Metaphor and Space

8/3/2019 Metaphor and Space

1/24

Metaphor and Space

Franson ManjaliJawaharlal Nehru University,

New Delhi

1. Spatial models

Along with the decline of the logicist paradigms, there has been

increasing reference to spatial modeling and schemata in contemporary

linguistics and semiotics. Perhaps, it is the need to rescue linguistic, and

particularly, meaning analysis from the obscurely mentalist accounts, and

to give it a physicalist or materialist orientation that has prompted such a

shift towards spatiality. Parallelly, scholars have shied away from the

definition of language as an abstract system consisting of arbitrary

symbols and the rules of their computation. The semiotic field is no longer

the container or the expresser of some otherwise indecipherable logical

entities or processes, but it can henceforth be, so to say, stretched out on

the ground in plain daylight. Language, which according to Saussures

original idea, was analogically the substratum to which other cultural

discourses could be compared and thus studied, now had to submit itself

to an abstract or real space in order to render its structure clear. The

guiding principle here is that by taking recourse to spatiality, the symbolic

structure can be exteriorized. Consequently, The pre-symbolic base of the

symbolic level is taken to be constituted of the spatial dimension.

Further, in contrast to the mentalist approaches of the type followed byNoam Chomsky, which insisted on an uncompromising universalism, the

spatial analyses were amenable to culturally specific accounts, while

retaining for themselves the factum of the universality of space.

What Hjelmslev called the localist hypothesis in grammatical theory,

especially with reference to the debates within nineteenth century

German scholarship (Hjelmslev, 1935; see Manjali, 1991 for a brief

summary of the relevant sections of this work), seems to have returnedas the methodological principle of spatialization of form in the second

1


2/24

half of the twentieth century. Lucien Tesnire in his proposal for an

actantial theory of syntactic structure, had suggested that the

syntactico-semantic part of sentences could be viewed as a vitalistic little

drama, characterised by a theatre-like, and hence, anthropomorphic

performers or actants and context-defining circumstants. Edward Sapir

had proposed a similar actantial and localistic model of sentence-

structure.1 In the more recent American context, the spatialisation of

form principle has been more seriously followed by Charles Fillmore,

Ronald Langacker and Len Talmy.

The localist-actantial theory has been submitted to rigorous

mathematical-topological formalisation in the works of the French

scientists Ren Thom and Jean Petitot. Proceeding from Thomscatastrophe-theoretical modelling, Petitot in his Morphognse du sens

(1985)goes on to propose a Kantian-type of schematisation of linguistic

and semiotic structures. In developing structur-alism as a cognitive theory

of morphodynamics, Petitot has also reinforced Gilles Deleuzes idea

that structures are essentially topological and relational, that is, even

before they are filled with any specific content. What is assumed in this

approach is an isomorphism between the dynamics of the rational

interiority of the human mind and the physical dynamics of the externalworld.

2. Iconicity and motivation

In order to understand the fundaments of the spatialisation project it is

perhaps useful to take recourse, via Roman Jakobson, to Charles Sanders

Peirces Semiotic. The latter being a semiotics that subsists our logical

understanding of the natural world, eschews Saussures imperative of alinguistic mediation between the nebulous thought and the equally

chaotic reality of the world by the system of discrete signs. At the top

of Peirces ternarian hierarchy, signs are divided into icons, indexes and

symbols. These are characterised by relations of factual similarity,

1 Discussed by Roman Jakobson in Quest for the Essence of Language, SelectedWritings Vol. II, p. 351. Such models, especially the actantial ones, have an historicalantecedent in the work of the 6th century Indian philosopher of language, Bhartrhari

(see Manjali, 2000). According to Bhartrhari, sentence meaning is comprehended as aunified whole, like a picture.

2


3/24

factual, existential contiguity, and imputed and learned contiguity

respectively between the signifier and the signified (or, representamen

and object in Peirces terms). In the symbol, its two parts are connected

by a conventional rule. Peirce avers that these are not names of pure

sign-types, but are indications of certain predominant tendencies within

each. These tendencies may and do exist as combinations in any given

sign, including the linguistic sign. Jakobson notes in this context that

according to Peirce the most perfect signs are those in which the iconic,

the indexical and the symbolic characters are blended as equally as

possible. (Jakobson, Quest, p. 349)

Equally important for our discussion is Peirces further division of icons

into images, diagrams and metaphors. As per his definitions, the imagesare icons which partake of simple qualities...; the diagrams are those

which represent relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of

one thing by analogous relations in their parts; and the metaphors are

those which represent the representative character of a representamen

by representing a parallelism in something else. (see Hiraga, 1994, p. 6,

fn.)

