Role in Metaphor
Michael J. Reddy (1979) discovered and has demonstrated that much of the language we use to talk about language is conceptualized and structured by what he refers to as the conduit metaphor. This paradigm operates through two distinct, related frameworks.
The major framework views language as a sealed pipeline between people:
1. Language transfers people's thoughts and feelings (mental content) to others
2. Speakers and writers insert their mental content into words
ex: You have to put each concept into words more carefully.3. Words are containers
ex: That sentence was filled with emotion.4. Listeners and writers extract mental content from words
ex: Let me know if you find any new sensations in the poem.The minor framework views language as an open pipe spilling mental content into the void:
1. Speakers and writers eject mental content into an external space
2. Mental content is reified (viewed as concrete) in this space
ex: That concept has been floating around for decades.3. Listeners and writers extract mental content from this space
ex: Let me know if you find any good concepts in the essay.Read more about this topic: Metalanguage
Famous quotes containing the words role in, role and/or metaphor:
“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents’ verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don’t speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“If women’s role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children she has borne leave home.”
—Betty Friedan (20th century)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)