One learns in school that a metaphor is calling something that which it is really not-- "My love is a rose," for example. One learns the term in English class, usually in conjunction with that most dreaded of topics, the formal study of poetry. Students learn the terms, show that they can use them on a test, and promptly forget them, figuring that they have no function in everyday life. What most people do not realize is that the metaphor is crucial to human thought, and if metaphors are not carefully examined, they can lead to disastrous and sometimes deadly results.
Metaphors are useful things. They allow us to understand difficult concepts, and to make our lives meaningful in ways they would not be if we did not have them. Metaphors work simply, like a cryptogram alphabet. Every letter is assigned a symbol, and in a message, the symbol is substituted for the corresponding letter. In such a way do metaphors work. For instance, I could say that the University of Iowa is like a human body. Certain parallels come immediately to mind. The administration could be compared to the brain, professors to nerves which stimulate the cells that are otherwise known as students. Campus security could be seen as the immune system, the Cambus as arteries. Yet there are functions that don't match. What, for example, is the stomach? What about the custodial staff?
Depending on your view of the University, there are, of course, other metaphors that can be used, both flattering and unflattering ones. The editorial and opinion pages of most newspapers are a fertile source for information on what metaphors Americans use in regard to the institutions of our country. For instance, there appeared in the Chicago Tribune on November nineteenth, 1992, an opinion column titled, "The efficient tool of police brutality." The metaphor of the article was that of police brutality as a tool, with all the attendant lore about tools that Americans know--that a tool by itself is not a good or a bad thing, but that its usage makes it so, and that some tools are more dangerous than others and should only be used by qualified people. The writer, Abraham A. Tennenbaum, uses words such as "create", "efficient", and "usefulness" to make it clear that this metaphor is one he wants his audience to believe is positive. I am not taking issue with the article itself, but it is a good example of an extended metaphor.
Take many metaphors, bundle them together in one mind, and you have a reality set. Take many reality sets that correspond for the most part and you have a culture. Culture defined this way is a sort of hive mind, not something that exists separately from its participants, but a thing that takes on its own life. Future generations are expected to fit into this metaphor--it is thought that as long as there are children being born into the set of metaphors, the hive mind of the culture will be immortal.
This reality statement is pervasive, and permeates the language of the culture. For example, there is an unspoken rule in English that something that is the object of a possessive must exist. For example, in English, the sentence, "My new hat does not exist" makes no sense at all, but in Navaho, it makes perfect sense. The metaphor is "All of my possessions exist, therefore if I posses something, it must exist." This is useful if you want to accuse somebody of something, but don't want to have a long, drawn-out argument about whether or not the person actually does what you are accusing them of doing. All you have to do is say something like, "Your constant tardiness infuriates me!" and you have all in one neat little package an accusation that most people don't know how to respond to. There is no argument about whether or not the person in question is actually constantly tardy, the attention is instead diverted to the part about the tardiness making you angry.
So metaphors are not perfectly innocuous things that you find in the pages of poetry textbooks, but are alive and well in everyday life. They are inescapable in thought and culture. If you understand what your neighbor's metaphors are, you can then better deal with that neighbor.
Yet metaphors can be dangerous and sometimes downright deadly. There are people in any society who are not going to be totally familiar with the metaphors of society and the ways that the society uses the metaphor, such as small children, foreigners, and the like. This is a problem with parents who use sleep as a metaphor for death, as in, "The vet had to put Rover to sleep." As Suzette Hadin Elgin says in More on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense, "You can't count on the child to match up the metaphor, sleep=death, at those points you were thinking of--the ones about rest and freedom from pain and the happy end to a long hard day. The child is likely to go straight to the part of the metaphor that matters most to children--the waking up from it so you can do things--and is going to be immediately aware that this is a place where the two halves of the metaphor don't match. So far as the child can determine, Rover is not going to wake up from this new kind of "sleep" you are suggesting." This gives the parent who uses this metaphor a good chance of finding that the child is now afraid to go to sleep. This illustrates the care we should take in choosing metaphors when dealing with people who are unfamiliar with the metaphors you are suggesting.
George Lakoff, a linguist, writes about the role metaphors played in the decision to wage the gulf war. Kuwait was seen as the damsel in distress, which the United States, as the "white knight" had to ride off and free. There was the metaphor of war as politics pursued by other means, as a cost-benefit analysis, as business. There is the metaphor of the state as a person, with wealth equaling health, and seen as having friends, enemies, dispositions, and personalities. Therefore, the United States did not march off to war to protect its own interests abroad, but went to rescue the pretty, rich damsel, and punished the evildoer that held Kuwait captive. The war was fought because it would do the country more good than harm to defeat the villain (the cost-benefit metaphor), and because our enemy had hurt one of our friends (the state as person metaphor). Iraq was seen as immoral, rapacious, and lazy, and this attitude was unfortunately directed at those in this country who have ancestors from that part of the world. Those who ordered the troops into the Persian Gulf operated under two potentially conflicting metaphors: the damsel in distress metaphor and the cost-benefit metaphor. The conflict arises not in the ultimate outcome of following the metaphors to their conclusion, but in the depiction of the enemy. In the damsel in distress metaphor, the enemy is of necessity irrational. The enemy can be sly or cunning, but one does not attempt to reason with a madman or enter into negotiations with him. In the cost-benefit metaphor, the goal is to "increase the cost" of occupying Kuwait to those who rule Iraq. This assumes that Saddam Hussein is rational, and that he can realize when the cost is too great to keep on fighting. If Saddam is truly irrational, than this metaphor breaks down, because madmen do not act predictably, and perhaps he will order the troops to keep fighting even when the cost has become overwhelming.
In these metaphors, war is seen as something that is necessary--if we do not rescue the princess, who will? It is seen as good, and a victory for our side is a moral and just victory. Yet here enters the problem with the metaphors. Death, destruction, and violence are not metaphorical. They are real. How many wars could have been avoided if these metaphors were not used to justify them? How many children would not be afraid to go to sleep if their parents had not chosen sleep as a metaphor for death?
All cultures should examine their metaphors. Are there metaphors that glorify pain, battle, strife, and fear? When examining a conflict, one should examine the metaphors that each side uses. Metaphors are a very convenient and accessible tool for communication. They are not inherently bad, but we must keep in mind at all times that they are not reality. Kuwait is not a damsel, the United States is not a knight riding an white F-16 rather than a horse, and the government is not a person and capable of independent thought or morality. If the metaphors are hiding important facts rather than simplifying complex truths, then the metaphor should be discarded and the facts allowed to take precedence in the mind of the culture.