Thus, the specific properties characterising the three types of icons arequalitative imitation, structural analogy and imputed parallelism

respectively. The images and the diagrams will have some objective

correspondence between the representamen / signifier and the object /

signified, while in the case of the metaphor-icons, the correspondence

may be perceptually or experientially constituted on the basis of a

parallelism. Peircean units seem to form a continuum starting from those

having a maximum of objective correspondence between the object and

the spatial / temporal form of the representamen as in the case of theimage, and ending with the arbitrary or law-like symbol, where such a

correspondence is almost absent. In this continuum, the metaphor

occupies a somewhat middle position, the nature of the correspondence

here being a parallelism that is subjectively felt. The iconicity of the

metaphor is thus part-objective, part-subjective. I.e.,

Obj. ICON (IMAGE, DIAGRAM, METAPHOR) INDEX SYMBOLSubj.

pole pole

3


4/24

Peircean semiotics is thus directly amenable to a spatial perspective. The

icon and the index with the similarity and contiguity principles that govern

them, are clearly signs that subscribe to a spatial dimension. So are the

two subtypes of icons, viz., images and diagrams. And when it comes to

the metaphors as the third subtype of icon, Peirce refers us to a quasi-

spatial notion of parallelism. Only the symbol, among the first five type

of signs stands apart as primarily based on arbitrariness / convention

(law). Even these are not exempt from being iconically or indexically

conditioned.

Saussure addresses the problem of the natural or conventional

relationship between the signifier and signified, not by way of a typology

of signs la Peirce, but in terms of two principles, motivation andarbitrariness, the latter being the dominant one. Since signs, individually

or in combinations, are all arbitrary (except for odd instances of sound-

symbolism and onomatopoeia), according to Saussure, they do not

resemble anything outside of language.2 Now, Jakobson, in his Quest

essay, makes it amply clear that iconicity or motivation can be attested

not only at the level of unitary signs, but also at the level of syntax and

morphology. Saussure himself was acutely aware of this issue,

introducing it under the heading Absolute and Relative Arbitrariness inhis Cours de linguistique gnrale. Though he favours the fundamental

principle of the arbitrariness of the sign, he insists on the limits of

arbitrariness. As he outlines the problem:

...the whole system of language is based on the irrational principle

of the arbitrariness of the sign, which would lead to the worst sort of

complication if applied without restriction. But the mind contrives to

introduce a principle oforder and regularityinto certain parts of themass of signs, and this is the role of relative motivation. (Course, p.

133) (italics added)

In any given language, though some signs (most of which appear to be

individual ones) may be absolutely arbitrary, other signs (which may

appear in sign-combinations) can be spoken of only in terms of degrees

of arbitrariness. Signs can be radically or relatively arbitrary, and

2

Though Saussure does not admit any direct extra-systemic similarity between thesignifier and the signified, he accepts a principle of analogy working within thelanguage system. The latter renders possible paradigms of (similarly) significant forms.

4


5/24

individual languages may combine these two (sub-)principles in

unpredictable ways:

There is no language in which nothing is motivated, and our

definition makes it impossible to conceive of a language in which

everything is motivated. Between the two extremes a minimum of

organization and a minimum of arbitrariness we find all possible

varieties. Diverse languages always include elements of both

portions that vary greatly... (ibid., p. 133)

The weight of evidence in favour of the new principle of relative

motivation is indeed strong. Providing us with useful lexical and syntactic

examples, Saussure states that one can speak of relative motivationwhenever a sign can be syntagmatically analysed into parts, and any of

the part/s thus obtained can be associatively compared with other signs

(of the same system). His well-known example in this regard is the

opposition between vingtand dix-neuf. The former is radically arbitrary

and the latter, because of the associations its two components, dix and

neuf have with other words in the system of the French language, e.g.,

dix-huitand vingt-neuf,is relatively arbitrary / motivated.

Let us follow Saussures argument more closely. Language is made up of

discrete signs, which owing to fact that they emerge from collective

behaviour or by convention, acquire the irrational principle of

arbitrariness, according to which there cannot be any natural connection

between the signifier and the signified. The limited or partial motivation

that the system of language has is due to our minds contriving to

introduce a principle oforder and regularity. And this is so because, the

mechanism of language is but a partial correction of a system that is bynature chaotic. Saussure seems to be saying this: Because language

arises due to convention, it possesses an irrational principle of

arbitrariness, which makes it naturally chaotic. In other words, languages

being conventional gives it a chaotic nature. Mind introduces an order on

it by reducing its arbitrariness, and making it partially motivated. It is

because of the minds action that there are natural connections between

some signifiers and the corresponding signifieds. Mind organizes the vast

5


6/24

and chaotic array of arbitrary signs into a relatively well-ordered system

of language by means of the classical (Aristotelian) principle of analogy.3

Without paying much heed to Saussures explanation of relative

motivation in morphology and syntax in terms of the syntagmatic and

associative axes of language, a method presumably forced on him by the

linear and systemic character of language, Jakobson adopts a Peircean

approach to the problem. True to the Peircean categories, Jakobson

renames the Saussurean problem of relative motivation as the problem

of iconicity in language.4 More precisely, in terms of the diagram-icon.

And, correspondingly, he restates the problem as a problem of parts and

wholes within a syntagmatically analysable sign-unit:

Not only the combination of words into syntactic groups but also the

combination of morphemes into words exhibits a clear-cut

diagrammatic character. Both in syntax and morphology any

relation of parts and wholes agrees with Peirces definition of

diagrams and their iconic nature. (Quest, p. 352)

Following Peirce and Jakobson, but in contradistinction to Saussure,5

contemporary Cognitive Linguistics tends to see iconicity in sentencestructures. Consequently, even a correspondence between the order of

the elements in a sentence, and that of the things / events in the

referential world can be taken as a case of (diagrammatic) iconicity.

