M ARTIN Z IEROLD Metaphors We Communicate By: Changing Metaphors of Communication in Everyday Language, Communication Theory, and the Academia I Introduction When I first attended a workshop on public relations, years ago at the University of Münster as an undergraduate student, held by a well-known and respected spin doctor and communication consultant who had worked for the German media mogul Leo Kirch and Chancellor Helmut Kohl among others, I was eager to learn how to improve my professional communication skills. Asked about suggestions for further reading on public relations — a field flourishing with a wide choice of handbooks, tutorials, and academic publications — the lecturer said there was only one good book on strategic communication: Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 1 the Prussian general’s theoretical reflections on warfare and its strategies and tactics. Surprising as that book recommendation was to me at the time, the notion that communication can be considered metaphorically as war is well-known from everyday life. It is also one of the well-known examples Lakoff and Johnson give in their seminal Metaphors We Live By 2 to illustrate how metaphors “govern our thought,” and “structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people.” 3 In everyday life and everyday language, the communicative activity of arguing is often structured with the conceptual metaphor “Argument Is War”: In debate, we ‘attack weak points’ of our ‘opponents,’ we ‘demolish’ or ‘shoot down’ arguments, and in the end, we ‘win’ or ‘lose.’ 4 While, following Lakoff and Johnson, the role metaphors play for human communication and cognition to structure our everyday life as conceptual systems has been widely discussed, it might be considered surprising that there has been significantly less research on the question of which concepts of communication themselves our metaphors of communication imply. This 1 Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (1932-34; Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996). 2 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980). 3 Lakoff and Johnson 3. 4 Lakoff and Johnson 4ff. M ARTIN Z IEROLD 212 question is going to be my main focus in this article: Put briefly, I will not try to analyze metaphors as (a part of or a means of) human communication, but metaphors of human communication. In a first step, I will give an overview of ‘classic’ metaphors of communication and their implications for our understanding of communication, drawing primarily on work by the Annenberg School of Communication scholar Klaus Krippendorff. 5 In a second step, I will try to take a look at the dynamics of metaphors of communication, differentiating between everyday language, academic research on communication, and finally even conceptual metaphors of academic communication itself. II Containers, Conduits, Wars — Classical Metaphors of Communication In his study “Major Metaphors of Communication and Some Constructivist Reflections on their use,” Klaus Krippendorff took stock of metaphors of communication and lists a number of major metaphors, each of which represents or implies a specific concept of human communication with profound consequences not just on a conceptual and theoretical level: Applying the conceptual metaphor that communication is conflict or even war will structure the way we communicate and will lead to battles of communication with the main focus on establishing and increasing power, on being right. Taking up an idea from Lakoff and Johnson, 6 Krippendorff contrasts the notion of communication as war with quite a different conceptual metaphorical field: that of dance and ritual. These metaphors highlight very different aspects of communication than the war metaphor, aspects which are often overlooked not least by scholars in media as well as literary studies, who all too often concentrate on communication and media content, rather than taking into account the various ways in which communication processes are embedded into social practice. However, it is important to note that hardly any metaphor of communication can be used for all kinds of communication as each metaphor highlights certain aspects of communication and allows us to see and conceptualize 5 Klaus Krippendorff, “Major Metaphors of Communication and Some Constructivist Reflections on their Use,” Cybernetics & Human Knowing 2.1 (1993): 3-25. See also Klaus Krippendorff, “Der Verschwundene Bote: Metaphern und Modelle der Kommunikation,“ Die Wirklichkeit der Medien: Eine Einführung in die Kommunikationswissenschaft, eds. Klaus Merten, Siegfried J. Schmidt, and Siegfried Wieschenberg (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994) 79-113. Krippendorff’s analysis is in parts a continuation of Michael Reddy’s critique of the ‘conduit metaphor’ of communication; see Michael Reddy, “The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language,” Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony (1979; Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993) 164-201. 6 Lakoff and Johnson 5. Metaphors We Communicate By 213 communication in a certain way, at the same time hiding other aspects. Thus one specific metaphor might be common, plausible, and productive for interpersonal communication but not for mass media communication (and vice versa), or have a major influence in a specific social system but not in others: The war metaphor might be used widely for interpersonal arguments and most often in business and political communication contexts, but — hopefully — not so regularly in educational, religious, and other social systems. It follows that each metaphor of communication should not only be analyzed with regard to its conceptual implications, but also to its specific context of use. 7 Further necessary dimensions for a differentiated analysis are the historicity of metaphors and the cultural context. 