The Elbow Bone is connected to the Brain Bone
We are what we perceive, I guess you could say...
I'm reading about framing these days. You could call frames the way our mind connects details to understand things within different contexts. In a way, frames create the contexts through the formation of connections and through the focus on specific details within any given situation. Like when you're in a restaurant and you know that the server will come to take your drink order and then return later to take your food order and that you will get a check before you leave. And the very fact that we all know that these items are all restaurantish and that say the person sneezing in the booth behind you is not. Framing helps us know that all of these things will happen or should happen when you're in a certain kind of restaurant and that other things are not as important to shaping the scene. In short, frames connect our current experiences to our previous experiences with expectation structures. They are part of a system of thought that blends concepts into networks of ideas. Essentially, this blending process is how we think about the world and how we interact with it. Here, I'm summarizing the work of two cognitive theorists: Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner.
Yet, there's another conceptual process that I'm trying to reconcile with these discussions of framing and conceptual blending: conceptual metaphors. I've been stuck on this problem for years. I thought I had it solved, but I'm revisiting it after doing some reading this summer. On one level, you might say that conceptual metaphors are conceptual blends because they are created using the same system of networking concepts together to create meaning that Fauconnier and Turner discuss. But on another level, they are the foundations of framing. Here is where I'm confused: What is the most fundamental level of cognition. What serves as the "foundation" of thought? And how are elements compiled on these foundations? Is there a fundamental level or should I be thinking about the relationship between these different cognitive theories in a different way?
Mark Johnson has written a book that discusses the concept of "image schemata," which are very simple understandings of the world based in bodily experiences. In some ways, image schemata are like frames; they're almost like a subset of the concept category "frame." As in, image schemata are a type of frame, along with things like scripts (what to say within a given context).
What has me confused is that these ideas are all so interconnected that it's very difficult to parse out which is which. For instance, image schemata are a type of framing device and they are analogical, which suggests that they overlap in some ways with the theory of conceptual metaphors. Yet frames do not always seem to be analogical, at least according to what I've been reading lately, and conceptual metaphors seem to be more detailed than image schemata. So I'm still left with a big mess.
I'm sitting here thinking that conceptual metaphors have to form the foundations for frames because our expectations for what should occur in a given context grows out of our metaphoric perspective of the context. Example: Restaurant again. You walk into Sycamore Cafe, the place where I had breakfast this morning. There are booths and tables, a cash register just inside the door. A hostess and waitresses. Assuming you've never been in this specific restaurant before, you draw on all of these contextual cues to shape your behavior, your actions, and your words. And now I'm rethinking the foundational quality of conceptual metaphors because I can't get it all to fit. How does a booth signify in this context? But more importantly, how does a booth signifiy analogically in this context?
Is it enough to suggest that conceptual metaphors are primarily linguistic and that framing is an overlapping conceptual system that encompasses experience as well as linguistic interaction? But the two are so interrelated that one doesn't presuppose the other. That is, conceptual metaphors inform frames and frames inform conceptual metaphors. Perhaps that's it. If this is the case, the two could perform the same mental operations at times (I'm still hung up on the idea that the mind is basically analogical, which I think comes from Johnson) but maybe we might say that image schemata are foundational and radiate out to form frames and conceptual metaphors.
I feel like I need to reread everything I've read in the past decade to get out of this quagmire. Unfortunately, that's not really an option. Maybe I'll spot check Johnson to get a sense of what's going on in that argument and then come back to this relationship between frames and conceptual metaphors.
I'm reading about framing these days. You could call frames the way our mind connects details to understand things within different contexts. In a way, frames create the contexts through the formation of connections and through the focus on specific details within any given situation. Like when you're in a restaurant and you know that the server will come to take your drink order and then return later to take your food order and that you will get a check before you leave. And the very fact that we all know that these items are all restaurantish and that say the person sneezing in the booth behind you is not. Framing helps us know that all of these things will happen or should happen when you're in a certain kind of restaurant and that other things are not as important to shaping the scene. In short, frames connect our current experiences to our previous experiences with expectation structures. They are part of a system of thought that blends concepts into networks of ideas. Essentially, this blending process is how we think about the world and how we interact with it. Here, I'm summarizing the work of two cognitive theorists: Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner.
Yet, there's another conceptual process that I'm trying to reconcile with these discussions of framing and conceptual blending: conceptual metaphors. I've been stuck on this problem for years. I thought I had it solved, but I'm revisiting it after doing some reading this summer. On one level, you might say that conceptual metaphors are conceptual blends because they are created using the same system of networking concepts together to create meaning that Fauconnier and Turner discuss. But on another level, they are the foundations of framing. Here is where I'm confused: What is the most fundamental level of cognition. What serves as the "foundation" of thought? And how are elements compiled on these foundations? Is there a fundamental level or should I be thinking about the relationship between these different cognitive theories in a different way?
Mark Johnson has written a book that discusses the concept of "image schemata," which are very simple understandings of the world based in bodily experiences. In some ways, image schemata are like frames; they're almost like a subset of the concept category "frame." As in, image schemata are a type of frame, along with things like scripts (what to say within a given context).
What has me confused is that these ideas are all so interconnected that it's very difficult to parse out which is which. For instance, image schemata are a type of framing device and they are analogical, which suggests that they overlap in some ways with the theory of conceptual metaphors. Yet frames do not always seem to be analogical, at least according to what I've been reading lately, and conceptual metaphors seem to be more detailed than image schemata. So I'm still left with a big mess.
I'm sitting here thinking that conceptual metaphors have to form the foundations for frames because our expectations for what should occur in a given context grows out of our metaphoric perspective of the context. Example: Restaurant again. You walk into Sycamore Cafe, the place where I had breakfast this morning. There are booths and tables, a cash register just inside the door. A hostess and waitresses. Assuming you've never been in this specific restaurant before, you draw on all of these contextual cues to shape your behavior, your actions, and your words. And now I'm rethinking the foundational quality of conceptual metaphors because I can't get it all to fit. How does a booth signify in this context? But more importantly, how does a booth signifiy analogically in this context?
Is it enough to suggest that conceptual metaphors are primarily linguistic and that framing is an overlapping conceptual system that encompasses experience as well as linguistic interaction? But the two are so interrelated that one doesn't presuppose the other. That is, conceptual metaphors inform frames and frames inform conceptual metaphors. Perhaps that's it. If this is the case, the two could perform the same mental operations at times (I'm still hung up on the idea that the mind is basically analogical, which I think comes from Johnson) but maybe we might say that image schemata are foundational and radiate out to form frames and conceptual metaphors.
I feel like I need to reread everything I've read in the past decade to get out of this quagmire. Unfortunately, that's not really an option. Maybe I'll spot check Johnson to get a sense of what's going on in that argument and then come back to this relationship between frames and conceptual metaphors.
posted by Brad Smith at 1:33 PM
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