Table Of Content'"
CONVENTIONAL METAPHORS AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
METAPHYSICS: THE PROBLEMATIC OF CULTURAL TRANSLATION
Roger M. Kecsing
Dep.onmcnt of Anthropology. The AU5I.ralian National Uni""nity,
Bo,,"
GPO Olnberta ACT 2601 A"sn"li<t
IF AN ITHN(X;RAPHER ENCOUNTERS A PEOPLE who talk as if the universe
werr pervaded by a dynamic. fluid-like energy. or as though the belly were the center
of the emotions, or as though trees could express ideas, how are these ways of talk
to be interpreted?' Are they to be taken as expressions of metaphysical ideas or
simply as conventional metaphors. figures of speech. tropes? 1 shall argue that we
anthropologists are profasionai dealers in exotica. Wherr are ambiguous.
meanin~
we tend tochoose readings thatdepia the people we study;u having cultures. beliefs,
symbols strikingly different from our own. These readings may often be apt; but
often, I fear, they are not, Where our evidence w nsists of the stuff of language (and
wheu our knowledge of fieldwork languages falls well shon of native competeoce),
we may read into the talk of other f'C'Jples and metaphysics that may not
~liences
be there ill alL
I will explore the epistemological implications for the anthropological enterprise
of ucent work on conventional metaphor, If, as a number of rec:ent writers on
metaphor argue, our everyday talk is pervaded by metaphor- most of il neither
nor "dead," but simply convemional fLakoff and johnson 1980), based on
"1ive~
culturally established 1979) or "cultural models"(Holland and Quinn
"frames~(&hon
n,d.}--then so is everyday talk in the jungles, desens, and peasam villages where we
do our fieldwork.
Recent work showing how coheunt the paradigrrn of wnventional metapbor are,
bow systematically they propose relationships between domains, and bow pervasively
they structure our language and may channel and shape our experience provides a
challenge to anthropologists to map the metaphoric &ehemata of non-Western pe0-
ples. Our interpretations and analyses of metaphor have, with a few notable excep
tions, been piec:emeal and partial; as Salmond (1983) suggests, much more systematic
exploration is needed.
My main wncerns, however, lie in a different direction. Ethnographers may often
have read into other peoples' ways of talk metaphysical beliefs or cosmologies that
such talk seems to imply, but does not. Have we invented cosmologies. theologies,
beliefs, constructed out of other peoples' metaphors? Have we ethnographers acted
as theologians to create nonexistent theologies?
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AS THEOLOGIAN
Ethr.ographers working in tribal societies characteristically encounter peoples wrn
cosmology is largely implicit in their ritual practice and everyday behavior. Ordinarily
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few, if any, informant.s articulate to us coherent and global accounts of their belief
systems and ritual meanings. There are notable exceptions among tribal peoples.
such as the I3tmul of New Guinea, where theological erudition is a source of woTldly
power (Baleson 1958). And the fortunate ethnographer may encountn a remaTk.able
folk philosopher like Ogotemmeli or Muchona the Hornet. who spreads Out a rich,
coherent, and global vision of his or her world (see Radin 1927). Pan of the danger
of cultural theology lies preo:isely in our prodivit}" 10 find the mOM gifted or knowl·
edgeable folk philOllopher and to elevate ..... hat may be a personal synthesis ex·
tJr
trapolation to the realm of "cultural symbols."'
I am more concerned ..... ith the temptation for the anthropologist to take the
unconneo:ted biL' and pieces manifest in ritual praCtice in what native actors do
~nd
and say and to construct from them coherent philosophy that no informants
~
articulate themselves. The ethnographer plays the role of cultural theQlogian, sup
plying the missing elemems. tying fragments together. apparently rendering lhe
implicil explicit.
