Metaphorical field

Explanation

A metaphorical field is a coherent domain of verbal images that connects different expressions through a shared underlying conception. References to a line of thought, point of departure, dead end, and goal do not function as four isolated metaphors but as movements within a path field. Such fields can organise arguments across extended passages, project inferences, and conceal selected aspects. They are not identical with a single image, a cognitive frame, or an isotopy; the decisive feature is the systematic relation among metaphorical transfers. A mixed metaphor may disrupt a field but can also open it productively. The concept reveals how recurring images make an imaginable landscape through which thought receives direction without every transfer becoming conscious.

Movement of thought

1. Several figurative expressions first occur at different points in a text and might be read as independent metaphors. 2. Their source conceptions prove related: paths, crossings, directions, and goals provide a common organisation. 3. Readers transfer relations within that field to the subject matter and consequently anticipate continuations, obstacles, or solutions. 4. A counter-test asks whether several systematically related transfers are present and separates a metaphorical field from repetition, isotopy, and accidental imagery. 5. The individual metaphors return as parts of a landscape whose unobtrusive topology carries the argument while making alternative routes harder to see.

Scientific use case

Metaphor research, discourse analysis, and literary studies map recurring source domains, their connections, and absences across texts or corpora. Comparison corpora reveal which inferential directions belong to a field rather than to the subject itself.

Example

An essay describes the “roots” of a problem, its “branches,” a “dead limb,” and fresh “shoots”; together the expressions establish a plant-based metaphorical field.

Counterexample

The words “table,” “chair,” and “cupboard” form a lexical field of furniture, but without transfer to another domain they do not constitute a metaphorical field.

Distinction

Distinguish it from a single metaphor, a lexical or semantic field without transfer, isotopy as semantic recurrence, a cognitive frame, allegory, and mixed metaphor as conflict between figurative organisations.

Effect on thought and perception

A metaphorical field gathers dispersed metaphors into a coherent imaginative order, facilitates inference, and can quietly commit an argument to preferred directions.

Resonance

One image calls another until a landscape appears between separate phrases; every new expression lets the remaining paths and boundaries of the field sound with it.

Cite this entry

Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Metaphorical field“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-METZ1-0012. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-METZ1-0012

https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-METZ1-0012

References for the historical section

• Harald Weinrich: Bildfeld, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, DOI 10.24894/HWPh.490 · Indexierte Begriffsbestimmung und Literaturverweis auf Münze und Wort (1958).