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Understanding metaphor in literature: An empirical approach
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Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 805-825
Book reviews G e r a r d Steen, Understanding metaphor in literature: An empirical approach. London and New York: Longman, 1994. xiii + 263 pp. $27.75 (pb.). Reviewed by Roger J. Kreuz, Department of Psychology, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152-6400, USA. E-mail: [email protected] ** Metaphor has long enjoyed a special status for students of rhetoric and literary criticism. For many, it exemplifies how literature differs from other, more mundane types of language use. The elucidation of metaphor has traditionally been viewed as a task for the humanities, but recent developments in the social sciences have challenged this academic franchise. The rise of psycholinguistics in the 1960s began this trend, with scientific study of the concept of grammar. The 1980s witnessed another step in this process the development of an approach referred to as the empirical study of literature. Although this term has been applied in various ways, I will define it rather narrowly for the purposes of this review. The empirical study of literature refers to the application of methodologies from experimental psychology and cognitive science to the study of literary production and comprehension. As with many other hybrids, the empirical study of literature has been viewed with suspicion by its parent disciplines. On the one hand, traditional literary theorists, not schooled in empirical methodology, have regarded attempts to quantify semantic and aesthetic properties as heretical. Traditional psychologists, on the other hand, have typically regarded the literary subject matter as 'soft', and not amenable to appropriate experimental control. Being neither fish nor fowl, the field has suffered from an identity crisis and a lack of a clear direction (for a fuller discussion of these issues, see Kreuz and Roberts, 1993). By the early '90s, however, the empirical study of literature seemed to be emerging from its extended adolescence. More research began to appear, and a number of international conferences spawned a series of edited volumes on these issues (e.g., Ibsch et al., 1991; Kreuz and MacNealy, 1996; Rusch, 1995; van Oostendorp and Zwaan, 1994). The research reported in Gerard Steen's book, Understanding metaphor in literature (1994), provides us with an unusually clear example of the pros and cons of this approach. Based primarily on his doctoral research at the Free University in Amsterdam (Steen, 1992), this book was published as part of the Studies in language and linguistics series by Longman. -
~ Partial support for the preparation of this review came from a Center of Excellence grant from the State of Tennessee to the Departmentof Psychologyat the Universityof Memphis.
0378-2166/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
806
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 805-825
The principal aims of Steen's work can be summarized simply. One goal was to determine whether literary metaphors differ from metaphors in other genres, such as those found in journalistic accounts. Another goal was to determine whether 'literary socialization' (that is, degree of literary expertise or experience) affects the reception of literary metaphors. Steen reports data from several experiments, using a variety of familiar experimental methods, such as text underlining, thinking out loud, and semantic differentials (scaling data). The first two chapters of the book are a review of theories of metaphor, and a discussion of some of the issues that these theories can and cannot account for. This discussion is a good one, and demonstrates the author's familiarity with the rather convoluted literature that has grown up around the concept of metaphor. The body of the book, however, consists of descriptions of experiments, and here the results are somewhat uneven. Altogether, the results of approximately eight studies are reported (depending on how the pilot studies and reanalyses are counted, the number might be a bit higher or lower). Several of the studies seem to be compromised by the use of too few subjects; in other cases, the generality of the results can be called into question, because only a small number of experimental texts or metaphors were used. Finally, the amount of information provided about the stimulus materials is quite variable. The report for one study that employed over 160 Dutch metaphors (chapter 8) provides no examples of the metaphors that were used, and the selection criteria for the metaphors in other studies are frequently omitted. It must be noted, however, that some of these problems are endemic to the empirical study of literature. Studies that employ literary 'experts' (as some of Steen's do) typically involve small numbers of subjects, for the simple reason that they are more difficult to recruit than undergraduate students. Similarly, the selection of stimuli can be problematic, since the metaphors are being ripped out of their frames of literary context. Many psychologists have skirted this issue by creating their own simple metaphorical materials, but if one truly wants to study metaphors in literature, this solution is not available. The results of Steen's studies do suggest that literary metaphors are different from journalistic metaphors; more specifically, it may be that an awareness that one is reading literature promotes attention to metaphors (chapter 3; see also Zwaan, 1991). On the other hand, several of the studies found no effect of literary socialization: teachers of literary studies, for example, produced think-aloud protocols that were similar to those given by teachers of anthropology (chapter 6). Once again, however, this result may be due to a lack of power in the experimental design. Finally, a number of experiments employing a semantic differential technique were used to identify specific dimensions on which literary and journalistic metaphors differ (chapter 8). This approach is of interest because it provides raw material for new ideas about how metaphors are used. One feature of this work deserves special mention. This book will be quite valuable to scholars in the humanities who are unfamiliar with experimental methodologies and statistical analyses. Steen takes pains to explain the rationale for his analyses, and describes statistical concepts like 'interaction' and 'covariate' for the uninitiated reader. In addition, most of the statistical details appear in tables and
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 805-825
807
footnotes at the end of each chapter, so the text is not encrusted with p values and F ratios. This can make the book slightly more difficult to read (lots of flipping back and forth is required to check the results), but for those not concerned with these details, the format should certainly be much more inviting than the typical research report. This book will be of value to readers trying to make sense of the theoretical perspectives on metaphor offered by psychologists, linguists, and cognitive scientists. The experimental reports may not be definitive, but they are certainly suggestive, and are deserving of an audience. There are other recent works on metaphor that take a somewhat broader approach (e.g., Mio and Katz, 1996, consider political and clinical implications), but Steen's work should be of interest to all students of literature and metaphor.
