Metaphors of the Mind
October 7, 2008, 3:14 pm
Posted by David Gibson
That’s the title of this interview in Scientific American with a social pyschologist, Chen-Bo Zhong, who explains why we use certain metaphors to describe certain feelings–because, he says, we are describing the way we actually feel. (Or is it the other way around?) Hence the subhead of the piece, “Why Loneliness Feels Cold and Sins Feel Dirty.” In fact, cleanliness IS next to godliness. (Or is it the other way around?)
Anyway, why post this? Perhaps it could have some relevance to a linguistic analysis of tonight’s debate, or to the words we use in religious discourse. Or maybe it’s just interesting–even if it makes my brain hurt. That won’t, of course, stop me from having my students read it for the next class…
Via ALDaily
It’s an interesting scientific reprisal of the European 18th c endeavor to come up with a universal aesthetics based in physical responses. Think of Edmund Burke’s _On the Sublime and the Beautiful_ — things with varying texture are more pleasing than things with consistent texture, the small makes us react with a tender delight while the beauty of large scale of mountains inspire in us a dizziness that can’t be distinguished from fear.
Zhong’s research conclusion — that the sensations are naturally occurring and while the language simply expresses the sensation — could just as easily work the other way, though. Since all of his participants are already acculturated in a language system where loneliness is described as cold and sin is described as dirty, their sensations might very well be constructed by their relationship to language and the metaphoric associations that attend it.
Burke’s particular search for a universal standard of beauty wound up working in quite racist ways. If black — as Burke argues — naturally makes “us” feel fearful and confused, then no person with dark skin color could be included in the fold of natural beauty. It’s interesting (although I don’t have any conjecture about what it might mean) that Zhong’s research on racial identity doesn’t seem related to his interest in universal human sensations.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say! … The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne’re be clean?–Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Act V.
You’re not fully clean unless your Zest-fully clean.–Zest soap commercial
Midwestmind makes an interesting point; the metaphors may not work in all cultures. But certainly that connection between morality and cleanliness has resonated for centuries in Western literature (even going back to Christ’s image of the whited sepulchres) and on Madison Avenue, which has sometimes cleverly reversed the metaphor to make physical cleanliness of one’s body and home part of one’s moral obligations.
And, dang! Now I’m going to spend the rest of the morning re-reading “Macbeth.”