chiasthmatic cough XVI

The poet wearing down the slopes
P. Street a laurel halo
One Lopez known as jackalopes
There's no such thing as J-Lo

Special Notice

Below Dunster regrets to inform you that it will not be updated for at least a week (until 02/25/05) as the author will be carving up the pistes at Big Mountain, Montana. For the week following that (until 03/06/05) posts will be sparse as the author switches from hosting a web log to hosting some very special friends. The author hopes to be able to post old chiasthmatic coughs during this time to hold over the readership. Regular posting will resume after 03/06/05; in the meantime, Below Dunster recommends that the reader take the time to peruse sections that may have been posted prior to her or his first venture Below Dunster, to revisit old goodies, and to comment feverishly while there is little chance of rebuttal or concurrence. Below Dunster would like to take this opportunity to thank its guests for their continued support and commentary. It is our hope that you will continue to tarry below Dunster, and our great pleasure to make your stay pithy, mirthful, and mythic.

Methinks we will post a c-cough for the road.

chiasthmatic cough XV

The poet under Egypt's linens
The Pharoah suicidal
The wife-to-be in extra innings
The Boston Red Sox, bridal.

THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS, Part Five

[Note: this is the fifth installment of an essay, "Coppelius, Oedipus, and the Phallic Stare: a rare instance of bidirectional cognitive metaphor?" being posted serially. Below Dunster recommends that the reader scroll down and view the sections in ascending order.]

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Visual Pleasure
In her influential 1973 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey addresses the cinematic concept of the “woman as image; man as bearer of the look” (Mulvey, 1973: 2186). Mulvey follows Lacan’s theory of male subjectification (see Lacan, 1949), according to which the abstract concept of the phallus exists both in the male unconscious as well as in language, and is that entity which bestows subjectivity. Men and women thus grow up, conditioned by the mind and by language, to assume the roles of subject and object, respectively. Mulvey explains how this relation is characterized in popular film, claiming that, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly” (Mulvey, 1973: 2186). Throughout the section, Mulvey furthers the significance of “looks” in film, which supposedly represent looking in the western world. It is clear to her that “in their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey, 1973: 2186). The spectator, of course, has the freedom to look at the main male character as well as the female lead. Still, she claims, this look is not an objectifying one, but an identifying one. The male character is not so much an object of the male spectator’s gaze, but rather the bearer of his gaze upon the woman, the spectator’s lieutenant, as it were (in the original sense of lieutenant, "place-holder"). The male actor, then, is the idealized subject with whom the viewer identifies, while the female character is the object of the gaze of both the male role as well as the spectator.

Mulvey’s essay has been highly controversial, and rightly so, but it is of significance to this project in at least three ways. First, it is a well-known example of a piece that affirms the connection between the eye and the psychological concept of the phallus. While traditional psychoanalytic theory has been contested by most Anti-Essentialist theorists, especially feminists, the subject-object relationship between male and female is widely acknowledged as a distinction that clearly exists, but must be overcome. If we define the phallus, then, simply as the difference between man and woman (common sense tells us that both the physical interpretation of the phallus, as well as some psychological factors, are part of or even constitute this difference), we have a connection between the phallus and the gaze, as the subjective male gaze at the female object is widely acknowledged.

The issue of essence
The presentation of an essential male-female difference could get me in big trouble with contemporary theorists. Let this trouble be momentary: the main discussion of the eye-phallus metaphor does not hinge on such a distinction being essential. If the distinction is (“merely”) socially or mentally constructed, very well; so are conceptual metaphors. Furthermore, humans operate largely on socially and mentally based premises (for better or for worse; this, after all, is the contention of contemporary Anti-Essentialism), and conceptual metaphors may result from these premises—they may, in fact, perpetuate them. Also, if language codes differences and other relationships, then conceptual metaphors exert an astounding influence by virtue of corresponding metaphorical linguistic expressions.

