SIGN AND METAPHOR

YI-FU TUAN

ABSTRACT. The capacity to feel deeply about the environment and the ability
to innovate-these two primary concerns of the humanist geographer-are closely
linked. Both presuppose a mind that is able to apprehend and create the affective
sign, the metaphor, and the symbol. Environment is vivid because the stimulus a
person receives from one source can generate multiple and unexpected sensations,
images, and ideas. Synesthesia, metaphorical predication, and symbolic thought are
different modes of this process: they differ in the degree of conscious awareness
and in the content of articulable ideas. Humanist geographers, by studying this
process, will better understand the “felt quality” of environment and the problems
of design.

N human geography we sometimes treat peo-
Iness.
ple as though they have little or no aware-
This is the approach of sociophysicists.
On the other hand, we sometimes postulate a
world in which people are always feeling, will-
ing, thinking, and making decisions. This is the
natural emphasis of humanist scholars. Both
approaches are valid, though each is limited by
its own restrictive view of the person. In fact,
people behave at times almost like automata
with hardly a hint of conscious awareness; at
other times, they respond to their environment
with feeling and thought. A comprehensive hu-
man geography will need to embrace the whole
spectrum of human awareness.
From the standpoint of a comprehensive hu-
man geography, two questions may be raised
concerning human awareness. One is: what are
the circumstances under which people behave
like automata and what are the circumstances
under which, to the contrary, they are propelled
to feel and think? The second question is: what
is the nature of a people’s affective and thought-
imbued response to environment? Phrased dif-
ferently, are there means of exploring the na-
ture and process of the human imagination so
that we can better understand what lies at the
heart of humanistic geography-the felt qual-
ity of the human world? I shall address myself
to the second question. An answer is to be
found in the idea that the capacity to feel
deeply-to see the world vividly-and the ca-
pacity to innovate are closely linked. Innova-
Dr. Tuan is Professor of Geography at the Univer-
Jity of Minnesota in Minneapolis, M N 55455.
ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS
0 1978 by the Association of American Geographers. Printed in U.S.A.
tive behavior is manifest in multiple ways dur-
ing the ordinary course of living, but that which
lies at their root is the uniquely developed hu-
man power to apprehend and create the affec-
tive sign, the metaphor, and the symbol.
ROUTINE BEHAVIOR A N D SIGNS
Innovation presupposes a background of sta-
bility and order. We feel at times that ours is
a chaotic and constantly changing world. This
feeling, however, may simply reflect the narrow
focus of individual experience. Even the mod-
ern city, which some people like to describe as
almost a jungle, displays order-the order of
routine and predictable activities. A bird’s-eye
view of the city will show streams of cars mov-
ing on the right lanes, stopping when the traffic
lights turn red. If there is a pedestrian mall or
bridge, we can safely predict that most people
will walk on the right side even though the law
does not require them to do so. Inside the build-
ings, people will behave by and large in stan-
dard patterns: one pattern in the dentist’s office,
another in a large department store, a third in
the public library, and so 0n.l In the course of
time, one generation will pass and another take
its place; there will be changes in environmen-
l F o r a county seat (population 830) in eastern
Kansas, Roger Barker has identified “198 standing
patterns of behavior and milieu with noninterchange-
able programs. If the town were abandoned by its
present inhabitants and resettled by people of totally
alien culture, they would require 198 instruction books
and/or training programs to reconstitute the behavior
environment of Midwest.” Roger Barker, Ecological
Psychology (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1968), p. 116.
Vol. 68, No. 3, September 1978

363
364 YI-FU TUAN
tal setting and adjustments in behavioral pat-
terns, but what must impress the objective ob-
server is their stability: cars still stop or go
when the lights change as though the cars, like
the traffic signals, are programmed machines
without human occupants. A. N. Whitehead
put it this way:2
A system will be the product of intelligence. But
when the adequate routine is established, intelli-
gence vanishes, and the system is maintained by a
co-ordination of conditioned reflexes . . . No one,
from President to miner, need understand the sys-
tem as a whole. There will be no foresight, but
there will be complete success in the maintenance
of routine.
In routine activities, human beings respond
more or less automatically to signs in the envi-
ronment. I define “sign” as that which triggers
off a movement or act rather than a mood, a
feeling, or a train of thought. An environment
in which people are at home is one wherein
they have established a routine, that is to say,
one in which the signs are unambiguous in their
call for specific types of behavior. For example,
I see the hands of the bedside clock point to
six and I get up; I see a toothbrush in a tumbler
and I brush my teeth; I get into my car, drive
down the road and when I see the Esso gas
station I turn right, and so on to the end of
another day. Even the words I use, which seem
to call for thought, are often little more than
automatic “speech acts” prompted by succes-
sive signs such as a colleague standing by the
elevator and the secretary behind her desk. I n
short, my social speech is made up of clichks
that fit snuggly into the repertoire of customary
gestures. A world in which human beings
respond unthinkingly to environmental signs
makes for that essential order or stability with-
out which innovation cannot arise. But this
stable world of reiterative patterns is little dif-
ferent in its fundamental, psychological char-
acteristics from the worlds of animak3 The dif-
2 A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York:
Mentor Book, 1955), p. 96.
