LINGUISTICSAND EDUCATION4, 247-253 (1992)

Book Review
More than Cool Reason: A Field
Guide to Poetic Metaphor

J.L. LEMKE
Civ University @New York

GEORGE LAKOFF & MARK TURNER. (1989).

More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, xxii + 230 pp.

More than Cool Reason is a direct successor to Lakoff and Johnson’s widely read
Metaphors We Live By (1980). The earlierbook proposed a general view of the
importance of metaphor in how people make sense of daily life, and it began the
task of identifying the general metaphors of modem Western culture (e.g., Argu-
ment is War, Life is a Journey, Mind is a Machine) that can be found in common,
everyday speech. It also proposed a rather complicated theory of the nature of
metaphorical truth that diluted some genuine insights from cultural anthropology
(e.g., that how we live shapes how we make sense of the world) with the rather
less useful perspectives of academic philosophy (e.g, the “objectivism” vs.
“subjectivism” debate). The book was mainly read for its central thesis: that the
specific metaphors of ordinary language shape both general habits of reasoning
and particular conceptual views.
This time Lakoff has a new a new partner for his inquiries into metaphor, not a
philosopher, but a literary critic, and although the new book’s examples are
drawn mostly from poetry, its true focus is still on how metaphor shapes our
thinking in general. The theoretical basis now lies in cognitive schema theory
rather than in philosophical arguments, and is still open to challenge, but their
specific analyses illustrate the practical method well enough to provide a useful
model for researchers in other fields. After reading Lakoff and Turner. you may
well conclude that an extended discussion of the typical metaphors of our dis-
course about education is very much needed.
More than Cool Reason combines two intellectual agendas: first, to win back
for poetry and the arts equal status with “cool reason” by showing how pervasive
and fundamental metaphorical reasoning is, and second, to explicate how meta-
phor actually works (at the expense of a number of inadequate traditional theo-

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to J.L. Lemke, CUNY, Brooklyn Colle_ee
School of Education, Bedford Avenue and Avenue H, Brooklyn, NY 11210.

247
248 Book Revieu

ries). Lakotf and Turner’s picture of metaphor seems in many ways on the right
track. and in their wider intellectual revisionism they are at least on the right side.
Both educators and linguists will want to examine their picture of how language
works as a cultural tool to shape the forms of reason and belief.
As a self-styled Field Guidr to Poetic metuphor, this volume actually does
contain a separate Index of Metaphors. which might prove useful to students
Icarning to make sense of poetry. or to write it on assignment. but which also has
a certain fascination of its own. It shows, for example, that (at lcast for modern
Western poetry) it is Life and Death that we speak of in the greatest number of
different metaphorical terms. It also shovvs that there arc metaphors and meta-
phors: compare Druth is Sleep with E1w7rs uw Actions. Lakoff and Turner
recognize the latter as an example of a general or generic metaphor (in fact a type
of metaphor) as opposed to specific metaphors like Dcuth is Slerp or Tin7c is (I
Hctrlrr. It is these generic metaphors (ELwrt,v trr’e Ac~tions. Sttrtrs trre Locrrtims.
P~trpo.sc.s arc Lkstiwtiom. Huhituul Brhm~iors urc Attributes, etc. ) that show
the pervasiveness and power of metaphoric reasoning outside of poetry and
which have also been recognized in functional linguistics and semantics as fun-
damental resources of language itself (under the name of “grammatical meta-
phors” Halliday, 1985. Ch. 10; Kavelli. 1988).
The book’s four principal chapters each undertake a different assignment. The
first gives a fairly detailed survey and description of a large number of common
cultural metaphors dealing with Life. Death, and Time. It also begins to intro
duce Lakoff and Turner’s basic theory of metaphor as a mapping of the concep-
tual relations of one topic domain onto those of another. The second chapter is
really the heart of the book and provides a detailed discussion of their theory ot
metaphor and a comparison with more traditional views. The last two chapters
provide rich examples: an exhaustive metaphoric structure analysis of one
William Carlos Williams poem. and an extended discussion of the metaphoric
interpretation of proverbs in the context of cultural theories of the Great Chain of
Being linking the attributes and behaviors of objects, plants. animals. and
people.
One of the limitations of Lakoff and Turner’s study is that. except for some
Sanskrit erotica in translation and one Navaho writer on horses, it is bounded by
Western culture, despite occasional claims for similar metaphors clsewhcre.
More serious. perhaps, is the ambivalence of their theoretical position regarding
cultural determinism. which slides from explicit reference to cultural mod& and
theories to appeals to putatively universal features of human experience and
cognition. This is especially troublesome when the book deals with the generic
metaphors. Speaking of States wc Locations ( p. X5). they say “it is difficult to
imagine what our cognition would be like without it” and consider it “indispcns-
able” in a way that certainly backgrounds any consideration of its being culturc-
specific. In another discussion, the terms “cognitive model“ and “cultural
model ” arc introduced as interchangeable ( p. 67). The Great Chain of Being
 Book Review 249

discussion (Ch. 4) is quite explicitly specific to Western culture, but does not
clear up the issue for other reasons (the model there is not purely one of meta-
phoric reasoning).
Lakoff and Turner are at their best in identifying the common metaphoric
ground underlying a wide range of different particular metaphoric expressions
and examples. They also make some very useful contributions to our understand-
ing of the processes by which metaphor extends and modifies the meanings we
create by using it, and even the possibilities we give ourselves for making new
meanings. They give a good analysis of Personification and a useful general
description of how metaphors interact with one another. Perhaps the greatest
theoretical contribution is their discussion (pp. 77-83) of the constraints that
limit what can be used for the metaphorical expression of what, and more
generally of the kinds of similarities that metaphoric mappings tend to preserve
between domains. This tells us, in effect, how likely one domain is to be useful
as a metaphor for another.
The book is probably at its weakest when dealing with the tough questions of
the relation of thought and language. Although generally sympathetic to the
Whorfian view that language shapes thought, Lakoff and Turner fall back on the
mentalist position that concepts precede and stand outside of language, so that
language only “expresses” these concepts. In fact, while recognizing this as
formally a metonymy (Words Standfor Concepts), they consider it again to be a
necessary one, “since words do stand for the concepts they express” ( p. 108). A
little humility, not to mention some cross-cultural counterexamples, should warn
them that they are relying here on a folk-theory (in fact an extended mentalist or
cognitivist metaphoric discourse) about the relation of thought and language,
which although recently dominant in our own culture, is not particularly compel-
ling when faced with, say, more sophisticated semiotic alternatives (Halliday,
1978; Lemke, 1988, 1990; Rumsey, 1990; Silverstein, 1976; Thibault, 1986,
1991).
Placing conceptual schemas outside of and prior to the human manipulation of
symbols (including preeminently language) through which alone conceptual
thought can take place, enables Lakoff and Turner to find a meta-metaphor for
what they want to say (Metaphors are Mappings between Conceptuul Schemas),
but one that also severely limits what they can say. The alternative view, that
language (and other symbol systems) provide the resources through which mean-
ings are made, and that what we call concepts and their relations are just seman-
tic (or more generally semiotic) elements and relations, would let them say a lot
more. It would, for example, enable them to make more sense of how metaphors
interact with common knowledge by allowing both to be represented in the same
(linguistic-semantic) terms. It would also free them from the tendency of men-
talist models to construe culture-specific patterns of meaning as universal cog-
nitive principles.
One of the most interesting points Lakoff and Turner make concerns what they
250 Book Heview