The second point Mulvey’s essay highlights, inseparable from the question of essence, may be one we have all been holding on to since the first mention of the THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS metaphor: everyone has eyes, but only half the population has a phallus! Is every gaze, including every female one, conceptualized through some phallic image, however subconsciously? Or can we only understand the male gaze, having no pervasive female metaphor? Worse yet, are we chained by the metaphor, or whatever lies behind it, to the laws of looking as put forth by Mulvey? Intuition tells us no. But it is very significant that the eye-phallus relationship exists, given that most of us feel equally able to conceptualize a female look as a male one. This ability does not discredit the past and present existence of the metaphor, but it may alter its quality in the future. A complete change would be extremely difficult, though, given the metaphor’s deep embedding in language, including its very sounds, and in prominent ancient works. There are those who would be for such a turnabout, but their task is a nearly impossible one.

THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS, Part Four

[Note: this is the fourth installment of an essay, "Coppelius, Oedipus, and the Phallic Stare: a rare instance of bidirectional cognitive metaphor?" being posted serially. Below Dunster recommends that the reader scroll down and view the sections in ascending order.]

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Some nonlinguistic manifestations: Freud, Sophocles, and Jesus
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed the metaphor SEEING IS TOUCHING. This metaphor may have nonlinguistic manifestations that relate to THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS. First, let us examine a few linguistic expressions that support it. Lakoff and Johnson mention the phrases “I couldn’t take my eyes off him” and “I felt his glance.” By themselves, these sentences are not very useful to our cause, but they combine with phrases like “Our eyes met” to support Lakoff and Johnson’s extension of the SEEING IS TOUCHING metaphor to EYES ARE LIMBS—a hefty step closer to our territory! Indeed, the phallus is occasionally conceptualized as a limb, as seen especially in such euphemisms as “the middle leg” (euphemisms constitute linguistic data and will be considered in more detail later in this paper). Thus, THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS can be seen as a member (pardon the pun) of the more general metaphor EYES ARE LIMBS, thereby providing further evidence for that relation as well. Kövecses (2002) adds the expression “undressing someone with ones eyes” to make explicit the sexual (and socially taboo) nature of the nonlinguistic manifestation of these metaphors.

Recall Freud’s quote about Oedipus, “the self-blinding of the mythical criminal, Oedipus, was simply a mitigated form of the punishment of castration—the only punishment that was adequate for him by the lex talionis.” The Latin term means “law of retaliation in kind” and means simply that the punishment must fit the crime. Oedipus had committed no offense with his eyes; rather, his crime was attributable to the phallus: he had killed his father and married his mother. The only appropriate penalty was castration, but Oedipus did not emasculate himself in the traditional sense. Instead, he fulfilled the same crime-punishment correspondence by removing his own eyes. Freud does not indicate whether he believes Oedipus was conscious of the underlying appropriateness of this substitution, or whether it was simply natural. In either case, it speaks to the conceptual relation of the eyes to the phallus.

If an essay by Sigmund Freud is the most likely place for the putting forth of a correlation between the phallus and the eyes—between the phallus and anything, for that matter—perhaps the least likely place is the New Testament. Yet the link may have been addressed by Jesus Christ himself. In the Sermon on the Mount, he declares, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt. 5:27-28, NIV, emphasis mine). This is an explicit claim of the likeness of lustful looking to physical intercourse, a correlation that, by extension, connects the agents of each action, i.e., the eyes and the phallus.

As if this statement were not forceful enough, Jesus immediately follows it with this exhortation: “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away” (Mt. 5:29, NIV). Was Oedipus a Bible reader? It would be more likely that Jesus read Sophocles, who wrote Oedipus Rex, but there is no reason to believe that either. No, every one of these men was aware of the eye-phallus relation, and Oedipus obeyed the principle announced by Jesus without ever having heard it. It is worth noting that the eye cannot really cause a person to sin, except by Jesus’s first claim, and, as mentioned already, Oedipus’s crime was not really one committed with the eyes, but rather with the phallus—much more apt to transgress. Thus, the relation between the two is necessary for the second quote of Jesus ever to apply.[1]

[1] Actually, it could also apply with other relations of the eyes to agents of mental and physical activity, such as, perhaps, those established by Lakoff and Johnson’s eyes are limbs metaphor. the eye is the phallus is most relevant however, both in the context of Jesus’s original quote as well as to this paper.

Slocomfort

I am diving below Dunster, not simply belowdunster, but below Dunster, for comfort in the Combe. Exmoor is sodden with Bristol Channel rain.

