Chapter 3: Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding

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My Summary of Chapter 3
1.        In this chapter, the authors give an extended explanation of the metaphorical systematicity.
2.        In order to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another, we will necessarily hide other aspects of the concept when expressing metaphorical concepts. (e.g., ARGUMENT IS WAR)
3.        Then the authors introduce a concept Michael Reddy came up with—the “conduit metaphor”—and explain it by examples.
4.        the “conduit metaphor”

IDEAS (or MEANINGS) ARE OBJECTS.
LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAINERS.
COMMUNICATION IS SENDING.

5.        By analyzing what the CONDUIT metaphor entails, the authors mention some of the ways in which it masks aspects of the communicative process. But these metaphors are only appropriate in situations where context differences don’t matter and where all the participants in the conversation understand the sentences in the same way.
6.        The authors underline that context matters in many cases by using the famous example recorded in an actual conversation by Pamela Downing.

• Some sentences have no meaning without context.
• The same single sentence will mean different things to different people.
  

7.        A concept structured by a metaphor is partially structured by hiding other aspects of these concepts, and it can be extended in some ways but not others.

My Reflection
After reading this chapter, I learned that when we understand a metaphor in terms of metaphorical systematicity, we should notice that the source domain and target domain are not equivalent in all aspects. However, metaphorical concepts can be extended beyond the range of ordinary literal ways of thinking and talking into the range of what is called figurative, poetic, colorful, or fanciful thought and language. That’s quite an interesting phenomenon. And I just started to pay attention to how we use language to describe language after reading it. I also think about the metalanguage I learned last semester.
All in all, linguistics is very fascinating, and metaphor analysis really draws my interest. I am eager to do some research on the metaphors we use in daily communication in the future!