Abstract
Bruce Fraser's metaphor for metaphor was nicely illustrated by its contexta multi-disciplinary discussion in which linguists, philosophers, psychologists, scientists, educators, and other academics trained their talents on that powerful but elusive trope. Though full of promising approaches, the symposium did not reach consensus on any of the major questions about metaphor: what it is, how it works, whether it is essential or inessential to communication--or, indeed, whether it is to be encouraged, discouraged, or simply tolerated. As symposia like Metaphor and Thought and On Metaphor show, scholars continue to differ strongly and vociferously about the nature, implications, and value of metaphor. But the complexity of metaphor--and the scholarly controversy it generates--should not discourage attempts to grapple with it in the college classroom, even-or especially-at the introductory level. On the contrary, metaphor is so essential to language and thought, so inescapable in everyday life, that it should be a prominent topic in any liberal arts curriculum--especially in those courses that purport to analyze human communication. trouble is not that metaphor is ignored in the current liberal arts curriculum--though it seems to receive little attention outside the study of languages and literature--but rather that it tends to be taught inconsistently or even misleadingly. Indeed, in a recent essay, J. Hillis Miller pointed out that many popular rhetorics reiterate well-exploded assumptions about metaphor: e. g., that it is supplemental or inessential to argument (primarily illustrative) and that it is clearly distinguishable from literal language (50-54). If composition teachers are likely to teach metaphor as an optional persuasive device, literature teachers are likely to present it primarily, if not exclusively, as a poetic device. For various reasons and in various ways, teachers and textbooks too often perpetuate inappropriate and outdated ideas about metaphor, it is as though, for the sake of simplicity, introductory physics confined itself to presenting a Newtonian view of the universe. Like many contemporary critics, Miller adopts a Nietzschean position, that metaphor is inescapable because language is fundamentally figurative: The pervasively figurative nature of language is the destructive element' in which, to borrow Stein's advice in Lord Jim, writers must immerse' themselves in order to swim at all (54). And he rejects the argument that it is impossible or impractical to teach this to beginning college students (55). What follows is an attempt to suggest how this might be done--to outline what an introductory college curriculum in metaphoric literacy ought to cover, and why, and how such a curriculum might be