"For the truly creative mind in any field is no more than this - a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create - to create - to create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of beauty and meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create. He must pour out creation. By some strange unknown pressing inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."
-Pearl S. Buck

A brief history of Dunster, Part Two


In later years Dunster Castle became less blurry, but in the process was reduced to black-and-white.


Into the 1400s the area of Exmoor was only sparsely populated, but at least one family made its home there: the Slocombes. They may or may not initially have been residents of Dunster, but they are most closely associated with an area on the other side (near side in the photo, I believe) of Dunster Castle: Slo Combe itself, from which the family derived its name. I would not be against the use of derove either, but ablaut is rare among English words of Latin origin.

Sloe are wild plum trees; they thrived (or throve)—still thrive, in fact—on the Combe, and it is comforting to know that one’s name comes from a toothsome fruit of the Rosaceae family. Remnants of a vineyard can still be seen on the Combe, which has also been a site for the raising of sheep. No trace of any artificial structure can be found, however, and it is likely that the Slocombe family lived very near the Combe and used it for commercial purposes. Some of the oldest records regarding the Slocombes show ownership of land near Dunster Castle.

The earliest known record of a Slocombe is in a document from a legal proceeding in 1308 at Dunster Castle itself, which tells of one John de Slocombe who testified in the case. I hope he did not bear false witness. Either way we can eagerly anticipate celebrating the 700th anniversary of his testimony in a few short years.

Source: The Slocum Family Project, http://www.slocombe.freeservers.com/index.html

chiasthmatic cough XIV

The poet at the banquet tables
The gourmet writing sonnets
Victorian dolls now telling fables
And Aesop, wearing bonnets.

A brief history of Dunster, Part One

It doesn't get any Belower Dunsterer

By popular request:

A brief history of Dunster, Part One

On the edge of Exmoor, Somersetshire, as it has for at least 700 years, this blurry castle overlooks the small village of Dunster. The castle stood well before that: records go back to the Norman invasion of 1066. It is unusual in that only two families have owned it since that time, the Mohans from 1066 to 1376 and the Lutrells from then until 1976, when the National Trust appropriated the castle and opened it to the public. One wonders if they intended to take over earlier and waited to give the Lutrells an even 600 years, or if they were gaping jealously across the pond at the American bicentennial celebration and suddenly desired their own event of import, having lost their share in that party to one G. Washington and his low-class comrades sometime around the Lutrells' tetracentennial.

Source: The Slocum Family Project, http://www.slocombe.freeservers.com/index.html

Tribute to the Three-tiered Vannimahns

This is a poem to
Kynstigar the Less Reserved
And his page
Chinstygger the Somewhat Refined
Who have lent me the antitheses
Of their nominal qualities
Who have defined i-over-naught
and not stopped there
but gone on to define such things
as love
justice and
His Grace the More Obscure

Who are rightly suspected
Of tagging their own
Statues they themselves erected
Who bask unscrupulously
In the chiaroscuro shade
They themselves forbade when
They said, “Never recline
Your pencil so”
Who flog fowl of bread box size
Who roll the inside three
Who liberally palatalize
J, S, and even B
Who write their wills to Mercury
Who favor poetasters
To the lyric masters and
Who are moderately familiar
With the poetry of Allen Ginsburg.

You are
Vermicular but necessary
Ova of my morning loins
And for this
I salute you.


-Yours Truly, on the 48th anniversary of Austrian independence, also on the 330th birthday of Moravian linguist and musicologist Dimitrie Cantemir and the 1104th anniversary of the death of Alfred the Great, hero of Anglo-Saxons.

chiasthmatic cough XIII

The poet citing prophecy
The augur writing verse
The choir's bent is fallacy
The dimwit's, to rehearse.

THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS, Part Three

[Note: this is the third installment of an essay, "Coppelius, Oedipus, and the Phallic Stare: a rare instance of bidirectional cognitive metaphor?" being posted serially. Below Dunster recommends that the reader scroll down and view the sections in ascending order.]

