ideological and non-ideological metaphors: a cognitive-pragmatic perspective

97Ideological and Non-ideological Metaphors: A Cognitive-Pragmatic Perspective

AbstractIn this paper, the ideological dimensions of metaphor are captured at the conceptual, cognitive,

and pragmatic levels. At the conceptual level, metaphor makes a given source domain salient for a given target domain by virtue of framing it with that particular source domain. This will be argued to contribute to the stabilization of metaphoric meaning in discourse. At the cognitive level, the anchor-age of metaphor in a particular concept at the conceptual level will draw attention to itself, with the result that the source domain elements get foregrounded in the mapping while other potential do-mains of conceptualization are backgrounded. This hiding and highlighting dimension of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) greatly contributes to metaphor’s ideological import. At the pragmatic level, the persistence of the same source concept to structure the same target concept together with the type of discourse in which these occur, tend to determine metaphor’s perlocutionary effect on participants in discourse. Thus, non-ideological discourse tends to fail to have pragmatic effects on discourse participants (Searle, 1975) owing to the non-persuasive intentions of authors. What may enhance metaphor’s ideological aspect is, however, the fact that ideological discourse tends to draw more on conventional metaphors while non-ideological discourse tends to depend more on novel metaphors. As Maalej (2003) showed for ideological discourse such as promotional discourse, con-ventional metaphors tend to be more persuasive than live or novel ones. The data that will be drawn

Ideological And Non-ideological Metaphors:

A Cognitive-Pragmatic Perspective

Zouhair Maalej(*)

*. Department of European Languages and Translation, College of Languages & Translation, King Saud University, P.O. Box 87907, Riyadh 11652, KSA.Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]

98 Metaphor and Cognition

upon to illustrate non-ideological and ideological uses of metaphor comes from popular songs and literary discourse, and promotional and political discourses, respectively.

Key words: conceptual metaphor, domain shift, domain stability, ideological, non- ideologi-cal, hiding, highlighting,

IntroductionWith the advent of the “Contemporary Theory of Metaphor” (CTM), the

status of metaphor dramatically changed from figure of speech to figure ofthought and action (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980), i.e. from structural and stylis-tic to cognitive, conceptual, and pragmatic status. Across discourse types, there could be made a broad distinction between “literary and artistic products of hu-man cognition” (Turner, 2002: 19) and utilitarian products of cognition such as political, promotional, etc. discourses. Searle (1975: 326) characterizes the former as “break[ing] the connection between words and the world.” And in breaking this connection, they do not occasion pragmatic damage to the partici-pants whose role is predetermined in the world as either producers or consumers of literature. Pratt (1977: 125) argues that “outside literature, the noninnovative, unimaginative speaker still has the right to a turn.” And it is this right to a turn that I take to determine the distinction made here between ideological and non-ideological metaphors. In other words, to the extent that metaphoric discourse does not occasion pragmatic damage it remains non-ideological like in the case of fiction, where characters’ utterances in fiction are “pseudo-speech acts” (Pratt,1977). However, as soon as participants affect each other in discourse pragmat-ics, metaphor assumes an ideological function.

For the purposes of the present paper, a broad line is drawn between two major types of discourse: ideological and non-ideological. Ideological discourse may include, among other things, business/economic, educational, political, promotional discourses, etc. while non-ideological discourse may include emo-tional, literary, musical discourses. This classification is independent of the exis-tence of metaphor in both discourses.

The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 1 offers an overview of some of the important tenets of the contemporary theory of metaphor. Section 2 is devoted to ideology and what makes metaphor ideological or non-ideological. Section 3 addresses non-ideological use of metaphor through a study of a popu-lar Arabic song and an English poem, focusing mainly on cognitive domain shift and non-conventional conceptual metaphor. Section 4 addresses the ideological


use of metaphor through promotional and political discourses, focusing mainly on cognitive domain stability and conventional conceptual metaphor.

1. Foundations of the contemporary theory of metaphorAccording to the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor (CTM), metaphor is

constitutive of thought, and pervades our conceptual system by which we think, reason, and act (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 3). The following sub-sections ad-dress some of the most important tenets of the CTM.

1.1. Linguistic and conceptual metaphorsLakoff and Johnson (1980: 7) distinguish “metaphorical linguistic expres-

sion” from “metaphorical concept.” A metaphoric concept or conceptual meta-phor (CM) is the underlying concept that governs the metaphoric expression(s). According to Lakoff (1993: 210), our conceptual system is constituted by a set of CMs that we use to structure new domains of experience. A consequence of this is that “metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s conceptual system” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 6). Because there is no possible direct access to this conceptual system, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 7) use metaphorical linguistic expressions “to study the nature of metaphorical concepts and to gain an understanding of the metaphorical nature of our activities.” The CTM talks about CM as involving a mapping between two domains of knowledge, a target domain (TD) and a source domain (SD).

1.2. Nature of mappingsMappings involve two types of governing correspondences: ontological

and epistemic correspondences (Lakoff, 1990: 48). Ontological correspondenc-es describe the same entities both in SD and TD. Lakoff gives the following correspondences for the now classic example of love-as-a-journey metaphor for English:

The lovers correspond to travelersThe love relationship corresponds to the vehicleThe state of being in the relationship corresponds to traveling in the same vehicleThe intimacy of being in the relationship corresponds to the physical close-ness of being in the vehicle.


The lovers’ common goals correspond to their common destinations on the journey.Difficulties correspond to impediments to travel.