There are two modes of pOlential distortion here. f il"Sl. by rendering the frag
mentar)· coherent, the ethnographer Can obscure salient between the prag
COntr~Sts
matic, and sociocentric world ,·ie ..... s characteristic of tribal peoples (wncerned
p~rtial,
more wilh acting in Ihe world than s}·stemalically txpJainmg it) and the coherent
cultural theologies characteristic of dass-stratified societies with theo
profession~l
logians. A spu riously coherent cosmology, created by the ethnographer out of a partial
and pragmatic ..· orld view, may, a-' Brunton (19M) has reo:eruly suggested for Mel
anesia, disguise contrasts that demand explanation.
theoretic~1
The second problem is more seriou,. The mi"ing order supplied by the analyst
may be wrong. What seems to be implif"<l by the surface evidence may be a spurious
inference by the ethnographer. A striking example come_ from Needham's recent
reexamination of headhunting in parts of Southeast Asia (1977). The pioneer cth
nographers. mainly Dutch. noted the conneo:tion between [he taking of heads and
the benefits, particularly fertility of crops. that were thought to accrue to the head
takers. Europeans inferred that the connection between head-taking and worldly
benefits was an in,·isible medium. a a person·s life force, social and
~50ul-substance:·
ptr(.onal, ctntned in the head and which can be acquired by a person who takes
the head. Headhunting is thus motivated by a quest to obtain this
~soul-substance.~
Needham assembles considerable evidence to show that many of these Southeast
Asian beadhunters in faci have no conceptions of this supposed
"soul-"ub:"'ance~'
spiritual medium is a missing ingredient created by ethnographen to provide a causal
link between head-taking and the benefiu that follow from it. Needham's rcfle<:tion.
(1977:82) bear pondering.
,: ••• :'. !>ee<I to understand . . . why jUJt th;J
CONVENTIONAL METAPHORS AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS 2()3
hydraulics, mechanic •. Tbccy addu<Xd by the beca\l3e ccnain dfecu had
w~", ethnogr1lph~n
to be causally acwunted for.
Needham points to a similar pervasiveness of images derived from classical physics
in the anthropological interpretations of the grcat French KlCiologim (Durkheim,
Mauss, and others). Mauss. for in5taoce, dwelled on "the spirit of the gift":
~What
force is there in the thing he asked "which makes the Teeipient return itr"
given.~
Such rdllcations and spurious metaphys>cs live On. We ethnographen, I think, both
perpetuate and continually invent them.
An equally striking example that I am exploring mYloClftakes us back to the famous
Oceanic concept of mana. Considerable linguistic and ethnographic evidence (Keesing
1984) indicates that in the early Oceanic languages from which the languages of
eastern Melanesia, Fiji, Nuclear Micronesia, and f'Qlynesia are derived, mana was
canonically a native verb, with meanings of 'be efficacious, be true, be realized, be
potent,' and the implication that such efficacy and potency was a result of blessing
or protrxUon or potentiation by ancestral or other spiriu. The term was abo used
as a transitive verb ("mana-ize my spell", or my garden" or "mana-ire my
~mana-ire
war canoc") and as an intransitive verb ("mana for me": "mana, mana. mana!") in
addressing the spirits in prayer. Finally, mana was used as a morphologically un
marked abstract noun derived from the stative. In some daughter languages, this
derived abstract noun is marked with a nominalizing suffix. It was this pattern (in
Kwaio and other Malaita languages), and my retrospective realization of my own
mistnms!ations, that led me to a comparative analysis.
This tripartite usage of mana as stative verb, active verb, and abstract noun is
pervasive in eastern Melanesia and widespread in Polynesia and Micronesia. What
is surprising, when one goes back to texu. is the spurious theology that has been
laid on mana as a diffuse surulanct, an invisible medium of power that humans sought
from ghosts, spirits, and gods. Such a metaphysic scems to be, like the
"soul-substance~
of headhunters, mainly a creation of European, not native, theologians. Melanesians
asking the spirits for efficacy (and attributing potency toone another) were imagined
to be: negotiating for, or in po5loCssion of, an invisible medium of spiritual power.
More often than not, sheer mistranslation has been at fault. [vcr since Codrington's
time, when anthropologists learned that mana was a noun. we have been recording
the term used as a stative or a verb and translaling it as a noun. for me,' says
~Mana
a Melanesian to his ancestor in prayer. "Give me mana,"tratulates Ihe anthropologisl.