Jakobsons famous example in this regard are Julius Caesars words Veni,

vidi, vici, which reflect the order of the emperors deeds. This

3 What Saussure is saying amounts to this: Individual signs which arise from collective

behaviuor and established by convention may be arbitrary in the sense of not havingany natural connection between the signifier and the signified. But as part of a systemof signs, the originally arbitrary signs have been subjected, at least partially, to somesort of analogical ordering by the action of mind. Here, as elsewhere in the Course, theeconomic metaphor might be at work: individual notes or coins may be arbitrary inrealtion to thier monetary value, but within a particular currency system, there is boundto be an analogical ordering based on the size of the notes, or the weight of the coins.Higher the denomination, greater the size of the notes, or the weight of the coins.4 In contemporary Cognitive Linguistics, the Jakobsonian term iconicity is widelyaccepted.

5

Saussure takes most sentences, except the formula ones, to be a unit ofspeech(parole), and not of the language system (langue).

6


7/24

correspondence in order between the signans and the signatum is

regarded as a good enough principle of iconicity in Cognitive Linguistics.

Now, we should note here that principle of analogy invoked by Saussure

for accounting for the limitation of arbitrariness and the notion of

diagrammatic iconicity suggested by Peirce and Jakboson are indeed

parallel and conceptually proximate. Their difference is that whereas, the

diagram, owing to its iconicity can function either within or without a

system of signs, analogy lacks a direct and referential iconicity and

suggests a parallelism that is merely system-internal. Thus the relative

motivation in morphology or syntactic structure, is strictly speaking,

analogical and not diagrammatic.

This iconicity principle has been used extensively by George Lakoff and

Mark Johnson in their accounts of what they call the conceptual

metaphors. Lakoff and Johnson have argued that metaphors are not just

linguistic entities or categories, but are in fact conceptual in nature. They

claim that metaphors partially structure our everyday concepts and that

this structure is reflected in our literal language (quoted in MacCormac,

1985: 57). The preponderance of metaphors in language use dead,

conventional, fresh, or poetic and the systematic and networkedrelations among them suggest that metaphors are not just a matter of

linguistic play, but are indeed the manner in which human beings conduct

their thought or conceptualize. Metaphor is thus a universally prevalent

and pre-eminent cognitive process. These conceptual metaphors, they

further claim, function on the basis of iconicity, that is, their creation and

use involve bodily experienced or perceived similarity, between items or

events in the world. Further, in the creation of metaphors, they assume a

clearly discernible directionality: they proceed from domains that aremore concrete and more immediate to those that are less concrete or

abstract. Thus, they also conclude that our body is the ultimate and the

most primitive resource of our more abstract perceptual and conceptual

constructions. They also emphasize the importance of schemas derived

from the structure and the basic functions and activities of the human

body. Experientially-constituted image-schemas based on the structure

and basic actions of our body are at the root of our complex and abstract

thought.

7


8/24

According to Johnson our very basic and very complex range of bodily

experiences... occurring at [the] experiential and pre-linguistic level

results in the embodiment of meaning, which provides a semantic basis

for linguistic forms, meaning and the structure of speech acts. (Johnson,

1992: 348) Lakoff and Johnsons basic argument runs as follows. Primitive

bodily experience gives rise to the image-schemas with their iconic

quality, play structuring role in our cognition and language. Thus, our

cognition, language and other social practices bear definite traces of the

bodily image-schemas. Even most of our new experiences and novel use

of language are coloured by these traces. Owing to their iconic or image-

schematic character of these traces, which in turn is a basic part of our

cognitive processes, their linguistic manifestation at the syntactic,

semantic or pragmatic levels of language should be thought aswidespread occurrence of conceptual metaphors. Thus, even the literal

language is suffused with metaphors, which are not dead, but which come

alive every time the latent conceptual metaphors are again put to work.

Poetic metaphors are only further creative extensions of this inexorable

(bodily and iconically rooted) metaphoricity in thought and language.

3. The classical approach: imitation and metaphor

Let us delve deeper into the problem. In Platos well-known dialogue,

Cratylus, we find Socrates at first agreeing with Cratylus naturalist view

on the origin and nature of language. Socrates argues that at the origin of

language, a hypothetical name-giver must have employed some sort of

sound-symbolism in order to arrive at the right names for things, just as

the painter or the musician would employ the right forms and colours or

the right sounds to undertake their respective artistic activities, with

natural correctness. As Socrates puts it, the name-giver must have

created:

by letters and syllables a sign and a name for each and every thing,

and from those names he compounds all the rest by imitation.

