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CS 215 781

Pugh, Sharon L.; And Others

Metaphorical Ways of Knowing: The Imaginative Nature of Thought and Expression.

National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana,

Ill.

ISBN-0-8141-3151-4

97
225p.

National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W.

Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (NCTE Stock No.

31514-3050: $12.95 members, $16.95 nonmembers).

Viewpoints (Opinion/Position Papers, Essays, etc.) (120)

Books (010)

MF01/PC09 Plus Postage.

Class Activities; *English; *Imagination;

Interdisciplinary Approach; Intermediate Grades;

Language Arts; *Language Role; *Metaphors;

*Multicultural Education; Rhetoric; Secondary

Education

IDENTIFIERS

*Metaphorical Thought

ABSTRACT

This book explores the subject of metaphor, using the imagery of cartography to set a course. It explores the creative aspects of thinking and learning through literature, writing, and word play, drawing connections between English and other content areas. Theory and practical applications meet in the book, linking activities and resources to current classroom concerns--to multiculturalism, imagination in reading and writing, critical thinking, and expanding language experiences. The first part of the book examines the uses of metaphor in constructing meaning. The second part takes up issues related to multiple perspectives--using metaphors to experience other lives, and exploring cultures through traditions. The third part of the book is devoted to a consideration of the history and current status of the English language and focuses on using cross-cultural stories in the English classroom, offering a number of resources for teaching multicultural literature in English. The fourth part examines the sensory Ixperience of metaphors by seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching with the imagination. Contains 14 pages of references and an index. (NKA) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.***********************************************************************

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0.0 -r- c4Metaphorical Ways of

Knowing

NCTE Editorial Board: Patricia Cordeiro, Colette Daiute, Hazel Davis, Bobbi Fisher, Brenda Greene, Richard Luckert, Al leen Pace Nilsen, Jerrie Cobb Scott, Karen Smith, chair, ex officio, Dawn Boyer, ex officio 4

Metaphorical

Ways of Knowing

The Imaginative Nature

of Thought and Expression

Sharon L. Pugh

Indiana University

Jean Wolph HicksIndiana University andUniversity of Louisville

Marcia DavisIndiana University

National Council of Teachers of English

1111 W Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801

5

Manuscript Editor: Julie Bush

Production Editor: Rona S. Smith

Cover Design: Loren Kirkwood

Interior Design: Doug Burnett

NCTE Stock Number: 31514-3050

©1997 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Permissions acknowledgments appear on page 214.

It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to provide a

forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and theteaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to anyparticular point of view does not imply endorsement by the ExecutiveCommittee, the Board of Directors, or the membership at large, except in

announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pugh, Sharon L.

Metaphorical ways of knowing: the imaginative nature of thoughtand expression / Sharon L. Pugh, Jean Wolph Hicks, Marcia Davis.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8141-3151-4 (pbk.)1. English philologyStudy and teachingTheory, etc. 2. EnglishlanguageComposition and exercisesStudy and teachingTheory,etc. 3. English languageRhetoricStudy and teachingTheory, etc.4. Interdisciplinary approach in education. 5. Pluralism (Social sci-ences) 6. Language arts (Education) 7.Multicultural education.8. Thought and thinking. 9. Knowledge, Theory of. 10. Imagination.11. Metaphor. I. Hicks, Jean Wolph, 1953-

.II. Davis, Marcia,1956-.III. Title.

PE65.P851997420' .7dc2196-47982

CIP 6 V

Contents

Preface

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Language, Thought, and Imagination

3

I. Metaphor and Learning

1. Metaphor and Meaning

13

2. Ways of Knowing: Metaphor and Learning

34

3. Reimagining Ourselves

48
II. Multiple Perspectives: Metaphors and New Outlooks

4. Experiencing Other Lives

69

5. Change

84

6. Time

95

7. Exploring Cultures through Traditions

109

III. Imagining Language

8. English as a Metaphor for Multiculturalism

9. World Literatu'res in English129

142

IV. Making Sense: The Experience of Metaphor

10. Seeing and Hearing with the Imagination

157

11. Metaphors of Taste and Smell

170

12. The Imagination of the Body: Movement and Touch

180

V. Conclusion and References

Conclusion

References195

197
vi

Contents

Permissions Acknowledgments

214
Index 215

Authors

221
8 vii

Preface

n this volume, three of the authors of Bridging: A Teacher's Guide to Metaphorical Thinking return to the subject we felt we had barely

begun in our first book. Here we have focused on metaphoricaland imaginative thinking as tools for learning, captured in the

phrase ways of knowing.Learning is an act of discovery. Language is the main equip-ment that human learners take on this expedition. Because of theuncharted nature of the territory ahead in the quest for new knowl-edge, learners need not only the right apparatus but also the skilland imagination to use it in versatile ways. Our aim in this book is toemphasize imagination in using language for thought and expres-

sion.As English teachers, we value precision, structure, and clarityin language, attributes that students certainly need in order tofunction in a communicative society. However, we should not letthese values obscure the equally important values of experimenta-tion, originality, and playfulness. Traditionally, school instruction hasemphasized accurate transmission of information and ideas. Toooften, we complain that students aren't hearing what we say, that is,they aren't understanding us; and they aren't saying what we expect

to hear, which is to say they aren't being clear. These concerns arevalid, but we should be just as concerned with whether students areusing language for exploration and invention.Too often, imagination gets squeezed. It is still functioningithas to be for language to work at allbut it is operating in a verysmall space. The well-known demise of creativity in many childrenthroughout the school years is one consequence of this compression.Like anything that is alive, imagination needs room, freedom, andstimulation to grow and be healthy.We have written this book especially for teachers of grades 5-14 who are interested in integrating the development of languageand thinking into a reading-writing curriculum. We also reach out toteachers who are attempting an even broader integration, that ofEnglish and social studies into a humanities block. By offering atheoretical basis for viewing metaphor as a way of knowing, and bysuggesting many avenues through which this way of knowing may

VIII

Preface

be explored and developed, we hope to promote the cause of the

imagination so that it will be given the kind of attention that ratio-nal, scientific knowledge has received for centuries.