In short, ontological correspondences offer two parallel scenarios including the same entities across domains.

Epistemic correspondences, however, take care of mapping knowledge about entities in the SD onto entities in the TD. Such knowledge mapping en-ables us to reason about the TD as if it were the SD. Lakoff (1990: 48-49) gives the following illustration of epistemic correspondences for the love-as-a-journey metaphor:

SD: traveling TD: love1. They can try to do something so that the relationship will once more allow them to pursue their goals.2. They can leave the relationship as it is and give up on pursuing those goals.3. They can abandon the relationship.

Ontological and epistemic correspondences are the cornerstones of any map-ping.

Semantically, the mapping is said to correlate the SD with concrete and the TD with abstract as claimed by many cognitive linguists (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff and Turner, 1989; Sweetser 1990; Gibbs 1994; Kövecses, 2002). Sweetser (1990: 30) calls this abstract-to-concrete cognitive modeling “unidi-rectional” cross-domain mapping, which has become the Unidirectionality Hy-pothesis, whereby “we model our understanding of logic and thought processes on our understanding of the social and physical world; and simultaneously, we model linguistic expression itself not only (a) as description (a model of the world), but also (b) as action (an act in the world being described), and even (c) as an epistemic or logical entity (a premise or a conclusion in our world of reasoning” (Sweetser, 1990: 21).

1. They can try to get it moving again, either by fixing it or getting itpast the impediment that stopped it.2. They can remain in the stuck ve-hicle, and give up on getting their destinations in it.3. They can abandon the vehicle.


1.3. Motivation of mappingsThe concept of motivation or grounding is important for meaning in cog-

nitive linguistics. Lakoff (1987a: 113) takes motivation to be a middle ground between categories as either predictable or arbitrary. Mappings are motivated, not arbitrary or inherent in the entities used by the metaphor. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 19) insist that “no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequate-ly represented independently of its experiential basis” (emphasis in original). The experiential basis of metaphor is refined as “correlations within our experi-ence,” which are typified as “experiential cooccurrence and experiential similar-ity” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 155, emphasis in original).

Lakoff and Turner (1989: 113) talk about motivations under the Grounding Hypothesis as follows:

(i) Many conventional concepts are semantically autonomous or have aspects that are semantically autonomous.(ii) Semantically autonomous concepts (or aspects of concepts) are grounded in the habitual and routine bodily and social patterns we experience, and in what we learn from the experience of others.(iii Semantically autonomous concepts (or aspects of concepts) are not mind-free. They are not somehow given to us directly by the objective world. They are instead grounded in the patterns of experience that we routinely live.(iv) The source domain of a metaphor is characterized in terms of concepts (or aspects of concepts) that are semantically autonomous.(v) In this sense, metaphorical understanding is grounded in semantically autonomous conceptual structure.

Implicit in the above is the fact that a SD is a semantically autonomous concept mapped on to a semantically non-autonomous TD.

Direct experiential basis is not the only motivation for CM. Grady (1999), for instance, made a distinction between “resemblance” and “experiential corre-lation.” Resemblance as a motivation is not to be confused with the simile view of metaphor, but it is functional in “image metaphors,” which describe shared attributes between SD and TD along shape or color as in “My wife ... whose


waist is an hourglass” (Lakoff, 1987b: 219). Experiential correlation ranges from physiological embodiment to cultural embodiment. Kövecses (2002: 69) elaborates on the notion of experiential correlation by pointing out that “correla-tion in experience” is not to be equated with similarity. For instance, “the prices of gasoline are high this year” correlates with MORE IS UP in our experience, but the level of liquid rising in a container in our experience is not similar to the prices of gasoline going up. Kövecses (2002: 70), however, notes that “not all conceptual metaphors are grounded in correlated experience in such a direct way as MORE IS UP or PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS.” These are generic metaphors that can correlate directly with experience.

There are, however, other cases where specific metaphors correlate in-directly with other generic metaphors. Commenting on the life-as-a-journey metaphor, Kövecses (2002: 71) argues that “we can take the specific LIFE ISA JOURNEY to be a special case of the more general PURPOSES ARE DES-TINATIONS metaphor. It then follows that the experiential basis that applies to the general case will also apply to the specific one.” As an important part ofthis experiential correlation, Kövecses (2002: 71) mentions that “some other metaphors have their experiential bases in the functioning of the human body.” One important instance of this biological motivation is the one found for anger as in ANGER IS HEAT. Kövecses (2002: 74) has proposed an important expe-riential motivation where the target domain has a cultural origin. For instance, the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR may have originated in the fact that “the verbal institution of arguments evolved historically from the physical domain of fighting.”

Lakoff and Turner (1989: 84) argue that it is not the case that direct experi-ence is the only motivation for conceptual metaphor; indirect experience is also important. For that, they make an interesting case for knowledge as a powerful grounding for conceptual metaphor. Discussing the lust-as-heat metaphor, La-koff and Turner (1989: 84) argue convincingly that the LUST IS HEAT meta-phor can be found to reside in the experience of an actively sexual person, but is only part of the commonplace knowledge about sex of a less actively sexual person. How is this basic metaphor grounded in knowledge? Since we are cul-tural beings, we possess various kinds of knowledge that is communicated to us through our culture. As part of that knowledge, for instance, we know that “sex involves physical exertion, and that physical exertion produces heat” (Lakoff and Turner, 1989: 84).


