Christina (1995): „The ‚Balance’ Metaphor in Relation to Peace”, in:

Schäffner, Christina/Wenden, Anita (edd.): Language and Peace, Aldershot, 75-91.

Schäffner, Christina/Musolff, Andreas/Townson, Michael (edd.) (1996): Conceiving of

Europe. Diversity in Unity, Brookfield.

Schäffner, Christina (1996): „Building a European House? Or at Two Speeds into a Dead End? Metaphors in the Debate on the United Europe”, in: Musolff, Andreas/Schäffner, Christina/Townson, Michael (edd.) (1996): Conceiving of Europe. Diversity in Unity, Brookfield, 31-60.

Schäffner, Christina (2001): „Attitudes to Europe – Mediated by Translation”, in: Musolff, Andreas/Good, Colin/Points, Petra/Wittlinger, Ruth (edd.): Attitudes towards Europe. Language in the unification process, Burlington, 201-218.

Schauer, Martin (2000): Schengen - Maastricht - Amsterdam. Auf dem Weg zu einer flexiblen Union, Wien.

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Brandstetter, Metaphern für die Konstruktion Europas

Trenz, Hans-Jörg (2005): Europa in den Medien. Die europäische Integration im Spiegel nationaler Öffentlichkeit, Frankfurt am Main.

Weinrich, Harald (1996) : Sprache in Texten, Stuttgart.

4.2 Korpus

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung auf CD-ROM (1993-1999)

Neue Züricher Zeitung auf CD-ROM (1993-1999)

Le Monde sur CD-ROM (1993-1999)

Le Soir sur CD-ROM (1993-1999)

4.3 Weitere Quellen

CSU/CSU-Fraktion (1994): „Überlegungen zur Europäischen Politik (1.09.1994)“, in:

http://www.cducsu.de/upload/schaeublelamers94.pdf (15.11.2009).

Europäisches Währungsinstitut (1998): Konvergenzbericht. Nach Artikel 109j des Vertrags zur Gründung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft vorgeschriebener Bericht. Frankfurt am Main: Europäisches Währungsinstitut, März 1998.

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Creative metaphor is a birthday cake: Metaphor as the source of humour

Marta Dynel

Abstract


Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht kreative Metaphern als Form des intentionalen sprachlichen Humors. Das Hauptanliegen besteht in der Darstellung wichtiger Faktoren, die zum einen das humoristische Potenzial von Metaphern in Metapherntheorien bestimmen und zum anderen dem ‚incongruity-resolution model‘ in der Humorkommunikation gerecht werden. Erklärungsansätze unterschiedlicher Reichweite wie z.B. die Diaphorizität, die Inkongruenz zwischen metaphorischen Konzepten/Domänen, die Verletzung der Angemessenheit, das Fehlen des Bezugsrahmens, die Vielzahl an Interpretationsmöglichkeiten sowie die „falsche“ Betonung von Eigenschaften, die eingehende Zuschreibung von Eigenschaften, die humoristische Unvereinbarkeit mit dem ‚vehicle‘ und „Bildbrüche“ (Katachrese) werden miteinander verglichen und anhand konkreter Beispiele erörtert.

The article discusses creative metaphors as forms of intentionally produced verbal humour. The paramount objective is to present a number of factors which emerge as responsible for the humorous potential of metaphors in the light of relevant theories of metaphor, as well as the incongruity-resolution model proposed in humour studies. Several explanatory points, by no means mutually exclusive, are raised viz. diaphoricity, incongruity between the concepts/domains, aptness violation, unavailability of the ground, multiple interpretations and “wrong” prioritisation of features, exhaustive attribution of features, humorous incongruity within the vehicle, and catachresis.
 

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Seite 27

Creative metaphor is a birthday cake: Metaphor as the source of humour

Marta Dynel, University of Łódź (marta.dynel@yahoo.com)

Abstract

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht kreative Metaphern als Form des intentionalen sprachlichen Humors. Das Hauptanliegen besteht in der Darstellung wichtiger Faktoren, die zum einen das humoristische Potenzial von Metaphern in Metapherntheorien bestimmen und zum anderen dem ‚incongruity-resolution model‘ in der Humorkommunikation gerecht werden. Erklärungsansätze unterschiedlicher Reichweite wie z.B. die Diaphorizität, die Inkongruenz zwischen metaphorischen Konzepten/Domänen, die Verletzung der Angemessenheit, das Fehlen des Bezugsrahmens, die Vielzahl an Interpretations- möglichkeiten sowie die „falsche“ Betonung von Eigenschaften, die eingehende Zuschreibung von Eigenschaften, die humoristische Unvereinbarkeit mit dem ‚vehicle‘ und

„Bildbrüche“ (Katachrese) werden miteinander verglichen und anhand konkreter Beispiele erörtert.

The article discusses creative metaphors as forms of intentionally produced verbal humour. The paramount objective is to present a number of factors which emerge as responsible for the humorous potential of metaphors in the light of relevant theories of metaphor, as well as the incongruity-resolution model proposed in humour studies. Several explanatory points, by no means mutually exclusive, are raised viz. diaphoricity, incongruity between the concepts/domains, aptness violation, unavailability of the ground, multiple interpretations and “wrong” prioritisation of features, exhaustive attribution of features, humorous incongruity within the vehicle, and catachresis.

1. Introduction

Metaphor is here deemed as a source of conversational humour, which does not appear to have been widely investigated in humour literature so far. Even if correspondences between humour and metaphor have been mentioned (Attardo 1994; Coulson 2000; Grady et al. 1999), few writings in linguistics account for the humorous capacity of metaphors. For instance, Veale (2003) and Veale et al. (2006) address metaphor as one of the cognitive construals exploited in the game of trumping. On the other hand, Mio and Graesser (1991) investigate disparagement metaphors, testifying that those are more humorous than uplifting ones. The perspective assumed here is closest to that of a few authors, such as Fónagy (1982) or Pollio (1996), who explain the humorousness of metaphors, referring to the semantic distance between the two concepts compared. Unfortunately, this model can easily be criticised on
the grounds that all metaphors, even those non-humorous, operate on some

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distance between the two juxtaposed concepts, and it is thus difficult, if not impossible, to determine when it is large enough to be considered humorous, which is why other provisions need to be added to render the approach more tenable. Also, it must be highlighted that the focus here is humorousness, but not necessarily funniness (see Carrell 1997) of metaphors. Accordingly, the article addresses metaphors which display humorous potential, but need not be considered genuinely funny, inasmuch as funniness is an individual’s idiosyncratic evaluation of a humorous stimulus. Additionally, attention is paid to deliberately produced humorous verbalisations, rather than slips of the tongue or linguistic lapses, which may also lead to humorous unintentional metaphors.
The notion of resolvable incongruity is the most widely espoused explanation the workings of humour within linguistics and psychology (see Keith-Spiegel
1972; Ruch 1992, 2008; Forabosco 1992, 2008; Staley/Derks 1995; Ritchie 2004; Partington 2006; Martin 2007; Dynel 2009). There is no unanimous agreement on how incongruity should be conceptualised, which is because authors adjust their postulates to the forms of humour on which they concentrate. The most general, capture-all definition appears to be the one stating that incongruity is “a mismatch, disharmony or contrast between ideas or elements in the broadest possible sense” (Attardo 1994:48). However, each of the numerous humour manifestations (e.g. pictures, drawings, canned jokes, satirical stories, etc.) has its own subordinate incongruity-based mechanism. Therefore, there simply must exist various unequivocal conceptualisations of incongruity mechanisms if they are propounded in reference to diversified humour phenomena.
Additionally, although incongruity adequately captures mechanisms underlying humorous stimuli, it does not differentiate between humorous and non-humorous incongruity, the latter causing responses such as moral disapproval, fear, shock, puzzlement or anxiety (see Berlyne 1960, 1972; Rothbart 1976; Morreall 1989, Staley/Derks 1995). In his answer to this query, Suls (1972) highlights that humorous incongruity entails unexpectedness, illogicality and ultimate resolution. Other authors endorse different, albeit not contradictory, opinions on a sine qua non for humorous incongruity, e.g. a facilitating (pleasant, safe) context (Rothbart 1976), or a playful frame of mind
(Apter 1982). Most importantly, the majority of authors concur on the

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incongruity resolution requirement (see Ruch 1992; 2008; Forabosco 1992,
2008; Staley/Derks 1995; Martin 2007; Dynel 2009).
Broadly speaking, the incongruity-resolution model, credited primarily to Suls (1972, 1983), as well as to Shultz (1972, 1974, 1976), holds that incongruity is first observed and later resolved, i.e. made congruous, according to an adequate cognitive rule. Again, the resolution process will manifest itself differently for each humorous form and each incongruity. In addition, it can be argued that it always takes place, even if it coincides merely with the hearer’s acknowledgement that there is a humorous incongruity capitalising on a given mechanism (Dynel 2009). As Forabosco (2008) rightly posits, the element of sense is always present in the background, and the perceiver always exerts mental control over the stimulus. Nevertheless, incongruity must never be removed entirely at the resolution stage (Suls 1983; Ruch and Hehl 1998; Forabosco 1992, 2008; Attardo/Raskin 1991). A complete removal of incongruity would disallow the appreciation of two competitive meanings, and hence of the whole humorous stimulus. Accordingly, having completed the incongruity and resolution stages, the interpreter re-appreciates the nature of the incongruity and its resolution, which is compatible with Koestler’s (1964) bisociation1 (for a detailed discussion, see Dynel 2009). The incongruity- resolution mechanism is realised in humorous metaphors in a number of ways, which will be presented in this article.

2. Metaphor in focus

Numerous conceptualisations of metaphor have been proposed in literature. In simple terms, metaphor expresses similarity between the semantic vehicle (base or source) and the semantic tenor (topic or target), viz. a less accessible notion to be defined. Metaphor is an inexplicit comparison of two seemingly unrelated concepts, one familiar and one unfamiliar, as a result of which features of the unknown one are revealed by analogy. In cognitive terms, metaphor is widely acknowledged to be the selective systematic mapping of conceptual structure from one conceptual domain onto another (e.g. Tourangeau/Sternberg 1981, 1982; Black 1962; Tversky 1977; Malgady/Johnson 1979; Glucksberg/Keysar 1990; Glucksberg/McGlone 1999;

1 The issue of bisociation is frequently raised in literature on humour and metaphor (e.g. Koestler 1964, MacCormac 1985, Coulson 2000).

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Gentner 1983; Gentner/Wolff 1997; Shen 1999)2. Domains as cognitive entities comprised of mental experiences, representations and concepts, which are characterised along relevant dimensions (Langacker 1987). When recognising a given metaphor, an individual perceives a concept from one domain in terms of its similarity to a concept from the other domain (Tourangeau/Sternberg 1981, 1982), which may constitute only an ad hoc category (e.g. Glucksberg/Keysar 1990; Chiappe et al. 2003). Therefore, the source and the target manifest common features/attributes, which constitute the relational basis, i.e. ground/tertium comparationis of the metaphor (Black
1962, 1979; Tversky 1977; Ortony 1979; Tourangeau/Sternberg 1981), which is the foundation of the emergent meaning. However, besides the similarity evoked, there will always be residual dissimilarity between the tenor and the vehicle. This dissimilarity is dubbed “tension” (Tourangeau/Sternberg 1982).
Crucial to the present discussion is the dichotomy between dead and creative metaphors. Dead, stock or conventional metaphors come into being in the process of gradual conventionalisation and literalisation of initially semantically deviant expressions and start to function as lexicalised polysemous senses, often coinciding with idioms (see Traugott 19853; Lakoff
1987; Gentner/Wolff 1997; MacCormac 1985, for a different view see Lakoff/Johnson 1980). In contrast, creative/novel metaphors, which are the focus of attention here, rely on active creation and comprehension processes. While speakers creatively produce novel metaphors, listeners must actively participate in the process of interpretation to infer the intended meanings (MacCormac 1985). Such metaphors are non-existent in semantic memory and are unlikely to fit any pre-established source-to-target mappings. In other words, two concepts are combined, producing both semantic anomaly and new conceptual insight (MacCormac 1985). Creative metaphors are unconventional verbalisations rooted in unprecedented ways of viewing the world (Black 1962; Miles 1967). Furthermore, such metaphors can be conceived of in terms of those that have to be elucidated, rather than those that elucidate

2 The models propounded by various authors offer diversified hypotheses on mapping mechanisms.

3 The author also dichotomises institutionalised metaphors into completely dead and conventional ones. While the completely dead ones (e.g. “veiled”) are entirely devoid of the original metaphorical force, conventional ones (e.g. “a snowball’s chance in hell”) still manifest some metaphorical value.

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(see Mooij 1976). They are also not cognitively economic, since they entail conceptual effort on the part of the speaker and the hearer.
Finally, it should be mentioned that a number of taxonomies of metaphors depending on their surface structure have been proposed (e.g. Miller 1979; Brooke-Rose 1958). All the same, what ought to be emphasised is that the majority of cognitivists and pragmaticists concentrate on metaphor following the ‘X is Y’ linguistic formula for the sake of clarity of presentation. Almost all the examples presented here subscribe to this pattern. Irrespective of the stylistic formulation, the paradigm for understanding of metaphor is: X is LIKE Y in respect of Z, where X is the tenor, Y the vehicle, and Z the ground (Leech 1969). Contrary to the tenor and the vehicle, the ground does not normally appear in the surface structure and must be inferred.

3. Metaphors and humour

The global explanation for the humorousness of metaphors is their novelty and surprising form, coupled with the fact that they recruit unconventional vehicles, sometimes in the form of elaborate ad hoc concepts. Consequently, humorous metaphors produce incongruity at the level of the hearer’s lexicon. Needless to say, the feature of novelty is not reserved to metaphors carrying humorous potential but it is their intrinsic feature, as long as the hearer is not familiar with a given verbalisation. This concurs with the well-grounded postulate that novelty and the element of surprise are the sine qua non for humour’s occurrence.
The central humorous capacity resides, however, in the incongruity between the topic and the vehicle and their attributes, which are, nevertheless, somehow compatible (congruous), even if this may be difficult to observe initially. This phenomenon can be approached in a number of ways. Several postulates are propounded below with a view to describing (even if not necessarily unequivocally determining) the underpinnings of incongruity- based, humorous metaphors. It should also be mentioned that these linguistic phenomena can be observed both from the speaker’s/producer’s and the hearer’s/listener’s4/interpreter’s perspective, for the latter is considered to be

4 Technically, the interpreter may also be a reader. However, given that conversational humour is most frequently (albeit not always) spoken the terms “hearer”/“listener” as used.

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able to conduct the comprehension process, as intended by the former. The method of presentation assumed here conforms to the interpreter’s purview.

3.1 Diaphoricity

The problem of the tenor-vehicle incongruity can be viewed from the perspective of the dichotomy between epiphors and diaphors championed by Wheelwright (1962) and MacCormac (1985). Epiphors, coinciding with the widely accepted view of metaphor, hinge on similarities between concepts. By contrast, diaphors convey new meanings by emphasising dissimilarities, i.e. the tension or incongruity, between concepts. However, there exist neither pure epiphors nor pure diaphors. Each metaphorical expression bears a varied number of features typical of both the types. In some metaphors, epiphoric elements, i.e. analogies, are so salient that any semantic anomaly instantly recedes to the background, whereas in others, it is diaphoric elements that abound and are the most salient, which is why finding similarities between the two concepts is difficult (MacCormac 1985). It emerges that most humorous metaphors subscribe to the diaphoric category, the tension between the tenor and the vehicle being more conspicuous than the ground, i.e. the tertium comparationis. Humorous metaphors centre on unusual and unprecedented correspondences between concepts.
(1) Billboards are warts on the landscape.5
attributes of the tenor: are placed on buildings or around a piece of land, used for advertising, etc.
attributes of the vehicle: blemishes, appear on skin, have no purpose, etc.
ground, i.e. similarity: something that mars something meaning: Billboards mar the landscape.
(2) This roll is a dune.
attributes of the tenor: made of dough, something to eat, etc. attributes of the vehicle: a hill of sand, something to walk on, etc. ground, i.e. similarity: something that crumbles easily
meaning: This roll crumbles and is not very nice.

5 All the examples come form the author’s private corpus of conversational humour garnered on the basis of media language (inclusive of random Internet resources) and real- life conversations held by the author with her friends and acquaintances.

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A metaphor is humorous when the dissimilarities between the tenor and the vehicle loom large, while the points of convergence are covert. The perception of incongruous ideas with the simultaneous expectation of a metaphorical comparison forces the listener to seek similarities among the attributes of the concepts, and thereby to resolve the incongruity. When found, points of resemblance between the two concepts are all the more striking, granting the interpreter the pleasurable feeling of cognitive satisfaction consequent upon his/her arrival at a resolution and the resultant appreciation of humour. Closely related to this is the postulate of incongruity between the tenor and the vehicle, conceived of as two juxtaposed domains/concepts.

3.2 Incongruity between the concepts/domains

According to the comparison view, although the topic and the base should be as similar as possible, the similarity should not be transparent, and hence too easy to observe (see Malgady/Johnson 1976). On the other hand, advocates of the anomaly viewpoint attach importance to the greatest possible difference between the two juxtaposed elements (e.g. Campbell 1975). Similarly, Tourangeau and Sternberg (1981, 1982) propose that metaphor’s aptness correlates positively with the dissimilarity between domains. Tourangeau and Sternberg postulate “the greater this dissimilarity, the better the metaphor” (1981:30). As signalled earlier, the distance between concepts and domains to which they belong may be regarded as a basis of humour (Fónagy 1982; Pollio
1996), notably resolvable humorous incongruity. Thus, one characteristic feature of humorous metaphor is resolvable incongruity between the domains/concepts compared. Two juxtaposed concepts stem from disparate ontological domains, e.g. concrete vs. abstract, inanimate vs. animate, non- human vs. human, with relevant attributes being transferred from one to the other. This process can give rise to sub-types of metaphors, e.g. personification or ‘animalification’, which appear to be particularly prolific mechanisms of humour.
(3) That guy is a dog wagging his tail, whimpering and salivating.
animalification
a man vs. an animal
ground: symptoms indicating a craving for something meaning: That guy wants something and can’t wait to get it.

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(4) I’m a doormat in the world of boots.
reification
a person vs. a thing ground: being trodden on
meaning: I’m treated very badly by everybody.
(5) This coffee is a killer with an Afro hairstyle.
personification
a thing vs. a person
ground: causing death, with some special layer (as if hair) at the top meaning: This coffee is very strong/much too strong and has a foamy layer of grounds at the top.
Although technically immeasurable, the strength of the dissimilarity between domains represented by the vehicle and the tenor purports to be an undeniable correlate of humour. Each incongruous juxtaposition of concepts produces a perceptual surprise engendering humour, perhaps even prior to the stage of resolution per se, on condition that the interpreter experiences cognitive control over a textual chunk (rather than anxiety, for instance). Full appreciation of the metaphor and its humorousness comes with the hearer’s realisation that the incongruous concepts deriving from incongruous domains are in a way congruous. In other words, the incongruity between the tenor and the vehicle must be resolved so that the full humorous potential and the metaphorical meaning can be acknowledged. When the tertium comparationis has been found, the interpreter may go through bisociation processes, oscillating between the inter-domain incongruity and congruity.
(6) Her laugh is an old Chevrolet starting up on a below-freezing morning.
human-related vs. inanimate
ground: a wheezing or grinding sound
meaning: Her laugh is very unpleasant, coarse and chortling.

(7) This meat is fresh asphalt. food vs. something inedible ground: gummy

meaning: This meat is very chewy.
(8) Universities are compost heaps.
prestigious places of education vs. putrefying organic waste ground: causing growth and development
meaning: Universities proliferate knowledge and cause societal
development.

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Needless to say, the sole existence of incongruity between domains does not immanently determine the humorousness of a given diaphoric metaphor, which may be novel and perceptive, but not humorous. As earlier mentioned, it is difficult, if not impossible, to propose a hierarchy of domains which would explain why some metaphorical elements are more distant and thus produce a more humorous effect than others, especially given that many source concepts are constructed ad hoc and are very elaborate (ex. 5, 6, 7, 11,
12). It could be tentatively hypothesised that it may be not the degree of distance per se but the character of the domains involved that accounts for the humorous potential. Humorous metaphors may be pivoted on source domains which are perceived as being tabooed, or at least somehow inappropriate. As a result, the emergent meaning is also somewhat frivolous or carries disparagement, but never against the addressee who should find it humorous (and not derogatory, as the direct target of such a jibe does). By contrast, the seriousness of the meaning to be conveyed will, in all likelihood, impede any humorous effect that might otherwise arise due to the distance between the domains compared.
(9) Her haircut is a prop for a horror movie. a hairstyle vs. a scary horror prop ground: being scary
meaning: Her haircut is so awful that it scares people.

(10) Her voice is an ice cube dropped down one’s back on a hot, sunny day.

a woman’s voice vs. the shocking sensation caused by an ice cube sliding on a very warm body
ground: something unpleasant and shocking
meaning: Her voice is very shocking and unpleasant, sending shivers down the hearer’s spine.

(11) She was a madman trigger-happy with an Uzi, producing a stream of unintelligible words.

a talkative but unclear speaker vs. an insane, and thus uncontrollable, person using a weapon
ground: uncontrollable production of copious numbers of something meaning: She blabbered on uncontrollably.
(12) During the party, I was the only one in a nudist colony wearing a duffel coat.
a person at a party vs. the sole person wearing warm clothes among naked people

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ground: the feeling of anxiety-provoking difference
meaning: During the party the speaker felt very awkward and alienated.

(13) A man without a wife is a statue without pigeons. a single man vs. a statue not infested with pigeons ground: being overburdened with problems

meaning: A single man is not overburdened with problems.
There have been attempts at verifying semantic distance of words and concepts on the basis of subjects’ ratings (Godkewitsch 1974; Hillson/Martin
1994), which corroborate the incongruity-resolution theory of humour. However, the authors merely check the funniness of forged collocations (Godkewitsch 1974) or metaphors (Hillson/Martin 1994), when those operate on concepts from distant domains, on the belief that “greater distance = greater incongruity” (Martin 2007:94). Regrettably, no distance measurement techniques are elucidated (Nota bene, Hillson/Martin (1974) also testify that metaphors are funnier if they can be resolved, which the authors dub within- domain resolution, here conceptualised as the tertium comparationis/ground between the tenor and the vehicle.). In conclusion, a disparity, conceived also as incongruity, between domains seems to be a plausible parameter explicating the humorous force of metaphors. Unfortunately, the distance between the domains appears to evade mathematical computation or measurement. Therefore, whether a distance is humorous can be evaluated only intuitively. It is noteworthy that such immeasurability is also a point of critique raised against explanatory humour theories, be it incongruity or script opposition (Raskin 1985). Those obtain, practically without fail, on provision that the text (or a different stimulus) is taken for granted as being humorous.
The two points discussed above appear to be the two superordinate tenets, applicable practically to all instances of humorous metaphors. However, a number of subordinate and non-obligatory mechanisms accounting for humorousness of metaphors can also be found.

3.3 Aptness violation: less salient features and unprototypical vehicles

Another method of explaining humorous incongruity in metaphor is to observe that its aptness is violated (see Tversky 1977; Ortony 1979; Chiappe et al. 2003). Similarly, humorous metaphor can also be conceptualised in terms of the violation of Tourangeau and Sternberg’s (1981, 1982) salience-dictated diagnosticity principle, or Gentner’s (1983) connectivity and systematicity

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Dynel, Metaphor as the source of humor

principles. In essence, since the function of metaphor, as traditionally proposed, is to elucidate an unknown concept, an apt metaphor revolves around the salient feature(s) of the vehicle and, usually, non-salient feature(s) of the tenor to be captured. By contrast, humorous metaphors need not be formed to elucidate the meaning of an unknown or elusive concept, but are primarily oriented towards producing a humorous effect. This is why they tend to be hinged on a reverse mechanism. Consequently, an apt humorous metaphor may be formed by combining a (contextually) salient feature of the tenor, which is thus fully comprehensible, and, what is more significant, a far less salient (ex. 14) or non-salient (ex. 15) feature of the vehicle. In other words, the most salient feature of the vehicle evoked does not have to be the one which is chosen as the one attributed to the tenor.
(14) This place is the bottom of the last man sitting on too short a toboggan.

(said upon entering a mountain chalet in winter)

attributes of the vehicle: hanging down, dragged on snow, very cold meaning: This place is freezing cold!
(15) I’m a Tarzan. This is an easy question!
attributes of the vehicle: uncultivated and maladjusted man, surrounded by monkeys and apes
meaning: I’m surrounded by people who do not think.
By the same token, humorous metaphors are formed in defiance of the premise of aptness conceptualised by Glucksberg and Keysar (1990) and Glucksberg/McGlone (1999), according to whom the vehicle ought to be prototypical or emblematic of the attributive ad hoc category which it epitomises, being subject to the interpreter’s nearly effortless understanding. If a metaphor is to elucidate a given concept, its comprehensibility should be the function of the prototypicality of a metaphorical vehicle for a particular category. Prototypicality coincides with what is perceived as conventional in a given culture, even if untrue or based on a stereotype. Moreover, as Glucksberg/Keysar (1990) observe, this phenomenon accounts for metaphorical systems of conventional, viz. systematic, metaphors proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). All such tenets stand in opposition to humorous metaphoricity. Verbal humour is frequently correlated with novelty and unconventionality of expression, which may be governed by exclusive aptness of the metaphor at its heart. The creativity of humorous metaphors is anchored
in the fact that the vehicles chosen are not conventional. Being less familiar, if

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not unfamiliar, to hearers, they appear more problematic cognitively and are not subject to their automatic inferencing. This process of meaning construction may initially be hindered, especially when the vehicle is linearly (over)developed and conceptually complex, and hence difficult to conceive of.

(16) Using a complex, sophisticated technique to attract a man is preparing a gourmet French meal for a Labrador retriever.

attributes of the vehicle: the meal is very expensive and effortful, while the breed is known for its gluttony (it devours a lot of food), which means that it will eat anything and the effort devoted to preparing the meal is superfluous
meaning: Using an elaborate technique to attract a man is unnecessary,
as it does not take a lot for a man to let himself be lured.

(17) The new employee is a tortoise with arthritis.

attributes of the vehicle: the tortoise is commonly believed (even if wrongly) to be very slow, while one with arthritis will be even slower meaning: The new employee is very slow.
Conceptualised in either way, aptness violation contributes to the incongruity between the two concepts juxtaposed in a metaphorical comparison. Additionally, sometimes the complex vehicle may manifest a subordinate humorous incongruity, which must be resolved before the main incongruity is tackled, leading to the hearer’s appreciation of the metaphor’s meaning and humour. The next three sections aim to provide further consequences of aptness violation.

3.4 Unavailability of the ground

Although the features characteristic of the vehicle may be many, it is only some, usually the most salient, that must be given priority in the metaphor comprehension process (see Tversky 1977; Ortony 1979; Glucksberg/Keysar
1990). Nonetheless, it happens to be the speaker’s intention to produce a metaphorical expression based on not only a less salient feature but also a most unlikely property of the source, which causes the hearer’s difficulty in finding any tertium comparationis/ground. In such diaphoric metaphors only incongruities between the concepts are striking, while there is no (instantly) perceptible similitude, i.e. congruity between them. Searching for an adequate feature, the interpreter is likely to activate the most salient features, which emerge as hardly mappable onto the tenor. Being cognisant of the fact that the
hearer will not appreciate or prioritise the relevant but covert attributes of the

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vehicle (or the tenor) forming the ground of the metaphor, the speaker ultimately clarifies the meaning by explicating the tertium comparationis, thereby divulging the meaning of the metaphorical comparison.
(18) This idea is a Christmas cracker… one massively disappointing bang and the novelty soon wears off.
attributes of the vehicle: associated with Christmas joy, containing confetti and sweets, made of colourful paper and cardboard, etc.
(19) My manager is a seagull…. she flies in, makes a lot of noise, s***s on everything and then leaves.
attributes of the vehicle: a bird that lives at the seaside, eats mainly fish, bothers holidaymakers, etc.
(20) Men buying lingerie for women are little kids buying cereal. They take the stuff they have no interest in just to get the prize inside.
attributes of the vehicle: children are attracted to colourful packages, choose those with chocolate, cannot choose which brand they want, etc.

(21) Life is a box of chocolates6… There is a variety but you always pick the worst one because the nicest ones have already been taken.

attributes of the vehicle: there is a variety, you pick what you want, you never know what flavours there are, etc.
(22) Marriage is an asparagus… It is always bland no matter what the spouses do with their relationship to make it more attractive.
attributes of the vehicle: a vegetable that is long and green and has shoots at one end, can be regarded as a gourmet vegetable, can be prepared in a variety of ways, etc.
On the other hand, the speaker may deliberately fail to explicate the ground and leave room for the addressee’s interpretation, which is a case discussed in the next section.

3.5 Multiple interpretations and “wrong” prioritisation of features

While the previous category embraces cases of metaphors hampering the hearer’s perception of the tertium comparationis, which needs to be elucidated by the speaker, there can also be instances of the incongruous juxtaposition of elements open to multiple interpretations, as intended by the speaker. The humorous potential of metaphor can stem from the equal likelihood of mappability of a number of properties of the base onto the target. Because

6 This example was initially used by Forrest Gump, who intended the metaphor to be understood differently, i.e. you never know what you may get.

