Metaphorical
Systems and their Implications to Teaching English as a Foreign
Language
1.
Introduction
In their joint commitment to finding out 'how people understand
their language and their experience', George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
(1980: iv) studied the patterns of metaphors that occurred in
everyday English. They found a systematicity in the usage of conventional
expressions and novel language constructions as well as a systematicity
in the reasoning of abstract concepts. Their findings led them
to the generalization that 'our ordinary conceptual system is
metaphorical in nature' (1980: 4) and that it is in constant use
just like the 'system of grammatical and phonological rules' that
operate unconsciously and automatically (Lakoff in Ortony, 1993:
245), and thus challenging the traditional view that figurative
language is 'unimportant, deviant, and parasitic on "normal
usage" ' (Ortony, A. 1993:2).
For the English teacher, such as myself, this has some important
implications. I have often wondered of ways to promote understanding
of metaphorical concepts ' in the way that the target language
community does' (Deignan et al, 1998: 70). In the 'authentic material'
I use, such as humourous language, song lyrics, movie scripts,
newspaper and magazine articles, myths, tales and fables, the
students have to deal with numerous metaphorical concepts which
are sometimes quite different from their own Japanese ones. Usually,
I would resort to paraphrasing, translations and dictionary definitions.
But now with mounting evidence and empirical findings (Johnson,
1987; Kovecses, 1986; Sweetser, 1990) related to the systematicity
and pervasiveness of conventional metaphors, I am motivated to
think of a more macroscopic way of dealing with the problem.
In this paper, I will attempt to identify and compare the 'metaphorical
systems' (i.e: the systematicity of metaphors) used in two newspaper
articles, one in English and the other in Japanese. This is relevant
to my teaching situation at Kyoto Municipal Saikyo Senior High
School in Japan where I am preparing my students to read and comprehend
university entrance examination reading texts which are usually'adult
level, well-written, grammatically and stylistically correct'
(Brown, 1995).
After an analysis of the metaphorical systems, it will be argued
that the systematic nature of metaphorical systems can be of use
to the foreign language learner. But, first I will clarify my
understanding of the term metaphorical systems, and attempt at
showing how pervasive they are supposed to be in everyday language.
It is argued that by showing the pervasiveness of metaphors and
their systems, the necessity of bringing them to the attention
of learners becomes clearer.
2.
Metaphorical Systems
2.1 Metaphors
In their study of metaphors, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980)
have found that far from being poetic and figures of speech, they
were pervasive in conventional language and thought. Expressions
like, Your claims are indefensible; He attacked evry weak point
in my argument; His criticisms were right on target; revealed
the underlying metaphorical concept of: 'Argument is War'. In
this way, they were able to identify many metaphorical concepts
underlying our language about time, events, motion, spaces and
emotions, to name a few.
One salient feature of these concepts is the systematic way the
words from the source domain (war) are used in everyday language
to describe the abstract war-like aspects in the target domain
(argument). Another, is that when using the Argument is War system,
other aspects of the target domain (e.g., cooperative aspects)
become 'hidden' (ibid: 10).
Metaphorical language allows us to express our abstract and difficult
concepts in concrete terms.
Therefore, I can talk about love in terms of falling in some bounded
region; and not just be content with the literal meaning of love
to convey that extraordinary feeling. These are some of the features
that make up the essential nature of a metaphorical utterance.
For the native speaker who is unaware of the metaphorical systems
operating in the mind readily understands and uses expressions
such as: 'Look how far we have come', 'It's been a long, bumpy
road', 'We can't turn back now' and 'We're at a crossroads' (Lakoff
in Ortony, 1993: 206). Lakoff and Johnson say that this is possible
due to the 'generalizations governing polysemy' and 'generalizations
governing inference patterns' found in language.
This brings up the question, How can the foreign language learner
acquire such unconscious behaviour?
Hypothetically speaking, the acquisition process may be facilitated
when the metaphorical systems are used to bring to the attention
of the learner the 'generalizations governing polysemy' that are
described 'in terms of conceptual organization' (Lakoff, 1987:
334) or for practical purposes exposure to the conventional usage
of metaphorical expressions.
As far back as 1973, H. Clark hypothesized that many of our everyday
metaphors relate to human perceptual systems and experiences with
the real world and thus would occur across languages (Hatch and
Brown, 1995: 92-93). However, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have shown
that everyday metaphor in a language is culturally as well as
perceptually based.