1.4. Primary and compound metaphorsWork on primary and compound metaphors indirectly started from remarks

made by Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 52) about the partial nature of cross-domain mappings. Dealing with the conceptual metaphor THEORIES ARE BUILD-INGS, they noticed that the partial nature of the mapping gives rise to “used” and “unused” parts of the SD. The used parts are realized by the literal linguistic expressions while the unused ones “fall outside the domain of normal literal language and are part of what is usually called ‘figurative’ or ‘imaginative’ lan-guage” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 52). According to Grady et al (1996) and Grady (1997), the explanation has to do not with the fact that there are “used” and “unused” parts to the SD, but with the fact that THEORIES ARE BUILD-INGS is not the right conceptual metaphor for the linguistic metaphors that it is said to govern. Grady et al (1996) and Grady (1997) pinpoint a couple of cognitive anomalies with this explanation: (i) “the poverty of the mapping,” whereby most of the salient elements of our knowledge about buildings are not found to be part of the mapping between theories and buildings (e.g., windows, doors, walls, floors, occupants, etc.), and (ii) “the lack of experiential basis forassociating buildings with theories.” Grady et al (1996: 178) rightly insist that the poverty of the mapping in the case of THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS is not amenable to what is known as “target-domain override,” since “there is no logical contradiction in claiming that theories have windows.” Grady (1997) concludes that “THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS is in fact an instance of a more general/complex mapping between abstract structures and buildings.”

Grady et al (1996: 181) define primary and compound metaphors as fol-lows:(i) A primitive is a metaphorical mapping for which there is an indepen-dent and direct experiential basis and independent linguistic evidence.(ii) A compound is a self-consistent metaphorical complex composed of more than one primitive.

The primary metaphors PERSISTING IS REMAING ERECT and LOGICAL STRUCTURE IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE constitute the compound meta-phor (VIABLE) LOGICAL STRUCTURES ARE ERECT PHYSICAL STRUC-TURES or THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS. Grady (1997: 286-7) justifies theneed for the decomposition of a complex metaphor into its corresponding prima-ry ones, claiming that (i) decomposition “allows us to explain or predict which


elements of a complex scenario are mapped onto a target concept and which are not, in a principled and specific way,” (ii) decomposition also “provides aclear and efficient way of stating the relationships between complex metaphorswhich clearly share some elements and differ in others,” and (iii) decomposition “shifts focus onto those metaphorical correspondences which arise directly from experience.”

1.5. The Invariance HypothesisAccording to Lakoff (1990: 54), the Invariance Hypothesis (IH) requires

that “metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive topology (this is, the image-schema structure of the source domain).” Lakoff (1993: 215) explains that “what the Invariance Principle does is guarantee that, for container-schemas, interi-ors will be mapped onto interiors, exteriors onto exteriors, and boundaries onto boundaries; for path-schemas, sources will be mapped onto sources, goals onto goals, trajectories onto trajectories, and so on.” As a consequence, “one cannot find cases where a source domain interior is mapped onto a target domain exte-rior, or where a source domain exterior is mapped onto a target domain path.”

Turner (1990: 248) stipulates two conditions for the IH to obtain: (i) there should be a one-to-one correspondence in the mapping between features of the source and those of the target domains, and (ii) the order between the features in the source domain must not be violated in their application to the target domain. For instance, to take the LIFE-AS-JOURNEY metaphor, since the traveler and the destination in the journey domain are separate, they must remain separate in the target domain (the person in question and the destination). Further, Turner tells us, we cannot say without provoking amazement that “First I was getting somewhere in life and then I got off to a good start,” because this counts as a violation of the order within the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema.

Criticisms of the IH came from Lakoff himself (1990: 69) when he observed in connection with generic-level metaphors that he elaborated with Turner (La-koff and Turner, 1989) that “what is preserved across the mapping is the causal structure, the aspectual structure, and the persistence of entities.” Facing up to the broadness of the concept of IH, Lakoff (1993: 216) invokes “target domain overrides,” which he calls “a corollary of the Invariance Principle,” stipulating that the “image schema structure inherent in the target domain cannot be violat-ed, and that inherent target domain structure limits the possibilities for mappings automatically.” Lakoff argues that target domain overrides explain many of the


constraints on mapping in the target domain, such as why someone can be given a kick without so much keeping it afterwards, and why someone can be given information without the donors ever losing it.

Turner (1990: 250) points to some difficulties with the IH in cases wheretwo features of a source domain get mapped onto one target-domain feature, thus destroying its unity. Turner quotes the following passage from The New English Bible:

Thomas said, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus replied, “I am the way; I am the truth and I am the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.”

Turner comments that when such a violation occurs it is “a carrier of signifi-cance” in novel metaphors, which led Turner (1990: 254) to propose a weaker version of the IH as follows: “In metaphoric mapping, for those components of the source and target domains determined to be involved in the mapping, preserve the image-schematic structure of the target, and import as much im-age-schematic structure from the source as is consistent with that preservation” (emphasis in original). Another insightful criticism of the IH came from Grady et al (1996: 177), who note that “many of the most salient experiential aspects of certain source domains play no role in the metaphors in which those domains participate.” Such a finding has been termed the “poverty of mapping” problem,and profoundly questions the usefulness of the IH. Grady et al (1996: 185) sug-gest the following:

(i) All metaphors either are, or are composed of, primitives.(ii) Primitives, by definition, have independent experiential basis, and are instantiated by linguistic evidence independent of any particular compound.(iii) Coherent metaphors may be unified, resulting in compounds.

