Featured Speaker Talk Metaphorical Creativity for Intercultural Communication
journal or
publication title
Journal of Research and Pedagogy of Otemae university Institute of International
Education
volume 6
page range 7‑17
year 2020‑03‑31
URL http://id.nii.ac.jp/1160/00002014/
Featured Speaker Talk
Metaphorical Creativity for Intercultural Communication
Gerry Yokota
Osaka University
Reference Data:
Yokota, G. (2020). Metaphorical Creativity for Intercultural Communication. In K. Tanaka & D. Tang (Eds.), Multicultural Japan - Research and Methodologies for Teaching Language and Culture. Nishinomiya: Otemae University.
Abstract
This paper demonstrates how basic concepts from cognitive linguistics may be creatively incorporated into various educational settings to promote intercultural communication and understanding. It begins with a brief overview of the classic Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980/2003) and an introduction to the three standard types of metaphor: conceptual, ontological, and orientational. It then introduces the work of two other scholars who have built on the work of Lakoff and Johnson: Lynne J. Cameron and Claire Kramsch. As concrete examples of metaphorical creativity in action, it introduces the rhetoric of world leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and the lyrics of songs on themes related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It concludes by recommending metaphor spotting as an engaging educational activity.
この論文では、認知言語学の基本概念をさまざまな教育現場に活用することにより、異文化間コ ミュニケーションと理解を促進する方法を示す。
G.レイコフとM.ジョンソンの『メタファーと人生』
(1980/2003)を概要した上、概念メタファー、存在メタファーおよび方向付けメタファーを解説し、そ
の基礎研究を更に展開した
L.J.カメロンと
C.クラムシュのフィールドワークを紹介する。最後に、
ネルソン・マンデラやデズモンド・ツツのような有名人の演説や持続可能性目標（SDGs）に関連する ポップミュージックの歌詞等に使われるメタファー探しを効果的な教育法として提案する。
The use of culturally familiar materials in English language education for Japanese students offers many benefits, including reduced cognitive load that results from minimizing non-Japanese personal and place names (Sheridan, Tanaka & Hogg, 2019), and enhanced confidence building that can result from engaging in personally meaningful tasks such as introducing Japanese culture to international visitors (Kadota & Kawaguchi, 2016).
However, there is one important caveat which must be strictly observed when incorporating such materials, especially in a mixed class including both Japanese and non-Japanese students: the risk of reinforcing a majority- minority, insider-outsider dynamic. Where Japanese students, usually the majority in an English language class at a Japanese university, take on the role of experts, while the international students are positioned as novices, there is a
high risk of inadvertently setting up a hierarchical formation. This is not to say that such tasks should not be assigned, but only that awareness of this potential risk should be addressed at the stage of assignment and be explicitly acknowledged as part of the total linguistic-cultural learning experience.
For example, in an attempt to engage the audience, a Japanese student giving a presentation may show an image like the one in Fig. 1 and ask, “Do you know what this is?”
Fig. 1. Illustration of the conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY
The reader of this article who does not recognize this image may feel a sense of disorientation and even discomfort. It is my hope that the reader will take the memory of that discomfort as a reminder of the need to put ourselves in the place of the non-Japanese students in our classrooms, in order to promote quality intercultural communication and understanding (Murphy-Shigematsu, 2016).
So, now that you are comfortably uncomfortable, let me explain that I am beginning this article by presenting this image with the aim of engaging my audience, not to set up a hierarchy of those who are in the know and those who are not. In a collective situation such as a live presentation, this may best be accomplished not be proposing a guessing game, inviting the audience to call out their answer and thereby compete for recognition, but rather by asking folks to share their questions and knowledge with a neighbor.
I begin with this local Japanese example of a common if not universal example of the conceptual metaphor, LIFE IS A JOURNEY, because it has hardily stood the test of time as a classic example of a productive stimulus for writing and discussion in the English language classroom. And I want to situate it as just one starter bead on a string of multicultural associations that affords both learners and teachers great pleasure in the process of creative collaboration. (I will return to the metaphor of a string of beads later.)
Three Types of Metaphor
Conceptual, ontological, and orientational metaphors are the three basic types of metaphor discussed in the classic study in cognitive linguistics, Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980/2003). In that study, they write:
“Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish—
a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language.… Most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” (3)
As Lynne J. Cameron says in Metaphor and Reconciliation: The Discourse Dynamics of Empathy in Post- Conflict Conversations (2012), “Metaphor helps a speaker find ways to describe themselves, their experiences and their feelings.” (40)
Claire Kramsch concretely demonstrates this phenomenon in The Multilingual Subject (2010). In that work, she reports the results of an extensive survey of over 900 students taking 14 different foreign languages at the University of California, Berkeley, where she asked them to use metaphors that capture their experience of learning, speaking, and writing in a foreign language.
