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Overseer: Jim Pohlig

Introduction

Consider this passage:

He [the righteous man] will be like a tree planted by water courses; his leaves will not wither; whatever he does will succeed. (Psalm 1:3)

Suppose that you were a translator, and imagine that all the consultant advice you had about this image amounted to:

“Ancient Hebrew often compared people to trees or other vegetation. Try to preserve this simile in translation if you can.”

Also imagine that you found it difficult for the receptor language speakers to accept this image, because they did not habitually think of people as trees. How motivated would you be to preserve this simile? Would it help if you understood the simile’s full import?

Advantages of using a metaphor here:

1. The emotive impact of trees in arid lands
2. The association of trees with kings (and perhaps other successful people, too)
3. It is much easier to characterise a successful tree than it is to describe successful people, because a tree is evaluated as successful based on a range of criteria that are far, far more limited—-and therefore far more specifiable—-than by what a successful person might evaluated.
4. It is far easier to imagine, i.e., create a mental picture of, a successful tree than to imagine a successful person.

   This point is important because our brains are “wired” to think using mental pictures much more easily than to think abstractly. This is why, for example, stories can be so effective in making a speaker’s point.

5. A given mental picture naturally suggests others as well to the hearer. This series of pictures is somewhat like the ripples in a pond when a stone drops into it. This is also why we enjoy poetry, because it evokes an endless stream of images.

Purpose

Why investigate low-level analyses of metaphors and similes?

1. To come as close as possible with available scholarship to approximating the Israelites’ minds when they wrote and performed the Psalms;
2. To come as close as possible to understanding the mental operations that the Israelites used in producing and understanding their figures of speech;
3. Having done these things, to understand why, if a “literal” representation of a speech figure into a receptor language “works,” why it does so; if it breaks down, where in the mental process does it fail, and can it be helped along so as to succeed in the receptor language?
4. As such, these speech figures play vital roles in their discourses—but only if they do not overplay their rhetorical functions—overplayed by the interpreter investing too many meaning features in them.
5. To assess the level of prominence that a given figure of speech holds in the text. Consider The price of gas is going up. Here going up is not unusually prominent as an expression; it is even seen as literal by the normal native speaker of English. As such, it should not be given more prominence in translation than it deserves—of course, not less prominence, either—bearing in mind that there are various sorts of prominence: thematic prominence, information-structure-based prominence, constrastive prominence, and, of course, imagistic prominence of various strengths.
6. To discover how native speakers organize many of their perceptions of and reasoning about God, themselves, and the rest of reality. This is the cognitive understanding of the first and foremost of the reasons that metaphor is used in natural language. (This view stands in contrast with the dominant traditional view, that metaphors and similes provided ornamental language that the translator could reduce to propositions at need. In this traditional view, if You have girded me with rejoicing (Psalm 30:12) proved difficult to represent figuratively in translation, one would be free to simply write, You have made me rejoice.

Conceptual Metaphors and their instantiations

In meaning-based translation, the dominant translation platform that has served the contemporary Bible Translation movement very well, figures of speech such as metaphors and similes are generally considered to be inherently very prominent. However, this view comes with problems:

1. Meaning-based Translation theory developed before cognitive linguistic theory became highly developed, so it could not benefit from it.
2. Cognitive researchers have since then generally recognised the existence of metaphorical thinking that underlies our use of language, whether or not the native speakers are aware of the deeply conceptual figurative patterns in which they conduct much of their reasoning and language use.

Example 1 (English)

Highway 16 goes to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Native English speakers would usually regard this as a completely literal, non-metaphorical statement. However, they would also agree, if prompted, that the road does not actually go anywhere, for it is a piece of asphalted real estate. Only people and vehicles go to Charlotte on the road. Having noted many, many utterances similar to Example 1, the cognitivist therefore posits that English speakers often think of roads—and paths in general—as being in motion. This association, unrealistic in itself and usually unacknowledged by the native speakers, is nevertheless very useful to them, for on its basis we can generate many expressions, e.g.,

a. Highway 16 meanders to Charlotte, North Carolina.

b. Highway 16 gallops to Charlotte, North Carolina.

c. Highway 16 creeps along to Charlotte, North Carolina.

d. Highway 16 takes you to Charlotte, North Carolina.

These expressions do not mean quite the same thing, but they are all based on the same underlying conceptualization that the highway itself is in motion. As such, they are considered to be Instantiations of a Conceptual Metaphor that is expressed in the cognitive literature as

PATH IS MOTION

or

PATH = MOTION

The paradox here is that, although highways do not actually move, when this conceptualization serves as the basis for the expressions above, truthor falsehood--can be expressed: I happen to know that Highway 16 is quite straight, so I can affirm that a is false. However, in the very early morning or in the late evening, b is true of this highway, and at rush hour, c becomes true.

The intuition that Highway 16 is in motion is laid out in the conceptual blending diagram above.

Example 2 (Mbe, a Bantoid language of Nigeria)

Binyam âa ályɛ akóbŏ ányí? How much money does this meat eat? = ‘How much does this meat cost?’

This expression is based on the observation, widespread in West Africa, that eating destroys what is consumed. In cognitive formulation:

DESTRUCTION IS EATING

or

DESTRUCTION = EATING

In this expression, a further mental operation is necessary: the realization that, although the money is not actually destroyed but rather simply changes hands, its loss to the purchaser functions as if the money were destroyed.