Grady et al (1996: 186) defend this view by claiming that “the psychological reality of primitives ... can be established more strongly than that of the com-pounds,” and that “primitives should prove to be the first conceptual metaphorsto be acquired.”

To sum up work on conceptual metaphor as Lakoff and Johnson (2003: 272-73) conceived of it, the following will be quoted:


• Metaphors are fundamentally conceptual in nature; metaphorical language is secondary.• Conceptual metaphors are grounded in everyday experience.• Abstract thought is largely, though not entirely, metaphorical.• Metaphorical thought is unavoidable, ubiquitous, and mostly unconscious.• Abstract concepts have a literal core but are extended by metaphors, often by mutually inconsistent metaphors.• Abstract concepts are not complete without metaphors. For example, love is not love without metaphors of magic, attraction, madness, union, nurturance, and so on.• Our conceptual systems are not consistent overall, since the metaphors used to reason about concepts may be inconsistent.• We live our lives on the basis of inferences we derive via metaphor.

The following section will address the ideological assets of metaphor, which are captured across the conceptual, cognitive, and pragmatic levels of discourse.

2. Ideology and metaphorIdeology as used here is a function of social cognition, and relates discourse

to metaphor as an ideological dimension of discourse and talk. 2.1. What constitutes ideology?Van Dijk (1998: 127) defines ideologies as:

... socially shared representations of a general and abstract kind. That is, ideologies are of the same family as socially shared knowledge and social attitudes... This is why the comparison between ideology and language (or gram-mar) is so instructive. Both are abstract systems shared by groups and used to accomplish everyday social practices, namely acting and communicating, respectively (emphasis in original).

The structure of ideology is represented by “a group self-schema” (van Dijk, 1998: 129). However, “although ideologies as such are social and shared,


they are actually used and reproduced by individual group members and in spe-cific social practices” (van Dijk, 1998: 129, emphasis in original).

Van Dijk (1998: 126) develops a socio-cognitive view of ideology as fol-lows:

1. Whatever else ideologies are, or whatever social condi-tions and functions they have, they are first of all systemsof beliefs. The nature of these belief systems, as well as their relations with other mental objects and processes, (also) need to be studied in a cognitive framework.2. Ignoring such cognitive dimensions of ideology, and merely analyzing them in terms of social practices, social formations, or social structures, provides incomplete in-sight into ideologies, and constitutes an improper reduc-tion of complex social phenomena, and hence an inade-quate theory.3. Ideologies are socially acquired, shared, used and changed by group members, and hence are a special type of socially shared mental representations.4. Ideologies are reproduced through their everyday uses by social members in the accomplishment of social prac-tices in general, and of discourse in particular. Such uses not only have social foundations but also cognitive ones, such as the personal experiences, knowledge and opinions of social members. In order to relate the social dimension of ideologies with their personal uses, only a cognitive theory is able to provide the necessary interface.

2.2. What’s ideological about metaphor?Metaphor shares in the socio-cognitive aspect of ideology by reproduc-

ing it through discourse. The analogy van Dijk invoked between ideology and language as shared systems is interesting to uphold. Fairclough (1995: 73) also argues that “language is a material form of ideology, and language is invested by ideology.” He (1995: 74) locates ideology in language in lexical meanings, pre-suppositions, implicatures, metaphors, and coherence. On the other hand, Wolf and Polzenhagen (2003: 268) conclude from a study of the ideological basis of metaphor that “global ideological patterns may arise from the application of a


particular metaphor and the neglect of alternative ones.” Thus, since language is ideological and since language is invaded by ideology such as metaphor, there-fore metaphor is also ideological.

In Maalej (2007: 131-38), I argued for doing critical discourse analysis with metaphor, and reviewed some of the most important “critical assets” of the CTM. The overall argument was that metaphor itself can function as a critical or ideological system. Some of these critical assets include the pervasiveness of metaphor in almost all kinds of discourse, its cognitive unconscious dimension, its psychological reality, and its product-process nature.

Conceptually, metaphor provides discourse with coherence, which enforces stability of meaning around the same SD selected to structure the TD. An im-portant claim of the CTM is that since “a metaphoric connection is one in which parts of the target pattern are created or modified and imbued with the struc-ture of the source pattern” (Turner, 1991: 154), metaphor highlights the features structured by the SD and hides the elements of the TD that are outside the scope of the SD. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 10) argue in this connection that “in al-lowing us to focus on one aspect of a concept, a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor.” Fairclough (1995: 74) argues that “coherence is a key factor in the ideological constitution and reconstitution of subjects in discourse.”

Cognitively, this partial structuring together with SD consistency have an effect on the “distribution of attention,” which results in manipulating it to a “comparatively lower or higher than some reference value on a relative, or norm-based, scale” (Talmy, 2000: 76). Thus, the more a metaphoric SD is high-lighted in connection with a given TD, the more attention it receives from cog-nizers, and the more other unmentioned potential SDs to conceptualize the same experience or TD are hidden from the cognizer’s attention and perception. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 141-42) made it clear, metaphor “highlights certain features while suppressing others.” Using consistent metaphors to structure a target concept entails giving partial (in both senses) accounts of a TD, which counts as ideological (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

Pragmatically, the user of metaphor is interested in acting on interlocutors’ beliefs and knowledge through the choice of a particular metaphoric SD. The highlighting dimension of metaphor has an ideological bearing fomenting it at the pragmatic level. Lakoff and Turner (1989: 64-65) discuss the pragmatics of metaphor in relation to five persuasive assets, including the power to structure


(i.e., imparting to a concept a structure that cannot exist independent of the meta-phor), the power of options (i.e., the options of filling in the slots of the TD), thepower of reason (i.e., the capacity to borrow patterns of inference from the SD), the power of evaluation (i.e., the power to carry over the way we evaluate the SD), and the power of being there (i.e., the fact that conceptual metaphors are so automatic and unconscious makes them less questionable). Together, these assets may enhance metaphor’s ideological dimension.

