Metaphor and Symbol

ISSN: 1092-6488 (Print) 1532-7868 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hmet20

Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering

Context in Metaphor by Zoltn Kvecses

Robert R. Hoffman & Yorick Wilks

To cite this article: Robert R. Hoffman & Yorick Wilks (2016) Where Metaphors Come From:
Reconsidering Context in Metaphor by Zoltn Kvecses, Metaphor and Symbol, 31:1, 50-52,
DOI: 10.1080/10926488.2015.1074808

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2015.1074808

Published online: 30 Jan 2016.

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 METAPHOR AND SYMBOL
2016, VOL. 31, NO. 1, 5052

BOOK REVIEW

Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor. Zoltn Kvecses. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 2015. 232 pages, $74.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0190224868.

This latest work by one of the leading thinkers in the area focuses, as the title suggests, on the
question of exactly how context inuences metaphor creation, interpretation, and use. Perhaps
the most telling single statement about Kvecsess viewpoint is from the preface: The human
conceptual system is heavily metaphorical in nature and . . . we use metaphors spontaneously and
with ease in the course of every-day communication (p. ix). This is dierent from many
traditional treatments of nonliteral language, which assumed that the sematic base (whatever
that is) is decomposable into the literal semantic features of individual words. But the assertion
that the foundations of meaning are themselves metaphor does not mean that language under-
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standing is now the reduction of expressions to a semantic base of metaphorical concepts. To the
contrary, the emphasis here is on generativity and the creation of new concepts, categories, and
meanings. A view that has gained prominence in recent decades is that the property of being a
metaphor is not a really property of individual isolated utterances, phrases, sentences, words, or
other lingual units. Rather, metaphors create new categories through an interaction of the lingual
expression with the speaker or listener (or reader), and the context as construed by the
individual (Gibbs, 2008). Kvecses takes this view seriously, and asks more precisely how context
might be at play at various levels or scales, and how context is crucial to the origins as well as
the meanings and uses of nonliteral expressions. As he says, the aim of the book is to ll a gap
in conceptual metaphor theory by analyzing context and its dynamics. Context is taken at
multiple scales, as it must, ranging from the individual and immediate, to the cultural, national,
and historical.
The rst three chapters present some fundamental concepts and issues, including context
dependence, ambiguity, physical frames of reference (embodiment), the relations of metaphor
and metonymy, the organization of the conceptual system (schemas, frames), and conceptual
metaphors. The core insights of conceptual metaphor are commonly attributed to Lako and
Johnson (1980), whose examples demonstrated how common metaphors are thematically related.
The original insight was that of Michael Reddy in a seminal paper titled The Conduit Metaphor
(1979), in which he showed how most language that is about language relies on a theme of
meaning being a substance or object (See what we mean?) that ows through a conduit (Are the
ideas getting across?). Kvecses takes conceptual metaphor theory beyond these initial insights
and well beyond the Lakoan emphasis on bodily metaphor themes (e.g., the long arm of the
law). Kvecsess main thesis is that context is crucial in metaphor creation and production and
not just comprehension. A second main thesis is that metaphors (and metonymies) are a way of
making new categories or concepts, as Gibbs (2008) and others have argued. Kvecses refers to
these as conceptual blends, a notion introduced by Fauconnier and Turner (2003). The
chapters in Kvecsess book show how this blending of concepts can be represented and
understood. These ideas take metaphor well beyond traditional theories that explain metaphor
as a similarity mapping between topic and vehicle. Although such structures can be discerned,
they are not the essence of metaphor or metonymy. Kvecses argues that . . . in actual com-
municative situations speakers/conceptualizers derive their metaphors from four large types of
experience: the situational, discourse, conceptual-cognitive, and bodily contexts. This goes
against the traditional view that most of our metaphors are simply conventionalized linguistic
expressions that have a certain meaning (p. 199).
 BOOK REVIEW 51

Chapter 4 begins the investigation of context by breaking it apart into such things as
discourse, ideology, culture, and history. Chapter 5 goes into more detail on cultural dierences
and similarities (as in conceptual models of emotion). The emphasis up through Chapter 5 on
how metaphor relates to common frames and categories begs the question of how novel and
poetic metaphors arise and how they too are context dependent. Chapters 6 and 7 address the
role of social and physical context in creative and poetic metaphor. Chapter 8 does likewise for
linguistic humor, and in this case the focus is on social, cognitive, and discourse incongruity.
Chapter 9 focuses on the role of context in our understanding of a particular emotion
happinessand how this concept is metaphorically conceived and understood. Chapters 4
through 8 are rich with examples illustrating the various notions of frames, blends, and cultural
dierences as well as universals.
Chapter 10 culminates and synthesizes the many ideas in this book. This includes a response and
resolution to numerous criticisms that have been made of the conceptual metaphor theory, and an
integration of various ideas about context and its role in comprehension. It might be noted that the
book does not broach the topic of computational analysis of metaphor. The conceptual metaphor
theory, with its emphasis on the relation of metaphor and metonymy, has been foundational in a
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recent project on computer interpretation of metaphors, and understanding metaphors cross-

culturally. But Kvecses should not be shorted or discounted for not considering a topic that the
book was not intended to cover.
As Kvecses argues in Chapter 3, this treatment presents not just an integrated theory of
metaphor/metonymy comprehension and creation, but a general theory of the human conceptual
system. With others, Kvecses reaches for a theory that explains how the human mind makes sense
of the world and makes inferences to support productivity and creativity (p. 46). Kvecses asserts
that the conceptual system is highly imagistic, reliant on schemas, semi-hierarchical, embodied
(highly dependent on spatial, physical, and physiological frames of reference), and is in many ways
arbitrary at scales ranging from the individual to the cultural. While perhaps not adequate as a
psychological theory, it is surely the bones of one.
Kvecsess many contributions to metaphor scholarship include treatments of emotion (Kvecses, 1986,
2000, 2011a), culture (2005), and conceptual metaphor theory in general (Kvecses, 2002, 2010, 2011b;
Polzenhagen, Kvecses, Vogelbacher, & Kleinke, 2014). This newest addition to the Kvecses canon will
stand as one of his most engaging and conclusive works. Thus, it is highly recommended for all metaphor
researchers and scholars. For a broader readership, the book is engaging as well as pedagogical. Thus, it is
highly recommended as a ne overall introduction to the cognitive linguistics of metaphor and as an
exceptional overview of the important roles of culture, history, and of course, context in gurative
communication.

References
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2003). The way we think: Conceptual blending and the minds hidden complexities. New
York, NY: Basic Books.
Gibbs, R. W. (2008). How metaphors create categories. In R. W. Gibbs (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor
and thought (pp. 6783). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Kvecses, Z. (1986). Metaphors of anger, pride and love: A lexical approach to the structure of concepts (Pragmatics &
Beyond). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Kvecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and emotion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kvecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction (1st ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Kvecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Kvecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Kvecses, Z. (2011a). Emotion concepts. New York, NY: Springer.
Kvecses, Z. (2011b). Methodological issues in conceptual metaphor theory. In S. Handl & S.-J. Schmid (Eds.),
Windows to the mind: Metaphor, metonymy and conceptual blending (pp. 2340). Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter.
 52 BOOK REVIEW

Lako, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Polzenhagen, F., Kvecses, Z., Vogelbacher, S., & Kleinke, S. (Eds.). (2014). Cognitive explorations into metaphor and
metonymy. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Reddy, M. J. (1979). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conict in our language about language. In A. Ortony
(Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 284310). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Robert R. Homan and Yorick Wilks

Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
rhoman@ihmc.us
ywilks@ihmc.us
2016 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2015.1074808
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