A conceptual metaphor such as LIFE IS A JOURNEY is more abstract, whereas ontological and orientational metaphors are more concrete. In the following sections, I will begin by introducing common examples of all three types.
I will then follow that survey with an exercise in “metaphor spotting,” to demonstrate how sharing metaphorical expressions in various cultures can promote equitable intercultural communication and understanding
Conceptual Metaphors
The image shown above is an eighteenth-century illustration by Yosa Buson of Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North), the 1689 travel diary of the haiku poet Matsuo Bashō. The two travelers on the left are setting out on a long journey, and the friends on the right are seeing them off.
While it is important to be vigilant about universalism and false solidarity, I believe it is fairly safe to say that this is a metaphor that most can identify with to a certain degree. Whether you are Japanese or not, whether you are young or old, whether you have lived your whole life in the same country or spent your whole life or career in another, or whether you have just arrived and are just settling in--when you think about it, the conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY has a special resonance, no matter what stage of your journey you may be on, whether you’re alone or with a companion.
Despite its abstract nature, LIFE IS A JOURNEY is a metaphor that resonates both with teachers and learners, and is especially effective with university students who are just beginning a very new stage in life, perhaps having just moved out of the family home they were born into. When I use this metaphor as a prompt for writing or discussion, it inevitably
stimulates a colorful string of associations, from TV shows like Saiyūki (Journey to the West) to games like Dragon Quest to Western legends like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in search of the Holy Grail.
Ontological Metaphors
The most common type of metaphor is probably the ontological metaphor, where one uses something familiar, usually a very concrete material item from daily life, as a means to understand something less familiar, more abstract, perhaps more confusing. A prime example is the question, what is love? Consider these lines from the theme song of the 1979 movie The Rose, lyrics by Amanda McBroom, famously sung by Bette Midler.
Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves the soul to bleed Some say love, it is a hunger, an empty aching need I say love, it is a flower, and you its only seed.
Another example especially appropriate for a discussion on intercultural communication in the multicultural classroom is the ontological metaphors that have been variously used to describe the ethnic diversity of U.S. American society, such as a melting pot or crucible, a tossed salad, a mosaic, or a patchwork quilt. This little metaphorical genealogy is particularly interesting because one can sense a sort of progress, from earlier, violently dehumanizing demands for assimilation to later, relatively less dehumanizing but perhaps still problematic expressions.
Two more common ontological metaphors are THE MIND IS A CONTAINER and LIFE IS A THREAD. This classic example from the Western literary tradition comes from Book I of John Milton’s 1663 classic, Paradise Lost.
The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Of course, this was not Milton’s original concept. It is ancient wisdom, expressions of which can be found all over the world. In Kurozuka, a canonical play in the Noh drama of Japan, the minimalist stage property in which the woman is sitting at the opening of the play clearly symbolizes her troubled mind, and her metamorphosis into a demon in the second act of the play is an expression of the idea of “demons in your head” that goes back at least as far as The Tale of Genji, as I discuss in Yokota (2017).
Some teachers may wonder whether Noh drama should be counted as culturally familiar material for the average Japanese university student. In my experience, many students loudly express their dissatisfaction with the stereotypical nature of the Cool Japan brand. In a multicultural classroom, such views may be expressed by both Japanese and Japanophiles from abroad. In both cases, this can become an excellent opportunity to raise the issue of the invention of tradition and promote awareness of some inaccurate ideas about traditional Japanese culture which are based more on artificially constructed inventions than on history, as I discuss in Yokota (2018).
It is especially interesting to discover through the sharing of such cultural examples, prompted by such a simple metaphor, that this idea of “demons in your head” continues to be expressed in popular culture as well. The next example is from the 2017 song “We Are” by One Ok Rock.
When you're standing on the edge So young and hopeless
Got demons in your head (We are, we are)
No ground beneath your feet Now here to hold you Cause we are, we are The colors in the dark.
I also encourage students to study the rhetoric of world leaders they admire for examples of effective metaphorical expressions, and often take the words of Nelson Mandela as a model. Mandela also frequently spoke of the mind as a container, as in this quote from his 1994 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.
