Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

Activity
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Activity

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COGNITIVE STYLISTICS AND THE THEORY OF
METAPHOR
Peter Stockwell’s article explores, challenges and ultimately rejects a important and
widely accepted theory of metaphor comprehension. This theory, known as the
Invariance Hypothesis
, postulates that our understanding of a metaphor works in one
direction only. Whereas our conceptualisation of the 
target
domain of the metaphor
(see unit A11) is affected and altered by the use of the metaphor, our conceptuali-
sation of its source domain (that is, the concept we draw upon to develop the
metaphor), remains unaffected. Thus, in the metaphor 
WAR IS CLEANING
, which was
discussed in A11, the thing we are trying to describe (our conception of war) is
configured into a new way of thinking, although in the process we do not revise our
mental schema of the source domain (our conception of cleaning).
More specifically, Stockwell draws on the concept of the Idealised Cognitive Model
(see unit A10) in order to explore the Invariance Hypothesis as it relates to the 
processing of metaphor. According to Stockwell, the Invariance Hypothesis places a
constraint on the ways in which ICMs are used to understand new experiences in 
a metaphorical mapping, allowing only the receiver’s knowledge about the target
domain of the metaphor to be altered. Using some examples from literature to support
his case, he demonstrates that 
both
domains are altered in a metaphorical mapping, an
observation which suggests that the basic assumption of asymmetry in metaphorical
mapping is ill-founded. Stockwell therefore rejects the Invariance Hypothesis as it
relates to the reading of literature and in its place suggests an alternative source for a
solution to the problems which the Invariance Hypothesis was invented to solve.
The inflexibility of invariance