Heart Metaphors in Thai LanguageRaAM7Thammasat UniversityMay 2008

Chatchawadee Saralamba

Themes of TalkThai Heart vs. English HeartIdentifying Metaphorical meanings of Thai Heart /jai/.Concepts of HEART.Conclusions.

1. Thai Heart vs. English

Thai HEART = /jai/ = heart + mind

English = 1. heart 2. mind

The Metaphorical meanings of /jai/Feelings: positive, neutral, negative.Nature / Personality: positive, neutral, negative .

Feelings: Positive views/waysanalysis of discourse action, discourse topics and themesaggregation into semantically-connected groupssystematic metaphors

Starting Points:at the beginningas a republican I felt obliged as a republicanto sit down and talk about thatand against the backdrop of the political reasonsgiven a platformfor a republican messagethat had been censored for decadessowhen offered an opportunityto sit downand talk about what motivated youthen you shouldavail of thatso thats the way I walked into itPat

Identifying linguistic metaphorThe central identifying feature of a linguistic metaphor is the use of a lexical item (the Vehicle term) that has another meaning which is potentially incongruous with its meaning in context. The other meaning of the Vehicle can be used to make sense of its use in the discourse context.

The Vehicle term can be a single word raising or a phrase bring together.

Starting Points:but as I saidwhen you meet somebodywhos so open to understanding your perspectivethen youre obliged to somehow reciprocate

Starting Points:in er,the first few days after the bombjust thinkingif only I could bring something positive out of thisand feeling very stronglythat my father was killedbecause he was part of a conflictand it was a conflict which I was suddenly emotionally involved inJo

Starting Pointsand I realisedI wanted to hear Pats storybecause I believe thatif anyone opens up and shares their storyehmits very hard to hateand my idea of Patwas of someonewithout much humanityand I wanted to meet himand hear his storyand discover his humanitylater on also came the idea that I wanted himto hear my story

Systematic MetaphorsSystematic metaphors are connected sets of linguistic metaphors used around a single Topic across a discourse event.... there's been a long long .. 16 years of [getting to this point].the first conciliation meeting is a stage on a journey.. the end of that journey,would be,.. sitting down and,... talking to the people who did it.

More examplessomething I have to go through.

... and how you ... come to terms with that,it's such a painful thing to carry.

it pains me to say that to you.coming to terms with responsibility is a journeycoming to terms with responsibility is physical injury

Grouping linguistic metaphors into systematic setslist Vehicles move them around into connected groupingsconstruct a label for each groupingsort each group by connected Topicsthese are systematic metaphors not conceptual metaphors

Metaphor Vehicles and TopicsLinguistic metaphors were grouped by Vehicle domains:Inside these Vehicle groupings, metaphors were connected by shared Topics.

Major systematic metaphors used to frame reconciliationRECONCILIATION IS A JOURNEYbring something positive out of this

UNDERSTANDING THE OTHER REQUIRES CONNECTIONI was crying in a desert

RECONCILIATION INVOLVES CHANGING A DISTORTED IMAGE OF THE OTHERits never the whole picture

RECONCILIATION HAPPENS THROUGH LISTENING TO THE OTHERS STORYI wanted to hear his story

Understanding the Other requires connection

building bridgesbreaking down barriersbeing open

building bridgesPat... (1.0) in the er --the journey,...(1.0) coming ... to a bridge,/... you [know].Jo[hmh]Pat... with two ends,

Patall those bridges are there to be built

connection and separation

Jo.. and it felt like my heart was broken,... through the conflict....(1.0) and, ... the suffering was .. my suffering.I couldn't separate it.I couldn't be detached anymore.PathmhJo.. and that --...(1.0) that um,.. that pain,that loss, ... was shared by, .. by everyone.

The removal of barriers allows connectionJo victims of all sides have been meeting, .. and --er,... (1.0) that is just about, ... er,.. br- breaking down barriers,sharing stories, and --PathmhJo... and through .. experiencing each other's stories,PathmhJo... there's a real feeling of,... closeness and humanity of everyone,

Reconciliation happens through listening to the Others storyPatbut you are also,and I find you very open.... to my story.where I --.. er,... I feel there is more to me than just a perpetrator....(1.0) and er,...(1.0) I suppose,...(1.0) what we're doing here.... is,.. exchanging our stories.