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there is no salient feature that can be unequivocally transported onto the tenor, humorous metaphors are open to multiple interpretations. Nota bene, open- endedness and interpretation variability are immanent features of all creative metaphors (cf. Carston 2002). Those of a humorous nature may exploit features which do not emerge as the most easily mappable ones.
This multiplicity of meanings is the outcome not of the hearer’s misinterpretation, but of the speaker’s underlying objective to produce a metaphor leading to ambiguity of meanings, which is typical of many a humour form (see Raskin 1985). Admittedly, “the right” interpretation may be non-existent, for the speaker’s aim is to have the hearer oscillate between alternative mappings. Therefore, the hearer is left with a number of competing inferences, which contributes to the humorous effect. The incongruity comes into being not only at the intersection of the tenor and the vehicle, which are rendered congruous in each alternative interpretation, but also at a higher level, namely between the competing inferences. This higher-level incongruity is resolved when the listener understands which of the mapping(s) is/are indeed meant by the producer of the metaphor or when the hearer realises that the latter intends this ambiguity to arise.
The phenomenon of multiple interpretations may be explained on the same grounds as the category discussed earlier. While in non-humorous metaphors, only some of the features of the vehicle are salient and only some are normally attributable to the topic, in humorous ones, any features can be prioritised and assumed as the tertium comparationis. In humorous metaphor, indiscriminate importation of features from the vehicle to the topic takes place, regardless of the degree of their salience and relevance to either the vehicle or the tenor. If priority is given to non-attributable, albeit salient, features of the vehicle, absurd humour comes into being.
(23) Her face is jelly.
salient attributes of the vehicle not mappable onto the tenor: eaten for
dessert, having a certain fruit flavour, made from gelatine and sugar, etc.
attributes of the vehicle mappable onto the source: artificial, translucent but coloured, set and still but shaky when touched, etc.
meanings:
Her face is artificial, due to the strong make-up she wears.Her facial complexion is very light, as if translucent, with foundation on it.

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Dynel, Metaphor as the source of humor

Her facial expression does not change, as she always keeps a stiff upper lip.
Her facial contours are saggy. absurd meanings:
Her face can be eaten for dessert. Her face has a fruit flavour.

(24) Love is a runny nose.

attributes of the vehicle: a common ailment almost everybody experiences, passes after a week or so even when one takes no medicines, everybody hates it, numbs the senses of smell and taste, makes one use a lot of handkerchiefs, etc.
meanings:
Love is a common ailment. Love passes after a week or so.
Love always gets one sooner or later. Love passes by itself.
Everybody hates experiencing love.
Love numbs the senses of smell and taste. Love makes one use a lot of handkerchiefs.
To recapitulate, the multiplicity of meanings engenders ambiguity and, partly, the resultant humorous incongruity. The interpreter generates a number of meanings, being unable to distinguish only one (when the topic is indeed unknown and there are no contextual factors facilitating the choice of the right interpretation), and simultaneously enjoying the plausibility or absurdity of them all. Secondly, humour originates partly from the incongruity between the topic and each feature arbitrarily attributed to it from the vehicle. This incongruity is also resolved when the interpreter realises that the emergent meaning is plausible or absurd.

3.6 Exhaustive attribution of features

There is yet another potential explanation for humour in metaphor related to the issue of aptness and multiple feature attribution. Accordingly, it may be consequent upon exhaustive mapping of features of the source concept onto the target concept. This entails transferring many, and even all, features of the base onto the topic without any adjustments, which is a violation of Tourangeau/Sternberg’s (1981, 1982) postulate that the vehicle’s qualities attributed to the tenor must be appropriately transformed to suit the new domain. In humorous metaphors, the interpreter pays no heed to the matching

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and alignment processes or to the verification of whether the features are salient for the vehicle or attributable to the topic. In consequence, all features are conveyed from the vehicle to the tenor. As a result of this indiscriminate feature importation, the hearer visualises the target precisely as the vehicle.
(25) Discotheque lights are glowing pimples.
(26) My beauty is a retirement pensioner.
Admittedly, this visualisation is dependent on the hearers’ processing and their literal treatment of the statement. However, it is undeniably prompted by the metaphor’s diaphoricity.

3.7 Humorous incongruity within the vignette of the vehicle

A different source of humour in metaphors is not only incongruity between the tenor and the vehicle but also incongruity inherent in the evocation of the vehicle alone. In other words, the conceptualisation of the source concept carries its own incongruity and humour, often bordering on the absurd. The interpreter first resolves this subordinate incongruity, and then tackles the higher-level one, i.e. between the vehicle and the tenor, finding the relevant attributes and the ground.
(27) Without my glasses, I’m a short-sighted mole which has lost its contact lenses.
incongruity within the vehicle: a mole vs. wearing/losing one’s contact lenses
topic-vehicle incongruity: a person without glasses vs. a blind animal
which wears lenses
meaning: Without my glasses, I can’t see almost anything.
(28) My hangover is elephants’ ballet performance held on a ship in a heavy storm.
incongruity within the vehicle: subtle ballet vs. clumsy elephants on a ship
topic-vehicle incongruity: the feeling of hangover vs. a ballet of elephants on a ship
meaning: My hangover makes me feel as if the room rocked, jumped and swirled.
(29) You’re a lame snail on crutches.
incongruity within the vehicle: a snail vs. being lame and using crutches topic-vehicle incongruity: a person vs. a snail on crutches
meaning: You’re incredibly slow.

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Dynel, Metaphor as the source of humor

(30) I’m a nutty squirrel with advanced sclerosis.
incongruity within the vehicle: a squirrel vs. suffering from sclerosis topic-vehicle incongruity: a person vs. a sclerotic squirrel
meaning: I hide or put things away and then forget where.
Some might claim that if humour is couched in one chunk of the metaphorical text, this cannot be regarded as a case of a humorous metaphor per se. However, it is here argued that this may actually be considered germane to a metaphor, since the textual chunk does assume the form of this figure and there is also incongruity between the metaphor’s two elements.

3.8 Catachresis

The final phenomenon explaining the humorousness of metaphor is the concept of catachresis, often used synonymously with the term of “mixed metaphor”. The term derives from the Greek word “katachresis” meaning “extension” or “transgression” and is reported to have been introduced in antiquity in reference to transfer of meaning. Nowadays, catachresis is commonly understood as an abuse or perversion of metaphor by an inapt juxtaposition of words arising due to the latter’s literal meanings or due to the violation of the traditional decorum principle. More relevant in the context of the present work is the use of two metaphors one after another in a single textual chunk, leading to a stylistic clash. Although mixed metaphor is normally considered to be a (humorous) mistake, it may also be applied consciously for the sake of generating humour. Moreover, it could be hypothesised that a jocular effect is all the greater if two juxtaposed vehicles belong to the same conceptual domain or very similar ones (e.g. animals, food, parts of the body), giving rise to the meta-level incongruity contingent upon the unexpected similarity, which is resolved once the meaning of the whole utterance is appreciated. Needless to say, either of the metaphors may be conducive to the humorous (resolvable) incongruity on the strength of factors presented earlier.

(32) She’s got the little eyes of an obese pig that bulge like frogspawn when she’s surprised.

(33) On New Year’s Day, groups of winos and idlers are crawling onto the pavement like worms after rain and noble citizens, honey drunken bees, bump into walls.

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4. Conclusion

The article aimed to account for the humorous potential of intentionally produced, novel metaphors. It can be safely concluded that the global mechanism underlying all humorous metaphors, as predicted, is resolvable incongruity, which can be explained on various grounds. None of the explanations is claimed to be a prescriptive rule which, when followed, will invariably lead the speaker to create a humorous metaphor. The hypotheses propounded in this article are only interpretative tools, facilitating the verification of humour in metaphors.
First and foremost, creative metaphor appears to be humorous if the juxtaposition of concepts is unprecedented and strikes the interpreter as surprising. This corresponds to the incongruity between the domains and the diaphoricity of the comparison, thanks to which incongruities between the tenor and the vehicle are transparent, while the few similarities are covert, at least initially, and entail considerable cognitive processing on the interpreter’s part. Nevertheless, when the ground and common feature(s) of the two concepts are discovered, the incongruity is resolved. Additionally, the humorous type of metaphor tends to manifest peculiar aptness, as less salient features are foregrounded, while the vehicle need not be a prototypical member of an ad hoc category. Sometimes, relevant features of the vehicle, and thus the source, cannot be inferred at all, given the non-salience and/or unmappability of the focal feature(s). Accordingly, the hearer is not capable of making any inference, while the ground is duly explained by the speaker. On the other hand, the hearer may arrive at multiple interpretations, some of them far-fetched or absurd, leading to humorous ambiguity and higher-level incongruity. In extreme cases, the interpreter may conduct exhaustive attribution of features and, ultimately, visualise the target as the source. Yet another factor contributing to the humorous effect is resolvable incongruity within the conceptualisation of the vehicle alone. Finally, in the case of catachresis embracing two novel metaphors, an additional layer of resolvable incongruity emerges between two adjacent metaphors, especially if they exploit vehicles belonging to one domain.
It should also be emphasised that the article concentrated on aspects relevant exclusively to metaphors, while those may be combined with other humorous linguistic devices. Therefore, although verbalised as a metaphor, a textual

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chunk may be humorous thanks to, for example, an internal pun. Also, no claim is ventured that the list of explanations provided is exhaustive. After all, metaphor is a birthday cake, i.e. it has many tiers, there is some for everybody interested, and everybody interested derives pleasure from digesting it.

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Metaphors of the EU constitutional debate – Ways of charting discourse coherence in a complex metaphor field

Michael Kimmel

Abstract

In 2005, referenda about the EU’s constitutional treaty were held in several European countries, which resulted in a No vote in France and the Netherlands and which left the European polity both devastated and clueless. The present essay describes metaphors in British journalism beginning with the year before the referenda and ending a few months after them. In 675 examined newspaper articles from the Sun and the Guardian, mostly commentaries, diverse conceptual patterns are found that belong to five major headings (= metaphoric target domains): the EU as political entity, the EU constitutional treaty, the process of EU integration, the impact of the No votes on the European polity, and pro- or anti-constitution campaigning prior to the referenda. A software-assisted and full-scale survey of metaphors is undertaken to identify recurrent conceptual metaphor patterns. This is followed by a theoretical analysis that aims to exemplify how cross-buttressing tendencies in the metaphor field, i.e. coherence between conceptual metaphors, can be charted out. The basic insight underlying this is that metaphors not emanating from the same conceptual metaphor can still entertain important conceptual relations with each other, for example because their inferences fit together or because they partake of a single “metaphorically told” story. With this in mind, the basic data is screened for coherence patterns that further weave together the discourse fabric. Metaphor scenarios and narrative connections play a major role here. Other mechanisms of importance relate to generic similarities between target and source domains, metaphor composition, as well as looser kinds of metaphor pastiche.

Im Jahr 2005 wurden in mehreren Ländern Referenden über den EU Verfassungsvertrag abgehalten, die in Frankreich und den Niederlanden in einem Nein resultierten und damit die Europäische Politik erschüttert und ratlos zurückließen. Der gegenwärtige Essay zeichnet Metaphern des britischen Journalismus nach, beginnend im Jahr vor den Referenden und bis hin zu ein paar Monaten danach. In den 675 untersuchten Zeitungsartikeln aus der Sun und dem Guardian, zumeist Kommentaren, werden verschiedene konzeptuelle Muster augenfällig, die fünf großen Gruppen (= metaphorischen Zielbereichen) zuzuordnen sind: die EU als politische Institution, der EU Verfassungsvertrag, der Prozess der EU Integration, die Auswirkungen des Neins auf die Europäische Politik, sowie die Pro- bzw. Anti-Verfassungskampagnen vor den Referenden. Es wird ein vollständiger und durch Software unterstützter Überblick mit dem Ziel unternommen, alle systematisch auftauchenden konzeptuellen Metaphern zu identifizieren. Daran knüpft eine theoretische Analyse an, die darauf abzielt aufzuweisen, wie Querverstrebungen im Metaphernfeld, d.h. kohärente konzeptuelle Metaphern, erfasst werden können. Die zugrundeliegende Einsicht hierfür ist, dass Metaphern, die nicht aus der gleichen konzeptuellen Metapher hervorgehen, dennoch wichtige semantische Verbindungen unterhalten können, etwa weil sie ähnliche Inferenzen nahelegen oder weil sie Teil einer gemeinsamen „metaphorisch erzählten“ Geschichte sind. Die Basisdaten werden folglich auf Kohärenzmuster geprüft, welche den Diskurs enger verweben. Metaphernszenarien und narrative Verstrebungen spielen hierbei eine wichtige Rolle. Weitere wichtige Mechanismen beziehen sich auf generische Ähnlichkeiten zwischen Ziel- und Quellbereichen, Metaphernkomposition, sowie lockerere Metaphernzusammensetzungen.
 

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Seite 49

Metaphors of the EU constitutional debate – Ways of charting discourse coherence in a complex metaphor field

Michael Kimmel, University of Vienna (michael.kimmel@univie.ac.at)

Abstract

In 2005, referenda about the EU’s constitutional treaty were held in several European countries, which resulted in a No vote in France and the Netherlands and which left the European polity both devastated and clueless. The present essay describes metaphors in British journalism beginning with the year before the referenda and ending a few months after them. In 675 examined newspaper articles from the Sun and the Guardian, mostly commentaries, diverse conceptual patterns are found that belong to five major headings (= metaphoric target domains): the EU as political entity, the EU constitutional treaty, the process of EU integration, the impact of the No votes on the European polity, and pro- or anti-constitution campaigning prior to the referenda. A software-assisted and full-scale survey of metaphors is undertaken to identify recurrent conceptual metaphor patterns. This is followed by a theoretical analysis that aims to exemplify how cross-buttressing tendencies in the metaphor field, i.e. coherence between conceptual metaphors, can be charted out. The basic insight underlying this is that metaphors not emanating from the same conceptual metaphor can still entertain important conceptual relations with each other, for example because their inferences fit together or because they partake of a single “metaphorically told” story. With this in mind, the basic data is screened for coherence patterns that further weave together the discourse fabric. Metaphor scenarios and narrative connections play a major role here. Other mechanisms of importance relate to generic similarities between target and source domains, metaphor composition, as well as looser kinds of metaphor pastiche.

Im Jahr 2005 wurden in mehreren Ländern Referenden über den EU Verfassungsvertrag abgehalten, die in Frankreich und den Niederlanden in einem Nein resultierten und damit die Europäische Politik erschüttert und ratlos zurückließen. Der gegenwärtige Essay zeichnet Metaphern des britischen Journalismus nach, beginnend im Jahr vor den Referenden und bis hin zu ein paar Monaten danach. In den 675 untersuchten Zeitungsartikeln aus der Sun und dem Guardian, zumeist Kommentaren, werden verschiedene konzeptuelle Muster augenfällig, die fünf großen Gruppen (= metaphorischen Zielbereichen) zuzuordnen sind: die EU als politische Institution, der EU Verfassungsvertrag, der Prozess der EU Integration, die Auswirkungen des Neins auf die Europäische Politik, sowie die Pro- bzw. Anti-Verfassungskampagnen vor den Referenden. Es wird ein vollständiger und durch Software unterstützter Überblick mit dem Ziel unternommen, alle systematisch auftauchenden konzeptuellen Metaphern zu identifizieren. Daran knüpft eine theoretische Analyse an, die darauf abzielt aufzuweisen, wie Querverstrebungen im Metaphernfeld, d.h. kohärente konzeptuelle Metaphern, erfasst werden können. Die zugrundeliegende Einsicht hierfür ist, dass Metaphern, die nicht aus der gleichen konzeptuellen Metapher hervorgehen, dennoch wichtige semantische Verbindungen unterhalten können, etwa weil sie ähnliche Inferenzen nahelegen oder weil sie Teil einer gemeinsamen „metaphorisch erzählten“ Geschichte sind. Die Basisdaten werden folglich auf Kohärenzmuster geprüft, welche den Diskurs enger verweben. Metaphernszenarien und narrative Verstrebungen spielen hierbei eine wichtige Rolle. Weitere wichtige Mechanismen beziehen sich auf generische Ähnlichkeiten zwischen Ziel- und Quellbereichen, Metaphernkomposition, sowie lockerere Metaphernzusammensetzungen.

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1. Introduction

Discourse may be likened to a fabric. We may perhaps think of it as a plaid with many intricate patterns, multiple layers of diverse hues that partly overlap, with frayed and threadbare parts at the fringes, or even an occasional loophole, but a plaid that is tightly interwoven in its center and that blends into a dominant coloration when looked at from a distance. Systematic metaphor analysis is suitable for looking at how the woof and warp of this fabric is constituted. Wielding its tools in the proper way, metaphor analysis can illuminate that discourses, although they are never hermetic or of a single piece, turn out patterned, exhibit a plethora of internal connections, delimit the boundaries of a theme, and enable opinion diversity within these limits.
My present topic, the animated and long standing debate around the EU constitution and, more generally, the EU’s future direction represents a discourse field replete with connected metaphor patterns. Part 2 of this paper sets the stage for the subsequent analysis by surveying conceptual metaphors in British EU related journalism. Part 3 then will take up the challenge of reconstructing further coherence relations between these conceptual metaphors (or discourse metaphors, as Zinken et al. 2008 prefer to call the more time- and topic-bound manifestations). My aim is to systematically chart possible affinities, so as to contribute to a metaphor-based theory of discourse coherence. Studying coherence means looking for thematic connections across text passages and whole texts, in order to piece together generative conceptual structures that discourse participants are likely to share.1 Others have undertaken similar efforts in the wake of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980:87-105) seminal discussion of image-schematic and entailment based coherence. What motivates the present effort is the lasting need for data from a corpus that is sufficiently large, metaphorically diverse, and argumentatively complex

1 In opting for a coherence based analysis, I take one of two possible avenues to the study of discourse. The alternative of a cohesion-based analysis I will only briefly touch upon towards the end of this paper. It examines the details of selected text passages and looks at how adjacent metaphors become interwoven within arguments. Other than this, the present paper leaves the question aside of whether logically coherent metaphors surface in textual adjacency, further apart in a text, or in altogether different articles. Note that a more thorough cohesion-based analysis of my data is undertaken in Kimmel (2009).

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enough. To date, theoretical treatments of coherence seem to be limited in one of two ways: Either they are based on compilations from large machine readable corpora or databases such as Goatly’s formidable study (2007),2 thereby cutting across various thematic sources. Or, they single out certain types of metaphor from a thematic corpus, such as Koller’s (2003) programmatic study. While the former approach tends to misrepresent thematic discourses in their inner argumentative coherence, the latter approach shortchanges the need for comprehensiveness. My conviction is that coherence is best understood by examining a single discourse full-scale, especially if we aim to survey the types of “conceptual glue” that metaphors produce. In this spirit, this paper presents an as comprehensive as possible guide to coherence- creating mechanisms that is capable of pointing researchers to patterns they can probe their own data for.
A higher-level coherence analysis of a corpus can ensue only after the major metaphor sets have been comprehensively identified, analyzed with care, and checked for their argumentative variants. To facilitate this, a cut-to-size manual tagging method was implemented in the qualitative annotation software Atlas.ti and applied full-scale to the texts (which is unlike how corpus linguists use their software). Atlas.ti allows multidimensional metaphor tagging and heightens the precision of data retrieval and pattern searches.

1.1 The EU referenda

In 2005, the first round of referenda about the EU’s constitutional treaty was held in several European countries – a treaty that, in the minds of its originators, was to create a stronger fundament for the Union, to make it manageable in face of the on-going enlargement, and to augment its international clout. The treaty’s rejection in the Netherlands and France in

2 Goatly uses his on-line database METALUDE to identify mutually supportive and antithetical relations between ideologically potent conceptual metaphors themes, as he calls them. The merits include a systematic consideration of how specific patterns spin-off from more basic ones (e.g. SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE WOMEN ARE FOOD from HUMANS ARE COMMODITIES), and a consideration of interactions between conceptual metaphors themes, similar to my present focus.

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May 2005 triggered a crisis in the EU polity that had put all its chips on a Yes vote. Even though the post-referenda period saw the European Union in one of its worst moments, the No votes enlivened the debate and led to an unprecedented surge of public discourse. In the UK, a country with a tradition of impassioned EU skepticism, the polity and the public hotly debated the role of British sovereignty, the involved stakes of the British government, as well as the possibility of holding a national referendum on the constitution. The interested parties included Tony Blair’s government, the Tory opposition, several NGOs and European institutions, and last but not least Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. In many ways, the debate came down to a battle over Europe vs. Britain’s splendid isolation. Not surprisingly, we find arguments about Europe interwoven with domestic issues, e.g. the impact of a possible UK referendum on Blair’s career. Overall, the diversity of protagonists and positions made for a rich debate in which many diverging scenarios arise and in which individuals continuously comment on or contest other opinions. From the viewpoint of metaphor, all combatants on the media front were able to draw on established EU metaphors, but had to put them to use in diverse ways depending both on their views and the changes in the political conditions. A broad, but not limitless range of metaphors had to accommodate a wealth of opinions, making for many creative extensions of conventional metaphors. The high emotional load of the British relations to the EU is frequently reflected in rhetorically elaborate metaphors. Finally, the topical complexity made for an intermingling of EU metaphors with related metaphors as well as for many complex multi-metaphor arguments.
Several studies have approached metaphors of the EU through corpus data
(e.g., Chilton & Ilyin 1993, Schäffner 1993, Musolff 2004, Bärtsch 2004, Reining
2005). They have demonstrated that the EU is commonly seen in terms of a body, a house, a family, or a journey, among other things. The present study will both validate these findings (with the notable absence of family metaphors) and extend them by looking at argumentative variants unique to our 2004/05 context. The study is also specific for the fact that it takes interest not only in the metaphoric target domain “EU”. It includes the surrounding discursive field, notably views on the constitution, EU integration, the two ill- fated referenda, and the style of the debate. These additional target domains tie in with the pressing question “Quo vadis, Europe?”, but present a much broader range of metaphoric reasoning. As we shall see, including them

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provides us with an increased grasp of the discourse context and with a more faithful picture of its complex inner links. (Note that another target domain that figures in the overall metaphor count in Table 1 below, the broader metaphors for general politics and politicians, remains excluded here due to space constraints.)

1.2 Corpus

The background to this paper is a seven nation study of the EU constitutional referenda, the debate preceding them, and their crisis ridden aftermath, covering the period from mid June 2004 to mid September 2005. A team at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute of European Integration Research applied qualitative content analysis to national newspaper corpora from France, Sweden, Poland, Austria, Portugal, the UK, and Ireland over these 15 months and compared the results. Each national corpus consisted of a yellow press and a quality paper (Mokre et al. 2006, cf. Bruell et al. 2009). In a smaller sub- project, I compared the metaphors found in the British corpus to the results of the content analysis data. This sub-project is what is reported on here.3
The British corpus came from the on-line versions of the influential and decidedly anti-EU yellow press paper Sun as well as the liberal broadsheet The Guardian and The Observer, its weekend edition. Articles were selected for analysis when they contained the keywords “constitution” and/or “EU”, although a restriction of one article per day was imposed (and 5 per day in peak periods surrounding referenda, national ratifications and EU-meetings). When in doubt, the longer, more theme-related articles were retained, especially in the case of commentaries. The basic quantitative data of the resulting corpus is as follows:

3 In addition, Kimmel (2009a) compares the results from a content analysis and a metaphor analysis, addressing the range, the focus, and the specific strengths inherent in each method. Essentially, the units of discourse that each method captures tend to differ. Content analysis targets more holistic and situated argumentative patterns with a quite topic-specific nature and a complex causal structure, whereas metaphor analysis mostly targets flexibly deployed smaller conceptual constituents.

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Number of

coded articles

Total

number of words

Average of

words per article

Total of

coded metaphors

Average of

metaphors per article

Average of

metaphors per word

Guardian

501

321411

642

1569

3.1

0,004

Sun

174

41704

240

958

5.5

0,023

Tab. 1: Quantitative metaphor data.

Note that, despite the much higher word count of the Guardian, the number of metaphors is remarkably more even between the two papers both due to longer article length and a higher article count. The Sun makes up for short articles with highly dense metaphor packages and an almost twice as high per article average. We may also note that each paper has its content- and style- related specificities. The Sun’s metaphor patterns are fewer and present British concerns only, most typically a fear of the EU. The Sun’s journalists also use more repetitive keywords and their language is more emotionalizing and rhetorically combative. The Guardian is more balanced in all of these respects and reports on a far broader range of opinions, including many voices from other countries. A detailed analysis of the differences between the two newspapers and a comparison to the metaphors from a smaller Swedish corpus was done in Mokre et al. (2006).

1.3 Coding and search for recurrent conceptual metaphors

The systematic analysis of these 2500 odd metaphors was implemented in a computer-assisted fashion, using the commercially available software Atlas.ti. This tool allows an easy annotation of texts and, later in the process, it supports retrieving, searching, filtering, and hierarchically grouping any chosen data segment. All metaphors were first identified and then tagged with independent code units for their source and target domains. This decision would later allow independent searches for, say, all death related metaphors irrespective of their target domain or of all constitution related metaphors irrespective of their source domain. For survey purposes, the Atlas.ti software was used to create a tabular overview of all target code + source code combinations by newspaper. For instance, target: EU constitution + source: building constitutes such a code combination and has 18 textual occurrences in the Guardian. All important conceptual mappings appear in the table, as

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each co-occurrence pattern corresponds to a set of linguistic metaphors spinning off from a more or less unified conceptual metaphor. All patterns with at least five metaphors per newspaper were selected for further analysis; those below this cut-off point were deemed insufficiently systematic. The final write-up was begun only after re-checking all metaphorical expressions and after making sure that their entailments and focal meanings were equivalent within each set. Notably, the metaphor’s grounds were considered, i.e. the attributes that actually get mapped in an individual instance (Goatly 1997). I also took care to differentiate the rhetoric and cognitive functions of each variant in a set, acknowledging the sometimes opposite argumentative thrust of otherwise similar metaphors. For example, journey metaphors can be employed to demand a continuation of EU integration or to demand the very opposite. Finally, conceptual metaphor formulas were assigned to each set of expressions that had proved equivalent. I shall report the results in section 2.

1.4 Higher-level analysis

As soon as the descriptive analysis was complete, I began charting out a map of linkages between the conceptual metaphors. Atlas.ti offers considerable facilities for exploring conceptual linkages. Tabular overviews have been mentioned. Searches for co-occurrence patterns, either hypothesis-driven or by serendipity, are another asset. Atlas.ti can be used to scan for expressions with affine conceptual domains, e.g. by running a search for all targets that take on a CONTAINER image schema and comparing them. Fortunately, it was also possible to draw on more than one criterion in looking for some relevant similarity between metaphors. The asset lay in the prior tagging of metaphors, which had been independently carried out for image-schematic source domains (such as “Force” or “Path”) and rich source domains (such as “Warfare” and “Journeys”). This allowed for independent searches and for grouping analytic sets by different criteria (cf. Kimmel n.d.). With the help of these tools, I began asking in which ways different conceptual metaphors might serve similar discursive purposes or partake of a larger conceptual unit, e.g. a metaphorical narrative with several slots. Section 3 reports the results of
this theoretically informed inquiry.

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2. The major metaphor patterns in a qualitative perspective

Each of the following sections (2.1-2.5) surveys the conceptual metaphors found in one of the five wider target domains, while also aiming to do justice to their internal variety. Each section will be broken down into a handful of main headers representing mappings like the EU IS A HOUSE. Under these headers or central mappings (Kövecses 2002, Musolff 2004), I discuss smaller variations that determine how commentators or quoted politicians actually reason. Broadly speaking, argumentative variations within a central mapping come about at three levels: (a) alternative instantiations of a metaphor scenario, i.e. of the same action type and same imagery, (b) similar imagery that differs slightly by virtue of diverging perspectival choices or role ascriptions, or (c) metaphors based on altogether different image schemas. To illustrate, metaphors that remain within a basic role distribution contrast opposite options like staying inside vs. leaving the house. The difference merely concerns whether the same basic action occurs or not. A slightly more pronounced difference concerns diverging role ascriptions and interaction patterns. Comparing metaphors in which the EU “engulfs” the UK and metaphors about its “entering” the EU, the UK’s role shifts from a passive nation surrounded by an expanding container to an active nation deciding to join a static container. The most pronounced difference possible within the central mapping of the EU house results when the metaphors do not share the same image-schematic basis (or, by implication, any one kind of action). For instance, metaphors that emphasize the house’s verticality or structural integrity are altogether different from the containment/path-related metaphors in all our previous examples.

2.1 The EU, its development, and its political functions

The first target domain I shall examine is the EU, with an emphasis on arguments about its general political nature and inner stability. Both, a high frequency and diversity of conceptual metaphors is found here, nine general types of mappings altogether. Many mappings appear in both newspapers, although the Guardian tends to be more varied and several patterns remain absent in the Sun. The argumentative thrust of each kind of metaphor will be now discussed, always stating the number of metaphor tokens in parentheses
for each mapping (i.e. N=).

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2.1.1 The EU as edifice

THE EU IS AN EDIFICE is a powerful central mapping that engenders different scenarios and variants. A first set of metaphors highlights the EU’s political soundness (or not), its institutional permanence (or not), and its underlying vision or plan. The generally very EU-skeptic Sun (N=16) emphasizes that the EU is not well put-together, welcoming the “trumpets of doom [that] are sounding across the European Union” and speaking of “the first wholesale rebuilding of the EU for 50 years” as well as ”the crumbling walls of jerry-built Europe”. Accordingly, the anti-EU front should “wreck the EU” or “scupper the blueprint in a [UK] referendum”. In all of these metaphors, the EU’s structural integrity is destroyed through force. The Guardian (N= 29) employs the same scenario with a more varied emphasis. It sees the EU as an “edifice” that needs to be “constructed”/“built”, an “institutional pillar of the post-war world”, although it is also characterized as “rickety”, prone to “collapse”, or being “wrecked”. It has “architecture” and “architects”, it “has to go back to the drawing board” to revise its “blueprint” or rearrange its “institutional furniture”. Second, a wholly different line of reasoning concerns the EU enlargement. In this scenario, the EU can “open its doors” or become a “fortress”, be “fortified”, “buttressed”, build up a “wall”, or “pull up its drawbridge”.