?: “The interpretation of signs is the basis of ani-
mal intelligence. Animals presumably do not distin-
guish between natural signs and artificial or fortuitous
signs; but they use both kinds to guide their practical
activities. We do the same thing all day long. We an-
swer bells, watch the clock, obey warning signals, fol-
low arrows . . . . The interpretation of signs . . . is
the most elementary and most tangible sort of intel-
lection; the kind of knowledge that we share with ani-
mals: that we acquire entirely by experience, that has
September
ference lies mainly in the number, type, and
complexity of signs to which each species will
r e ~ p o n d Such
. ~ worlds, because they are unin-
formed or only weakly informed by imaginative
feeling and thought, tend to be schematic.” It is
not surprising that the scientist’s abstract mod-
els should often prove adequate to the ex-
planatory description of these schematic worlds.
BEYOND SIGNS
Human beings respond not only to signs but
also to affective signs and symbols. Their speech
is not mere verbal gesticulation, consistently
clichi-ridden, but contains fresh metaphors,
and it is occasionally used for thought (Fig. 1 ) .
A sign is an aid to action. An affective sign
elicits an imaginative and emotion-tinted re-
sponse. A symbol encapsulates and nurtures
an idea or a set of ideas. It “serves to make
one conceive the idea it represents, and is an
aid to thought and day-dreaming.”6 All ani-
mals, including human beings, know how to
interpret appropriately the signs in their re-
spective environments: they must in order to
survive. Affective signs are within the experi-
obvious biological uses, and equally obvious criteria
of truth and falsehood.” Susanne K. Langer, Philoso-
p h y in LI N c w ~Key (New York: Mentor Book, 1958).
p. 60.
4 “A man, viewed as a behaving system, is quite
simple. The apparent complexity of his behavior ovei
time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the
environment in which he finds himself.” On another
page: “Only human pride argues that the apparent
intricacies of our path stem from a quite different
source than the intricacy of the ant’s path.” Herbert
A. Simon, T h e Sciences of the Attificial (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), pp. 52-53.
5 On the schematic nature of the animal world, see
D. 0. Hebb, T h e Organization of Behavior (New
York: John Wiley, 1949), pp. 93-94; H. H. Price,
Thinking and Experiencing (London: Hutchinson Uni-
versity Library, 1969), pp. 39-42; Roger Brown,
Words and Things (New York: The Free Press, 1968),
pp. 168-270; and Roger Muchielli, Introduction to
Structural Psychology (New York: Equinox, Avon
Book, 1972), pp. 71-72. On the schematic nature of
the human world-the lack of conscious awareness
in routine behavior-see David R. Seamon, Move-
ment, Rest, and Encounter: A Phenomenology of
Everyday Environmental Experience, unpublished doc-
toral dissertation, Clark University, 1977. I have
explored this theme in Space and Place: The Penpec-
tive of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 1977), pp. 68-74 and in the paper “Im-
ages and Mental Maps,” Annals, Association of
American Geographers, Vol. 65 (1975), pp. 20.5-13.
Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form (New York:
Scribner’s, 1953), p. 26.
1978 SIGN AND METAPHOR 365

Behavior (action) Feeling Thought

3

Affective sign

Sign Symbol

Space: Schematic-action Aesthetic Sy m bo Iic-abst r a ct

World: Routine-practical Affective Con ceptu a Ibex p lor a t o r y

A c a d e m i c , Behavioral H u m an istic (Study of ideas and

field ’ geography geography concepts)
\
v \ /
v
Stable world: design is feasible Unstable ( i n n o v a t i v e ) world:
design is problematic
FIG. 1. The human world is one in which individuals behave (act), feel, and think. Behav-
ior responds to sign, feeling to affective sign, thinking to symbol. Synesthesia, metaphor, and
simile are way stations to symbolic thought. The main arrow points in the direction of increas-
ing awareness. The greater the awareness the less stable the world becomes, and the greater
the problem of design. The scientific method is best adapted to studying the world of signs (be-
havioral geography). Humanistic geography is concerned with the worlds of affect and of
thought.

ence of both animals and humans, but to a
unique degree among humans. Symbols exist
solely in the human world.
