Regan Wilson Abstract E6361- Dr. Musgrove August 7, 2012 In my presentation I will explore what the working connection between experience and understanding is while examining the space (the source domain and the end result domain) within the metaphor. This gap begins as an empty space and I will look at how this empty space becomes full through the bondage of experience and understanding. I will research the significance and the similarities among the bonded gap and the empty space to better understand the expansion, in some cases, and the bondage in other cases. The role of experience and understanding are, in fact, the bases of metaphor and meaning. Syntax, pragmatics, mental states, representations, and values fall into the quantitative aspect of the metaphor and we see the birthing of a gap among the source and end result domain. This quantitative aspect falls into the “understanding” domain and the qualitative would fall into the “experience” domain. The qualitative domain works as a bonding of meaning because, without it, understanding could not exist, and vice versa. If the gap remains empty, meaning has not yet been made. The empty gap represents the source domain and the end result domain on opposite ends of the spectrum, before any interpretation has been made. Once the gap between the source domain and the end result domain begins to close, the beginning of interpretation has begun. Once this gap has been married via sensorimotor processing and cognitive neuroscience, the end result is an interpretation. The source domain and the end result domain are no longer separate entities but are now one due to what occurred during the gap. What occurs during the gap, of course, is different for everyone hence why metaphor theorists have strayed away from this gap. The gap cannot be defined linguistically and can only be experienced. This is my attempt, however, to show that this experience of bondage is just as important, if not more so, in extracting meaning from metaphor. The sources I chose for this research project helped me understand that metaphor is a much bigger part of our lives than we originally think. The sources I chose pointed out that metaphor is not limited to linguistics and philosophy and thus, they opened the door of possibility and interpretation of metaphor as it pertained to understanding and experience. Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, and Mark Turner mapped out the meaning making process and metaphorical conventionality which worked as a base board for my research. My question at issue is of importance to myself and to others because we all want to have meaningful lives. If we did not know how to extract the utmost meaning from circumstances and/or metaphor, we would not be living our lives to their capacities. If we could realize that understanding and experience should not exist by themselves, then we would understand that each moment presents us with an immense and deep amount of meaning. If we would allow experience and understanding to bond every time we interpreted something, our lives would be much fuller. Regan Wilson
Annotated Bibliography E-6361- Dr. Musgrove August 7, 2012 Annotated Bibliography Eubanks, Philip. "The Story Of Conceptual Metaphor: What Motivates Metaphoric Mappings?." Poetics Today 20.3 (1999): 419-442. Humanities International Complete. Web. 7 Aug. 2012. In this article, Philip Eubanks talks about metaphorical mappings and refers to them as “licensing stories”. The article is focused mainly on different kinds of rhetoric and how the use of these different kinds of rhetoric creates mappings. There are three parts to Eubanks’ working hypothesis: 1) “my reexamination of conceptual metaphors reveals complexly operating rhetorical patterns, (2) that these patterns help to constitute conceptual metaphors, and (3) that we can develop a richer account of conceptual metaphor as a cultural phenomenon if we consider the patterned relationships between metaphors and other discursive forms…” (1). All of these conceptual metaphors are influenced by politics, philosophy, social attitudes, and individual experiences of the world. Philip Eubanks’ main point in writing the article is to make his readers rethink how conceptual metaphors work. This source comes across, at first, as a little biased, but through the inclusion of different and reliable kinds of evidence, the reader sees that the author is coming from a more objective stance and is merely trying to show a different way of interpreting conceptual metaphors. This source is similar to another source of mine written by Mark Johnson in that both authors believe that past researchers have not studied metaphor in its fullest depth and, therefore, cannot fully understand what a metaphor or what meaning is. This source is extremely helpful for me in explaining the nature of the gap in between the source domain and the end result domain via these “licensing stories”. Through exploring the mappings, I have a better grasp on how the utterance of a metaphor and the interpretation and experience of a metaphor can become bonded for and individual. Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. Print. In The Meaning of the Body, Mark Johnson emphasizes the importance of aesthetics in creating meaning. Johnson argues that the study of metaphor has been inaccurate and dull due to the fact that past theorists leave no room for aesthetics while studying the metaphor and the meaning to be taken away from the metaphor. Throughout the book, Mark Johnson focuses on the “bodily sources of meaning, imagination, and reasoning” (Preface). He focuses on our everyday experience with the world and our internal understanding of the world, and claims that we create meaning by a mixture of the two: body and mind. In this sense, art matters because it helps us understand our everyday existence and it also helps aid in the understanding of the metaphor. The Meaning of the Body is a little objective, in my opinion, because Mark Johnson adds his “two cents” throughout the book. These “two cents” are often written metaphorically. The reader can tell that “meaning” means a lot to the author and missing the point of “meaning” is something that theorists have been doing for ages, and it needs to be corrected. The focus on experience and understanding relates most indefinitely to my research project. I am trying to map out where understanding falls and where experience falls while coming to an interpretation of meaning and Johnson’s research will help me because of his emphasis on experience. Experience (things like reactions to art, music, etc.) play a huge role in closing the gap and Mark Johnson’s research helped me answer my question at issue because of his interest in direct experience. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. Print. Similar to what Mark Johnson did in The Meaning of the Body, Lakoff and Johnson talk about the misinterpretation of meaning in western philosophy as it pertains to metaphor. Metaphor, according to these authors, is a key element to having a meaningful life, and thus, must be understood adequately. An adequate understanding of metaphor is the main goal of what these authors are trying to do. Both authors came to the conclusion that metaphor extends beyond linguistics and philosophy, and because of this, it must extend beyond “understanding” in my use of the word included in my question at issue. Lakoff and Johnson supply an “alternative account in which human experience and understanding, rather than objective truth, played the central role” (Preface, x). The authors talk about a vast array of different metaphors that we all live by, both consciously and unconsciously. In pointing out how our conceptual system works and that we are often unaware of it, the authors have helped me, and many other readers, I am sure, become aware of how these conceptual metaphors are working. Through observing what happens when I conceptualize something, my research about experience and understanding and the gap between the two has become much clearer. This book brought to my attention how and why we come to understand something and, as a result, has made me understand the way the qualitative and the quantitative is working in my brain to create meaning. Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. More than Cool Reason A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989. Print. George Lakoff and Mark Turner change their focus in More than Cool Reason to that of metaphor in poetry. Since poetry works to illuminate experience for readers, the authors examine how metaphor is helping in this. The authors point out that poetry would not exist if metaphor didn’t and because metaphor is such a huge part in poetry, it has to be a huge part of all art. Lakoff and Turner point out the difference between poets and non-poets does not rest in the fact that they use metaphor and others don’t, but rather in the fact that poets are more aware of the metaphors they use and non-poets are less aware of them, and have less skill in using them. The authors delve into the ordinary ways in which we think so that we can better understand poetic creativity. They explore the everyday metaphors and concepts used by humans, but not recognized as metaphor by humans. Lakoff and Turner touch on how experience shapes metaphor, such as how habit and routine experience creates some of these sub-conscious metaphors we are not aware of in our everyday lives. Cognitive knowledge and commonplace knowledge must take place in understanding metaphor, according to the authors, and they explain the why and the how of this in a couple chapters of the book. The authors tie culture to an individual’s mind and this is what I plan on doing in my research with experience and understanding. The two concepts are interchangeable so the research that Mark Turner and George Lakoff did is rich with helpful information for my project. Mikkonen, Kai. "The "Narrative Is Travel" Metaphor: Between Spatial Sequence And Open Consequence." Narrative 15.3 (2007): 286-305. Humanities International Complete. Web. 7 Aug. 2012. Kai Mikkonen investigates the motivation behind the metaphor and focuses on the question of relation between time and consequence. Mikkonen talks about how the metaphor humanizes the experience of time and space and that this understanding is intimately related to experience. He explores these aspects by focusing on how metaphor works in a narrative. The metaphor takes the reader somewhere else entirely. This “other place” is accomplished through the understanding of the metaphor and the experience of the metaphor. “Travel”, “Movement”, and “Journey” have been popular concepts in Lakoff and Johnson’s research and Mikkonen elaborates on this. The article focuses mainly on consecutiveness and consequence in narrative travel writing. The author talks about the limits of metaphor in writing. These limits are of special importance to my research because I am arguing that these limits can be overcome through placing more importance on what happens before interpretation, while floating in the midst of the gap. This article will help me with my research in that it explores the effects of the metaphor after it is understood and experienced. Therefore, I can better elaborate and understand what happens after the bond has been made among experience and understanding. I can take this end result to prove that metaphor is pertinent in every aspect of life and should be understood as such. Okonski, Lacey, and Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. "Art Is The Sex Of The Imagination: Explaining The Meanings Of XYZ Metaphors." Textus 23.3 (2010): 697-718. Humanities International Complete. Web. 7 Aug. 2012. Lacy and Gibbs conduct an experiment involving a group of university students completing two different interpretation tasks. The authors explore the interactions among the