The figurative range of storyPatsix killed --people killed in one night.... and there are so many other stories like that.

Pat be open to the other persons story

Jo you offer me the story pain of your war

The flexibility of storyJo.. as a daughter of a conservative MP,I .. can sort of take responsibility for the --...(1.0) what the government .. didn't do.and,.. the not listening, not hearing [their story].

Local patterns of metaphor useChallenge the others metaphor.a bridge with two endsAppropriate the others metaphor Vehicle for own topic.my healingAdapt the others metaphor. the struggle a struggleUse contrast metaphor to explore alternatives.if my heart was closed

Metaphor Analysis - Procedure

Finding metaphorsIdentification of linguistic metaphors

Discourse structureHow parts of text or talk contribute to the whole

Metaphor clusters and absences analyse distribution of metaphors across talk or text

Discourse topics or themes

Local discourse actionanalyse talk or text

Metaphor scenariosinfer narratives around metaphors

Building metaphor groupsaggregation into semantically-connected groupssystematic metaphors

Answer research questions

Pose research questions

How does metaphor contribute to the process of reconciliation?It offers ways to explore alternatives to violence and revenge.It allows victim and perpetrator to explain their feelings to the Other, and to feel empathy for the Other.It allows speakers to control and adjust the affective climate of the talk.Small acts of reconciliation e.g. allowing appropriation of metaphor, contribute to the large process.

References

Cameron, L. (2007). Patterns of metaphor use in reconciliation talk. Discourse and Society. 18(2), 197-222.

Metaphor analysis website:http://creet.open.ac.uk/projects/metaphor-analysis/index.cfm

The participants arrived at their first meeting, not only from their different histories, but with different motivations for agreeing to participate.

Here is Pats starting point (from radio interview).The underlined words in extracts are the Vehicle terms of linguistic metaphors. His starting point metaphors use Vehicle terms message / backdrop / platform from a domain of theatre or public speaking.This initial goal changed somewhat in response to meeting Jo. Being open is a different Vehicle domain, much more 2-way or dialogic than the monologic platform / theatre domain.

Jo describes a different starting point [from radio interview]. An immediate reaction to the death of her father was to want to bring something positive out of the event. She is already thinking in terms of a journey with a purpose.

As the talk progresses, her motivation also shifts slightly.As with Pat, the conciliation becomes more of a mutual or shared experience, metaphorised as hearing each others stories.(from radio interview)Systematic metaphors apply terms from a particular Vehicle domain to the same Topic. Having grouped the metaphors by Vehicle domain, as shown earlier, we then grouped them further by the metaphor Topic. For example, from the JOURNEY domain, there was a group of metaphors used to talk about the first meeting between Jo and Pat.

Small capitals are used in descriptions of systematic metaphors.Some more examplesGrouping of the Vehicles of the linguistic metaphors into connected domains produced the categories seen here. Most could be fitted into one of the domains, with a small other category. (Prepositions are fairly controversial as metaphors - we identified those we considered to be used metaphorically but have not yet further analysed them.)

When Jo Berry and Pat Magee talk about the processes of understanding each other through their meetings, they use the metaphor domain of connection, which includes three, more specific, systematic metaphors. Two are ways of making connections: building bridges, breaking down barriers. The third is a pre-condition to connection: being open. The Vehicle open was used 45 times across the discourse events, mainly as an adjective I find you very open (Pat to Jo) and with a positive evaluation, being open is a good way to be. People are described as being open without any complement term in the second conversation but in the later conversation they are also open to each other; you; me; the other persons story; to the others humanity. In the radio interview, Pat again emphasizes how Jo was very, very open and how Jos openness required him to be open and frank too.