I shall illustrate the meaning of sign, affec-
tive sign, and symbol with two examples. Con-
sider the traffic light. To motorists it is a sign
and calls for suitable action. Engineers put it
there for no other purpose. In a dark foggy
night, however, the glowing red eye may evoke
an emotion-tinted response and vaguely stir the
imagination. The traffic light then becomes an
affective sign. It can also be a symbol; for in-
stance, I may see it as a symbol of law and or-
der in society. Another example is the cross
on top of a church. Unlike the traffic light, the
cross is meant to be an affective sign. A Chris-
tian may respond to it as to a sacred object-
one that evokes a sense of dread, or as a sym-
bol around which he can organize his thoughts
concerning Christianity. To many people, how-
ever, the cross may well play an unintended
role-that of a sign, a mere landmark for ori-
entation in the city. How would an intelligent
animal, say, a dog respond to a traffic signal?
He may take it as a sign-perhaps for relieving
nature. Under certain conditions he may re-
spond to it in dread as to a threatening pres-
ence, but he cannot see it as a symbol for the
idea of law and order. Again, a dog may be
taught to react to a cross in a seemingly rever-
ential manner, but it will not be for him a sym-
bol that conduces to thought. Because the hu-
man world contains affective signs and symbols,
and not just signs, it differs in important ways
from the animal world. The human world, de-
spite its weight of routine, is capable of radical
change induced by large shifts in awareness.
AFFECTIVE SIGN AND METAPHOR
My speech may be full of tired phrases, mere
verbal gestures to smooth the social inter-
course, but occasionally I coin a fresh meta-
phor such as “the red eye of the traffic signal.”
366 YI-FU TUAN
My habitual relationship with the traffic signal
is unimaginative: the signal merely triggers re-
flex actions. But occasionally it functions as
an affective sign: it can stir my feeling and im-
agination. It looks alive and if I had to describe
the appearance I would have said that “the red
light looks like an angry eye.” The human re-
sponse to an affective sign is invariably touched
by an idea, and that idea when clothed in words
reveals its metaphorical structure.
What is a metaphor? Philip Wheelwright rec-
ognizes two parts in the concept-“epiphor”
and “diaphor.” The epiphor strives for the out-
reach and extension of meaning through com-
parison. Its essential mark is “to express a simi-
larity between something relatively well known
or concretely known (the semantic vehicle)
and something which, although of greater worth
or importance, is less known (the semantic
tenor) .”i Consider two rather commonplace ex-
amples: “A mighty fortress is our God” and
“the river of life.” God is an important but
fuzzy concept. The fortress anchors one facet
of God-his strength, dependability, and pro-
tective might. When I am in a fortress I feel
God’s presence. The fortress is an affective sign
pointing to, or hinting at, something of greater
importance. Put in another way, the fortress
is an epiphoric vehicle, of which the tenor is
divine power. The other example is “the river
of life.” Nothing is closer to us than our own
life and yet it seems elusive because we cannot
see it. The river is an apt epiphoric vehicle.
We look at a stream winding its way to the
sea or petering out in a waste of sand, and say
“that’s life.” The body of water here does not
call for practical action-“stop,” for instance,
a message that humans as well as animals un-
derstand-but rather it serves as an affective
sign, a vehicle for the outreach and extension
of meaning.
The diaphor, in distinction to the epiphor,
strives for the creation of meaning through jux-
taposition and synthesis.* Its role is not to point
from one thing to another, from “river” to
“life”; rather it is to combine two dissimilar
appearances or ideas. Take the word “land-
scape.” It is a diaphor in the sense that it de-
rives its tensive meaning through combining
7 Philip Wheelwright, Mefuphor and Reality (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 73.
SWheelwright, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 72.
September
two dissimilar entities, “domain” and “scen-
ery.” Domain belongs to the vocabulary of
political and economic discourse. A domain or
an estate can be surveyed and mapped; it can
be viewed objectively from a theoretical point
high above. Scenery, on the other hand, is an
aesthetic term. It is an individual and personal
perspective from a position on the ground. The
diaphoric meaning of landscape lies not in one
image (concretely known) pointing to another,
but rather in both-equally important-imag-
inatively synthesized.
SYNESTHESIA AND METAPHOR
How is it possible that stimulus from one
object or idea can evoke another image or idea
that is only distantly related by analogy? If we
have an answer, we would have solved the
problem of human thinking and creativity. The
metaphorical process, which lies at the basis
of human imagination and thought, is not
clearly understood. We can, however, acquire
an insight into the metaphorical process by
looking at a physiological and experiential
process that resembles it and probably lies at
its roots: this is syneTthesia (Fig. 1).
