Conduit metaphor

In linguistics, the conduit metaphor is a dominant class of figurative expressions used when discussing communication itself (metalanguage). It operates whenever people speak or write as if they "insert" their mental contents (feelings, meanings, thoughts, concepts, etc.) into "containers" (words, phrases, sentences, etc.) whose contents are then "extracted" by listeners and readers. Thus, language is viewed as a "conduit" conveying mental content between people.

Defined and described by linguist Michael J. Reddy, PhD, his discovery of this conceptual metaphor refocused debate within and outside the linguistic community on the importance of metaphorical language.

Fellow linguist George Lakoff stated that

"The contemporary theory that metaphor is primarily conceptual, conventional, and part of the ordinary system of thought and language can be traced to Michael Reddy’s now classic essay... With a single, thoroughly analyzed example, he allowed us to see, albeit in a restricted domain, that ordinary everyday English is largely metaphorical, dispelling once and for all the traditional view that metaphor is primarily in the realm of poetic or 'figurative' language. Reddy showed, for a single, very significant case, that the locus of metaphor is thought, not language, that metaphor is a major and indispensable part of our ordinary, conventional way of conceptualizing the world, and that our everyday behavior reflects our metaphorical understanding of experience. Though other theorists had noticed some of these characteristics of metaphor, Reddy was the first to demonstrate them by rigorous linguistic analysis, stating generalizations over voluminous examples."

The genesis of Reddy's paper drew inspiration from work done by others in several disciplines, as well as linguistics. Research on information theory had led Norbert Wiener to publish the seminal book on cybernetics, in which he had stated, "Society can only be understood through a study of the messages and communications facilities which belong to it." Social-systems theorist Donald Schön had examined the impacts of metaphorical speech on public-policy problems, putting forth the idea that people's conflicting frames of reference were often to blame for communication breakdown. Schön's frame-restructuring solution was similar in some ways to Thomas Kuhn's groundbreaking views on the shifting of scientific paradigms through what he called the "translation" process.

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