ESSAY REVIEW ‘The Big Men’: a journalist’s look at the Scholastic Aptitude Test

Our ordinary, human conceptual systems struggle daily with complex ideas and language. Indeed, the most complex thoughts often demand speci!c cognitive inventions to make their comprehension easier, and one of the most common strategies for improving comprehension is metaphor. Metaphor, of course, has a speci!c interpretation in literary studies, but, in the !eld of linguistics, its meaning is wider and generally considered a statement in which the unfamiliar is described in terms of the familiar. As Lakoå and Johnson note in their very in"uential book, Metaphors We Live By (1980), we are compelled to use metaphor to describe those concepts that elude simple description. For instance, our inability to describe the idea and purpose of human existence forces us to engage in rhetorical strategies that make this complex idea more real. How does one describe life? Our metaphorical understandings include common, pithy metaphors such as ‘life is a journey’, or ‘life is a bowl of cherries’. But, metaphor can also be used to sharpen and deepen our thinking and shake us away from uncomplicated conceptual understandings. Lakoå and Johnson point out that the basis of all our experience is metaphorical. Indeed, Nietzsche referred to our understanding of the truth as a mobile army of metaphors. A linguistic and conceptual tool closely related to metaphor is metonymy. Metonymy is sometimes considered a speci!c instance of metaphor in which a part of a concept or object stands for the whole. When referring to the monarchy, one might use the term ‘crown’, or when summarizing the viewpoints of workers, we might use the term ‘labour’. US journalists often use this linguistic device when they report that the ‘White House’ has issued a statement or commented on policy. In this instance, the White j. curriculum studies, 2001, vol. 33, no. 2, 247–260