The examples of such sound-symbolism that Socrates provides us with

are indeed instructive. The consonantal sound r is (naturally) appropriate

as an excellent instrument for the expression of motion (many Greekwords relating to motion containing this sound) because the tongue is

8


9/24

least agitated and least at rest in pronunciation of this letter. He gives

similar natural reasons for the use of other consonants to express some

primitive meaning essences: the sibilants and fricatives whose

pronunciation is accompanied by a great expenditure of breath are used

for imitating windiness involved in shivering, seething, shock, etc.; the

closing and pressure of the tongue in the utterance of d and t is

expressive of binding and rest in a place; liquid movement of l, in the

pronunciation of which the tongue slip, and in this he found in this he

found the expression of smoothness. And as for vowels, Socrates

mentions o, which [is] the sign of roundness...

Now, what is remarkable in these Socratic assertions, is not just the fact

of imitation by sound, but indeed it is the specific character of theimitation. r imitates motion because of the agitation of the tongue, and its

lack of rest. The windiness of the sibilants and the fricatives imitates

the rapid expiration involved in emotions like shock, anger, etc. These

imitations involve certain rhythmic or steady movement of the tongue in

time, and are therefore appropriate for imitating events or actions that

have a sudden temporal / dynamic character. As a converse ofr, closing

and pressure of the tongue in d and t, imitates rest in a place. Here a

certain steady spatial posture of the tongue imitates a state of rest. Andsimilarly, and perhaps more apparently, the rounded shape of the mouth

while pronouncing o, which is also imitated in the shape of the Greek

letter o,is naturally appropriate for imitating the corresponding sound o!

It is really not just a case of a sound that imitates the meaning, but rather

it is the shape of the mouth-orifice while producing a particular sound that

mimics the meaning. A particular sound has acquired a corresponding

symbolic meaning, because there is a mimetic relationship between the

spatial (and temporal) mode of articulating the sound and a certain(spatial and temporal) essence of the thing referred to. The iconicity

here is indeed that of the bodily, i.e., the oral, gesture. One may add here

that the view pertaining to oral iconicity put forward by Socrates in quasi-

defence of Cratylus naturalism, if stretched to its impossible logical

conclusion, would indeed seem to threaten the much avowed structuralist

principle of double articulation. But this does not happen because any

natural connection that may exist between a sound and its manner of

articulation on the one hand and the corresponding meaning on the other,

9


10/24

is progressively attenuated by means of analogy, metaphorization and

compounding in the larger discursive process.

(The same phenomenon of bodily mimesis can be attested elsewhere too.

For example, it has been noted by the present author that the syllable

mu which involves, in its articulation, a protrusion and near-closure of

the lips is present word-initially in the Malayalam language in a number

words that contain the signification of pointed or sharp angularity, e.g. the

point of a knife, thorn, breast, corner, etc. Here again, it is the shape of

the mouth and by extension the corresponding sound that imitates the

shape an essence of the thing denoted.)

If Socrates intuition in this respect is correct, then unlike in painting ormusic, immediate and intimate resources of the body are employed in

linguistic imitation. Language, or naming involves, according to Socrates,

a natural kind of action for imitating the essences of things. This

imitation, he thinks, is different from the imitation in music and painting,

which have to imitate only the sounds (in the former) and the form and

the colours (in the latter) pertaining to events or objects in the world.

Here, we notice that even when Socrates perceives a difference between

the artistic imitation in such arts as music and painting, which is a kind ofform-to-form imitation (where both the forms can be located in the

spatial or temporal dimension) and the (art of ) linguistic imitation which

involves an imitation of the essences of things by sounds, while speaking

of the latter, he actually reduces these so-called essences to their spatial

or temporal forms, which are in turn imitated by the manner of

articulation of the speech sounds. These essences need not be a priori,

but are constituted in our encounter with the objects and events, and the

role of language is only to copy them with the given resources of ourbody. As per this account, at the very basic level linguistic articulation

begins with mimesis, and language is essentially mimicry.

(Strictly speaking, we notice that Socrates is concerned with two kinds of

imitation in language, which correspond to the generic distinction

between music and painting. For instance, when the sound r imitates

motion, the type of imitation may be referred to as that involving a

certain temporal-rhythmicity, because it is the rhythmic movement

occurring in time that is imitated by the articulation of the sound r.

10


11/24

Whereas, when the sound o imitates roundness, the imitation may be

that of a spatial-figurative kind.)

What is significant about this account of mimicry at the origin of language

is that it is not forced on him by the nature of things. Things do not cause

imitation. The latter results from the correct matching of a property

extracted from (the nature of) things and a sound unit extracted from the

phonetic stream. As such, the initial imitation is neither caused or

motivated, nor is it random or arbitrary. It is a creative action that man

performs according to his sense of the fitness of things. The fundamental

sound symbolism and mimicry is not just a process oriented to an

objective truth, but rather a proto-sthetic or phonsthetic activity.

The preceding discussion highlights only Socrates arguments in favour of

naturalism. Later in the dialogue, he counterposes the thesis for an all-out

naturalism with the anti-thesis of a strong conventionalism. He argues

that the conception of natural correctness assumed by the hypothetical

name-giver, could very well be wrong. And if that is the case, we who

are his followers and have inherited his conception would also be wrong.

It is at this point that Socrates distances from a position of strong

naturalism:

everyone should expend his chief thought and attention on the

consideration of first principles:- are they or are they not rightly laid

down? and when he has duly sifted them, all the rest will follow.