2.1.2 The EU as machinery

THE EU IS A MACHINE is deployed mainly with the intent of focusing on the EU’s internal preconditions of functioning. In the Guardian (N=24), metaphors depict the EU as an “engine”, “machinery” or “motor of integration” that is “working” or not. Important states are characterized as the “engine room”. The constitution’s purpose is to ensure its “smooth running”, to “prevent(s) the motor’s stalling”, to “oil its machinery”, “keep it going for decades” and to prevent “gridlock”. The voters’ rejection of the constitution “put[s] a spanner in the EU works”, “dismantle[s]” it or “send[s] it back to the drawing board”. Two metaphors in the Sun (N=2) emphasize the EU’s complex internal structure and complementary mechanic parts in stating that the EU “works
like a ratchet” and describing a country as a “cog in the massive EU wheel”.

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2.1.3 The EU as container

In the Guardian, THE EU IS A CONTAINER includes two quite different sets of metaphors (N=12). First, images of being swallowed up or being subject to bondage underlie fears in the anti-EU camp, who speaks of “engulfment by a superstate” and “the tentacles of Brussels”. Here, the implied counterpart to the EU is a nation state that is weak and faces an ever expanding, greedy, and imperialistic behemoth. Alternatively and with quite different entailments, the inside-outside distinction of containment is used to speak of membership to the EU, such as the fear of being “left on the outside” or the suggestion to “expel those that have been working for the destruction of the EU (mainly Britain)”.4 In the Sun, (N=9) both engulfment fears (“suck us into a European superstate”; “swallowed up”) and membership play a role (politicians are reminded of “a pledge to pull out of Europe” or to “leave us out”). A more implicit evocation of engulfment is the catchword “superstate” (Guardian N=37, Sun N=45), implying a possible dissolution of the UK in a larger whole. This appears across outright anti-EU views, explanations of where fears originate, criticisms of scaremongering, and EU-internal voices that warn against such a development.

2.1.4 The EU in force dynamic interaction

Metaphors of force dynamic interaction (Guardian, N=22) either couch the EU in the action slot of an agent or patient. The first pattern sees the EU subject to external forces, e.g. a “war-torn” continent or an entity that a “defeat would shake” – although “nobody will want to rock the boat” too early or cause it to “be broken down”. Inversely, accepting the constitution would “fortify the EU”, which guards against any of these destructive forces. From a second viewpoint, forces may issue from the EU itself. Here it is construed as an active force agent, i.e. as “a counterweight to America”, getting “a bigger punch on the world stage”, flexing “its political muscle”, or having “the upper

4 Yet another variant refracts the conceptual metaphor IDEAS ARE ENTITIES / PROJECTS ARE CONTAINERS FOR IDEAS: “Europe is not a value, it is a project, a container, and unlike the neo- liberals, the Yes-men, the compromise merchants, I am interested in its contents.” [Guardian

164].

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hand”. Note that forces are couched in various rich domains, i.e. general physics, warfare, seafaring, boxing, and fighting. The EU is also subject to inner forces in “the forces pulling Europe together are stronger than those pulling it apart”, which already brings us to the next category.

2.1.5 The EU as an area with a center and a periphery

Center-periphery metaphors for the EU partly overlap with the container ontology and evince a key pattern based on IMPORTANT EU MEMBERS ARE CENTRAL. In the Sun (N=13), the main expression found is “heart of Europe”. In the Guardian, (N=34) we find an opposition between a “Core Europe” (equivalent to “its heart”) and “and outer ring” or “its margins”, which suggests that some countries are more important than others. A recurring argument runs that the EU’s founding members are attempting to create an “EU inner core” led by France, in order to protect the social model, while leaving Britain with its liberal model “on the fringes”. Specifically, it is debated whether Britain should remain at the margin or be taken “to the heart of Europe”, as advocated by Blair.

2.1.6 The EU as body

THE EU IS A BODY (Guardian N=27, Sun N=13) lends itself to a broad range of different entailments. First, metaphors of body-mass emphasize aspects of institutional complexity. The Guardian urges the EU to “slim down”, become “lean” or, conversely, be “fleshed out”. Second, health metaphors are used to talk about the crisis, seeing a body that is “faltering” or that suffers “wounds” and “fractures”, “gets the jitters” or is brought “to its knees” (the latter two in the Sun), but also seeing a possibility of “healing” and “detoxing nationalism”. Third, in both papers body-topology appears in the idiom “at the heart of Europe”.5 Fourth, agency is highlighted with an EU that “flexes its political muscles”6 (Guardian), or the Sun’s urging that “Brussels must stretch every

5 This a metaphor-from-metonymy in which one first has to grasp that hearts are central to bodies before going on to infer the conceptual metaphor IMPORTANT IS CENTRAL.

6 The expression “institutional skeleton of the union” fits more with structural integrity.

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sinew”, “must be fit and strong to compete”, release itself “from the economic straitjacket” or turn into “an actor on the world stage”. One commentator ironically speaks of the need to “drag the EU kicking and screaming into the
21st century”.

2.1.7 The EU as a person

Personification in a more general sense is used to talk about collective political processes. Mainly in the Guardian (N=11), this takes the shape of attributing to the EU a “destiny”, a “collective will” and emotions like “fury”, and reactions like “to follow”, to “believe in itself”, and to “learn a new language”. Criticism of the EU is expressed by speaking of a person who has “lost touch” or is “inward looking”, “navel-gazing” or “not blind to its own faults”. One interesting metaphor splits Europe in two entities by saying the “Political and economic Europe do not live in separate rooms”.

2.1.8 The EU as animate being / creature

The source domains “Animate Being”, “Animal”, and “Monster”, found mainly in the Guardian, share much in common with personification (N=4, 7,
7). Animal related and several other animate idioms do not really reflect a single scenario, e.g. “Brussels’ tentacles”, “a new animal in the Brussels jungle”, “Europe is no holy cow”, or “dinosaur policies”. A more systematic line of argument concerns the EU being “a living creature” that the French “created in their own image”, a “triumphant creation”. It is argued that anti- French forces in Brussels “have turned on their own European creation to solve their problems”. A negative variant of this highlights uncontrollability. The EU is criticized as a “gargantuan bureaucratic European leviathan”, a “juggernaut”, an “uncontrollable robot”, or “a monster you cannot counter”.
Finally, birth-related (N=3) and plant-related metaphors (N=13) mostly highlight change over time. The latter occurs in an EU that “has grown into 25 nations” and “grown up since the treaty of Rome” (SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS ARE PLANTS, cf. Kövecses 2002). It is further asked “whether the EU will be allowed to wither away in the face of mounting global pressure” or the EU depicted as “complex, political, economic and legal hybrid” to emphasize its complexity. Finally, a creative analogy explicates what it takes to develop the EU:

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“She says that the EU must be like an English garden - an area of growth, requiring constant planting and replanting, weeding, fertilising and full of variety and change. But, she adds, there must be an organising hand somewhere” (Guardian 350).

2.1.9 The EU as social group

In the Guardian, source expressions from the domain “Social Groups” (N=21) are exclusively used to talk about the relations between member states. The dominant scenario is that of a “club” becoming an “expanded club” or vis-à- vis Turkey a “Christian club”. This club has “rules”, “members”, “second-class membership”, and the option to “expel” members. The main meaning focus seems to be that of exclusiveness, rules and shared aims, and perhaps that of old members keeping others out. A smaller set of metaphors personifies the EU as a group which is “dominated” by some states, having a “leader”, “a binding community” or a common household (“and we Europeans would still be faffing around like a household of old maids, eternally squabbling about the arrangement of the furniture in their front parlour”).

2.2 EU integration

Next, we will examine metaphorically expressed views of EU integration in general and after the No vote in particular. This major sub-topic of EU discourse commonly yields “Journey” and “Path” related metaphors, albeit such that are realized in an enormous variety of ways.

2.2.1 EU integration as journey

The dominant mapping found here is EU INTEGRATION IS A JOURNEY. A large number of different evaluations about the process of EU integration, its aims, and its status especially after the French and Dutch No votes are couched in this metaphor. No matter what a speaker’s convictions, journeys are useful. In the Sun (N=31), the pro-EU camp speaks of “a brave new course for Europe”, “Europe moving forward", a "perfectly sensible way forward", or declares that the constitution “does not go far enough” (Jean Luc Dehaene) and “shouldn’t stop there” (Rocco Buttiglione). The critics say that “the EU has gone so far down the dangerous route” or warn about “travel[ing] one inch further down
the slippery slope of European integration”. They criticize that “Brussels is

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carrying on regardless” or scold “the clowns who have driven "The Project" to the brink of disaster”. Tony Blair is reported to call “for a huge change in direction”, while foreign minister Jack Straw limits Britain’s involvement by saying “This far and no further”. A commentator mentions that Blair “has a unique opportunity to drive the EU in the direction that is best for Britain”.
A look at the Guardian (N=89) demonstrates more systematically that path attributes are used to reason with: the fact of traveling, direction, speed, and driving forces. The EU is thought to be “stopping”, “going on”, moving at a certain “pace”, or being “propelled forward too quickly and ambitiously”. It must “be kept going” or “need not proceed forever”. While for its supporters the EU is “in permanent onward flux” and “moving on”, its critics aim at “rendering it immobile”, and some skeptics expect that it will “encounter large road blocks”. As to its pace, integration happens in “leaps and bounds” or “two steps backwards followed by almighty leaps forward”. The EU can be static or dynamic, e.g. it can be “overtaken by the world economy” and it can be being forced along in “Gordon Brown […] is brimming with ideas and determined to drag the EU kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.” Or, Europe can move at two speeds concerning “rumours that Paris and Berlin planned to form a political union leading to a two-track Europe within the EU, leaving behind recalcitrant states such as Britain.”7
As to direction, the EU is “heading a wrong direction”, the direction may be “unclear”, “can be cooperative”, or “should be changed”. Of course, “the end point” may differ depending on whom one asks. The EU may be on “the road to ruin” if it lacks vision.
The required force for traveling is equally elaborated on. The founding fathers and important nations are its “driving forces”. Politicians try to “take it” or “lead it” on a journey for which a “pace is set”, “milestones” exist, and “fellow travellers” are sought. Not surprisingly, fanciful elaborations on what makes Europe move are found:
“Europe, he told us, was like a bicycle: you keep pedalling or you fall off. Well, we have been pedalling as if seeking the Tour de

7 In one instance, “decades of EU activity have simply passed people by”.

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France yellow jersey. British sceptics and many others would prefer to make the journey on foot, at an amble” (Guardian 53).

2.2.2 EU integration after the No votes

Right before the referenda, many voices express that a No means “bringing the EU project to a halt” and causes a “huge institutional setback”, “a dire reverse in the long march”. An argument by the British government is that a No means making “a step into the unknown”, “a foolhardy leap in the dark”. After the No votes, accordingly, the EU is seen in “new territory” and at a “crossroads”. At best, it “stumbles along” or is seen on “a rollercoaster ride” and is left with its “momentum […] broken”. Most, however, speak of “road blocks” which let the integration “shudder […] to a halt” or “stall” in “the present impasse” where the EU “can neither go forward nor stay the same”. Only some recommend that that we go ahead with this” and do “their best to keep the show on the road”. Consequently, the “way ahead is far from clear” and requires “difficult decisions”. A pause for reflection is thus frequently suggested: When you're facing a precipice, you don't step forward. Pro- Europeans across the continent need to step back and take time to consider their options”, also expressed as “stepping back to move forward”. In the Sun, some see the “drive towards a United States of Europe dead in its tracks”, others say that the process “can still go ahead”. In any case, “questions about the future direction of Europe” are raised.
Using vehicle imagery (Guardian N=29) to give the metaphors added impact, the EU is depicted as “a ship without a clearly defined course” or a “train stopped in its tracks”. In the post referendum crisis, some ask from every member state “to put a shoulder to the wheel” to plow on. Others think that “Britain can seize the steering wheel” or the “helm of the EU”. The Sun (N=8) urges that Tony Blair “takes the helm” and credits him with “set[ting] a brave new course” or sees “the unique opportunity to drive the EU in the direction that’s best for Britain” as Britain assumes the EU presidency. Otherwise, the Sun only weakly elaborates the idea of continuing with the EU integration and typically warns of surreptitious continuation (e.g. “go ahead with parts of the constitution by the back door”, by “weasel[ing] in”, “stealth”, or “a plot”). Related blockage images can be seen in the call to define “red lines” against
EU demands.

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2.2.3 Further aspects related to EU integration: enlargement, institutions, and referenda

Journeys also appear in further, smaller target domains that tie in with the EU’s development. In the Guardian (N=7), European enlargement has a “pace”, may be a “long and winding road” or pose no “hurdles”, and is a process that “had not been not derailed” or, alternatively, was “stopped in its tracks”. Specifically, the No “blocks the path of new nations queuing to join”. Journeys also relate to the EU institutional processes (N=5), e.g. in “the endless, grinding pace of institutional change”, in “European institutions inveigling their way into every nook and cranny of life”, and in “the rotating presidency will plough on”. Finally, the national constitutional referenda themselves are couched as journeys. In the Sun (N=4), various British politicians promise to “plough ahead”, “steam ahead”, or “proceed” with their own referendum whichever way the Spanish, French, and Dutch vote. By contrast, the Guardian (N=6) warns against a UK referendum because of its uncertain outcome. It is seen as leading to “a crossroads”, “a risky path”, “a hurdle”, “a course fraught with uncertainty” or even a “referendum rodeo”.8

2.3 The constitution and its fate after the referenda

The target domain “EU constitutional treaty” (or “constitution”, for short) stands at the very center of the debate. It variously takes on the sources “Journey/Path”, “Force”, “Life”, and “Object integrity”, besides being reflected in several fixed idioms. The metaphors and idioms appear in arguments mainly about the constitution’s function, opinions about how well thought out it is, how far its implementation has “advanced”, and if it can “survive” the French and Dutch Noes.

2.3.1 The constitutional process as a journey or path

This and the next two subsections are best explained through Talmy’s (2000)
force dynamic model, i.e. an agonist-antagonist interaction in which the

8 The single hit “Russian Roulette” shows that the same opinion can be expressed through an alternative source domain.

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stronger entity displaces the weaker entity or impedes its movement. In terms of metaphors, we are looking for images of pushing, enabling, vying, blocking, or forcing ahead. In one sense, the constitution plays the role of the major “enabler” for EU integration (i.e. THE CONSTITUTION IS A MOVING ENTITY, which in turn converges with THE NO IS A BLOCKAGE). In the Guardian, path (N=35) and vehicle metaphors (N=31) project a moving constitution striding forward in tandem with EU integration. The constitution can be “carried forward”, “launched into space”, “kept going”, “get a modest boost”, or even receive “unstoppable momentum” through a Yes vote. Conversely, some sports metaphors in the Guardian (N=6) elaborate the difficulty of implementing the treaty (“exercise”, “marathon”, “hurdles”). The Sun (N=20) bemoans how various agents “go ahead/ plough ahead with” the constitutional process or seem “far from pulling back”. Some call for a blockage, a “this far and no further” or for “red lines”. They advocate stopping “the ramshackle constitution in its tracks” or saying that is has been “Sunk” (a pun hinting at the newspaper’s causal role). The damaged-constitution scenario can be connected with the blockage scenario in using maritime vehicles the voters can “torpedo” or “sink”. (The two are coherent because a damaged vehicle is prevented from advancing on its path). A related blockage is couched in a building scenario connected with fears that the referendum could be ignored by the elites; it warns of “bringing in the treaty by the back door”. Critics also take issue with the constitution’s being “foisted upon us”, “forced through” (for example through “arm twisting”), so it should be “opposed”.
In the Guardian, forces occur in two path-related keyword of what the constitution does to render the EU institutions more effective or counter its malfunctioning. One is the aim to avoid gridlock in the EU’s inner workings (N=14). This typically collocates with streamline (N=14), i.e. making the moving EU slicker and more motile by passing the constitution. Both idioms are based on blockage removal, although the former involves an image of a circular motion of a cogwheel, while the latter suggests speeding up on a planar path.

2.3.2 The constitution as active causal force

The constitution’s motion on its path ahead is not the whole story. An interesting alternative perspective results from looking at how the constitution

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causally influences and shapes other entities. We have seen above how the treaty can be exposed to blocking or enabling forces, but not how the constitution exerts force and thereby carries forward or holds back a process. In the Guardian (N=21), in the view of its supporters, it appears as “a powerful force for change and renewal” that “keeps the enlarged EU going for decades” and that can “create momentum”. Rejecting it will “bring the EU to a grinding halt” or “set the European project back by 15 years”. In the view of its opponents, the British Conservatives, it can also weigh down other agents, being “a ‘ball and chain’ on British business”. The emphasis can also turn to the path itself here: Summits and the constitutional treaty are seen as “steps on the road to a superstate”. Furthermore, the constitution determines the EU’s direction by “turn[ing] Europe away from the path of solidarity and into that of neo-liberalism”.
With a different twist, the constitution occurs as a force-exerting agent who damages entities. Its entering into force can “kill French jobs”, “ride […] roughshod over French social principles” or “deliver […] a hard knock to federalism” by enshrining a vision of a free-market Europe. Interestingly, the Sun includes only a single case in which the constitution is an active agent that “will usher in a British-style free market economy”. Other than this, it is depicted as causally impotent and functionless. The above opportunities for a negative emphasis are also missed, and the constitution remains passive, with a given “fate” or in saying that “cannot be rescued”.

2.3.3 The constitution as object (violently) acted on

Further along, we find forces that act on the constitution, especially after the No. The basis of this is the ontological metaphor THE CONSTITUTION IS A (DYSFUNCTIONAL) OBJECT that gives the abstract entity the status of a manipulable object (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). This serves the conceptual function to envisage either the treaty’s wholesale destruction or its being removed. The Guardian (N=18) visualizes a scenario in which the voters “wreck”, “tear up”, “consign to the shredder”, “deliver the final hammer blow to”, and “scrap the existing treaties as well as the constitution”, which is left “damaged” and has “remnants”. This, in turn, relates to “sink” or “torpedo” above. The object removal scenario includes “ditch the constitution”, “dump
the document”, “kick the constitution into the long grass”, “chuck the EU

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constitution in the dustbin”, and put it “on the shelf”. If we compare the two latter expressions, shelving maintains the unique identity of the object for later use, whereas scrapping insinuates a dysfunctional state of something that is a priori junk-worthy. The Sun too (N=24) presents both the damage scenario (“has taken ferocious hammering”, “shattered by a French ‘NON’”, “slammed the EU blueprint”, “wreck the planned European Constitution”) and the removal scenario (“ditch”, “scupper”, “bury the plan”). Overall, object removal more cautiously signals a pause for reflection, whereas object destruction suggests a complete dismissal of the constitution. Interestingly, all the metaphors spill over to the fate of the (much debated) UK referendum which gets “dumped”, ”scrapped”, “chucked in the dustbin”, “scuppered” or “shelved” after the Noes in France and the Netherlands (Sun N=11, Guardian N=4). In the Sun, they even spill over to the EU as a whole, e.g. in “snubbing the treaty will wreck the EU” or in “ditch the old-style social model” (N=6). Overall, the Sun uses language implying a piece of junk more profusely, with more lexical variety, and applied to almost any kind of EU related target. Its many destruction related expressions denote a generally dismissive attitude.

2.3.4 The constitution’s life, ailing and death

The most frequent source domain for the constitution is life and death. It engenders scenarios with various stages and outcomes, most notably THE NO VOTE IS THE CONSTITUTIONS DEATH. In the run up to the referenda, the Guardian’s (N=38) commentators characterize a possible rejection of the constitution as “signing the death warrant”, “killing” it, or “burying the plan for an EU superstate”, although more hopeful views exist too, saying that officials may decide not to “kill it completely”. After the referenda, it is especially the anti-EU camp (inter alia, the Sun and Daily Mail in the Guardian’s press review) who speak of a treaty that “is (stone) dead” “dead in the water”, “a doomed treaty” that “cannot survive” or has received a “kiss of death”. On the other hand, EU officials like Junckers and Barroso claim that despite the No the constitution “is not dead”. They see a possibility to “breathe life into this corpse” (through a European referendum) and to “find a way of keeping it alive”. Commentators discuss the chances of “keeping it alive” or “rescuing” it from its “fate”. Some respond skeptically by saying that
“no magical formulae to revive the document” exist, or view the debate “akin

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to giving an injection to a dead patient”. More optimistic voices suggest “putting it on ice until better days dawned”, like a cryogenically frozen patient. Optimists commonly mitigate the death metaphor into a patient whose health is being diagnosed, or they reject the death scenario explicitly, e.g. “don’t bury the constitution just yet” and “there is still life in the document”. The Sun (N=37) uses ailing, death, and reviving equally profusely and with a welcoming attitude towards the treaty’s demise, which they call wretched and hated. Not surprisingly, a certainty that the constitution is “dead” and “a case for the morgue” dominates over voices that say “not dead” (reported views of Junckers and Barroso) and visions of its being “resuscitated” or even “resurrected”. It also emphasizes that “if by any means they try to breathe life into this corpse, then we need to have the British people having a say”.
One remarkable facet of metaphorical reasoning warrants attention here. Death is rendered final only by European politicians “pronouncing” the constitution dead, “deliver[ing] last rites”, nailing the “coffin […] lid” down,9 and “burying” it. It is criticized that the reluctance to call things by their name comes from the fact that “no one wants to be blamed for delivering the final blow” and that “no one wants to be the first hand on the dagger”10. This twists the familiar logic of death, the source domain, somewhat. The paradoxical logic that only politicians decide about final death has clear argumentative purposes. It is used to call on them to officially pronounce it dead:
“this constitution is a case for the morgue. [….] Have some courage, man, and declare this constitution dead” (Sun 29).
Moreover, this shrewd rhetoric gambit suggests a final decision, but still leaves the opposite outcome open. This fits with a situation where the metaphors express more the anti-constitution camp’s hopes than an actual decision by EU officials. Another observation is that graphic elaborations and

9 “Today the European Constitution is cooling in its coffin. But while Brussels bureaucrats are drawing breath the lid can never be quite nailed down.” [Guardian 183].

10 This metaphor continues with an explicit analogy: “Like Brutus stabbing Caesar, they need 25 hands on the dagger” [Guardian 105].

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extensions like pulse checking or morgues serve to convey glee and make the argument stick.
Another striking fact is that the slots in the death scenario are frequently filled in creative ways, i.e. elaborated (Lakoff & Turner 1989:67ff). In the Sun, the suggestion of a gruesome vampire being finished off at long last conveys a supremely negative evaluation of the constitution and insinuates a parasite sucking the life blood of the British (“Tony Blair last night drove a stake through the heart of the EU Constitution”). The dead body is also humorously elaborated as “dead duck” and “a dead parrot”, referring to a famous Monty Python sketch in which a dead pet is absurdly treated as alive. By contrast, expressions such as “driving the final nail into its coffin” and “hopes the treaty can be resuscitated” extend the more conventional conceptual metaphor ENDING IS DEATH, which usually does not include the slots of burial or resuscitation. In the Guardian, metaphor extensions occur in the politicians’ “bedside vigil” and “post mortems”, and the question who is “to take the blame for killing the treaty” or for “assassinating” it. Another metaphor extension has the No inserted in the scenario as death’s cause. The No (in France) “may kill” or “has killed” the treaty, renders it “dead”, sends it “in coma” or it makes a “casualty” of the European vision. The specific aspect of violent death, realized as “final blow” and the No that “axes” the constitution, is also found (Guardian N=15, Sun N=9).

2.3.5 The constitution as building / entity with structural soundness

The central mapping THE CONSTITUTION IS AN EDIFICE engenders three different variants. First, we find an architectural design scenario. The Guardian (N=18) views the constitutions as a “blueprint” for a new union, “Giscard d’Estaing as the principal architect”, and its being “forced back to the drawing board” after the No. In particular, the catchword “blueprint” is used to discuss what the constitution stands for:
“Many of France's more traditionally-minded Socialists see the constitution as Thatcherite blueprint for a union that ignores France's emphasis on worker protection, public services and welfare guarantees” (Guardian 240).

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“Seen by Eurosceptics as a "blueprint for tyranny," the cooler view is that the constitutional treaty makes clear exactly who does what in the complex political, economic and legal hybrid that is today's EU” (Guardian 451).
In the Sun (N=29), the term “blueprint” actually accounts for the lion’s share of the found tokens. A quite different scenario, found in both papers, focuses on the constitution's lack of structural integrity. This is expressed by calling it a “ramshackle treaty“ that “must collapse under the weight of its own contradictions“, diagnosing “verbal castles in the air”, or saying that “reopening the whole package would almost certainly lead to total collapse” and “bring the whole enterprise crashing down”. Note that a small set of entity or substance related metaphors share a thematic focus on the constitution’s lack of structural integrity or worthlessness:
“The Constitution is a disgraceful ragbag of legal contradiction, cobbled together in secret and designed to confuse” (Sun 67).
“He said that in the French President's hands the EU constitution had been turned into ‘dross’” (Sun 9).
In a third, infrequent edifice scenario speakers warn of the dangers of relinquishing national competencies by drawing on door metaphors (“a door into a room which the UK will never be able to leave” or “a gateway to a country called Europe”).

2.3.6 Special fixed idioms

The constitution’s merits are also discussed in several fixed idioms that serve to entrench arguments by repetition and drive points home. By and large, the keywords underwrite the Sun’s abiding opposition to the constitution, whereas the Guardian has a more balanced emphasis. The term surrender couches the relinquishing of power or of sovereignty to the EU in warlike terms (Sun N=28, Guardian N=6); sign away/ hand over captures the same argument (Sun N=27, Guardian N=2). The term streamline (Guardian N=19) positively evaluates the constitution as facilitating the institutional management of the EU and enshrine (Guardian N=32) suggest an immutable state of sacrosanctity, which is taken issue with in “enshrines a ruthless neo- liberal agenda”, “free-market values”, or an “Anglo-Saxon model of unfettered capitalism”. With the inverse evaluation, a second group of commentators welcomes that the treaty enshrines an “European” or “French social model”,

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the “commitment to solidarity and environmental sustainability”, an outmoded “social economic model”, or a “labour-friendly economic model”, “human rights”, “workers’ right” and “the right to strike”, “Europe’s Christian roots”, “French influence”, “a common agricultural policy”, and “women and minority rights”. The term blueprint for tyranny, originating in the anti-EU Murdoch press, suggests that British sovereignty is at risk. The Guardian cites other papers using the term “blueprint” (N=19) and although the term “tyranny” itself is rare, “diktats”, “dictator” and “totalitarian regimes” point in the same direction (N=6). These metaphors contrast with a more benevolent view that sees the constitution as a mere tidying up exercise (N=7). It emphasizes that the complicated existing EU treaties are molded into a coherent single legal framework and thereby opposes critics seeing British sovereignty endangered.

2.4 The impact of the referendal Noes

A complementary and smaller target domain concerns the referendal No in France and the Netherlands. Metaphors for the No highlight its alarming nature or further specify the earlier mentioned aspects of Europe’s reaction. The target takes on various source domains, notably “Object damage”, “Fisticuffs”, “Warfare”, “Revolutionary force”, and “Natural forces”. In effect, all of the resulting conceptual metaphors suggest the same force-dynamic interaction pattern between the voters, a force agent, and the constitution or elite, the force recipient. In other words, they revolve around a single basic image schema and add special facets to it.

2.4.1 The No as violent force / knock-out

THE NO IS A VIOLENT FORCE is a generic pattern fleshed out in different variants, but held together by three shared implications: a violent reaction of the voters, the impossibility to ignore it, and its destructive consequences. First, THE NO IS A BLOW highlights either the referendum’s finality, its seriously damaging effects, or both. In the Guardian (N=32) we find “a final hammer blow delivered to the EU constitution”, “a knockout blow”, “terminal”, “grievous” or “probably fatal blow”, “a resounding slap in the face”, that “leaves almost the entire political class of the EU bruised, shaken”, and makes “the EU reel[s] from a double whammy”. The Sun (N=21) speaks of a

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“referendum drubbing”, “a serious blow”, and “a crushing NON”. The fistfight scenario lends itself to personalization, with a Gerhard Schroeder who “was given a bloody nose”, as well as with talk of a “black eye” and of a “last man standing” among the important European figures (i.e. Tony Blair).
Second, THE NO IS WARFARE amplifies the idea that the No has negative effects on other entities too. In the Sun (N=14), the No “kills” or “axe[s]” a British referendum or the constitution or “torpedoes” it (the implication being unexpectedness). A British referendum is also seen as meaning “annihilation” for Tony Blair, if held. To the Guardian (N=29), the No is “‘a warning shot’ in opposition to Turkey's membership” and enlargement is one of the “casualties of the French and Dutch referendums”. More than this, the entire future of the EU has “suffered grievous collateral damage”.
Third, THE NO IS A NATURAL FORCE serves to visualize the felt quality of the shock, its suddenness and vehemence. The Guardian (N=7) speaks of a “raspberry the voters delivered with the force of a tornado”, “a tSunami”, “the backlash of the No is sending shockwaves through every country”, and is still “reverberating”. The No can also be “a jolt across Europe”, a force that “shakes the political establishment”, or an “electric shock”. In the Sun (N=6), “the earth has moved”, “the defeat sends shockwaves through European capitals”, “reverberations were felt in Germany”, “rumblings of a political earthquake”, “a landslide defeat”. (A metaphorical background assumption is that POLITICS IS A LANDSCAPE with established and stable structures.) 11
Fourth, THE NO IS A REVOLUTION pattern hints at political motives in addition to the counterforce itself. The Guardian (N=9) explains the No as a “voters’ mutiny”, a “popular uprising”, “a revolt against the rules in The Hague and Brussels”, “the beginning of a second French revolution”, or “just another of those spring revolutions that France, to stay sane, must of necessity undergo every 50 or 100 years or so”, while the Sun (N=11) speaks of “anti-EU rebels”, a “Europe wide revolt”, and, in a pun, a “mEUtiny”. The implication here is more a rejection of the elites than of the constitution itself.