Another important factor in the (non)-ideological dimension of metaphor is the fact that some discourses are less pragmatically salient than others. If, for instance, in everyday speech in Tunisian Arabic the expression “we will marry her” is uttered about a maid (which stands for sending her back to her parents be-cause she turned out to be disappointing), the metaphoric utterance is pragmati-cally viable, i.e. it takes effect and brings about action in the real world. Such consequential action as brought about by metaphor has to do with the maid being actually taken back home, which puts an end to her stay in the host family. La-koff & Johnson (1980: 145) argue that if a new metaphor enters the conceptual system, “it will alter that conceptual system and the perceptions and actions that the system gives rise to.” In this sense, metaphor is one of those world-organiz-ing and/or changing processes.

However, no such perlocutionay action/effect is brought about through metaphor if such an expression is uttered in literary discourse. The suspension of consequential effects and actions in such a discourse has to do with the very nature of literature and its relation to our conceptual system. Searle (1975: 325-6) characterizes nature as follows:

1. So my first conclusion is this: the author of a workof fiction pretends to perform a series of illocutionary acts,normally of the representative type.

2. So our first conclusion leads immediately to oursecond conclusion: the identifying criterion for whether or not a text is a work of fiction must of necessity lie in theillocutionary intentions of the author

3. My third conclusion then is this: the pretended illo-cutions which constitute a work of fiction are made possi-ble by the existence of a set of conventions which suspend the normal operation of the rules relating illocutionary acts and the world.


Although Pratt (1977: 136) argues that in fiction “his [a speaker’s] point isto produce in his hearers not only beliefs but also an imaginative and affective involvement in the state of affairs he is representing and an evaluative stance toward it,” literature as an aesthetic form of expression falls short of producing in the reader perlocutionary effects on a par with those produced by functional or utilitarian discourses such as political and promotional discourses.

It seems that the pragmatic status of discourses and their relation to ide-ology and metaphor determine the ideological import of metaphor. Discourses that do not have a world-changing capacity are likely to be metaphorically non-ideological. However, discourses that have a world-changing capacity are likely to be metaphorically ideological since the pragmatic uptake is synonymous with action in the real world in spite of claims that metaphor is a non-serious mat-ter. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 158) argue that “in all aspects of life, not just in politics or love, we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed toact on the basis of the metaphors.”

3. Non-ideological metaphorThis paper supports the view that the everyday mind is essentially met-

aphoric (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999) and poetic (Gibbs, 1994). Starting from the premise that cognition is shaped by poetic processes like metaphor, metonymy, analogy, imagination, creativity, etc., the view will be defended that the everyday mind is essentially literary, and that although literary texts may be thought to be special, the very instruments of thought used to create and inter-pret them are basic to everyday thought (Lakoff and Turner, 1989; Turner, 1991, 1996; Maalej, 1999a, b).

3.1. Domain shiftOne of the basic characteristics of everyday metaphor is its all encompass-

ing nature, i.e. its functioning tentatively and seeking to embrace alternative domains of experience that can render a better account of one particular TD. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 221) capture this in the following way:

There is a good reason why our conceptual systems have inconsistent metaphors for a single concept. The reason is that there is no one metaphor that will do. Each one gives a certain comprehension of one aspect of the concept and hides others. To operate only in terms of a consistent set


of metaphors is to hide many aspects of reality. Successful functioning in our daily lives seems to require a constant shifting of metaphors. The use of many metaphors that are inconsistent with one another seems necessary for us if we are to comprehend the details of our daily experience.

The argument behind non-ideological uses of metaphor is that those who are behind discourse tend to sacrifice coherence around one conceptual domain,and experiment with various conceptual domains to express their feelings and emotions. In discourses that are not ideological, the user of metaphor often ex-periments with various domains of experience as source domains (SD) to struc-ture the target domain (TD) at the risk of producing SDs inconsistent with one another. It seems that non-ideological uses of metaphor correlate with experi-mental uses of it such as in literature in general and popular songs in particular. For instance, song writers experiment with different frames to capture the TD, using different SDs that might be incompatible with each other within the same discourse.

3.2. Non-conventionalized metaphorAs one type of non-ideological discourse, literary discourse is usually cor-

related with novel or live metaphors, created online by authors to conceptual-ize their feelings and emotions. If conventional metaphors are used to structure a given TD, the author usually “extends them, elaborates them, and combines them in ways that go beyond the ordinary” (Lakoff and Turner, 1989: 67). In this sense, neither novel or live metaphors nor extended, elaborated, or combined conventional metaphors are really part of the conceptual system of readers. As these experimentally manipulated metaphors have low salience in the concep-tual system of readers, they may be rejected by readers, which rates them low on the scale of persuasion and ideology.