2.2
Primary Metaphors
Just by functioning normally in the world, we automatically and
unconsciously acquire and use a vast number of such metaphors.
Those metaphors are realized in our brains physically and are
mostly beyond our control. They are a consequence of the nature
of our brains, our bodies, and the world we inhabit. (Lakoff and
Johnson, 1999: 59)
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (ibid: 45) point out that the reason
we conceptualize for example: understanding an idea as grasping
an object, lies in the primary metaphors we have built up since
early childhood (ibid: 46~47). These metaphors are said to have
developed after a period of conflation of our subjective and sensorimotor
experiences. These experiences gradually give way to 'a period
of differentiation' creating separate domains, while the cross-domain
associations continue to persist (ibid: 46). This cognitive mechanism
of cross-domain associations is what allows us to view a subjective
experience of understanding an idea in terms of the sensorimotor
experience of grasping. Similarly, there are supposed to be several
hundred of such primary metaphors (ibid: 57) prevalent in a culture.
Some of them possibly exist, it is predicted, universal across
cultures.
2.3
Basic Event-Structure Metaphor
The basic event-structure metaphor reveals 'our most fundamental
understanding of what events and causes are' (Lakoff and Johnson,
1999: 178). In addition, Lakoff (in Ortony, 1993:219~220) had
previously emphasized that ' various aspects of event structure,
including notions like states, changes, processes, actions, causes,
purposes, and means, are characterized cognitively via metaphors
in terms of space, motion, and force'.
The basic event-structure metaphors are fundamental categories
through which we comprehend the world and such basic event-structure
metaphors 'are fundamental not only to our literal conceptualization
of the world but to our metaphorical conceptualization as well'
(Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 231). Support for this comes from the
studies of Berlin et al (1974), Hunn (1977), Mervis and Rosch
(1981) and Tversky and Hemenway (1984) who have shown that 'our
earliest and most natural form of categorization' (Lakoff, 1987:
49) are the basic-level categories.
Of the many salient features of the basic event-structure metaphor
(for discussion refer to Lakoff and Johnson, 1999), the hierarchical
nature found in the interaction between metaphorical systems seems
to stand out as being relevant to the foreign language learner.
For example, the Life is a Journey metaphor entails the interaction
of other events in life such as, love, career and so on. In other
words, The Love is a Journey and Career is a Journey metaphors
inherit the structure of Life is a Journey metaphor (Lakoff in
Ortony, 1993: 223~224). This inheritance factor allows for expressing
love and career domains in terms of the journey domain. This expression
of metaphors in general categories is what connects them or in
Lakoff and Johnson's words gives them 'coherence' (1980: 43~45).
2.4
Shortcomings
Though Lakoff and Johnson (1980; 1999) and Gibbs (1994) have emphasized
that metaphorical systems motivate large areas of our language
use, Cacciari (in Katz et al, 1998: 187) cites two crucial problems.
One, that the perceptual experience ends up being, once again,
"disembodied" ,' in their 'well-structured and predictable
mappings' bearing similarities to the 'abstract-based format of
traditional semantic accounts'. Two, that findings in the field
of meaning representation studies(Cacciari, 1997; Cacciari and
Levorato, 1997) show the inadequacy of the 'inferential-literal'
language in dscribing many visual, haptic, kinesthetic and other
perceptions (ibid: 187).
In addition, Deignan (in Cameron and Low, 1999), finds the present
theory of metaphorical systems to be inadequate in explaining
the partial and overlapping aspects of metaphor.
Furthermore, Thornbury (1991) points out, that we need more justification
before we rush to generalize for example, She lost me then as
evidence that she is behaving according to the underlying metaphorical
concept of Learning is a Journey. Gibbs (in Cameron and Low, 1999:
64) agrees and Low (ibid: 64) suggests the need for more ethnographic
evidence.
3.
Metaphorical Systems in the Newspaper Articles
In the next part of this paper, an attempt will be made at identifying
the metaphorical systems found in similar newspaper articles of
an English newspaper and a Japanese one. The systems will be compared
and their similarities and differences will be highlighted. Finally,
in this way, some important implications for the foreign language
learner will be formulated.