11 With a more positive twist, there is the occasional emphasis on a force that “shakes up the debate” and makes it progress.

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2.4.2 Further inferentially compatible patterns

Beyond all this, in the Sun several metaphors of object destruction indirectly suggest that force was applied, alternatively as THE NO IS A DISASTER or as THE NO IS A COLLAPSE. First, metaphors of chaos point to great force having been applied, a “shambles” or “mess” to be cleared up, a “disaster” (N=8),12 throwing “the European project into chaos”. Second, (N=7) terms like “plunge”, “collapse”, and “fall” specify the force’s direction. They implicate the conventional conceptual metaphors BAD IS DOWN and DYSFUNCTIONAL IS DOWN. Third, THE NO IS A LOUD NOISE emphasizes a perceptually highly salient and sudden event that suggests immediate action in “a wake-up call” or “alarm bells” or in “the people are blowing the trumpets round the city walls. Are we listening?” (N=3 in Sun and N=2 in the Guardian). Noise fits with an act of force, because vehemence typically results in loudness.

2.5 The debate and the pre-referendum campaigning

Finally, a medium-sized last target domain concerns metaphors that comment the style of the debate and the pro- or anti-constitution campaigns. These metaphors mostly involve force dynamics (vying forces, counterforce) and forces on paths (movement ahead, path reversal). The source domains business, sports and conspiracy add extra inferences to this prevalent pattern, as we will see.

2.5.1 Debating and campaigning is war

The central mapping THE CAMPAIGN/DEBATE IS WARFARE occurs in both newspapers, basically a spin-off from the more general metaphor POLITICS IS WAR, a pattern fully exploited elsewhere in my data that I lack the space to discuss here. In the Guardian (N=31), war metaphors include to “lay down the battle lines”, “winning” or “losing”, “gaining ground”, “going on the offensive”, “sniping and swiping”, “concentrating the fire on”, “an uphill struggle”, “staying aloof from the fray”, and “Blair’s strategy of keeping his

12 The heat metaphors “perilous meltdown” and “Holocaust” suggest the same end effect by different means.

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head down”. The debate is a “war of words”, a “battle”, and the pre- referendum campaign an “expected fight”, a “crusade” in which arguments may be weapons (e.g. in “the febrile topic of asylum is emerging as one of the
'Vote No' campaign's early weapons”). One comment on the negative style of the debate is framed in a war-like way: “sections of the press have therefore ventured furthest in their mutilation of the previously defined rules of public debate”. In two other text passages, the politicians react to the No with “a battle between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe for the future of the continent”, and are depicted as “locked in a massive blame-game”. In the Sun, (N=10) the expressions “battle”, “to battle for”, “crusade”, “war chest”, and the injunction to Blair to “surrender or fight on” occur in connection with the campaign for a No.

2.5.2 Campaigning is a force (and so are the opponent’s opinion and public opinion)

The interaction of political interests appears as CAMPAIGNING IS USING FORCE, with the same emphasis on violence and vehemence as above, but simply in less war specific expressions. In the Guardian (N=13), first, we find forces on a path, e.g. “give it a major boost”, “hesitate to throw all his papers behind the no campaign”, and “build up such a head of steam” (CAMPAIGNING IS PRODUCING MOMENTUM). This is also couched in terms of sports in “uphill task”, “kickoff of a campaign”.13 The second pattern concerns aggression against an opponent, including “in a swipe at Britain”, “ferocity of the campaign”, “wrestle with”, and “had the field to itself”” (CAMPAIGNING IS VYING WITH THE OPPONENT). Related expressions envisage campaigning as counterforce, e.g. “reverse the rising tide of opinion against Europe’s constitution” or “reverse the swing against the constitution”. This implies the general idea that PUBLIC OPINION IS A FORCE that can be made to move either in one or the other direction. Note the pattern extension here. While the political debate is a bipartisan force antagonism between two entities, campaigning is

13 By contrast, the sports expression “game plan” seems to be less force-dynamic in nature. It relates to strategy, similar to some war metaphors, and at best evokes the image of a highly complex array of paths the players follow.

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the attempt of both sides to swing a third entity, public opinion, in their direction. In the Sun (N=4), forces occur once on a path in “propaganda drive”, but mostly as an aggressive conflict in “furious bust up”, “tore up the diplomatic rulebook”, and “locked in a battle which threatened to wreck”.

2.5.3 Campaigning is moving on a path

Another path-based scenario occurs in “the two sides are neck and neck” and “the yes camp is still ahead” (THE CAMPAIGN IS A RACE). The difference to metaphors of campaign momentum is that the implication here is not to displace or subdue the opponent, but to cross the finishing line first. A race is not a typical case of force dynamics in that sense, although it shares the basic idea that momentum is needed to succeed. Other paths occur in unsystematic patterns in the Guardian. There is talk of “shifts in the parameters of the debate”, of opposite poles being “little more than different routes to the same destination” (journey scenario), and of “launch a campaign” (war scenario).

2.5.4 Campaigning is business

I now move on to force un-related conceptual metaphors. In the Sun, negative undertones are metaphorically depicted as THE PRO-EU CAMPAIGN IS SELLING (DUBIOUS) GOODS TO THE CITIZEN in “selling policies” (N=9), or even more negatively as “peddling lies and myths” (Guardian N=11). They elaborate that Blair, a pro-European, “will never persuade people to buy the package” and that “the goods are very suspect and the salesman is not to be trusted”. This draws on the highly conventional conceptual metaphors IDEAS ARE OBJECTS and the idiomatic pattern TO UNCRITICALLY BELIEVE AN IDEA IS TO BUY GOODS.

2.5.5 Campaigning is a conspiracy

Finally, yet another way to attack the pro-constitution camp is the accusation that THE CAMPAIGN IS A CONSPIRACY (Sun N=7). The pattern occurs in “the French president hatched a plot to force Britain to hold a referendum”, in “he will be damned by the EU for sabotaging a treaty”, in the accusation that the politicians are planning to “rig” or “stitch up” the referendum, and in an alleged “ploy” to make the constitution seem inevitable.

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3. Integrative analysis of discourse coherence

Having now surveyed all metaphor types of at least five hits per newspaper and having inferred the underlying conceptual metaphors, the next step is to inquire into higher-level patterns that may further connect these. Before going into this advanced analysis, I will once more round up all conceptual metaphor patterns, their main focus (i.e. mapped attributes), and their argumentative thrust, enabling the reader to get an overview of common trends. I have grouped them by their relatedness and attempted to hierarchically position them.

3.1 Bird’s eye view of the metaphor field

A. For the target domain EU, i.e. institutions and membership, we find several basic patterns that explicate its nature. First let us examine metaphors for the political institutions as such:

THE EU IS AN EDIFICE Æ highlights functionality (or lack thereof), acts of destroying, the vision involved in designing and effort in building, as well as enlarging its size or shutting out others.
THE EU IS A MACHINE Æ highlights functionality and its prerequisites, complex inner relations and design of the institutions, and the fact that some nations are more important for their functioning.
THE EU IS A BODY has four quite different variants with different entailments:

o INSTITUTIONAL FUNCTIONALITY IS BODY HEALTH Æ emphasizes the soundness of and changes to the EU institutions.

o INSTITUTIONAL COMPLEXITY IS BODY MASS Æ emphasizes the hypertrophy of the institutions.

o MAIN POLITICAL AGENTS ARE BODY CENTERS Æ emphasizes difference in status and importance.

o POLITICAL POWER IS MUSCLE STRENGTH Æ emphasizes the need for political strength.

• THE EU IS AN AGENT WITH FORCE Æ serves to picture the EU either as active agent or as impacted by the action of other political agents.
THE EU IS A PERSON Æ general ontologization for collective processes and intentions; also used to criticize a one-sided concern with institutional issues instead of an international perspective.

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• THE EU IS AN ANIMATE BEING Æ emphasizes coming into existence and being sired, growth, and a need to survive; it can also emphasize that the EU is a difficult to control monster (Guardian only).
Let us now look at the patterns concerned with EU membership and its consequences:
THE EU IS A CONTAINER comes in two relatively unconnected variants:
o EU MEMBERSHIP IS BEING ENGULFED Æ highlights the threat the EU poses to Britain and of being drawn into a huge entity against one’s will.
o EU MEMBERSHIP IS ENTERING A CONTAINER Æ emphasizes the either-or nature of membership and the possibility of keeping others out.
IMPORTANT EU MEMBERS ARE CENTRAL Æ emphasizes differences in status or importance; is also used to envisage a reduced “Core Europe”.
• EU MEMBERSHIP IS MEMBERSHIP IN A CLUB Æ emphasizes dominant agents, the exclusive and rule-bound nature of membership as well as conditions for joining (Guardian only).
• THE EU IS A SUPERSTATE Æ emphasizes that nation states lose influence through the EU and in a few instances that it has international clout.

B. The specific target of EU integration is organized by the mapping EU

INTEGRATION IS A JOURNEY and its path related aspects:

THE MODALITY OF EU INTEGRATION IS A CHOSEN PACE Æ emphasizes progress as being continuous, rushed, too inactive, or too slow.
• EU POLICY IS A CHOSEN DIRECTION / DECISIONMAKERS ARE LEADERS Æ emphasizes decisions about the EU’s future being (un)clear or wrong, and that the integration process has powerful advocates.
DIFFICULTIES IN INTEGRATION ARE IMPEDIMENTS Æ emphasizes the No as obstacle to further integration; converges with “gridlock” of institutional functioning and “streamlining” to avoid it (Guardian only).
A PAUSE FOR REFLECTION IS STEPPING BACK Æ warns against rushing decisions after the No.
A POLITICAL AGENT / THE CONSTITUTION IS THE INTEGRATIONS DRIVING FORCE Æ suggests the role either of the constitution or of particular politicians as a cause of integration.

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C. Concerning metaphors for the constitution, a first group shares the journey structure just discussed. The mapping THE CONSTITUTION IS A MOVING ENTITY engenders the following variants:
PASSING THE CONSTITUTION IS MOVING AHEAD Æ emphasizes continuous progress.
DIFFICULTY IS TIRING MOVEMENT Æ emphasizes current difficulties and main “hurdles”.
SUCCESS IS GAINING MOMENTUM Æ expresses the achieved degree of success.
PASSING THE CONSTITUTION AGAINST POPULAR WILL IS FORCING IT THROUGH Æ emphasizes that it is illegitimate to act against public opinion.
OPPOSING THE CONSTITUTION IS BLOCKING ITS ADVANCE Æ highlights possibilities of counteraction against EU integration.

o INTRODUCING THE CONSTITUTION PIECE-MEAL IS ENTRY BY STEALTH Æ highlights the illegitimacy of overturning the will of the public.

THE CONSTITUTION IS A SHAPING FORCE Æ highlights how the constitution impacts other policy fields and integration.

o THE CONSTITUTIONS FORCE KEEPS EU INTEGRATION GOING Æ makes the constitution a causal mover and “engine” in the face of other difficulties that have slowed down the advance.

o THE CONSTITUTIONS FORCE WEIGHS DOWN ON THE ECONOMY Æ

expresses the British fear of a too “Socialist” constitution.

o THE CONSTITUTIONS FORCE DAMAGES RIGHTS Æ emphasizes how social rights will be neglected, etc.

Furthermore, the constitution can be couched in the ontology of objects or animacy:
THE CONSTITUTION IS AN EDIFICE

o THE CONSTITUTIONS CONTENT IS ITS ARCHITECTURE Æ highlights the ideational structure of the constitution, the effort underlying it, and its soundness or not.

o THE CONSTITUTION IS A RAMSHACKLE EDIFICE Æ highlights the unsound contents and justifies the rejection.

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THE CONSTITUTION IS A (JUNK-WORTHY) OBJECT

o THE CONSTITUTIONS DEMISE IS OBJECT DESTRUCTION Æ highlights complete unsoundness.

o THE CONSTITUTIONS DEMISE IS OBJECT REMOVAL Æ highlights temporary unsoundness.

THE CONSTITUTION IS A LIVING BODY

o THE CONSTITUTION'S DEMISE IS DEATH Æ highlights that the constitution’s rejection is final, the violent nature of the rejection, and the agents who hold responsible it.

o THE CONSTITUTION'S DEMISE IS ILLNESS Æ highlights that the constitution is seriously endangered by the No, but that a chance exists.

In all of this, we thus get a view of the constitution as a DYSFUNCTIONAL OBJECT or DYSFUNCTIONAL BODY that becomes temporarily or permanently obsolete, depending on the degree of damage. Finally, two very specific and idiomatic patterns evaluate the degree of change that the constitution will bring about and emphasize how deeply its acceptance would affect British sovereignty:
THE CONSTITUTION IS A BLUEPRINT FOR TYRANNY Æ highlights the negative expected effects on British sovereignty and the undemocratic nature of the EU.
THE CONSTITUTION IS FOR TIDYING UP EXISTING EUROPEAN TREATIES Æ highlights that the treaty principally simplifies existing legislation and promotes the EU’s effectiveness, but does not change the EU fundamentally.

D. The constitution’s rejection constitutes a target that is variously expressed in a force-dynamic scenario of elites who succumb to the voter’s force:

THE NO IS A VIOLENT FORCE Æ comes in variants, all of which highlight the vehement and consequential nature of the voter reaction.

o THE NO IS A KNOCK-OUT BLOW DELIVERED BY THE VOTERS and, more particularly, THE POLITICAL ELITES ARE FIGHTERS SUFFERING BLOWS Æ highlights that the No threatens the elites’ interests or even their careers.

o THE NO IS WARFARE Æ emphasizes the damage to other fields such as enlargement.

o THE NO IS A REVOLUTION Æ emphasizes the voter’s motive to punish the elites.

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o THE NO IS A NATURAL FORCE Æ highlights that the No’s effects are sudden, unexpected, and too strong to be opposed.

THE NO IS A DISASTER Æ highlights the huge problems the elites face; fits well with the previous patterns because force is a likely precursor.
THE NO IS A LOUD NOISE Æ highlights that it is impossible to ignore the No, that reactions are called for, and that attempts to downplay it are illegitimate; fits well with violent forces.

E. The debate, including the pro- and con-campaigns, constitutes a small target domain in its own right. The metaphors express the commentators’ view of the style and nature of the discourse they are participating in:

THE CAMPAIGN/DEBATE IS WARFARE Æ emphasizes the conflict-ridden nature of the debate, strategy issues, fervor, and that much is at stake; specification of POLITICS IS WARFARE.
CAMPAIGNING IS USING FORCE Æ highlights vehemence, required effort, counteraction, and vying interests; specification of ARGUMENTS ARE FORCES; comes in sub-patterns:

o CAMPAIGNING IS PRODUCING MOMENTUM ON A PATH Æ used for the campaign’s effectiveness.

o CAMPAIGNING IS VYING WITH THE OPPONENT Æ emphasizes opposite political interests.

THE CAMPAIGN IS A RACE (Guardian only) Æ emphasizes competitive aspects of campaigning such as opposition, difficulty, and the relative success of two parties.
THE CAMPAIGN IS SELLING DUBIOUS GOODS TO THE CITIZENS (Sun only) Æ emphasizes that pro-constitution propaganda manipulates the public or spreads disinformation.
THE CAMPAIGN IS A PLOT AGAINST THE CITIZENS (Sun only) Æ idem.

3.2 Why search for conceptual affinities?

If metaphor analysis is to offer a valid perspective, features defining a discourse qua discourse should be reflected in metaphors. First, discourse should allow for some diversity of opinion based on a socio-cultural common ground. Thus, it is important to look at how conceptual metaphors become differentiated to accommodate alternative viewpoints. We have seen that opinion diversity is possible within all occurring conceptual metaphor
patterns, minimally because any metaphor can at least be rejected, but also for

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more complex reasons we will get to. Even more importantly, conceptual metaphors should define a range of things people want to speak about and they should interrelate them meaningfully. Here, my data points to a large – but of course limited – number of conceptual metaphors in use. A palpable general picture within each newspaper, the paper’s line, remains discernible even if reported views of other speakers “dilute” this. Hence, journalists deploy metaphors in mutually supportive ways, and our task after enumerating all conceptual metaphors is to examine the mechanisms that integrate them. My assumption is that conceptual metaphors will be perceived as integrated by readers who are regularly exposed to the media and that, a fortiori, its makers (journalists, politicians) are acutely aware of the integrative patterns. Although I cannot undertake the necessary psycholinguistic experiment to prove this, we may reason that if it is possible to reconstruct a broad set of logical affinities, this points to high metaphor induced discourse coherence in real minds. Coherence patterns become visible only by considering parallels and affinities from a bird’s eye view. As Quinn (2005) convincingly argues in a key methods paper on empirical metaphor research, this comprehensive approach allows the researcher to deduce what ordinary speakers actually know, although this knowledge does seldom surface en bloc. At the surface, we typically see selected small chains that need to be pieced together.

3.3 Affinity based on source or target domain logic

Having familiarized ourselves with the specific argumentative uses of conceptual metaphors in section 2, we are now in a position to scan the data for plausible coherence patterns. In this section, I will show that the coherence between conceptual metaphors can be based on similar source or similar target domains. Goatly (1997, 2007) has dubbed different target/same source

multivalency, and different source/same target diversification.

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3.3.1 Activation spread due to target domain similarities

Non-identical target domains will always overlap associatively in a clearly delimited discourse such as ours. The inherent topical relatedness of targets can become a basis for metaphor coherence because it might let a source domain appear applicable across the board.14 For example, there is an obvious parallelism between seeing the EU and the constitution as an edifice. Both mappings highlight design and structural integrity (or their absence). Similarly, the post-referendum crisis metaphors depict several target entities as falling apart, being split, snubbed, wrecked, or discarded. It is secondary for the Sun’s commentators whether this is the EU, its old-style social model, the constitutional treaty, or a future British referendum. The argumentative impact (and, predictably, the glee of the readers) comes from the violence of destroying just any entity related to the EU. The logical transfer from the EU to the constitution is due to metonymical relations within the wider domain of “all things related to the EU”. Likewise, the-No-as-warfare impacts not only the constitution. Its “collateral damage” afflicts targets like EU enlargement. To provide yet another example, in two of the most frequent patterns, the EU and the constitution are both metaphorically expressed as entities in motion. The conceptual metaphor EU INTEGRATION IS A JOURNEY is naturally extended to include its major “enabler”, the constitutional treaty, yielding the subsidiary mapping THE CONSTITUTION IS A MOVING ENTITY. Again, the ease of extension can be explained as associative activation spread in the wider target domain or, more specifically, through the well attested conceptual metonymy CAUSE FOR EFFECT that lets the prospective cause of further EU integration stand for the integration as such.

14 This means that coherence results as a spill-over from a metaphor “that started it all”, perhaps because the word “European” suggests such a connection. An alternative explanation is that similar metaphors get chosen because the speaker’s foreknowledge of the target domains connects them in some more principled way. For diagnosing coherence, it remains unsubstantial if its reason is some prior conceptual similarity of domains or a mere spill-over between them.

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3.3.2 Affinity through shared image schemas (source domain similarity)

Next, I will look at affinities between conceptual metaphors within the same target (e.g. the EU, the No, …), based on a non-identical, yet connected source domain logic. Under this and the following headings I will discuss various sources that lead to a sufficient degree of source domain similarity.
One major basis for similarity is image-schematic. Image-schematic scaffolds commonly characterize the source domain’s basic ontology such as PATH, FORCE, ENTITY, and STRUCTURE. A basic image-schematic coherence extends between specific level mappings that can claim a subordinate status to the same generic level mapping. We saw this with THE NO IS A VIOLENT FORCE which subsumes fisticuffs, war, natural force, and revolution. The source domains all instantiate violent forces. These are similar at the level of causal source (which is external) and manner of motion (which is vehement and abrupt).15 In another sense, each source domain adds something not shared such as social dissatisfaction, naturalization, and the emphasis on an event not to be ignored. However, this should not keep us from saying that a part of the metaphors’ meanings is coherent at one level.
An opinion about the best course of action can correspond to a single image schema (within a broader scenario setting), that we can discern in otherwise unrelated source domains. For instance, the Sun’s main message to the readers seems to be OPPOSITION IS BLOCKAGE. It corresponds to a simple image schema that is variously couched as imposing red lines, torpedoing the constitution, opposing its backdoor entry, and opposing is being “foisted on us”. In all these instances, it is the British public exerting counterforce or creating a blocking impediment. Likewise, we have seen how the image schema DISSOLUTION OF STRUCTURE can be instantiated across different rich source domains. The EU is depicted as ”faltering” and “collapsing” (Body or Building), “unraveling” (Fabric), “rickety Heath Robinson structures” (Building), or “sclerotic” (Body). All of the expressions instantiate DISSOLUTION

15 For the same reason, general lexis for physical forces such as “shake” converges with more specific body strength related expressions like “flexing its muscles”. The latter is situated at a more specific level. Yet, bodies belong to the general class of physical forces. It comes down to a descriptive choice whether we call it diversification or choose the generic formula with the benefit that all kinds of physical force can be subsumed.

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OF STRUCTURE for the target EU and some of them UP-DOWN in addition. The image schema is partly independent of the richer knowledge we possess of bodies, buildings, or fabrics. Why alternative expressions exist in language to frame the relevant image-schematic notion is best explained through the Invariance Hypothesis (Lakoff 1990). It claims that the image-schematic fit of a source is a primary factor for enabling a successful mapping. From this angle, image schemas capture relevant coherence patterns because the first and irreducible portion of what gets mapped is the same. The rich domains “Body”, “Building”, and “Fabric” are enlisted because they constitute a suitable carrier for (or show optimal fit with) the intended image schema. All three work equally well as rich sources, because they express functionality in terms of structure and dissolution imagery. It may be noted that many possible aspects of bodies, buildings and fabrics are missing in actually found mappings. This view chimes with Grady’s theory (1997), who argues that a lot of knowledge from the rich domains remains unused, because primary metaphors, perhaps in combinations of two or three, are what the actual mappings are motivated by. Hence, in our example, a primary formula such as THE EU’S / THE CONSTITUTIONS ORGANIZATION IS A STRUCTURED PHYSICAL ENTITY might capture best what gets mapped.

3.3.3 Beyond image schemas

Despite what was just said, many mappings are not reducible to image- schematic properties. It has previously been noted that the Invariance Hypothesis, in its original form, has difficulties explaining some mappings. What is mapped from the source can rest on non-image-schematic inferences deriving from what Ruiz de Mendoza calls Extended Invariance (1998). The same is true for two mappings when we search for similarities in their source domains. The analysis of the inferentially richer source domain structure as opposed to the image-schematic aspects leads to analytically equally valid, yet different sets of metaphors for our comparison. Take CAMPAIGNING FOR THE CONSTITUTION IS WAR and CAMPAIGNING FOR THE CONSTITUTION IS A PHYSICAL FORCE: Both emphasize the antagonistic nature of campaigning equally well because warfare is mainly an act of force. At this level, they form a set. Yet, strategic aspects of war, a frequent emphasis in our data, appear to be more
complex than image schemas. What is more, by comparing “war strategy”

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with “game plan” we can see that some similarity generating strands reach out in a direction orthogonal to image-schematic logic and thereby implicate force- unrelated domains. From this viewpoint, war and game metaphors constitute an equally interesting analytic set. Further below, I will bring knowledge aspects such as strategy into connection with affinities of causal structure.16

3.3.4 Affinity through image schema transformations

Sometimes we need to figure out an affinity by performing small image schema transformations. Impediments on the path of integration converge with a state of “gridlock” in the machinery scenario, an impediment to a circular motion of a cogwheel. One simply has to mentally transform the forward motion to a circular motion (basic biker’s knowledge, as it were) to see that the force and the force blockage schemas are otherwise identical. This image-schematic similarity can be detected on the basis of applying naive physics.

3.3.5 Affinity through antithetical image schemas

Of course, sameness between image schemas is not all that human minds are able to make sense of. Antithetical relations between them may play an equally important role for creating discourse coherence, as long as one metaphor is uttered with an awareness of the other’s oppositeness. For example, the opposition of a navel-gazing with a more outward-looking Europe lends itself to an ironic inversion. Exploiting this image-schematic similarity, the Sun sometimes equates the core countries with the navel-gazing ones. Thus, an attribute thought of as positive (IMPORTANT IS CENTRAL) turns into a negative one (SELF-CENTERED IS CENTRAL). The idea that irony or ambiguity is usually image schema based comes from Turner (1996:66), but it also underlies several examples given by Goatly (2007:chapter 5).

16 This demonstrates the importance of my deliberate methodological decision to code image-schematic aspects of source domains independently in addition to rich source domains (“two tier coding”, cf. Kimmel, n.d.). Having image-schemas represented in the software keeps all quotes with a shared image-schematic pattern retrievable at a mouse click.

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3.3.6 Affinity by image schema inversion (metaphor duals)

A specific kind of affinity relates to metaphor duals, i.e. two inverse image- schematic construals of a conceived scene (Lakoff & Johnson 1999). Duals switch trajector and landmark, i.e. who is the primary entity in motion and who is defined relative to it. Especially in the Sun, we find an affinity between container related metaphors that instantiate EU MEMBERSHIP IS ENTERING A CONTAINER and others that instantiate EU MEMBERSHIP IS BEING ENGULFED. The implication of the former is AVOIDING INVOLVEMENT IN THE EU IS KEEPING OUT OF IT. The agent, the nation state, is in motion and the EU is the static backdrop. The implication of the latter is AVOIDING INVOLVEMENT IN THE EU IS BLOCKING IT. Now, the nation state is static and the EU is in motion towards it. Both conceptual metaphors suggest the same basic gestalt configuration, with the difference that the constituents of agent, object, and ground are construed in different ways. (The difference of course lies in how aggressive the EU is considered). A speakers’ cognitive unconscious will connect both levels based on a gestalt similarity and will frequently allow generating expressions by viewpoint switch.

3.3.7 Affinity based on a correspondence of causal structure

What is shared between two or more conceptual metaphors can also relate to a shared abstract causal pattern in the source domain (cf. Lakoff & Johnson
1980:93ff). Speaking of the constitution’s rejection, the source domains “Lifespan” and “Object/structural integrity” are found. People know in an abstract way that the consequences of death are similar to destroying an object. A stake driven through a vampire’s heart shares the structure of an object consigned to the shredder. We know, of course, that death refers to animate beings, whereas the object-related metaphors do not. Yet, in both cases the established shape is destroyed and normal functioning impaired. At an abstract level a shared event structure of the following sort connects the
two:
“causal stimulus occurs” Æ “an entity ceases to be permanent/functional and therefore changes ontological status”

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This abstract causal similarity lies in a script-like scaffold defining the event’s sequence. Such similarities between sources are not based on image-schematic features in the usual sense, but on relational ones.17 Discourse coherence here owes to the fact that two structure mappings, as Lakoff and Johnson (1980) define them, share an array of abstract correspondences. To provide another example, machinery-metaphors are similar to building-metaphors in respects going beyond structural integrity and dissolution. The European nations in the machine’s engine room correspond to the edifice’s architects (mapped feature: “agent in charge of the process”). Causal structure seems to be another case of Extended Invariance. If we still choose to think of our examples as image- schematic, the image schemas must be of the highest level kind. Relational knowledge may comprise a high-level image schema (Kimmel 2002) if we consider candidates such as COMPLEX SYSTEM TERMINATED (i.e. an abstract notion that a cause impinges on an entity and effects a change that renders the system dysfunctional) or SUSTAINED CAUSAL AGENT (i.e. an abstract cause continuously shapes a process).

3.3.8 Affinity based on evaluation of effect

The perhaps loosest kind of affinity occurs when evaluative entailments are shared between two source domains, but that is about all. Compare, for instance, PRO-EU PROPAGANDA IS SELLING (DUBIOUS) GOODS and PRO-EU PROPAGANDA IS A PLOT. The source domains differ in their causal-intentional structure (active effort to convince vs. causing a disturbance/creating something harmful on the sly). Yet, both mappings emphasize the illegitimate nature of propaganda, simply because both result in some negative effect on the citizens. In this way and similar other ways, metaphors can be related at the level of their rhetorical emotive functions when the source domains carry the same evaluative load about an effect.

17 The notion of relational similarities, as opposed to feature-related ones, was explored by Gentner (1983) as a way of explaining correspondences between metaphor sources and targets. Again, the difference in the present context is that relational similarities extend between two different mappings that share a similar source.

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3.4 Metaphor coherence in a dynamic perspective

Next, I will turn to coherence-creating devices that result from conceptual dynamization, that is when we give metaphors a more narrative format. Speakers commonly tell metaphorical stories about an issue to make a point, as in the following journey frame: The EU has faced difficulties in the recent years (“integration is stalling”), which is why constitution is needed to “streamline” the bulky object. They also envisage alternatives in a narrative way: A Yes to the constitution would enable EU integration and give it “unstoppable momentum”, while the No would stop this movement.

3.4.1 Central mappings create associative coherence

Before we turn to narratively couched metaphors let us briefly consider coherence in the absence of such mechanisms. Before metaphors are given a particular narrative twist they are represented as central mappings, following Kövecses (2002) and Musolff (2004:19). For instance, the time-honored idiom “body politic” reflects this ontologically irreducible level of conceptualization. Central mappings are apparently represented in the conceptual system at a level rather unspecific to what a speaker wishes to make of his or her topic. We have seen that THE EU IS A BODY can give rise to a diversity of rather unrelated argumentation points or storylines. An argument for slimming the EU down, i.e. the aspect of body girth, seems to be quite faraway from an invective against institutional navel-gazing, and that again differs from a call for building up political muscle. Hence, the central mapping THE EU IS A BODY spawns hugely different specific mappings because so many different body features lend themselves to metaphorical use. In view of this diversity, I propose that central mappings of this sort unify discourse, but do so only indirectly. In the Lakoff-Johnson tradition we would probably say that the EU as a body is a productive structural mapping which systematically connects a set of sub-mappings by virtue of belonging to a conceptual domain. We might alternatively say that, because of the hugely differing grounds of the mappings, a term that Goatly (1997) draws attention to, we have no single conceptual metaphor here at all. Our example would rather conform to Goatly’s metaphor diversification in which different source domains shed light on different aspects
of the target domain EU. Whichever parlance we prefer, the coherence link

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between the mappings is associative and more at the domain level, rather than laying claim to some shared conceptual content in the narrow sense.