The building bridges metaphor entered the talk as a theme of a poem that Jo Berry had written before meeting Pat Magee and that she read aloud to him in both conversations. The poem conceptualizes reconciliation as building bridges and asserts the possibility of this process. As a metaphor, it emphasizes the gap between self and Other as what is in need of bridging; understanding is metaphorized as the bridge, and the reconciliation process is the act of building the bridge. In the talk outside of the poem, the metaphor is used 21 times. It is not much extended, remaining close to the form in which it was first used: build is only used once without being accompanied by bridges; bridge occurs in singular and plural form but other aspects of bridges are not found in the talk. Indeed, in our interview, Jo Berry, although able to recall clearly when the metaphor came into her mind, was unable to elaborate the metaphor in terms of what type of bridge this might be, suggesting that this was not primarily an image metaphor, but rather conceptual and linguistic. The metaphor starts as the property of Jo Berry in her poem, but is gradually used also by Pat Magee four times in the first conversation and seven times in the second. Only Jo uses it in the interview. In one of his first uses in a response to the poem (Extract 15), Pat elaborates the Vehicle term bridge to emphasize their different starting points:The metaphor starts as the property of Jo Berry in her poem, but is gradually used also by Pat Magee four times in the first conversation and seven times in the second. Only Jo uses it in the interview. In one of his first uses in a response to the poem Pat elaborates the Vehicle term bridge to emphasize their different starting points: The Vehicle elaboration in line 685 of two ends is a move that enables Pat to distance himself slightly from Jo while at the same time maintaining alignment through repeating her bridge metaphor.

By the time of the second recorded conversation, Pat has adopted Jos metaphor, extending it to talk about wider conciliation processes between other people caught up in violence:2: 573all those bridges are there to be builtAt a micro-level, metaphors from the domain of connection are frequently found in contrasting pairs alongside metaphors of separation, often lexicalized as loss or parts of the verb lose (31 uses in total) As the metaphor used to speak of the killing of Jos father, loss is the starting point for the talk and for the reconciliation process, for both speakers:1: 174Pat(2.0) you whove lost your fatherFor Jo, a consequence of the loss of her father is, paradoxically perhaps, a connection to others who had suffered in similar ways and to the Irish conflict:

The metaphor of breaking down barriers, with 13 uses across the talk, can be seen as more violent alternative to building bridges, enabling connection through removal of a barrier rather than through making contact across a gap. There is a strong literalizing echo in the metaphor of the physical barriers constructed during the conflict on the streets of Irish cities, both the barriers of burning cars and of army road blocks.

shows the interplay of metaphorsThe listening to the Others story metaphor appeared in the first recorded conversation (21 uses) but became more important throughout the second conversation (67 uses). In the radio interview (13 uses, e.g Extract 2), it is Jos preferred way of describing what she and Pat have done and what they hope to do for other people. The power of the metaphor listening to the Others story comes not particularly from flexibility and productivity, which characterised the journey metaphor, but from its varied lexicalizations, its collocations, and its re-deployment from the Topic of reconciliation processes to the Topic of accounting for political violence. Since to have a story is to be human, in a reconciliation context merely allowing that the Other has a story is in itself an act of re-humanization (Extract 19). Being prepared to listen to that story is a gesture of empathy. Listening to the Others story serves the curiosity and finding commonality that build sympathy, and may assist the listener to move beyond sympathy towards empathy, by imagining themselves in the Others position.

However, allowing the other to tell their story remains distinct from giving validity to that story as truth, and it is likely that participants in post-conflict conciliation need to retain this distinction victims in particular may need to be able to listen and hear, and thereby understand better, without completely accepting the Others justification for violence. The story metaphor created richness and potential by working across the metaphorical and the literal, being used with a range of degrees of metaphoricity. The word stories is used literally by Pat to describe things that happened in Ireland:

This use of story here is metonymic because it means more than just the tale of what happened; it also includes explanation of cause and effect, and justification. By choosing the word story, rather than a more neutral alternative such as account or explanation, speakers can be said to be doing something figurative. Interpreting story in its strictest sense as a plot-driven narrative, with an entailment of fictionality, would lead to classifying its use as metaphor rather than metonymy.While positive aspects of the story metaphor are used to frame the reconciliation process, negative contrasts are drawn on to explain the roots of violence. A significant moment occurs in Extract 21 where Jo uses the story metaphor, in negative forms the not listeningnot hearing their story, as she accepts some responsibility for the Irish situation: