Visibility and economy as dimensions of metaphoric language

Abstract

Metaphoric language can be examined either from the standpoint of conceptual structure or from the perspective of linguistic form. The role of conceptual metaphor in metaphoric language has received considerable attention, notably in Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Blending Theory, but the impact of linguistic form remains less well understood. Brooke-Rose’s A Grammar of Metaphor (1958) presents subjective impressions of various forms, and more recently, cognitive linguists have examined the metaphoric uses of individual grammatical constructions. However, Stockwell offers the most methodical and comprehensive comparison of metaphorically used constructions along a specified parameter, that of ‘visibility’ (1992, 2000, 2002). On the cline of visibility, constructions range from the most visible constructions, such as simile, to the least visible, such as allegory.

The current article draws on Sullivan’s (2013) study of the role of grammatical constructions in metaphoric language to examine and refine Stockwell’s cline of visibility, inputting the syntactic characteristics of Stockwell’s metaphoric constructions into a multidimensional scaling analysis. The results support Stockwell’s dimension of ‘visibility’, but suggest that the distinctions between metaphorically used constructions are better accounted for in a two-dimensional analysis that considers the dimension of ‘economy’ – the linguistic complexity required to express a conceptual metaphor – alongside ‘visibility’.