“Fiscal Cliff” or “Slope”? What’s in a Metaphor Anyway?

When I was a graduate student, one book I frequently heard being mentioned by my professors and peers alike in a variety of contexts was Metaphors We Live By. Written by George Lakeoff and Mark Johnson in the late 1970s, this work of practical philosophy examines the way that metaphors shape collective thought and action. In particular, Lakeoff and Johnson have much to say about how war serves as a metaphor in debate and gender politics, as in “the battle of the argument” and “the war between the sexes.”

As a lover of poetry, I’ve long understood that metaphor and simile are not ornaments, frivolous scrolls of language to make our manuscripts pretty. Rather, a metaphor is thought itself. So Lakeoff and Johnson’s discussion of argument as war, which includes the idea of “blowing an opponent’s argument out of the water,” might explain why many people view argument as fighting and generally hate election seasons.

I also found it clarifying that a culture that perpetually refers to relationships between men and women as “war,” a peculiarly masculine view, I might add, is not going to view friendship between men and women as possible. And they won’t be optimistic about marriage as being anything other than détente.  

Two Ways of Metaphor

I teach, write, and do research in two subdivisions of English, in Creative Writing and Composition Studies. These two fields encourage us to think about metaphor in different ways. In Creative Writing, metaphor is classified as either clichéd or new. Clichéd metaphor might include “love is a rose” and we are “blank slates” at birth, which I believed until my wife and I had our first child. But unless it is expressed in a character’s speech and therefore seen as revealing something about that character, a cliched metaphor should be pulled from fiction or poetry like so many dandelions. Because it is so commonplace that we no longer think when we use it, clichéd metaphor is dead weight. In contrast, new metaphors (I hope my references above to dandelions and dead weight will count) are valued for their power to make us see experience in new ways.

But as a Composition teacher, I also view metaphor as a rhetorician would—the way Lakeoff and Johnson see it in their book—as doors into the way a culture will frame issues. Commonplaces, clichés, for all their dullness in creative writing, are in rhetoric doorways that politicians always enter, or at least open and think about. At any rate, they ignore them at their peril.

Metaphors and Issues: “Fiscal Cliffs”

If Lakeoff and Johnson were writing their book today, they might find real interest in a metaphor now getting a lot of media circulation. I refer, of course, to the “fiscal cliff” that is, like the Mayan calendar’s presumed prediction of end of the world, fast approaching.

The political consultant who came up with this one is a rhetorical genius.

Like most voters, I’ve become  concerned about what is going to happen at the end of the year if Congress and the President don’t work out some agreement about those pesky Bush-era tax cuts set to expire. Do we raise taxes only on the wealthy, on everyone, or keep the tax cuts in place for everyone? 

Most of the media I hear and read will present the issue in these terms. 

The question not generally being raised in all of this, however, is whether or not the metaphor is true. We won't do this because we are looking past the metaphor already. And it is a metaphor. But perhaps it is time to ask this. Do the cuts or lack of them constitute a fiscal cliff? Do they deserve their own metaphor? And as Lakeoff and Johnson might ask, how does the metaphor shape the way most of us are thinking about this vote?

Here's how we are thinking. We are entertaining two probable scenarios--neither has been acknowledged as only probable, aside from one columnist I am aware of, Jack Shakely, who is admittedly left-leaning, and has suggested that the “cliff” in question might really be only a slope. According to Shakely's way of seeing, letting the tax cuts expire—all of them—might result in some problems for a few months. But eventually, the national debt would lessen and basic services would continue to receive funding. It may really be only a slope. Or a hill.

 

 

The Need for Certainty

Are we approaching a “cliff”? What would result from allowing the tax cuts to continue?

 

 

I haven't the space or the background to cast light on the economics behind this. But I can note that an organizing metaphor may have replaced our ability to have a discussion about it. A general unconsciousness about how we use language may be implicated in the creation of a false dilemma. Instead of real public debate (for some that would be unpleasant warfare), we are being subjected to a cliché—the "cliff"—and the submerged image of a battle of chicken (Who will be the first to blink in this political battle of the wills?).

 

 

Shakely’s scenario is, of course, like the others, also only probable. It may be a cliff, a hill, or a slope. We won't know until it arrives. 

 

And that presents the problem. We are not generally willing to mess around with what is only possible or probable. We demand certainty.

 

 

So we hold to our metaphors as our maps.

 

 

I give Shakely credit for at least reminding us that instead of a real cliff, it may really be another metaphor we are fast approaching.  

Works Cited



Lakeoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1980.

Shakely, Jack. "Let's Take the Plunge." Los Angeles Times. 5 Dec. 2012: A17.