The confinements of ‘metaphor’ – Putting functionality and meaning before definition in the case of metaphor

Abstract

In recent research, metaphor is increasingly confronted in terms of a cline rather than a dichotomy. Yet the decision of whether a word or phrase is metaphoric is not as straightforward as a one-level cline suggests. The notion of 'metaphoric meaning' has further reaching implications on our language understanding and use than is commonly discussed. Metaphor is often subjective and dependent on changes in language specific to time period, genre, environment of the speakers or writers, and context. Furthermore personal experience and judgment are crucial factors in addressing and understanding meaning, whether metaphoric or literal. Approaching metaphor from a lexical stance, this research project adopts the psychological theory of lexical priming (Hoey 2005) as a way of explaining the collective linguistic patternings and associations within metaphor. The data is taken from a corpus of Nineteenth Century writings and focuses upon the single item flame. The focus is on a qualitative analysis of problematic cases of metaphor, which are not easily identifiable or characterized through collective primings. The research concludes that the functionality of 'metaphor' as an umbrella term is often too restrictive. Moreover the research serves to illustrate that the perspective on lexical metaphor should be re-focused on to the individual language user and the social processes that dominate our ever-changing use of language and meaning.