3.4.2 Metaphor scenarios create a common ground for diverse opinions

As a counterpart to a central mapping Musolff coins the term metaphor scenario. Scenarios provide “main story lines or perspectives along which the central mappings are developed or extended” (2004:18) and thus situate them in one of several possible action configurations with particular participants and roles. What does the difference amount to? Apparently, sometimes we simply think in static metaphoric features. For this a central mapping suffices, e.g. when we use THE CONSTITUTION IS AN OBJECT WITH STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY to point out that one considers it well-made or unsound in its content. More typically however, we think quasi-narratively and in terms of “who does what to whom?”. In an argumentatively more elaborated form THE CONSTITUTIONS REJECTION IS OBJECT DESTRUCTION/REMOVAL is created as a dynamized spin-off from the central mapping. Metaphor scenarios thus bestow a greater argumentative situatedness on conceptualizations.18
Metaphor scenarios provide a common discursive currency for otherwise diverging opinions. The central mapping THE CONSTITUTION IS A LIVING BEING provides a shared reference frame for speakers, who may otherwise disagree, but is not particularly conducive to the expression of opinion diversity about an event. Only derivative dynamic scenarios like REJECTION IS HEALTH DAMAGE allow debating the present state, i.e. whether the treaty is “alive”, in “coma”, or “dead” after the Noes. The source domain script heavy-illness-followed-by- death (or recuperation) is used to discuss Europe’s problematic state. Death suggests finality, whereas illness is less final, and comes somewhere in between. Similarly, the No conceived of as a damaging blow accommodates opinion diversity by being final or “a blow for the constitutional process, but not the end of it”. And, “dumped”,” scrapped”, “scuppered”, or “shelved” share the basic object ontology, but one action is further reaching than the

18 It appears that metaphor scenarios primarily occur as what Zinken et al. (2008:365) call discourse metaphors “preserving a relatively high level of specificity and relatively rich cultural knowledge in the source domain”.

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other. (When something “cobbled together” does not work, we first put it aside, but we may eventually really dump it). A key function of scenarios in discourse is that they allow speakers to juxtapose and compare different courses of action within a central mapping.
Secondly, our example indicates another important point: Only what happens on a scenario level reveals the speaker’s opinion, because central mappings inherently under-specify any specific viewpoint. A dynamic scenario is needed to predict argumentative valence, among several other discourse modulators such as negation, hedges, emotional downtoners, etc. (see Kimmel, n.d., Koller 2003).
Thirdly, turning a central mapping into a scenario allows for creativity and thereby powerful, non-conventional inferences, as in the following example:
“Constantly moving the EU institutional furniture about only breeds more anxiety” (Guardian 118).
This speaker seems to imply that the post-referendum crisis calls for a single thorough rebuilding of the House, rather than perpetual small changes. The idea of institutional furniture, not to speak of rearranging it, goes well beyond the EU IS A HOUSE mapping; it is an extension. Similarly, all of the metaphor extensions and elaborations discussed in section 2 were situated at the scenario level, which is what typically happens.

3.4.3 How events, agency, causality, and states become complementary in metaphor scenarios

Equipped with this basic notion, we may now look at multi-component scenarios in which ostensibly independent central mappings come to co- specify each other. A ramshackle building that collapses or an object that is battered goes with a forceful, violent action. It is a common experience that a force damages a well-put together object. THE NO IS A NATURAL FORCE enters into natural affinity with THE CONSTITUTION IS A WELL-MADE OBJECT/ERECT EDIFICE, resulting in the compound scenario THE NO DESTROYS/TOPPLES THE CONSTITUTION. This aligns a metaphorical agent, the No, with a metaphorical

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recipient of force, the constitution. By way of activation spread from one target domain to the next, the related view THE EU IS A DAMAGED EDIFICE results.19
Another scenario-based complementation comes about when a force is added to a process to make it into an action (i.e. to bestow a cause on it through CAUSATION IS DRIVING). The highly frequent pattern EU INTEGRATION IS A MOTION ON A PATH receives the addition THE CONSTITUTION IS A FORCE KEEPING THE EU GOING. This supplies an “engine” for the movement. Further enrichment is achieved by adding an obstacle that explains why this engine is much needed, i.e. DIFFICULTIES IN THE EU’S FUNCTIONING ARE PATH BLOCKAGES. While all of these patterns are independently found, the ones further down the logical chain automatically implicate those higher up.
There is a basic cognitive rationale to the fact that entity related metaphors tend to become specified by force metaphors. Humans tend to think of what happens in terms of causal actions. Talmy (2000) claims that causation is understood in terms of force-dynamic interactions like impelling or attracting. Hence, events understood as actions, and not mere occurrences, require force- dynamic conceptualizations. These, in turn, need to be populated with ontologized entities. Much metaphoric discourse coherence comes about because (previously static) ontologizations of entities get inserted in force related scenarios. Hence, ontological and force-dynamic conceptualizations converge naturally as metaphorical patient and metaphorical agent/action.
A complementation of a different sort occurs between path and container- metaphors. Combining the idea EU IS A CONTAINER with the idea that a nation state’s INTEGRATION IS A PATH may give rise to AVOIDING INVOLVEMENT IN THE EU IS KEEPING OUT OF IT. The mutual fit is quite natural. In the source domain of spatial relations, path motion happens on a ground, including approximate regions or even sharply delineated container-like zones. Thus, container metaphors enrich path-metaphors by specifying states or institutional settings with the properties of states.

19 Even if an individual speaker suddenly came to realize that the familiar idea of the “EU House”, etc. invites the possibility of damaging, the possibility has been there all along in the source domain’s ontology.

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Overall, a conceptual complementation of agent, patient/recipient, causality, and changing states (or any subset of these) can be created from constituents of independent metaphors. The affinity between path, force, and container source domains is due to the fact that events, causes, and states need to be specified for a full logical structure of what happens, whereby each of the three source domains fulfills a complementary role. Thus, a rather typical goal of inferring coherence in metaphorical discourse is to connect several thematic groups of conceptual metaphor within a mini-narrative (Kimmel 2005, cf. Lakoff & Johnson 1980:92).

3.4.4 Experiential motivation in a primary scene

Why do metaphorical mini-narratives arise? How can the affinities be explained? One answer I have just explored, i.e. the claim that the source domains “Path”, “Force” and “Container” become mutually supporting because we know that these go together in all kinds of experienced events. The interlocking image schemas frequently reflect an experiential coherence of a more concrete sort. For instance, the earthquake/landslide/tsunami- metaphors for the No connect naturally with the constitutional edifice/object- metaphors, because these natural forces and destruction are metonymically linked in everyday experience. Aspects expressed in different metaphors may thus be motivated in a single and more concrete human experience. Primary scenes may lie at the origin of instances when speakers perceive two source domains as connected.20 When source aspects from different conceptual metaphors go together in a prototypical everyday experience, it is easy to connect them in the mind. The referendal No that occurs in FORCE-related metaphors is another example. This force scenario can easily incorporate the sudden, loud noise (a bang, sneezing, or a ringing clock) used to emphasize that the No cannot be

20 My suggestion bears some similarity to a point made by Grady (1997). He claims that experiential co-occurrence in infancy can motivate how source and target become connected in conceptual metaphor. For example, AFFECTION IS WARMTH and RELATIONSHIPS ARE ENCLOSURES are both motivated in the infant’s experience of being held tight by a caretaker. This is what Grady dubs a “primary scene”, which involves the experiential co-occurrence of source and target. A similar kind of explanation can be provided for the affinity between independent metaphors.

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ignored. Vehemence and loud noise are directly correlated in experience. Objects and the possibility of breaking them go together, as do sudden movement and noises. Based on this primary scene, the No as destructive force and the bang naturally cohere. We may hypothesize that the human repertoire of primary scenes is a major impetus for building appropriate extensions to metaphors that are already around in discourse. A journalist might begin to use a loud noise metaphor because he has used force- metaphors before and simply extends these through experiential logic.

3.4.5 The top-most level of coherence: Force-dynamic interaction patterns

The possibly most general unifying mechanism between different conceptual metaphors emerges from role distributions and agent interactions they share. (Most metaphors at least implicitly require a conceptualization of both of these dimensions). We can analytically capture roles and interactions by analyzing the implied force dynamics. Politics is about antagonism in the dominant line of thinking and thereby exhibits the prototypical force-dynamic pattern. A great many political metaphors reveal a vying forces-model. In our data, this interaction pattern concerns the antagonism of the pro- vs. anti-constitution camps as well as that of the elites vs. the voters. Both antagonisms reflect a polar structure. If we probe the data further, this general role distribution is characteristic of three sets of source domains, i.e. “Journey/container”,
”Edifice/machine/object”, and “Life”. The anti-constitution camp opposes the EU establishment in (1) wanting to block its advance, (2) wanting to pull down its structures against efforts to keep it functional, and (3) wanting to kill it, and thereby again stop it, in face of efforts to keep it alive and kicking. Force- dynamics analysis requires us to ask who is agonist and who antagonist, who has which intrinsic motion tendency, who’s force is stronger, and who moves or stops whom in the resulting dynamic. If we apply this, we get two types of logical correspondences. We can see that metaphor sets (1) and (3) overlap in the specific inference that the constitution’s success equals motion, unless the counterforce prevails. With a somewhat different logic, metaphor sets (2) and (3) overlap in a different inference, namely that the anti-constitution camp aims at rendering the treaty dysfunctional through physical destruction. The one side of the interaction involves a force aiming to preserve an object’s
functional shape, i.e. the proponents’ tendency to stay in place. (At the

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epistemic level this is mirrored in an adherence to its belief in the constitution). Opposed to it is a counterforce aiming to demolish the object. (At the epistemic level this means overcoming the inertia of the belief that the constitution still has a chance).
A force-dynamic coherence can be effective even when it is less than absolute. In our campaigning metaphors, there are certain shared aspects between racing the opponent and vying with the opponent. Force is exerted and superior strength is needed in either, but the path aspect is different in a race. (One races against one’s fatigue or lack of fitness, as it were, if we must stay in the agonist-antagonist framework). Another case of incomplete overlap comes about when new participants get added to a configuration of agents. Apparently, the basic force-dynamics pattern can almost always be extended into a more complex configuration. For instance, in speaking of “swinging the [public opinion] tide”, the two-agent pattern underlying the competition between the two political camps gets extended into a triple interaction. Now, the purpose of the campaign is to cause the voters, the third agent, to move in one’s own direction, while the opponents are trying to achieve the same thing. My point is that even when a fine-grained analysis makes out the difference, the all-important configuration defined by agents and their vying force remains part of the now augmented scene. Hence, a degree of coherence results with the aforementioned bipartisan metaphors.

3.5 Textual metaphor interaction

So far I have looked at inferred connections that need not surface textually. I now turn to conceptual interactions between metaphors that become demonstrable in the text itself. Connections manifestly surface either in tight syntactic metaphor compounds or, more often, in passages with several adjacent metaphors occurring within a sentence of two.

3.5.1 Metaphor diversification

Diversification has been treated in part 2, which summarizes diversified conceptual metaphors for the same target under a heading each and thereby shows how they cover complementary aspects of the EU, the constitution, etc. The only necessary addition is that diversification quite typically occurs in

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single text passages to describe a target from different angles. This heightens thematic coherence through within-argument cohesion:
“Over the past few years, the EU has become something of a juggernaut and I fear it has become so concerned with navel-gazing that it has actually lost touch with the populations of Europe” (Guardian 214).
Here, the EU IS A MONSTER, the EU IS A SELF-PERCEIVING BODY and THE EU IS A REMOTE ENTITY/BODY are combined to shed light on various aspects of the same target, namely the EU’s growth, its internal behavior, and its external behavior.

3.5.2 Metaphor composition

Lakoff and Turner define metaphor composition as the “simultaneous use of two or more […] metaphors in the same passage, or even in the same sentence” (1989:70f). Composition is frequent in unique acts of poetic creativity. Of course, the discursively most interesting instances of composition are those that are found more pervasively, such as the following:
“Brussels will stretch every sinew to drag it in through the back door” (Sun 59).21
Here, IMPLEMENTING THE CONSTITUTION IS A JOURNEY (and THE EU IS ITS MOTOR) are creatively combined with the more implicit mapping THE NATION IS A HOUSE or THE EU IS A HOUSE (depending on the perspective the hearer attributes to the sentence). This results in a house-entry scenario, i.e. INTRODUCING THE CONSTITUTION IS BACKDOOR ENTRY, thus spelling out that trying to proceed with the treaty after its rejection is illegitimate. Two mechanisms contribute to this. First, the two image schemas need to be matched. The PATH is superimposed on a house-CONTAINER. (This relates to the above mentioned complementariness of agent, cause, and setting but with the difference that two expressions realize a compound structure in situ).

21 The expression in fact permits interpretation as extension or composition depending whether we think of one single or of two combined metaphor units. Recall that we have characterized extension as exploiting a part of a source domain that is not conventionally used and as thereby activating “dormant” slots.

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Second, a number of inferences that the image schemas per se do not license are introduced by what speakers consider the standard way to enter a house. The inference of illegitimacy emerges with our rich cultural knowledge that private spaces should remain inviolate, that the owners should grant entry to houses, and that entering by the back-door is a typical act of deception. Again, the speaker has to imagine the scenario in its full specificity do produce the appropriate inferences. This is neither part of the PATH nor the CONTAINER imagery, but emerges from inserting the two together into a richer context.

3.5.3 Argumentative interlocking by metaphor pastiche

What I call metaphor pastiche occurs when the speaker creates a metaphor cluster in which metaphors cohere textually, whereas at the conceptual level they interact only loosely (cf. Goatly 1997:chapter 7). Such “mixed” metaphor clusters are common in my corpus and account for about half of all metaphors (Kimmel 2009b). Many clusters comprise pastiche patterns. To exemplify a metaphor pastiche, the conventional metaphor of the “House of Europe”, usually used with positive undertones, can be turned into a negative statement by adding further metaphors:
“The House of Europe has been built by stealth and deception; … What has been created is an anti-democratic and anti-freedom monolith and the backlash is here” (Guardian 170).
Let us first note that the commonly understood main meaning focus of the European House is shared responsibility and effort. The two most important metaphors that add to THE EU IS A HOUSE are that of “stealth and deception” (POLITICS IS CONSPIRACY) and “monolith” (THE EU IS A RIGID OBJECT). I will not discuss the “backlash” metaphor (DISGRUNTLEDNESS IS COUTERFORCE) because it belongs to the next thought already. Now, stealth is not really connected to our prototypical knowledge of how houses are built. The metaphor has been added more or less ad hoc to create a strange scenario in which someone constructs a house on the sly, something that is hardly typical in experience. The monolith’s fit with houses is equally flimsy. True, there is a shared OBJECT/STRUCTURE ontology creating a superficial semantic connection. The implications of the word monolith (a hermetic, rigid and internally coherent object) might apply to houses, but not with the critical thrust we find here.
Calling a house rigid misrepresents what the speaker means. At the intended

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plane of meaning, a monolith is mapped onto an unchangeable institutional structure to criticize that the EU does not welcome democratic change. This criticism bypasses the logic of houses. The only conceivable connection is the atypical assumption that the house should be inherently open to rebuilding. Thus, to make sense of the monolith-metaphor one will usually switch to a logical plane outside the house scenario. A new aspect is highlighted and a slightly different conceptualization of the topic is opened.
Hence, what defines a pastiche is the presence of (a) some degree of contextual, syntactic, or basic-level semantic integration between the metaphors, yet (b) no motivated extension of the first metaphor, not to speak of a primary scene that links them all. In the more extreme cases of a pastiche, it is only textual cohesion or syntactic compounding that prompts us to merge the metaphors conceptually.

4. Conclusion

The study validates the claim that conceptual metaphors, besides explaining diversity within, integrate discourse. My study is rooted in a double claim harking back to Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Their more or less universally recognized first contention is that sets of expressions manifesting the same underlying conceptual metaphor in and of themselves point to discourse coherence. A less frequently received claim made by Lakoff and Johnson is that coherence may be further heightened by affinities between conceptual metaphors. This essay has aimed at understanding discourse as an interwoven fabric at this level of higher affinities. Recognizing that the woof and warp of metaphoric discourse is not of a single kind, I have showcased the varieties of filament that can create such a fabric. Some of these connective strands depend on activation spread in the source or target domains, while others capitalize on the ability to interrelate knowledge narratively. The most important focus of my discussion was activation spread in the source domain (mainly because the target domain logic is rather self-explanatory and already emerges from the descriptive survey). Under the heading of source domain mechanisms, I have discussed various ontological similarities rooted in image schemas, causal, and evaluative structure. Towards the end, I turned to the ability to creatively
juxtapose or interlock metaphors in a more ad hoc fashion.

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Overall, a study of metaphor coherence opens an interesting vista on the broader issue of argumentation. One possible reason for metaphor coherence is that more encompassing conceptual structures play a guiding role in discourse production. Other approaches have recently suggested that speakers draw on more complex ideascapes when shaping their thoughts (discussed in Kimmel 2009b), a point that also forcefully emerges from a comparison of metaphors to the more extended text units, i.e. whole arguments, which they are embedded in (Kimmel 2009a). Parts of my analysis, notably force-dynamic patterns, dovetail with the assumption of such more encompassing generative patterns. We need not necessarily regard conceptual metaphors as the only (or even as the preferred) cognitive structures that determine how metaphors get deployed in discourse. At the same time, metaphor analysis remains a well tested method and is eminently suitable for a bottom-up reconstruction of these complexities.
Whatever future studies may find out about this issue, the present paper should be read as a plea to consider motivated similarities across conceptual metaphors in a systematic way and based on thorough qualitative groundwork. I close with the hope that the categories of high-level coherence suggested here will provide other researchers with some useful guidelines for scanning and analyzing their data.

5. Acknowledgements

For constructive feedback to a previous version of this paper my thanks goes to Katrin Mutz and Ronald Kemsies.

6. References

Bärtsch, Christine (2004): Metaphernkonzepte in Pressetexten. Das Verhältnis der Schweiz zu Europa und der Europäischen Union, unpublished dissertation, Zurich University.
Bruell, Cornelia/Pausch, Markus/Mokre, Monika (edd.) (2009): The

Contestation of Europe, Frankfurt/New York.

Chilton, Paul/Ilyin, Mikhail (1993): “Metaphor in political discourse. The case of the ‘Common European House’”, in: Discourse and Society 4(1), 7–31.
Gentner, Deidre (1983): “Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy”, in: Cognitive Science 7(2), 155–170.

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Goatly, Andrew (1997): The Language of Metaphors, London.
Goatly, Andrew (2007): Washing the Brain – metaphor and hidden ideology, Amsterdam/New York.
Grady, Joseph (1997): Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary

Scenes, Berkeley, unpublished dissertation, University of California.

Kimmel, Michael (2002): Metaphor, Imagery, and Culture, unpublished dissertation, Vienna University.
Kimmel, Michael (2005): “From metaphor to the ‘mental sketchpad’: literary macrostructure and compound image schemas in Heart of Darkness”. in: Metaphor & Symbol 20(3), 199–238.
Kimmel, Michael (2009a): “The EU constitution in a stereoscopic view: Qualitative content analysis and metaphor analysis compared”, in: Bruell, Cornelia/Pausch, Markus/Mokre, Monika (edd.): The Contestation of Europe, Frankfurt/New York, 119–162.
Kimmel, Michael (2009b): “Why we mix metaphors (and mix them well): Discourse coherence, conceptual metaphor, and beyond”, in: Journal of Pragmatics, 97-115
Kimmel, Michael (n.d.): “Compositional and two-tier coding – optimizing qualitative software tools for the study of metaphor in discourse”, unpublished manuscript.
Koller, Veronika (2003): “Metaphor clusters, metaphor chains: analyzing the multifunctionality of metaphor in text”, in: metaphorik.de 05, 115–134.
Kövecses, Zoltán (2002): Metaphor: A practical Introduction, Oxford.
Lakoff, George (1990): “The Invariance Hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas?”, in: Cognitive Linguistics 1(1), 39–74.
Lakoff, George/Johnson, Mark (1980): Metaphors We Live By, Chicago.
Lakoff, George/Johnson, Mark (1999): Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought, New York.
Lakoff, George/Turner, Mark (1989): More Than Cool Reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor, Chicago/London.
Mokre, Monika/Pausch, Markus/Bärenreuter, Christoph/Brüll, Cornelia/ Gaibauer, Helmut/Gröner, Ulrike/Kimmel, Michael (2006): The Referenda on the European Constitution: a crucial moment for the development of a European public sphere?, project report, University of Salzburg.
Musolff, Andreas (2004): Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical reasoning in debates about Europe, New York/Basingstoke.

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Quinn, Naomi (2005): “How to reconstruct schemas people share from what they say”, in: Finding Culture in Talk: a collection of methods, New York/Basingstoke, 35–82.
Reining, Astrid (2005): “Conceptual metaphor in media discourse about the European constitution - An evaluation of the Hamburg metaphor database”, in: Online Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Workshop on Corpus-Based Approaches to Figurative Language, July 14th, 2005, Birmingham.
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco (1998): “On the nature of blending as a cognitive phenomenon”, in: Journal of Pragmatics 30(3), 259–274.
Schäffner, Christina (1993): „Die europäische Architektur. Metaphern der Einigung Europas in der deutschen, britischen und amerikanischen Presse“, in: Gewenig, Adi (ed.): Inszenierte Information. Politik und strategische Kommunikation in den Medien, Opladen, 13–30.
Talmy, Leonard (2000): Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Cambridge, Mass./London.
Turner, Mark (1996): The Literary Mind, Oxford.
Zinken, Jörg/Hellsten, Iina/Nerlich, Brigitte (2008): “Discourse metaphors”, in: Frank, Roslyn/Dirven, René/Ziemke, Tom/Bernárdez, Enrique (edd.): Body, Language and Mind: Volume 2. Sociocultural situatedness, Berlin/New York, 363–385.

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The Discursive Formation of Theatricality as a Critical Concept

Glen McGillivray

Abstract


The metaphor of theatricality has, in recent years, been recuperated as a key term in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies. This scholarly “re-valuing” of the term arises, in part, as a reaction to performativity, a term that has achieved a certain discursive dominance in the field. Rather than taking sides in favour of one or the other, in this essay I argue that theatricality is critically formed by this struggle. Historically, theatrical metaphors have been employed in anti-theatricalist discourses to suggest ideas of inauthenticity and deception; most famously, in art critic Michael Fried’s “Art and Objecthood” (1998). Yet, for the European avantgarde, theatricality was the “essence” of theatre. What appears to be a contradiction seems less so when it is understood that “truth” in these instances lies not in what is claimed for theatricality, but in the juxtaposition of it and another term. This essay analyses how the metaphor of theatricality is flexibly applied in the service of particular arguments as either ally or foe. At stake is the assertion of interpretive authority that allows only one interpretation in the struggle for discursive dominance.

Die Theatralitätsmetapher hat in den vergangenen Jahren eine Schlüsselstellung innerhalb der Forschung zu Theater und Performance eingenommen. Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte den Theatralitätsbegriff wieder aufwerten - als Reaktion auf die Diskursdominanz des konkurrierenden Terminus ‚Performativität‘ (bzw. ‚Performanz‘). Ohne für die eine oder andere Position Partei zu ergreifen, zeige ich in diesem Artikel, dass die Semantik von ‚Theatralität‘ wesentlich durch diese Debatte geprägt wird. Theatralitätsmetaphern wurden in der Vergangenheit meist in theatralitätskritischen Diskursen verwendet, um fehlende Authentizität zu bezeichnen - am bekanntesten in der Kunstkritik von Michael Fried: “Art and Objecthood” (1998). Und doch stellte Theatralität für die europäische Avantgarde die “Essenz” des Theaters dar. Der scheinbare Widerspruch löst sich auf, wenn man versteht, dass die „Wahrheit“ hier nicht in dem liegt, was als ‚Theatralität‘ behauptet wird, sondern in der Gegenüberstellung von Theatralität und einem anderen Begriff. Dieser Essay beleuchtet, inwiefern die Theatralitätsmetapher für unterschiedliche Argumentationen sehr flexibel zu handhaben ist, ob als Verbündeter oder als Feind. Zur Debatte steht die Behauptung einer Deutungsautorität, die nur eine Interpretation im Kampf um diskursive Dominanz zulässt.
 

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The Discursive Formation of Theatricality as a Critical Concept1

Glen McGillivray, Sydney (g.mcgillivray@uws.edu.au)

Abstract

The metaphor of theatricality has, in recent years, been recuperated as a key term in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies. This scholarly “re-valuing” of the term arises, in part, as a reaction to performativity, a term that has achieved a certain discursive dominance in the field. Rather than taking sides in favour of one or the other, in this essay I argue that theatricality is critically formed by this struggle. Historically, theatrical metaphors have been employed in anti-theatricalist discourses to suggest ideas of inauthenticity and deception; most famously, in art critic Michael Fried’s “Art and Objecthood” (1998). Yet, for the European avantgarde, theatricality was the “essence” of theatre. What appears to be a contradiction seems less so when it is understood that “truth” in these instances lies not in what is claimed for theatricality, but in the juxtaposition of it and another term. This essay analyses how the metaphor of theatricality is flexibly applied in the service of particular arguments as either ally or foe. At stake is the assertion of interpretive authority that allows only one interpretation in the struggle for discursive dominance.

Die Theatralitätsmetapher hat in den vergangenen Jahren eine Schlüsselstellung innerhalb der Forschung zu Theater und Performance eingenommen. Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte den Theatralitätsbegriff wieder aufwerten - als Reaktion auf die Diskursdominanz des konkurrierenden Terminus ‚Performativität‘ (bzw. ‚Performanz‘). Ohne für die eine oder andere Position Partei zu ergreifen, zeige ich in diesem Artikel, dass die Semantik von

‚Theatralität‘ wesentlich durch diese Debatte geprägt wird. Theatralitätsmetaphern wurden in der Vergangenheit meist in theatralitätskritischen Diskursen verwendet, um fehlende Authentizität zu bezeichnen - am bekanntesten in der Kunstkritik von Michael Fried: “Art and Objecthood” (1998). Und doch stellte Theatralität für die europäische Avantgarde die “Essenz” des Theaters dar. Der scheinbare Widerspruch löst sich auf, wenn man versteht, dass die „Wahrheit“ hier nicht in dem liegt, was als ‚Theatralität‘ behauptet wird, sondern in der Gegenüberstellung von Theatralität und einem anderen Begriff. Dieser Essay beleuchtet, inwiefern die Theatralitätsmetapher für unterschiedliche Argumentationen sehr flexibel zu handhaben ist, ob als Verbündeter oder als Feind. Zur Debatte steht die Behauptung einer Deutungsautorität, die nur eine Interpretation im Kampf um diskursive Dominanz zulässt.

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Theatricality seminar of the

American Comparative Literatures Association conference at Princeton University in March

2006. I would like to thank the seminar conveners Andrew Parker and Martin Harries for inviting me, and to acknowledge the stimulating input from the other seminar participants. Thank you also to the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney for giving me the time and opportunity to develop this essay.

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0. The discursive formation of theatricality as a critical concept

In 1977, at the Sydney Sculpture centre, the Australian performance artist
Mike Parr hacked off his left arm with a meat cleaver.
Nearly thirty years later he recalled in an interview with Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Angela Bennie: “everyone was all relaxed and they were all talking amongst themselves . . . I came out, sat down in front of them and began to hack away” (Bennie 2006:4). To those who are unfamiliar with Parr, and with this particular work, he was born with a deformed left arm and the arm being amputated was, in fact, a prosthetic arm which the artist had “stuffed with blood and guts [which] all went everywhere” (ibid). This illusion of self-mutilation was devastatingly effective and Parr claims that young artists still ask him if he had really chopped his arm off for Art; to which he replies: “Of course I did!” (ibid.).
Apart from being a great punch line, Parr’s claim to dismemberment in the cause of Art furthers the traditional narrative of the charismatic artist giving his (and generally the artist is male) all for Art. While Parr’s response could simply be that of an older artist gently satirising the dreams and aspirations of a neophyte; his next comments, reportedly delivered with “emotion in his voice and on his face”, suggests that a rigorous and somewhat masochistic commitment to Art is exactly what is required: performance art, he says, is taking a task to its limits.
“And that’s what I do. Performance in the theatre, that is simulation; performance art[,] that is performing a task to the end of one’s endurance, both mine and the audience’s . . . theatre is always simulation; performance art is always a drastic version of the real” (2006:5).
Parr is apparently oblivious to the irony of this statement in the light of his early piece of grand guignol theatre that used theatrical “simulation” to shocking effect, and through his casual anti-theatricality buys into a metaphysical paradigm that, while ancient, has nonetheless been vigorously challenged in recent years.2

2 Jonas Barish’s The Antitheatrical Prejudice (1981) is the seminal work that provides a genealogy of anti-theatricality since ancient times. More recently Alan Ackerman and Martin Puchner edited an issue of Modern Drama, on the twentieth anniversary of Barish’s book, that

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Parr invokes theatre not because he is offering a critique of it as an art form, but because it provides a short hand metaphor that enables him to assert, in contrast, the ontological status of his own art which is: “a drastic version of the real” (ibid). It is not, however, my intention to challenge Parr’s assertions nor leap to the defence of theatre; rather, I want to use his statements as the starting point to explore this discourse that uses the metaphor of theatricality to further what are at times quite contradictory interpretive positions. The anti-theatricality of Parr’s interpretation of his work, which directly contradicts the deliberately staged nature of much of it, reinforces how metaphors of theatricality have a different economy of value to actual theatrical practices. Transformed into the realm of metaphor theatricality becomes a multivalent sign that is used to assert the truth value of something else. As such it carries the Platonic hostility to mimesis, a prejudice that was vigorously re-asserted within Modernist Art by Michael Fried in 1967 and, as a consequence, theatricality is equated with inauthenticity in certain artistic circles. Yet Fried, too, separated certain theatrical practices – those of European avantgardists such as Brecht and Artaud – from the metaphor of theatricality that he used to condemn “literalist” art in his essay “Art and Objecthood” (1967).
Within theatre and performance studies the term has a similar multivalency; yet, the interpretational convolutions involved in its use differ from the straight Platonic anti-theatricalism of the visual arts. The European avantgarde in the first decades of the twentieth century saw theatricality as a metaphor for life itself; this was particularly the case for Russian theatre artists such as Evreinov and Meyerhold. From the inheritance of the European avantgarde came Eugenio Barba’s theatre anthropology and the anthropology of performance advocated by Victor Turner and Richard Schechner. Unlike the avantgarde, Schechner writes within a theoretical paradigm transformed by the discourses of postmodernism, European poststructuralism, Indian and South American post-colonialism. Essentialist ideas such as Evreinov’s notion of a “pre-aesthetic” theatrical instinct (1927:24), therefore, are viewed with suspicion. Nonetheless, Schechner still manages to construct an argument for

explored notions of theatricality and anti-theatricality in the context of modernism (Ackerman, 2001); (Puchner, 2001). See also Puchner’s book Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti- Theatricality, and Drama (2002).

