{"id":1377,"date":"2025-05-12T15:30:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/?p=1377"},"modified":"2025-05-18T12:18:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T11:18:04","slug":"mia-post-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/2025\/05\/12\/mia-post-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"MiA Post 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life is a journey in\u00a0The Leopard<\/em><\/strong><\/h1>\n

My first post about Metaphor in Action cannot be about anything else than life as a journey.<\/p>\n

For one thing, I am launching this new website and blog from Messina, Sicily; this is one of the many journeys that I took from Amsterdam in my academic life.<\/p>\n

For another, LIFE IS A JOURNEY is one of the most famous metaphors that launched the new metaphor studies in 1980, with the revolutionary publication of Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s Metaphors we live by.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

And thirdly, examples of LIFE IS A JOURNEY are easy to find, as with John Bunyan\u2019s Pilgrim\u2019s Progress <\/i><\/em>and Robert Frost\u2019s \u2018The road not taken\u2019.<\/p>\n

So here is another illustration, taken from the well-known novel about Sicily (not Messina, but Palermo) by Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo <\/i><\/em>(orThe Leopard<\/i><\/em>). Early in the novel, the Prince of Salina is traveling from Palermo to Donnafugata for the family\u2019s summer retreat, and after three days finds the journey rather tiring:<\/p>\n

\u2026; waking at very early dawn amid all that sweat and stink he had found himself comparing this ghastly journey with his own life, which had first moved over smiling level ground, then clambered up rocky mountains, slid over threatening passes, to emerge eventually into a landscape of interminable undulations, all the same colour, all bare as despair. (p. 41)<\/p>\n

Life has different periods just like a trip has distinct stages, difficulties in life are obstacles in trips, and so on. It is how many of us can think and talk about life. Lakoff and Johnson recruited this figure as one of their star examples for their new theory about metaphor as thought.<\/p>\n

The crux for this particular example, however, is that it really is <\/i><\/em>a metaphor in action. We see the Prince actively setting up a comparison in which he in fact thinks about one thing in terms of something else. The narrator tells us that the Prince is \u2018comparing this ghastly journey with his own life\u2019. The grammar of this sentence even suggests a witty reversal of direction of the comparison, which makes you think twice.<\/p>\n

What is important is that this is a figurative<\/i><\/em> comparison, since journeys do not literally resemble lives. This involves figurative analogical thinking, in which we mentally project proportionate correspondences from one domain to another. In this sentence, both domains are separately referred to and intentionally set up as part of the composite mental micro-world that the Prince is constructing for himself. And the reader must do the same.<\/p>\n

The metaphorical life-journey ends in \u2018a landscape of interminable undulations, all the same colour, all bare as despair\u2019. This is a chilling image, with a devastating final and distinct figurative comparison inside the journey metaphor, \u2018bare as despair\u2019. And this is what the novel as a whole is about, too. The Prince represents the social class that is on its way out, and the novel recounts how this is happening.<\/p>\n

Life is a journey, and this is occasionally expressed in vivid terms. It may indeed take some time to figure out the details of this metaphor, including its reversal. And, who does the smiling, the clambering, the sliding, and the emerging? Is it the Prince or his life? What is it that makes the bareness comparable to despair, to whom or what? Does translation play a role here?<\/p>\n

But the more general point is this: not all metaphorically used motion words about life in language use are metaphors in action, making people really compare their lives with journeys. It is the task for metaphor researchers to find out when and how this does and does not happen, with what purpose and effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life is a journey in\u00a0The Leopard My first post about Metaphor in Action cannot be about anything else than life as a journey. For one thing, I am launching this new website and blog from Messina, Sicily; this is one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1377"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1481,"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions\/1481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaphorinaction.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}