Is “Generic is Specific” a Metaphor?

Debate has raged for decades over what counts as metaphor. Do proverbs, such as better the devil you know than the one you don't, involve metaphor? When we refer to a generic-brand tissue as a Kleenex, is that a metaphor? In this paper, we observe that controversial examples such as these fall into the class of structures called " Generic is Specific " in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). We argue that " Generic is Specific " examples have complicated the debate between proponents of a conceptual theory of metaphor (Lakoff & Turner 1989) and detractors of this type of theory (McGlone 2007, Sperber & Wilson forthcoming). Furthermore, we suggest that Blending Theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) has the explanatory power to supersede this debate, and to show that " Is this structure a metaphor? " may be a less meaningful question than " How does this structure work? " Blending Theory can represent the ways in which " Generic is Specific " blends look more or less like metaphor. In this paper, we find that these blends resemble metaphor to a greater or lesser degree depending on the similarity of the blends' input spaces, the extent to which these spaces are structured by the same organizing frames, and the complexity of the blends' mappings. According to our analysis, " Generic is Specific " blends map the family resemblances characterizing a category prototype to other category members. Some of these blends give the impression of metaphor, as in McGlone's (2007) example this journal is a gem, which ascribes the qualities of a prototypical valuable object to a journal; while others appear less metaphoric, such as Sperber and Wilson's (forthcoming) example of here's a Kleenex used in reference to a generic-brand tissue.