Uncouth Reflections

Fenster writes:

We are often cautioned to make judicious use of metaphors in communicating.  It’s good advice.  It’s tempting to want to employ metaphor’s coattails as ladders to climb the commanding heights of the mountaintop of ideas.  But it is easy to go too far, and to end up with goofy formulations suitable for the New Yorker’s Block That Metaphor sidebars.  Out of such concern, the advice to be prudent is typically made on aesthetic grounds.

But there are other reasons to be careful around metaphors.  One reason is that they are (metaphor alert!) the umami of communication.  They not only contribute flavor as umami does but they also share umami’s ability to hide in plain sight everywhere.  Guy Deutscher describes all language as a “reef of dead metaphors.”  As R.L.G puts it in an Economist article, “it is literally impossible to be literal.”

Most of the time we do not realise that nearly every word that comes out of our mouths has made some kind of jump from older, concrete meanings to the ones we use today. This process is simple language change. Yesterday’s metaphors become so common that today we don’t process them as metaphors at all. 

So we speak figuratively more than we think, and may perhaps evidence a certain overconfidence as a result of the mistaken belief that we are mostly literal.  We are unconscious machines for the making of metaphors.

And when we make them we tend to believe them, and to put the metaphor cart before the reality horse.  There is the new word, the new idea, and it feels as if it is plainly true as a thing-in-itself.  Meanwhile it is just a bundle of meanings that sits atop a scaffolding which may itself be sturdy or not.

That suggests another, related reason to be careful around metaphors.  Because we tend to take the figurative literally, they can be incredibly powerful tools for making meaning and persuading.  Too powerful, perhaps, since their power derives from the seductive allure of feeling as though one knows.  Are they true?  That all depends on the underlying situation that the metaphor is hoping to describe.  Maybe yes, maybe no.

Here’s an example.  A number of years back I saw a debate on the subject of whether Massachusetts voters should endorse a tax limitation package.  A prominent tax-cut advocate, Barbara Anderson, made the case for limitation.

The case against limitation was argued by (a younger) Barney Frank.

The argument went back and forth on the facts.  It only really heated up, and got to the point where people were prepared to be persuaded, when both debaters got their metaphors in motion.

Frank agreed that of course there was some fat in government spending.  But that it was not excessive and, more importantly, efforts to extricate government fat are like trying to cut the fat out of a steak with a knife.  The fat is marbelized into the structure of the meat, and efforts to cut it out will result in cutting vital tissue as well.

No, no countered Anderson.  You don’t need to use a knife.  You have only to put the steak on the grill and turn up the heat.  The fat melts away.

It was a lovely debate moment.  Those watching had their choice of two prime metaphors.  But which was most persuasive that night?

There was no immediate answer in the debate.  The debaters rolled out their metaphorical cannons at the end and fired and no conclusion was drawn on which one was better.

So, now, which is the most persuasive?  Is one better?

Well, I think you have to look beyond the metaphors themselves, with their seductive power to convince you that yes, you’ve got it!  You have to look directly at the underlying situation.  At that is something that might be known, or knowable.

Is there evidence as to what tends to actually happen when budgets are artificially constrained?  Yes, I think so.  And on that count, Frank wins the night.  The “fat draining away” metaphor is simply unlike most all budget cut situations as they are played out in the real world.  Most of the time, it is a matter of wielding a knife and cutting both fat and meat.  That’s just how it happens in the all-too-human real world.

That does not mean tax cut limitations are or were a bad idea.  It does mean that metaphors are only as good as what they purport to describe, and that people are generally quite willing to consider a metaphor they like to be an explanation when it is just another barnacle on the metaphor reef.

Not for nothing that the Greeks both prized rhetoric and fretted over its tendency to sophistry.  Like most lessons from the past, that is something that must be learned and relearned anew.