Synesthesia is the blending of sensory ex-
periences. It occurs when “sensations from one
sense modality (e.g., taste or smell) are called
forth when stimuli of another sense modality
(e.g., hearing or vision) are presented.”D We
all have some capacity for synesthetic experi-
ence. To a few-perhaps less than ten percent
of any large population sample-this capacity
is developed to an exceptional degree. The most
common variety of synesthesia would seem to
be “colored hearing,” a condition wherein the
hearing of a sound induces the visualization of
a certain color. In human speech, vowels are
able to evoke colored images with remarkable
consistency. Still more common is the associa-
tion of the pitch of a sound with the brightness
of an image. For example, low pitched sounds
such as deep voices, drums, and thunder pro-
duce dark images, whereas squeaks, violins and
soprano voices produce white or bright images.
Another common association is between the
pitch of a sound and the size and shape of an
image. Thus, high pitched sounds are small,
9T. F. Kanvoski and H. S. Odbert, “Color-
music,” Psycholo~icul Monographs, Vol. 50, No. 2
(1938), p. 3.
1978 SIGN AND METAPHOR
angular and sharply edged, whereas low pitched
sounds are dark, round, and massive.“’
Synesthesia can be highly individualistic and
specific. One person informed Francis Calton
that to him the letter “A” is always brown. To
the poet Arthur Rimbaud, on the other hand,
“A” is black.ll Synesthesia can also be general
and widely shared: for instance the association
of red color with warmth and activity, and blue
color with coldness and passivity. Culture and
language differ among human groups, and yet
the “feeling tone” of their worlds may have
much in common. The feeling tone of a phe-
nomenon, which may be an appearance or an
idea, is its connotative significance. T o use a
related term “affective sign,” the meaning of
an affective sign-its connotative significance
-may be transcultural. Charles Osgood notes,
in his study of Anglo-American, Navaho, and
Japanese groups, that despite differences in lan-
guage and culture they show similar synesthetic
tendencies. Thus, for all three groups, the idea
“fast” is seen as thin, bright, and diffuse;
“heavy” is down, dark, and near; “quiet” is
horizontal and “noisy” is crooked.12 Morse
Peckham postulates a relationship between cer-
tain architectural dimensions and human feel-
ings that appear to be synesthetic in character
and may also be transcultural: for example, the
association of verticality and solidity with a
sense of demand, of closed solids with fixity or
rejection, open pavilions with flexibility or
openness, light and rectangularity with ade-
quacy, deep axis with energy re1ease.l:’
The human world is richer for our synes-
thetic tendencies. A sound is not only a sound
but also a color; and if not a specific color for
most of us, then at least the pitch of a sound
does suggest images of brightness or darkness.
Synesthesia aids memory. Extreme synesthetes
are mnemonists of a high order. T o them, ran-
dom alphabets are easy to recall because they
are not only shapes but also colors. The Rus-
10 Karwoski and Odbert, op. cit., footnote 9, pp. 1- Is S. here simply reporting on his sensations,
60; and Lawrence E. Marks, “Synesthesia,” Psychol- or is he speaking in a poetic, metaphorical lan-
OKY T o d a y , VOI. 9, NO. 1 (1975), pp. 48-52.
11 “You vowels, A the black, E white, green U,
blue 0, Some day I will reveal your hidden identities.” swer for this particular instance, but we do
(Arthur Rimbaud). Quotation in Philip Wheelwright,
op. cit., footnote 7, p. 76.
12 Charles E. Osgood, “The Cross-cultural General-
ity of Visual-Verbal Synesthetic Tendencies,” Behav-
ioral Science, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1960), pp. 152-53.
13Morse Peckham, Man’s Rage for Chaos (New
York: Schocken Books, 1967), p. 199.
367
sian synesthete and mnemonist, known to ex-
perimenters as S., was once asked whether he
could find his way home from the institute
where some tests on his remarkable memory
had been conducted. S. replied: “How could I
possibly forget? After all, here’s this fence. It
has such a salty taste and feels so rough; fur-
thermore, it has such a sharp, piercing sound.”14
The world of an extreme synesthete may be
rich but it also tends to be hallucinatory. He
hears a sound and sees a color as well, although
only his auditory organ has been stimulated by
an outside source. A person like S. finds it diffi-
cult to distinguish one sensation from another,
or between sensations and actual experiences
of events. His vivid and phantasmal world re-
sembles in some ways that of a small child.
Indeed, children are known to show stronger
synesthetic tendencies than adults. A biological
advantage of this capacity is that, by aiding
memory, it enables the child to get a firmer
hold on his world, although-in extreme form
-it leads to fantasy. As a child grows older,
he depends less on the services of synesthesia
and more on the resources of language for a
firm grasp on the world and for finding it rich
and stimulating. Moreover, with the resources
of language the child can explore the world in
imaginative ways without confounding the prod-
ucts of his imagination with reality.
