ABSTRACT
Metaphors are formally defined as a species of analogy – a trope or figure of speech, often considered as a literary or rhetorical device, but actually the lifeblood of language and performance. Metaphors can also close off thinking, for example by reducing complex bodily experiences to simple mechanics, then reifying such mechanics as abstractions. The value of metaphor, once described as unnecessary ornamentation and to be avoided in scientific explanation, was recovered through the work of cognitive psychologists, who showed that metaphors are essential to thinking and explanation, and not supplementary.
As the study of metaphor has shifted away from isolated texts to ‘real world’ activities (where researching metaphor use has become a form of ethnography), and from individual to ‘shared’ cognition, so it has become apparent that metaphor (i) shapes behaviour through affording an opportunity to ‘think otherwise’, (ii) shapes entire cultural patterns, such as typical ‘medical performance’, and (iii) can close down thinking when metaphor acts negatively. Metaphor use in the world has correlates in brain activity, but cannot be reduced to such activity. Indeed, such brain activity is often construed through metaphor. Knowledge of neural correlates, however, helps to explain why some people find it difficult to employ or understand metaphor, persistently mistake the literal for the metaphorical, or experience a hyper-metaphorized world. Finally, ‘medicine’ is considered itself as a cultural ‘master metaphor’, whereby, for example, the ‘health’ of a culture can be contemplated and addressed, as artists and writers become surrogate doctors or ‘diagnosticians of culture’, noticing and addressing symptoms.