Thus we see, at the base of language Socrates is arguing for a principle of

natural correctness rooted in bodily mimicry, oral gesture. But, one may

discover this principle to be wrongly founded. The historically laterfollowers of the hypothetical name-giver may progressively correct this

founding principle, or they may introduce more appropriate principles.

Thus, there would be increasing movement (at least from a historical

point of view) from nature to convention; from mere natural correctness

to conventionally constituted truth without relinquishing the materiality

and corporeality upon which imitation and similarity are predicated.

The scenario Socrates presents us with is the following. The name-giver

imitates the specific / assumed essences of things with his bodily / oral

11


12/24

resources. The recognition of the semantically-appropriate sounds is

preceded by an analysis of the process of articulation. Articulation of

sounds is appropriate for the expression of particular essences of things.

There is a matching between the formal essences of things and the

sounds at one level, and between the substantive form of the things and

the manner of articulation at another level. Using Hjelmslevian terms, we

can say that the first level involves an equivalence between the form of

content and the form of expression, and the second level involves an

equivalence between the substance of content and the substance of

expression. The first results in sound symbolism, and the second in

mimicry:

Essence of thing : Imitating sound

(Sound symbolism)

(Form of Content) : (Form of expression)

Thing : Imitative action (Mimicry)

(Substance of Content) : (Substance of Expression)

But, such equivalencies may neither be adequate to begin with, nor would

they hold for everyone and for all eternity. The correctness of the bodily

and spatially articulated names are unstable. The names may not be

equivalent to the things. The equivalence may be wrongly conceived by

the name-giver. The names being given according to the conception of

the name-giver may be more or less than appropriate to the things. The

imitation may be more or less adequate. (This is not unlike metaphors,

which are also signifiers that suggest an exaggeration or a diminution of

the thing referred to.) In oral imitation or mimicry, the names are already

distanced from and re-configured in relation to things. They are already

deviant, tropes. Though there can be more and more of names, more or

less deviant, Socrates warns us that [h]e who follows names in the

search of things, and analyses their meaning, is in great danger of being

deceived. Names can never be entirely true to things.

Besides, since the first imitation is not a plastic imitation, it is transmitted

socially from the name-giver to other possible users of language. And

because naming is imitative action displayed for the benefit of the others,there is a going-beyond of the name from the self to the others. Socrates:

12


13/24

And if [the name-givers] conception was erroneous, and he gave names

according to his conception, in what position shall we who are his

followers find ourselves? Shall we not be deceived by him. But since we

also have just the same bodily and spatial resources and capacities for

imitatively creating names, names which are ever-deviant, that is

metaphors, these names constantly go beyond the things and our own

selves, in a lateral process that can go on infinitely.

Perhaps now we are in a position to better appreciate Aristotles

discussion on imitation and metaphor in Poetics. According to Aristotle,

imitation and metaphor are two special qualities that man is endowed

with, and they are described as one of the two causes for the origin of

poetry (the other is harmony and rhythm), and as the mark of poeticexcellence, respectively.

Poetry has sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our

nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from

childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that

he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation he

learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt

in things imitated. We have evidence for this... Objects which inthemselves we view with pain, we delight when reproduced with

minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and

of dead bodies.

Thus, in the Aristotelian syllogism implicitly at work here, the instinct of

imitation is linked with learning. And learning gives man the liveliest

pleasure. Therefore, Aristotle is able to conclude that men enjoy seeing

a likeness...

This likeness returns later when Aristotle discusses metaphor as one of

the modes of linguistic expression. Metaphor is defined as the application

of an alien name by transference. Though, poetic excellence generally

involves observation of propriety in the use of the modes of expression,

metaphor has a very special status. Here propriety is not the matter of a

pre-given or natural correctness in the relationship between the signifier

and the signified. It is that of an aptitude for noting likenesses on the

13


14/24

basis of which a name originally used for one signified can be transferred

to another. Of all the poetic qualities, Aristotle notes,

...the greatest thing is to have a command of metaphor. This alone

cannot be imparted by another, it is the mark of genius, for to make

good metaphor implies an eye for resemblances.

Thus imitation, which is a natural human instinct, is also an ideal tool for

learning, and it therefore gives pleasure to all men equally. Whereas the

poetic metaphor, though it too involves an eye for resemblances, is

something special, perhaps restricted to those with strong artistic

sensibility. It is a mark of genius and cannot be learnt by way of

instruction.6

4. Embodiment of speech and culture

Unlike Socrates, for whom iconicity is a matter of spatial or temporal

form which is imitated by the spatial resources of the body, Maurice

Merleau-Ponty, a phenomenologist of our own times, views the perceptual

process as a result of the interaction between a persons body and the

spatial dimension into which she is thrown from her birth. Merleau-Pontys

theory of cognition, itself based in the primacy of perception, is informed

by his principal notions of embodiment, enaction and embeddedness.7 A

person uses her body as the central point of orientation while perceiving

and conceptually describing both the space that surrounds her as well as

the objects that appear in space. There is a continuous going back-and-

forth between the space outside and the figure-space of the human body,

which involves a projection of the body of the subject into the world, and

a corresponding introjection of the world on the subject. The relation

between body and space, is not to be seen as the relation of interiority

between an physically-existing body and an objective space in which the

former is located. Beneath the objective space, there is a spatiality

which merges with the bodys very being. To be a body, is to be tied to a

6 In his long and engaging discussion of the role of metaphor in philosophy, Derridaoverlooks the fact that for Aristotle metaphor has simultaneously an aesthetic and an

aletheic status. See Derrida, J., 1982, pp. 230-45.7 See Varela, F. (1991) for a useful discussion of the relevant issues.

