Philosophers, psychologists and linguists start to conceptualise metaphor from the cognitive angle rather than linguistic prospective. Recent studies have shown that metaphor is not interpreted as a linguistic phenomenon only. However, it can also be analysed in connection with thought (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003: 4). According to Lakoff and Turner (1989) metaphor is regarded as a pervasive element, for it exists in both language and thought. Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) studies metaphorical patterns in ration to Target domains (tenor, ground) and the Source domains (vehicle, figure). Its central focus lies in how abstract terms and concepts can be converted into concrete concepts in the mind of individuals.
According to Baldick (2008: 205), the term metaphor is a literary analogy, in which
‘one thing, an idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea or action’ to imply ‘some common quality shared by the two’. Gibbs (1994: 5) recognises that ‘people conceptualise their experiences in figurative terms via metaphor, metonymy, irony, oxymoron, etc. and these principles underlie the way we think, reason and imagine’.
In this thesis, CMT is included within the category of the interactional style of EMMS.
2.7.1 Application of Cognitive Metaphor Theory to Christopher Boone’s Mind style
The characters’ mind styles are represented through certain conventional and non-conventional metaphorical expressions reflected in linguistic elements of the text. For instance, Semino and Swindlehurst (1996) examine Bromden’s mind style, the main character and narrator in Ken Kesey’s (1975) One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest in terms of CMT. Bromden is a patient treated in a hospital and has been exposed to electroshock therapy. In his narration, he exploits some conventional metaphors in English, namely, PEOPLE ARE MACHINES and BIG IS POWERFUL. The uses of these metaphors by Bromden create a peculiar mind style due to the tendency of using mechanical objects and electronics. In the latter example, BIG refers to the notion of size that he interprets literally and POWERFUL can figuratively be associated with authority and domination. Moreover, he uses a large number of linguistic indicators of metaphorical patterns, such as ‘I am not functioning properly today’ and ‘I’m running out of steam’ and associates them with certain conventional metaphors such as MIND/INSTITUTION ARE MACHINES, THE HOSPITAL IS A MATCHINE ROOM and THE STAFFS ARE ROBBOTS.
Semino (2007, 2014a, 2014b) concludes that Christopher in The Curious Incident is unable to interpret certain kinds of metaphor.
The second main reason [why Christopher finds people confusing] is that people often talk using metaphor. These are examples of metaphors I laughed my socks off. He was the apple of her eye. They had a Skelton in the cupboard. We had a real pig of a day. The dog was stone dead. … I think [metaphor] should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards.
(Haddon, 2003: 19-20) However, Semino (2014a) argues that Christopher can understand other types of conventional metaphorical expressions including ‘stay out of people’s business’ (Haddon, 2003: 38) and he can use a simple simile when he refers to different kinds of machines to describe his own cognitive processes:
My memory is like a film. That is why I am really good at remembering things, like the conversations I have written down in this book, and what people were wearing, and what they smelled like, because my memory has a smell track which is like a soundtrack.
(Haddon, 2003: 96)
And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL
(Haddon, 2003: 177-178)
In the description of those metaphors associated with machines and particularly computers, Semino (2014a) notes that Christopher compares his mind to a machine because he can grasp the technical matters more easily than his knowledge of the working of other people’s minds. Fanlo Pinies (2005) comments that Christopher’s use of the MIND AS MACHINE metaphor could be ‘a rationalization of his mental condition and his information processing limitations’. According to Trice (2008), Christopher uses a computer screen image as a metaphor to explore how his mind works: ‘We’re looking at a screen inside our heads, like a computer screen’ (Haddon, 2003: 116), as well as ‘cinematic simile and other mechanical metaphors (Haddon, 2003: 163) to portray his own way of processing experience’. Berger (2008: 273) argues that ‘Metaphors and jokes are incomprehensible to Christopher because, like facial expressions, they have multiple meanings’. Furthermore, Burk-Abbott (2008: 294) comments that Haddon succeeds in portraying Christopher as having the ability to use ‘figurative language, but still leaving him able to engage only in literal thought’.
According to Leger (2013), Christopher notifies the reader that the novel will be deprived of metaphorical style which implies the absence of poetic figures of speech. This needs further discussion because my analysis of those selected episodes in the novel demonstrates that Christopher can understand certain metaphors such as ‘I do a search’ (p.
97), which signifies that he refers to his mind as a machine using computing terms and also idiomatic terms such as ‘see you later, alligator’ (p. 97). Christopher can understand simile because it ‘is not a lie’ (Haddon, 2003: 22) but cannot understand metaphors because they are lies (Semino, 2005, 2007, 2014a, 2014b; Walsh, 2007; Van Hart, 2012; Leger, 2013).
According to Berger (2008: 274), similes can be true, ‘not a lie’, in comparison to
‘metaphors, jokes and novels’ that are lies. Walsh (2007) refers to two new metaphorical expressions that Christopher invents which can be associated with CMT, namely, RED IS
GOOD and YELLOW IS BAD (Haddon. 2003: 105-107). Walsh argues that Christopher’s use of the COLOUR metaphor reflects his perception of his fictional world.
I presume that the two invented metaphorical expressions RED IS GOOD and YELLOW IS BAD appear to be under the influence of the Orientational Metaphors UP IS GOOD and DOWN IS BAD as readers realise that Christopher invents these metaphors to cope with his daily challenges. In the novel, Christopher connects these metaphors with his experiences of particular objects, things or events. For instance, he explicitly acknowledges that he is averse to eggs, sweet corn and yellow cars due to the colour ‘yellow’ as demonstrated below:
‘3 red cars in a row made it a Quite Good Day, and 5 red cars in a row made it a Super Good Day, and why 4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day’ (p. 31).
Having discussed in detail the literature review of the theoretical frameworks of this thesis and the way the notion of mind style has been investigated by stylisticians, the next section starts with a brief review of the existing research on mind style in order to explain in detail the way the EMMS has been built, and proceeds with considering the EMMS functionality in its application to the stylistic analysis of the two characters in the two novels.