The concept of creativity within the framework of metaphor studies has been subject to a number of investigations. The purpose of this article is to study the way fiction authors reflect on the concept of creativity via meta discursive prose and interviews. For the empirical part of the study two authors were selected: Victor Pelevin (Russia) and Steven King (USA). To fulfill the research objectives, content and comparative analysis were carried out in order to identify the most frequently used types of metaphors and the prevailing source domains they refer to in regard to the phenomenon of creative writing or the state of writer's block.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, metaphor studies, creativity, creative writing, cultural dimensions, Steven King, Victor Pelevin
Creativity in all its forms and manifestations has long been subject to continuous research due to the fact that a driver or a source of novelty and innovation has no evident source of its own. A fundamental mechanism applied for creation of new products and an integral part of everyday human activity, creativity is often characterized through some rather abstract concepts (Aimable, 1996). The linguistic means applicable to the definition of creativity are quite scarce regardless of the language potential for the most vivid and detailed description. The reason for that is mainly the specificity of scientific observations which cannot be conducted with the same success in the case of creativity. One can trace reactions, document the process, assess the results, but creativity is too much of an implicit and intangible entity to be examined the same way. Being a “still-to-be-unraveled” concept, creativity lacks the descriptive language means one could rely upon. This paper proposes a potential way to overcome this obstacle — conceptualizing creativity through figurative language, metaphors in particular.
The aim of the study is to analyze the way creativity is interpreted by fiction writers — those who professionally tame it — on the example of interview transcripts and meta discursive prose produced by Steven King and Victor Pelevin. The notion of meta discourse implies the type of prose where the author elaborates on the process of writing and elaborates on the background information. This empirical data was chosen as it somewhat resembles the method of introspection — a practice where the object and the subject of the study coincide, the person engaged in the process “looks inside themselves” and is capable to examine their cognitive processes from the first-hand perspective. The method is often criticized for its subjective nature yet some phenomena like creativity do not give the methodological freedom one would wish for. The authors chosen for the analysis — Steven King and Victor Pelevin — were selected for a number of reasons: shared literary aesthetic, comparable volumes of produced literature, affiliation to the modern writers. Steven King is known for the ornate language of his and the ingenious use of stylistic devices among which is metaphor while meaning that with him alone this research would be a justified endeavor. Nevertheless, Pelevin was added to the sampling for the sake of a hypothesis that the choice of metaphors, the prevailing types and the source domain could be conditioned by cultural background. To test this hypothesis the representatives of two often opposed cultures (USA and Russia) were chosen and subjected to consequent comparative analysis.
Speaking of the analysis conducted within the framework of this paper — to fulfill the objective of the study and provide a multi-faceted overview of the phenomenon a mixed method approach was implemented. The sources chosen for the study included 46 interviews with Victor Pelevin, 18 interviews with Steven King and his autobiographical book “On writing: A memoir of the craft” (2000).
The main tool during the first stage of the research was content analysis: the empirical material was thoroughly examined in search of metaphors and the accumulated data was organized into matrices. Afterwards, thematic analysis was performed to identify the types of metaphors, the most frequently encountered source domains and the general tendencies that could be traced in the way the writers self-reflected on the writing process. The envisioned results of the study were of both qualitative and quantitative nature so as to elaborate not only on the semantic aspect but also on the statistical component which required basic calculations: the total sum of metaphors discovered and the number of metaphors referring to the most popular source domains and types of metaphors.
The theoretical basis of this research consists of two major parts with the first one being dedicated to the approaches to studying metaphor and the second one taking into consideration creativity-related theories. A brief overview of the theoretical part is in order to provide the necessary background to the empirical findings.
The notion of metaphor dates back to ancient times and Aristotle who is considered to be the author of the first metaphor definitions. He called metaphor a “better version of simile” and did not quite distinguish the two. Furthermore, another stylistic device which became an autonomous entity only with the rise of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) is analogy. The so-called traditional view implied that metaphor was a purely language property which did not overlap with cognition and could be easily removed due to its rather redundant nature. The functions of metaphor were down to the exclusively aesthetical ones and did not consider it a valuable tool for knowledge acquisition. The neglect of cognitive components ended with Lakoff and Johnoson proposing a new conceptual metaphor theory in the 1980s. The essence of it lies in understanding one conceptual domain through another. It revealed the fundamentally metaphoric nature of the conceptual systems people rely on in everyday life and stated that the functions of metaphor go far beyond the artistic ones — they structure the way people think.
At this point in metaphor’s “career” the terminology of traditional view is replaced with a new one: tenor turns into target domain, vehicle — into source domain, ground becomes salient features. On the example of life is a journey metaphor these terms can be exemplified the following way: life is a target domain, the entity one is aiming to conceptualize; journey is a source domain, a tool with the help of which one is trying to conceptualize life; salient feature in that case is the duration of the endeavor, the obstacles one might face along the way, the final destination, etc.