A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. (624)
Another common ontological metaphor is the idea that LIFE IS A THREAD, sometimes a string of beads. It too can oscillate between heaven and hell, positive and negative poles. Positive associations include interpersonal connection and the weaving of community, as in this quote from No Future Without Forgiveness (2000), Desmond Tutu’s account of his work with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours. We belong in a bundle of life. (31)
Negative associations include manipulation, feeling like a puppet on a string or trapped in the web of a predatory spider. The classical canon of Noh includes a play called Tsuchigumo (Ground Spider) that manifests this terror (on both sides). Similar images may again be found in popular culture as well, such as the anime series Kōkaku Kidōtai (Ghost in the Shell), which presents the World Wide Web as a sinister trap where one can lose one’s identity to a faceless entity known as the Puppet Master. The spinning wheel used by the woman in Kurozuka brilliantly captures this complex duality.
Orientational Metaphors
The third kind of metaphor is the orientational metaphor. Happiness is up, sadness is down. Heaven is up, hell is down.
Kaguyahime, the princess found in the shining bamboo, like the angel with the feather robe in the Noh play Hagoromo, once descended to earth but couldn’t wait to get back up to heaven. In recent pop tunes like “Happy” (2014), Pharrell Williams sings about feeling like a hot air balloon or a room without a roof, while Bruno Mars chants the lines from the Mark Ronson song, “Uptown funks you up.”
Universalism and Relativism
There is one serious risk with the kind of multicultural associations I have introduced in the previous sections, gathering seemingly random examples from various cultures in an attempt to avoid Anglo-Eurocentrism, and that is the risk of false universalism. Facile romanticization of common humanity runs the risk of flattening out difference and reinforcing implicit bias. Here I would like to introduce an antidote to such bias, a concrete expression of the idea of cultural relativity.
What do you imagine when you hear the word “island”? Many like myself may be conditioned to associate islands with summer vacation, lounging under a palm tree on a sandy beach, drinking coconut juice straight from the shell. That was the major sort of response elicited by a project at the University of Edinburgh called the Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus.
But the respondents who participated in that survey did not comprise a very diverse sample, and anyone who imagines something like they (and I) did needs to remember to be very careful not to assume that this is what everyone around the world universally imagines.
It would be fitting to remember that a Chinese American may be far more likely to associate the word “island”
with Angel Island, the immigration station on the West Coast where their family was detained; an Irish or Polish American may associate it with Ellis Island, the East Coast equivalent; and the vast majority of South Africans will associate it with Robben Island (which South Africans simply call The Island), where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.
Ask a Westerner, or anyone who has received a Western-style education, to recall a song or poem that features the image of an island, and many will say John Donne’s Meditation XVII, “No man is an island” (1624), while most South Africans will likely think of “Asimbonanga,” a 1987 song by Johnny Clegg, a white South African who was fluent in Zulu and formed a multiracial band called Savuka during the apartheid years.
Oh the sea is cold and the sky is grey Look across the island into the bay We are all islands till comes the day We cross the burning water.
Can metaphor help us “cross the burning water” in this age where we tread the fine line between the ideal of an Internet that helps us connect with people all over the world, people who are different from us and from whom we can
potentially learn so many new things, and the reality of algorithms that pretty much guarantee that we will only “see what we want to see and disregard the rest,” to paraphrase Paul Simon?
“Burning water” may at first strike one as an extreme metaphor, but I would argue that it is not so far-fetched. Is shyness or lack of confidence the only thing that keeps some students from communicating with people from other cultures? I have had more than one student express a feeling of resonance with these words from Cameron (2012):
Metaphor helps say the unsayable, whether that be thoughts too painful to speak directly or ideas that might threaten the person we are talking with. (3)
…Metaphor helps a speaker find ways to describe themselves, their experiences and their feelings. More than that, metaphors can show how these descriptions are designed with the other person in mind, i.e., dialogically: for example, using a metaphor that was previously used by the other can create some temporary solidarity prior to asking a confrontational question. (40)
Cameron is writing about a case of reconciliation after the Troubles in Northern Ireland, where the two parties connected through the dialogical use of the metaphor of the bridge. I strongly advocate exploring metaphors used in such critical situations in ways that promote both global awareness and self-awareness, together with developing skill in self-expression.
Metaphor Spotting
In this section, I invite the reader to experience an engaging classroom activity I call “metaphor spotting.” See how many metaphors you can spot in the next three songs. Imagine using your own selections in a warmup exercise and then inviting students to share their own favorites. And consider the potential of such sharing to serve as an effective bridge across the “burning water.” These three pieces are from a playlist of songs I have compiled for use in my university classes, where I take the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a starting point in a course where students design projects such as a public advertising campaign.