8 While historical changes of metaphors will be analyzed in the third part of this paper, I cannot go into details regarding the culture-specificity of metaphors of communication. However, it is likely that cultures with different concepts of individuality and community, time, and space (and other key concepts) will also develop different metaphors and concepts of communication. Notions of communication as ‘dance,’ which will be analyzed in the following, might play a more dominant role in cultures that put less emphasis on individuality and linearity but focus rather on community and circularity of temporal experience. The metaphor of ‘ritual’ is particularly useful for some kinds of mass media communication. The concept of communication as ritual highlights that our uses of mass media very often take the form of rituals held dear, like the daily reading of a newspaper at breakfast, or family gatherings in front of the TV on a Saturday night and so on. 9 Seen as a ritual, it is not so much the content of the television shows, nor even that of the papers, that really matters, but the social, ritualistic functions they serve: The daily paper at breakfast gives the morning a structure in a temporal dimension, listening to your iPod on the tube creates a private space where you can ignore people around you, gathering in front of the TV with the family every Saturday night serves a social function and so on. “The metaphor of the ritual directs attention to what is invariant in communication: the endlessly repetitive performances not aimed at a practical purpose and the unifying of those involved into a community,” Krippendorff argues. 10 7 Krippendorff himself does not distinguish between interpersonal, mediated, and mass media communication explicitly, nor does he take into account social contexts of use. 8 Even cognitivist approaches of metaphor theory, which for some time focussed on supposedly universal metaphors alone, today take cultural variation into account. For a seminal work from this background see Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007). 9 See also James W. Carey, “A Cultural Approach to Communication,” Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, ed. James W. Carey (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989) 13-36. 10 Krippendorff, “Major Metaphors“ 12. M ARTIN Z IEROLD 214 The idea of ‘communication as dance’ seems to be more adequate for specific forms of interpersonal communication and dialogue, and is directly opposed to the idea of ‘communication as war.’ Small talk or, as Krippendorff suggests, conversation, might be prototypes where this conceptual metaphor applies: Seen in the light of dance, communication is not about winning or losing, but about “maintaining the process of mutual engagement.” 11 Here, communication is conceptualised primarily as a communal and cooperative activity, and everybody is supposed to have his or her turn. While the metaphors mentioned so far each have very specific implications and are thus linked closely to certain limited contexts of use — e.g. war and arguments, dance and conversation —, Krippendorff also names a very prominent group of conceptual metaphors of communication which to this day play a key role in shaping our everyday ideas of communication in a very general sense and which also play a prominent role in communication theory: the ‘container’ and ‘conduit’ metaphors. “What is in the letter? ”, “What did you get out of that article? ”, “Don’t read this into my statement! ”, “These are empty phrases! ” — All of these expressions can be seen as being derived from a container metaphor of communication which is based on the idea that communication consists of discrete messages and that these messages contain a meaning, feelings, information etc. This metaphor shapes our concepts of communication in a very special way and has at least four major implications: First of all, this conceptual metaphor puts an emphasis on the content of communication, on messages, and masks the process of communication and its materials. Following this metaphor, we would not want to look at the container, but at what is inside. Second, the container metaphor suggests that communication contents are themselves “entities with objective qualities,” 12 as Krippendorff argues. Once taken out of the container, they are not ambiguous and not in need of interpretation: The meaning is there, and it simply has to be unpacked; it has to be taken out of the text, the film, the utterance. 13 This, as a third implication, leads to the idea that communication processes are processes of mere transportation. We have to get the container from here to there, so that the message can be unpacked. Once it is where it should be, we can expect understanding to take place ‘by contact.’ Scholars of communication and particularly literature might consider this notion so naïve that it may be hard to believe it plays a major role in any context where 11 Krippendorff, “Major Metaphors“ 13. 12 Krippendorff, “Major Metaphors“ 6. 13 It could be argued that this notion also supports a consumerist approach towards communication, expecting messages to be something that can be consumed like other commodities. Metaphors We Communicate By 215 communication is essential. However, if you think of the advertising industry, this metaphor and the idea that ‘contact is effect’ is the economic basis of every contract: Companies pay publishers a price for their adverts what is based on the number of people who will be seeing the ad, the so called ‘costper-thousand’ (CPM). 14 A fourth implication of this metaphor is the idea that communication should lead to shared ideas. If many people get the same text, they should unpack the same message, as Krippendorff underlines: Indeed, just as we would not believe anyone who claims able to pour wine, milk, or oil out of a bottle filled with water, the physics invoked by the container metaphor implies that one can remove from a message only, what had been put into it and that this would have to be the same for everyone. It offers no logical place for variations or discrepancies. 