Highly specialized gifts of nature can be a
mixed blessing. For example, a minimal talent
for calculating numbers in the head is a condi-
tion for doing mathematics at more advanced
levels, but an exceptional computational gift
may hinder the birth of original mathematical
ideas. Likewise, synesthesia is a probable con-
dition for understanding and inventing meta-
phors, but the vividness of direct experience in
an extreme synesthete can be an enchantment
that hampers the mind from exploring analo-
gies at the level of ideas. The Russian mnemon-
ist S. once told the linguist L. S. Vygotsky:
“What a crumbly, yellow voice you have.”lj
guage? Or is he doing both? We have no an-
know that S. has difficulty in appreciating meta-
phors. People tend to assume that poetry calls
14A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist (New
York: Basic Books, 1968), p. 38.
15Luria, op. cit., footnote 14, p. 24.
368 YI-FU TUAN
f o r the most graphic kind of imagination. In
fact, the metaphors in poetic language evoke
not so much images as ideas: the images are not
the meaning, they arc the vehicles of meaning.
We say of a lovely young woman that “she is
a rose.” A synesthete o r a small child may well
find this expression nonsensical. Put a rose side
by side with a woman, and where is the resem-
blance? A rose is much closer in appearance
and constitution to a cabbage than to a young
human female, yet such is the force of the meta-
phor that many people will find its coupling
with the latter more natural.
A person who looks at a fence and hears a
“sharp, piercing sound” as well is a synesthete;
his capacity is inborn-a function of his neuro-
logical endowment. Strong synesthesia in an
individual is a unique gift; on the other hand,
universal synesthetic tendencies also exist. All
people appear to associate the visually large
with the auditorially loud. Such coupling can
be the product of invariant experience rather
than of some neurophysiological process. As
Osgood puts it, “it i s simply a characteristic of
the physical world that as a noise-producing
object approaches o r is approached, increases
in visual angle are correlated with increases in
loudness.”“’ Synesthetic events of this kind
occur without preparatory thought. They are
not the result of an active imagination. It can
be difficult to tell, however, whether ideas have
in fact played a role. F o r example, when I look
at a landscape and see peace, calm, and nurtur-
ing power, am I registering unreflectively a syn-
esthetic event o r does my experience depend
on the prior input of formulated ideas? I can-
not be certain. But this is clear: when I look
at a landscape and see a reclining human fe-
male o r mother figure, imagination is at work.
“Mother earth” is a metaphor.
UNIVERSAL METAPHORS
I t may be that strong synesthesia and meta-
phorical thinking are two ends of a continuum
in human capacity. At one end, the outreach
from one sensation to another is an automiitic
physiological process made possible by an in-
terlacing of nerve fibers; at the other, the ex-
tension of an image o r idea is a playful leap
of the mind.“ Between them lie intermediate
Osgood, op. cit., footnote 12, p. 168.
1‘;
17“Learning , . . covers a very wide range. At one
extreme we have the case of the individual who sees
September
states, wherein the translation from one sensa-
tion, image, or idea to another is dependent
in varying degree on conjoint experience, cul-
ture, and individual talent. An example, alreadl
given, of synesthesia as the result of conjoint
experience is the coupling of the visually large
with the auditorially loud. Culture operates at
a more conscious level: it extends and elabo-
rates a synesthetic disposition. F o r instance,
the general tendency to associate frontal space
with illuminated space and future time may be
more explicitly acknowledged in some cultures
than in others. Finally, a person can seek to
enrich and deepen the meaning of an image
by marrying it to another: he attempts meta-
phorical thought.
I n the exchanges of daily speech, a few fresh
metaphors may emerge but most are shop-
worn. Some metaphors are so old and univer-
sally employed that, like certain kinds of widely
shared synesthetic experience, they seem con-
stitutive of human nature. Animal and human
metaphors are caqes in point. James Fernandez
argues for their universality. He notes that the
human sense of self is elusive, that the pronoun:,
of social life (the “I,” “you,” “he,” “it”) are
inchoate unless they are predicated on some
affective sign, some metaphor. Pronouns must
become objects by taking the point of vieh of
“the other,” before they can become subjects
to themselves. “This becoming an object, this
taking the other, this predication upon the
pronoun, i s a process that has for millennia
turned to the animal world.”’8 Children learn
their identities by playing animal games. They
are nervous chickens one moment and raven-
ous beasts of prey the next. By mastering these
roles they learn to see themselves as having the
characteristics of these animals, but also as
transcending them. Even in our machine-domi-
nated society, infants and college coed? play
with stuffed animals. Boys engage in “horse
play.” Fathers teasingly pretend to eat u p their
the various colors of billiard balls when he hears
numbers from one to fifteen. At the other extreme
we have the learning of language and familiarity with
literature, with all of the sensory analogies there
suggested.” T. F. Kaiwoski, H. S. Odbert, and Charles
E. Osgood, “Studies in Synesthetic Thinking. TI. The
Role of Form in Visual Responses to Music,” Jourriul
of Gencid Psycho/o,Ty, Vol. 26 (1942), p. 215.
