1 - Metaphor Use: Strategies and Methods

Summary

If metaphors can be used and reused for multiple purposes, how can such varied engagements be analysed? To answer this question, this chapter first distinguishes between metaphors’ functions and their uses and fleshes out and nuances some of the binary assumptions about metaphors that I describe in the introduction. Metaphors’ functions tend to be cast in mutually exclusive roles: they familiarise or defamiliarise, they are prescriptive or descriptive, they limit or open up. Accordingly, the effects of metaphors are presented in binaries, too: they are considered risky, even dangerous, on the one hand, or empowering and therapeutic on the other. While one might question whether or not it is beneficial to reproduce such binary classifications – I should also add that other scholars such as Alan Bleakley prefer lists over binaries (see Chapter 6) – the categories allow me to point to a gap in the existing research which only few studies have tackled so far, namely the observation that how people actually use metaphors criss-crosses such neat categorisations and evaluations.

Taking Arthur Frank’s memoir At the Will of the Body (1991) as an exemplar of innovative metaphor use, this chapter examines several of these frames. In metaphor theory, metaphor analysis focuses on the implied conceptual mappings of a metaphor and offers vocabulary for describing writers’ creative strategies in rethinking those mappings. Narrative analysis emphasises the narrative context in which metaphors tend to be embedded, exploring how parallel stories but also narrative criteria such as character, setting and tone can challenge existing mappings of metaphor or inspire new ones. One of Frank’s chapters in particular – ‘The Struggle Is Not a Fight’ – sustains the battle metaphor for illness over the course of several pages, while ingeniously interweaving it with other, parallel narratives. Both Frank’s careful questioning of the metaphor’s mappings as well as his use of additional narratives lead to a gradual thickening and saturation of the metaphor. The argument here is that a combined analysis, including approaches from both metaphor theory and narrative theory, together illuminate the full range of metaphorical engagement better than they do separately.

FUNCTIONS OF METAPHORS

One major function of metaphor is to name, clarify and crystallise: metaphors help fill gaps in language.