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Metaphors of Language
A Discursive and Experimental Analysis of the Role of Metaphor in the Construction of National
Languages:
The Case of Croatian and Serbian
Višnja Čičin-Šain
Dissertation presented for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD) Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages
Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo
2019
Metaphors of Language
A Discursive and Experimental Analysis of the Role of Metaphor in the Construction of National Languages:
The Case of Croatian and Serbian
Višnja Čičin-Šain
© Višnja Čičin-Šain
Višnja Čičin-Šain 2019
Title: Metaphors of Language: A Discursive and Experimental Analysis of the Role of Metaphor in the Construction of National Languages: The Case of Croatian and Serbian
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank Professor Ljiljana Šarić for accepting the task of being my supervisor, for her detailed and useful feedback, and for giving me scholarly and intellectual freedom throughout the conception and writing of this thesis to pursue and develop my own ideas. I am enormously indebted to Professor Mateusz-Milan Stanojević, my co-supervisor, who has followed my scholarly development from the very beginning, when I was still a graduate student, and who has always encouraged me to ask unconventional questions and strive for the best. His support and insightful comments were invaluable in the final stages of the completion of this thesis.
My heartfelt thanks go to Ole Sneltvedt, a dear colleague and friend, without whose long inspiring conversations and uplifting jokes my office routine and stay in Norway would have been much less enjoyable. I also wish to express my warm gratitude to other colleagues at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, Stijn Vervaet and Kristina Tanasković, who made both my scholarly and personal experience at the Institute a memory that I will always cherish. Special thanks go to Matthew Williamson for his friendship and invaluable language advice. Outside academia, I wish to express my gratitude to Ana Vulić and Jelena Golubović for their friendship and for taking my mind off work from time to time.
Above all, I am forever thankful to my family and my husband, Neno, without whose immense patience, love and kindness, taking a path of a doctoral candidate would have been impossible.
Oslo, 7 June 2019
Contents
Part One
……….…………11. Introduction ..………....………3
1.1 Research Aim, Questions, and Hypotheses ………...5
1.2 Situating the Research Questions: Metaphor in Language and Thought, Post-Yugoslav Sociolinguistic Situation ………...………....…7
1.2.1 Croatian and Serbian Post-Yugoslav Language Debates as a Focus of Research………...…….……….………...7
1.2.2 Metaphor as a Lens for Analyzing Discursive Constructions of National Languages and Language Debates ..……….………...…………....……....9
1.2.3 Why Use a Mixed-Methods Approach to Metaphor and Dirtiness as a Grounding Domain for Language Attitudes? ...11
1.3 Thesis Structure ...………..……13
1.4 A Note on Writing Conventions ………...………….14
2. Theoretical Background………...….15
2.1 How Are Metaphors Cognitive? ...17
2.2 Metaphor as a Phenomenon of Language and Discourse …………..……….……24
2.2.1 Discourse as Action and a Source of Cognition …….………...…..24
2.2.2 Discourse-Oriented Approaches to Metaphor ……….…..…..…29
2.2.3 Metaphorical Underpinnings of the Folk Models of LANGUAGE ……..………...32
2.2.4 National Languages: The LANGUAGE–LANGUAGE USERS/COMMUNITY metonymy as an Underlying Cognitive Mechanism ………...…38
2.3 Metaphor as a Phenomenon of Thought? ...44
2.3.1 Criticism of Conceptual Metaphor Theory………..44
2.3.1.1 Lack of Autonomy of Abstract Concepts……….45
2.3.1.2 Non-Linguistic Evidence and the Limits of CMT………48
2.3.1.3 Limits and Paradoxes of (Neural) CMT………...…49
2.3.1.4 Limits of Criticism………50
2.3.2 Dual Grounding Approach to Language Purism ……….52
2.4 Croatian and Serbian Sociolinguistic Context ………58
3. Methodology ...61
3.1 Metaphor-Oriented Discourse Analysis: Data Collection and Metaphor Identification …62 3.1.1 Discursive Material: Collection and Selection Procedure………...62
3.1.1.1 Croatian……….……63
3.1.1.2 Serbian………..65
3.1.2 Coding and Metaphor Identification: Rationale and Procedure………..68
3.1.2.1 Rationale behind the Choice of the Metaphor Identification Procedure………..69
3.1.2.1.1 Typical Problems Faced by a Metaphor Analyst…………..73
3.1.2.2 The Analytical Steps Taken in Coding and Metaphor Identification……….……76
3.1.3 Position of the Analyst……….79
3.2 Psycholinguistic Experiment: Methodology and Operationalization ……….………80
3.2.1 Preliminary Research: Linguistic Stimulus………...………..81
3.2.1.1 Selection of the Linguistic Stimuli and the Design of the Preliminary Questionnaire ………81
3.2.1.2 Selection of Stimuli for the Main Experiment……….……….84
3.2.2 The Main Experiment: Methods, Procedure, and Stimuli………..……….86
3.2.2.1 Participants………….……….………..86
3.2.2.2 E-Prime and Questionnaire………..…….…86
3.2.2.3 Experimental Manipulation of Dirtiness………...……88
3.2.2.3.1 Keyboard as a Disgust-Elicitation Instrument………...88
3.2.2.3.2 The Experimental Manipulation Check………...89
4. Summaries of Articles ...91
4.1 Article 1 ……….……….……..91
4.2 Article 2………..………….………..93
4.3 Article 3……….……..…………..95
5. Conclusion ...97
6. References ...101
Part Two
...115Article 1. Metaphors for language contact and change: Croatian language and national identity...117
Article 2. Metaphorical Dimensions of Language Purism: The Case of Croatian ...149
Article 3. Taking Care of Serbian – by Reading, or by Fighting? Metaphors and
Pseudo-Metaphors in the Serbian public discourse...187
Appendix: The Preliminary Questionnaire ...225
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Part One
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1. Introduction
Set in the context of the post-Yugoslav, or former Serbo-Croatian, linguistic area, one of the two main goals of this dissertation is to better understand how metaphors and linguistic figurations discursively create and sustain Croatian and Serbian as national languages and symbols of collectivity. Metaphorical (figurative) language is taken not only as an integral part of discourse in general, but also as central in the representation of national languages that are, much like nations themselves, not given or self-evident and immediate entities, but ones that require mediated, discursive construction. Accordingly, this thesis elucidates how, out of otherwise complex and spatially and temporally displaced phenomena, figurations in discourse transform Croatian and Serbian into reified, delineated, and unique entities emblematic of their respective nations, as well as how the evaluative nature of metaphor sustains their mutual separation and a link to a national dimension.1 More specifically, Article 1 focuses on Croatian institutionalized discourse and investigates the modalities of the construction of danger through metaphorical representations of unwanted language contact and change. The article focused on Serbian discourse, Article 3, analyzes the literal aspects of metaphors of violence towards the Serbian language and the political ramifications of such figurations.