call the difference between conceptual schema metaphors and image schema
metaphors. In image metaphors, it may be the physical shape (or other essen-
tially visual properties) of one object that stand for those of another, rather than
any set of purely abstract conceptual relations. This case does not readily fit their
conceptualist model, as they admit, but any semiotic theory certainly expects that
in addition to linguistic semantic metaphor there should be metaphors based on
other semiotic systems (pictorial, gestural, actional, etc.).
Lakoff and Turner do take a more semiotic position in rejecting the pragmat-
its-semantics distinction, along with the truth-conditional philosophical theory
of meaning it is meant to preserve. They do this because their analysis of
metaphor shows clearly that there is no defensible basis for a theory that some
meanings arc “literal” and nonmetaphoric because they rest on autonomous
“objective” meanings of words (or correspondences to “objective realities”).
But if semuntic’s refers to all aspects of meaning, both those that are relatively
stable across context and those that are highly context-dependent (for which
others introduce a secondary “pragmatics”), then this broad-scope semantic5
should be sufficient for their (and most) purposes, without introducing yet an-
other separate domain of conceptual structures or schemas. It is necessary to
notice, as Lakoff and Turner do in other terms (p. 50), that the same semantic
relationships can be constructed through a variety of different word-choices and
grammar-choices. But the appropriate distinction here is not one between mental
concepts and language, but between semantics and text, that is, between mean-
ings and wordings. In a semiotic theory, meanings are constructed through the
semantic resources a language provides: its grammar and its lexicon. Semantics
remains part of the linguistic system.
A unitary semiotic model enables one to do most of the sorts of things that
Lakoff and Turner really want to do, keeping the culture-specific viewpoint they
prefer. within a consistently linguistic picture of meaning. The cultural role of
common knowledge and commonplace metaphors is easily accounted for by
recognizing that we interpret the meaning of a particular metaphoric text not
simply in relation to its situational (and textual) context, but in relation to other
texts in the relevant content domains. Recurring, culture-specific patterns of
semantic relations, whether metaphorical or not, are relatively constant across
different texts in which their wordings may differ significantly. These ir~trrtrxtual
semantic patterns serve precisely the function of Lakoff and Turner’s cognitive
“conceptual schemas,” while remaining within the language system, and being
directly based on textual evidence (and not on appeals to unobservable mental
representations). I have called them themcrtic patterns and shown their usefulness
in analyzing both poetic and ordinary. classroom discourse (Lemke, 1983, 1985,
1990).
Whether we formulate them as conceptual schcmas, or as thematic (semantic,
cultural. intertextual, linguistic) patterns are metaphors “mappings” from one to
another as Lakoff and Turner forcefully argue‘? Mapping. of course, belongs to a
metaphor from the domain of mathematics (which took it from geography). A
 Book Review 251

mapping in mathematics is a systematic, relation-prese~ing co~espondence be-

tween one set and another. It is a reasonable metaphor for linguistic metaphors,
but it may be misleading in an important respect. Lakoff and Turner argue (pp.
131--133) that there is an essential asymmetry in metaphor, that the mappings
from a “source” to a “target domain” (more te~inology borrowed from a
common thematic pattern in the language of mathematics) are not “bidirec-
tional ,” that is, metaphors are not generally reversible; Gvrre is a he&r, but not
healers are time or anything like it. This amounts to saying that metaphorical text
is really about a primary domain (e.g., time, change) and the metaphorical
domain (i.e. ~healing) is merely an alternative mode of expression of the primary
thematic pattern (which could be expressed differently without it).
But Lakoff and Turner have studied metaphoric language enough to know, as
they say elsewhere (pp. 62-65, 120- 122), that the meaning of a metaphoric text
is not paraphrasable in the primary domain, because the second thematics adds
layers of meaning and does not merely substitute new wording for meaning
already there. So what we have is not really a mapping, but something more like
an overlay, like double-vision or, as Bakhtin (1973, 1981) names it, “double-
voicing.” A similar conclusion has been reached in the theory of grammatical
metaphor in functional linguistics (Halliday, 1985, Ch. 10; Ravelli, 1988). Even
mathematics has elaborated the geographer’s original view. The logical domain
of a mapping in mathematics is the logical product, not the sum, of the sets that it
brings into correspondence.
This important notion of the doubled-meaning of metaphor applies across the
continuum that functional linguistics sees between gr~mrnat~c~~ and lexical met-
aphor. If grammar is a resource for making meanings, then grammatical distinc-
tions (e.g., between active and passive voice, modalities of possibility and
permissibility, verbs of action and relation, interrogative and imperative mood,
etc.) contribute to meaning just as lexical distinctions do. Lexical distinctions are
often just finer gradations of grammatical ones (cf. Hasan, 1987) and the use of
an unusual or marked grammatical construction can be as metaphorical as the use
of a “borrowed” lexical item. “Can you tell me the time?” for “Tell me the
time, please” can be treated as grummuticaf metaphor, as can “The third day saw
them reach the summit” for “On the third day they reached the summit” (Halli-
day, 1985, Ch 10.) In fact, Lakoff and Turner’s important notion of generic
metaphors (e.g., Events are Actions, States are Locations) are exactly gram-
matical metaphors (of Halliday’s “ideational” type). They can be specified in
very precise grammatical terms and their history in the language, and in indi-
viduals’ language development can be precisely traced. Lakoff and Turner even
offer some intermediate cases between grammatical and lexical metaphors (e.g.,
Understanding is Seeing, Time is u Changer) of just the sort that Halliday’s
theory expects. This is another case of the more parsimonious linguistic-semiotic
theory encompassing more than one that relies on unnecessary extralinguistic
notions like cognitive schemas.
1 will not comment on the analysis of the William Carlos Williams poem,
252 Book Review