My first example is “Landslide” (1975). It was originally written as a love song by Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac, but was later used in two films in ways that effectively bring out the profound significance of its metaphors. The first film was One True Thing (1998), where a daughter struggles with her resentment at being forced to give up her career to take care of her dying mother, while her professor father is having affairs with his female students and her younger brother is a student. The second film is Suffragette (2015), a dramatization of British women’s fight for the right to vote. It features a woman who was driven out of her home and lost her parental rights because her husband opposed her political activism, even though he could not care for their son himself and put the boy up for adoption without her knowledge.
I took my love, took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
These lyrics will no doubt further resonate with anyone who has suffered various climate disasters in Japan and around the world.
My second example is “Ordinary Love” by Bono and U2, the theme song for the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013). This is an especially poignant expression of intense layers of alienation: between a husband and wife (Nelson and Winnie) and between racial groups. This song too uses a complex palette of metaphors. But it is remarkable for the pointed absence of any island. The painful image of The Island is only elliptically alluded to through the images of the sea, the shore, the rocks, and the birds, just as the painful memory of a marriage destroyed is only elliptically alluded to in later verses through the image of a house and the tragic realization that the hope for reunion was only an illusion.
The sea wants to kiss the golden shore The sunlight warms your skin All the beauty that's been lost before Wants to find us again.
I can't fight you any more It's you I'm fighting for The sea throws rocks together But time leaves us polished stones.
We can't fall any further if We can't feel ordinary love And we can't reach any higher if We can't deal with ordinary love.
My last example is a song that I found when I was searching for music about refugees in a class on the SDGs where several students had chosen to investigate that issue. “Sanctuary” (2009), written and performed by Utada Hikaru, is the theme song for a game called Kingdom Hearts. It is particularly remarkable for its use of garbled lines sung
backwards in a way that subtly evokes the disorienting feeling of being in a situation where you cannot understand the language being spoken around you.
{Wonk uoy naht noitceffa erom deen I}
In you and I, there's a new land Angels in flight
{Wonk uoy naht noitceffa erom deen I}
My sanctuary, my sanctuary, yeah Where fears and lies melt away...
Music will tie
{Wonk uoy naht noitceffa erom deen I}
What's left of me, what's left of me now...
How might you fit such a metaphor spotting exercise into your own practice?
Conclusion, with a Word about Self-Disclosure
Clearly I am a firm believer in the power of both traditional and popular culture to serve as a bridge, both for intercultural communication and to the exploration of difficult topics that might be difficult to approach head on.
I hope the reader will take this study as an impetus to recall your own favorite song and study the lyrics. How many metaphors can you spot? If none, perhaps other rhetorical devices were preferred. What were they, and do they promise similar potential? Might you consider finding a way to fit it into a lesson plan sometime? If not, why not?
Could the idea of that much self-disclosure be uncomfortable?
Self-disclosure comes more easily to some teachers than others. I myself was afraid for years, for example, that I would be accused of bragging if I told my students the story of my work with Nelson Mandela, as a member of the executive committee that welcomed him to Japan after his release from prison. While I was very vocal about my activism in the anti-apartheid years, I stopped talking about him after he became President due to this fear of being perceived as boastful. It was only after his death in 2013 that I realized I should not be allowing a false idea of modesty to prevent me from honoring his memory and his legacy.
I have happily found that many students say they find the story strengthens their motivation to study English when they realize that it was my bilingual skills in Japanese and English, together with my volunteer activism, that opened that magical door and enabled me to receive that precious opportunity. And so I share this experience in the hope it may serve as a lesson to teachers everywhere about the value of judicious self-disclosure in the classroom. It may also serve as a reminder that avoiding the personal, and avoiding controversial political issues, simply out of fear that you may be accused of subjectivity or ideological bias, runs a high risk of perpetuating taboos and apathy.
The poet Bashō’s journey, depicted in the painting by Buson introduced above, was more than an excursion through physical terrain. It was a spiritual journey, with the Deep North (Oku, the remote interior) symbolizing an
exploration of the inner workings of the heart and mind. While our pedagogical practice may tend to focus more on practical skills required for survival and success in today’s competitive global society, metaphor spotting may be an effective way to show respect for our students’ inner lives and facilitate a healthy integration of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, thought and action.
Bio Data
Gerry Yokota is a Professor of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies in the Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University. <gyokota@gmail.com>
References
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