Sharon L. Pugh

Jean Wolph Hicks

Marcia Davis

10 ix

Acknowledgments

We wish especially to thank the librarians of the Monroe County (Indiana)

Public Library, the Louisville (Kentucky) Free Public Library, and theIndiana University Library who put their expertise to work for us inlocating obscure citations and materials. We also thank Julie Chen and

Mayumi Fujioka, IU doctoral students, for contributing a number ofChinese and Japanese name origins, and Bhupender K. Sharma, who kindly

shared Hindi names with us.We appreciate the time taken by teachers to read and respond to ourwork, including Anne Greenwell of Ahrens High School (adult education)

in Louisville; Brenda Overturf of Mt. Washington (Kentucky) Middle School; Danna Morrison of Hebron Middle School (Bullitt County, Ken- tucky); and the teachers in the Louisville Writing Project's Advantage classes.Special thanks also go to photographer Dave Stayer and computer expert David Hicks for their contributions to our work. 1i

Metaphorical Ways of

Knowing

12 3

Introduction:

Language, Thought,and Imagination

The whole story of humanity is basically that of a journey toward the Emerald City, and of an effort to learn the nature of Oz.

Loren Eiseley, The Unexpected Universe

Language is an act of the imagination, a means by which we

construct in our minds images (or, to use a related word,imitations) of each other's thoughts and experiences. Unlikethe dances of bees, the songs of whales, or the scents of moths,our messages have meanings on multiple levels, so that the humanlanguage user is more poet than information processor. When aperson speaks the simplest sentence, ten listeners may interpret it tendifferent ways, and yet we understand each other well enough tocommunicate, cooperate, or quarrel in amazingly complex ways.We believe that the English class is a place where studentsshould learn a great deal about their own creative powers as lan-guage users and makers, destined to understand and express them-selves in original yet communicative ways throughout their lives. Atthe heart of these creative language and meaning processes, webelieve, is the imaginative logic of metaphorical thinking, defined inour previous book, Bridging, as "drawing parallels between appar-ently unrelated phenomena to gain insight, make discoveries, offerhypotheses [and] wage arguments" (Pugh et al. 1992, 2). To be a

metaphorical thinker, as we all are, is to be "a constructive learner,one who actively builds bridges from the known to the new" (5).Metaphorical thinking and knowing begin early in the life of a

language user. In Mental Leaps (the title itself a metaphor for under-standing analogies), Holyoak and Thagard (1995) tell the story ofNeil, a four-year-old who tried to establish the significance of a treeto a bird by comparing the bird's experience with his own. At first hecalled the tree the bird's chair, because it is where the bird sits, butthen decided that it was more like the bird's yard, because it is wherethe bird's nestor "house"is located. An even earlier example,described by Johnston (1993), is a two-and-a-half-year-old child'scomparison of his training pants to a stop sign, both meaning "don't

13 4

Introduction

go." Gibbs (1994), in a chapter entitled "The Poetic Minds of Chil-

dren," supports his claim that young children have significant abilityto think in figurative terms with numerous examples, including the

use of metonymy by a two-and-a-half-year-old who told his mother"don't broom my mess" (423) and a ten-line poem composed by aseven-year-old projecting herself into the experience of a raindrop.In their work using therapeutic metaphors with children, Millsand Crowley (1986) equate telling a story with telling a metaphor,which they believe accounts for the "natural receptivity to meta-phor" in children. Defining metaphor as "the critical substance ofchange," they compare its power in children with putting a flame toa candle, "igniting the child's imagination to its brightest valence ofstrength, self-knowledge, and transformation" (xix).

Throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, we canrevisit virtually any fairy tale and see how its meaning continues to

develop for us. We may decide, as Shel Silverstein (1974) did in hispoem "The Little Blue Engine," that "The Little Engine Who Could"holds up a sometimes unreachable ideal of self-reliance and fails toacknowledge that often we need each other to succeed. Or as Toni

Morrison (1977) suggests in Song of Solomon, adults may still act likeHansel and Gretel, drawn to their doom by the powerful forces ofhunger or desire. We may know a Cinderella, waiting passively to berescued from an unsatisfactory life, or a Gingerbread Man, runningaway from those who love and care about him into the jaws of fate.We may also use metaphorical understanding to reject damagingpremises. Why should the young woman in "The Three Spinners"(Grimm 1966) look for supernatural ways to accomplish the impos-sible feats set by a demanding future spouse? Why not just say, asdid Bartleby the Scrivener in Melville's parable of resistance, "I

would prefer not to" ([1853] 1990, 57)?In a course on critical and creative thinking across the curricu-

lum, a prospective teacher, Jennifer Kuhn, used the lead character

from Eric Carle's Mixed-Up Chameleon (1984) to reflect on her learn-ing. In this story, a chameleon tries to emulate an admirable charac-teristic in every animal he meets. He grows pink wings to be elegantlike the flamingo, a bushy tail to be smart like the fox, a big head and

trunk to be strong like the elephant, and so on. In the end, he decidesthat he prefers being himself, but knows it was important for him togo through all the changes he experienced. From this story, Jenniferdraws a personal metaphor:

I am definitely not saying that I wanted to be, or think, like otherpeople in the class. However, I did appreciate hearing what everyoneelse had to say. It helped me look at issues and problems in my own

everyday life that I may never have thought about before. In addi-tion, I gained insight into some of the biased thinking that I now

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