The analysis of the role of metaphor in nationally motivated language ideology in the context of Croatian and Serbian has not yet been a focus of in-depth research, which is surprising given that language debates within the territory of the former Yugoslavia are still rather active and periodically re-emerge in the public arena.2 In deconstructing the relevant figurations within their respective specific micro-contexts, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of Croatian and Serbian post-Yugoslav language ideologies and the possible negative (political) consequences arising out of a non-critical use of metaphor.
Contemporaneously, this thesis points to the instability of the classification of (national)
1This dissertation was written within the project Discourses of the Nation and the National, whose overarching theoretical approach sees nations, national symbols, and nationhood as products in large part constructed in discourse, and (the construction of) national languages as part and parcel of nation-building (e.g., Gellner 1983, Anderson 1991).
2For instance,Jezici i nacionalizmi (Languages and Nationalisms), is a project conducted in 2016 whose main purpose was to “discuss the existence of four ‘political’ languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and Serbia.” http://jezicinacionalizmi.com. (Accessed 1 April 2019).
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languages and their ultimate dependence on discursive (dis)agreement, where discourse in itself is inherently biased, not least because of figurations. Moreover, when observed within the specific micro-contexts of Croatian and Serbian, and in relation to their respective cultural narratives, metaphors and figurations themselves display an instability of meaning and a range of ramifications.
Whereas Articles 1 and 3 adopt discourse analysis as the methodological approach to Croatian and Serbian language debates and their figurative representations, the conceptual, or embodied, approach to metaphor presents the theoretical underpinning for investigating the second major interrelated aim of the dissertation – the role of metaphor in nationally- motivated language purism. Therefore, in addition to discourse analysis, this dissertation investigates the influence (and limits) of embodiment, or conceptual metaphor, on nationally motivated language purism. The embodiment-oriented experiment, presented in Article 2, investigates the effects of DIRTINESS/CONTAMINATION in relation to language attitudes as one type of social cognition3. Specifically, the experimental part of the thesis tests the psychological reality of the BAD IS DIRTY conceptual link, which is contextualized in Croatian linguistic purism where it has been hypothesized that the respondents’ contact with physical dirtiness might influence the (un)acceptability of foreign words.
By merging the conceptual metaphor approach with the “classical” sociolinguistic question of language attitudes, the experimental part of the dissertation moves away from traditional approaches to language purism and tentatively offers a contribution to cognitive sociolinguistics. At the same time, the experiment probes the boundaries of “conceptual metaphor”, thus contributing not only to the understanding of post-Yugoslav sociolinguistics, but also to recent discussions about metaphor and embodied cognition (e.g., Hampe 2017a, also Duschinsky, Schnall, &Weiss 2016).
3For the explanation of the use of small capital letters, see the notes on writing conventions in Section 1.4.
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1.1 Research Aim, Questions, and Hypotheses
The general and specific aims of this dissertation are formulated according to two major theoretical approaches to metaphor, namely the discursive-linguistic approach that sees metaphor as a (predominantly) linguistic and discursive phenomenon and the conceptual, or embodied, approach that considers metaphor as a phenomenon of human conceptual system and thought.
Accordingly, the questions can be roughly divided in two major groups:
1. Research questions concerning the discursive analysis (conceptualization and representation of national languages, language debates, etc.):
General questions:
• How do figurations and blends help to construe and sustain Croatian and Serbian as national languages and symbols of collectivity?
• How is figurative language used for ideological purposes?
Specific questions:
• How does metaphorical language construct danger and threat in the context of Croatian, and what is its function?
• What is the function of metaphors of VIOLENCE in the context of Serbian discourse about language?
2. Research questions concerning the embodied effects of metaphor and the grounding of puristic emotions:
General:
• Does metaphor have a reality beyond the linguistic one, as claimed by the advocates of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003) and, similarly, some social psychologists (e.g., Landau, Robinson, & Meyer 2014a, Landau 2016, Duschinsky, Schnall, & Weiss 2016)? If so, is it possible for conceptual metaphor to be manifested in language purism (as a type of negative social emotion)? Generally speaking, is it possible that metaphor plays a role in sociolinguistic cognition?
6 Specific questions:
Having in mind the nuances of the conceptual-discursive continuum, as well as the embodied- social one in relation to metaphor (e.g., Kövecses 2015), I posited two hypotheses for the experimental part of the thesis:
H1 (A Strong Cognitive Hypothesis):
• Language purism is grounded in the domain of DIRTINESS/CONTAMINATION (following a number of observed instances of linguistic metaphors).
• Touching a dirty prime can influence one’s language attitudes. A tactile sensation of dirtiness, acting as a “springboard” for the application of concepts culturally associated with DIRTINESS, will affect assessments of foreign linguistic elements.
H2 (A Weak Cognitive Hypothesis):
• Metaphor is observable only in language and is not a matter of thought, in the sense of CMT. Also, language purism is primarily an emotion depending on the knowledge of social dynamics, i.e., it inevitably includes a social aspect, which is an “external”
dimension and not an “internal”, embodied one, to use Harder’s (2007) terminology.
Therefore, the strong cognitive effects of metaphor (DIRTINESS) should not be observed, or should only be observed to a limited extent (in line with Sinha’s (1999) Dual Grounding Theory).
The aim of the general and specific discourse-oriented questions is not only to better understand the role of figurative language in the conceptualization of Croatian and Serbian language ideologies, but also to engage critically with some unacceptable and even controversial discursive public practices in the hope that they might ultimately be done away with.
The experimental part of the thesis is more closely oriented to metaphor proper, and its aim is to test the limits of the influence of embodiment on language attitudes, as one type of social cognition. The idea and the hypotheses for the embodiment-based experiment followed naturally out of a close reading of a number of linguistic metaphors circulating in the Croatian discourse. Within the discursive data, DIRTINESS and CONTAMINATION were systematically used as metaphorical domains for framing unacceptable or unwanted language contact and change. Because of the linguistic material that served for the formulation of the
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embodiment hypotheses, the experiment was conducted in Croatia with the help of Croatian- speaking respondents. The experimental part of the thesis presents a step away from a strictly discursive-analytical approach and helps better understand not only language purism as an attitude/emotion, but also the nature of metaphor itself.