14


15/24

certain world, our body is not primarily in space: it is of it. (Merleau-

Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, p. 148)

Merleau-Ponty insists that this primitive body-image plays a key role in

our apprehensions of objects in space. Body-image is a way of stating

that my body is in-the-world. (ibid., p. 101) The presence of body-image

in this manner is evident in our use of spatial prepositions: When I say

that the object is onthe table, I always mentally put myself either in the

table or in the object, and apply to them a category which theoretically

fits the relationship of my body to eternal objects. Stripped of this

anthropological association, the word on is indistinguishable from the

word underor the word beside.(ibid., p. 101)

According to Merleau-Ponty, body and space are interrelated in two

important ways. Firstly, a person recognises the spatial unity of her body

enactively through perception and bodily movement in space. Secondly, a

persons body for her is not like any other object in the world. It is instead,

the centre of the world. Space is like an extension or an organic envelope

of the body which in turn sustains the unity of the body-space system,

just as the heart sustains (and is sustained by) the body:

Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it

keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it

and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system. (p. 203)

That is why we also understand the spatiality of objects in terms of the

bodys spatiality. For example, we understand a cube not in terms of its

purely objective properties arrayed in a disconnected manner, but as a

fragment of space enclosed between its six equal faces, just as we canexperience ourselves as enclosed between the four walls of a room. (ibid.,

p. 204)

The whole philosophy of Merleau-Ponty is characterised by a corporeal

and perceptual materialism. The experience of body-in-space and the

inter-relationship between body and its ambient space is the most

fundamental experience for an individual. A subject experiences the world

through her body and perception. Further, the body is the affirmation of

ones existence in the world. This affirmation is expressive in a certain

15


16/24

field of action formed by the external space and a persons body. (ibid.,

p. 180) Merleau-Ponty would say, the body expresses existence at every

moment, just as a word expresses thought, or a poem expresses its

meaning. It is this capacity of body to be displayed in space, that makes it

comparable to a work of art, just as in a picture or a piece of the idea is

incommunicable by means other than the display of colours and sounds.

(ibid., p. 150)

Language, according to Merleau-Ponty begins with the bodys (existential)

expressivity, and in the perception of this expressivity in others.

Therefore the source of speech is in bodily gesture. The oral organs which

have other biological functions, are specialised in man for linguistic

expressivity, giving rise to a more specific oral gesticulation or a kind ofgestural onomatopoeia.8 Thus, in spoken language:

... a contraction of the throat, a sibilant emission of air between the

tongue and teeth, a certain way of bringing the body into play

suddenly allows itself to be invested with a figurative significance

which is conveyed outside us. ... For the miracle to come about,

phonetic gesticulation must use an alphabet of already acquired

meanings, the word-gesture must be performed in a certain settingcommon to the speakers, just as the comprehension of other

gestures presupposes a perceived world common to all, in which

each one develops and spreads out meaning.

The spoken expression, thus, is not something that can be computed from

its parts. It stands as a whole, as a relief against the background of the

speakers body and the surrounding space. It is a gesture in the

figurative (iconic) as well as the deictic (indexical) sense of the term.

The spoken word is a genuine gesture, and it contains its meaning

in the same way as the gesture contains its. (ibid., 183)

And,

The spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world. (ibid., p.

184)

8 Gill, J.H., 1991: 95.

16


17/24

Similarly, we understand the speech of others too as gestures, gestures

again directed to specific tasks in the world. These gestures, Merleau-

Ponty says, stand on their own, and cannot be reduced to some shared

and pre-existing intellectual meanings. They too are understood as

bodys intentionally-oriented responses to tasks in the world. What takes

place in a verbal gesture is a body-to-body communication in a specific

spatio-temporal world. The meaning of a gesture thus understood is not

behind it, it is intermingled with the structure of the world outlined by the

gesture, and which I take up on my own account. (ibid., p. 186.)

History of the verbal gestures between individuals, and by extension

between communities, sets up progressively a common world, and anynovel gesticulations refer to this fund of previous gestures, which function

like a common spatial world within which every gesture is understood.

