Metaphor

The focus of this entry is on a subset of verbal metaphors, those that happen to be humorous. As such, discussion of metaphors in and of themselves is presented only marginally and as relevant to the subject. It is common to use the terms source and target of a metaphor. In the metaphor “an argument is war,” the source domain is the conceptual domain from which the “comparison” is drawn (war), whereas the target is the concept being metaphorized (argument). So in the example “Mary won that argument,” “winning” is drawn from the source conceptual domain of war (wars can be won or lost), whereas the target of the metaphor is “argument.” This entry discusses some explanations for why metaphors can be humorous.

Most accounts of humorous metaphors (including works by Ivan Fónagy, Maureen Morrissey, Howard Pollio, and Marta Dynel), rely on variants of the distance theory. This essentially consists of postulating a threshold of semantic distance beyond which the linkage between the source and target domains in the metaphor becomes stretched (i.e., too distant) and is therefore perceived as humorous. The most obvious problem for the distance theory is that no precise (or even approximate) quantification of the threshold exists.

A related distinction, introduced by Reuven Tsur and Howard Pollio, is between metaphors that have an emphasis on the incongruous aspects of the source and target concepts and those that background the differences between source and target and focus on the similarities between them. Tsur speaks of “split” and “integrated” focus metaphors, while Pollio speaks of emphasizing the “line” between source and target or “fusing” it. Metaphors that emphasize the incongruity of speaking of a target concept in terms of a source tend to be perceived as humorous, whereas those that downplay the incongruity are perceived as figurative or poetic. The problem with these approaches is that they do not answer the basic question of what makes a metaphor emphasize the incongruous aspects or, conversely, downplay them.

Elliott Oring has proposed a different approach to humorous metaphors, which relies on ideas commonly used in humor theory, that is, incongruity and resolution. According to Oring, metaphors seek to find appropriateness in an incongruous connection between two frames or contextual cues leading to the interpretation of a message, but they are not humorous because the appropriateness they find is “genuine” (i.e., legitimate), whereas riddles and jokes find “spurious” appropriateness in the connection of two frames. Humor always involves incongruities that are not fully resolved. Metaphors, conversely, fully resolve the incongruity of the mapping between domains.

Oring’s explanation combines semantic and pragmatic factors. The incongruity of the mapping deals with semantics, or the rules of word meanings, whereas the attempt to find appropriateness deals with pragmatics, or the relation between language and its context. It is obvious that it could be recast in blending terms, that is, as a mental space consisting of a blend of features from two other mental spaces, a leading approach to metaphors, without any loss of analytical power. It differs from the distance approach in that the distance between domains is not a factor relevant to the humorous effect, whereas the processing of the blend/metaphor is assumed to be the crucial factor. A further difference between Oring’s approach and the distance theories is that [Page 505]Oring’s is a dynamic theory, based on the inferential process of finding appropriateness in (i.e., resolving the incongruity of) the comparison of two different domains. The distance theories are based on a priori metrics, or on vague and undefined terms such as emphasis or focus on the incongruity or congruity of the comparison. Moreover, Oring’s approach has the further advantage of being fully integrated, even terminologically, with humor theory. It should be also noted that Oring’s account is not necessarily antagonistic to the distance theory, which could possibly be integrated in his account.

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