Domain shift and non-conventional metaphors as characteristics of non-ideological discourse will be illustrated from popular songs in Arabic and a poem in English literature. Consider the following song by Mejda Er-roumi, a famous Lebanese singer. The translation of the source text into English adopts in some places a word-for-word translation to preserve the metaphors:


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Wordsكالكلمات ليست يراقصني كلمات ُيسمعني حنيHe tells me, while dancing me, words that are not like any wordsالغيمات أحلى في يزرعني ذراعي، حتت يأخذني منHe takes me from under my arm, and sows me in the sweetest of cloudsضخات تتساقط في عيني األسود واملطرThe black rain falls abundantly from my eyeالشرفات وردي ملساء يحملني معهHe carries me with him to an evening with pink balconies النسمات حتملها كالريشة يده، في كالطفلة وأناAnd I am like a little girl in his hand, like a feather blown out by the breezeالسنونوات قطيع و صيفا يهديني شمسا، يهدينيHe offers me a sun, a summer, a herd of swallowsالنجمات آالف أساوي و أني حتفته يخبرنيHe informs me that I am his masterpiece, that I equal a thousand stars من لوحات شاهد بأني أجمل ما و وبأني كنزAnd that I am a treasure and that I am the most beautiful of all paintingsاخلطوات و املرقص تنسيني ُتدَوخني، أشياء يرويHe tells me stories that send me dizzy, and make me forget the dance floor and the stepsحلظات في امرأة جتعلني تاريخي، تقلب كلماتWords that cause my history to go upside down, and turn me into a woman in secondsسوى حلظات أسكن فيه وهم ال من لي قصرا يبنيHe builds me an illusory castle in which I dwell no more than a few secondsإال كلمات معي ال شيء لطاولتي وأعودAnd I return to my table with nothing but wordsكالكلمات ليست كلماتWords that are unlike words. The poem includes several metaphoric domain shifts of a heteroge-neous kind. The beloved is conceptualized in seven different ways as is clear in the following conceptual metaphors:BELOVED IS A PLANT SEWN IN CLOUDS


BELOVED IS A CHILDBELOVED IS A FEATHER CARRIED BY THE BREEZEBELOVED IS A MASTERPIECEBELOVED IS A TREASUREBELOVED IS A PAINTINGBELOVED IS A SHORT-LIVED QUEEN

These CMs are all attempts on the part of the poet to better capture the worth of his beloved, with each attempt carrying its own system of entailments. The poet gives us inconsistent metaphors, with domains ranging from child, feather, up to treasure and queen. The domains chosen seem to function by cancelling each other, i.e. the author seems to be giving up each metaphor selected for a newer one, rather than to capture one facet of the beloved and conceptualize it in turn.

The conceptual metaphors have all turned out to be non-conventional ones, and most of them are far from being part of the conceptual system of Arabs in general. These CMs may aesthetically be appealing and pleasurable ones, but they do not constitute an ideological system of beliefs shared by the community of readers of this kind of poetry owing to the fact that most of them do not evoke those existing in our conceptual systems. In Maalej (2001), I proposed the con-cept of “cultural filters” to deal with cases where subjects show no responsive-ness to metaphor owing to the negative filtration of the pictorial material acrosscultural models. Such “cultural filters” may be safely generalized to verbal meta-phor as well. Our conceptual system includes a set of conceptual metaphors to make sense of the world in our respective cultures. If linguistic communication offers conflicting models to the ones we hold, rejection of the metaphor takesplace, and persuasiveness is most likely to be minimized. So, this low degree of persuasion of non-conventional metaphors seems to make them bad candidates for conveying ideology.

The second illustrative example of non-ideological discourse is a poem by Joyce Kilmer:

Trees I think that I shall never seeA poem lovely as a tree.A tree whose hungry mouth is pressedAgainst the earth’s sweet flowing breast;


A tree that looks to God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray;A tree that may in summer wearA nest of robins in her hair;Upon whose bosom snow has lain;Who ultimately lives with rain.Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. (Joyce Kilmer, 1918-1986)The first couplet of the poet announces a metaphoric connection of a poem

and a tree as A TREE IS BETTER THAN A POEM, which is developed in the four middle couplets of the poem, with each including one or more CM. The concluding couplet says why A TREE IS BETTER THAN A POEM advanced in the first couplet. In cognitive linguistic terms, the poem offers a conceptualiza-tion of a tree by mapping some features of human beings onto a tree, which leads to what is known as personification, even though “each resists the superimposi-tion of the other” (Turner, 1991: 153).

Couplet 2 introduces the reader to the cross-domain mapping of human features onto the tree. The tree is conceptualized as having a mouth with which it sucks at the earth’s breast, which establishes the tree as AN ANIMATE BE-ING. By inference, the earth itself is conceptualized as AN ANIMATE BEING – a suckling mammal that breast-feeds its offspring. The metaphoric mapping, thus, connects the tree and the earth in a kinship metaphor, uniting mother and child in a fresh relationship. Although the CM, INANIMATE IS ANIMATE is part of our conceptual system, A TREE IS A MAMMAL is not, and is created online through the re-categorization of the tree from an inanimate category into an animate one. We know that animate beings (whether bipedals or quadriped-als) do not suck at their mothers’ breasts while they are standing on their head and rooted to the ground, with their mothers’ breasts facing the ground.