1.2 Situating the Research Questions: Metaphor in Language and Thought, the Post-Yugoslav Sociolinguistic Situation
In the following three subsections, I will briefly introduce the background to the research and explain the rationale behind the choices of the research questions.
1.2.1 Croatian and Serbian Post-Yugoslav Language Debates as a Focus of Research
After the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia as a polity in the 1990s, a relative resolution of ethnic and national tensions was reached. One by one, the newly born nation- states followed a romanticist model of nation-language idealization and insisted on seeing their national name in the name of their language. Presently, there are four standard internationally recognized languages in the place of Serbo-Croatian: Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. Although ethno-national conflicts have ceased with the end of the war, the question of language re-emerges from time to time, gaining public attention and sparking fervent discussions. The abundance of language debates within the territory of the former Yugoslavia might be attributed to the fact that the nations living there are situated in a relatively small area and that they strive to keep their individual integrity by emphasizing their differences. In doing so, language issues have long been an arena where national borders and national identities have been asserted, disputed, and denied among national and ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia (e.g., Škiljan 2002, Greenberg 2008, Peti-Stantić 2008, Čolović 2008, Kordić 2010, Bugarski 2012, Radanović Felberg & Šarić 2013, Langston &
Peti-Stantić 2014). Simply put, language ideologies have been intimately related primarily to national ideologies, and discussions about standard Croatian or standard Serbian are hardly imaginable without considering an intra-national and/or territorial dimension. Language
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identity of “successor languages” – Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian – go hand in hand with national identity of the respective nations and the delineation of national and territorial borders to such an extent that disputes and attempts to challenge the current classification of the languages equals assertion and/or negation of the nation or ethnic group in question (e.g., Ilić 2014, Vervaet 2019 for discursive attempts at denying the Bosnian language, and hence nation). Moreover, being inseparable from the matters of group identity, the question of language “separateness” or “unity” has not been limited to an expert and scholarly milieu only. It has regularly been debated within a broader public arena where public, lay views and scholarly views have supported and contrasted one another. Given that language matters hold a prominent place in nationally oriented debates within this geographical area, and given the inevitable political implications of such debates, the analysis of metaphor-based discourse shaping Croatian and Serbian as national languages, and their relationship, is a crucial aspect in understanding the sociolinguistic situation in the present- day territory of the former Yugoslavia.
The two languages in focus of the analysis, Croatian and Serbian, are indubitably institutionally established symbols of their respective nations (e.g., Langston & Peti-Stantić 2014, Čolović 2008). However, as Blommaert (2006: 244) puts it, the emblematic character of a language needs maintenance and re-creation just as any other national symbol or nation- constitutive element does. This maintenance is inevitably performed in and through discourse (e.g., Wodak et al. 2009), which highlights the need for its analysis. The need for an analysis of the present-day discourse is additionally motivated by the fact that language debates about Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian are still current regardless of the relatively politically secured status of the languages. One such recent debate was launched with the project and a set of conferences called Languages and Nationalisms, where the initiators urged public support for the recognition of the “sameness” of the four languages.4
As will be shown in Article 1 and Article 3, metaphor can be used as a powerful tool for the demarcation of linguistic and territorial borders. Furthermore, given the sensitivity of the general socio-historical background, some seemingly innocuous and conventional metaphors (e.g., instantiations of ARGUMENT IS WAR) can, within the post-Yugoslav language debates, turn into politically controversial warmongering messages.
4Jezici i nacionalizmi (Languages and Nationalisms) http://jezicinacionalizmi.com, accessed 1 April 2019.
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1.2.2 Metaphor as a Lens for Analyzing Discursive Constructions of National Languages and Language Debates
This subsection will briefly defend the choice of figurative language as the focus of the discursive analysis and its importance in imagining, understanding, and creating national languages.
In this dissertation, figurative language and metaphor – as tools that are used, evolve, and dissolve in discourse – are taken to be a fundamental means not only of conceptualizing
LANGUAGE, but also of building argumentation and negotiation of language status in a broader national and political frame. Discourse, as the most important medium in the representation of reality, is essential in the representation of language, language attitudes, and, naturally, debating and identity negotiation. However, it is also inherently metaphorical and biased (Lock & Strong 2010). Although it is virtually impossible to draw firm boundaries for any (national) language (Haarmann 2005), the agreement about what constitutes one is reached and negotiated through discourse, where figurative language holds a central role in delineating borders and classifying otherwise complex and spatially and temporally displaced and disintegrated abstract entities – languages. Metaphorical and figurative blends (in the sense of Fauconnier & Turner 2002) simplify a more complex sociolinguistic and linguistic reality and are in essence ideological tools (Geeraerts 2003). Furthermore, as claimed by various scholars, the concept of LANGUAGE is inherently complex and thus susceptible to metaphorization more than other concepts (Reddy 1979/1993, Radden 2001, Seargeant 2009).
As a complex phenomenon susceptible to figurative conceptualizations, looking into the so- called “folk” models or “cultural” models of language (Radden’s (2001) and Geeraerts’
(2003) terms, respectively) holds a central position for an analyst. Investigating the ways in which linguistic metaphors contribute to the construction of national languages, in their most
“basic” or schematic conceptualizations (e.g. LANGUAGE AS AN OBJECT, LANGUAGE AS A POSSESSION, LANGUAGE AS A PERSON, LANGUAGE AS A TOOL, LANGUAGE AS A BOND (attested in, e.g., Bermel 2007, Polzenhagen & Dirven 2008, Berthele 2008, Underhill 2013, Weaver 2015)), and they way in which they contribute to more complex linguistic figurations that encode a variety of attitudes and emotions (e.g. language is the shield of the nation, language is like a mother, language - the cradle of national identity, language pollution, language as a battlefield) can give insights into people’s spontaneous theorizing about language that go beyond the Croatian and Serbian sociolinguistic context.
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Apart from an epistemological role of figurations in relation to the conceptualization of (national) languages, discourse itself is understood to be a type of linguistic action, in addition to the fact that it might lead to a physical action. This is why in this dissertation metaphor is not viewed as merely a linguistic “tool” for conceptualization of communication or attitudes, whose (in)adequate imagery requires deconstruction and replacement (as per, e.g., Reddy 1979/1993), but also (metaphorical) discourse itself is considered as an action that might have serious consequences (e.g., Van Dijk 1990, 1997). Metaphor and discourse as action proper, not just a dissociated linguistic representation of some external events, is taken as a point of departure primarily in the light of the fact that the classification of languages (closely related to language being a collective symbol) relies, first and foremost, on discursive agreement. This means that discourse becomes the central arena where the symbolic status of a language is debated, created, agreed upon, and disputed. That identity is shaped and performed in discourse is not a novelty (e.g., Wodak et al. 2009). However, this dissertation reminds that and the categorization and construction of languages is no exception to that.