But in some pam of Melanesia, and much of Polynesia, mana as abstract derived
noun ("effioocy, potency· ) was at least partly .unstantivized or concretized. Mana
became, at least metaphorically, something individual! had more or less of. I surmise
that this theological elaboration i. a reflection of cernin kinds of politicaVreligious
hierarchy in Oceania (Kcesing 1984:151_53). Howe"er, with only limited original
texts available, it is difficult to distinguish indigenous theology from European mis
construction. Douglas Oliver (1974:55), from whom I learned some of my ethno
graphic skepticism, has noted the problem of overinterpretation, the crcation of a
nonexislent metaphysic, with refereDCC to Tahiti:
In my judgment .5ooXty bland. data do not IUpport [.S.C. Handr'" (1927) thesis that
th~
tl>nc f'QIynesian. rcgaTded the univnM: ;as ~ p'),<hic dynamism manIfesting iuclf physi
cally. ...
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No 1'«Or<kd texU or acrounl.ll of behaviour that I know of provide thaI
~videnc~ Ih~
(Society Islandets] et1\ctt.ain«\ such a gcnctalittd, all,cmbnoc;ng, CT>I<'l""ic. an;mat;Hic
v~w
of th~ir un;v~r~ . .. , I beliue that th~ highly r~6ncd (Ompr~helUiv<: V>tw cnunw\cd ~bove
;" lhe conmuct of the philowphKal\y minded cthlK>logi>t and nO!. ""cn implKidy. of the
(Society Isbndeo] \hcmselv6.
Again we find. as Needham noted for the imputation to non-West
~soul-suMtance:
ern peoples of all-embracing. universalistic cosmologies, characteriu:d in terms of
elcctromagnCl:ism. mechanics. hydraulics. etc .. of classical physics.
How can we avoid misinterpreting and overintcrpreting such folk (COnceptual iyS
tcTll5? We need first of aU to address our interpretive task squarely as one of cultural
translation. a task fraught with difficulty and danger.
RE1FICATION AND DISTORTION IN ETHNOGRAPHIC T RANSLATION
One of the pervasive errors I have encountered in anthropological renderings of
mana is translation of a stative or a verb as if it were a noun. Such errors by scholars
working in the shadow of Codrington (ISSI, 1891; Codrington and Palmer 1896)
arc perhaps understandable, but such a misrendcring of words describing pro<:esses
or states with English sUMtanlives seems to be a more general problem. One step
toward Icss-distorting (uhural translation is to be faithful to the linguistic evidence
at hand and (COnstantly attentive to the dange.-s (to whkh English makes us especially
prone. it would seem) of rcification and false substantivization; of attributing what
the philosopher of scien(e Campbell calls ·enlitivity" to a world of relations and
processes,'
A misleading translation may create not only nonexistent entities but spurious
analytical problems, as welL The Oceanio:: Austronesian W(Ird tapuJ/abu. which, like
mana. has figured so prominently both in Pacific anthropology and in the meulan.
guage of (COmparative analysis, is a case in point. Tapu and cognate forms are ca·
nonio::ally stative verbs. Roth in talking about Polynesian and Melanesian and
custom~
in more general attthmpological discourse ("the incest this word dCS(ribing
taboo~).
a state has bc<:n translated as if it ·.. .. ere a noun, undergoing a process of ~iftcation
and distortion that ironically began on Cook', voyages (see Steiner 1956). Anthro
pologists (who have at least in general correctly taken the sUlive form as primary)
have, by milieading translation, often pKudoproblems. The basic meaning
(~ated
of lapu in boI:h Melanesian and Polynesian languages scems best rendered as simply
limits." This captures the relational nature of tapu in a way that "sacred" and
~off
do not: and it keeps us free of the seeming contradktion between the
"forbidden~
positive valence of sacredness and the negative valen.:c of "pollution" and interdiction.
Something that is tapn is. then. "off limits"; and that inescapably implies: (I) an agent;
(2) a perspective; (3) a contex\.