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Some linguistic manifestations: phonosemantic evidence
A number of linguistic expressions relate the eyes and the phallus to each other. Of course, we don’t consciously think of them as indicating this relation. But how are we to account for phrases like “a piercing gaze” and “a penetrating glance”? Penetration is prototypically a phallic event. It is true that other things penetrate and pierce, but a look into the history of the accounts of visual perception lends our case some force.

Before the eye was understood as a lens and a receptor of light into a person, it was thought that the eye actually emitted rays or beams that extended from their origin at the eye to their target, the object looked at. There was thought to be an invisible, but physical, spear of sorts connecting the eye to the object of the gaze. Thus, it was actually possible for a look, i.e., the physical protrusion from the eye, to penetrate a person. The superstitious notion of the evil eye, for instance, derived from this idea.

How the phallus relates to this protrusion is easily understandable, and it is no large leap to extend this relation from the gaze to the eye itself, allowing it to stand even after the notion of the spearlike look became less fashionable.[1] But the eye-phallus metaphor penetrates deeper than fashion; in fact, it occupies an impregnable position in the structure and even the sound of the English language itself. Rather than an affair of fashion, then, we might call the phallic metaphor a matter of style.

This is not pedantry; it is phonosemantics—the study of the relationship between the sounds of words and their meanings. Saussure declared this relationship to be arbitrary, but there is evidence that in at least some cases there is a patterned connection. In English, it is most salient in word-initial consonant clusters; for instance, words beginning with gl- are often related to reflected light, e.g. gleam, glint, glow, glare, etc. Though counter-examples abound, the percentage of gl- words that fit the pattern should not be passed off as coincidental. Little formal work has been done in phonosemantics compared to other linguistic subdisciplines—the term itself is rather new—but one piece is of particular interest to us. In his paper “Style Stands Still” (in press), John Lawler categorizes the semantic features of English words that begin with the consonant cluster st-. He has found that about 70% of words beginning with this cluster possess or indicate the property “1-dimensional rigid,” enough to label the st- cluster as a classifier of that property.[2] Examples of words demonstrating this classification include stick, staff, stem, stab, stake, stave, stiff, and stilt. The word style itself, according to Lawler, is confusingly derived from the name of the ancient pen-like apparatus, stilus (Latin), and often related to the Greek stylus, which is a vertical column or pillar.

It is clear enough that the referents of these words have a phallic association, but what do they have to do with eyes? We have already seen the primitive (as Freud would call it) notion of the pole-like look, and its phallic connotation. It is compelling, but not linguistically. Here phonosemantics flies in with a crucial set of linguistic data. Consider the English verb stare, as in “he stared at the wall for several minutes.” It is a common alternative of look, with the more specific connotation of being prolonged and intense. Few starers realize, however, that it derives etymologically from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *ster-, meaning “stiff.” The relevant present-day German word, starren, means both "stare" as well as "to be rigid" (the word for rigid is simply starr). In fact, the “stare” sense of the word has come to be considered not a different meaning of the same word, but rather simply a special case of the “rigid” meaning (OED).

The English adjective stern comes from the same PIE root (*ster-) as stare, and has as one of its OED definitions the term “unbending.” When we hear the phrase “a stern look,” we tend to interpret it as “a look from a person who is (being) stern.” Could it be, though, that the word modifies the look itself much more directly, even physically? The look, that is, in the sense of the protruding beam; thus, His stare was stern = The rigid beam protruding from him was unbending.

These linguistic expressions are immensely supportive of the eye-phallus metaphor. Of course, they rely on the nonlinguistic conception of the gaze as a physical projection and on that conception’s congruity with the phallus. We turn next to some more different types of nonlinguistic manifestations of the relation.

[1] Many cultures, especially non-western ones, retain the concept of the look as a protrusion from the eye, either lacking scientific understanding of the actual process of visual perception, or disregarding it for the sake of tradition, utility, or poetry. Anglo-American English, as we have been observing, retains the notion largely for the sake of metaphorical linguistic expression, as in formal or poetic diction.
[2] For further examples, see e.g. Margaret Magnus, Gods of the Word: Archetypes in the Consonants, Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson Univ. Press, 1999.

THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS, Part Two

[Note: this is the second installment of an essay, "Coppelius, Oedipus, and the Phallic Stare: a rare instance of bidirectional cognitive metaphor?" being posted serially. Below Dunster recommends that the reader scroll down and view the sections in ascending order.]