Thus Merleau-Ponty believes that behind the conventional language there

exists a primary and more direct form of bodily signification, which is

inter-subjectively recognised. This incarnate significance is the central

phenomenon of which body and mind, sign and significance are abstract

moments. (ibid., p. 166) Behind the conceptual and delimiting meaning

of words, there exists an emotional content of the word, which [is] itsgestural sense, which is all-important in poetry, for example. If this is

really the case, then words, vowels and phonemes are so may ways of

singing the world...and their function is to represent things, not as the

nave onomatopoeic theory would have it, by means of an objective

resemblance, but because they extract and literally express, their

emotional essence. (ibid., p. 187)

Our gestures, including our oral / phonetic gestures have an unmediated,and indirect meaning in the world. It conveys the subjects position in the

world of meanings, that constitute our mental or cultural life, which

borrows its structure from the natural life (ibid., p. 193). Thinking

subject has its basis in an incarnate subject. Further, since the human

body and its motility in space is responsible for the subjects view of the

world and for making this view come into existence, the body is also the

condition of possibility ... of all expressive operations and all acquired

views which constitute the cultural world. (ibid., p. 388) Now, since the

expressive gestures take place in ever new spatial and cultural fields,

17


18/24

speech, especially authentic speech, puts up a new sense. Considering

that even the acquired significances were once new, Merleau-Ponty claims

that there is an ultimate fact of this open and indefinite power of giving

significance that is both of apprehending and conveying a meaning by

which man transcends towards a new form of behaviour, or towards other

people, or towards his own thought, through his body and his speech.

(ibid., p. 194) And this process can tend towards some sort of a cultural

universal, which is no longer the overarching universal of a strictly

objective method, but a sort oflateral universal which we acquire through

ethnological experience and its incessant testing of the self through the

other person and the other person through the self (Merleau-Ponty,

Signes, p. 150; Signs p. 120: quoted in Gill, J.H., 1991: 47; emphasis, the

present authors). Merleau-Pontys other name for this infinitely lateralprocess is dialogue:

In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the

other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are

interwoven into a single fabric (...). We have here a dual being,

where the other is for me no longer a mere bit of behaviour in my

transcendental field, nor I in his; we are collaborators for each other

in consummate reciprocity Our perspectives merge into each other,and we coexist through a common world. In the present dialogue, I

am freed from myself, for other persons thoughts are certainly

his... (Phenomenology of Perception, p. 354)

This dialogue begins early in life with the childs imitation of the (gestural)

language of the adults in response to tasks for which common results are

intended. In the process, a whole array of signs is acquired. Now, since

communication is essentially inter-corporeal, the sedimented meanings ofeach of these signs are less relevant for individuals than the expressive

effect that the signs can have over and above their permutations and

combinations in actual speech. Here, what Merleau-Ponty calls the

speaking speech (as opposed to the cognitively sedimented, spoken

speech) becomes another layer of expressive gesture, which is like a

personal or a specific cultural style. This style or perspective is what

Merleau-Ponty in his unfinished last work, The Visible and the Invisible,

views as the metaphoric mode. This second layer or reflective style is

indicative of a certain slacken[ing of] the intentional threads that attach

18


19/24

us to the world... (ibid., p. xviii). In this slackening, what is otherwise

opaque becomes visible, and what is visible, is so only through the

transparency of the style. The first of these movements means that,

Language can vary and amplify inter-corporeal communication as

much as we wish: it has the same source and style as the latter.

Here too, what was secret must become public and almost visible.

In language, as in inter-corporeal communication, significations

come through in whole packages, scarcely sustained by a few

peremptory gestures. (Signes, p. 27)

And owing to the style or the metaphoric mode, which is also the cultural

process of slackening:

The effective, present, ultimate and primary being, the thing in

itself, are in principle apprehended in transparency through their

perspectives, offer themselves therefore only to someone who

wishes not to have them, nor to hold them as with forceps, or to

immobilise them as under the lens of a microscope, but to let them

be and to witness their continued being... (Merleau-Ponty, 1968:

101)

Thus for Merleau-Ponty, the metaphoric, being closely related to reflective

mode of thought and to cultural mode of being, is a specifically human

mode of language, situated mid-way between the entirely mystical and

the too positive. It is a mode wherein one is able to transport oneself

beyond the subjective and the objective, and by means of which one

establishes infinite inter-subjective worlds.9

5. The sense of metaphor

In the preceding sections we mainly focused on the spatial, the corporeal

and the iconic dimensions of the linguistic phenomenon of metaphor.

Whatever be the psychological and ideal aspects that it may be said to

possess, fundamentally human language is an activity proceeding from

9

This idea, based on the etymological sense of metaphor as transport has beeneminently developed by E. Levinas, in his essay, Meaning and Sense. See referencebelow.

19


20/24

the human body situated in an ambient space and time. Therefore,

language is a sort of gesture occurring in space (and time). However, it is

not a gesture involving the whole of human body, but is specialised in and

limited to the oro-oto-laryngeal region of the body. In addition to this

communicative specialisation which man shares with many other species

of animals, he is endowed with the unique property of being able to oro-

laryngeally produce an imitative fragment of certain essential properties

of objects and events in the world around him. This imitation, as assumed

by classical Greek thought, is not stimulus-bound, but is creative. Thus,

the human vocal organs can produce non-instrumentally a copy of the

forms and figures and in the world. Hence Socrates hypothesis about o

replicating roundness, sibilants replicating windiness, and d and t

replicating levelness, etc.