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performance based on a dichotomy of the illusory and the real that encompasses both postmodern contingency and modernist authenticity. Although Schechner avoids writing about performance in terms of essence, he nonetheless ascribes to it a set of qualities similar to those that European theatricalists identified as the essence of theatre. How then do we begin to understand the paradox of the same critical terms being employed in support of opposing arguments?
In the opening essay to Institution and Interpretation (1987), Samuel Weber re- reads Derrida’s "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1978) in which he deconstructs the process of interpretation in Western thought. Weber takes Derrida’s idea of a division between “affirmative” interpretation oriented towards process, play and deferral of meaning, and “nostalgic” teleological interpretation that aims to uncover an ultimate Truth, and argues that Western discourse is characterised by a battle for supremacy between these two interpretive positions. Parr’s positioning of theatricality, in the above anecdote, reflects this struggle of interpretations and a desire to establish one interpretation with the ultimate, “drastic”, status of the Truth. Theatricality, formed through such discourses, becomes a cipher that, in nostalgic interpretation, comes to stand for inauthenticity, hence reinforcing the authenticity of something else; or else, when used for affirmative interpretation, stands for contingency, plurality, process and play. In the discussion that follows, I will illuminate some of the curious claims made in the name of, or against, the metaphor of theatricality in order to reveal how discourse has formed it as a critical term. I will argue that by positioning the term as ambiguous, various commentators attempt to “de- theatre” it so that it can serve other purposes.

1. Theatricality as an empty value

Parr’s statements are the latest in a long discursive tradition in the visual arts that distinguishes between those art works that are deemed to approach an idealised Real and those judged to be less real, inauthentic, and tending towards simulation. Indeed, concern with the status of the Real has pre- occupied Western philosophy from Plato to Derrida. The art critic Michael Fried, in the frequently cited “Art and Objecthood” (1967), argued for the purity of modernist art against minimalism (what Fried termed “literalism”).

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Although Fried’s argument was with a particular genre of painting and sculpture, the self-conscious and intersubjective effects he perceived in certain minimalist art works expressed an aesthetic consciousness, or value, that he described as theatrical. This re-framing of theatricality as a value, rather than simply describing stagecraft or things to do with the theatre, Martin Puchner argues has a genealogy in modernism that stretches back to Wagner for whom it was a value that “must be either rejected or embraced” (2002:31). Within the field of modern art, then, according to Fried, theatricality was a value that must be categorically rejected. What is important here is not to question Fried’s choice of metaphor, but to notice how theatricality enabled him to establish the terms of his argument: “theater and theatricality are at war today; not simply with modernist painting (or modernist painting and sculpture), but with art as such” (Fried 1998:163).
To an art historian it may seem bizarre to find a common purpose in the statements of Parr, a performance/conceptual artist, and Fried who, as a champion of artistic modernism, is seemingly the antithesis to Parr. Nevertheless, if we compare Fried’s writing in “Art and Objecthood” with Parr’s statements nearly forty years later, we can see that both utilise metaphors of theatricality to reinforce the truth claims of something else (modernist art for the former, and performance art for the latter). Despite being on opposing sides in the art world, Parr and Fried both deploy an identical interpretive strategy in order to reinforce the truth claims each makes for the art he wishes to promote. Theatricality, here, signifies emptiness (in the sense of being morally void), deception, and superficiality – everything which the art promoted by Fried and Parr, is not.
However the putative emptiness of theatricality as Fried uses it in “Art and Objecthood” (1967) (and I suggest Parr’s use is the same) has a greater role in defining the terms of the argument itself. As Rosalind Krauss suggests, for Fried theatricality functioned as
“A nonthing, an emptiness, a void. Theater is thus an empty term whose role it is to set up a system founded upon the opposition between itself and another term” (Krauss 1987:62-63).
The significance of this arrangement, Krauss argues, is that “Art and Objecthood”(1967) established a discourse wherein an asymmetrical, value- based opposition is created between theatricality and nontheatricality:

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“Theater as the empty, unlocatable, amorphous member of the pair is bad, while the nontheatrical rises within the pair to be coded as good”(Krauss
1987:63). Theatricality, because it is usefully “empty”, “unlocatable” and “amorphous” can be deployed in Fried’s discourse as a negative value against which, in contrast, he is able to position modernist art as full, defined and situated.
If we use Krauss’s analysis of Fried, together with how Parr frames his own art, we notice that both discursively position theatricality in order to ontologically validate something else. This is a familiar anti-theatrical strategy the genealogy of which reaches back to Plato (Barish 1981); but it is also a common interpretational strategy in Western epistemology, as we shall see shortly. In the meantime, if we direct our attention to the form of such a discourse, and try to avoid taking sides in respect of it (which is an effect of the discourse itself), we notice that remarkably similar distinctions are also made between “good” and “bad” theatricality by one who, unlike Fried and Parr, is ostensibly its advocate. Theatricality, as the following example illustrates, is again deployed in a binary opposition of terms although this time, it is positively valued.
In an oft-quoted example from his essay “Baudelaire’s Theater”, Roland Barthes makes the definitive claim that theatricality is “theater-minus-text, it is a density of signs and sensations built up on stage starting from the written argument” (1972:26). Such a claim introduces the notion, promoted by the European avant-garde since the beginning of the twentieth century, that the “essence” of theatre was to be found not in the written text but in the non- textual elements of production. Once again, I am not about to dispute the “truth” or otherwise of this claim, but if we examine the argument of “Baudelaire’s Theater”, beyond the sound-bite of Barthes’s opening sentence, we begin to see that he, too, is utilising an interpretational strategy that shares the hallmarks of that deployed by Fried and Parr.
It becomes quickly apparent that Barthes does not intend to discuss live performance events nor even the texts for such. Instead Barthes uses theatricality as a critical trope in his analysis of Baudelaire’s writing that manifests in the following statements: “Baudelaire put his theater everywhere except, precisely, in his projects for plays” (1972:28); “Baudelaire’s theatricality evades his theater in order to spread through the rest of his work” (ibid); his

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work “testif[ied] to the . . . horror of theater” (ibid:29) and, even more tellingly, “Baudelaire had to protect theatricality from theater” (ibid:30).3 These statements reveal that in his analysis of Baudelaire’s “theatre” Barthes juxtaposes what he sees as the essential nature of one version of theatricality against the “horror” of another. Despite the semantic reversal (“theatre” is the opposite of “essential” theatricality), the discourse produced by Barthes nevertheless mirrors that of Fried and Parr; and despite the anti-theatricalist bias of the latter, the form of their arguments is exactly the same.
Barthes, like Fried and Parr, assigns a value to theatricality and theatre that allows him to produce a discourse founded on an asymmetrical logic based on the opposition of two ideas: an essential theatricality versus a “horrifying” theatre. However, if we consider these statements about theatricality in terms of the discourses being produced, we can evade what Krauss calls the “ethical vector” of terms used to describe “one’s own position [as] good” and “someone else’s” as bad (1987:63), and begin to see that behind the statements of Parr, Fried, and Barthes is a struggle for interpretive domination, the logic of which sets the terms within which such arguments can occur.

2. A struggle for interpretive domination

Samuel Weber (1987) in his re-reading of Derrida’s (1978) interpretation of interpretation through Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals describes what he sees as the contest or battle between “affirmative” and “nostalgic” interpretation (Derrida 1978:292 and cited in Weber 1987:3). “Beyond the ‘irreducible difference’ of nostalgic and affirmative interpretations,” writes Weber,
“there is a third version, interpreting interpretation as a struggle to overwhelm and dislodge an already existing dominant interpretation and thus to establish its own authority” (1987:5).
This establishment of interpretive authority is what Foucault terms a “specific [effect] of power attached to the true” (1980:132); it allows Parr to refer to his work as expressing a “drastic version of the real” (Bennie 2006:5), and it enables Fried to claim in support of modernist art that “presentness is grace”

3 Such protection was apparently required because of what Fried sees as “theater’s profound hostility to the arts” and the “survival” of the latter “has come increasingly to depend on their ability to defeat theater” (1998:160,163).

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(1998:168). Against such authority, theatricality is cast as interpretively subordinate and, lacking the truth value of its opposing term, is assigned qualities that include emptiness, deceit, insincerity, moribund tradition, or meretricious-ness. However, when someone such as Barthes assigns interpretive authority to theatricality, its qualities of process, plurality, artifice, and playfulness are re-valued to reinforce its particular truth status. Why this is so and how such disparate values can coalesce in the same term is a function of the interpretive struggle identified by Weber. It is the logic of the struggle, the battle to dominate and avoid domination, which underpins the discursive uses of theatricality discussed so far and which produces some of the curious effects discussed below.
In the epigraph to “Art and Objecthood” Fried quotes from Perry Miller’s biography of the eighteenth century puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards:
“The abiding assurance is that ‘we every moment see the same proof of a god as we should have seen if we had seen him create the world at first’” (1998:148).
Here the nostalgic fantasy of origin expressed transcendently through Art that forms the foundation to Fried’s essay is made explicit. Fried’s sad and nostalgic yearning for a transcendent truth appears in the binary opposition he seeks to establish between theatrical and self-conscious “presence”, and immanent “presentness” in which “at every moment”, he writes, “the work itself is wholly manifest” (1998:167). Such interpretation Derrida describes as “saddened, negative, nostalgic, guilty, Rosseauistic”, interpretation that seeks “to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or origin which escapes play and the order of the sign” (1978:292).
A similar yearning for an ultimate truth or origin suffused, also, the early theatrical avant-garde’s new, positively valued, interpretation of theatricality, here elevated by Evreinov in The Theatre in Life (1927) to the status of a “pre- aesthetic” instinct:
“The art of the theatre is pre-aesthetic, and not aesthetic, for the simple reason that transformation, which is after all the essence of all theatrical art, is more primitive and more easily attainable than formation, which is the essence of aesthetic arts. And I believe that in the early history of human culture theatricality served a sort of pre- art. It is exactly in the feeling of theatricality, and not in the

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utilitarianism, of the primitive man that one must look for the beginning of all arts” (1927:24).
What is constructed in Evreinov’s interpretation is a metaphysics in which The Theatre appears as an ahistorical Form, that manifests in specific cultural contexts, with shifting degrees of verisimilitude to the ur-Theatre, to which all theatres must aspire. The particular claims being made here are for a pure theatricality the moral worth of which rests on its status as an expression of origin.
Yet, the efforts of Eugenio Barba’s theatre anthropology notwithstanding, contemporary scholarship, post-Derrida, rejects the onto-theological yearning for an origin. To desire to do so is to align oneself with a reactionary interpretive position; so, contemporary theorists have adopted an opposing interpretational strategy to nostalgia: affirmative interpretation. This strategy rejects the search for an origin or ultimate Truth and instead interprets reality as composed, contingent and intersubjective; reality is, therefore, recalling the qualities mentioned above, theatrical. Although lacking the nostalgia of Fried or Evreinov, a metaphysics of the Real just as surely underpins interpretation that valorises the illusory and contingent.
This rhetorical sleight-of-hand emerges in a series of statements made by performance and theatre scholars over the last twenty-five years. In a 1982 essay examining performance art from a theatre studies perspective, Josette Féral, who has written extensively on theatricality, explicitly adopted an affirmative interpretational strategy:
“Theatricality is made of this endless play and of these continuous displacements of the position of desire, in other words, of the position of the subject in process with an imaginary constructive space” (1982:177).
Many of the buzz-words that signal affirmative interpretation are contained in this statement: “displacement”, “desire”, “endless play”, “process”, “imaginary constructive space”. Although Féral’s use of theatricality here did not express a foundational state of being, unlike Evreinov’s, nonetheless her use of the term was just as ontological.
In this she was not alone. Richard Schechner, in his seminal Performance Theory, used a similar rhetoric and even managed to claim for performance a truth status that was both contingent and essentialist. “Performances”, wrote

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Schechner, “are make-believe, in play for fun. Or, as Victor Turner said, in the subjunctive mood, the famous ‘as if’” (1988 [1977]: xiv). Having established the contingency of “performances”, Schechner was now in a position to make his ontological truth claim. Within such discourses, truth claims are given weight by invoking an ancient authority; thus, Schechner invoked the interpretive authority of “Sanskrit aesthetics” for which performances are “lilas – sports, play – and maya, illusory” as is life itself (ibid). This led him to triumphantly reason, in a mode worthy of Evreinov, that “performance is an illusion of an illusion and, as such, might be considered more ‘truthful’, more ‘real’ than ordinary experience” (ibid). Peggy Phelan, Schechner’s colleague at New York University, returns to this theme when she rhetorically asks “if the diversity of human culture continually showed a persistent theatricality, could performance be a universal expression of human signification, akin to language?” (1998:3) [emphasis added]. Suddenly, the gap between “a universal expression of human signification, akin to language” (ibid) and Evreinov’s pre-aesthetic instinct seems very small indeed.

3. The revaluation of theatricality

These interpretations of theatricality ostensibly reject the nostalgia of the avantgarde (although in their universalism they are demonstrably inflected by it) and instead express an interpretational strategy that Derrida posits as an alternative “no longer oriented toward the origin” but which “affirms play and tries to pass beyond man and humanism” (1978:292). This latter interpretive distinction, Weber suggests, appears to be celebrated in Derrida’s text; it is revolutionary or at least evolutionary and it moves us towards emancipation, unlike nostalgic interpretation, which seeks to return us to a prelapsarian state of grace. This binary logic offers a clear set of political affiliations: on the one hand, the forces of vivacious animated progress pitted against those of hoary conservatism on the other. Against this logic we can map the competing claims made for theatre and theatricality.
If, following Weber and Derrida, theatricality is caught up in a struggle of interpretations, and enlisted to fight on both sides, how can it be deployed in opposing positions? In this case, defining theatricality as empty, amorphous, unlocatable, and useful only in juxtaposition with something else, is a common strategy. As Thomas Postlewait and Tracy C. Davis observe in their

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introduction to their collection Theatricality: “apparently the concept [theatricality] is comprehensive of all meanings yet empty of all specific sense” (2003:1). Strategically positioned as ambiguous, theatricality can be nostalgic when it refers to theatre as an originary Form and it can be affirmative when interpreted as semiotically playful and not concerned with producing ultimate meaning. Theatricality functions, as Shannon Jackson observes in the same volume, “ubiquitously and contradictorily” because of its “flexible essentialism” (2003:189). Theatricality, thus, provides a free pass through the discursive battle ground by offering itself as a cipher upon which a range of, often conflicting, interpretations are inscribed.
Theatricality’s flexible essentialism creates some curious effects; for example, in the 2002 collection “The Rise and Fall of Theatricality”, published in the journal SubStance, the editor, Josette Féral again, claims that
“The notion of theatricality is indeed not only a tricky one but also one that replays the whole history of theatre. It is precisely because the notion of theatre has changed that we must constantly redefine the notion of theatricality” (2002:4) [emphasis added].
In her introduction, Féral lays out the framework within which the essays in the collection are to be read – her use of “tricky” provides a clue to her interpretive strategy. Yet, despite the putative “trickiness” of theatricality, it nonetheless remains a value that Féral associates with a historically changing notion of theatre. The apparent indeterminacy of the concept of theatricality is, paradoxically, counterpointed by Féral’s assumption that, notwithstanding the lack of an explicit consensus, everybody in the collection is in fact writing about the same thing. That “same thing”, whilst remaining indeterminate and unstated, can still be written about by Féral’s community of interpreters because they share a common understanding of “it” (whatever “it” is).
The SubStance collection suffers from the same strengths and weaknesses as does Postlewait and Davis’s Theatricality (2003). While individual works within the collections deal thoughtfully with differing ideas of theatricality (and others simply deploy it as the metaphor du jour) it is in the editors’ attempts to frame each collection that they start to run into the kinds of problems described in the previous paragraph. And, as is typical, they seek to have a bet each way, as Postlewait and Davis write:

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“For better or worse, the idea of theatricality is quite evocative in its descriptive power yet often open-ended and even contradictory in its associative implications. It is not, however, meaningless, and it offers, at least potentially, a protean flexibility that lends richness to both historical study and theoretical analysis. Of course, as we noted initially, it can mean too many things, and thus nothing. If it serves too many agendas, it is in danger of losing its hold on both the world of theatre and the world as theatre” (2003:4).
If we apply Weber’s analysis of interpretation to Féral’s introduction, however, we discover that she is attempting to carve out a position for the writers who are engaged, whether explicitly or not, in a struggle for domination between opposing interpretations. In asking: “is theatricality . . . still a pertinent concept compared to performativity, which has overshadowed it in the last 15 years” (2002:3) we reach the heart of the matter, at least as far as Féral is concerned. The recent struggles over the term “performativity” had, in a real sense, prevailed and succeeded in consigning theatricality to the position of the negative against which “performativity” was now juxtaposed as a positive term. In a field of disciplinary contest this created, as Shannon Jackson notes, a certain disciplinary anxiety arising from the struggle: “For theatre scholars, the relation between theatricality and performativity is more pressing, and a cause for defensiveness, in a theoretical context where the latter term has intellectual currency” (2003:33). In the logic of this struggle, to be affiliated with theatre was to be associated with a conservative position (and also the trivial, the feminised and the irrelevant).4
By deploying theatricality as a critical concept, the discourse of theatre is reconfigured and reclaimed. No longer referring to hoary old theatre, instead, by drawing on certain anthropological and sociological texts, the term is elevated or, rather, re-valued, particularly in Féral’s writings, to stand as a foundational concept; one which, affirmatively, “is only graspable as a process” and within which the “permanent movement between meaning and

4 Stephen J. Bottoms perceptively argues the gendered bias that allows theatricality to be repositioned as the Other to performance: “To act, to play a part, to dress up in tights is not properly manly, entailing as it does the ‘unnatural’ construction of a presentational artifice (such ostentation being traditionally assumed to be more ‘naturally’ the preserve of women). To be involved with theatre is – ergo – to be feminized, if not downright effeminate“ (2003:176).

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its displacement, between the same and the different, alterity arises from the heart of sameness, and theatricality is born” (2002:12).
How Féral has framed the 2002 SubStance collection re-positions an idea of theatre, through the metaphor of theatricality, as a foundational concept in order to assert its primacy in an interpretive struggle with the notion of performativity. Each resists nostalgic interpretation and claims its place on the cutting edge of affirmative interpretation while, at the same time, hinting at a prior claim to authenticity (theatricality, for Féral is “born”). Weber shows that the logic of such interpretations owes less to the truth claims of either interpretation but, rather, reflects a struggle to impose a set of ideas and, also, a battle to impose a logic that determines the possibility of thinking certain ideas and not others.
These interpretational strategies are not, of course, confined to discussions of theatricality only. Yet in the discursive formation of the term as a critical concept, the tension between both interpretational strategies emerges and this accounts for these somewhat schizophrenic definitions of theatricality. The logic of the discourse will demand that we adopt a position either for or against theatricality, but we must resist doing so in order to interrogate the terms in which particular arguments are couched. Rather than enter into debates concerning art versus theatre, theatricality versus performativity, or reality versus (theatrical) simulation, and attempt to assert a “truth” — contingent or otherwise — for the ideas clustered under the umbrella of theatricality; it is better that we critically appraise just how metaphors of theatre and theatricality are used in a particular argument and for what ends. Ultimately, such appraisal will lead us to discover, like Nietzsche did with the Judeo-Christian and Platonic tradition, that genealogies of interpretation, concealed as Truth, Being or Subject, succeed in establishing their “own authority and driving all competitors from the field” (Weber 1987:5).

4. References

Ackerman, Alan (2001): “Introduction: Modernism and Anti-theatricality”, in:

Modern Drama 44.3 (Fall), 275-283.

Barish, Jonas A. (1981): The Antitheatrical Prejudice, Berkeley.
Barthes, Roland (1972): “Baudelaire’s Theater”, in: Critical essays, Evanston, 25-
31.

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Bennie, Angela (2006): “Mike Parr’s Body of Work”, in: Sydney Morning Herald
4-5 March, 4-5.
Bottoms, Stephen J. (2003): “The Efficacy/Effeminacy Braid: Unpicking the Performance Studies/Theatre Studies Dichotomy”, in: Theatre Topics 13.2 (September), 173-187.
Derrida, Jacques (1978): “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the
Human Sciences”, in: Writing and Difference, London/Henley, 278-293.
Evreinov, Nicolai N. (1927): The Theatre in Life, London/Calcutta/Sydney.
Féral, Josette (1982): “Performance and Theatricality: The Subject
Demystified”, in: Modern Drama 25 (March), 171-181.
Féral, Josette (2002): “Forward”, in: SubStance 31, 2 & 3 (98/99), 3-13.
Foucault, Michel (1980): “Truth and Power”, in: Gordon, Colin (ed.):

Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, Sussex,

109-133.
Fried, Michael (1998): “Art and Objecthood”, in: Art and Objecthood: Essays and

Reviews, Chicago/London, 148-172.

Jackson, Shannon (2003): “Theatricality’s proper objects: genealogies of performance and gender theory”, in: Postlewait, Thomas/Davis, Tracy C. (edd.): Theatricality, Cambridge, 186-213.
Krauss, Rosalind (1987): “Theories of Art after Minimalism and Pop”, in: Foster, H. (ed.): Discussions in Contemporary Culture No. 1, Seattle, 56-87.
Postlewait, Thomas/Davis, Tracy C. (2003): “Theatricality: an introduction”, in: Postlewait, Thomas/Davis, Tracy C. (edd.): Theatricality, Cambridge,
1-39.
Puchner, Martin (2001): “Modernism and Anti-theatricality: an Afterword”, in:

Modern Drama 44.3 (Fall), 355-361.

Puchner, Martin (2002): Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-theatricality, and Drama, Baltimore/London.
Schechner, Richard (1988 [1977]): “Introduction: the Fan and the Web”, in:

Performance Theory, London/New York, xiii-xv.

Phelan, Peggy (1998): “Introduction: The Ends of Performance”, in: Phelan, Peggy/Lane, Jill (edd.): The Ends of Performance, New York/London, 1-19.
Weber, Samuel (1987): “Texts/Contexts: Closure and Exclusion”, in: Institution and Interpretation, Minneapolis, 3-17.

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On the Relationship Between Metaphor and Cultural Models – with data from Chinese and English language

Yuanqiong Wu

Abstract


Does metaphor constitute or reflect cultural models? As to the answer, some claims that cultural models exist without prior metaphorical understanding, and some others hold that cultural models, especially those for abstract concepts are basically metaphorical. It is proposed, in the paper, with diverse examples from English and Chinese language, that the relationship between metaphor and cultural models is not an either-or one, but one of mutual dependence and benefits. In other words, some cultural models, especially the abstract ones, are constituted via metaphor, while cultural models function as filters to determine the linguistic instantiation of certain metaphors. Furthermore, metaphor and cultural models interact with each other, pushing the two spiraling upward.

17Konstituieren oder spiegeln Metaphern kulturelle Modelle? Antworten auf diese Frage fallen je nach Fach- und Fragerichtung recht unterschiedlich aus. Einige veranschlagen die Existenz kultureller Modelle ohne metaphorische Schemata, während andere wiederum kulturelle Modelle als genuin metaphorisch charakterisieren. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht anhand von Beispielen aus dem Englischen und dem Chinesischen die Beziehung von Metaphern und kulturellen Modellen. Das Augenmerk der Analyse liegt dabei auf der Wechselbeziehung und dem gegenseitigen Nutzen beider Phänomene, in denen Metaphern für die Entwicklung abstrakter kultureller Modelle grundlegend sind und kulturelle Modelle als konzeptuelle Filter bei der Entwicklung sprachlicher Metaphern Pate stehen. Metaphern und Modelle, so das Ergebnis, scheinen also auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen miteinander zu interagieren.
 

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Seite 115

On the Relationship Between Metaphor and Cultural Models

– with data from Chinese and English language*

Wu Yuanqiong, Shanghai (ellen5@163.com)

Abstract

Does metaphor constitute or reflect cultural models? As to the answer, some claims that cultural models exist without prior metaphorical understanding, and some others hold that cultural models, especially those for abstract concepts are basically metaphorical. It is proposed, in the paper, with diverse examples from English and Chinese language, that the relationship between metaphor and cultural models is not an either-or one, but one of mutual dependence and benefits. In other words, some cultural models, especially the abstract ones, are constituted via metaphor, while cultural models function as filters to determine the linguistic instantiation of certain metaphors. Furthermore, metaphor and cultural models interact with each other, pushing the two spiraling upward.

Konstituieren oder spiegeln Metaphern kulturelle Modelle? Antworten auf diese Frage fallen je nach Fach- und Fragerichtung recht unterschiedlich aus. Einige veranschlagen die Existenz kultureller Modelle ohne metaphorische Schemata, während andere wiederum kulturelle Modelle als genuin metaphorisch charakterisieren. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht anhand von Beispielen aus dem Englischen und dem Chinesischen die Beziehung von Metaphern und kulturellen Modellen. Das Augenmerk der Analyse liegt dabei auf der Wechselbeziehung und dem gegenseitigen Nutzen beider Phänomene, in denen Metaphern für die Entwicklung abstrakter kultureller Modelle grundlegend sind und kulturelle Modelle als konzeptuelle Filter bei der Entwicklung sprachlicher Metaphern Pate stehen. Metaphern und Modelle, so das Ergebnis, scheinen also auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen miteinander zu interagieren.

0. Introduction

Metaphor and cultural models are two notions that have become extremely influential in recent decades in attempts to describe and characterize the human conceptual system. And as to their relationship, there are two schools of thought. Some scholars claim that cultural models exist without prior metaphorical understanding. In other words, we are equipped with a primary

* In the process of composing this paper, I have received encouragement and insightful suggestions from Professor Edward Slingerland at the University of British Columbia, Canada. I would like to thank professor Slingerland for his help and guidance to me while I was visiting the University of British Columbia. Doctor Gerry Staley and his wife Betty Staley have helped me with the language and some of the examples in this paper. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to them too. My gratitude also extends to the editors from metaphorik.de, for the time and efforts they put in reviewing and commenting my paper.

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literal understanding of cultural models (e.g. Quinn 1991). Others, however, hold that cultural models, especially those for abstract concepts are inherently metaphorical; that is, they are constituted by metaphor. (e.g. Lakoff/Johnson
1980; Lakoff/Kövecses 1987). Thus, the question remains: what is the relationship between metaphor and cultural models? Does metaphor constitute or merely reflect cultural models?
As cognitive linguists have illustrated that metaphors are rooted in our bodily experience. Here, “bodily experience” should be interpreted as “referring to our bodily function and interaction with the outside physical world, and our knowledge so derived” (Ning Yu 1998: 43). However, the bodily experience can only tell what possible metaphors are. According to Ning Yu (ibid), whether these potential metaphors are actually selected in a given culture is largely dependent upon the cultural models shared by individuals living in this culture. So, our focus will go to the examination of the different linguistic manifestations of metaphors in English and in Chinese, to have a look at the corresponding cultural models. As to the linguistic data, we have mainly utilized those spoken daily by English or Chinese speakers. If the data are derived from dictionaries or other researchers, we reveal the source of quotation. Moreover, each metaphorical expression is shown in bold type. By doing this, the author intends to contribute some knowledge to the above-mentioned discussion about the relationship between metaphor and cultural models from the perspectives of English and Chinese. The belief is that the relationship between the two is not an either-or-one, but a bilateral one. That is, they are interactive in that some cultural models, especially those for abstract concepts, are largely conceptualized metaphorically, while on the other hand what linguistic manifestations are in practical use in different languages is determined by the corresponding cultural models. As Basso (1976: 117) once said:
FOR IT IS IN METAPHOR, PERHAPS MORE DRAMATICALLY THAN IN ANY OTHER FORM OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSION, THAT LANGUAGE AND CULTURE COME TOGETHER AND DISPLAY THEIR FUNDAMENTAL INSEPARABILITY. A THEORY OF ONE THAT EXCLUDES THE OTHER WILL INEVITABLY DO DAMAGE TO BOTH.

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Moreover, by offering new ways of looking at things, metaphor enriches the cultural models. Thus, metaphor and cultural models move into a new circle of mutual influence. In this paper, we firstly focus on the conceptualizations of such cultural models as time and emotions that are metaphorically constituted. Then we move on to the point that cultural models determine the manifestation of metaphor in language. Finally, we intend to prove that metaphor and cultural models interact with each other, thus pushing them both forward.

