Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory

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ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
Metaphors as a Way of Worldmaking, or:
Where Metaphors and Culture Meet
I Why Metaphors? Introducing the Focus, Goals, and Outline
In their seminal work Metaphors We Live By, which of course provides one of
the key texts and inspirations for this volume, George Lakoff and Mark John-
son observe that “the people who get to impose their metaphors on the cul-
ture get to define what we consider to be true […].”1 Anyone who doubts
that they are right only has to look at a random selection of examples to real-
ize to what extent metaphors have indeed served ‘to define what we consider
to be true’ and to shape our views of culture and our theories. No matter
what the domain is, we apparently cannot do without metaphors: Whether it
is our notions of communication (see Martin Zierold’s contribution to this
volume), research and knowledge (Herbert Grabes), the ways we conceive of
literary creativity (Hubert Zapf), culture or cultural transference (Greta Ol-
son), history (see Demandt), political power (see Rigotti) and the state (see
Peil), or computers, their defects (e.g. ‘viruses’) and the internet: We always
resort to metaphors whenever we try to make sense of complex phenomena.
Though the ubiquity and pervasive importance of metaphors in culture
and society at large which provides the point of departure for both this in-
troduction and the volume in general may be hard to deny or ignore, one
might still ask the question of ‘why metaphors’ or ‘why metaphors again’?
The answer is that despite a plethora of contributions to the burgeoning
fields of metaphor theory, metaphorology, and contemporary metaphor
studies in general, there is still a number of areas that have not yet received
the degree of attention they arguably deserve. As the programmatic title
“Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory” already indicates, this volume
focuses on the cultural, epistemological, and political work that metaphors
do, concentrating on the complex ways in which metaphors shape both our
views of cultural phenomena and our theories. Metaphors are not only “the
understanding of something in one conceptual domain [...] by conceptual
1 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago/London: U of Chi-
cago P, 1980) 160.

ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
xii
projection from something in a different conceptual domain,”2 but they also
serve as subtle epistemological, conceptual, and cultural tools that are im-
bued with a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and ideological connota-
tions.
Using these preliminary observations as a point of departure, the articles
in this volume explore how metaphors structure not only what we perceive
and experience in our everyday realities,3 but how they also provide the tools
in terms of which we conceptualize, structure, and understand culture, cul-
tural change, and even our theories. As Herbert Grabes shows in his article,
metaphors like ‘mirror,’ ‘anatomy,’ and ‘enquiry’ are very interesting meta-
phoric cases in point insofar as they have profoundly shaped our under-
standing of research and knowledge.
Serving as a means of structuring, narrativizing, and naturalizing cultural
phenomena and transformations, metaphors can be conceived of as impor-
tant sense— and indeed worldmaking devices. Metaphors not only serve to
structure how we understand cultural transformations, but they also project
“mininarrations”4 onto them, thereby providing ideologically charged plots
and explanations of cultural and historical changes rather than neutral de-
scriptions thereof. It is arguably “the metaphorical concepts we live by,”5 to
use Lakoff and Johnson’s felicitous formulation, that provide the key to un-
derstanding the topic at hand, i.e. “Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory.”
If one accepts Lakoff and Johnson’s view “that most of our conceptual system
is metaphorically structured,”6 then one might even go so far as to argue that
metaphors and narratives are the most powerful tools we have for making
sense of cultural transformations, being endowed as they are with the power
of reason and the power of evaluation.7
This volume focuses on the role of metaphors for exploring ways of
worldmaking. When Nelson Goodman coined the term ‘ways of worldmak-
ing,’ he was mainly concerned with the claim that the world we know is
always already made from other worlds. According to Goodman, there is no
such thing as a given world – the only thing we can ever have access to are
culturally shaped world models. Recent years have seen an increasing inter-
est across all disciplines in the question of exactly how worlds are made and
how the relation between worldmaking and orders of knowledge can be
2 Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier, “A Mechanism of Creativity,” Poetics Today 20.3
(1999): 403.
3 See Lakoff and Johnson.
4 Philip Eubanks, “The Story of Conceptual Metaphor: What Motivates Metaphoric Map-
pings?” Poetics Today 20.3 (1999): 437.
5 Lakoff and Johnson 22.
6 Lakoff and Johnson 106.
7 George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor
(Chicago/London: U of Chicago P, 1989) 65.