topic tenor and the vehicle tenor. They propose their experiment and hypothesis through introducing three mappings (X, Y, Z), instead of the traditional X and Y mapping. In this article, X=art, Y=sex, and Z= imagination. The authors talk about the different possibilities of interpreting art, sex and imagination which they back up through their experiment at the university. They then begin to investigate what is in between X, Y, and Z, which is what I refer to as “the gap” in my question at issue. What is in between these things beside conventionality? The authors attempt to answer this question by documenting and researching the moment by moment process of interpretation. They come to the conclusion that people have diverse cognitive and aesthetic responses to different XYZ metaphors. This article will be helpful in my research project because it shows specific examples of different interpretations to the same metaphor. The fact that different things can be taken from the same metaphor proves that personal experience comes in to play while the individual is in limbo (in the gap). Blog 34
Chapter 10 8/6/12 The Meaning of the Body In Chapter 10, Johnson talks more about the fact that philosophers have dismissed art and aesthetics when it comes to interpreting and landing at meaning. These philosophers deny art any “meaningful” meaning because they refuse to look at art as a form of language. “According to this language-centered view, music, painting, architecture, dance, and so on do not have meaning it its “proper” sense, and poetry has meaning only to the extent that it can be likened to prose” (207). Johnson presents his hypothesis. 1) Aesthetics is not just an art theory, but rather should be regarded broadly as the study of how humans make and experience meaning, because 2) The processes of embodied meaning in the arts are the very same ones that make linguistic meaning possible. (209) Johnson explores Western philosophers and analyzes why they have devaluated art and aesthetics when it comes to meaning. Blog 33 Chapter 9 8/6/12 The Meaning of the Body In Chapter 9, Johnson talks about how humans make the leap from embodied meaning to interpreting abstract thoughts. Johnson claims that metaphor is what makes interpretation into abstract thought possible. The Purposeful Activities are Journeys Metaphor is the main outlet to understanding abstract thought, according to Johnson. The only way that the Purposeful Activities are Journeys Metaphor makes sense is through the Primary Metaphor which arises “naturally from our embodied experience” (178). “A Primary metaphor is based on experiential correlation between a particular sensorimotor domain and some domain pertaining to a subjective experience or judgment” (178). Johnson goes on to elaborate on the primary metaphor claiming that the source domain is the physical closeness of a thing and a target domain which is the physical intimacy of a thing (the primary metaphor= relationship is closeness). As a result, the primary metaphor results in humans bodily organs interacting with the environment. Johnson talks about the conceptual metaphor theory and how, without this, understanding the abstract would be impossible. There is one thing that Johnson did not elaborate on while talking about the Primary Metaphor. I am wondering if these Primary Metaphors are constantly changing as we learn and adapt to them from childhood to adulthood. If so, are they working the same way as the base metaphors we explored in previous chapters? Blog 32
Question at Issue in progress we create the magic and marry the gap Latest version of question at issue: QAI: What is the working connection between experience and understanding while examining the space (the source domain and the end result domain) within the metaphor? I have removed the term “empty space” for my newest version of my question at issue because, through my research, I have learned that this space does not remain empty, and as a result, I needed to remove that term. I am still going to research the significance and similarities among the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the metaphor to better understand how the gap is either expanding or coming together. Working thesis: The role of experience and understanding are, in fact, the bases of metaphor and meaning. Syntax, pragmatics, semantics, mental states, representations, and values fall into the quantitative aspect of metaphor and begin to create the gap. This quantitative aspect would “understand” and the qualitative would be “experience”. The qualitative works as a bond to meaning because, without it, understanding could not exist, and vice versa. If the gap remains empty, meaning has not been made. Once the gap has been married via sensorimotor processing and cognitive neuroscience, then the end result is an interpretation of metaphor. How sources have helped adjust QAI: “The Meaning of the Body” by Mark Johnson really helped me in understanding the nature of the “gap” between the source domain of a metaphor and the end result domain. Prior to reading this book, I was under the impression that this gap was empty and remained there, even after interpretation and meaning was made. I thought of this “empty space” as some sort of magical element that created meaning for us. After reading Johnson’s embodiment of meaning hypothesis, I realized that the closing of the gap that we each do individually is where the magic lay. Blog 31