1. Metaphorical Cultural Models

According to Naomi Quinn, cultural models are “presupposed, taken-for-granted models of the world that are popularly shared by the members of a society and that play an enormous role in their understanding of that world and their behavior in it” (Quinn/Holland 1987: 4). In both English and Chinese, the linguistic evidence shows that some cultural models are metaphorically conceptualized.

1.1 Metaphors on temporal concepts

1.1.1 Time as space metaphors

Space and time have been “the subjects of serious study down the ages. From ancient days to modern times, philosophers and scientists have spoken or written extensively on the subjects from different standpoints, although no final conclusion or consensus has been reached” (Ning Yu 1998: 83). However, one thing is clear, that is space and time are concepts very tightly interwoven with each other. They are so closely tied to each other that the coordinate phrase is sometimes reduced to a coordinate compound, such as “space-time”
in English and “时空” in Chinese. Despite the fact that space and time are
treated as parallel conceptually and linguistically, they do not seem to stand on a completely equal footing. That is, temporal concepts are always expressed metaphorically via spatial concepts, not vice versa.

Time as space in English

Lakoff (1990, 1993, 1994) has noticed that time in English is conceptualized in terms of space. That is, the understanding of time can be reached by the

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human being’s experiencing of space. It gives rise to a lot of temporal metaphors such as (Lakoff 1993):

(1) Time passing is motion of an object

a. Thanksgiving is coming up on us. b. Time is flying by.

c. The time has passed when…

d. It’s getting closer to bedtime.

e. Christmas is around the corner.

f. If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

(2) Time passing is motion over a landscape

a. We’re coming up on Christmas.

b. We’re getting close to Christmas.

The above examples are instances of mappings from the space domain onto the time domain under the central conceptual metaphor TIME PASSING IS MOTION in English. They show how abstract inferences of time are actually metaphorical versions of spatial inferences, which can be summarized by a single conceptual metaphor.

Time as space in Chinese

In Chinese, the lexical items in the time domain are also systematically conceptualized via motion in space. For example, in Chinese, there are phrases like:

(3)

a. 春天来(The spring is coming.)

b. 冬天去。(The winter has passed.)

c. 二十一世到来了。(The 21st century arrives.)

On the other hand, Chinese temporal metaphors differ from those in English in that, firstly, a great number of temporal concepts are understood via the Chinese localizers such as “”(above, up) and “” (below, down), “” (front, ahead) and “” (after, behind, back), which does not occur so often in
English:

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(4)

a. 上半年 (the first half of the year)

b. 上个月 ( last month)

c. 上半夜 (before midnight)

(5)

a. 下半年 (the second half of the year)

b. 下个月 (next month)

c. 下半夜 (after midnight)

(6)

a. 几年前 (several years ago)

b. (before lunch)

c. (before Spring Festival)

d. 前辈 (ascendant)

(7)

a. 几年后 (a few years later)

b. (after lunch)

c. (after Spring Festival)

d. 后代 (descendant)

It is noted that in the above examples, all the spatial concepts indicating upper part or front of an object are used to refer to earlier time, such as “”(above or upper), “” (before), while those indicating lower part or bottom of an object to later time, such as “” (below or under), “” (back). Besides, Chinese language also offers examples of combining localizers such as “” and “”, “ ” and “”, and sometimes even “” (right) and “” (left) to refer to time concepts.

(8) 前后

a. 前后 (during the Spring Festival)

b. 这项 工程从工到完成前后用了半年时间(This project, from the day it was launched to the day it was completed, takes only half a

year.)

(9) 上下

孩子考上大学,全家上上下下都很高(The child was accepted by a university, the whole family, old and young, are extremely pleased.)

(10) 左右

30 左右 (about 30 years old)

Secondly, body-part terms, or body-part terms together with spatial terms, are

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used in temporal understanding in Chinese, which also seldom occurs in
English. For instance:

(11)

(12)

a. (the beginning of a month)

b. (the beginning of a year)

a. 不能只眼前,不将来。 (We must not think of the present and neglect the future.)

b. 目前是忙季(Now it is the busy season in farming.)

By saying that the localizers, or localizers together with body-part terms are more often used in Chinese does not mean that they are not used in English at all. The problem is that they are not as abundant in English as in Chinese. For example, in English, there are phrases like “afternoon”, “look forward into the future”, “look back into the past” etc., while the body-part terms are seldom found to refer to temporal concepts in English.
It is argued that this spatial conceptualization of time may be due to our cognitive correspondences between spatial and temporal concepts which are actually based on our bodily experience in the physical world. As humans, according to Ning Yu (1998: 111), “we have upright or vertical bodies, with our heads up and feet down. When we lie down on stomach, we normally move in the direction of head rather than feet. So our heads become fronts just like the fronts of any moving objects, such as cars, trains, planes, and so forth. Moreover, the fronts of moving objects usually pass a particular point in space first, thus they are earlier in time than backs”. This argument is true to some extent. However, in Chinese we also use the “front” concept to refer to a later
time — future, as in “前途 (front road)” (future), which is contradictory to this
argument. Of course, contradiction can always be found in any discussion.
In spite of the diverse differences, one thing is clear. That is, such a commonly used concept of time is understood metaphorically via spatial concepts, not vice versa. This asymmetrical relationship between the twin notions of space and time is evidenced by the sequence of their development in human history in general, and in individual growth in particular. In human history, according to Akhundov (1986) (quote from Ning Yu 1998: 85), the conceptions of spatial
relations are developed far earlier than those of temporal relations; in the

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process of individual growth, the conceptions of spatial relations are again acquired before those of temporal relations. Another reason for this asymmetrical relationship is that we can actually see and touch space, but not time. This asymmetrical relationship between the twin notions reflects our conceptual pattern of understanding the abstract or not-easy-to-access concepts metaphorically via the concrete or easy-to-access concepts.

1.1.2 Time as money metaphor

In Western society, with the development of modern industries, people realize that they can produce more products if they make good use of time, which will lead to more money or profits in return. This experience of industrial life gives rise to the now commonly accepted conceptual model of “time is money”, which further gives rise to a system of new metaphors in modern Western culture.

(13) Time is money

a. You are wasting my time.

b. That flat tire cost me an hour.

c. I’ve invested a lot of time in her.

d. You’re running out of time.

e. You need to budget your time.

f. You don’t use your time profitably.

(Lakoff/Johnson 1980:7-8)
Comparatively speaking, all these metaphorical expressions are new in modern times and they provide a new way of looking at the time concept, which reflects the dynamic property of both cultural models and metaphors.

In Chinese, we have an ancient saying that “一寸光一寸金,寸金难 买 寸光”, in which the concept of time is metaphorically expressed via precious gold, a hard currency. However, the original gold-related concept of time had nothing to do with commercial industry or exchange. It originated from the traditional

Chinese virtue of “学而优则 ”, which means to study assiduously to be

qualified to take office in the official-oriented Chinese society. On the other hand, this ancient saying has got new interpretations in modern times, that is, “时间 就是金”, which is completely the same with the English correspondent

“time is money”.

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From the above two paragraphs, it is obvious that in modern times, people usually look at time metaphorically to express its value in the present world. By saying so, I do not mean that this is the only way for human beings to conceptualize time. It is true to Chinese culture and Western culture. It must also be true that there are cultures where time is metaphorically understood via other objects. With the increasing popularity of English as a world language, the metaphor “time is money” will definitely be felt by more cultures in the world.

1.2 Emotion metaphors

Emotion metaphors in English

In English, extensive studies have been made on the function of metaphor in the conceptualization of emotions — one of the most central and pervasive aspects of human experience (Fesmire 1994, Kövecses 1986, 1988, 1990a, 1990b,
1991, Lakoff/Johnson 1980, Lakoff/Kövecses 1987). A central claim of these
studies is that human emotions, which are abstract in nature, thus elusive and transient, are to a great extent conceptualized and expressed via metaphor grounded in bodily experiences. Given the limit of time and efforts, the current discussion of emotion metaphor is mainly focused on anger metaphors. For example, there are anger metaphors in English as follows:

(14) Anger is a hot fluid in a container.

a. His pent-up anger welled up inside of him. b. Jim’s just blowing off steam

c. He was bursting with anger.

d. She blew up at me.

(15) Anger is fire

a. She is doing a slow burn.

b. He is burning with anger.

c. The insincere apology added fuel to the fire.

According to Gibbs (1996), central to human beings’ understanding of the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER is the “direct physical experience” of containment. People have strong kinesthetic experiences of bodily containment, ranging from situations in which their bodies are in and out of containers (such as bathtubs, beds, rooms or houses), to experience of their bodies as containers where substances enter and exit. An

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important part of bodily containment is the experience of bodies being filled with liquids, including stomach fluids, blood and sweat. These various, recurring bodily experiences are metaphorically elaborated in a large number of abstract domains of experience (e.g. concepts about emotions, the mind, linguistic meaning, moral obligations, and social institutions). For instance, the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER takes the image schema for CONTAINMENT as part of its source domain and maps this image-schematic structure onto anger, which gives rise to a number of interesting entailments. Thus, people know that when the intensity of anger increases, the fluid in the container rises (e.g. his pent-up anger welled up inside him), that intense heat produces steam and this creates pressure in the container (e.g. Bill is getting hot under the collar, Jim’s just blowing off steam, and He was bursting with anger), and that when the pressure of the container becomes too high, the container explodes (e.g. She blew up at me). So is the case with “Anger is fire” metaphor. Thus, it can be said that without the metaphorical mapping of bodily containment and fire experience onto anger experience, it would be extremely difficult to explain the anger concepts. Moreover, it is important to point out that the “fire” and “hot fluid” anger metaphors in English are unified under the general concept metaphor “anger is heat”.

Emotion metaphors in Chinese

While the above-mentioned argument is based on the evidences founded in English, it is actually true to the emotion metaphors in Chinese. For example, in Chinese we have anger metaphors as the following:

(16) 生气是火 (anger is fire)

a. 惹我! (Don’t cause me to lose my temper.)

b. 他大肝火。 (He flew into a rage.)

c. 他心火起。 (He flared up with anger.)

d. 他是火性子。 (He is easy to lose temper.)

The interesting thing is that, under the general metaphorical concept of “Anger is heat”, there is a concept of “Anger is gas in a container”, instead of “Anger is a hot fluid in a container”, in Chinese:

(17) 生气是气 (Anger is gas in a container.)

a. 她脾气很大。 (She is hot-tempered.)

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b. 她憋了一肚子气。 (She was filled up with pent-up anger.)

c. 他正在气上。 (He is at the top of his anger.)

d. 他气鼓鼓的(He’s inflated with anger.)

e. 他拿我出气(He vented his anger on me.)

It is obvious that there are metaphorical concepts of “Anger is heat” in both English and Chinese, thus, the author believes that the physical effects of anger might be universal among all human beings, because all cultures are built around biological, psychological, and social characteristics common to all mankind. However, we have “Anger is gas in a container” metaphor in Chinese; English has “Anger is a hot fluid in a container”. This diversity indicates cultural models do come in and influence the selection of linguistic expressions for a particular physical experience. This is what is going to be talked about in the next part.
Thus far, we can see that, though sometimes different in linguistic manifestations, cultural models, especially abstract ones, are basically conceptualized metaphorically. Or to put it another way, metaphor plays an indispensable role in the constitution of cultural models.

2. Cultural Models as Filters

Ning Yu (1998:43) points out, though metaphors are grounded in our embodied experience, the “bodily experience can only tell what possible metaphors are. Whether these potential metaphors are actually selected in a given culture is largely dependent upon the cultural models shared by individuals living in this culture”. In other words, cultural models function as filters in the selection of metaphors. Particular metaphors are selected by speakers, and are favored by these speakers, just because they provide satisfying mappings onto already existing cultural understandings. As it shows in the former section that though the experience of “Anger is heat” is common both in English and in Chinese, one of its subversions takes on different looks in these two languages. That is, it takes the appearance of “Anger is gas” in Chinese, while “Anger is a hot fluid in a container” in English. Ning Yu explains the difference by referring to the theories of Chinese medicine—which form cognitive or cultural models underlying the
metaphorical conceptualization in Chinese. According to traditional Chinese

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medicine, the human body is composed of three basic substances: (gas),

(blood), and 体液 (fluids other than blood), which serve as the basis for the function of the organs, tissues, and so forth. The so-called “” is “the moving but invisible, nutritive substance which functions as the motive power for the physiological movement of internal organs” (Chen 1989b:1010) (quote from Ning Yu 1998:71). Whenever is locally impeded, it will affect the circulation of blood and local pain may occur as a result of increased internal pressure in that area. The causes for the impediment of circulation of are various, but negative emotions, such as anger, are believed to be the most significant one, as is expressed in the phrase “气大” (rages do harm to health).

From this example, we can see the reason why “” is chosen over “” in Chinese anger metaphors: it is the cultural models that make themselves felt; or to put it another way, metaphors are selected out to fit pre-existing cultural models. In what follows, the author will have a close look at the cultural preference for certain metaphors. The objective is to make a comparative study of the different linguistic manifestations of metaphors in English and Chinese, thus proving that the result of the culture-selecting metaphors must be reflected in the choice for what I.A. Richards (1936) calls “tenor” and “vehicle” in a metaphor. And the observation of data from both English and Chinese shows that there are two ways in which cultural models select metaphors.

2.1 Metaphors determined by cultural universalities

In both English and Chinese, there are a large number of metaphors with the same tenors or vehicles or both. In other words, the tenor or vehicle or both are totally correspondent with each other across the linguistic boundary of English and Chinese. Look at the following examples:

(18) Body parts

a. The head of the department =个部

b. At the foot of the mountain =山脚下

c. The mouth of the cave = 洞口

d. The neck of a bottle =

e. The legs of a table =桌腿

(19) General ecological features

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a. The love of money is the root of all evil = 乃万之根源

b. a ray of hope = 线 希望

c. as though skating on thin ice = 如履薄冰

d. thunderous applause =般的掌声

e. the daughter has made friend with a bad egg =女儿和坏蛋交上了朋友

f. a sweet girl =

(20) Kinship

a. the father of literature =文学之父

b. mother tongue =

c. art lovers = 艺术

d. twin cities = 姊妹城市

(21) Human activities

a. There is always a lot of maneuverings behind the scenes before a new government is formed. = 新一届政府成以前是有很多幕后操作。

b. You are my walking dictionary. = 你是我会走路的字典。

The complete correspondence between certain tenors and vehicles indicates that there are important similarities in these two cultures, perhaps in all cultures — similarities that, in Harry Hoijer’s (1974:122) words, stem from the fact that “all cultures are built around biological, psychological, and social characteristics common to all mankind”. In other words, as human beings, we all share and experience basically the same physical world, and we are all driven by the genetically determined cognitive faculties of eating, seeing and feeling, or doing things. These commonly shared experiences gives rise to cognitive universals as well as cultural universals and these universals are reflected in metaphors arising from them. That is, they give rise to the same manifestations of tenors and vehicles of metaphors in different cultural models.

2.2 Metaphors determined by cultural relativity

As I have shown that human understanding and reasoning are grounded in our embodied experience, and since basic bodily experience should be common among all human beings, it can be concluded that there exist cognitive universals, as well as cultural universals, which are reflected in metaphors arising thereby. On the other hand, as Ning Yu (1998:47) points out,
“since bodily experience always interacts with specific physical, social, and

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cultural environments”, it is also expected that there should be cognitive variations across cultures and languages, and these variations are instantiated in metaphors with the following features.

2.2.1 Differentiation of tenor vs. vehicle relationship

Comparing the metaphors in English and in Chinese, it is not difficult to find out that there are metaphors whose tenors are the same, but expressed by different vehicles. For instance:

(22)

(23)

a. He met his Waterloo.

b. 于四面楚歌的境地。

a. He is a Monday morning quarterback. b. 他是事后葛亮。

In (22), the tenor, implied in the sentences, is failure. In English, it is expressed with the vehicle of Waterloo, a place where Napoleon I met his fatal defeat. But in Chinese, it is expressed with the vehicle of “四面楚歌”, a concept originated from the war between Chu and Han — two warring states in ancient China. During the war, Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu, was driven into a desperate state and defeated by Liu Bang, the overlord of Han. The story of Napoleon I gradually come to be a shared cultural heritage in the western
countries, while the story of Xiang Yu become a part of cultural heritage in China. Thus, the same concept of “fatal defeat” is expressed metaphorically with different vehicles in English and in Chinese. In the similar vein, football is a popular sport in the west, and it is usually held on Sundays. In a football match, the quarterback functions as a general commanding an army. If a team loses, on Monday morning, at work, those who are knowledgeable about the game will say, “in a certain crucial situation, the quarterback should have called for a pass rather than opting to run with the ball”. Thus, the expression “Monday morning quarterback” is usually regarded as being pejorative because Monday morning quarterback has no real qualifications to fill the
role. And in Chinese culture, Zhu Geliang (葛亮), a statesman and strategist
in the Three Kingdoms (220-280 AD), is well known for being insightful and resourceful. However, if Zhu Geliang only provides some comments or

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suggestions afterwards, he does nothing to solve the problem, hence, no qualification to be a strategist or master. This leads to the use of different vehicles to refer to the same tenor “people of no qualification” in the metaphors in (23). From these two examples, we can see that though metaphors reflect the commonalities of human experience, they are at the same time interact with different cultural realities, thus we have metaphors with the same tenors expressed by different vehicles in English and Chinese.
Another manifestation of tenor vs. vehicle relationship is to use the same vehicles expressing different tenors. The reason for this is that, as human beings, we share a lot of things in the world, such as the same ecological features of raining and thundering, or same animals like tiger, horse, and chicken. However, different cultural realities give those commonly shared things different associated meanings. When these differently associated meanings are used in metaphors, we have metaphors with the same vehicles but different tenors. Let’s turn to the following examples:

(24)

(25)

a. He is a real dragon; you had better keep away from him. (from Wu Ping

2001)

b. 是家龙头 (This is a leading enterprise.)

a. You are a lucky dog.

b. 痛打落水狗。 (Beat soundly the drowning dog.)

Both English and Chinese cultures share those animals like dragons, dogs, and bears, etc., while different cultural models give these animals differently associated meanings in these two languages. For example, dragon is regarded as a national totem in China, and it always carries the feeling of admirations. So, in (24:b), when Chinese use dragon to refer to an enterprise, it indicates that this enterprise is very good, and it functions as a model in the field. While in English, dragon is believed to be a fierce and violent monster that always spouts evil fire. When it is metaphorically used to refer to a person, it means that this person is fierce and violent, or evil, which is the implied meaning of (24:a). From this, we can see that it is the differently shared knowledge of the animal dragon in these two languages that gives rise to its differently associated meanings: symbol of goodness and happiness in Chinese, while
that of evilness or violence in English. Similarly, dog is a pet animal in English

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culture, so it always carries tender feelings of love and affection as in (25:a). But in Chinese, though the dog sometimes functions as faithful doorkeepers, it is in most times suffering from bad reputation of being snobbish and obnoxious, so it becomes the target of righteous man. That is why Lu Xun uses the title “痛打落水狗” in his essay to attack the reactionaries. The reason for this difference is due to the different cultural models.

2.2.2 Linguistic bound metaphors

While we say cultural realities select metaphors, the result might be metaphors with the same tenors expressed by different vehicles, or the ones with the same vehicles but different intended meanings. These two are illustrated in details in the above paragraphs. Besides this, there exists another type of culture-selecting manifestation of metaphors, that is, some vehicles appear only in one language, but absent in others. The reason for this is that the different cultural frameworks nurture unique ways of looking at things or reasoning. In Chinese, for example, Mount Tai is one of the Five Sacred Mountains (the Eastern Mountain—Mount Tai in Shandong Province, the
Southern Mountain — Mount Heng (衡山) in Hunan Province, the Western
Mountain—Mount Hua in Shaanxi Province, the Northern Mountain—Mount Heng (恒山) in Shanxi Province, and the Central Mountain—Mount Song in Henan Province) which are of vital importance in Chinese culture. Furthermore, east is always favored over other directions, so Mount Tai - the eastern Mountain - is of the greatest importance among the five. Based on this cultural reality, Mount Tai is often used as a symbol of great weight or importance, as in (26):

(26) 小人有眼不泰山!一冒犯兄,望乞恕罪 (《水浒传 )(You are as famous as Mount Tai, but I failed to recognize you. I hope that you will forgive me for that blunder.)

Due to the importance of Mount Tai, the star over it enjoys great brightness, hence, importance, as in (27):

(27) 他是中国文学史的泰斗。 (He is as eminent as the star over Mount

Tai—he is the foremost figure in Chinese Literature.)
In the above two examples, both Mount Tai and the star over it are metaphorically used to refer to persons of great importance or eminence. This

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metaphorical use of Mount Tai only exists in Chinese, for it is unique in
Chinese culture.
In the same vein, there are metaphorically used concepts which are specific to English, as in “Geometry is his Achilles’ heel”. In this sentence, “Achilles’ heel” is used as the vehicle of the tenor “the weak or vulnerable point of a person (organization, country, etc.)”, and this metaphorical use does not exist in Chinese. This is due to the fact that the phrase “Achilles’ heel”, originating from Greek epic — an important constituting part of western culture. Since English and Chinese do not share the same cultural origins, the metaphorical use of “Achilles’ heel” does not exist in Chinese.
From these examples, it is not difficult to notice that it is cultural specific models that determine vehicles which exist only in certain languages. And it is this kind of cultural-specific metaphors that cause the highest degree of difficulty in cross-cultural understanding.

3. Interaction of Metaphor and Cultural Models

From the above two sections, it is obvious to see the relationship between metaphor and cultural models: each cannot exist without the other. Metaphor is an important constituting part of cultural models, and cultural models select the instantiation of metaphors. However, it is, like the egg and chicken argument, difficult to tell which comes first and which comes second. Furthermore, metaphor and cultural models always interact with each other, and this interaction leads to their mutual growth. In other words, metaphors, especially novel metaphors, possess the natural ability to enrich cultural models; while on the other hand, cultural models give rise to novel metaphors, thus, leading the growth of the two to spiraling upward. In the following, we will examine this interaction process in details.
Firstly, metaphors, especially novel metaphors, have the potentiality to provide fresh blood for our ways of thinking and reasoning, and may thus change our conceptual perspective of looking at things. According to Roger Tourangeau (1982:32), a novel metaphor may be novel in several senses: It may be phrased in an original way; it may offer an original view of its subjects; or it may make us see the relations between two domains in a new way. So,

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novel metaphors include not only those newly born, but also the conventional ones used in an original way and the ones provide us a new perspective of looking at the world. Take the Chinese sentence “挂你一生,戴你一世” (Shu Dingfang 2000:89), as an example. Judging from the first sight, it is quite

possible to come to the conclusion that it is a vow made to the beloved one. However, it is actually an advertisement for gold jewelry. Understanding this background, the readers are impressed by the novelty and creativeness of the metaphorical use of “” and “”, whose literal meaning are “to worry
about, or care” and “to respect” respectively, while they are now used to refer to the act of putting on the gold jewels and the affection arising from it. This way of novelty belongs to the first type of Tourangeau’s new metaphor. It is novel because it gives the conventional words new blood. Another example is Black’s metaphor “marriage is a zero-sum game” (Black 1979:29). Black takes the metaphor to mean that marriage is a sustained competition between two contestants, and in this competition the rewards of one can only be obtained at the expense of the other. This metaphor is novel in two ways. First, as a view that most of us would prefer to reject, it contradicts many of our beliefs about marriage. Second, it forces us to package our beliefs about marriage according to a new structure, the structure of games. Thus, the once life-long partners now become competitors in a game; and the compromise in marriage that was once thought cooperative is now regarded as competitive. The novelty of metaphors, to conclude with the words of Lakoff and Johnson (1980:140), is “capable of giving us a new understanding of our experience. Thus, they can give new meaning to our pasts, to our daily activity, and to what we know and believe”. Put it another way, novel metaphors give us a new conceptual framework of the world we live in.
Moreover, as a way of structuring our conceptual system, novel metaphors also have the capability to create new realities, including new cultural realities. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980:145) commented, much of cultural change “arises from the introduction of new metaphorical concepts and the loss of old ones.” The creative function of metaphor comes to be felt when we begin to understand our experience in terms of the new metaphors and when we begin to act accordingly. Also take the metaphor “marriage is a zero-sum game” as
an example. When this metaphor enters the conceptual system that we base

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our actions on, we came to structure marriage in terms of games, and act accordingly. Thus, the once romantic love journey ends with success or defeat; the once unselfish devotion for happy marriage is replaced by equality between two partners. More and more couples even resort to contracts about the respective share of housework, baby-sitting, salary earning, etc. In this way, the marriage model takes the form of a game or business model, either of which is different from the one before.

On the other hand, when the new marriage model comes to be accepted by the public, it further gives rise to series of novel metaphors. For example, in the game-modeled society, the once happy marriage is now called “boarding the pirate ship” ( 上了 ), and the life-long partners “destined foes” or “opponents” (冤家) etc. This mutual enrichment of metaphor and cultural models leads to the spiraled growth of the two.

4. Conclusion

In this paper, we have discussed the relationship between metaphor and cultural models in details. From this, we can see the relationship is not that of one dominant over the other, but that of mutual promotion and constraint. It is so because cultural models, especially the abstract ones, are not free of metaphor, while on the other hand, cultural models play a significant role in selecting and shaping metaphors; moreover, new metaphors have the power to create new models. Or in Ning Yu’s words (1998:82), “culture plays a role in shaping metaphor” and in return, metaphor plays a role in constituting and creating culture.

5. Bibliography

Akhundov, M. D. (1986): Conceptions of Space and Time (trans. by Charles
Rouges), Cambridge.
Basso, K. H. (1976): “‘Wise Words’ of the Western Apache: Metaphor and Semantic Theory”, in: Basso, K./Selby, H. (edd.): Meaning in Anthropology, Albuquerque, 93-121.
Black, M. (1962): Models and Metaphors: studies in language and philosophy, NewYork.

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Black, M. (1979): “More About Metaphor”, in: Ortony, A. (ed.): Metaphor and

Thought, New York.

Fernandez, J. W. (ed.) (1991): Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in

Anthropology, Stanford, CA.

Fesmire, S. A. (1994): “Aerating the Mind: The metaphor of mental functioning as bodily functioning”, in: Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 9, 31-44.
Gibbs, R. W. JR (1996): “Researching Metaphor”, in: Cameron, Lynne/Low, Graham (edd.): Researching and Applying Metaphor, Cambridge.
Hoijer, H. (1974): “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis”, in: Blount, B. G (ed.):

Language, Culture and Society: a book of readings, Cambridge.

Holland, D./Quinn, N. (1987): Cultural Models in Language and Thought, Cambridge.
Kövecses, Z. (1986): Metaphors of Anger, Pride, and Love: A lexical approach to the structure of concepts, Amsterdam.
Kövecses, Z. (1988): The Language of Love: The semantics of passion in conversational English, Lewisburg, PA.
Kövecses, Z. (1990a): Emotion Concepts, New York.
Kövecses, Z. (1990b): Joy: An exercise in the description of emotion concepts, Graz. Kövecses, Z. (1991): “Happiness: A definitional effort”, in: Metaphor and

Symbolic Activity 6, 29-46.

Lakoff, G./Johnson, M. (1980): Metaphors We Live By, Chicago/London.
Lakoff, G. (1990): “The Invariance Hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas?”, in: Cognitive Linguistics 1, 39-74.
Lakoff, G. (1993): “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor”, in: Ortony, Andrew (ed.), 202-251.
Lakoff, G. (1994): “What is a Conceptual System?”, in: Overton Willis
F./Palermo David S. (edd.), 41-90.
Lakoff, G./Kövecses, Z. (1987): “The Cognitive Model of Anger Inherent in American English”, in: Holland, D./Quinn, N. (edd.): Cultural Models in Language and Thought, 195-221.
Quinn, N. (1991): “The Cultural Basis of Metaphor”, in: Fernandez, J. W. (ed.),
57-93.
Richards, I. A. (1936/1981): The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Oxford. Shu, D. F. (2000): Studies in Metaphor, Shanghai.
Tourangeau, R. (1982): “Metaphor and Cognitive Structure”, in: Miall, D. S.

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(ed.): Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives, 14-35.
Wu, P. (2001): Comparative Studies of Rhetoric Devices in English and Chinese, Hefei.
Yu, N. (1998): The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor, Amsterdam.

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Ralph Müller

Einleitung

Die Herausgeber, der Schriftsteller Franz Josef Czernin und der Literaturwissenschaftler Thomas Eder, legen mit diesem Sammelband neue philosophische, zum Teil auch kultur- und literaturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Metapher vor. Czernin selbst demonstriert diese Verschränkung von Literatur und Philosophie in seinem Einleitungsessay, der anspielend auf einen philosophischen Aufsatz von Donald Davidson (1978) ein literarisches Gedankenexperiment zur Rolle von Erfahrung in der poetischen Bedeutung ausführt.
Die wissenschaftlichen Beiträge sind in drei Teile geordnet: Der erste, umfangreichste Teil ist der Metapher in der analytischen Philosophie gewidmet, der zweite Teil beschäftigt sich mit der Metapher in den Wissenschaften, der dritte Teil mit der Metapher in der Literatur.
 

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Ralph Müller, Universität Freiburg/Schweiz (ralphmueller@web.de).

Die Herausgeber, der Schriftsteller Franz Josef Czernin und der Literaturwissenschaftler Thomas Eder, legen mit diesem Sammelband neue philosophische, zum Teil auch kultur- und literaturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Metapher vor. Czernin selbst demonstriert diese Verschränkung von Literatur und Philosophie in seinem Einleitungsessay, der anspielend auf einen philosophischen Aufsatz von Donald Davidson (1978) ein literarisches Gedankenexperiment zur Rolle von Erfahrung in der poetischen Bedeutung ausführt.
Die wissenschaftlichen Beiträge sind in drei Teile geordnet: Der erste, umfangreichste Teil ist der Metapher in der analytischen Philosophie ge- widmet, der zweite Teil beschäftigt sich mit der Metapher in den Wissen- schaften, der dritte Teil mit der Metapher in der Literatur.