James Fernandez, “The Mission of Metaphor in
Expressive Culture,” Current Anthropology, Vol. 15,
No. 2 (1974), p. 122.
1978 SIGNAND METAPHOR
small children, and then offer them piggyback
rides. As adults, we never become so confident
of our identities as to escape altogether the need
for animal metaphoric predications. In mo-
ments of ambiguity or conflict, we feel more re-
assured if we can liken the opposing teams to
hawks and doves. I say of a colleague that he
is a jelly fish. Although neither of us has seen
a jelly fish, we both know that a precise accu-
sation has been made and that, moreover, the
label will stick.l!)
“Sky father” and “earth mother” are old
metaphors, known in diverse cultures in widely
different parts of the world; likewise, the idea
of rain impregnating the earth. It is an old and
common habit of thought to see the earth in
terms of human anatomy: rocks are bones,
soil is flesh, and the plant cover the hairpiece
of a cosmic being. The association is strong
enough so that to some nonagricultural Ameri-
can Indians it is sacrilege to tear up the grass
for the purpose of planting crops.2o Even to
some agricultural peoples, digging up the earth
in the past aroused unease and called for ritual
propitiations and sacrifice. Clearly, seeing the
earth as mother is not just a literary conceit.
Although Western man does not look upon
pebbles in a stream as “toes” (like the Dogon
of West Africa), his topographical vocabulary
does contain anatomical metaphors: for exam-
ple, headland, foothill, volcanic neck, the spine
or brow of a ridge, the tail of a drumlin, the
shoulder of a valley, and the mouth of a river.21
Using human beings or animals as predicates
of nature is an ancient practice. Many such
zoo-metaphors have long since lost their origi-
nal power to stimulate. A few are kept alive
as part of a continuing tradition, and they may
still affect the ways people treat nature, but the
images they call forth have gone stale. New
metaphors, of course, continue to appear. In-
novative conjunctions of ideas continue to
emerge. The human mind is extraordinarily
fertile. We may well ask whether the moon
and the stars can still inspire new anthropo-
morphic images. The answer would seem to be
yes. T. E. Hulme, for example, was able to
19 Femandez, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 122.
2oFor samples of American Indian lyricism, see
T. C. McLuhan, ed., Touch the Earth: A Self-portrait
of Indian Existence (New York Outerbridge & Dienst-
frey, 1971).
21 Victor W. Turner, “Symbols in African Ritual,”
Science, Vol. 179 (16 March, 1973), p. 1104.
369
evoke fresh images and ideas by linking the
heavenly bodies of perduring human concern
to the country and the city, viewed since an-
cient times as antithetical ways of life. He
wrote:22
A touch of cold in the autumn night
I walked abroad
And saw the round moon lean over a hedge,
Like a red-faced farmer,
I did not stop to talk, but nodded;
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.
METAPHOR AND SYMBOL
Synesthesia provides a foundation for the
development of metaphorical thought. Discur-
sive and systematic thought rests, in turn, on
the human ability to create metaphors, that is,
reach from one image or idea to another and
perceive their joint Metaphor, sim-
ile, and the full articulation of ideas form a
continuum: one moves from the implicit to the
explicit (Fig. 1 ). The simile, in distinction to
the metaphor, is explicit in its analogy: “wist-
ful stars are like white-faced city children.”
The symbol goes beyond the simile. It is an
abstracted affective sign that has lost its direct
link with a human subject in a specific context.
It permits an extended excursion in analogic
reasoning; it is an aid to day-dreaming and to
thought. Plato accepted the microcosmic meta-
phor of his time-the idea that man’s body is
a likeness of the cosmos. He did not, however,
rest with the metaphor; he proceeded to build
on it a towering schema of correspondences
harmonizing the components of the universe
from the very small to the very large.24To take
a more current example, we may begin with the
direct apprehension that “society is an orga-
nism.” We take the next step and say that “so-
ciety is like an organism,” and then proceed to
think explicitly and in detail in what ways
society is, and is not, like an organism.
As we move on to thought, the impact of the
original affective sign or metaphor tends to lose
its emotional power. A church, for example, no
2 2 T . E. Hulme, “Autumn.” Quotation in Wheel-
wright, op cit., footnote 7, pp. 74-75.
23 “Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by com-
parison, and the metaphors of language derive there-
from.” I. A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1936), p. 94.
24 Leonard Barkan, Nature’s Work of Art: The Hu-
man Body as Image of the World (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1975), pp. 17-18.
370 YI-FU TUAN
longer commands awe. From a numinous pres-
ence it becomes a symbol for the Christian doc-
trine of salvation, for the church’s teaching on
the relationship between God and man. Yet,
this seemingly fragile web of articulated ideas
can overcome the impact of affective signs that
work directly on the senses. Consider how one
might experience the interior of an old cathed-
ral in a Latin country. It is dark and musty,
there are flickering candle lights, women in
black, blood-covered effigies of the dying
Christ, memorials and stone coffins of the il-
lustrious departed. They are all affective signs
of woe and death. But to someone who is aware
of Christian symbolism and has profound sym-
pathy for the story it tells, the feeling inside
the church is not morbidness but hope.
