HSH1000 Chap.4 Metaphor: Source Domains and Target Domains
Metaphor: Source Domains and Target Domains
The outcome is narrower than appreciating imagery
The Meeting 2 outcomes ask you to take a metaphorical expression apart into the domain it borrows from and the domain it describes, to say why that matters, and to identify the two domains in an expression you are given.
The reason it matters is that a metaphor imports a structure, and the imported structure carries consequences the speaker may never have meant to assert. Mapping is how you make those consequences visible.
Two failures, and the procedure that prevents both
The first failure stops at recognition.
An answer that says this compares an argument to a building has identified the figure and said nothing about what follows. The second failure reads the source domain exhaustively: buildings have owners, permits and a fixed location, and arguments have none of those. A metaphor is a partial mapping, and the features it refuses to carry are as informative as the ones it carries.
The procedure is four steps.
Name the target, which is what is really being discussed. Name the source, which supplies the vocabulary. List two or three features that cross, stating the inference each licenses. Then find one feature that conspicuously does not cross, and say what the metaphor is therefore hiding.
That last step converts description into criticism, and it is where the insight sits.
Dead metaphors work harder because nobody hears them
A live metaphor announces itself and invites the mapping. A dead one has been absorbed into ordinary vocabulary and is no longer heard as a figure, which makes its entailments harder to notice and therefore more powerful.
When a discussion talks about the foundations of a belief, the building mapping is running underneath even though nobody is thinking about masonry, bringing with it the suggestion that beliefs rest on a few basic ones and collapse without them. That is a substantive position, not a neutral way of speaking.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Source domain and target domain as an analytical pair
- 02
Entailments that cross, and inferences they license
- 03
The blocked feature and what it reveals
- 04
Partial mapping rather than exhaustive comparison
- 05
Live and dead metaphors, and why dead ones matter more
- 06
Reviving a dead figure to see what it commits you to
Mapping one sentence completely
- 1Name the target and the source.
- 2List three features that cross and what each licenses.
- 1Name one conspicuous block and the claim it hides.
Key terms
- Source Domain
- The familiar area a metaphor borrows its vocabulary and structure from.
- Target Domain
- The subject actually under discussion, which the borrowed structure is being used to describe.
- Entailment
- A feature of the source that travels across the mapping and licenses an inference about the target.
- Blocked Feature
- A prominent feature of the source that the mapping refuses to carry, which usually marks what the metaphor is hiding.
- Dead Metaphor
- A figure absorbed into ordinary vocabulary and no longer heard as one, whose entailments continue to operate unexamined.
Metaphor: Source Domains and Target Domains FAQ
How do I identify the source domain quickly?
Ask which words would be literally true of something else. In a weak argument, weakness is literally true of bodies, so the body is the source and the argument is the target. The test works because a metaphor always borrows vocabulary that belongs somewhere else.
Does every metaphor hide something?
Every mapping is partial, so every metaphor leaves features behind. Whether that matters depends on what is left behind. The useful question is not whether something is blocked but whether the blocked feature is one the argument needs, which is why you should name it rather than note that mappings are partial.
Why do dead metaphors matter if nobody notices them?
Because their entailments keep operating. Talking about the foundations of a belief carries a whole picture of how beliefs are supported, and a reader who never notices the figure will never examine the picture. Reviving it is how you decide whether you accept what it assumes.
Is this the same as identifying a simile or a symbol?
No. Spotting a figure is the step the outcome treats as insufficient on its own. The work is in the mapping: which features cross, what each licenses about the target, and which conspicuous feature does not cross. A label without a mapping answers a different question.
Exam move
Practise on sentences rather than on poems. Take one line from anywhere, name the two domains, write three crossings and one block, and say what the block hides. Four of these take ten minutes and build the recognition speed the exam tests. Keep a short list of the dead metaphors you find yourself using in your own writing about the set texts, because those are the ones quietly shaping your argument.
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