3.1
Materials and Method
For this study, an article about the elections in Iran from the
February 21, 2000 issue of the Herald Tribune (see
Appendix A) and a similar article on the
same date from the issue of the Asahi Shimbun (see
Appendix B), randomly selected, will be the
subject of this investigation.
First, the metaphorical systems in the English newspaper article
have been listed by categorizing the conventional metaphors (Table
1, Appendix C). Next, the same
can be seen for the Japanese newspaper article in Table 2,
Appendix D. Later, for the purpose of locating
the similarities and differences in the metaphorical systems of
the respective articles, the conventional metaphors were translated
into the language of comparison (Table 1, and Table 2). However,
only those metaphorical systems occurring more than once in the
articles have been considered as the main metaphorical systems.
The other metaphorical systems in the articles, that were determined
from single occurrences of conventional metaphors are not dealt
with in this paper, but only those found to be different or marked
when translated are cited and dealt with in section 3.6 of this
paper (also Table 3, Appendix E).
For this study, 'The New Japanese-English Dictionary' (Koh Masuda,
1974) was the basis for all the Japanese to English translations,
and Mr. Kazutaka Nomura's (Japanese English teacher at Rakusei
Junior and Senior High Schools) expertise for the Japanese translations.
3.2
Limitations
The method of identifying the metaphorical systems is limited
by the ability to recognize the source and target domains. There
is going to be a 'measure of subjectivity' and 'randomness' in
such a 'unilateral approach' (Graham Low, 1999: 49~51). In addition,
'peripherally relatable' (ibid) cases of metaphors might be emphasized
due to reading the articles many times over. Finally, with an
approach that is dependent on translation for seeking out the
differences and similarities there is the danger of being satisfied
when the 'truth conditions' (Lakoff, 1987: 316) have been fulfilled,
thereby missing 'how concepts are organized'.
3.3
The Main English Metaphorical Systems in the English Newspaper
Article and their prevalence in Japanese
The following metaphorical systems were found to operate in more
than one instance of conventional metaphorical expressions in
the English newspaper article:
Election is a Race
Election is War
Elections are Locations
Election is a Movement of an Object
(refer to Table 1, Appendix C for details)
The four metaphorical systems underlying the English newspaper
article is dispersed in the following way:
Election is a Race has thirteen sentences.
Election is War has nine sentences of which seven overlap with
the Election is a Race system.
Elections are Locations has four sentences.
Ekections is a Movement of an Object has five sentences.
Now, in order to see the prevalence of the conventional metaphors
found in the English newspaper article in Japanese, the expressions
were translated. Conventional metaphors in Japanese were found
prevalent for a majority of the cases. The exceptions were found
for one sentence in the Election is a Race system, and all the
five sentences in the Election is a Movement of an Object system.
The sentence, 'Preliminary results showed Mr. Rafsanjani coming
in as far down the list as twenty-fifth' uses the words coming
in metaphorically. This when translated to Japanese is nonsensical
as the ni kiteirui the Japanese translation for coming in cannot
be used to describe the meaning of the English sentence. Instead,
the sentence would have to be translated using the Japanese words
ni ranku sareta to literally mean, was ranked so as to describe
the result of the candidate.
As for Election is a Movement of an Object, all the five sentences
do not have translations using the same English equivalents for
went to, put in, give, handed and moving (refer to Table 1, Appendix
C) which in Japanese are ni itta, ni oku, ataeru, tewatasu and
ugokasu, respectively. Instead, tori meaning has taken; nari meaning
became; ni yori meaning through, ijoushita meaning transfer, and
ni meaning towards, are the translations for the English words
cited above. Nevertheless, these are words describing movement
of an object. This indicates the similarity of the system but
differences in describing the concepts. Moreover, as the words
are all from the same source domain of movement of an object,
it is likely that this is a case of 'coherence' showing the connections
between the metaphors in both languages.
3.4
The Main Japanese Metaphorical Systems in the Japanese Newspaper
Article and their prevalence in English
The following metaphorical systems were found to operate in more
than one instance of conventional metaphorical expressions in
the Japanese newspaper article:
Election is War
Election is a Race
Positions are Body Parts
(refer to Table 2, Appendix D for details)
The Japanese newspaper article is mainly based on two metaphorical
systems and one other metaphorical system in a minor way. The
occurrence of the metaphors are as follows:
Election is War has twenty-one sentences.