Example 3 (Biblical Hebrew)

a. הָפַ֣כְתָּ מִסְפְּדִי֮ לְמָח֪וֹל לִ֥י You have changed my wailing into dancing

b. ִפִּתַּ֥חְתָּ שַׂקִּ֑י you have untied my sackcloth,

c. ַֽוַֽתְּאַזְּרֵ֥נִי שִׂמְחָֽה You have girded me with rejoicing

(Psalm 30:12)

For convenience, we will treat lines b and c as one complex figurative expression, while line a is an introductory summary statement. We will posit that the chain of mental operations that authorize lines b and c is as follows:

1. YHWH has acted in a way that causes the psalmist to rejoice (starting the chain with knowledge from this psalm’s storyline up to this point).
2. YHWH is pictured as a person, having human-like hands.
3. Sackcloth was worn as a symbol of grief, of mourning (activated background knowledge).
4. YHWH is pictured as untying the psalmist’s sackcloth, implying in its removal.
5. The sackcloth’s removal implies the end of the psalmist’s grief (background knowledge).
6. The psalmist’s new joy must be publicly expressed in an honor-shame culture such as ancient Israel (background knowledge).
7. If one rejoices in an honour-shame culture such as ancient Israel, he must dance so everyone can see that he is joyful (in metonymical terms, rejoicing is dancing) (background knowledge).
8. If one dances, he must tuck up (“gird up”) his long robe to facilitate his movements (background knowledge).
9. Although it is the psalmist who actually “girds” himself for dancing, because of the metonymy that began with YHWH’s wonderful actions, it is as if YHWH himself has tucked up the psalmist’s robes.
10. The figurative truth that YHWH has tucked up the psalmist’s robes leads to the metonymical truth that YHWH has set the psalmist dancing.
11. Therefore, the action of girding up the psalmist’s robes is equated to the action of rejoicing.
12. Therefore, the girded-up robes are spoken of as the state of rejoicing.

Although this chain of mental operations could be seen as an entirely novel chain of reasoning, it is far better regarded as a habitual pattern of figurative mental operations that we find repeated with almost countless variations in Biblical Hebrew. The heart of this particular chain is the ancient Hebrew speaker’s custom of equating personal conditions and habitual behavior to the wearing of certain sorts of clothes. We may formulate this Conceptual Metaphor as

STATE, CONDITION, HABITUAL ACTION IS CLOTHING

or

STATE, CONDITION, HABITUAL ACTION = CLOTHING

In the Book of Psalms alone, we have inventoried the following list of instantiations of this one Conceptual Metaphor: Psalms 5:13; 8:6; 18:33; 30:12; 35:26; 65:7; 65:12a; 65:13b, 14a; 73:6; 93:1a, 1b; 103:4; 104:1; 109:18; 132:9; 132:16; 132:18.

Image Metaphors

These are “one-off” metaphors, unique, not participating with other metaphorical expressions in any Conceptual Metaphor.

English examples

The following are from P.G. Wodehouse, a master of image metaphor:

The angry swan uncoiled another eight feet of neck.

Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.

A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle.

Biblical examples

1. ְ וְזָרְחָ֨ה לָכֶ֜ם יִרְאֵ֤י שְׁמִי֙ שֶׁ֣מֶשׁ צְדָקָ֔ה וּמַרְפֵּ֖א בִּכְנָפֶ֑יהָ But for you who respect my name, the sun of vindication will rise with healing wings,
2. ִֽוִֽיצָאתֶ֥ם וּפִשְׁתֶּ֖ם כְּעֶגְלֵ֥י מַרְבֵּֽק and you will skip about like calves released from the stall (Malachi 3:20 NET)
3. ֣עַ֣ל מֶ֥ה תֻכּ֛וּ ע֖וֹד תּוֹסִ֣יפוּ סָרָ֑ה כָּל־רֹ֣אשׁ לָחֳלִ֔י וְכָל־לֵבָ֖ב דַּוָּֽי Why will you still be smitten, that you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. (Isaiah 1:5)
4. לְפָנִים הָאָ֣רֶץ יָסַ֑דְתָּ וּֽמַעֲשֵׂ֖ה יָדֶ֣יךָ שָׁמָֽיִם The heavens will perish, but you will last. All of them will wear out like a garment; like clothes you will change them, and they will be discarded. (Psalm 102:26)

Embedded image metaphors

Sometimes we find image metaphors embedded in much larger metaphorical complexes, as in:

1. ְ֝ וְ֝גִ֗יל גְּבָע֥וֹת תַּחְגֹּֽרְנָה and the hills tie joy around their waists (Psalm 65:13b) Lush grass is a delight for both sheep and shepherds. From a distance, green hills may look clothed in green.
2. לָבְשׁ֬וּ כָרִ֨ים ׀ הַצֹּ֗אן the pastures clothe themselves with flocks (Psalm 65:13b) From a great distance, pastures may easily seem to wear a white garment, which on closer inspection proves to be dense flocks of sheep.
3. ַוַעֲמָקִ֥ים יַֽעַטְפוּ־בָ֑ר and the valleys put on grain (Psalm 65:14) The standing grain is imaged as the valley fields’ clothing.

All of these metaphors feature personification as well—of the hills, of the pastures, and of the valleyes. All are said to be clothed.

Sometimes a symbol or archetype serves as the basis of an image metaphor:

1. ְ֝ וְ֝עָלָ֗יו יָצִ֥יץ נִזְרֽוֹ On him [the king] shall his crown shine (i.e., the king’s reign will prosper) (Psalm 132:18b) Here the royal crown symbolises the king and his reign.