However, the copies need not always be vocally iconic. Just as the

iconically produced voice is already another substance standing for the

thing / event in the world, other substances such as letters and pictures

can copy the thing. Further, there need not be a relation of concrete

iconicity between the thing and its copy, i.e., either of the image or of the

diagrammatic kind, in the sense of Peirce. Thus, substances that are not

directly meant for the representational purpose, but which resemble anoriginal thing or its assumed property, can stand for the latter. Such is the

case, for example, with the emblematic signs. By extension, words and

other representations of such substances can stand for the original thing.

And so on and so forth.

The imitation that inaugurates human language is not forced on man.

Language is an quasi-artistic activity, and thus in part comparable with

painting and music. Many thinkers agree that at the root of languagethere is iconicity, similarity and figurativity, proceeding from the most

easily available natural objects, especially the human body: For Socrates,

certain essences of things in nature can be iconically reproduced by oral

gestures. In due course, these iconic forms are subjected to inter-

subjective correction, and are conventionalised. For Merleau-Ponty, on the

other hand, the verbal gesticulation is decidedly a type of bodily display

of existential / subjective responses in the situated space. Use of

conventional signs, he argues, is a late form of relationship between

20


21/24

people, they presuppose an earlier means of communication.10 Jean-

Jacques Rousseau similarly believes that it is not physical needs like

hunger and thirst, but moral needs and passions such as love, hatred,

pity, anger, etc., that first resulted in language, and figurative language

was the first to be born. Mans first words were singable and passionate

before they became simple and methodical.11

There is implicit agreement among these philosophers that the source of

language, one way or another, is physis, i.e., the body in and of nature.

At the source, the truth of the linguistic signs is figurative. The figurative

truth at first represented in iconic or indexical signs (in the Peircean sense

of these terms) undergoes corrosion and dilution through repeated use of

these signs whose values are relatively fixed by way of tacit convention.The task of philosophy in its classical sense is to discover truth with

regard to and in language as a system of arbitrary signs. It is an

excavation of the system of language. However, truth of the physis

(nature / body) already figures in language.12 In Deleuzian terms, the

series of the natural / figurative forms runs parallel to the series of the

conventional / symbolic / arbitrary signs.13

Thus, the figurative is neither before nor after the arbitrary signs. But it issomething other than the conventional. This is why Aristotle is full of

praise for the use of metaphor. An eye for resemblance involves an

abandonment of the conventionality and the arbitrariness of the given

linguistic signs, and establishes new and previously unnoticed

relationships of similarity between two objects or two words.14 Since

10 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 187.

11 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Essay of the Origin of Language, 1966 edn, p. 12.

12For a discussion of some of these issues, see Nancy, 2000.

13

This point, of course, is of great relevance for a theory of narrative as well as in psycho-analysis. Speaking of metaphor and metonymy in the context of structuralism, Deleuzesays: Ce dplacement relative des deux sries nest pas du tout secondaire; il ne vientpas affecter un terme, du dehors et secondairement, comme pour lui donner undguisement imaginaire des tres et objets qui viennent secondairement occuper cesplaces. Cest porquoi le structuralisme porte tant dattention la mtaphore et lamtonymie. Celles-ci ne sont nullement des figures de limagination, mais dabord desfacteurs structuraux. (Deleuze, G., 1973: 321)

14

This rather positive cognitivist account of metaphors, though not without pitfalls, isassumed by many. Earl MacCormac (1985), for instance, notes that internally,metaphors operate as cognitive processes that produce new insights and new

21


22/24


23/24

Levinas, Emmanuel, 1987. Meaning and Sense, in A. Lingis (tr.) Levinas Collected Philosophical Papers. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

MacCormac, Earl, R., 1985. A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor. Cambridge(Mass.): MIT Press.

Manjali, Franson, 1991. Nuclear Semantics Towards a Theory ofRelational Meaning. New Delhi: Bahri.

Manjali, Franson, 2000. Body, Space and Metphorical-Cultural Worlds, inMeaning, Culture and Cognition. New Delhi: Bahri.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1962 edn. Phenomenology of Perception. (tr.)

Colin Smith. New Jersey: The Humanities Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M., 1960. Signes. Paris: Gallimard.

Merleau-Ponty, M., 1968 edn. The Visible and the Invisible. (ed.) ClaudeLefort; (tr.) A. Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Nancy, Jean-Luc, 2000. Entre deux, Magazine Littraire 392: 54-57.Paris.

Petitot, Jean, 1985. Morphognse du sens. Paris: Presses Universitairesde France.

Plato, Cratylus. in, Hayden, D.E. and E.P. Alworth (eds.) Classics inSemantics. London: Vision Books. (1965)

Radwanska-Williams, Joanna, 1994. The problem of iconicity, inPragmatics 22: 23-36.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1966 edn. Essay on the Origin of Language. (tr.)J.H. Morgan and A. Gode. New York: F. Ungar.

Saussure, F. de, 1974 edn. Course in General Linguistics. (tr.) WadeBaskin. Glasgow: Fontana.

Varela, Francesco, Eleanor Rosch and Evan Thompson, 1991. TheEmbodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge(Mass.): MIT Press.

*****

23


24/24

Documents

Metaphor and Space