Something is off limits. tapu. only if some (human or nonhuman) agent defines it
as such. This agent may be a god, the ancestors. or a (god-like) chief. In many
Oceanic languages, however. it may also be a parent telling a child not to do some
thing.' Something is off limits. tapu, only given a pe.-spective. What is off limits to
one pc,.,."n or category of persons may be 'permissible' (ofl en rendered with n.,.. or
related fonnl) or even enjoined for an<xher person or category of persons. A men_
strual hut may be tapu from the vantage point of men; from the vanl<lge point of
CONVENTIONAL METAPHORS AND Al'ITHROPOLOCICAL METAPHYSICS
20~
a menstruating woman, it would be tapu to be anywheu else. Similarly, a men's
house may be tapu for women, noa for men; a perspective is alwaY' implied. Some
thing that is off limits, tapu, is always offlimiu If) $omtont, not in and of itself. Finally,
being tapu, off limits, implies a context. A place or act or thing that is tapu this
afternoon, from the perspective of wme people and in the context of a particular
ritual or circumstance, may be noa (or tapu) for diJ!~ people tomorrow. This
underlines why u"anslations of tapU either or "forbidden" are misleading.
a~ ~sacred"
Sanctity is a quality that, we imagine, inheres in people or places or things in an
absolute and noncontextual way. Even the tapu-ness of a priest or chief in eastern
Polynesia wu contextual and perspectival, although the merging of political power
and priestly imermediation ..... ith the gods seems to have led to theological elal.",uions
of notions of tapU as well as ideas of mana. Sahlins (1981), in his re«:nt book on
Hawaii, notes the elaborations of tapu-ness emanating from the goos and surround.
ing the chiefs; and he comments sardonically on the way modern Hawaiians write
"hpu" on fen<:es, as if the word simply meant "no tuspassing." Of course Sahlin! is
right that a term once pugnam with religious meanings, in Ha. .... aii. has become
Yet ironically, "off limits" has been the rOO( meaning of tapu for at lea.!t
s«ulari~.
four thousand years, transparem to Oceanic speakers throughout this time period
and over a vast geographkal area. We can take no better metaphor for the meaning
of tapu than a fence prohibiting a(cess, ....· hether the fence hu been erected by gods,
chiefs, or mere mortals. If we interpret tapu a.! "off limits" (with no preconceptions
either that the "fence" bas been erected by gods or aoce!!tors or that it has to do with
the inherem qualide!! of the act, object, or person being fenced off), we steer clear
of the pseudnproblem, upon which Steiner (1956) and so many others have dwelt,
of why the term refers both to sanClity and to the prohibited or polluted. It ufen
to boI:h and to neither.
Cauful translations that do not falsely concutize, do JIOt cuate nonexistent sub
stantiVe!! out of relationships, stales, and processes, are an urgent first step. That is
JIOt to say that we, as analysts, cannot or should nOI go beyond indigenous categories;
but a first task is surely to under them as faithfully as we can.
Oceanic peoples (.some of them. at least) did, however, talk as though individuals
who were consistently successful, visibly powerful, or hereditarily sacred mana."
~had
Interpreted literally, chey seo:med to be saying that mana, which people had more
or leM of, was the medium of and means to power. sucress, and sanctity. And tbat
takes me to conventional metaphor.
CONVENTIONAL METAPHOR
The pervasiveness of colII·entional metaphor in ever)·day language has been most
strongly argued by Lakoll" and John.son (1980). They advance what they call an
"experiential" theory of metaphor. Conventional metaphors au systematk (we might
say paradigmalic) in thaI they propose a universe in which one realm is talked about
in terms of another. Thus spatialiUlIWn metaphors describe temporal. emotional, and
other experiential realms in terms of space. In Ilfllologiai metaphors, natural forces
and entities aTe personified or ahiltractions concretized; as in metapho" that liken
theories buildings, constructed on foundations. metaphors·· propose
to ~Structur3l
JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH
a structural homology sour<:e and target domain, as with the
ktw~~n equivalenc~
we draw ktween rational argument and war,
When we look at metaphoric s<:hema aCTon a range of languages, we find ooth
expectable cuhural diversity and perhaps surprising regularity. Thus all, or virtually
all, languages des<:rik rdation, in time in terms of rdations in space, Em(){ions are
descrikd ..., ith LO colors with envy," "sc:cing red") and often
~ference ("blue,~~green
to space ("do'm." "low," "up"). Othn widespread, perhaps unive",,]' spatial
"high,~
metaphors characterize the physical world in the terms in which humans perceptually
encounter it; as if the earth were flat, as if the sun and muon moved and the earth
slood still (the sun "rises" and even where this does not correspond to modern
·sels~).