References Ibsch, Elrud, Dick Schram and Gerard Steen, eds., 1991. Empirical studies of literature: Proceedings of the second IGEL-conference, Amsterdam 1989. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. Kreuz, Roger J. and Mary Sue MacNealy, eds., 1996. Empirical approaches to literature and aesthetics. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Kreuz, Roger J. and Richard Roberts, 1993. The empirical study of figurative language in literature. Poetics 22: 151-169. Mio, Jeffery S. and Albert N. Katz, eds., 1996. Metaphor: Implications and applications. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Rusch, Gebhard, ed., 1995. Empirical approaches to literature: Proceedings of the fourth Biannual conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature. Siegen: LUMIS-Publications. Steen, Gerard, 1992. Metaphor in literary reception: A theoretical and empirical study of understanding metaphor in literary discourse. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Free University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. van Oostendorp, Herre and Rolf A. Zwaan, eds., 1994. Naturalistic text comprehension. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Zwaan, Rolf A., 1991. Some parameters of literary and news comprehension: Effects of discourse-type perspective on reading rate and surface structure comprehension. Poetics 20:139-156.
Christoph Gutknecht and Lutz J. Roelle, Translating by factors. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996. 346 pp. Reviewed by Eva Koktov~i, 325 West 1 lth Ave., Windsor House, Vancouver, BC, V5Y 1T3 Canada. The book under review is a brilliant study of the factors involved in the translation of modal verbs from English into German. Its contents are, however, richer than the title may suggest. The book is not only significant for translators, but also addresses, in an insightful and inspiring manner, a number of issues relevant for theoretical, general, and comparatiw~ linguistics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of lan-
Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 805-825
Book reviews G e r a r d Steen, Understanding metaphor in literature: An empirical approach. London and New York: Longman, 1994. xiii + 263 pp. $27.75 (pb.). Reviewed by Roger J. Kreuz, Department of Psychology, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152-6400, USA. E-mail: [email protected] ** Metaphor has long enjoyed a special status for students of rhetoric and literary criticism. For many, it exemplifies how literature differs from other, more mundane types of language use. The elucidation of metaphor has traditionally been viewed as a task for the humanities, but recent developments in the social sciences have challenged this academic franchise. The rise of psycholinguistics in the 1960s began this trend, with scientific study of the concept of grammar. The 1980s witnessed another step in this process the development of an approach referred to as the empirical study of literature. Although this term has been applied in various ways, I will define it rather narrowly for the purposes of this review. The empirical study of literature refers to the application of methodologies from experimental psychology and cognitive science to the study of literary production and comprehension. As with many other hybrids, the empirical study of literature has been viewed with suspicion by its parent disciplines. On the one hand, traditional literary theorists, not schooled in empirical methodology, have regarded attempts to quantify semantic and aesthetic properties as heretical. Traditional psychologists, on the other hand, have typically regarded the literary subject matter as 'soft', and not amenable to appropriate experimental control. Being neither fish nor fowl, the field has suffered from an identity crisis and a lack of a clear direction (for a fuller discussion of these issues, see Kreuz and Roberts, 1993). By the early '90s, however, the empirical study of literature seemed to be emerging from its extended adolescence. More research began to appear, and a number of international conferences spawned a series of edited volumes on these issues (e.g., Ibsch et al., 1991; Kreuz and MacNealy, 1996; Rusch, 1995; van Oostendorp and Zwaan, 1994). The research reported in Gerard Steen's book, Understanding metaphor in literature (1994), provides us with an unusually clear example of the pros and cons of this approach. Based primarily on his doctoral research at the Free University in Amsterdam (Steen, 1992), this book was published as part of the Studies in language and linguistics series by Longman. -
~ Partial support for the preparation of this review came from a Center of Excellence grant from the State of Tennessee to the Departmentof Psychologyat the Universityof Memphis.
