Metametaphorically Speaking: Notes on metaphors

Here are some more notes on familiar themes in my thinking that I'll reference and link back to on other posts.

When I talk about metaphors, I'm not all that interested in exact terminology and direct correspondence — such as trying to determine when perhaps something might be an allegory or analogy or parable rather than a metaphor.

I'm more interested in the mechanics.

The trajectories.

The engineering parts and relational dynamics within the various working parts.

(It drives me mad when someone talks about pushing it too far; surely all we need is the right reframing or additional cog or lens, and we can keep pushing…?)

Anyway. Keeping it simple, when the mechanics of an idea turn up in the shape of another familiar scenario, that's when I see myself as using a metaphor.

If I called it a parable, I think that would be to call too much attention to the distinct shape of the story. I'd rather be looking at the nuts and bolts and hinges and levers and cogs and pulleys, rather than crafting a story that you have to leave alone afterwards.

(As children, we used to have a Ladybird Book at home called Levers, Pulleys and Engines. That's what's in my mind here.)

What I like about metaphors (in the way I'm describing them) is how they function as fresh scaffolding for thought experiments. You can build them however you like. Like if Simon (see my post on British Childrens TV in the 1970s) was drawing new worlds using physics experiments, and perhaps quantum physics. That's part of what's happening on my site beyond the Stage Door, in a way.

...

Sometimes we use a word or phrase in a way that is metaphorical.

A ceiling, for example.

It might be the ceiling in your house, that creates a boundary and a shelter.

Or the concept of 'putting a ceiling on' the amount of money you intend to bid at an auction, which again is both a boundary and a shelter in a sense, but marks the point at which you have decided you can go no higher in how much you would pay.

And how about a glass ceiling in a particular industry — a limit that applies to some, which you can see through, may be invisible and yet still effective. It might actually be something that can be smashed through, but it's certainly a kind of boundary. Perhaps the idea of a shelter might be used more like a filter to keep some from passing beyond even though others may.

(Again, you might decide — and you may be right — that the way I'm expressing this lacks rigour. Please let me know. I want to think straight, but in this moment I want to get something in my head down and posted before I forget.)

An example I found fascinating is drawn from Knirsh, talking about the word 'veil.'

There are all kinds of veils, from the fragile sort that a bride may wear on a wedding day to the veil of the ancient temple which was so thick it was far from fragile, and yet it tore in two at the moment of Jesus's death, according to the Bible.

These specific examples depend on recognising different cultural norms, of course. And other associations might come into play — for example, what a particular veil meant to a particular bride, say in an arranged marriage, or when it was passed down through generations. Any reader or language speaker encountering or using the word 'veil' will bring endless unique thoughts and associations to the table, and these aspects contribute to the meaning. The word cannot arrive in a vacuum.

So all forms of a word like that have something in common, but differences too. Put them altogether and you have the culmination of them all, with every related thought and concept and idea all wrapped in that one word.

And yet no one veil could — in an ordinary sense, at least — contain every different sense. Poetically, yes, perhaps. But literally, probably not.

So in my thinking and writing I've been intrigued by Knirsch's idea of metametaphor.

— We have first the metaphor with its own distinct meaning. Each of them.

— We have all of them together, revealing what relates every instance, without taking anything away from each one's distinctive version.

— And then we ALSO have the overlapping meanings that create paradox and excesses, and obviously far too much for our human minds to hold in totality and still make sense. Yet for a fluent language user, that whole complicated archive of usage resides somehow within (or alongside or in the background of) every single instance of that word. That produces echoes and resonance and paradox and so on in a dynamic relationship between the whole discourse contained in that word — veil, or ceiling — and each distinctive use. The word becomes more than just a label. It's more like a living concept continually feeding back and forward into and out of every single version of the metaphor.

Like a wedding veil. Fragile. Like a veil of mist. Like a veiled comment.

In some ways like that temple veil. A sacred threshold.

Or then again, the temple veil. Thick and unbreakable. Like thick fog rather than mist, but still… And yet in some ways almost invitational in its statement, like that wedding veil.

Imagine the metametaphor. A veil of veils, perhaps. The pattern that is true of all veils, and the reason individual examples present us with more than just 'a net over a bride's face,' or 'a drape.' The ongoing scaffolding of the metametaphor adds invisibly to the picture a complex lens we intuit but rarely mention.

And so on.

So much more to say, but this placeholder post allows me a reference point.