Therefore metaphorical discourse analysis is of unprecedented importance if anything is to be understood about the creation of Croatian and Serbian as closely related, yet separate, national languages. Naturally, discourses that shape (national) languages rely on perpetual power relations emanating from political centers, which might or might not receive support from the public (e.g., Irvine & Gal 2000, Blommaert 2006), which is why I include both dominant and less dominant voices in the analysis.
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1.2.3 Why Use a Mixed-Methods Approach to Metaphor and Dirtiness as a Grounding Domain for Language Attitudes?
A mixed-methods approach is assumed in this dissertation. The discursive aspects are investigated through a close reading of a corpus of manually collected texts, whereas the conceptual aspects of metaphor are investigated using psycholinguistic methods. Topic and context-wise, the analyzed collected corpus includes Croatian and Serbian texts focusing on sociolinguistic aspects of language. The texts were gathered mainly by online Google searches, entering general keywords such as Croatian language, Serbo-Croatian, Serbian language, “language is…”, and some more specific keywords (dirtying language, language pollution, language and nation), to name just a few. The search returned articles in newspapers, language-advice articles, linguistic pamphlets, books, or parts of books treating Serbian, Croatian, and Serbo-Croatian. The corpus analyzed in this dissertation mainly covers authoritative, institutionalized discourses and texts, although some less dominant discourses are included, too (e.g., forum discussions, comments’ sections of the newspapers). Having as a source and focus of study authoritative and influential texts that sustain, reflect, and produce power, a critical approach to the use of metaphor and figurations is assumed (in line with, e.g., Charteris-Black 2004, 2011, Reisigl & Wodak 2001, Wodak et al. 2009).
Apart from discussing the discursive, or linguistic role of metaphor in relation to national languages, this dissertation tries to give answers to questions concerning the theory of metaphor proper, more specifically, the role of embodiment in shaping language attitudes.
No less important than the creation of national languages in discourse, the nationalistic dimension in language leads to puristic practices, whereby speakers, in an attempt to dis- identify with an out-group, proscribe certain linguistic elements belonging to the out-group (e.g., Jernudd & Shapiro 1989, Thomas 1991). Language purism is no novelty in sociolinguistics; however, from a perspective of metaphor as a grounding “field” for negative language attitudes, language purism is a fruitful phenomenon for experimental studies on the effects of embodiment. To investigate the conceptual-cognitive effects of metaphor, conceived of as a part of the dissertation building upon the discursive analysis, a psycholinguistic approach to metaphor and sociolinguistics is employed, namely a combination of implicit and explicit attitude elicitation.
The experiment naturally followed and was inspired by the discursive analysis of Croatian texts falling into a broad puristic ideological spectrum, where metaphors for language (especially language contact and loanwords) were often framed in terms of
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pollution, dirtiness, and contamination. The experimental part therefore probed into the psychological reality of the BAD IS DIRTY primary metaphor (e.g., Landau, Robinson, & Meier 2014b, Gibbs 2017) contextualized in puristic language attitudes. Introducing an embodied view of metaphor into an otherwise discursively oriented dissertation helps better understand the nature of metaphor and, perhaps, the limits of some approaches to metaphor that have been popular in the last several decades, specifically Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff &
Johnson 1980/2003) and cognate approaches (e.g. Landau, Robinson, & Meier 2014a), in favor of more semiotic approaches that see metaphor first and foremost, if not exclusively, as a phenomenon happening and existing in language and through language (e.g., Sinha 1999, Cameron 2003).
Finally, a mixed-methods approach, as an attempt at introducing a different perspective to somewhat traditional interpretations of language purism, presents a novelty not only for metaphor studies, but also for sociolinguistics proper, where language attitudes have commonly been interpreted solely through social motivation. In this sense, the experimental questions and answers add to the body of research probing into the groundedness of social attitudes in bodily concepts (e.g. Landau, Robinson, & Meier 2014b, Landau 2016, Duschinsky, Schnall, & Weiss 2016).
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1.3 Thesis Structure
This thesis is divided into two parts. Part One, also known also as the “kappe”, serves as an introduction to the three articles that make up the central part of the thesis. Part One gives a theoretical and methodological background, as well as a conclusion, to the three self- contained articles given in Part Two. The unity of the articles is visible primarily in that they take metaphor in both its linguistic and conceptual dimensions as objects of study, and, no less importantly, they all explore the questions of nationally motivated language ideologies, language purism, and the construction of Croatian and Serbian as national languages.
In the first chapter of Part One, I give an overall introduction to the entire thesis, outline the main questions and hypotheses, situate them briefly in a wider scholarly background, and provide a rationale for choosing this particular topic. In the second chapter, Theoretical Background, I situate the thesis within the broader literature on metaphor as both a discursive-linguistic and conceptual phenomenon. I give an overview of relevant studies inquiring into the role of metaphor in the conceptualization of the complex and abstract concept of (NATIONAL) LANGUAGE, offering in addition some specific historical and contextual background to the present-day Croatian and Serbian sociolinguistic situation. Here, I also outline the theoretical background to the experimental part of the thesis, discussing metaphor as a matter of the conceptual system, i.e., as an embodied dimension that can potentially have an influence on (social) cognition. In the third chapter, Methodology, I discuss the methodology employed in both the discourse-oriented articles and in the experimental part, as well as the challenges that arose from choosing to take an experimental approach to metaphor studies. The Methodology section is followed by the Summaries of Articles, where I give summaries of all three articles. Finally, the last chapter of Part One is the Conclusion where I focus on the main findings and claims in the thesis and clarify how all three articles contribute to both major intersecting fields of study, namely metaphor and Croatian and Serbian language ideologies.
Part Two consists of the three articles that make up the core of the dissertation. The status of the articles with respect to their publishing is as follows: the first article, Metaphors for language contact and change: Croatian language and national identity, was published in 2019 in the book edited by Ljiljana Šarić and Mateusz-Milan Stanojević, Metaphor, Nation
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and Discourse, by John Benjamins Publishing Company. The second article, Metaphorical Dimensions of Language Purism: The Case of Croatian, passed the first round of reviews and was to be reviewed and resubmitted to Cognitive Linguistics (Mouton De Gruyter), however I withdrew it from the reviewing process. The third article, Taking Care of Serbian – by Reading, or by Fighting? Metaphors and Pseudo-Metaphors in the Serbian public discourse, is yet to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal (e.g., Metaphor and the Social World).