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Conceptual metaphors and Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytic theory, with a different end in mind, has been responsible for some of the farthest-reaching discussions of conceptual metaphors. Fetishism, for example, relies on the metaphorical connection between the phallus and other concepts. Most psychoanalytic discourse does not mention metaphor by name, but this is simply because the terminology of the early twentieth century, and indeed that of today’s general public, reserves the term for metaphorical linguistic expressions. Psychoanalytic theorists might therefore see the term “metaphor” as making light of their theory, but the cognitive linguistic view assigns great importance to mappings supported by conceptual metaphors.

The metaphor
Among the several conceptual metaphors proposed by Sigmund Freud, one stands out as particularly interesting to the field. This metaphor, mentioned by Freud inexplicitly and almost in passing, is THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS. Under a bit of scrutiny, this concept quickly moves from ridiculous to noteworthy to downright fascinating.

In his famous 1919 essay, “The ‘Uncanny’” (“Das ‘Unheimliche’”), Freud attempts to discover the criteria for the instantiation of an uncanny event. He spends a large part of the essay investigating the German gothic classic, Der Sandmann, by E.T.A. Hoffman, whom Freud elsewhere calls “the unrivalled master of the uncanny in poetry.” The story features a young man, Nathaniel, who has suffered from a phobia of losing his eyes since a traumatic incident in his childhood. He links the man responsible for this incident, Coppelius, with the mythical Sandman, who supposedly enters children’s bedrooms at night to pour sand in their eyes. The bleeding spheres then jump out of the victims’ heads for the Sandman to collect and carry back to his lair, where he feeds them to his children. Nathaniel’s terror returns when, as a young adult, he is accosted by an eyeglass salesman named Coppola, who, Nathaniel is convinced, is really the same man as Coppelius, back from a lengthy exile.

Freud’s discussion leads him to consider the fear of losing one’s eyes in general, citing a number of cases to indicate that “no physical injury is so much dreaded by [adults] as an injury to the eye” (Freud, 1919: 938). He goes on to claim that the fear of losing one’s eyes actually tends to be nothing less than a placeholder for castration anxiety. This, he says, is often apparent in dreams, fantasies and myths. Indeed, “the self-blinding of the mythical criminal, Oedipus, was simply a mitigated form of the punishment of castration—the only punishment that was adequate for him by the lex talionis” (Freud, 1919: 938). Freud counters the view of opponents that it is simply natural for an organ as precious as the eye to be guarded proportionally to the phallus, and the slightly bolder view that castration anxiety is simply one form of that type of rational fear of losing an organ, by claiming that this stance cannot account for data from dreams, myths, and fantasies, “nor can it dispel the impression that the threat of being castrated in especial excites a peculiarly violent and obscure emotion, and that this emotion is what first gives the idea of losing other organs its intense coloring” (Freud, 1919: 938). [2005 note: A professor pointed out to me that Freud's claim "sounds (eerily, perhaps, or uncannily) very much like certain forms of generative grammar discourse." Some readers will find this comment amusing.]

Regardless of one’s position with respect to psychoanalytic theory, Freud’s THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS metaphor has physical, psychological, and even linguistic merit. We will approach these areas individually, but will find that they are hardly separable.

There are two perspectives from which we must view this relation, determined by two predominant interpretations of the phallus. One is the Freudian/Lacanian interpretation of the phallus as a somewhat abstract signifier, simultaneously defining male subjectivity and female objectivity. In this case, the phallus is not really the male organ, but an abstract concept existing, according to Freud, in the unconscious, and, according to Lacan, also in language. The other interpretation is simply the anatomical feature, the erect penis.

The eye must also be considered with regard to its non-physical (psychological, mythological, etc.) significance as well as its anatomical role. For the latter, we can further examine both the structure and the function of the physical eye. Though a conceptual metaphor’s source domain is, by definition, that domain which is necessary in order to understand the target domain, we will not spend much time characterizing the physical interpretation of the phallus, since another assumption of a cognitive metaphor is that the source domain is already fairly well understood.

Below Whatster?

by popular request,

A brief history of Dunster

is coming soon to Below Dunster!

THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS, Part One

For unknown reasons I became inclined, about fifteen minutes ago, to post at Below Dunster the text of an essay I once wrote, entitled "Coppelius, Oedipus, and the Phallic Stare: A rare instance of a bidirectional cognitive metaphor?" It will follow in daily installments, just as the tales of Dickens were once published (though this is not a work of fiction); I encourage the reader to peruse the sections in order. By the way, although peruse is commonly thought to mean something like skim, it actually means the opposite: to read or examine thoroughly, with great care. In fact, sixty-six percent of the American Heritage Usage Panel finds the former use unacceptable; I am not so anti-philistine, but it is in the latter sense that I intend the recommendation of the previous sentence. You are, of course, authorized to skim, especially if the alternative is to shun.

If you are interested in language, cognition, psychoanalysis, film, literature, gender studies, animism, or what is called everyday life, you should find at least something of interest to you in the excerpts that follow.

It can be amusing to note, when reading old writings of one's own, what stupid things one once found fit to say. No doubt such things found their way into this essay; they do not necessarily depict my current views.

Enjoy, and comment copiously!



Coppelius, Oedipus, and the Phallic Stare:
A rare instance of a bidirectional cognitive metaphor?

Summary
Work in the area of cognitive metaphor over the last 20 or so years has assumed that metaphors, as a rule, are unidirectional (e.g., Kövecses 2002); that is, a metaphor’s source and target domains cannot be reversed without forfeiting the salience of the metaphor. Indeed, this is generally the case, but no research I know of has even seriously considered bidirectional conceptual metaphors as a category. This essay discusses a specific conceptual metaphor, THE EYE IS THE PHALLUS, and its arguable bidirectionality, and seeks to draw some conclusions about the nature of and basis for bidirectional metaphors in general. Along the way, I will explore a number of other peculiarities, justifications, and implications of the eye-phallus relationship.

Introduction to cognitive metaphor
In the discipline of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is defined as a mapping of qualities from a source domain to a target domain. In print, these mappings are written as A IS B (always in small caps), where B is the source domain and A is the target domain. An example is A LIFETIME IS A DAY, where properties of A DAY are mapped onto A LIFETIME. The purpose of this mapping, and of cognitive metaphors, is to help us understand a relatively abstract concept by considering a more concrete one. Death (the end of a lifetime) is difficult to grasp, but practically everyone is familiar with a sunset (the end of a day). Thus, the metaphor helps us conceptualize death in a less alien way.

Such a conceptual metaphor may or may not manifest itself linguistically in an expression that a poet would call metaphor. In fact, a major contention of the discipline is that metaphor is not primarily a linguistic phenomenon, but a cognitive one, originating and primarily transpiring in the mind. Our already considered conception of death, as well as instances like Oedipus’s reasoning out of the riddle of the Sphinx, would be considered nonlinguistic manifestations of A LIFETIME IS A DAY, while such expressions as “his life's sun is at its zenith” are linguistic manifestations of the same conceptual metaphor; we will call these “metaphorical linguistic expressions.” Other conceptual metaphors may not have corresponding metaphorical linguistic expressions, but all metaphorical expressions rely on some conceptual metaphor, whether it is a common one or one established by the speaker or writer.[1]

Another consideration with regard to conceptual metaphors is whether they are universal or culture-specific. One is always wary of classifying anything as universal, but studies from several cultures and languages suggest that some metaphors, especially ones relying on the human anatomy, light/dark, and up/down as target domains, are near-universal. In any case, the claim that conceptual metaphors are based in the mind and not in language is strong enough to merit study regardless of their universality, which can be investigated separately. One of the upshots of regarding a comparison as a conceptual metaphor, then, is that the validity of the comparison is greatly supported by its mental basis (as opposed to the supposedly more transient nature of language).[2]

[1] See Kövecses (2002, pp. 42-55) for a brief discussion of metaphors in literature and their relation to conceptual metaphors; they will also be addressed in a different light later in this paper.
[2] The question of the degree of the human mind’s stability is a troubling one, but being scrutinized by greater minds in different papers.

chiasthmatic cough XII

The poet shopping at Kris Kringle
Toy-nuts employing themes
The Death Star luring with a jingle
Coke ads, with tractor beams.