same fundamental assumptions as CMT but expands the understanding of metaphors and their function to some extent. Johnson writes about schemas and metaphors:
I have been trying to make sense of the claim that metaphors are sometimes creative in giving rise to structure within our experience. That is, they do not merely report preexisting, independent experience; rather, they contribute to the process by which our experience and our understanding (as our way of “having a world”) are structured in a coherent and meaningful fashion (ibid. p. 98).
In this sense, metaphors are also active in making meaning and creatively provide a structure.
These schemata provide structure to experience and are not pre-existing and thus some-thing, which can be revealed either deductively or inductively. Rather, they can emerge in a process of making structure of experience. This emergent approach to metaphor is dominant in recent metaphor studies in the area of emergent metaphors (Cornelissen, 2005;
El Refaie, 2013; Jensen & Cuffari, 2014). Especially Jensen and Cuffari stress the impor-tance of both the emergent nature of metaphor in discourse and conversation and what is termed metaphoricity (Müller, 2009), considering metaphors as a continuum or a degree of metaphoricity rather than a dichotomy. They further claim that metaphoricity might be more fundamental than metaphors. Thus, the dynamics in a conversation provides the stage for the participant’s way of having a world — and not having a world that necessarily was pre-existing but which might emerge out of the conversation. To some extent, Johnson lets the concept of schema be emergent and culturally determined. It is essential to note that the schemas are not innate. They are based in experience.
This notion of schemas as emerging and temporarily stable rather tahn innate or pre-existing and as a way of having a world and metaphors as a way of expressing this in natural conversation is fundamental to the approach to metaphor in the work presented in the articles below. Taking this approach even further, Gibbs and Cameron (2008) describe
“attractors” in a conversational landscape, pulling attention and conversation in a certain direction:
Some metaphors may come to be used as shared ways of talking-and-thinking (...) and these can be seen as stabilizing in the landscape into attractor valleys that the trajectory of talk returns to several times. (ibid, p. 69)
These attractor valleys are essential to the way of regarding metaphor as something different altogether in conversations rather than in written language or prepared speech. Thus, in understanding how metaphors for knowledge emerge and in understanding how knowledge is conceptualized in metaphors, both CMT and MIP fall short. As the research process relevant for this dissertation unfolded, this became more and more obvious. The more detailed consequences of this realization will be unfolded in chapter 7.3.2.
3.4.1 Metaphors in Gesture
Gesture holds an important insight in the potential image schemata and attractors indicated by the use of metaphor. Kendon and others have grounded the field by stating the impor-tance of bodily action in communication (Kendon, 1997, 2004). Apart from gestures used
to point, shape and indicate size, they can also hold a metaphorical meaning (Müller et al., 2008). Analysing gesture in this particular case has the purpose of determining whether any of the metaphors used in language were supported or even started in gesture. As stated by Cienki, CMT has mostly consisted of language analysis (2008). He also states that analysis of gesture and language should be united in order to see if indeed a metaphor is used and if it demonstrates a mental mapping or conceptualization (ibid: 20).
Cienki describes the metaphor analysis in gesture as the identification of any wilful move-ment (ibid: 6). In the context of this dissertation, focus is only on the respondents’ hands even though other elements of body language can also be seen as elements of gesture analysis as is done by Jensen and Cuffari (2014). Citing McNeill and Levy, Cienki describes gesture as 1) beats, 2) deictic, 3) iconic and 4) metaphoric (ibid: 7), the latter being when “... pictorial content presents an abstract idea”. It is this form of metaphorical gestures that the analysis below will be focusing on.
The reason for including gesture in the coding of metaphors is that hands play a role in understanding how concepts come about in conversations. This is clearly stated by e.g. Sweetser (2007), Mittelberg (2006) and Jensens and Cuffari (2014). Mittelberg states that metaphorical gestures have an iconic nature, depicting aspects of the source domain (Mittelberg, 2006, p. 241). Following this line of reasoning, gestures hold information which can help the analyst in understanding the source domain better than from e.g.
looking it up in a dictionary. This in turn is also relevant since “gesture is not only there for the hearer” (Sweetser, 2007, p. 204). She continues: “When two routines are closely correlated in performance, activating one of them will help activation of the other” (ibid.).
Thus, gesturing helps the other participants in the conversation (and the analyst) in better understanding the metaphor or the communication as such, but it also helps the speaker find the right words. 5 Thus, when researching a material of conversational data, looking into gesture in the analysis is essential, both from a metaphor analysis point of view and from an embodied cognition point of view.
3.4.2 Multimodal Metaphors
Following the lines from gesture analysis and embodied and distributed cognition, metaphors can also reveal themselves in other modes. This approach to metaphor analysis is not as well documented as language and gesture analysis. However, some points should be made on creative metaphors in general and the usage of bricks specifically.
As will be described in more detail in the book chapter “Using Metaphors as a Management Tool” (chapter 10 in this dissertation), the approach to metaphors is slightly different in areas beyond the linguistic area. Thus, in management and communication, metaphors are regarded as tools and means of organizational change (Abel & Sementelli, 2005; Argaman, 2008). The tendency, however, goes in the direction of using metaphors as a tool for co-creation of meaning (Cornelissen, 2005). This focus on metaphor as a way of creating meaning rather than revealing meaning is interesting for this project. The term creative metaphor is presented by El Refaie (2013). She argues that to some extent, metaphors are
5In chapter 7 metaphors in language supported by gesture are presented. See figures 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6 and 7.7
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understood intuitively and thus cannot be fully understood by being made explicit. The multimodality of metaphor is (as was also argued by Sweetser above) both helping the speaker and the hearer (ibid. p. 247). Thus, “... the way we represent the world does not simply reflect our thinking but may also shape it” (ibid. p. 237). Metaphors and metaphor analysis is an attempt to understand this shaping of the world or “having a world”, as Johnson puts it (2013, p. 98). This approach to creative metaphors and metaphors distributed in different modes corresponds very well with the joint epistemic action presented in chapter 3.1 and below in chapter 7.3.1. Using a common creative mode makes the negotiation and externalization of ideas and thoughts possible.
This is exactly what is done by Heracleous and Jacobs in their studies of multimodal metaphors (2008; 2006). They propose that in strategy work, toy bricks can be used to construct and externalize ideas and thoughts. This in turn makes differences and similarities visible and constructs a common narrative for a given group of employees, managers or stakeholders in a company. Even though it is inspired by CMT and Lakoff and Johnson’s work, this approach is bottom-up and does not claim to reveal pre-existing metaphorical schemata. Rather, it is a construction of a shared metaphor and an externalization of something that is otherwise abstract and invisible.
The multimodal approach to metaphor is dominant in my studies. The challenge of a multimodal approach is to balance the different approaches in a way which makes the analysis of the modes contribute to each other rather than presenting completely different results. This is further elaborated in chapter 7.4.