Metaphors: A Constructivist
Approach
Ana
Pasztor
Florida International University
University Park
pasztora@cs.fiu.edu
“Quite simply: what I believe is missing is
… this paradigm-consciousness … to human communication itself” (Reddy 1993:
164).
“Human
communication will almost always go astray unless real energy is expended”
(Reddy 1993: 174).
The
purpose of this paper is to contextualize the study of metaphors within
constructivist-informed research, in the hope that this process will orient
cognitive scientists to the usefulness of implementing qualitative research
methodologies, especially to using the person of the researcher as the primary
research instrument. First, I explore some of the differences between Johnson
and Lakoff’s Contemporary Metaphor Theory (CMT) and
approaches evolving from it on one hand, and the clinical approach to metaphor
based on a constructivist therapy model, on the other. CMT has been one of the
most significant forces that helped shift cognitive science toward an embodied
approach to cognition. While it has succeeded to place physical experience back
where it belongs in reason and meaning, CMT has, however, also fallen into some
positivist “traps” which lead to problems such as a dualism, a split between
the knower and the known, and with that, to a distrust of introspective,
first-person accounts. In the process of finding conceptual
metaphors—generalizations that govern metaphorical expressions—CMT often
deletes the idiosyncratic characteristics and presuppositions implicit in
linguistic metaphors; it divorces them from people’s sensory experiences, the
“here and now” and the intent of their communications. The
constructivist approach to metaphor that I present in the second part of this
paper accepts as a priori assumptions much of what workers of CMT are
out to prove. In particular, it takes the correlation of conceptual metaphors
and physical experience, as well as the unity of language and thought as
pragmatic givens. Emulating the constructivist therapist’s approach to
metaphors, I show how she deconstructs conceptual metaphors into minute sensory
distinctions, using her own person as her main tool, for the purpose of helping
people change their experiences in desired ways, at will. I illustrate this
process by numerous examples from a wide field of applications, including
mathematics education and psychotherapy.