Chapter 8 The Meaning of The Body In Chapter 8, Johnson reiterates his main point of the book that the brain and the cognitive neuroscience, neural, and bodily bases must all work together to create meaning. The reason that most scientists refuse to accept Johnson's claim is a matter of immature study. Cognitive neuroscience help us to understand the nature of concepts and, thus, without neuroscience, we would be "lost in translation". Johnson then talks about the different concepts and branches of the neuroscience that support the "embodiment of meaning" hypothesis. Johnson talks about the neural perspective of his "embodiment of meaning" hypothesis and how, without this, we would not know how the concepts work. Johnson proposes two challenges that fall under the categories mentioned above: 1. "If concepts are not disembodied symbolic representations, then what are they, from a neural perspective?"(157) and, 2. "Can all concepts be embodied, that is, grounded in sensorimotor experience? (157)" Johnson presents evidence "that meaning of concrete concepts is grounded in activations of sensorimotor areas of the brain(157)" and shows how "abstract concepts also rely on sensorimotor areas of the brain and are thus embodied." At the end of the chapter, Johnson makes the statement that "we must never equate brain with mind (175)". After all of his ranting about the connections and oneness of these two things, this blunt statement struck me. I may have been misinterpreting Johnson's definition of embodiment of meaning, but the whole time I was under the impression that these two concepts, brain and mind, must be equated. Blog 30
Chapter 7 Johnson The Meaning of the Body “The Corporeal Roots of Symbolic Meaning” The Space and Logic of the Body Meaning arises from organization-environment interactions, and we too have neural maps. Shapes, patterns, relations, up-down, are mappings in our mind that help us to understand those interactions. Abstract conceptualization and reasoning are usually connected to language and conversation. Johnson asks how is it possible for meaning to emerge in our bodily experience and still be the basis for abstract thought. To answer this question, Johnson talks about “coupling” and examines which ones most obviously make our reality. Johnson dives into the structural dimensions of our sensorimotor experience. Johnson talks about image schemas and the ones in which are used daily and automatically. These schemas help aid us in understanding up and down, side to side, ect so that we can things like walk and talk. The schema’s he includes in the chapter are; center-periphery schema, verticality schema, source-path-goal-schema, scalarity schema, and container schema. Johnson brings up three important aspects related to image schemas. The first is that “image schemas are an important part of what makes it possible for our bodily experiences to have meaning for us” (139). Second, “there is logic of image-schematic structure” (139). Third, “the image schemas are not to be understood as either merely “mental” or merely “bodily”, but rather as contours of what Dewey called the body-mind” (139). As Johnson suggests, body and mind are “not two separate things, but rather are abstractions from our ongoing, continuous, interactive experience” (140). I have some issues grappling with this statement. How can we recognize both our body AND our mind if there isn’t some sort of awareness apart from body and mind to do so? If we were simply body, then we would be body. A pen does not think about itself being a pen. So what is the thing that recognizes the body and mind? There is obviously something else to this equation, a certain kind of awareness, maybe? All thinking emerges from the qualitative world where it must return. Johnson talks about experiencing taste, smell, oak trees, and etc in his own, everyday world as well as in some poems like William Stafford’s poem referred to on page 70. As Johnson suggests on page 71, we have an uncanny need to describe these qualities with certain adjectives. I have always wondered if some aspect of the experience of a thing was taken away through the humans need to describe them. Without previous conceptions about a thing, we might experience it as if it were the first time. Should we experience everything for the “first time” or is that what basic conceptual metaphors do? In chapter three, Johnson asserts that feeling comes before meaning and that that emotion has been disregarded with respect to meaning because philosophers can’t explain “private feelings” (53). Johnson claims emotion is one of the most essential aspects of meaning in the chapter. Johnson briefly touches on phenomenology and American Pragmatism, two philosophies which give us in depth insight into emotions. He then talks about the cognitive neuroscience of the emotions to counteract the often misunderstood aspects of feelings as they pertain to creating meaning.
Johnson bases his claims about the cognitive neuroscience of emotions on researchers Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux. He coins Damasio’s work when he talks of the “systems geared toward our continued existence, growth, and flourishing. These systems include: 1. Metabolism 2. Basic reflexes 3. Immune system 4. Pain and pleasure behaviors 5. Basic drives and motivations 6. Emotions 7. Feelings (56) According to both researchers, without these things humans would have no way to exist. All of these things cannot be talked about as one “source” and therefore, the author talks about these things as a type of awareness to bodily functions. He says this awareness is coined by the term “emotional responses” (58) which arise continuously from changes within an organism. Johnson then goes to redefine and adjust the definition of emotion to include five different, complex categories so that the term “emotion” would better fit our purposes. On page 61 Johnson asserts that “most of the time we do not need language, nor even elaborate conceptual schemes, to grasp the felt meaning of our current situations as it is unfolding, moment by moment” (61). Many artists and poets would say that they help an experience come out in readers and, as a result, would probably disagree with this statement. Language does not add to this experience of feeling? |
Regan Wilson
My name is Regan Wilson and I like to sit in the sunshine and laugh. ArchivesCategories
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