Election is a Race has seven sentences of which three sentences
overlap with the Election is War system.
Positions are Body Parts has two sentences.
Interestingly, all the Japanese conventional metaphors in the
newspaper article could be translated into English without any
sense of loss of the concepts that are expressed (refer to Table
2, Appendix D).
3.5
A Closer Look at Both the Systems
The two articles seem to highlight similar concepts about the
elections in Iran. They highlighted the war and race aspects of
the elections. However, the Japanese newspaper article stressed
the war aspects more and the English newspaper article stressed
the location and movement of an object aspects, too.
As a result, the cooperative and journey aspects that elections
carry were hidden in both articles. For example, the elections
might have been held in a very orderly and civil circumstance
(in some areas) showing cooperation among the voters, election
officials and candidates; and also, the long-term effects elections
have on a country and the direction they take the country in have
been hidden or downplayed.
Other similarities can been seen in the use of the expression
landslide victory in both newspaper articles, and many instances
of the use of the same polysemous words in the war and race domains.
Similarities in most of the concepts can be seen in translations,
where most of the metaphorical expressions were found to exist
in both languages.
However, the use of the exact same words differed in certain places.
For example, the word run used to express running for elections
had a corresponding word in Japanese called shutsuba (literally
meaning running away or run for). On further analysis this word
revealed that it is used only to describe the act of standing
for election or running for election. Though the Chinese characters
of ? (shutsu, meaning emerge or put out), and ? (ba meaning horse)
have metaphorical connotations, Lakoff and Johnson would call
such usage as a 'dead metaphor' (1999: 126).
Moreover the Japanese word for run is hashiru which is not used
to express the act of running in an election. In other words,
the polysemous meanings of the English word run are not the same
for the ones found for hashiru. One clear example can be seen
in the following sentence where hashiru is not used for the translation:
His arguments run counter to what we have proposed. The converse
is also true. The Japanese language uses the word hashiru (run)
to describe a moving car such as in the following: hashitteiru
kuruma kara tobi oriru (Jump off a moving car). In the English
language it would sound nonsensical to say a Jump off a running
car.
There were many such words where the extent of polysemy varied.
The Japanese particles 'ni' and 'o' are polysemous, too. 'ni'
can mean in, at, on and into. While 'o' can mean at, of, on, in
and with. This could be a very troublesome area to learn for a
foreign language speaker, and in addition this seems to cause
a lot of confusion to my students when dealing with English prepositions.
In the Japanese expressions under Positions are Body Parts, English
equivalents were available, but on closer examination, there is
a small difference in the Chinese character for head used to describe
a leader or a head of an organization. The character used is ?
(neck) and not ? (head).
There were also two Japanese sentences with words that would sound
odd when tanslated into English. The metaphorical systems followed
were, Blood Relations are Real and Omission is a Leakage which
are quite marked for the English language (refer to Table 3, Appendix
E). The word jittei (real younger brother) is used to distinguish
blood relations from other relations. It is common in the Japanese
language to combine the Chinese character for real (?) with family
relations such as, real-father (??), real-mother (??), and real-older-brother
(??).
In the case of the metaphorical system Omission is a Leakage,
a single occurrence of a Japanese sentence describing a person
being omitted from the list as a leakage (moreta). However, this
word moreta (past tense of moreru) is also used for describing
a leaked secret, very similar to the English usage. Finally, phrases
such as social labels, labeled as an American and labeled as a
slang in my dictionary are marked expressions in Japanese. The
conventional usage of the word for label (retteru) is different
in Japanese, though it is used to translate the just mentioned
phrases. The English metaphorical system of Categories are Labels
seems to sound odd in the Japanese language.
All in all, mot of the metaphorical systems found in both the
newspaper articles could be translated back and forth into the
two languages under consideration. However, the extent of the
polysemous usage of the words appearing in the metaphors seems
to vary. But, it may be safe to say that the metaphorical systems
used for describing elections are very similar in the two languages.
This could be due to the universality of the concepts governing
elections across many languages.
4.
Implications for Foreign Language Learners
It is believed that as foreign language learners already possess
' world knowledge' and 'discourse knowkledge' which can be used
to help where there is a lack of 'linguistic knowledge' (Singleton
and Little, 1991), an awareness of universal and differing metaphorical
concepts may also be helpful.