Metaphors as a Way of Worldmaking
xiii
described. Useful concepts for exploring this question, which have come to
the forefront of research, are the notion of narrative, archives, and media.
What has received much less attention, however, is the prominent role that
metaphors play in the ways in which we construe the world.
Exploring a wide range of examples from the Middle Ages through the
Enlightenment to modernity, postmodernity, and contemporary media soci-
ety, the articles in this volume provide fascinating casestudies of how meta-
phors not only serve to shape prevailing views of culture and theory, but are
also, at the same time, shaped by the cultures and theories from which they
originate. On the one hand, metaphors project structures onto cultural phe-
nomena which defy direct observation and serve to make sense of them.
They thus play a central role in shaping both culture and theory. On the other
hand, metaphors are also shaped by both everyday cultural notions and by
theories. As Zoltán Kövecses has convincingly shown in a number of publica-
tions, metaphors not only reflect prevailing cultural models, but they also
shape and even constitute cultural models.8 Kövecses is also the first theorist
to explore the various dimensions of metaphor variation across and within
culture.9
By focussing on this reciprocal relationship between metaphor and cul-
ture, the articles also explore the functions that metaphors serve to fulfil
within cultures and theories. Despite the productiveness of the metaphor
industry, both the cultural implications and ideological functions of meta-
phors and the constitutive rather than just reflective role of metaphors in
determining the perception of culture and theories have not yet been suffi-
ciently explored. This volume tries to redress the balance by examining in
detail the relationships between metaphors and culture and between meta-
phors and theory. As a number of scholars have shown, metaphors have
played a much more important role in the history of science and in theories
than is commonly assumed.10
8 See e.g. Zoltán Kövecses, “Does Metaphor Reflect or Constitute Cultural Models?” eds.
Raymond W. Gibbs and Gerald J. Steen, Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics (Amsterdam:
John Benjamins, 1999) 167-88. See also Kövecses’ seminal books listed in the Works
Cited.
9 See Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 2005); Zoltán Kövecses, Language, Mind, and Culture: A Practical Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), see especially chapter 10, “Metaphor Variation Across and
Within Cultures.”
10 See e.g. Bernard Debatin, “Der metaphorische Code der Wissenschaft: Zur Bedeutung
der Metapher in der Erkenntnis- und Theoriebildung,” European Journal for Semiotic Stu-
dies 2 (1980): 793-820; Evelyn Fox Keller, Das Leben neu denken: Metaphern der Biologie im
20. Jahrhundert (München: Kunstmann, 1998); Petra Drewer, Die kognitive Metapher als
Werkzeug des Denkens: Zur Rolle der Analogie bei der Gewinnung und Vermittlung wissen-
schaftlicher Erkenntnis (Tübingen: Narr, 2003); Gerd Mattenklott, “Metaphern in der Wis-
senschaftssprache,“ Bühnen des Wissens: Interferenzen zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft,

ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
xiv
One of the main reasons for the great interest that metaphors hold for the
cultural historian11 and for anyone interested in cultural theory is that they
show how cultures and theories are understood by the contemporaries. As
Rüdiger Zill, following Hans Blumenberg, has emphasized, metaphors pro-
vide insight into the ‘substructures of thinking,’12 into what has been dubbed
the ‘history of mentalities,’ i.e. habits of mind or structures of ideas and atti-
tudes.
Providing a preliminary introduction to some of the theoretical under-
pinnings, the second part of this introduction will give a brief outline of cog-
nitive metaphor theory and of the central role metaphors have played in
shaping culture and theories. The third part will then give a brief account of
the more recent historical study of key metaphors and consider its conse-
quences for metaphor theory. In the final section an attempt will be made to
assess the importance of metaphoric projections for the study of culture and
theory in the context of the history of mentalities, suggesting that such a
metaphorological approach can open up productive new possibilities for the
analysis of the reciprocal relationships between metaphors and culture and
between metaphors and theories.
II Theoretical Premises: On the Role and Functions of
Metaphors in Culture and Theory
Since cognitive metaphor theory is arguably of central relevance for any at-
tempt to gain insight into the complex relationship between metaphors and
culture, a brief summary of some of its premisses and insights may provide a
ed. Helmar Schramm (Berlin: Dahlem UP, 2003); Wolf-Andreas Liebert, “Metaphern als
Handlungsmuster der Welterzeugung: Das verborgene Metaphernspiel der Naturwis-
senschaften Eine Rose ist eine Rose…: Zur Rolle und Funktion von Metaphern in der Wissen-
schaft und Therapie,“ ed. Hans-Rudi Fischer (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2005);
see also the interesting volumes edited by Lutz Danneberg, Andreas Graeser, and Klaus
Petrus, Metapher und Innovation: Die Rolle der Metapher im Wandel von Sprache und Wis-
senschaft (Bern/Stuttgart/Wien: Haupt, 1995) and Wolfgang Bergem, Lothar Bluhm,
and Friedhelm Marx, Metapher und Modell: Ein Wuppertaler Kolloquium zu literarischen
und wissenschaftlichen Formen der Wirklichkeitskonstruktion (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Ver-
lag Trier, 1996).
11 For the relevance of metaphors for the history of mentalities see Peter Burke, ”Stärken
und Schwächen der Mentalitätsgeschichte,“ Mentalitäten-Geschichte: Zur historischen Re-
konstruktion geistiger Prozesse, ed. Ulrich Raulff (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1987) 139-40: “Den-
noch kann es für die Beschreibung der Unterschiede zwischen Mentalitäten sehr nütz-
lich sein, sich an die wiederkehrenden Metaphern zu halten, insbesondere wenn sie das
Denken insgesamt zu strukturieren scheinen.”
12 See Rüdiger Zill, “’Substrukturen’ des Denkens: Grenzen und Perspektiven einer Meta-
pherngeschichte nach Hans Blumenberg,“ Begriffsgeschichte, Diskursgeschichte, Meta-
pherngeschichte, ed. Hans Erich Bödeker (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002) 209-58.