1.4 A Note on Writing Conventions
Following conventions in cognitive linguistics and cognitive metaphor studies for distinguishing the conceptual content from the linguistic content, I employ small capital letters when referring to conceptual content. So, for instance, a concept of a four-legged domestic animal would be written as CAT, whereas its linguistic, symbolic form would be written in regular letters, or italicized as cat, or Croatian mačka (following, e.g., Barsalou &
Wiemer-Hastings 2005). For distinguishing the specific instantiations of metaphor in language from what might be a conceptual metaphor (e.g. AFFECTION IS WARMTH, as per Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003, or Gibbs 2017), I alternate between italics and small capital letters, respectively. In addition, italics is sometimes used for the emphasis of non-figurative language. Additionally, throughout the articles I explain the use of small capital letters when they are not used in the sense of Lakoff and Johnson (2003) or Gibbs (2017), but simply employed for conceptual generalizations or schematizations on the basis of a group of linguistic instantiations without subscribing to any strong cognitive theory of metaphor.
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2. Theoretical Background
The twofold focus of my topic—the discursive construction of Croatian and Serbian as national languages on the one hand, and the grounding of attitudes to language on the other—requires me not only to consider both discursive and conceptual views on metaphor, but also a broader framework that includes identity construction through discourse, the metonymic links behind the concept of national languages, folk models of language and, finally, the Croatian and Serbian post-Yugoslav sociolinguistic situation. Due to a limited space allotted for Part One of the dissertation, and the fact that a metaphor scholar may face numerous publications on metaphor, I will give a brief theoretical overview of the current theoretical approaches to metaphor in the manner I see relevant for the present research. The theoretical chapter will follow the logic of what I call “weak” and “strong” cognition by metaphor.5 My “weak” versus “strong” view of metaphor in cognition is comparable to what Šarić and Stanojević (2019: 26) formulate as the distinction between “language-first” and
“thought-first” approaches. Since Articles 1 and 3 focus on the creation of reality through the figurative representation of Croatian and Serbian as national languages, their users and their mutual relationship, discursive theories of metaphor present the relevant framework, and they cover the “weak” role of metaphor in cognition. On the other hand, Article 2 focuses on embodiment as a source of cognition. i.e., to what extent and in what aspects can metaphor, in the sense of embodiment, influence meaning making. Article 2, therefore, probes the boundaries of the “strong” cognition by metaphor. The representatives of these two provisionally distinct camps include, for instance, Ricoeur (1978, 1975/2003), Cameron (2003, Cameron et al. 2009), Conceptual Blending Theory by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) on one side of the theoretical spectrum, and the school of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) (Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003, Casasanto 2009, Kövecses 2010, Landau 2016) on the other side (“weak” and “strong” cognition by metaphor, respectively). The Dual Grounding approach to language and thought (Sinha 1999), as a theory leaning towards the “weak” end of the spectrum, but one that also explicitly tries to take a middle way between the conceptual and discursive approaches, will be discussed, too.
5“Weak” does not imply irrelevant (more about the distinction throughout the section 2.1).
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The Theoretical Background chapter starts off with a section that discusses the notion of cognition within the current terminological landscape in metaphor studies (section 2.1). It is followed by two sections on theoretical approaches of metaphor – Metaphor as a Phenomenon of Language and Discourse (2.2), and Metaphor as a Phenomenon of Thought (2.3) – that at times digress with other subsections specifically relevant for Articles 1, 2, and 3. So as to cover the theoretical frameworks of the three articles as pertinently as possible, excursuses from the strict focus on metaphor theories include, for instance, the subsections on the role of discourse in the creation of knowledge (2.2.1), on language as the object of metaphorization (2.2.3), and on the concept of national languages (2.2.5). The theoretical chapter concludes with a section on the post-Yugoslav sociolinguistic context (2.4), which is not strictly a theoretical background, but a section that introduces some relevant contextual knowledge.
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2.1 How Are Metaphors Cognitive?
In this subchapter I wish to discuss the term “cognitive” in relation to conceptual and discursive approaches to metaphor. This section is thought of as an introduction to more detailed descriptions of the theoretical approaches discussed throughout this chapter.
In this dissertation, I adopt what might be viewed as a broadly constructivist approach to language and semiosis. A constructivist approach is one where “any truly veridical epistemological access to reality is denied”, and where meaning “is the result of mental construction” (Ortony 1979/1993: 1) (emphasis original). Within a constructivist take on thought and reality, I assume an approach to metaphor that neither tries to impose a strong distinction between figurative and literal language (e.g., Ogden & Richards 1927/2013, Rumelhart 1979/1993, Cameron 2003), nor makes a clear-cut distinction between metaphor as a linguistic device and a phenomenon of thought. Although, for the purposes of theoretical discussions, I assume these two positions form two ends of a complementary continuum.
Furthermore, the rejection of a definition of metaphor that would go beyond a simple definition such as “seeing compatibility within incompatibility”, or “congruence within incongruence”, or “incompatibility for the sake of compatibility” (similar to Ricoeur 1978), defines my view of metaphor as one that subsumes almost any non-literal language and figuration under the term “metaphor”.6 In this rather broad understanding of metaphor, figurative devices like similes, comparisons and counterfactuals will be subsumed under the terms “metaphor”, or “metaphorical blend” (in line with Conceptual Integration Theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2002)). This definition of metaphor is also in line with Cameron’s idea of metaphor as a “Vehicle” (1999b, 2003), that does not insist on inflexible compartmentalizations of figurations.7
Against the backdrop of a constructivist approach assumed in this dissertation, I consider both
“conceptual” and “discursive” qualities of metaphor to be cognition-inducing, regardless of
6I do make a distinction between metaphor and metonymy, as a minimal necessary distinction for thinking about figurative phenomena.
7By “thought” or “thinking”, here, I do not refer to the Lakoffian concept of “metaphorical thinking” in the sense of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, where concepts and thoughts precede and are the cause of the linguistic reality. “In thought” simply refers to metaphorization induced by linguistic elements, i.e., linguistically induced metaphorical thought (more about this later throughout this chapter).