Translating tasks are very common in Japanese English classrooms
and this practice is highly favoured by most of the Japanese secondary
school English teachers (Hino, 1988; Mulvey, 1999). However, using
this task for 'hypothesis testing' (Rutherford, 1987: 18) is rare
as mostly the practice is to do with building vocabulary and grammar
knowledge (ibid). It is possible that by using translation as
a tool to seek the metaphorical systems that underlie the target
text the Japanese English teachers could be providing for a more
stimulating discussion of the phrases and words used.
By contrasting and comparing the metaphorical systems used in
authentic texts by first setting up a task of translation may
offer the foreign language learner the opportunity to obtain 'data
crucial for the testing of hypothesis' (Rutherford, 1987: 18).
The data will speak of the similarities and differences in the
metaphorical expressions and polysemous usage of words. For example,
the information gleaned from the comparisons made between the
English and Japanese newspaper articles on the elections in Iran
could be extended to a writing exercise to describe elections
in Japan. Furthermore, such topics as politics or debating could
be described using the same source domain of War (same as for
elections). In this way, the foreign language learner could form
generalizations and strategies through trial and error for expressing
abstract concepts, and in addition develop a strong familiarity
with the polysemous meanings of the words.
However, the introduction of metaphorical systems as an approach
for understanding the target language may first require some understanding
of the 'approach' itself. Metaphorical idioms may be a good source.
One book, The Big Picture (King, 1999) in particular stands out
for listing such idioms under metaphorical systems. King (ibid:
xi) suggests that it becomes easier to remember such idioms when
the meanings they entail are understood. Interestingly, the many
metaphorical idioms are described in pictures, too. Again, a compare
and contrast task by translation of the metaphorical idioms could
be one way to introduce the 'aproach'.
Familiarity to the foreign language may be facilitated, if not
accelerated, by developing a familiarity to the metaphorical concepts
that underlie the target language. Teachers of English as a foreign
language need to provide tools and strategies to their learners
to help them effectively build semantic memories of the words
and phrases in the target language. The effectiveness can only
be judged to the extent such knowledge of words and phrases are
retained in long-term memory. The argument here is that metaphorical
systems provide patterns in the linguistic data which may help
build solid semantic mappings of words and phrases in the learner's
brain as opposed to rote learning and learning from lists.
However, it is acknowledged that for a pattern to be discerned
the brain requires quantum amounts of experience (Hart, 2002),
which again are necessary for applying the pattern (ibid). In
learning a foreign language as opposed to a second language, exposure
is mainly limited to the classroom thereby making 'quantum amounts
of experience' a far cry. Then what should be given priority is
to provide efficient modes of exposure to the foreign language
learner.
It may be interesting to note, that for example, a study in 1987
concluded that students (not foreign language students, however)
were generally retaining, 10% of what they had read, 26% of what
they had heard, 30% of what they had seen, 50% of what they had
seen and heard, 70% of what they had said, and 90% of what they
had said as they were doing something (J. Stice, 1987, in "Engineering
Education" 77: 29, 1-296). It could be possible then, that
the task of translating into the first language with the purpose
of discovering the behaviour of polysemous words through contrast
and comparison with the target language may actually help the
learners retain more knowledge of the vocabulary and its semantics.
5.
Conclusion
This paper, has been an attempt to find the implications of metaphorical
systems in teaching English as a foreign language. For this purpose,
random and dated newspaper articles which appeared in both English
and Japanese dailies, that happen to be about elections in Iran,
were selected and their respective metaphorical systems were compared
and contrasted. The findings point to the many similarities in
concepts regarding the description of elections. This study attempted
to formulate some implications metaphorical systems have for the
foreign language learner. Though this research has not been exhaustive,
an attempt has been made to find a use for the pervasive nature
of metaphorical systems.Metaphorical language is often a part-and-parcel
of authentic material. In dealing with such material the foreign
language learner is faced with the polysemous use of words. To
be able to adequately grasp and use these words the learner requires
a methodology that follows a systematic and reliable approach.
This study into the nature of metaphorical systems and their pervasive
nature in languages has shown that it may be one such approach.
However, further research, especially empirically based evidence,
is required to justify the use of metaphorical systems as a tool
for teaching some areas of English as a foreign language.