Metaphors as a Way of Worldmaking
xv
convenient point of departure. It is arguably no coincidence that most of the
terms that we have at our disposal for talking about such abstract and elusive
phenomena as history, time, the state, human creativity, communication,
emotion, research, or the world at large tend to be metaphoric. The main
reason why we tend to resort to metaphors whenever we try to conceptualize
abstract entities and complex processes is not hard to determine:
Because so many of the concepts that are important to us are either abstract or not
clearly delineated in our experience (the emotions, ideas, time, etc.), we need to get
a grasp on them by means of other concepts that we understand in clearer terms
(spatial orientations, objects, etc.). This need leads to metaphorical definition in
our conceptual system.13
There is apparently a great need for metaphors in our conceptual system
because so many cultural phenomena are not only fairly abstract and difficult
to grasp, but they also defy direct observation or experience. Resorting to
metaphors is thus one way of coping with and making sense of cultural phe-
nomena. In order to see in detail what is involved in metaphoric projections
and the knowledge they generate, we must first have a clearer idea of some
of the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive metaphor theory and of the
constitutive rather than just reflective or rhetorical role metaphors play in
cultures as well as in many of our theories.
One might as well begin by pointing out that metaphors pervade both our
culture and our theories. The reason for this widespread tendency to talk
about complex cultural changes and phenomena in metaphoric terms is not
hard to determine. Resorting to metaphors has always been one way of con-
ceptualizing something that defied direct observation and experience. Like
other abstract political entities which tend to be conceptualized metaphori-
cally, e.g. history, government, and the state,14 cultural changes are often a
highly elusive phenomenon of considerable abstractness and heterogeneity,
being anything but clearly delineated in people’s experience.15 The same
13 Lakoff and Johnson 115.
14 See the encyclopedic monographs by Alexander Demandt, Metaphern für Geschichte:
Sprachbilder und Gleichnisse im historisch-politischen Denken (München: Beck, 1978); Diet-
mar Peil, Untersuchungen zur Staats- und Herrschaftsmetaphorik in literarischen Zeugnissen
von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (München: Fink, 1983); Herfried Münkler, Politische Bil-
der, Politik der Metaphern (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1994) and Francesca Rigotti, Die Macht
und ihre Metaphern: Über die sprachlichen Bilder der Politik (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1994).
15 See MacKenzie, who emphasizes that the empire was “at least four separate entities. It
was the territories of settlement [...]. It was India [...]. It was a string of islands and stag-
ing posts, a combination of seventeenth-century sugar colonies and the spoils of wars
with European rivals, China, and other non-European cultures. And finally, Empire
was the ‘dependent’ territories acquired largely in the last decades of the nineteenth
century.” John M. McKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Opinion,
1880-1960 (Manchester/New York: Manchester UP, 1984) 1.

ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
xvi
holds true for the far-reaching cultural and economic transformations that
have occurred in the wake of 9/11 which the great majority of people do not
experience in any direct fashion and which therefore have to be compre-
hended indirectly, via metaphor:16 “we tend to structure the less concrete and
inherently vaguer concepts […] in terms of more concrete concepts, which
are more clearly delineated in our experience.”17 Metaphors allow people to
understand the somewhat abstract and elusive domains of politics and eco-
nomics in terms of much more concrete and familiar domains of experience
like illness.
Moreover, metaphors for cultural phenomena are themselves subject to
both cultural variation and historical change. There is arguably more than
just fashion in the changing use of metaphors, however. Just as metaphors
have an underlying logic in their own right, the changing preference for cer-
tain dominant metaphors (what Blumenberg has called ‘Leitmetaphern’) also
– at least for those who have the privilege of the benefit of hindsight – dis-
plays a certain degree of logic. The images that form the source domain of
such metaphors do not arise out of nowhere and do not by mere chance sud-
denly become favoured suppliers of schemas to be mapped onto important
target domains. It shows that their choice is linked to changes of culture at
large and in particular in technology, social formations, and practices. This
aspect has so far not received sufficient attention and needs to be studied in
detail to learn more about the interdependence between cultural changes and
the changes of central metaphors.
What metaphors that shape culture and theory have in common is not
only that they serve to structure how we understand and interpret the re-
spective target domain, but also that they do this cultural work in a more or
less systematic way, foregrounding particular aspects while masking others.
By virtue of their more or less coherent entailments, metaphorical concepts
provide a systematic way of talking about and making sense of cultural phe-
nomena. Lakoff and Johnson (chapter 2) have emphasized what they call the
“systematicity of metaphorical concepts”18 and have spelled out its implica-
tions: “The very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a
concept in terms of another […] will necessarily hide other aspects of the
concept. In allowing us to focus on one aspect of a concept […], a metaphori-
cal concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept that are
inconsistent with that metaphor.”19 Metaphors “form coherent systems in
terms of which we conceptualize our experience”20 – and cultural phenomena
16 Lakoff and Johnson 85.
17 Lakoff and Johnson 112.
18 Lakoff and Johnson 7.
19 Lakoff and Johnson 10.
20 Lakoff and Johnson 41.

Metaphors as a Way of Worldmaking
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and theories, one might add. Highlighting certain aspects while hiding or
even repressing others, metaphors serve as both sense-making devices and as
“‘strategies of containment’ whereby they are able to project the illusion that
their readings are somehow complete and self-sufficient.“21
Far from being mere poetical or rhetorical embellishments, metaphors ar-
guably play an essential and constitutive role in shaping the structure(s) of
both cultural phenomena and theories. One might even go so far as to argue
that they create the very realities they purport merely to describe:22 “changes
in our conceptual systems do change what is real for us and affect how we
perceive the world and act upon those perceptions.”23 Offering ways of orga-
nizing complex experiences and cultural processes into structured wholes,24
metaphorical concepts like evolution, improvement, or progress “not only
provide coherent structure, highlighting some things and hiding others,”25
they are also capable of giving people a new understanding of the respective
target domain, playing “a very significant role in determining what is real for
us.”26 As the articles in this volume serve to show, metaphors are never a
completely disinterested or neutral way of viewing reality, but always func-
tion as important structuring and sense-making devices that serve to struc-
ture, explain, and evaluate cultural phenomena.
Although it is well-known by now that metaphors are not restricted to
poetry or literature, the study of metaphors used to belong to the domain of
literary studies, which regarded metaphors as a purely literary phenomenon.
The interest that linguists have displayed in metaphors and the rise of cogni-
tive metaphor theory, however, have ushered in new phases in the study of
metaphors, which have in recent years become a subject of interdisciplinary
interest. In their concise introduction to what is a particularly useful and rich
collection of articles on recent approaches to metaphor, Monika Fludernik,
Donald C. Freeman, and Margaret H. Freeman (1999) provide a very good
overview of the several sea changes that metaphor theory has undergone in
the course of the 20th century. These changes have not only alerted us to the
ubiquity and pervasive importance of metaphors in culture at large, but they
have also highlighted “the intrinsic linkage between linguistic processes in
general and the more specifically literary instances of them.”27 Moreover,
according to cognitive metaphor theory,
21 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981;
London: Methuen, 1983) 10.
22 Lakoff and Johnson 145, 156.
23 Lakoff and Johnson 145-46.
24 Lakoff and Johnson 81.
25 Lakoff and Johnson 139.
26 Lakoff and Johnson 146.
27 Monika Fludernik, Donald C. Freeman, and Margaret H. Freeman, “Metaphor and
Beyond: An Introduction,” Poetics Today 20.3 (1999): 384-85.

ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
xviii
[l]anguage is generated as a result of general cognitive processes which [...] are
characterized by specific principles that constrain mappings across mental spaces.
Cognitive metaphor theory is therefore a radical version of constructivism and
subsumes linguistic expression under more general conceptual and behavioural
parameters.28
Working with the processual meta-metaphor of mapping, cognitive ap-
proaches attempt to explore how a source domain is mapped or projected
onto a given target domain. Cognitive metaphor theory has alerted us both to
the ubiquity of metaphors and to the central role they play in our conceptual
systems, affecting as they do the ways in which we perceive, think, and act.
Cognitive metaphor theory conceptualizes what is involved in the com-
plex processes of metaphoric projection in terms of ‘blending’ or ‘conceptual
integration.’29 Foregrounding the mapping process and exploring how the
source domain is mapped onto the target domain, cognitive approaches
characterize metaphoric blending processes as a ‘mechanism of creativity:’30
Image-schematic projection creates a new virtual realm, the blend, which is no
longer subordinate to either the source (vehicle) or the tenor (target) but instead
creates emergent structure that exists neither in the source nor the target do-
mains.31
This model not only takes into consideration the fact that people draw on
their pre-existing cultural knowledge when they use or process metaphors,
but it also demonstrates that metaphoric projection is anything but a one-
sided, uni-directional affair. On the contrary, what is involved is a process of
mutual integration of two distinct conceptual domains. In the present case,
both the personal sphere of illness and the political and economic sphere of
wide-ranging changes and transformations are projected into the blended
space, which, while bringing together salient features of the two knowledge
domains involved, “exactly resembles none of them […]. This selective bor-
rowing, or rather, projection, is not merely compositional – instead, there is
28 Fludernik, Freeman, and Freeman 393, 385.
29 It is, of course, beyond the scope of the present paper to present a detailed account of
cognitive metaphor theory or of the conceptual integration network theory. For a brief
introduction, see Fludernik, Freeman, and Freeman 387-92, Turner and Fauconnier; for
comprehensive accounts, see Gilles Fauconnier, Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Con-
struction in Natural Language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994); Gilles Fauconnier,
Mappings in Thought and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997); Gilles Fauconnier
and Mark Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks,” Cognitive Science 22 (1998): 133-
87; Mark Turner, Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism (Chicago/ Lon-
don: U of Chicago P, 1996).
30 See Turner and Fauconnier.
31 Fludernik, Freeman, and Freeman 387.

Metaphors as a Way of Worldmaking
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new meaning in the blend that is not a composition of meanings that can be
found in the inputs.”32
Another thing that cognitive metaphor theory has taught us is that meta-
phoric projections involve much more than just feature mappings, i.e. indi-
vidual correspondences between the source domain and the target domain:
“It has long been recognized that metaphor often involves more than simple
feature correspondences, that the correspondences between target and source
can be systematic.”33 One reason for the great attraction that metaphors of
crises and catastrophes had for the language of popular imperialism may be
that they not only tend to map multiple features, but also preserve the rela-
tions and hierarchies, between those features. Moreover, family metaphors
entail a wide range of cultural implications, including ethical norms and
values.
Acknowledging the great importance of such a cognitive turn in the the-
ory of metaphors, we will argue that metaphors should first and foremost be
conceptualized as a cultural phenomenon. We would thus like to call for a
“second fundamental paradigm shift, one toward greater historicity and
cultural awareness”34 and make some modest proposals for historicizing
cognitive metaphor theory and for exploring metaphors as a culturally de-
termined attempt to account for complex cultural and theoretical transforma-
tions.35 Even though the cultural genesis and variability of conceptual meta-
phors has in general been recognized,36 most theorists, viewing mapping
primarily as a cognitive phenomenon, have not bothered to explore the cul-
tural implications and ideological functions that may be involved in meta-
phorical projections. In a pioneering article, Philip Eubanks has provided
important steps towards closing the gap between cognitive approaches and
the cultural underpinnings of conceptual metaphors: “Because metaphors are
always uttered by historically and culturally situated speakers, metaphoric
mappings are subordinate to the speakers’ political, philosophical, social, and
individual commitments.”37
32 Turner and Fauconnier 398.
33 Eubanks 429-30.
34 Bruno Zerweck, “Historicizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability in Narrative Fiction
as Reflection of Cultural Discourses,” Style 35.1 (2001): 151.
35 For a more detailed account of how cognitive metaphor theory might be historicized,
see Ansgar Nünning, “Metaphors the British Thought, Felt and Ruled By, or: Modest
Proposals for Historicizing Cognitive Metaphor Theory and for Exploring Metaphors of
Empire as a Cultural Phenomenon,” eds. Marion Gymnich, Ansgar Nünning, and Vera
Nünning, Literature and Linguistics: Approaches, Models, and Applications: Studies in Hon-
our of Jon Erickson (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2002) 101-27.
36 See e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 142, 146.
37 Eubanks 419.

ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
xx
One might go even further than that and suggest that, since metaphors
are deeply entrenched in the cultural discourses of their age, the study of
metaphors can give us insight into those habits and structures of thought,
feeling, and ideas that Foucault christened the episteme and that is the object
of the history of mentalities. Moreover, metaphor studies would arguably
stand to gain by cross-disciplinary interaction between cognitive linguistics,
literary theory, and cultural history. Cognitive metaphor theory, literary
studies, and cultural history, despite their contrary theoretical and methodo-
logical assumptions, are not as incompatible as is suggested by the fact that
their respective practitioners tend to ignore each other’s work. The findings
of cognitive linguistics or cognitive metaphor theory, literary theory, and
cultural history can illuminate each other’s understanding of the use and
functions of metaphors.38 Such an alliance could open up productive new
possibilities for the analysis of both the relationship between metaphors and
their cultural contexts, and the cultural implications and functions of meta-
phors. In addition, such an alliance promises to throw new light on the actual
use and functions of metaphors. Or to put it in a nutshell, the more conscious
of conceptual metaphors literary and cultural history becomes and the more
historically and culturally orientated cognitive metaphor theory becomes, the
better for both.39
III Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory: A Selective
Historical Overview
For all it is worth, cognitive metaphor theory remains largely fictitious as
long as it is not linked to empirical evidence, in this case actual examples of
metaphors placed in their textual and cultural context, and all such examples
will be historical, no matter whether encountered yesterday or found in
source material several centuries old. Led by our own needs, we may well be
most interested in the metaphors that shape the culture we live in and the
kind of theory we presently hold to be the most powerful, but to investigate
these tends to be rather difficult because – as George Lakoff and Mark Turner
have pointed out – it are precisely such “basic” metaphors “whose use is
conventional, unconscious, automatic, and typically unnoticed.”40 Regarding
the metaphors underlying our most deeply entrenched convictions we are in
the same helpless position as we are in regarding the mythical part of our
world view, or, as Roland Barthes has demonstrated, as “users” of a myth we
38 Fludernik, Freeman, and Freeman 388.
39 See Hunt, who argues that “the more cultural historical studies become and the more
historical cultural studies become, the better for both.” Lynn Hunt, The New Cultural
History (Berkley: U of California P, 1989) 22.
40 Lakoff and Turner 80.

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have no Archimedean point from which to study that myth as “mytholo-
gists” as long as we are inside that myth.41 In order to be able to investigate
how and to which extent “basic” or central metaphors are not only created by
but also shape culture and theory we therefore better choose examples which
allow for the amount of distance that is necessary for a somewhat sober
analysis. Such a distance can, of course, also be guaranteed on a synchronic
level by reverting to examples from a quite different, foreign culture but in
this volume we decided to focus on casestudies from the history of our own
Western culture because they may still tell us something about our present
cultural condition.
The study of metaphors that held a certain position in Western culture is,
of course, not altogether new. It was begun in a more serious way by Ernst
Robert Curtius in terms of an investigation of “historical metaphors” of
which he gave an impressive example in his history of the book as metaphor
and symbol,42 was further developed in studies like M. H. Abrams’ The Mir-
ror and the Lamp (1953) and supplied with a sophisticated theoretical founda-
tion by Hans Blumenberg in his Paradigmen einer Metaphorologie (1960).
Blumenberg’s aim was to free at least some metaphors from their traditional
assessment of being merely intermediate stages in the progress from mythos
to logos, stages which had to give way to more concise concepts – an aim he
reached by showing that even in philosophical language there are metaphors
that are “absolute” in the sense that they can never be replaced by concepts.
On the other hand, such “absolute metaphors” nevertheless have a history
because they can be substituted by other metaphors and what “metaphorol-
ogy” investigates is the “substructure of thought” that gives testimony of
“the courage with which the spirit is ahead of itself in its images and how it
projects its history in this courage to work by conjecture.”43 What will be-
come apparent in the case histories is that metaphors of this kind are not only
results but also constitutive elements of our worldmaking, our notion of
what are legitimate ways to truth, and our philosophical reflection on both,
so that their history is a genuine part of cultural history, the history of science
and learning, as well as the history of philosophical thought.
At the same time such metaphors are only one determinant among others
of the world view, knowledge structure, and theory dominant during a par-
ticular period in a particular region, and they therefore have to be investi-
gated in that wider context if we want to get beyond a description of their
mere factuality or seeming contingency. That one can indeed get beyond this
41 See Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seize, 1957).
42 Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: Francke,
1948) chapter 16.
43 Hans Blumenberg, “Einleitung,” Paradigma einer Metaphorologie (Bonn: Bouvier, 1962)
(our translation).

ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
xxii
stage regarding the interdependence between central metaphors and culture
(or theory respectively), is borne by more than a few contributions to this
volume. As already mentioned earlier, it shows that the changes of central
metaphors are closely linked to cultural changes.
What is further revealed by the supplied casehistories is that the theoreti-
cal distinction Lakoff and Turner make between “image metaphors” that
“map rich mental images onto other rich mental images” and “conceptual
metaphors” that merely map the conceptual structures taken from “image-
schemas” onto other conceptual structures, is not sufficient to describe what
actually happens in the case of metaphors shaping culture and theory. For it
shows that the metaphors that gained a central position generally have a
source domain that consists of a “rich mental image” from which not one but
several “image-schemas” or conceptual structures can be derived and
mapped onto other target concepts, which means that the image serving as
source domain can be made to function in several ways. Take as an example
the modern and postmodern career of the ‘net’ of which a more detailed
account is given in this volume by Alexander Friedrich. In the traditional
discourse of religion we will find it used as an instrument to slyly catch a
victim and we have to watch out that the devil will not catch us in his net just
as a spider catches a fly. For the circus artists on the flying trapeze, however,
the net spread out beneath them is meant to be life-saving, just as the social
net will be for those who cannot sustain themselves. With the advent of elec-
tricity, the net has also come to indicate that the electrical current can be
transported to any number of destinations, spread out so to say – in an in-
verse relation to a river net consisting of many brooks and rivulets all flow-
ing into the same stream. Then with the telephone, the net came to signify an
interconnection of a host of participants in such a way that messages could
travel in either direction, and subsequently it became invisible not only with
radio and television but also with radio telephone and finally the internet. In
all these cases the source domain is the image of a concrete net, yet the im-
age-schemas or conceptual structures derived from it and subsequently
mapped onto other target domains are quite different. It is not hard to see
that it is exactly this feature that has made it possible for the ‘net’ to gain such
an important position in more recent culture.
This shows that a closer examination of the role of metaphors that have
gained such a position in the culture or theory of the past or more recent
times is not only illustrative. It confirms our view that the many casestudies
included in this volume are important because they may well instigate a
revision and further development of metaphor theory.

Metaphors as a Way of Worldmaking
xxiii
IV Why Metaphors Matter: On the Value of Metaphor Theory for
the Study of Culture
We should like to conclude by providing a brief assessment of the value that
a cultural and historical analysis of metaphors may have for the study of
culture, the history of mentalities, and for theories of culture. A reconsidered
notion of metaphors which takes into consideration their cultural implica-
tions and historical contexts can indeed “help to explain the cultural motiva-
tions of metaphoric mappings”44 and to “develop a richer account of concep-
tual metaphor as a cultural phenomenon.”45 In contrast to the primarily
synchronic and ahistorical account of conceptual metaphors which has so far
predominated in cognitive metaphor theory,46 a historicized and cultural
approach to metaphors can throw new light on “how [...] metaphors operate
concretely in the communicative world,” revealing “not just mental processes
but also something of our culture.”47 As the articles in this volume will hope-
fully serve to show, metaphors are very much a cultural and historical phe-
nomenon, since they are inflected by the cultural, political, and social dis-
courses of the period they originate from as well as by theoretical and
ideological commitments of the people who use them.
Moreover, a cultural investigation of the nature and functions of meta-
phors belies the idea that metaphors are merely ornamental or literary de-
vices rather than inferential, creative, and constitutive ones. While purport-
ing merely to represent their respective target domains, metaphors arguably
shape the prevailing view of cultural phenomena and of theories. One might
even go so far as to argue that they serve to construct cultural models and
theories. They not only popularize certain values, biases, and epistemological
habits, they also provide agreed-upon codes of understanding and cultural
traditions of looking at the world, forging a widespread consensus by draw-
ing upon culturally rooted views and values.
Working simultaneously on different cognitive, emotional, ethical, nor-
mative, and ideological levels, metaphors of crises and catastrophes should
thus be seen as a productive medium or ‘mechanism of creativity’48 that has
played an active role in the generation of both many theories and the cultural
fictions that we live, think, and feel by. Metaphors have also served as means
of structuring, narrativizing, and naturalizing cultural transformations which
defy direct observation and experience. Shaping habits of thought, popular
feeling, and people’s views of the present and the past, metaphors have
44 Eubanks 421.
45 Eubanks 420.
46 See Lakoff and Johnson; Lakoff and Turner.
47 Eubanks 421.
48 See Turner and Fauconnier.

ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
xxiv
played, and continue to play, an important part in shaping mentalities and
worldviews because they have served to organize the conceptual and emo-
tional realities and conditioned the way in which people perceive, emotion-
ally experience, and evaluate cultural phenomena.
If Umberto Eco’s hypothesis that the “success of a metaphor is a function
of the socio-cultural format of the interpreting subjects’ encyclopedia”49 is
valid, then it is anything but a coincidence which metaphors gain particular
popularity in a given culture. For the history of mentalities, the cultural his-
torian and the history of science, metaphors prove to be a very fertile source
of evidence. They are of real interest to the cultural historian because they
shed light on how cultural phenomena and transformations are perceived,
understood, and discursively constructed, how they are given shape and
meaning. The significance of metaphors for the history of mentalities and of
science is in the light they throw on the habits of thought, the attitudes, and
the values that inform a given culture. Moreover, they also illuminate how
societies collectively deal with and account for culture and how interpretive
communities (sensu Stanley Fish) conceive of their objects, methods, and
theories. The articles in this volume support the hypothesis that metaphors
embody what Elizabeth Ermarth in a different context has called “the collec-
tive awareness of a culture.”50 By giving shape and meaning to cultural trans-
formations, metaphors can even construct an important “article of collective
cultural faith.”51
In sum, we hope that this volume will serve to show that anyone inter-
ested in the study of culture and in the underlying assumptions and struc-
tures of theories would profit a great deal from taking the study of meta-
phors into consideration, just as the study of literature and culture might in
turn profit from taking into account research in cognitive metaphor theory,
Hans Blumenberg’s metaphorology, and other branches of metaphor studies.
Taking a fresh look at the insights of cognitive metaphor theory and histori-
cizing the models and categories it has developed could be an important
force in the current attempts to enrich the linguistic and literary study of
metaphors in the framework of cultural history and to explore the role that
metaphors play as cognitive instruments which impose structures and stories
onto cultures and theories. In order to reassess the changing cultural func-
tions that metaphors have fulfilled, it is worth looking more closely at the
role of such discursive processes as metaphoric mappings in determining the
perception and construction of cultural phenomena and theories.
49 Umberto Eco, “The Scandal of Metaphor: Metaphorology and Semiotics,” Poetics Today
20.3 (1999): 254.
50 Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, The English Novel in History 1840-1895 (London/New York:
Routledge, 1997) 89.
51 Ermarth 122.

Metaphors as a Way of Worldmaking
xxv
Cultural historians and theorists would therefore arguably be well ad-
vised to intrepidly rush in where linguists, literary critics, and most tradi-
tional historians usually fear to tread. Whether or not they would be fools in
doing so may be an open question, but the fascinating area where language,
literature, culture, and the history of mentalities meet is simply too important
to be neglected, and cultural studies and the German variant of the study of
culture known as ‘Kulturwissenschaft(en)’52 can only continue to ignore this
crucial interface at their own peril. These concluding suggestions are not,
however, meant to be the last word on any of these complex issues, but
rather should be seen as modest proposals for a reconceptualization of the
central role that metaphors have always played and continue to play in
man’s attempt at world-making and in shaping our cultures and theories.
52 Ansgar Nünning and Vera Nünning, eds., Einführung in die Kulturwissenschaften: Theore-
tische Grundlagen – Ansätze – Perspektiven (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2008).

ANSGAR NÜNNING, HERBERT GRABES & SIBYLLE BAUMBACH
xxvi
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