0378-2166/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
806
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 805-825
The principal aims of Steen's work can be summarized simply. One goal was to determine whether literary metaphors differ from metaphors in other genres, such as those found in journalistic accounts. Another goal was to determine whether 'literary socialization' (that is, degree of literary expertise or experience) affects the reception of literary metaphors. Steen reports data from several experiments, using a variety of familiar experimental methods, such as text underlining, thinking out loud, and semantic differentials (scaling data). The first two chapters of the book are a review of theories of metaphor, and a discussion of some of the issues that these theories can and cannot account for. This discussion is a good one, and demonstrates the author's familiarity with the rather convoluted literature that has grown up around the concept of metaphor. The body of the book, however, consists of descriptions of experiments, and here the results are somewhat uneven. Altogether, the results of approximately eight studies are reported (depending on how the pilot studies and reanalyses are counted, the number might be a bit higher or lower). Several of the studies seem to be compromised by the use of too few subjects; in other cases, the generality of the results can be called into question, because only a small number of experimental texts or metaphors were used. Finally, the amount of information provided about the stimulus materials is quite variable. The report for one study that employed over 160 Dutch metaphors (chapter 8) provides no examples of the metaphors that were used, and the selection criteria for the metaphors in other studies are frequently omitted. It must be noted, however, that some of these problems are endemic to the empirical study of literature. Studies that employ literary 'experts' (as some of Steen's do) typically involve small numbers of subjects, for the simple reason that they are more difficult to recruit than undergraduate students. Similarly, the selection of stimuli can be problematic, since the metaphors are being ripped out of their frames of literary context. Many psychologists have skirted this issue by creating their own simple metaphorical materials, but if one truly wants to study metaphors in literature, this solution is not available. The results of Steen's studies do suggest that literary metaphors are different from journalistic metaphors; more specifically, it may be that an awareness that one is reading literature promotes attention to metaphors (chapter 3; see also Zwaan, 1991). On the other hand, several of the studies found no effect of literary socialization: teachers of literary studies, for example, produced think-aloud protocols that were similar to those given by teachers of anthropology (chapter 6). Once again, however, this result may be due to a lack of power in the experimental design. Finally, a number of experiments employing a semantic differential technique were used to identify specific dimensions on which literary and journalistic metaphors differ (chapter 8). This approach is of interest because it provides raw material for new ideas about how metaphors are used. One feature of this work deserves special mention. This book will be quite valuable to scholars in the humanities who are unfamiliar with experimental methodologies and statistical analyses. Steen takes pains to explain the rationale for his analyses, and describes statistical concepts like 'interaction' and 'covariate' for the uninitiated reader. In addition, most of the statistical details appear in tables and
Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1998) 805-825
807
footnotes at the end of each chapter, so the text is not encrusted with p values and F ratios. This can make the book slightly more difficult to read (lots of flipping back and forth is required to check the results), but for those not concerned with these details, the format should certainly be much more inviting than the typical research report. This book will be of value to readers trying to make sense of the theoretical perspectives on metaphor offered by psychologists, linguists, and cognitive scientists. The experimental reports may not be definitive, but they are certainly suggestive, and are deserving of an audience. There are other recent works on metaphor that take a somewhat broader approach (e.g., Mio and Katz, 1996, consider political and clinical implications), but Steen's work should be of interest to all students of literature and metaphor.
References Ibsch, Elrud, Dick Schram and Gerard Steen, eds., 1991. Empirical studies of literature: Proceedings of the second IGEL-conference, Amsterdam 1989. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. Kreuz, Roger J. and Mary Sue MacNealy, eds., 1996. Empirical approaches to literature and aesthetics. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Kreuz, Roger J. and Richard Roberts, 1993. The empirical study of figurative language in literature. Poetics 22: 151-169. Mio, Jeffery S. and Albert N. Katz, eds., 1996. Metaphor: Implications and applications. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Rusch, Gebhard, ed., 1995. Empirical approaches to literature: Proceedings of the fourth Biannual conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature. Siegen: LUMIS-Publications. Steen, Gerard, 1992. Metaphor in literary reception: A theoretical and empirical study of understanding metaphor in literary discourse. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Free University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. van Oostendorp, Herre and Rolf A. Zwaan, eds., 1994. Naturalistic text comprehension. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Zwaan, Rolf A., 1991. Some parameters of literary and news comprehension: Effects of discourse-type perspective on reading rate and surface structure comprehension. Poetics 20:139-156.
Christoph Gutknecht and Lutz J. Roelle, Translating by factors. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996. 346 pp. Reviewed by Eva Koktov~i, 325 West 1 lth Ave., Windsor House, Vancouver, BC, V5Y 1T3 Canada. The book under review is a brilliant study of the factors involved in the translation of modal verbs from English into German. Its contents are, however, richer than the title may suggest. The book is not only significant for translators, but also addresses, in an insightful and inspiring manner, a number of issues relevant for theoretical, general, and comparatiw~ linguistics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of lan-