Your Metaphors Are Unique

Struggling to come up with an original metaphor? Just listen to yourself – or perhaps find an X-Ray Listener to talk to

At a quick listen, you’ll often hear similar metaphors from lots of different people, especially if they share a language and culture. An easy-to-read guide to these can be found in Prof Gerald Zaltman’s book Marketing Metaphoria.

But while people’s metaphors may appear similar at first… once you learn to elicit the details… everything changes!

As Wendy Sullivan and I said in our book Clean Language: “That’s because the metaphors we use in our language and our thought are far from being random. They are grounded in our embodied experience — the reality of being a person living in a body, on a planet with gravity.

“In Philosophy In The Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson point out that the youngest baby will quickly learn that warmth means affection, love and intimacy; that important things (like parents) are big. The toddler learns to put things into containers and take them out again, and to walk towards the things he wants. All these human experiences generate a set of metaphors we can all relate to.

“For example:

• Affection is Warmth: “They greeted me warmly.”

• Important is Big: “Tomorrow is a big day.”

• More is Up: “Prices are high.”

• Change is Motion: “My car has gone from bad to worse lately.”

• Categories are Containers: “Are tomatoes in the fruit or vegetable section?”

• Purposes are Desired Objects: “I saw an opportunity for success and grabbed it.”

“While we may share apparently similar underlying metaphors, the details are invariably different for each individual.

“While every baby may begin life by learning a few common metaphors, every baby also has unique experiences. We learn about each new thing in our world and we think about it in terms of what we already know. By the time we are young children, each of us has a unique, complex network of personal metaphors reflecting our life’s learning so far. By the time we are adults, a few of our personal metaphors may break through to consciousness, but the majority of the network is unconscious. Imagine the level of complexity that develops! Much as it is easy to believe that another person’s metaphor is ‘the same’ as yours, once you examine the detail, it won’t be.”

This is the piece of the “metaphoric thought” jigsaw where Clean Language can really help. David Grove’s powerful questioning system allows you to get into the nitty-gritty of a person’s metaphor and discover all those unique, personal details.

So if you want to help someone (including yourself) to come up with an ‘original’ metaphor, Clean Language is an excellent place to turn.

• Many thanks to Matt Rock at the University of Arizona for a question which prompted this week’s blog posts.