The commercial strip of new and rapidly ex-
panding American towns provides, in a sense,
a contrary example. The strip is brightly lit
at night. The language of signs is explicit
and leaves no doubt in the motorist’s mind as
to where he can stop to refuel and to eat.
Bright illumination and colors are affective
signs that evoke cheer, a sense of thrusting
power against the darkness and gloom of the
surrounding countryside. Children appreciate
the lights and so did teen-aged youngsters who
used to drive their resuscitated vehicles up and
down the strip. Sophisticated adults, however,
are often deprecatory. They forget the conve-
nience of the signs which tell them what to do,
they choose not to respond to the lights and
colors as affective signs-metaphors of dynam-
ism and vitality; instead they interpret the ap-
pearances symbolically. The strip as a whole
and in its parts symbolize for them the least
appealing sides of American life-its vulgar
thrust for quick success, its insensitivity to es-
tablished values, its blatancy and crassness.
The difference between the affective sign or
metaphor on the one hand and the symbol on
the other is one of degree: the symbol carries a
greater proportion of articulable ideas. Con-
sider “landscape.” We have seen that it is a
diaphor in the sense that it combines and syn-
thesizes two dissimilar ideas-“domain” and
“scenery.” Landscape is epiphoric insofar as it
is a vehicle for something more important and
less tangible than itself such as divine presence.
Landscape may lose its affective and meta-
phoric power and become a mere unit of space.
On the other hand, it can acquire more explicit
connotations and become a symbol. The epi-
September
phoric function of landscape seems to have
waned: we rarely respond to a landscape as to
a numinous presence. But the symbolic mean-
ing of landscape has increased. We think and
talk about it more.2s
As an illustration of multiple symbolic mean-
ings, take the English landscape in the eigh-
teenth century. We may now choose to see it
through the eyes of Jacquetta Hawkes, for
whom it is a moment when a precarious bal-
ance was achieved between the shifting forces
of nature and of man.2oThe harmony and love-
liness of the English countryside are a result
of this momentary balance. A particular scene
can thus serve as a symbol for the idea of
ecological health. We may, however, choose to
see the same landscape through the eyes of
Raymond Williams, for whom the gross dis-
proportion in scale between the cottage and
the mansion is a symbol of social injustice in
eighteenth-century England.27 The point of the
illustration is two-fold. One is the conscious-
ness of choice, which the symbol allows and
which the affective sign, being direct and im-
plicit in its effect, does not. The other is the
possibility of using the landscape as a material
symbol around which ideas concerning ecologi-
cal health or social injustice can accrue.
DESIGN IMPLICATIONS
The categories of perception here sketched
have implications for design : they suggest why
designers can make successful plans, and also
why plans often fail (Fig. 1). Designing for
other people is feasible because human behav-
ior, like that of other animals, is routinized; it
depends on the habit of responding to environ-
mental signs in an appropriate manner. Signs
may be clear or ambiguous, facilitating action
in the one case and handicapping it in the
other. One duty of the planner is to ensure
25 We articulate our feelings and ideas far more
than d o people in traditional societies. “While exe-
gesis of anything and everything is the order of the
day in university culture, it is much rarer in tradi-
tional cultures. Empirical research, in fact, shows that
it is usually quite difficult to obtain the significata of
symbols.” James W. Fernandez, “Analysis of Rit-
ual: Metaphoric Correspondences as the Elementary
Forms,” Science, Vol. 182 (28 December, 1973),
p. 1366.
26 Jacquetta Hawkes, A Land (London: Cresset
Press, 1951), p. 143.
27 Raymond Williams, The Country and the City
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 106.
1978 SIGN AND
that the signs achieve maximum clarity. Thus
architects should plan office buildings so that
people can find their way from one bureau to
the next without the endowment of a sixth
sense, and highway engineers might be able to
design a route system such that motorists can
drive from one city to another with minimal
mental and emotional stress.