Couplet 3 keeps the same conceptual metaphor of the A TREE IS AN ANI-MATE BEING, where the tree is said to perceive and act. If a tree is concep-tualized as an animate being, therefore it can perceive, act, and even pray. “To pray” elevates the tree to the status of a human being, which changes the tree from TREE AS AN ANIMATE BEING to TREE AS A HUMAN BEING. The branches of the tree become arms for the tree in keeping with this metaphoric


coherence. Couplet 4 goes a step further in developing the personification of the tree.

The tree is said to wear a nest of robins in the hair. Until we get proof to the con-trary, wearing things in one’s hair is a feminine trait. This is triggered from the common observation that trees may be inhabited by birds, and since the tree is conceptualized as TREE IS A HUMAN BEING, therefore a nest of robins in her hair stands for hairdressing common among ladies. The nest of robins becomes an embellishment, and the branches become the hair of the tree, which logically turns the tree into TREE IS A HUMAN FEMALE. It should be noted that the change of CM from couplet to couplet creates some inconsistency produced through the entailments of CMs. By entailment, the branches of the tree are arms in keeping with the CM of the tree praying as if it were a human being. In couplet 4, however, the branches become hair decorated by nests.

Couplet 5 continues the conceptual metaphor introduced in couplets 3 and 4, where the tree is said to have a bosom. We may infer from visualization that if the tree’s roots are its mouth or the location of it, the branches again meta-morphose into the tree’s bosom. It should be noted that the image of the tree as conceptualized shows the mouth and the bosom as diametrically opposed, with no head in view, hence the selectiveness of this metaphor.

The poem can be summed up metaphorically as follows:A TREE IS A MAAMALA TREE IS AN ANIMATE BEING A TREE IS A HUMAN BEING A TREE IS A LITTLE FEMALE A TREE IS A HUMAN FEMALE Imagery is incoherently and illogically constructed, thus creating inconsis-

tent metaphors that are far from being persuasive and ideological, even though imaginatively possible.

4. Ideological metaphorThe ideas defended in connection with ideological discourse are the coun-

terparts of non-ideological discourse, i.e. domain stability and conventional metaphors. It seems to me that the right question to ask about metaphor is not whether metaphor is ideological; rather, when metaphor stops being so.


4.1. Domain stabilityIdeological discourse is characterized by conceptual metaphors used from

within a particularly chosen domain of experience, without attempting to vary them. I will not attempt to discuss intentions, but I will assume that in ideologi-cal discourse these domains are carefully chosen with the intent of producing effects on participants.

As argued earlier in this paper, domain stability provides conceptual an-chorage for ideological discourse. Using the same conceptual domain to con-ceptualize experience in ideological discourse focuses the reader’s attention on that domain, with the result that this stability hides other aspects of the TD. The hidden part of the TD would enhance the persuasibility of metaphor, which little by little builds its ideological grounding. Since “when we say that a concept is structured by a metaphor, we mean that it is partially structured” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 13), partially structuring it is biased and biasing. What creates this bias is the subjective selection by copy writers or authors of a particular SD for a given target concept or domain. Thus conceived, metaphor is primarily subjective and ideological.

4.2. Conventional metaphorsWhat makes metaphor participate in constructing ideology in discourse? It

seems that one of the factors that makes metaphor ideological is perseverance in using the same framing for a given concept, i.e. using the same source domain for a given target domain within the same discourse. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 221) tell us that “to operate only in terms of a consistent set of metaphors is to hide many aspects of reality.”

What makes metaphor even more ideological is the fact that the creation of this perseverance comes through a conventional metaphor. Conventional meta-phors constitute our conceptual systems, and as such we do not seem to be aware or conscious of their existence or even our using them in our everyday function-ing. Owing to their cognitive unconscious nature, conventional metaphors may pass unnoticed throughout our daily functioning, which makes them very good candidates for persuasion, hence their ideological propensity.

Ideological uses of metaphor will be illustrated through domain persever-ance and conventional metaphors from promotional and political discourses. Consider the following advert:


AT LAST THE SUBARU OF SUPERMINISJUSTY. THE WORLD’ S FIRST 1.2 4WD SUPERMINIA solitary cat. In a street of its own.A poetic little mover. Precise. Instinctively sure-footed.Subaru four-wheel drive. Gripping stuff.On good roads. Rotten roads. No roads at all. Bad weather or not.Drive quality, superb. You feel in safe hands.With a sinewy little Subaru of an engine.Clean burn. Sweet torque. Pulls like a dream.Feels right. Superbly comfortable fit. Everything to hand or foot.Good with numbers. 5-speed box. 3 valves per cylinder. And a choice of 3 or 5 doors.And of course four-wheel drive.Justy. The Subaru of superminis.THE WORLD’S FAVOURITE FOUR-WHEEL DRIVES.(Ronald Carter et al, 1997: 212)

In the advert, the copy writer maps the SD of pets onto the TD, the Subaru Justy, which yields the CM, A SUBARU CAR IS A BEAUTIFUL ANIMAL/PET. This CM governs the linguistic metaphors: a solitary cat, a poetic little mover, instinctively sure-footed, gripping stuff, a sinewy little Subaru of an en-gine. The choice of cat as SD, suggests, among other things, the smaller size of the car and freedom of mobility thtat this suggests, which enables its driver to have greater possibilities for nipping in and out of traffic and parking it in smallspaces.