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what the mutual relationship between the two may be (compatibility or exclusivity). Within metaphor studies, the qualifier “cognitive” normally co-appears with and within Conceptual Metaphor Theory, making it seem as if this particular school of thought “owned” the term, and as if the hypothesized “conceptual metaphor” were the exclusive source of the “cognitive quality” of metaphor. For instance, referring to Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Rohrer says:
They dubbed this more systematic notion of metaphor “conceptual metaphor,” both in order to distinguish it from the prior tradition of “linguistic metaphor” (or “literary metaphor”) and in order to emphasize that metaphors are a matter of cognition and conceptual structure rather than a matter of mere language (emphasis mine) (Rohrer 2007: 32).
There are at least two problems with this description of CMT. Firstly, theories preceding cognitive linguistics, particularly Conceptual Metaphor Theory, cannot be claimed to have been ignorant of a cognitive quality of metaphorization, although they formulated the idea in their own particular parlance. For instance, Richards claims that “we all live, and speak, only through our eye for resemblances,” or that metaphor is “the omnipresent principle of all [language’s] free action” (Richards 1936: 89–90, in Mahon 1999: 77). Richards obviously finds metaphorical process “cognitive” in the sense that it affords new knowledge and is life-giving, as it were, for new concepts. Similar thoughts can be found in Ricoeur (1978, 1975/2003). In his rejections of the theories that would negate an epistemological status to metaphor, Ricoeur claims: “one must say that metaphor bears information because it
‘redescribes’ reality. Thus, the category-mistake is the de-constructive intermediary phase between description and redescription.” (1975/2003: 24). Not only that Ricoeur, inspired by Gadamer, defends the ideational or cognitive status of metaphor, he even makes a move towards recognizing metaphor as the fundamental mechanism of the “linguistic order”:
Certainly, (...), metaphor does not produce a new order except by creating rifts in an old order.
Nevertheless, could we not imagine that the order itself is born in the same way that it changes? Is there not, in Gadamer’s terms, a ‘metaphoric’ in work at the origin of logical thought, at the root of all classification? (...) The idea of an initial metaphorical impulse destroys these oppositions between proper and figurative, ordinary and strange, order and transgression. It suggests the idea that order itself proceeds from the metaphorical constitution of semantic fields (...) (Ricoeur 1975/2003: 24).
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In explicitly recognizing the possibility of metaphorical origins of the “semantic and linguistic order”, Ricoeur’s thoughts could be compared to those Lakoff and Johnson’s
“groundbreaking” arguments (1975/2003).8 Furthermore, Ricoeur (1978) explicitly labels metaphor “cognitive” in his paper entitled Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling, where he explicitly says:
…we may speak (...) of the fundamental metaphoricity of thought to the extent that the figure of speech that we call “metaphor” allows us a glance at the general procedure by which we produce concepts (Ricoeur 1978: 149).
I reproduced these two quotes to demonstrate that there may be different nuances in looking at and understanding the metaphorical thought. Namely, Ricoeur does not seem to draw the conclusion about the “fundamental metaphoricity of thought” from conceptual systematicities that Lakoff and Johnson (1980/2003) observe, nor does he posit some stable mappings in the conceptual system. He gets at the “fundamental metaphoricity” by realizing that there is a linguistic-conceptual loop where one cannot escape metaphorizing in the creation of new ideas and concepts. This “general procedure” then, or cognitive mechanism of thought, for Ricoeur seems to be inextricably related to language, or symbolic realm (“the figure of speech”). For instance, one way in which Ricoeur suggests this “fundamental metaphoricity” is dependent on language can be found in his theorizing about the definitions of metaphor: “it is impossible to talk about metaphor non-metaphorically (...) the definition of metaphor returns on itself” (Ricoeur 1975/2003: 18–19) (emphasis mine). By referring to
“talking” and “defining” as the cause of self-reflexivity of the definition of metaphor, Ricoeur seems to find the linguistic realm crucial regardless of metaphorization being fundamental to thought.
His belief in the omnipresence of metaphor as a cognitive mechanism is best illustrated by the idea that metaphoricity “takes in as well every philosophy that might wish to rid itself of metaphor in favour of non-metaphorical concepts.” (Ricoeur 1975/2003: 19).
Therefore, Ricoeur is well aware that the new routes to knowledge and the generation of new concepts keep falling into a kind of metaphorical recursive trap where every subsequent attempt at describing or elucidating the previous unknowns are bound to be done so by means of figurative representations and figurative language. This understanding of the “fundamental
8 In fact, given the temporal sequence of theories, the comparison should be formulated the other way around, but for the sake of the argument, I formulated it in this manner.
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metaphoricity of thought” is therefore a cognitive one, but, to my mind, quite different from Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980/2003) “metaphorical thought” as conceptual mapping, and especially Lakoff’s (2014) neural theory.
To go back to Rohrer’s quote after a lengthy excursus, and to introduce the second part of my argument related to language proper – one must ask oneself what would metaphors as “mere language” refer to anyway?9 Firstly, how can one even observe language per se (as a semiotic system) as “mere language” without any underlying thought structure and cognitive power? Whether one wishes to draw attention to ephemeral, “discourse metaphors” (Zinken, Hellsten, & Nerlich 2008), or more stable metaphorical occurrences, language is obviously inextricably related to cognition, thought and the conceptual plane, meaning that cognition goes both ways – from thought to language, but also from language to thought (more about language and cognition later in 2.2.1).
That said, the insistence on the notion of “cognition” being tied to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, as well as the division of semiotic-cognitive phenomena into “mere language” or discourse, on the one side, and thought on the other, I find somewhat misguided.
This division has perhaps subsided in the current vocabulary within metaphor studies or with some particular authors, however the main idea remains present in the wider scholarly milieu:
communication/language/discourse somehow differs from cognition. This is also clear from the very first introductory remarks by Hampe, in her recent edited book on metaphor:
Metaphor scholars used to debate over the “conceptual” or “linguistic” nature of metaphor.
More recently, they have been considering whether metaphor is “embodied” or “discursive.”
Despite the shift in focus implied by this terminological change, the divide between communication-oriented and cognition-oriented approaches to metaphor has not disappeared (Hampe 2017b: 3) (emphasis mine).
Although the book in question attempts to combine both approaches and find common ground between them, the terms “cognition” and “cognitive” still remain tied to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and in certain opposition with the notions of discourse and language.
Though this discussion may seem as nit-picking, my objection here is that the notion of
“cognition” should not be limited exclusively to the realm of (hard-line) embodiment-oriented approaches (specifically, Conceptual Metaphor Theory and followers), and to their particular
9Metaphor as “mere language” could, of course, refer to some objectivist, or substitution theories of metaphor, but within a constructivist background where the majority of current researchers of metaphor operate, these theories are, hopefully, no longer in the scope of argument, anyway.