Planning an environment that affects our
emotions and stirs our imagination is also pos-
sible. We can all think of a pedestrian mall, a
residential area, or a reconstructed urban cen-
ter that has succeeded far beyond the utilitarian
functions it primarily serves. The reason why
one can plan such environments is that a
“grammar” of affective signs exists. There are
rules that govern affective and imaginative
responses. A designer knows that a certain
stimulus will evoke a certain feeling and even a
rudimentary idea. Synesthesia and the root
metaphors of a culture give stability to a peo-
ple’s emotions and thought so that they are, to
a degree, predictable. Red color is “warm” and
“active,” verticality and solidity evoke a sense
of “demand.” But an imaginative designer can
do much more than the following of such sim-
ple rules. Just as a writer can stimulate the
reader with a new literary conceit, so a planner
or architect can stimulate his client with a new
architectural or spatial conceit: he might, for
instance, juxtapose two dissimilar elements or
deliberately introduce ambiguity in his design
so that a client is challenged to perceive his
environment anew.28
We have moved from signs that trigger stan-
dard behavior to what approximates a dis-
course between the imaginative designer and
his responsive-imaginative client. Planning for
human beings can often be objective, for rea-
sons already given, but it ultimately must em-
brace human discourse. And here we encounter
fundamental difficulties in design. There exist
no rules that guarantee successful human dis-
course. Differences in individual personality
and of culture, including the use and apprecia-
tion of language, are not readily overcome.
Even within the shared culture of a family, a
28 Robert Ventun, Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modem
Art, 1966); Amos Rapoport and Robert E. Kantor,
“Complexity and Ambiguity in Environmental De-
sign,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners,
Vol. 33 (1967), pp. 210-21.
METAPHOR 37 1
member cannot be sure that his pun or prac-
tical joke will produce the desired effect. Inno-
vation even at the humblest level risks failure.
A fresh metaphor may cause incomprehension
rather than enlightenment; an architectural
conceit may baffle and distress rather than
stimulate and refresh. Objects intended as signs
(e.g., the traffic signal) may be read as affec-
tive signs or symbols, and vice versa. More-
over, discursive thought-increasingly promi-
nent in modern society-can deeply affect our
perception so that a landscape formerly ad-
mired for its harmonious lines and ecological
health may now symbolize social injustice and
economic exploitation.
SPEECH AND REALITY
A talented writer can evoke the mood and
personality of a place; with mere words he is
able to conjure “life” out of a pile of stones.
All human beings, however, have the power
of speech. We all can and do make the world
around us more present and vivid by giving
utterance on appropriate occasions and in suit-
able settings. Unlike the professional writer,
who has to conjure with words an image of the
context where talk occurs, in real life the con-
text is given: it is whatever concrete situation
we happen to find ourselves in. Given a real
locale, words have surprising influence even
if they are not used in any strikingly original
way. A casual metaphor, for example, can de-
tract or enhance the reputation of a neighbor.
People whisper in our ears that so-and-so is a
jelly fish, or that he has a razor-sharp mind.
Thenceforth, our view of a particular individ-
ual is altered, however slightly: he becomes a
more vivid personality-someone for us to de-
spise or admire. Clearly this power of speech
applies not only to people but also to aspects
of our material environment. “ A gingerbread
house,” I say slyly of a proud businessman’s
mansion, and its image suffers. We well know
that a deftly told ghost story can radically alter
a man’s perception of the lonely road. At night-
fall, as I climb into the car in preparation for
the long drive along the coast of New Jersey,
a friend says: “By the way, folks here believe
that the marsh flame you will see from the turn-
pike is the lantern of a railroad man, acciden-
tally beheaded on his job, searching for his
head.”
372 YI-FU TUAN
CODA
The world of competence and habit consists
of signs that do not command focused interest.
Driving along the highway I must be able to
interpret them correctly with a minimum of
conscious effort. From time to time, a particu-
lar object-such as the marsh flame in the dark
night-catches my attention and evokes a
mood, a feeling, or a rudimentary idea. It is
then an affective sign. However, the marsh
Aame can generate more than just a passing
mood or idea. As the result of attaching an
elaborate ghost story to the flame, an affective
sign becomes a powerful symbol able to create
an eerie scene in the mind’s eye of anyone who
has heard the story.
This, in a nutshell, is the felt quality of our
environment-mostly gray and unseen, occa-
sionally vivid. A task for humanist geographers
is to understand better how localities and envi-
ronments come to be imbued with feeling and
thought. Given a setting we ask: what are its
affective signs and symbols? Under what cir-
September
cumstances do the affective signs function as
such, and not as mere signs? How are the sym-
bols maintained by ceremonial acts and discur-
sive speech? What themes tend to dominate the
inhabitants’ conversation? What are their fav-
orite metaphors? The felt quality of a place
can never be fully revealed by describing the
physical structures and noting the ways people
move in them. Nor is it merely a stable attribute
that can be elicited through the use of restric-
tive questionnaires. Such approaches have evi-
dent value, but they must be supplemented by
studying a people’s speech as it appears natu-
rally in the course of day-to-day living and on
more dramatic occasions. Even commonplace
words have power if they are uttered in the on-
going situations of life, and not extracted by
formal survey. Words serve to maintain routine
and also to shatter it. Humanist geographers
want to know how a people, not only through
imaginative action but also through enlivening
speech, create and recreate their multifaceted
and kaleidoscopic worlds.