The Subaru Justy has the specified manner of movement and speed thatbefit a cat. Corresponding to the cat’s gait or way of motion, the car is said tobe instinctively sure-footed. At gripping stuff, the cat and the car spaces are blended, which enables the TP to access the gripping system of the cat (its paws) and brake system of the car in the blend. The cat’s lean body and muscles are mapped onto the car’s engine, which becomes a sinewy little Subaru of an en-gine. All these linguistic metaphors are so commonplace in the experience of Westerners with cats that they tend to evade their awareness of them as a domain


for structuring cars, but they do not fail to notice the CM, A SUBARU CAR IS A BEAUTIFUL PET.

The ideological dimension of the CM, A SUBARU CAR IS A BEAUTI-FUL PET comes from the commonplace social belief in the West that PETS ARE GOOD. If pets are good, therefore Subaru cars are good. This SD is unfailingly used to conceptualize the Subaru in the advert. The use of the domain of pets is so pervasive in the advert that readers may wonder whether discourse talks about real cats or cars. This exclusivity is so blinding that it tends to suggest that there is no other way for the copy writer to conceptualize the car, and the ad reader has no other means but to trust the copy writer’s conceptualization. The ultimate result is that what is presented to our attention tends to blind us altogether to what is hidden, and that has not been captured by the domain of petness. So far, it seems that what enhances ideology is the fact that copy writers are aware of the existence of the conventional CM, PETS ARE GOOD. What also enhances this is the fact that they stick to the same CM throughout the advert.

In the following extract from political discourse, domain stability and hid-ing and highlighting capacity of CM will be focused upon:

I come before you and assume the presidency at a moment rich with promise. We live in a peaceful, prosperous time, but we can make it better.For a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by free-dom seems reborn; for in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient lifeless tree.A new breeze is blowing – and a nation refreshed by free-dom stands ready to push on: there is new ground to be broken, and new action to be taken.There are times when the future seems thick as a fog; you sit and wait, hoping the mists will lift and reveal the right path.But this is a time when the future seems a door you can walk right through – into a room called tomorrow.Great nations of the world are moving toward democracy – through the door to freedom.


Men and women of the world move toward free markets – through the door to prosperity.The people of the world agitate for free expression and free thought – through the door to the moral and intellectual satisfactions that only liberty allows.We know what works: Freedom works. We know what’s right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just end prosperous life for man on earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will un-hampered by the state (from D. Bush’s inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1989).

The text is structured in terms of two metaphoric clusters: AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT IS A NATURAL PHENOMENON and AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT IS A JOURNEY. The abstract concept, the TD is freedom and related issues, and the SDs are nature and journeys. The CM, AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT IS A NATURAL PHENOMENON, relying on “breeze” as a natural phenomenon to legitimize the passage from lack of freedom to freedom as something in the nature of things. This CM is, however, not as ideological as AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT IS A JOURNEY, which conceptually dominates this fragment of the speech.

The JOURNEY metaphor is reproduced four times, which cannot pass un-noticed to an attentive cognizer. Such a repetition, together with the stylisti-cally parallel structures used, serves to stabilize metaphoric meaning around the components of the JOURNEY. Thus, the JOURNEY’s DESTINATION includes “future,” “democracy,” “free markets,” and “free expression and free thought.” Two characteristics of the PATH are profiled: (i) the existence of a door, whichserves as a TD to conceptualize “tomorrow,” “freedom,” “prosperity,” and “mor-al and intellectual satisfactions,” and (ii) the profiling of progress to the DES-TINATION as a form of “walking right through” the various doors or “moving toward” it. Not profiling the SOURCE in this JOURNEY metaphor may suggestthat progress toward freedom and democracy can be started wherever one may exist.

The ideological dimension of the JOURNEY metaphor in this extract arises from many points. At the conceptual level, coherence around JOURNEY con-solidates meaning around it at the exclusion of other conceptual domains. At the


cognitive level, the JOURNEY suggests that progressing to the DESTINATION (future, democracy, free markets, and free expression and free thought) is as easy and impediment-free as moving and walking in space. At the pragmatic level, the JOURNEY metaphor is so familiar to cognizers that it meets with very little resistance from them. Thus, this conventional metaphor and tends to ideologically facilitate persuasion.

ConclusionThe thesis that has been defended in this paper is that framing is essential

for the production of metaphor, and that the latter is by default persuasive and ideological. When it offers multiple framings or mappings about a particular target concept or TD within the same discourse, metaphor tends to be less ideo-logical, and starts being experimental and tentative as is the case with literary discourse and related discourses.

The ideological dimension of metaphor has been located at three levels, namely, conceptual, cognitive, and pragmatic. The conceptual level takes care of anchoring metaphoric meaning in a single conceptual domain, which has the ef-fect of stabilizing meaning and providing ideological discourse with much want-ed coherence. The cognitive level focuses attention on the source conceptual domain, and diverts attention away from any domain other than the one selected owing to metaphor’s capacity for highlighting and hiding. The pragmatic level links the type of discourse in which conventional or non-conventional metaphor occurs. The more a metaphor is conventional, the more persuasive and ideologi-cal it is. However, the more non-conventional a metaphor is, the less persuasive and ideological it is. The fact that metaphor is ideological seems to be insepara-ble from the types of discourse in which it occurs, including the pragmatic status of discourse. Thus, the more discourse is world-changing, the more metaphor in it functions ideologically, and perlocutionarily shows effects in cognizers of an interactive kind. However, the more discourse is world-preserving and shows no signs of provoking lasting pragmatic effects on cognizers, the more metaphor in it functions non-ideologically.


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