except to say that it certainly supports the book’s contention (p. 106) that “all
reading is reading in.” Lakoff and Turner certainly provide a powerful analytical
engine for reading metaphors of many sorts, not just those on the surface of a
text, but those that intertextual cultural-thematic patterns suggest for the poem as
a global whole.
The final chapter presents an interesting theory of the metaphorical interpreta-
tion of proverbs. Proverbs may or may not be poetry in the narrowest scnsc. but
they are certainly a widespread cultural phenomenon, and may well represent a
predecessor of, and a still viable alternative to, abstract categorical language.
Lakoff and Turner invoke a new master trope for proverbs. a kind of metaphor
they call Getwric is Sprc{fic. This is not, however. either a lexical or a gram-
matical metaphor, but rather a sort of rule of abstraction, whereby the attributes
and behaviors of one set of entities may stand for a similar structure of different
attributes and behaviors of another. A proverb such as “The blind man blames
the ditch” potentially unifies all situations in which it could intelligibly be used,
creating a kind of abstract category that academic logic does not construct (but
folk-logic, and much non-Western logic. does). The common denominator of its
situations can be analyzed into something like: events in which someone with a
deficiency wrongly blames something else for a negative consequence of the
deficiency.
As a metaphor in Lakoff and Turner’s theory, the Getwric i.c Spec$k rule is
just too general; it connects too much in too many ways. So its application to the
interpretation of proverbs has to be restricted by a particular Western cultural
theory (the Great Chain of Being) and by a principle of interpretation based on
one of Grice’s conversational maxims (even though Lakoff and Turner have
already rejected the pragmatics assumptions on which Grice’s theory is based;
presumably the maxim stands on its own). The resulting theory seems a little too
unwieldy to me to be fully convincing. It is not basically metaphor at all that lies
behind the use of proverbs; it is situational recontextualization of meaning. a
common semiotic phenomenon. It makes sense in the context of a logic quite
alien to abstract categorial reasoning, a logic that needs to be understood in its
own terms first. Nevertheless. the many examples in the chapter give ample
scope for the rest of Lakoff and Turner’s method.
Mar-c~than Cool Rcuson is a very accessible book: linguists may long for more
formal analysis and exposition, but educators and the generally curious reader
will find few obstacles to understanding what Lakoff and Turner have to say
about metaphor, about poetry, and about how language shapes reasoning. My
quarrels with them are those of a theoretician working close to the borders of
their subject. What they say is well worth reading, adapting. and quarreling with.
 Book Review 253

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