astronomical knowledge. In these domains, metaphoric s<:hemata much more
a~
similar from language to language than we might expect. Life ill treated as a line of
mar<:h. a path on which the future lies in fronl, the paSt khind.' Metaphors based
on body parts differ much less than we might expt<:t from language to language
(Ha\'iland n.d.). However, languages do incorporate systems of metaphor that are
culturally spe.:ific (if nOt necessarily unique). Lakoff and johnson illustrate this point.
for Englillh, with a system of metapho~ that liken time to money: we save time,
,",'aste it, budget it, and so on.
Non,Wntern languages may use metaphoric ..:hemata than ours to char.
diffe~nt
emotions and cognitive proceues. Lakoff and (n.d.) analp.e the
ac~rile Kovo::~
systematic modd in which. in English, anger is likened to hot fluid in a container.
Rosaldo (1980) explicates 110ngot usages of ligd. which expresses equally
sys~matic
but quite different metaphoric schemata for emotional states of "anger."
What is most anthropologically interesting aoom such paradigms of metaphor is
that they propose a univrrM of metaphoric discourse, within which one realm of
experience is talked aoom in terms of anolher. It is propoosal of a universe, in
thi~
the conventional metaphors of aIL alien culture, that poses a
s~cial epist~mological
problem to which we have paid insufficient attention_ Consider case of mana_
th~
When a Pol}'nesian says that chiefs have mana, and that is why they are tapu, are
we to imagine that mana is a spiritual that flows like elearicily,
~f\'asive, ~ub~tance
a substance that people have more or less of. by vinue of the gods?
CONVENTIONAL METAPHOR: HOW DEEP, HOW SALIENT'
Before we can address the problematic for anthropologists of aptly
interp~ting
other pc:<.>ples· paradigms of conventional metaphor, we need to look dosely
mo~
at the Lakoff/johnson argument, particularly as an ethnography of the world view
codified in the English language.
Lakoff and johnson concerned to show that metaphurs live in a different
a~
realm. in a different way, than we have usually imagined. Co""em;onal metaphor.
pervade Our everyday language; ....· e cannot talk, cannot think, except in and through
them.' They are built out of our most fundamental experiences. of human bodies
and brains and senwry apparatus, situated in a world like our.; and at the same
time, Lakoff and Johnson argue. Our conventional ways of characterizing .ubjective
experience are constitutive of experience itself. We per<:eive oursdve. as agents·in·
the·world »'Irtly in terms of the conventional metaphors of agency and cause (and,
CONVENTiONAL METAPHORS AND AJlITHROPOl.OGlCAl METAPHYSICS 'tfY1
as Whorf noted, probably in terms of grammatical molds of language, well). We
;u
are inextricably situated in a world that language creates for us.
Theargumem laurKhed in MeI<Jplum We Lim By is still being expanded and refined,
its implications still bring e)[plored. In their analysis of the conceptualization of anger
implicit in English, Lakotf and Zoltan Koveoes (n.d.) show that a central metaphoric
schema likening anger to hot fluid in a container, together with a set of related
metaphors, converge or map onto a prototypia.l scellario of anger, ils cause and
coune: "This enables us to show e)[acily how the various metaphors are related to
one another, and how they function together to help characterize a single concept.
This is something that Lakoff and johnson (1980) were unable to do."