1. Die Metapher in der analytischen Philosophie

Die Beiträge zur Metapher aus der Sicht der analytischen Philosophie nehmen über die Hälfte des Bandes ein. Der einleitende Artikel von Marga Reimer und Elisabeth Camp1 führt überblicksartig in die Behandlung der Metapher im Rahmen der analytischen Philosophie ein. Es gelingt, auf kleinstem Raum die umstrittenen Aspekte der sprachphilosophischen Behandlung der Metapher (insbesondere bei Fogelin, Black, Searle und Davidson) darzustellen und zu diskutieren. Leider sind gerade neuere philosophische Beiträge, wie etwa Stern (2000), relativ knapp und oberflächlich behandelt.
Severin Schröders Beitrag „Metapher und Vergleich“ leistet eine griffige Metapherndefinition: Metaphern seien implizite kühne Vergleiche zwischen einigermaßen heterogenen Dingen (55). Dies ist eine knappe Schlussfolgerung seiner lesenswerten Rettung der Auffassung, dass Metaphern als Vergleiche

1 Es handelt sich um eine Übersetzung des Beitrags von Camp und Reimer (2006).

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analysiert werden können. Solche Vergleichstheorien haben einen schlechten Ruf. Nun ist Schroeders Vorschlag nicht den naiven Vergleichstheorien zuzuordnen (wie sie von Black kritisiert werden).2 Dennoch vermisste ich einen Beleg, dass Schroeders Vergleichstheorie anderen Ansätzen wie z.B. Blacks Interaktionstheorie überlegen ist; zumal in terminologischer Hinsicht unklar geblieben ist, ob Schroeder mit Vergleich die sprachliche Aussage oder das Zu-Verstehen-Gegebene meint.
Künnes Beitrag „Wahrheit, ‘Metonymie’ und Metapher“ stellt luzide die Verhältnisse zwischen Äußerung und propositionalem Gehalt dar. Dabei sind insbesondere seine Ausführungen zur Frage der Unumkehrbarkeit von Vergleichen lesenswert (69–72). Daneben gibt es auch weniger aufschluss- reiche Teile, z.B. die umfangreiche Diskussion der wenig umstrittenen Tatsache, dass es einen Kontext geben könnte, in dem die Aussage „Moskau, liebe Freunde, ist leider eine sehr kalte Stadt“ absichtsvoll sowohl metaphorisch als auch nicht-metaphorisch sein könnte (66). Die Herausforderung wäre vielmehr zu zeigen, wie man in der Analyse ungeachtet solcher spitzfindigen Probleme Metaphern und Nicht-Metaphern unterscheiden kann.3
Czernin ist vor allem als Dichter bekannt, aber sein Beitrag „Metapher und die Ersetzbarkeit von Ausdrücken in literarischen Texten“ ist philosophischer Argumentation verpflichtet. Dies macht den Beitrag nicht unbedingt lesbarer.4
Czernin erklärt Metaphern als „Konjunktion von Propositionen“. Damit werden metaphorische Äußerungen auf die abstrakte propositionale Struktur
„A und B sind C“ zurückgeführt. Demnach ist eine Aussage dann
„metaphorisch wahr“, wenn „A“ (z.B. Achilles) und „B“ (z.B. Löwe) das Merkmal C (z.B. Tapferkeit) teilen. Czernins Argumentation konzentriert sich sodann auf literarische Texte. Die Ausgangsfrage ist, in welchem Ausmaß

2 Eine solche naive Vergleichtheorie, die von einer objektiven Vergleichbarkeit von unterschiedlichen Gegenständen ausgeht, wird noch von Hegel vertreten (vgl. 1997:516f.); allerdings dürfte sich Schroeder mit nur wenigen von Hegels Annahmen einverstanden erklären. Dass aber eine angepasste Vergleichstheorie sogar erklärende Kraft hat, wurde bereits früher dargelegt (z.B. Goatly 1997:118f.; Mooij 1976).

3 Kittay (1987) sucht hierauf Antworten.

4 Zudem sind nicht alle Gedankenexperimente mit der nötigen Präzision durchgeführt worden, denn Esel sind Einhufer und keine Paarhufer, 136.

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Rezensionen – Reviews – Comptes rendus

metaphorische Ausdrücke durch Synonyme ersetzt werden können, ohne dass sich der Wahrheitswert der Aussage ändert (salva veritate). Czernins These lautet dazu, dass man in literarischen Texten bei einer Aussage wie „Die Sonne strahlt“ das Substantiv nicht durch einen extensionsgleichen Term (z.B.
„Himmelskörper im Zentrum unseres Planeten“) ersetzen kann, ohne dass der Wahrheitswert verändert wird (78). Es wird deutlich, dass Czernin literarische Bedeutung auf textinterne Relationen zurückführt; es ist somit gut möglich, dass Czernin auf diese Weise ein allgemeines Merkmal fiktionaler Texte beschreibt.
Die erste Hälfte der sprachanalytischen Beiträge wird durch zwei Aufsätze von Samuel C. Wheeler beschlossen. Wheelers erster Beitrag „Wahrheit, Metapher und Unbestimmtheit“ bezieht sich explizit auf Davidson (1978). Wheeler legt dar, dass Davidsons Verständnis von Bedeutung als wörtliche Bedeutung letztlich keinen Raum für so etwas wie metaphorische Bedeutung lasse (96). Während sich Davidson aber auf innovative Metaphern beschränkte, bei denen die Intention des Sprechers gut rekonstruiert werden kann, geht Wheeler auch der Frage nach, wie Metaphern verblassen und schließlich vollständig in den Bereich des Wörtlichen eingehen können. Er stellt fest, dass es keine zuverlässigen Indikatoren gibt, nach denen eine Aussage als wörtlich oder metaphorisch bewiesen werden kann. Deshalb kommt er zum Schluss, dass es Aussagen gibt, die zwar einen Wahrheitswert haben, bei denen aber der Wahrheitswert nicht ermittelt werden kann (108).
Wheelers zweiter Beitrag ist nach eigener Auskunft für den Dichter Czernin geschrieben, „um zu erklären, wie Quines Auffassungen von Sprache und Bedeutung, wie sie von Davidson ausgedehnt und entwickelt wurden, eine angemessen reiche Grundlage für eine Darstellung der poetischen Bedeutung liefern“ (111). In diesem Zusammenhang betont Wheeler, dass in Davidsons Philosophie Wörter in einem Netzwerk von möglichen Assoziationen stehen (114). Allerdings wird nicht ausgeführt, wie auf diese Weise der Reichtum der poetischen Bedeutung zugänglich wird.
Der Gewinn dieser philosophischen Sektion liegt darin, dass sich Künne, Schröder und Czernin gegenseitig kommentieren (119-164). Damit geben sie ein Bild lebendiger philosophischer Auseinandersetzung. Die terminolo- gischen Diskussionen zeigen, dass der Dissens bisweilen größer ist, als man

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beim flüchtigen Lesen der Hauptbeiträge vermuten würde. Aussagen wie „ein Satz hat einen sprachlichen Sinn“ (67) tragen immer noch denselben explosiven Gehalt, den Davidson (1978) geschickt genutzt hat, als er stichhaltig darlegte, dass Metaphern keine Bedeutung haben können. Insgesamt hat Künne in dieser Diskussion dank stringenter Terminologie klare Vorteile.

2. Metaphern in der Wissenschaft

Die Sektion zur Metapher in der Wissenschaft wird von Thomas Eders Beitrag
„Zur kognitiven Theorie der Metapher in der Literaturwissenschaft“ eingeleitet. Es handelt sich um die wohl bisher gründlichste Kritik der kognitiven Metapherntheorie in der Literaturwissenschaft in deutscher Sprache. Dass Eder dabei aber zu einem kritischen Urteil kommt, dürfte daran liegen, dass in theoretischer Hinsicht George Lakoffs Annahmen zur konzeptuellen Metapher im Zentrum stehen. Eder stützt sich allerdings, was die empirische Fundierung betrifft, insbesondere auf Vertreter der Class- inclusion Theorie, die empirische Resultate, die Lakoffs Theorie stützen, stiefmütterlich behandeln.5 Besonderes Interesse erhält die literatur- wissenschaftliche Anwendung von Lakoffs Theorie auf literarische Texte. Dabei wird deutlich, wie wenig Lakoffs Theorie geeignet ist, interessante Interpretationen von Metaphern hervorzubringen. Relativ gute Noten gibt Eder dagegen der Blending Theorie von Turner und Fauconnier (auch bekannt als Theorie der konzeptuellen Integration). Ihr Beschreibungsmodell ist weniger reduktionistisch als die Theorie der konzeptuellen Metapher (193-
195). Anzumerken wäre allerdings, dass die Blending-Theorie dieses Ziel zum
Preis einer unzureichenden empirischen Begründung erreicht.
Christel Frickes „Buchstäblicher, metaphorischer und ästhetischer Sprachgebrauch“ setzt allgemeine Ausführungen zur Zeichentheorie ins Zentrum der einleitenden Abschnitte (198-201). Fricke unterscheidet dann konsequent zwischen buchstäblichem und metaphorischem Zeichengebrauch, ohne kritische Einwände gegen eine solche Einteilung zu diskutieren (vgl.

5 Vgl. Chiappe (2003), der McGlone (2001) vorwirft, empirischen Befunden, die die Theorie der konzeptuellen Metapher stützen, zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit zu schenken.

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Gibbs 1994:75-79). In diesem Sinne erklärt sie die Wahrnehmung von Metaphern vor allem aus der Spannung zwischen dem buchstäblichen Ver- ständnis einer Aussage und dem Kontext der Aussage (in der eine Sprecherin der kommunikativen Sparsamkeit und Zweckrationalität verpflichtet ist,
202f.). Diese Sicht wird aber nicht auf den ästhetischen Gebrauch von Metaphern ausgedehnt. Hier betrachtet sie den Entstehungskontext des Textes nicht nur als unzugänglich, sondern für eine ästhetische Lektüre sogar als irrelevant. Demnach stellt sich die Frage, wie wir ohne Kontext in der Lage sein sollen, in literarischen Texten Metaphern und Nicht-Metaphern zu unterscheiden.
Gerhard Grössings Beitrag zur „kontinuierliche[n] Einbettung diskreter Ereignisse“ beschäftigt sich mit Metaphern in der Physik unter der Hypothese, dass die Metapher in den Naturwissenschaften die Funktion erfüllt, den Möglichkeitsraum mittels Sprache einzuengen, während sie diesen in der Dichtung erweitert (220). Hauptschwerpunkt des Beitrags liegt in der Darstellung der Ablösung des mechanistischen Erklärens durch ein abstraktes prinzipien-basiertes Erklären im 20. Jahrhundert, das nunmehr wiederum in Frage gestellt wird, da der Rückgriff auf subatomare Bereiche nicht die emergenten Merkmale des Zusammenspiels vieler Atome erklären kann (etwa, dass Eis hart ist).

3. Metaphern in der Literatur

Die letzte Sektion beschäftigt sich mit Metaphern in der Literatur. Christian Strub geht von Celans Satz aus: „Und das Gedicht wäre somit der Ort, wo alle Tropen und Metaphern ad absurdum geführt werden wollen“. Strubs Beitrag ist hervorragend informiert über die Geschichte der Metapherntheorie. Gerade in einem solchen Fall werden Lücken umso auffälliger, wie etwa das Fehlen von Aristoteles’ Behandlung der Metapher im Buch der Rhetorik (226f.). Die Schwierigkeiten dieses Artikels liegen darin, dass Strub mit durchaus eigenen (wenn auch an Celans Vortrag angelehnten) Begriffen von Bild, Metapher, Trope und Synonymik operiert, die sich jeder Verallgemeinerung entziehen. Das Resultat ist eine durchaus anregende, wenn auch unverbindliche Aus-
einandersetzung mit Celans Büchner-Preisrede.

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Hans-Jost Freys Ausführungen zu „Metaphorisches in Dantes Paradies und anderswo“ (mit „anderswo“ ist Tiecks dramatisches Fragment Ein Prolog gemeint) bietet eine eindrückliche Demonstration des Umgangs traditioneller Philologie mit Metaphern. Der Leser findet in diesem instruktiven und gut lesbaren Beitrag eine Interpretation einer Metapher aus Dantes Göttlicher Komödie. Freys ‘close reading‘ wägt die verwendeten Belege sorgfältig ab. Er beurteilt seine Belege hinsichtlich des Ziels, die „Unersetzlichkeit“ eines Wortes in der dichterischen Redeweise nachzuweisen (247). Im Falle von Dantes Werk gelingt es auf diese Weise, die metaphorische Selbstdarstellung des Textes (etwa wenn volume gleichzeitig “Himmel“ und “Buch“ bedeuten kann) zu zeigen.
Die letzten zwei Beiträge konzentrieren sich auf das Schaffen des Schriftstellers Czernin. Thomas Poiss’ Beitrag „Geflügelt und also wörtlich“ bietet einen guten metapherntheoretischen Überblick, er zeigt aber gegenüber der Auswahl der Theorien eine gewollte Nonchalance, die in Poiss’ These begründet ist, dass keine Theorie mit der schöpferischen Kraft der Dichter mithalten könne (265). In der Tat bietet Czernins Anna und Franz mit seinen wortspielerischen Verschränkungen von Metaphern, Redensarten und Ver- gleichen zweifelsohne „die realen Prüfsteine der Metapherntheorie“ (270). Dennoch wird der Gemeinplatz von der Uneinholbarkeit dichterischer Praxis durch die Theorie von Poiss eher behauptet als bewiesen.
Marco Baschera behandelt in seinem abschließenden Beitrag „Wie kann ein Gedicht eine Speise sein?“ Czernins eigene Poetik der Metapher. Bascheras eigener Zugang über eine „Phänomenologie der Zunge“ ist relativ subjektiv begründet, wie der Autor selbst zugibt (290f.).

4. Schluss

An Bascheras Beitrag können einige grundsätzliche Fragen angeknüpft werden, die dieser anregende Sammelband für mich aufgeworfen hat. Es ist auffällig, dass die sprachphilosophischen Beiträger sich gegenseitig kommentieren. Dies geschieht unter den literatur- und kulturwissenschaft- lichen Beiträgen nicht. Woran liegt das? Es schient mir, dass die Beiträge im dritten Teil die Metapher nicht mit jener begrifflichen Präzision und theoretischen Systematik behandeln, die ein gegenseitiges Kommentieren und

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Kritisieren ermöglichen. Gleichzeitig zeigen aber die sprachphilosophischen Beiträge kaum Ansätze eines interdisziplinären Austauschs. Gewiss, Wheeler diskutiert die Verwendung von neurophysiologischen Scans in der Metaphernforschung, insgesamt werden aber Erkenntnisse der Kognitions- wissenschaften ignoriert.6 Reimers und Camp halten in ihrem einleitenden Artikel zur Sprachphilosophie der Metapher fest, dass ihre Zukunft „weniger klar“ ist (42), und sie äußern die Hoffnung, dass man in Zukunft Ergebnisse anderer Disziplinen einbeziehe. Die Dominanz artifizieller Gedanken- experimente in den sprachphilosophischen Beiträgen zeigt, dass hier noch viel Entwicklungspotenzial vorliegt. Für die Zukunft wünschte man sich noch mehr interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit, denn gemeinsame Problem- stellungen (etwa die Frage, inwiefern literarische Metaphern eigenen Gesetzen gehorchen) scheinen durchaus vorzuliegen.

5. Literaturverzeichnis

Camp, Elisabeth/Reimer, Marga (2006): „Metaphor“, in: Ernest Lepore und Barry C. Smith (edd.): The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford, 845-863.
Chiappe, Dan L. (2003): „Review: Understanding Figurative Language. From Metaphors to Idioms. Sam Glucksberg with a contribution by Matthew McGlone“, in: Metaphor & Symbol 18,1, 55-61.
Davidson, Donald (1978): „What Metaphors Mean“ In: Sheldon Sacks (ed.): On

Metaphor, Chicago, 29-45.

Gibbs, Raymond W. (1994): The Poetics of Mind. Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding, Cambridge.
Giora, Rachel (2003): On Our Mind. Salience, Context, and Figurative Language, Oxford.
Goatly, Andrew (1997): The Language of Metaphors, London.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1997): „Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I“, in: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Werke [in 20 Bänden]. Auf der Grundlage

6 Dabei werden durchaus Behauptungen über den Verstehensprozess von Metaphern gemacht, die empirisch überprüft werden können. So behauptet etwa Schroeder, dass wir beim Verstehen einer Metapher die wortwörtliche Bedeutung verwerfen (50, 121); empirische Studien zeigen, dass diese Annahme problematisch sein könnte (vgl. Gibbs

1994:109; Giora 2003:109f.).

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der Werke von 1832–1845 neu ed. Ausg., Eva Moldenhauer/Karl Markus

Michel (edd.), Bd. 13, Frankfurt.
Kittay, Eva Feder (1987): Metaphor. Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure, Oxford.
McGlone, Matthew S. (2001): „Concepts as Metaphors“, in: Sam Glucksberg:

Understanding Figurative Language, Oxford, 90-107.

Mooij, J.J.A. (1976): A Study of Metaphor. On the Nature of Metaphorical

Expressions, with Special Reference to Their Reference, Amsterdam.

Stern, Josef (2000): Metaphor in Context, Cambridge (Mass.).

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Cornelia Müller (2008): Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A Dynamic View, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press

Judith Visser

Einleitung

Die vorliegende Studie zur Unterscheidung zwischen toten und lebenden Metaphern basiert auf der Habilitationsschrift der Verfasserin, die 2004 an der Freien Universität Berlin eingereicht und angenommen wurde. Der Text ist unter Verweis auf die mangelnde Rezeption deutscher Arbeiten zur Metaphernforschung in der internationalen Fachdiskussion auf Englisch verfasst. Das erste Verdienst der Autorin, die in ihren Ausführungen viele Forschungslinien ausführlich und mit großer Sachkompetenz nachzeichnet, ist damit ihr Beitrag zu einer stärkeren Verbreitung dieser Arbeiten in der internationalen Fachwelt.17

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Seite 143

Cornelia Müller (2008): Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A Dynamic View, Chicaco/London: University of Chicago Press.

Judith Visser, Bonn (jvisser@uni-bonn.de)

Die vorliegende Studie zur Unterscheidung zwischen toten und lebenden Metaphern basiert auf der Habilitationsschrift der Verfasserin, die 2004 an der Freien Universität Berlin eingereicht und angenommen wurde. Der Text ist unter Verweis auf die mangelnde Rezeption deutscher Arbeiten zur Metaphernforschung in der internationalen Fachdiskussion auf Englisch verfasst. Das erste Verdienst der Autorin, die in ihren Ausführungen viele Forschungslinien ausführlich und mit großer Sachkompetenz nachzeichnet, ist damit ihr Beitrag zu einer stärkeren Verbreitung dieser Arbeiten in der internationalen Fachwelt.
Kritischer Ausgangspunkt der Analyse Müllers ist, wie aus dem Titel abzulesen, die traditionelle Dichotomie der toten und lebenden Metapher. Das Ziel der Studie, das sich im Untertitel widerspiegelt, ist die Überwindung dieser eher statischen Einteilung dank eines integrativen Ansatzes, der linguistische, semiotische, philosophische und psychologische Herangehens- weisen kombiniert. Dieser soll zu einem dynamischen Modell führen, in dem die Dichotomie dead/alive von einer durch fließendere Übergänge gekenn- zeichneten Einteilung in sleeping und waking abgelöst wird, die den graduellen Charakter von Metaphorizität stärker hervorhebt. Die Arbeit wird verstanden als Brücke zwischen konzeptuellen und klassischeren Metapherntheorien.
Kapitel eins (Metaphors and Cognitive Activity: A Dynamic View) ist der Auseinandersetzung mit den vier der Studie zugrunde liegenden Annahmen gewidmet: Metaphors are Based on a Cognitive Activity (Kap. 1.1), Metaphors Are Based on a Triadic Structure (1.2), Metaphors Are Modality-Independent (1.3), Metaphors Are A Matter of Use (1.4). Die Verf. hebt hervor, dass der Fokus ihrer Untersuchung nicht auf dem P r o d u k t Metapher, sondern dem P r o z e s s der Etablierung von Metaphorizität liegt. Diesen Prozess unterteilt sie in die Elemente „establishing metaphoricity as cognitive activation“, „activating a triadic structure, that is, seeing C in terms of B“, „speaking and writing“ (39).
Das Produkt Metapher wird allerdings nicht ausgeblendet: Hier gilt das

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besondere Augenmerk der Tatsache, dass Metaphern nicht nur auf der Ebene der Kognition und in der Sprache angesiedelt sind, sondern sich auch in Bildern und Gesten manifestieren. Etablierten Metapherntheorien, die, angeregt durch die Arbeit von Lakoff/Johnson, bei der Untersuchung von Metaphern eine Abwendung von der literarischen Sprache hin zur Allgemeinsprache vorgenommen haben, wirft Müller eine nicht hinreichende empirische Verankerung sowie eine zu starke Konzentration auf die Ebene des kollektiven Systems statt auf den individuellen Sprachgebrauch vor.
In Kapitel zwei (Metaphors in Thought and Language: Fundamental Issues) erfolgt ein ausführlicher Überblick über linguistische und kognitive Theorien zur Metapher, an dessen Ende das Ergebnis formuliert wird, dass Metaphorizität als kognitiver Prozess mit multimedialen Produkten verstanden werden muss. Als weiteres Ziel der Untersuchung wird das Sammeln von Hinweisen formuliert, „that provide support for assuming a differentiation between structures of general conceptualization and language-specific conceptual structures“ (48).
Kapitel drei (Realms of Metaphors: Activation in Language Use) widmet sich der Aktivierung der Metapher auf konzeptueller, verbaler, bildlicher und gestischer Ebene und mündet in der Schlussfolgerung, dass ‘tote’ Metaphern im Sprachgebrauch ‘leben’ können. Die Untersuchung von Gesten, die beispielsweise eine Sprachäußerung begleiten, die eine in klassischer Terminologie als ‘tot’ eingestufte Metapher beinhaltet, zeigt, dass diese Metapher auf der Ebene der Gestik ‘leben’ kann1. Insgesamt ist die Untersuchung dieser Gestik, die in traditionellen Studien zur Metapher wenig Berücksichtigung findet, als ein großer Pluspunkt der vorliegenden Studie zu werten.
In Kapitel vier (The Core of Metaphors: The Establishment of a Triadic Structure) wird die triadische Struktur einer Metapher diskutiert. Dieser für den Leser auf den ersten Blick etwas überraschende ‘Rückschritt’ in eine Art Forschungsüberblick wird von der Verf. damit begründet, dass die Aus-

1 In dem betreffenden Beispiel ist zu beobachten, dass in einem Gespräch über depressive Stimmungen in einer Beziehung die Sprecherin mit einer nach unten deutenden Handbewegung die konzeptuelle Metapher ‘sad is down’, die sich etymologisch hinter dem Lexem depressiv verbirgt, aber für den Sprecher wohl kaum transparent sein dürfte, nachzeichnet.

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führungen in Kap. drei eine vertiefende Beschäftigung damit notwendig machen, was sich hinter dem Stichwort Aktivierung im Zusammenhang mit einer Metapher verbirgt. Verschiedene triadische Strukturen aus kognitiven und linguistischen Metapherntheorien werden – oftmals mit Schaubildern veranschaulicht – vorgestellt. Die Autorin kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass die triadische Struktur das Herzstück von Metapherkonzepten darstellt, auch wenn das Wesen und die Rolle der drei Elemente unterschiedlich gesehen werden: „Basically, the divergence concerns the question of whether metaphor is supposed to be a phenomenon of linguistic or of general cognitive organization“ (132). Während der CMT [scil. kognitive Metapherntheorie(n), J.V.] eine Reduzierung der Metapher auf kognitive Prinzipien vorgeworfen wird, konzentriert sich die Kritik an der LMT [scil. linguistische Metaphern- theorie(n), J.V.] auf eine fehlende systematische Auseinandersetzung mit nicht-sprachlichen Metaphern. Aus diesen Forschungsdesiderata leitet die Verf. die Notwendigkeit ab, sich umfassender der Aktivierung von Metaphorizität beim Sprechen und Schreiben zu widmen.
Darauf beruht die Konzipierung von Kap. fünf (Mixed Metaphors: Selective Activation of Meaning), in dem mit Hilfe verschiedener methodischer Ansätze mixed metaphors analysiert werden sollen. Dieses Untersuchungsgebiet erscheint Müller geeignet, die verbreitete Meinung, bei der Aktivierung einer sprachlichen Metapher würden beide Bedeutungsebenen gleichermaßen aktiv sein, zu widerlegen. Der Untersuchung der mixed metaphors liegen die Fragen zugrunde, warum diese Metaphern Sinn ergeben bzw. warum sie es nicht tun. Bei der Diskussion dieser Fragestellungen führt die Verf. vorhandene, bis- weilen etwas stereotyp wirkende Auffassungen über die Eigenschaften gemischter Metaphern an und analysiert vor diesem Hintergrund ver- schiedene Fallbeispiele. Die exemplarischen Untersuchungen sollen Aufschluss darüber geben, warum bestimmte Metaphernkombinationen möglich erscheinen und andere nicht und in welcher Hinsicht die Kombinationsmöglichkeiten eingeschränkt sind (Widersprüche auf der Ebene der wörtlichen oder übertragenen Bedeutung, Probleme im Bereich der formalen Strukturen bzw. der Syntax). Auf der Basis der Beispielanalysen kommt die Verf. zu dem Ergebnis, dass Metaphorizität selektiv aktiviert werden kann, d.h., dass Sprecher bei mixed metaphors nur bestimmte
Bedeutungselemente aktivieren und andere ausblenden. Angesichts der

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differenzierten Fallanalyse erscheint die Antwort Müllers auf die einleitende
Frage nach dem Sinn oder Un-Sinn gemischter Metaphern etwas banal:
„[T]hey make no sense from the perspective of language experts […], whereas they do (did) make sense from the viewpoint of the speaker/writer at the moment of speaking“ (177).
In Kap. sechs (Sleeping and Waking Metaphors: Degrees of Metaphoricity) erfolgt eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der dead-alive-Unterscheidung. Die Verf. nimmt eine Unterscheidung zwischen Metaphern auf der Ebene des (kollektiven) Sprachsystems und Metaphern auf der Ebene des individuellen Sprachgebrauchs vor. Daraus ergeben sich für sie mehrere Fragen: „[C]an a conceptual metaphor newly arise in one individual?“; „how are these individual conceptual metaphors related to the collective ones?“; „how are they related to language as a collective system?“ (195). Innerhalb des dynamischen Metaphernkonzepts, dass sie in ihrer Studie vorschlägt, misst sie der Graduierbarkeit von Metaphern eine besondere Bedeutung zu.
Die dead-alive-Unterscheidung erscheint Müller deshalb problematisch, weil sie nicht miteinander kompatible Kriterien mischt: Die Vorstellung von Vitalität basiere auf verschiedenen Kriterien: dem Konventionalisierungsgrad, der Transparenz und der Bewusstheit. Die ersten beiden Aspekte bezögen sich auf die Ebene des Sprachsystems, der dritte auf die kognitive Aktivierung von Metaphern beim individuellen Sprecher. Ausgehend von der Kritik an einer Metapherneinteilung, die auf einer unsystematischen Unterscheidung zwischen der individuellen und der kollektiven Ebene beruht, schlägt die Verf. eine statische Klassifizierung verbaler Metaphern vor, die auf Transparenz und Konventionalisierungsgrad beruht, und unterscheidet zwischen historical entrenched – novel. Hinzu kommt eine zweite, dynamische Einteilung, die auf dem Aktivierungsgrad der Metaphorizität basiert, die bei einem bestimmten Sprecher zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt gegeben ist. Diese führt zu einer Kategorisierung from sleeping to waking; die Formulierung unterstreicht den dynamischen und graduierbaren Charakter der Einteilung.
Im abschließenden Kap. sieben (The Refutation of the Dead versus Alive Distinction: A New Approach and Some of Its Implications) diskutiert die Autorin schließlich die von ihr etablierte Distinktion mit Blick auf ausgewählte Theorien der Metapher und hebt hervor, dass eine Untersuchung von Metaphern im Sprachgebrauch eines dynamischen Modells bedürfe.

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Die Ausführlichkeit, in der Müller in diesem Schlusskapitel noch einmal auf verschiedene Ansätze der Fachliteratur eingeht, hätte ggf. eher im Forschungsüberblick ihren Platz gehabt. Dies hätte möglicherweise auch zur Transparenz des Argumentationsgangs beigetragen, die, obwohl die Verf. stets darauf achtet, ihre Schritte zu begründen, in der Beispieldiskussion und vor allem in bisweilen für das Leseverständnis unnötig häufig repetierten Kernthesen etwas verloren geht. Die abschließende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Forschungsstand macht außerdem deutlich, dass einige Erkenntnisse der Studie etwas weniger innovativ sind, als es die vorangehenden Kapitel suggerieren.
Trotz dieser im Gesamtbild geringfügigen Kritik ist die Studie von Müller zusammenfassend als theoretisch sehr fundierter und aufschlussreicher Beitrag zu Metaphernklassifikationen zu werten. Gerade die Arbeit mit nonverbalen Metaphern und die ausführlichen Beispieldiskussionen führen zu wertvollen Denkansätzen hinsichtlich der ‘Lebendigkeit’ von Metaphern und machen die Arbeit zu einer interessanten Überprüfung tradierter und offenbar nicht hinreichend bzw. nur aus bestimmten Perspektiven in Frage gestellter Dichotomien.

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