Metaphors are Culturally Driven

By Carl R ToersBijns

April 8, 2015

Why do we like to use metaphors and how does that impact my way of words and expressive behaviors as we try to create a moment of poetic creativity in a cognitive and linguistic manner so I can be sure the words used and written reflect the actual thoughts and perceptions of my mind.

The answer is not that simple but when you search deep within yourself, you eventually find what you are looking for and see for yourself how metaphorical creativity present you with a conceptual moment and a manipulated idea to share devices of the mind and come to a conclusion that is easy to understand as it draws cognitive and graphic creativity for you to see with your own mind and within your own culture.

Cultures are hinged on perceptions, beliefs, customs and practices. To put credibility on such effects there must be the use of the imagination as well as the presence of elaboration to clarify thoughts or ideals through the use of words. Each language has its own set of words but the words can change meanings unless the use of metaphors steers it into the direction provided by the author for such ordinary but important purposes as communication and journalism.

Perhaps the use of metaphors is more imaginative in poetry than journalism but the need to balance between fact and fiction has always been the key to skillful writings. Although we give more lateral movement to poetry, we should also include a defined latitude in journalism so we can distinguish the difference between the creativity involved and the manipulation of desired outcomes and ideas.

We all possess a fair amount of creative and cognitive devices. We all learned that metaphors can be used to be factual in nature but exaggerated in expression. Thus we balance the two in order to keep the elements clear and not formulate or design more than one train of thought or pattern.

This is most difficult to do and maintain over a long period of time as the metaphorical creativity tends to dominate the need to go even further into the creative world and device some kind of vision for you to see. Hence, the challenge is to keep it in context as much as possible without straying or going off on a tangent.

Under most circumstances, people, different people but ordinary people, conceptualize an idea or thought metaphorically and do so to better understand the idea under the pressures of comprehensive skills and their own personal experiences. In such cases, we must be assured the metaphor is kept within the context provided or intended in order to create a reflection of the truth or actuality.

Under the burden of being persuasive, we have to work under the pressure of comprehension and context. One cannot accomplish facts without the other if you are using metaphors as a means to convey an idea or concept. Keeping in mind, context can be used in poetry in two ways; poets can designate or elaborate the context in which they create the poetry and they may use the context as a means to say or express something else.

In journalism, the poetry is eliminated by the use of a straightforward example of describing the scene or concept disallowing any creativity to set in, making the situation appear to be a black and white situation or case remembering that the context is the scene and the scene has to be preserved with facts to tell the truth.

While journalist are injecting and producing the context (scene) in an almost literal manner, they do use adjectives and other forms of descriptive nouns to keep it real. This does not mean they can’t use that description of the surrounding context without metaphors. Keeping the context literal and enhancing its surroundings with metaphors appears to be an acceptable manner to express the description.

Here the context remains the domain and the metaphors are working the edges of the surroundings creating a pleasant mix of creativity with factual data or descriptions. Thus the writer has two targets; the context and the surroundings with each its own domain.

The descriptive statements must match the domain and to mix or combine the two would only cause a confusion of the facts when the metaphors used are describing something other than the original domain of context.

The point here is to simply ensure that the dominant literal description of the context is not tampered with by the use of certain metaphors not remarkably general in nature and distracting certain concepts or facts from the source of the domain (context) rather than the surrounding perspectives.

Changing cultures changes the meanings of perceptions and descriptions provided adding confusion to the meaning of such writings. The writer has to focus on the dominantly literally conceived source or context when it intends to convey a message or description.

Separating context into a cultural context, we change the choices of the scene partly due to motivated customs and practices as well as beliefs and traditions. It is true that a symbolic belief is different from various parts of the world and this adds another concept to the use of metaphors in our writings making it very important to understand the differences between cultural diversities around the globe.

Adding another dimension to the cultural context is the surrounding physical cultural environment. It is important that the writer maintains a defined line in the relationship between the scene and environment.

Keeping it culturally accurate in order to convey personal relationships or physical connections validated through various cultural means keeping in mind that some cultural inferences are based on human biology and how that gives the character or descriptive personality linked to the contextual domain described. This is how we create misunderstandings and metaphors just add more to the confusion if the link is not properly connected to the cultural context described.

This the cultural context includes many things including the belief systems, the technology available to the persons or character and other various specific forms of cultural variations either geographically, ethnically or religiously.

One could not begin to talk about cultural influences without talking about social implications or social context. Remember the conceptual creation is based on the main form or domain of the context provided. This cannot change under most circumstances.

We cannot confuse the main domain with a target domain. We cannot construct a new structure out of the original structure as it changes the meaning or context as well as the metaphorical efforts to describe the surrounding environment. They are all connected and all related at one point of the concept and that domain is a fixed or permanent domain.

Removing the original social structure or context creates a new social structure or context. This must be avoided unless the writer deliberately changes the meaning of the primary domain and creates a new target domain on purpose. This can be done accurately if all methods are used to harmonize the context and surroundings to a common theme or conceptualization.

I found this analysis helpful in my writings and pay attention to not overly combine the effect of these metaphorical factors or influences in my writings. I have become more aware of the blending factors and how they change the concept or context unintentionally. Thus the interaction in using metaphorical induced ideas or concepts should take into consideration all what has been noted to be an integration theory that makes the motivation to input metaphors into the works accurate and reasonable under such recognized factors.

I am not suggestion writing a conventional style metaphoric paper. I am merely suggesting that context of writings can be changed unintentionally when they are modified in response to contextual factors such as was written in this paper.

Concluding my thoughts, we should keep in mind poems and poetic languages sometimes disregard cultural social and personal backgrounds of the reader possibly distorting the original idea or approach. Secondly, there are social and historical as well as technological perspectives or concepts we have to include or be aware of to avoid contradictory views or mixing context rather than building natural bridges of comprehension and systematical views.

The use of metaphors can be a natural and educating experience in the writings of poetic materials or in journalism. These views have long been supported by the current use of metaphors in various context and stories. In a critical climate as we live in today, we actually stand to be at a greater risk to offend or underestimate the degree of accuracy between what is written and what the writer actually wanted to convey to the reader.

Citation:

Reading the writings of Zoltán Kövecses

“Metaphor and poetic creativity: a cognitive linguistic account”

Eötvös Loránd University Budapest