Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

sub-world
. Sub-worlds
are established when a character projects thoughts and reflections, perhaps through
a flashback or prolepsis (B7), to create another conceptual space inside the text world.
This projection forms a distinct situation of its own, because it sets up a reality outside
the parameters of the existing text world. Some practical suggestions about how to
identify text world and sub-world defining elements are set out in unit C10.
The second key model of conceptual tracking is the framework of narrative
comprehension developed by Emmott (1997). Emmott, as with Werth, is interested
in the way the reader can hold more than one context at once while concentrating
on one context in particular. Emmott develops the term 
binding
to describe how
episodic links between people and places are established in a text, and how these
links create a context which is monitored by the mind. Characters are bound into a
mental frame at the point at which they enter a fictional place. This process is distin-
guished in Emmott’s model from the process of 
priming
which describes the process
by which one particular contextual frame becomes the main focus of attention for
the reader (Emmott 1997: 123). As any sentence of narrative normally follows only
one event in one context, that frame is the reader’s main context and is therefore
primed.
The question arises, then, as to what we do with the other narrative strands that
have been bound into the story but which have been temporarily left alone by the
narrator. Emmott points out that characters remain in a fictional place until there is
an indication that they need to be ‘bound out’. So for example in the hospital drama
referred to above, a number of characters are bound into a variety of fictional places
as each episode begins. We develop a mental frame to track these fictional charac-
ters and locations even when they are not primed, and indeed, we assume that the
characters remain in place until we receive an explicit signal that they should be
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bound out. Unit C10 provides an opportunity to develop through textual analysis
the concepts of binding and priming in more detail.
Summary
Like all models in stylistics, cognitive models are designed to facilitate the process of
interpretation by helping us understand how we read texts. What distinguishes cog-
nitive from other sorts of stylistic models is that the main emphasis is on mental 
representation rather than on textual representation. Finding the right balance on the
cognitive–textual continuum is important, because a stylistic analysis can go too far in
either direction. To be overly text-based risks losing sight of what readers do when
they read, and this makes our stylistic analysis look as if it holds good for all readers
in all reading contexts. To be overly cognitive risks losing sight of the way a text is
made, and this tends to mask stylistic subtlety and creativity in textual composition.
The cognitive stylistic theme is sustained in C10 where a selection of practical
activities are provided which probe the concepts developed here and in A10. The
unit below takes the cognitive model in a different direction by focussing on the
interconnections between style and conceptual metaphor.
STYLES OF METAPHOR
This unit looks at some of the ways in which the study of metaphor has developed
within cognitive stylistics. In unit A11, brief reference was made to the idea of 
novelty
as a feature of metaphor in literature, and the following sub-unit will explore this
issue in greater depth. Later in the unit, attention turns to a short poem by Roger
McGough which, amongst other things, serves as a good illustration of some of the
connections that can be drawn between metaphor and style.
Metaphors in everyday discourse and in literary discourse
The idea that a particular metaphor is ‘novel’ can be understood in a number of
ways. It can be understood as referring for example to the newness or uniqueness 
of a conceptual mapping between a source and target domain, or alternatively, to a
striking method of expression which a writer uses to relay a metaphor. However,
taking the idea further requires that we work from the background assumption 
that most metaphorical mappings are transmitted through familiar, commonly occur-
ring linguistic expressions. For instance, the metaphor 
IDEAS ARE FOOD
is relayed
through a variety of everyday constructions like ‘I can’t stomach that idea’, ‘Your
theory’s half-baked’ or ‘His story is pretty hard to swallow’ and so on. It is inter-
esting that the pattern in such metaphors involves the mapping between an 
abstract target domain (
IDEAS
) and a more physical source domain (
FOOD
). This
pattern of ‘concretisation’, where we try to capture the essence of an abstraction 
by recasting it in the terms of something more palpable, is replicated in a great many
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metaphorical constructions and it offers an important insight into the way the human
mind works.
The process of concretisation underscores the fact that metaphorical mapping is
a conventional way of thinking and is not something remote to human thought. Not
surprisingly then, many metaphors have become embedded over time into fixed
expressions like 
idioms
. Idioms are conventionally defined as clusters of words whose
meaning cannot be read off their constituent parts, although it is important not to
lose sight of the often metaphorical origin of a particular idiom. A good illustration
of this principle of ‘metaphoricity’ is provided in the following slip of the tongue,
said by a journalist of an overworked sports personality:
(1)
He’s burning the midnight oil at both ends.
(from Simpson 1992b)
In this example, two expressions embodying one conceptual metaphor have been
unwittingly merged. The metaphor which is evoked is 
ENERGY IS A BURNING FUEL
and it is commonly transmitted through idioms like ‘burn the midnight oil’ and
‘burning the candle at both ends’. The popular term for this sort of slip, a ‘mixed
metaphor’, is something of a misnomer because, as observed, this is really a blend
of two idioms which draw on the same metaphor. But most importantly, the example
explains well the cognitive basis of idioms by showing how the same conceptual
storage system can contain related sets of fixed expressions.
To return to the issue of novelty, it is against this background of everyday
metaphorical mapping that writers of literature seek not only to establish new con-
nections, and new types of connection, between target and source domains, but also
to extend and elaborate upon existing metaphors in various ways. Consider for
instance the following fragment from Craig Raine’s poem ‘An Enquiry into Two
Inches of Ivory’:
(2)
. . . the vacuum cleaner grazes
over the carpet, lowing, . . .
Here the target domain is an everyday domestic appliance and the source domain a
familiar bovine animal. The source domain, as with many metaphorical expressions,
is evoked by verbs which specify some action of the target (‘grazes’ and ‘lowing’), so
the overall metaphorical formula can be captured as: 
A HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCE IS A
FARMED ANIMAL
. As far as the novelty of the metaphor is concerned, it is the mental
coalescence, or ‘conceptual blending’, of the familiar entities that offers a fresh
perspective on an otherwise prosaic object like the humble vacuum cleaner. It is
noticeable also that the two concepts in (1) are physical (one animate, the other not)
so the transition between target and source is not like the process of concretisation
seen above in the examples of everyday metaphorical mapping.
As a footnote to this discussion, it is worth reemphasising that novelty in stylistic
expression cannot remain novel indefinitely, and what is foregrounded in an orig-
inal context of use will become part of the background as time goes by (see B1).
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Indeed, many of our common sayings and figures of speech originated from creative
metaphors in literature. The expressions ‘cold comfort’, ‘a tower of strength’, ‘play
fast and loose’, ‘in my mind’s eye’ and ‘to the manner born’ may have little impact
nowadays, but all of them saw their first use in the plays of William Shakespeare.
Metaphor and style
The following poem is by the Liverpudlian poet Roger McGough:
40
–
LOVE
middle
aged
couple
playing
ten
nis
when
the
game
ends
and
they
go
home
the
net
will
still
be
be
tween
them
(McGough 1971)
In this poem, McGough employs a range of linguistic-stylistic devices to relay a single
underlying conceptual metaphor. Whereas the target domain is our understanding
of a human relationship, the source domain for the metaphor comes from games
and sport, yielding the formula: 
A HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IS A GAME OF SPORT
.
Regarding the source domain, we often apply concepts drawn from games and sports
to a whole host of target domains – the game of chess alone services a great many
metaphors in many different cultures. However, what is particularly marked about
the McGough poem is the way this conceptual metaphor is sustained by patterns of
graphology and other levels of language (see A2). Using this variety of devices,
McGough develops the basic metaphor through two processes known as