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understanding of the role of metaphor in meaning-making ((near-)universality, neural basis etc.). This, I believe, should be clear already from the assumption to which, hopefully, the majority of cognitive linguists subscribe, which sees language in totality as a semiotic means of not merely mediating but, crucially, getting at the “unreachable” reality, thus itself a source and device of cognition (see, e.g., Arbib & Hesse 1986, Ortony 1979/1993, Van Dijk 1990, 1997). This very general quality of language as a symbolic-cognitive tool has recently been succinctly presented by Žižek (2019).10 In his latest thoughts on the future of society, specifically, the possibility of a direct connection between human brains via an implantable brain-computer interface that would bypass the communication as we know it, Žižek elevates language, or symbolic communication, to a precondition for overall human cognition, rejecting the possibility of a kind of immediate, non-linguistic thought or mind reading. For him, “brutally simplified” linguistic communication, as opposed to a direct transmission of thoughts and feelings, is precisely what creates a kind of “meaningful surplus”. A simplified sentence such as I love you “reduces the wealth of one’s feelings” but, crucially, at the same time “evokes a rich texture of what is left unsaid.” In other words, this very “condensation of chaotic wealth” and feelings into ever-inadequate symbolic communication, is precisely what triggers and enables the surplus of deeper meaning. In this sense, the “deeper meaning”
behind the words is not “simply there to be discovered, but is in fact generated by this reduction of thoughts and feelings to simple linguistic formulas” (Žižek 2019). Although there is nothing new in the idea that language requires interpretation (see, e.g., Ogden &
Richards’ triangle 1927/2013: 11, or Reddy’s (1979/1993) criticism of folk ideas of the functioning of communication), what Žižek reminds us of is that this “clumsiness”, simplification, or void afforded by language is in fact generative and, I would add at this point, therefore cognitive. During each and every unique communicative event, this void afforded by language forces upon the interpreter incessant creativity in the construction of meaning. This is why, even when the shared embodied basis is present, symbolic communication is nevertheless capable of generating this “surplus” of meaning.11 This ties in with Borghi and Cimatti’s (2009) claims about the socio-cognitive grounding of language that
10Žižek, S. (2019). [Ippolit Belinski]. (2019, May 3). Slavoj Žižek – Hegel with Neuralink (Apr 2019) [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/ppGlEiQXrRI
11This is, naturally, also the reason why a shared bodily basis that presumably requires no symbolic mediation to be understood (such as the one discussed in primary metaphors (Grady 1997)), is simply one layer of meaning that is always combined and “reformulated” in language where it (potentially) gains further overlays of meaning.
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see words (and language) as things or tools that we use in our ordinary experience – as action that is consequently associated to real-life events and other actions.
Naturally, the problem is that language is permeated with metaphors that can be identified (post factum though) on various levels (from grammar to lexemes) and in all their states (from the dead to the creative ones). From this standpoint we can return back to metaphor as a cognitive device underlying all semantic processes in language (as in Ricoeur’s claims above). However, my contention is that metaphor is not the only mechanism operating within language, nor can cognition be limited to metaphorical extensions only. Suffice it to say that those psychologically most plausible conceptual metaphors, primary metaphors (AFFECTION IS WARMTH, IMPORTANCE IS SIZE, SIMILARITY IS PROXIMITY etc.), are in essence
“correlational”, or metonymic in origin (see, e.g., Barcelona 2000, Kövecses 2013). After all, all language as a symbolic form-meaning pairing rests on a kind of contiguity, i.e., metonymy (see, e.g., Littlemore 2015). It would be fairer to claim then that metonymy is the most fundamental cognitive operation.
To return to the notion of cognition, if one makes a very crude analytical distinction between metaphor in thought (as per Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003), in the sense of metaphor as a matter of stable, all-pervasive conceptual mappings, and metaphor in language (as a primarily linguistic or semiotic phenomenon), there are two different routes to cognition by conceptual extension with different theoretical commitments. So, not only that language is cognitive per se, but metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon is cognitive, too. If we agree, then, that both linguistic metaphor and language per se, in their own specific manner, are sources of cognition, then the term “cognitive” seems to lose its meaningfulness when applied in contrast to linguistic, or discursive approaches (as in Hampe’s quote above). This also leads to the conclusion that the term “cognitive” loses its meaningfulness altogether.12 However, I do not wish to simply do away with the term “cognitive”, and I do believe that, if it should mean anything specific in relation to metaphor studies, it should refer to the attempts at finding refuting or supporting evidence for Lakoffian “strong” metaphorical thought by examining the presence of metaphorical effects in modalities that go beyond the linguistic data (see, e.g., Casasanto 2009, 2017, Landau, Robinson, & Meyer 2014a, Landau 2016).
That said, the terms “cognitive”, “cognition” “metaphorical thought”, I believe, should either
12This resonates with Geeraerts’ (2016) thoughts on the superfluousness of the term “cognitive” in current cognitive linguistics. Geeraerts is occupied with the same problem but from a slightly different angle in relation to language – the dichotomy between what is embodied (body-based), on the one hand, and what is socially- induced on the other hand, concluding that both sources are cognitive, which makes the term “cognitive” implied and thus superfluous.
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be done away with altogether from metaphor studies, or be reclaimed by the discursive approaches. Throughout my articles, I explain which “metaphorical thought” I refer to, (primarily) language-induced one, or the one in the sense of Lakoff and Johnson (1980/2003).
To conclude, my contention is that metaphors are “cognitive”– just as language and all meaning-bearing symbols may be – because I cannot help but metaphorize (and metonymize!) in the creation of new concepts, ideas, and in the expansion of my conceptual and affective
“mindscape”, and not because a bundle of neurons are tied together in my brain that deterministically constrain my understanding of, for instance, love as a “flame”, a
“rollercoaster”, or something third.13 In other words, as my colleague Stanojević keeps bringing up in our conversations – metaphor is the ability to metaphorize, which is linked to the ability to think, speak and feel. I would add to this that, as a unique, logically non- reducible, non-formalizable and non-predictive ability, metaphor may be the only thing that makes humans unique and sets us apart from, and potentially saves us in a dystopian future ruled by, artificial intelligence.
Having discussed the notion of “cognitive” in relation to the conceptual, or “strong”, and discursive, or “weak”, approaches to metaphor, I have simultaneously introduced the theoretical landscape within which I operate. In the following sections I will continue with the theoretical background, giving more substance to the frameworks touched upon in this section.
13I return to this issue in section 2.3.1.