Within the framework of CMT metaphors are classified into three types: structural, orientational and ontological. Structural metaphors follow the “A is B” or “to A is to B” logic. For example, life is war, anger is fire, love is a flower, etc. Orientational metaphors rely on spatial organization making a quality or phenomenon more or less intense given its orientation in space: up and down, front and back, in and out, etc. For instance, to feel up/down, to feel out of sorts, etc. Ontological metaphors are used to conceptualize experiences or intensify the description by making, for instance, inanimate objects or animals do something only humans are known for and vice versa: the clouds can cry, a person can crawl out of their apartment on a rainy day, a misfortune can knock on one’s door, etc.
The final aspect to be addressed in CMT’s regard is the cooperation of Lakoff, Johnson and Zoltán Kövecses in the early 2000s resulting in the concept of metaphorical competence. The notion deals with one’s ability to produce and use original or unconventional metaphors and/or their linguistic manifestations (Kövecses, 2015).
Despite the overall prevalence of CMT in contemporary metaphor theory, another approach was introduced quite recently as a way to compensate for what CMT is lacking. Deliberate metaphor theory (DMT) introduced by Steen in 2008 takes into consideration the context in which the metaphorical utterance takes place and the factors influencing the choice of it. Within the framework of DMT metaphors are divided into deliberate and non-deliberato ones according to the assumption that some metaphors require cross-domain mapping and some do not. According to DMT, a “true” metaphor is the deliberate one as, presumably, the cognitive processes behind the creation process add validity to the figurative nature of the utterance.
Having looked through the metaphorical component of the theoretical part we are to move onto the creativity aspect. Defining the phenomenon has been a challenge ever since creativity became a subject of scientific research. The definitions varied from a trait that is most characteristic of creative people (Guilford, 1950) to the more exhaustive ones like “the production of novel, appropriate ideas in any realm of human activity, from science, to the arts, to education, to business, to everyday life” (Amabile, 1996). Some authors even came to a conclusion that the process of introducing something creative regardless of the applicability of its product can still be addressed as creativity (Drazin et al., 1999).
The way the approaches to understanding creativity differ among cultures is also to be taken into consideration. Niu and Sternberg (2011) came to a conclusion that Eastern people tend to view creativity as a part of social and moral values, the link between tradition and innovation is an indispensable part of their mindset. Westerners, on the contrary, prioritize the individual component of creativity and do not perceive the products of creative activity as a contribution to the common heritage. This discrepancy may be explained by the differences in the way the cultures see the world — holistically or analytically. This paper hopes to discover similar correlations in the way creativity is described through metaphors depending on culture yet the conclusion made within its framework serve as a starting point for future research rather than the final destination.
Moving on to the findings, throughout the course of the research 85 metaphors and “potentially metaphorical utterances” have been accumulated and analyzed. It is to be highlighted that two thirds (57) of the metaphors belong to Steven King, while Pelevin’s use of metaphors was rather scarce (28). Since Pelevin ended up using a rather laconic and not so figurative language when it came to metaphors specifically, a necessary alteration to the initial premise was made — for the case of Pelevin we also took into consideration simile and analogy with a notice that with certain modification to the utterance a metaphor could take place.
Based on comparative conducted afterwords the following conclusions were drawn:
— both authors tend to use personification (Pelevin — 5, King — 17), the compare creativity to an autonomous living being which is self-sufficient to the extent where the writer’s only function is to follow its lead;
— both King and Pelevin also talk about creativity being a mysterious and uncontrollable entity which puts the writer in some sort of a trance state;
— the most frequently source domains are life and death, presumably because of the milestones these two entities imply;
— Pelevin conceptualized creativity with the help of everyday activities — food, drinks, walking, cleaning, doing sports, while King compared creativity to a tool or an artifact;
The gap in the use of metaphors between Pelevin and King can be explained by the fact that Russia, according to The World Values Survey, prioritizes survival values. In other words, Russian people tend to be rather direct and straightforward and consider figurative language a redundancy. USA, on the contrary, propagates self-expression values which may be positively correlated with the extensive metaphoricity of King’s utterances.
Although the objectives of the paper were fulfilled, the limitations identified within the framework of this study such as sampling serve as a ground for future research to expand this paper’s framework and build upon its findings. This work is believed to contribute to both linguistic, cultural and creativity-related studies as it takes into consideration the way these three components can be interrelated. The way the accumulated data can be implemented further to comprehend the polyvalent nature of creativity seems to be a reason to unleash one’s creativity on the way to define it.
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