Lakoff and KOVf:(;KS show that the ontology of anger represented in this proto
typical scenario is "largely constituted by metaphor"; but these c<J11.5li1utim metaphor!,
characterizing the course of anger in teTms of limit, fora:, control, etc. are drawn
from relatively abstract, ·superordinate" domains. In contra51 (Lakotf and
sou~e
Kovecscs n.d.),
These authors, although they take the conceptual schema proposed in Lakoff and
johnson (1980) considerably further, concede that crucial questions remain. Granted
that is centrally constituted by and systematically expressive of un
/i~tU UJage
derlying metaphoric schemata, Lakotf and Kovecses (n.d.) ask, what ate the psycho
logical and experiential entailments of such metaphoric schemata? "Our methodology
does nO{ enable us to say much about the e)[act psychological status of the modd (of
anger) we have uncovered. How much of it do people really usc: in comprehending
anger? Do people base their actions on this model? . . . How much of it, if any, do
people consciously believe? And most intriguingly. does the model have any effect
on what people [ttl?" They note that it is by no means certain that the model of
anger they e)[plkate is equaUy salient to, and has the same meanings for, aU speakers
of English.
Lakoff and Kovecses, in taking Lakoff and johnson's analysis further. make dear
the cultural shaping and systematic nature of a modd of anger built into English; a
modd we anthropologists would expect, then, differ from modds of "anger" and
to
related emotions codified in other languages and cultures. Rosaldo's (1980) analyses
of liget among the Ilongot of the Philippines and Lutz·s (1982) analYijf:S of cultural
conceptualizations of emotions on 1faluk amply bear out these expectations.
But the question of how deeply conventional metaphors are constitutive of e)[
perience remains problemat". It seems likely that many of them are constitutive of
experience, and that they pervasivel)· shape and channel our thought. But many of
them may nO{ be 50 deeply salient. Nor can we comfortably assume, as L.akoff and
Kovecses warn, that just because an native speakers use the same conventiollallin_
guistic e)[pressioWl, these have the same meanings for every speaker.
Consider, for instance, the way" English speakers talk of the heart in conventional
or
JOURNAL ,,:-;THkOPOLQGICAL RESEARCH
metaphors. I have no doubt that Lakoff and could, with equal skill, show
Kovec:s.c~
many sy:stematic SlrUClures in our talk of hearts. As a systematic device for talking
about inner stales having the properties of an entity, the metaphoric heart serves us
well; its properlies are characterized in intuitively meaningful ways, as light or heavy,
rising or sink.ing, intact and W\md or broken, hard or soft. The affective and cognitive
processes and ilS$OCiated with the heart in conventional metaphors con
~pericnces
trast with the purely intellC(tive, with things of the "head." But the heart :>emetimes
represents will and resolve, sometimes the emotions (particularly Love, compas
sion,:s.cntimentality), sometimes depth of commitmenl. sometimes the deep, funda
mental, and inarticulable.
What physical organ is used metaphorically to characterize the emotions, deepesl
thought and feelings, and profoundest and most enduring aspects of will and char
acter is not an arbitrary matter: it must be a cenlral, visc:eral organ, \lOt a peripheral
one (it must be physicalJ)' "deep" as well as central); ideaUy (perhaps) it is not one
that we directly monitor physiologically or conlTOI voluntarily. We ell:perience an
accelerated pulse under emotional stress. Thus the heart is an apt and not randomly
chosen source domain for our ways of talking about emotions. will. character, etc.
And in some sense, the contrasts drawn through talk of the heart are both ell:pericn
tially salient and even shaping or comtituti,'e of the wap we interpret oursel"es and
others.
But out talk of heans using viKCraJ anatomy as source domain d~s nol altrWul( 10
1M slJUru domain the proa:5SCs characteriled in terms of it. The heart is not, for us,
the "seat of the emotions." Our folk explanation for this (incorporated in many
learned tomes) is that at stage in Our past, when ""e were Ie,s
~me ~philticated,
Westerners used to beli/!ve that the physical he. . rt wa.s the "seat of Ihe emotions";
our metaphors are aU that rem .. in of such old beliefs. Theob.;.ervations of MacCuno(h
(1912 :557, 5r.6) in the E ngclopatdw of Rt/igion 11m! Elhics emboc:ly this folk. thwry:
a v~w of the hun a> make. il the seat of rcliJiou. experience, emotion, enli!{htenmenl or
divine indwelling is oommon mou of the hIgher religion, ... , l!cre, of what is a
10 COO1"$(,
metaphoriul view of Ihe word is based on urlier ,'iews regarding the physical he"" itself.
or
In primitive thought the li.'CT waS probably reg,mled.., a primary seal life, but the
heart genenlly came to be looked upon in this wa)', a5 il5 ph)'siologic:al functio",s were beucr
underotood.