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2.2 Metaphor as a Phenomenon of Language and Discourse
In the four subsections of this major section (2.2), I will cover all the topics related to metaphor, discourse, and cognition, in the way I find relevant for Articles 1 and 3. The section starts with the discussion of the notion of discourse as action and a source of knowledge (2.2.1), and is followed by an overview of discursively oriented metaphor theories (2.2.2).
Subsection 2.2.3 covers the role of metaphor in folk models of language, and, finally, subsection 2.2.4 discusses the notion of national languages and its dependence on a series of metonymies and metaphors.
2.2.1 Discourse as Action and a Source of Cognition
In this subsection, I will discuss several ideas about how a scholar can approach the notion of discourse as a source of both cognition and action.
There are various definitions of discourse, none of which can properly overcome the fuzziness of the concept. Van Dijk (1997: 1–2) himself admits to its complexity and vagueness: one can see discourse simply as a form of language use, or consider discourse as a set of ideas (e.g., philosophy propagated by neo-liberal thinkers), or as a communicative event (which focuses on its processual and intersubjective aspects).14 Despite a variety of communicative phenomena that can, in one way or another, be subsumed under the term
“discourse”, Van Dijk summarizes the scope of discourse studies simply as being “about talk and text in context” (1997: 3). He acknowledges, however, that discourse as “talk and text” is almost always in some manner multimodal. This is especially the case with modern media where “text” is often accompanied with visuals (language spoken on TV being one of the examples). Multimodality can, therefore involve “several types of non-verbal activity such as gestures, face-work, bodily position, proximity, applause, and laughs” (Van Dijk 1997: 5).
Although the notion of discourse obviously comprises much more than just language (in use), and includes various modalities such as gestures, visuals, and the like, in my discourse analysis in Articles 1 and 3, I mostly limit myself to a definition of discourse as (written)
14The latter view speaks with Langacker’s idea of discourse as “language in use” (Langacker 2008: 457).
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language or text, as well as a collection of topically related texts (similar to Van Dijk’s “set of ideas”). This is primarily so because written linguistic material was my main source of discursive data (e.g., books and online newspapers), as well as because within authoritative discourses that I analysed, one can discern a uniform set of ideas, e.g., conservative discourses on language.
Given that my analyses focus on discourse primarily as realized through language, I wish to discuss the possibilities of thinking about language as a medium affording cognition, continuing thus partly the discussion in 2.1. How language and discourse afford knowledge is obviously one of the “hard” problems in both science and the humanities, (see, e.g., Van Dijk 2003). Therefore, in this section, I do not presume to anything more than a speculation about the modalities in which this may happen. First, in relation to the idea that discourse affords cognition, one should turn once again to general postulates of constructivism, whose advocates, in opposition to positivistically oriented theorists, believe that there is no possibility of knowing reality as such without mediation or “windows” into it — subjective perceptions, symbols (mathematical, linguistic etc.). 15 Cognition in this view, then, is always a result of an interplay between different dimensions, or “tools” of knowledge: language, memory, perception, pre-existing knowledge, context (e.g., Ortony 1979/1993, Lock &
Strong 2010), all of which obfuscate, for lack of a better word, reality in their own particular manner, but also act as tools of grasping that same reality.16
One way of looking at discourse as cognition is to start from the cognitive dimension of language as a classificatory system. Language is per se cognitive, first, in the sense that it serves as a tool for conceptualization and compartmentalization of phenomena (if we focus on what goes on “in the mind”), but also by virtue of being a social tool for accomplishing “acts”
in an intersubjective universe (Austin 1962/2009, Sinha 1999, Borghi & Cimatti 2009).
Setting aside the specific role of metaphor for a moment, there are several ways of looking at the cognitive qualities of language as a symbolic tool. Fist, as Žižek (2019) formulates it, the simplistic and formulaic nature of language allows for a meaningful “surplus” to be created through each and every act of meaning and/or interpretation (see the discussion in 2.1). In a similar vein, Douglas compares the role and functionality of rituals to language, highlighting the fact that ritual, as well as language, focuses attention and constructs new experience instead of simply pointing to a pre-existing content:
15 Discussed earlier in 2.1.
16This is why a “scientist-constructivist” would not exalt scientific language over “ordinary” language and would see scientific advancements as shifts from one figurative-linguistic description of the world to another (see Kuhn’s (1962/2012) ideas on scientific progress).
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It is not enough to say that ritual helps us to experience more vividly what we would have experienced anyway. It is not merely like the visual aid which illustrated verbal instructions for opening cans and cases. If it were just a kind of dramatic map or diagram of what is known it would always follow experience. But in fact, ritual does not play this secondary role. It can come first in formulating experience. It can permit knowledge of what would otherwise not be known at all. It does not merely externalise experience, bringing it out in the light of day, but it modifies experience in so expressing it.
This is true of language. Once words have been framed, the thought is changed and limited by the very words selected (Douglas 1966/1992: 64) (emphasis mine).
The cognitive quality of language, or discourse for that matter, lies therefore in focusing on some selected aspects of experience and their particular organization. The organization of the content itself is therefore conducive to a particular mode of cognizance, meaning that the construction of a content with the help of language is not merely a different way of saying what is already known or felt. Or, as Douglas illustrates it, it is not a mere visual aid accompanying verbal instructions for can opening, which is presumably already informative enough. Importantly, not only does language organize mental and emotional content in a certain manner, it “modifies experience by so expressing it” (Douglas 1966/1992: 64).
Douglas’s idea of “mere” externalization being a transformative experience in itself, would suggest that even the seemingly most banal level of linguistic activity such as sound articulation in speech, or strokes of hand in writing, are obviously crucial components in the overall meaningfulness of the “content.” This is not only a way of looking at language as emergent together with action, but to, to turn the formulation around, one way of considering action as endowing meaningfulness to symbols, that is, language. The performative and transformative character of the externalization of mental content is therefore a point where Douglas finds similarities between ritual and language. A corollary of this view is that language should be taken seriously since even the most trivial of all utterances and expressions are in fact transformative on some level.
Indeed, taking the organization of the “mental content” (emotions, conceptualizations) on the one side, and the externalization of that content on the other side (by way of face-to- face, written, or spoken communication, or some other media that might combine various modalities), we get two inseparable pillars affording cognition.17 This view resonates with some more recent theories of language. More specifically, this “ritualistic” view of language
17This understanding brings language and meaning afforded by it close to Van Dijk’s (1997: 1–2) definitions of discourse that see a variety of modalities as meaning-bearing.