Such a view of our metaphors as the frozen residues of old beliefs seems 10 me
to be fundamentally contradicted by Lakoff and Johnson's work. If metaphors per·
vade our language. shaping our experience as well as drawing on it, pTOposing salient
(but not rMlIlplrysically !.alient) homologies between source domains and target do
mains. we must expect the metaphorical charactcrizawn of the world to be an
ongoing process in aU languages_ We (annot auume that other people's ways of
talking about hearts or liven or Sun rising Or faning Or SUC(C$.S and have
failu~
qualitatively different depths of meaning for them than our ways of talking have for
00.
The same problems and questions arise with wap of talk that are less dearly
metaphoric but equally Consider. for the way. in ""hieh En.
convention~L inst~nce,
ghsh speakers talk about "luck." The prototype sc:enario in which (and al,o
~luck'"
derives its central meanings is (I think) a gambling game that has Ih ..
"fortune~)
CONVENTIONAL METAPHORS AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS 209
appearance of randomness but in fact has outcomes for the participantt,
~loadedM
outcomes which are invisible hut apparent from winnings and losings. The meta·
phoric schemata that derive from this prototype scenario, I think, include:
I) Luck i. an i.risible ."t... .r u:e the "pblyen" ha"e moTe 1_ ofj thus
Of" ~50me
people have all the luck," Iud. ran out," "out of luck."
~my
2) Lw.ck, IIlI wt..tancc, o::omc. in two varictie., soocI hid, and bMIluckj thus ~I
had bad luck today, but good luck yesterday," etc.
3) Luck is. pcraon who is oontrollia( the game; thus "lady luck," "luck was with
me," looked my way," smiled on me," "the hand of fortune," etc.
~luck ~rortune
But what is the salience, for English speaken, of such conventional ways of talking?
First, I think we can safely infer that the meanings of for diffe.-ent English
~luck"
speakers vary oonsiderabl.y. Many of us assume that the outcome of the events we
liken to a game of chance are in fact random. We use oonventionallinguistic expres
sions about luck to characterize particular outcomes on particular occasions, talking
if
as the "games" of life had detenninate outcomes without "believing" that this .-eally
is 50. But many of us may al50 "believe" that the outcomes art determinate. When
an English speaker says, "Some people have all the luck," he or she may be making
an obsenation about people's unequal life chances, or may be (sardonically or ban
teringly) oommenting on a particular situation.
Conventional meta phon of luck as invisible substance are ritualized by many En_
glish speakers in "good luck charms," such as rabbits' feet. But those who have lucky
charm!. or athletes who have lucky putters or headbands, may (I think) ha\IC very
diverse notions (if any) about how these objects .-elate to and affect the outcome of
eventt.
Our talk of "luck" embodie5 conventional ways of charanerUing life experience
in terms of a nonrandom game, ways that are inoorporated into the stuff of everyday
linguistic usage. Out talk about "luck" has no determinate relationship to metaphysical
beliefs about the forces controlling th~ universe, JUSt as our lalk of "hearu" implies
no folk physiology of mind and emotion. How people speaking English actually
the world to "work" is by nor inferable from such con
imagin~ ncith~r d~t~rmined
ventional modes of talk. In conventional metaphor, the relationship the speaker
imagines actually to e",ist between sour« domain and domain (betWC1:n hot
targ~t
fluid and anger. heart and love, gambling game and life) is indeterminate, doubtlcu
variable from speak.er speaker, and demonstrable from ways of talk alone.
to nev~r
I n~ed to make cI~arer what I mean by ~metaphysicalH in this context. Let me
distinguish between two senses oflhe word, even though boundary between them
th~
is inevitably fuzzy. We make implicit a.!.Sumptioru about the nature of the world
perceived through sensory experience: (he solidity of "solid"' the "downness"
o~ecu,
of down and "upness" of up, the commonsense peru:ptions of space, cause,
tim~,
etc. These a.!.Sump!ions are, I think, systematic and modelling, or paradigmatic. I
have no doubt that they vary to some extent from culture to culture (as well as, to
some extent, among individuals in a particular society); and I have no doubt that
they are constituted in crucial ways by conventional metaphor, presented in the
syntactic, semantic, and idiomatic I shall call these assumptions
chann~lsoflanguag~.
metaphysical in an "unloaded" scnsc.
To Ihu SenSe of metaphysical, referring implicit assumptiom about what lies
to
behind or connects the of the world perceived by the senscs. I wish to
eI~ments
'" JOURNAL OF ASTHltOPOL(X;[CAL
Rt:~EARCH
contrast what I will call "loaded" sense of tht term. The metaphysical in this sense
it
constitutes (more or In.! explidtly articuiated) np!nnal;Q" of those aspecls of the
it
world whkh cannot be perceived by the )cnses: an expiallillOry theory of how the
world worb that ac(ounts for human experiences and the outcomes of evenu . A
metapbysi(aJ idea is of the lIOn that ethnographers h;tve chara(teriuicaily framed
with statements of the order: "The XS believe thai . , ." (see Needham 19;3 on the
problems of attributing "belief" to people).
We might illustrate the difference with reference 10 the sun "rising" and "setting"
(}r the eanh being Hat. We "sophisticated" moderns. however much astronomy we
kno. ...· , live our lives and talk our talk as if th .. sun did risc and sink. as if the world
were Hat; it is a metaphysic, in the "unloaded" sen"", thar is probahly inevitable fo"
creatures with our brains and bodies, living on th .. surfae. . of our plan .. t. But it would
be nonsense for an .. thnographer of England or the U.S. tu wrile lhal "th", natives
believe that the .. anh is Hat and that the sun goes up and comes down." or that ·'the
nativ .. s beli .. v. . that th .. heart is the seat of the emotions."'
Here, then, li .. s the anthropologist"s problem.
CONVENTIONAL METAPHOR AN[)THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RU.lG10N
Much anthropologi<:al writing on religion (mOlit of r.he earlier work, and a good
deal of contemporary analysis) implidtly or explicitly incorporates the assumption
made by MacCulloch (1912): that primilive peoples hold melaphysicaJ beliefs in Ihis
"loaded" sensc, helids of a kind Western peoples once used to hold but no longer
do. Hence when "primitive" peoples talk about their emotions in terms of hearts or
livers or bellies, or talk about soul·substance or mana, these ,,'ays of talking embody
metaphysics that our talk abum hroken heans and having all the luck no longer
imply. Such a view embodies ethnountric COntrASts between Our sophisticalion and
their primitivism, c.mtrASU lhat have been transcended in most domains of social
anthropology; they seem 10 live on, in disguised form, in some recent symbolist
e~'en
anthropology. "Tlldr" ways of talking about the world are imputed a metaph),.icAI
or cosmological.\alience that our ways of talking are not.
I do not doubt that tribal peoples who eXf>Ound theologies wherein trees ha\'e
indwelling spirits, "'ho say that ther encounter the shades of the dead in dreams.
who divine to find om whether i( is propi!io'" ro slage a raid, or who perform
gardening magk or $Orcery have of th", world sub$lantially, even qualilali"ely,
view~
differenT from those moSt AmeriCAns or EuropeAns now huld. But I do doubt th",
assumption Ihat ,uch metaphysical notions can be infctred from ways of talk alone.
or that our metaphors mainly represent the resiriues or old beliefs. We cannor e,'en
assume that coherent metaphpi<:al beliefs underlie mAgical or ritUAl prActices. e,'en
where Ihese \eeJllIO imply such beliefs: wilness rabbits'feet and lucky pullet..,. If \\e
see wnventional metaphor as a process of hUJll;lfI cognirion, manifest in
uni~'ersal
all languages (as Lakorr and John,;..,n', would imply). rhen dererminate and
view~
metaphysically $ali .. nt relationships have betw",en a tArget and
ma~' ne~'",r e~isled
source domAin. And far from metaphors representing the frolen residue of ancient
folk theories or folk theologies, exactly the cycle rna)" ofien In Ih",
re"er~e 'KnlT.
hi"ory of a langUAge. a relationship between all experientiall), more accessible '"