15 However, if people do come to different understandings of a text, the logical consequence of the container metaphor is not to regard them as different (and possibly equally valid) interpretations, but to check whether everybody really had access to the same texts (that is, if the transportation was successful), to call upon authorities (if possible, the author) to state what ‘really’ is inside the text or to simply fight about who is right. The most productive approach would probably be to abandon the metaphor and the concept of communication it offers, but from within the concept, this is hard to achieve. The conduit metaphor of communication is closely connected to the container metaphor and in a way offers a more concrete concept for the question of transportation of the container. The idea that human communication requires ‘channels’ — be it auditive and visual channels for interpersonal communication or more technical channels like wires and electromagnetic waves for mediated communication — emerges in the 19 th century with the invention of the telegraph and, later on, the telephone. The staggering question of how messages could be “squeezed through copper-wires,” 16 a phenomenon unheard of before and only explainable by a complex technical knowledge, asked for a metaphorical answer: Still today, the logic of electronics is explained by schoolteachers with the help of a vocabulary from fluid mechanics: A cable ‘is’ a channel; electricity ‘is’ water which flows through the tube. Regarding communication, the idea of communication flowing through channels may have shifted the notion of messages from being discrete entities 14 Obviously, hardly any advertising agency really claims that seeing an advert inevitably leads to the desired effect. It is, however, striking that the business model of advertprices still relies on this very notion of communication: The more people you reach, the greater the effect, and the more you have to pay. 15 Krippendorff, “Major Metaphors“ 7. 16 Krippendorff, “Major Metaphors“ 8. M ARTIN Z IEROLD 216 in favour of a continuous flow, but the idea that it is the content of the channels that matters, and that at the end of the wire understanding is not a problem unless the message has been altered along the way is still active. The experience that acoustic noise can interfere with telephone lines or radio can suggest metaphorical explanations for misunderstandings even in non-mediated contexts: We think of ‘barriers’ for communication that prohibit the message from reaching its destination. But at the end of the transportation process, the container metaphor stays in place: “What comes out of a channel […] can neither be qualitatively different nor quantitatively exceed what entered it.” 17 As we have seen with the conduit metaphor, innovations in communication technology can bring about changes in metaphors of communication in general. A very old, but suggestive technology is that of cryptography, which originated in ancient times and today is brought to close perfection by modern computer systems which are capable of encryption following complex algorithms that no human being is able to decrypt without the help of computer technology, and — so the industry claims — not even without the correct key. The idea of enciphering and deciphering is also at the heart of Shannon and Weaver’s mathematical theory of communication 18 which stresses that even in a technical sense you cannot put messages into channels of communication as they are, but that the transmitter has to translate the message into some technologically apt form and the receiver has to perform the inverse operation: In Shannon and Weaver’s terms, “messages” have to be translated into “signals” and vice versa. Krippendorff calls this the ‘transmission metaphor’ of communication and it is more complex than the mere conduit metaphor, as it involves a process of translation at both ends of the communicative process. While Shannon and Weaver had intended their model only to be used as a mathematical and technical concept, it has often been used as a metaphor or model of human communication in general, and it even seems to be at the heart of models like ‘encoding/ decoding’ that formed the early model of mass communication used in British cultural studies. 19 In this transmission metaphor, it is not the author or speaker alone who puts a message into a container and then sends it, but the receiver also plays an active role by decoding and deciphering the signals. While the ideal of 17 Krippendorff, “Major Metaphors“ 9. 18 See Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1963; Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1998). 19 See Stuart Hall, “Encoding/ Decoding,” Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79, ed. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) (London: Hutchinson, 1980) 128-38. Metaphors We Communicate By 217 ‘functioning’ communication remains that the message should be the same at the beginning and the end of the communication process, the transmission metaphor adds the aspect of a ‘code’ that is used in communication and can explain misunderstanding not only by a failure of transport or a barrier in the channel, but also in a problem of encoding and decoding, possibly because of different codes being used. 20 But even this concept seems very simplistic to anybody involved in communication research and theory: Where do the ‘codes’ come from? What about the reflexivity of communication that is completely masked in technical models of transmission without feedback, etc. Indeed, the transmission metaphor and especially the container and conduit metaphor have been heavily criticized for a number of reasons, the argument being that they suggest a misleading concept of communication. That they clearly are still in use in everyday language, and even in some fields of communication research, as I have hinted at with regard to the advertising industry and its models of media effects, might suggest that they nevertheless play a productive role in offering a simple concept for communication. And it could even be that the criticism of these metaphors has been too harsh, stressing some obvious points in which, for example, the conduit metaphor suggests a simplistic and essentialist model of communication. A number of scholars, including Joe Grady 21 or Philip Eubanks, 22 have tried to show that such a criticism might be short-sighted, not because they want to argue for a more simplistic concept of communication, but for a more complex analysis of metaphors of communication. Eubanks makes this point clear by stating: Most of us have said that the Conduit Metaphor is wrong because language does not work the way the metaphor assumes. I want to argue the opposite point: Prevalent objections to the Conduit Metaphor are wrong because metaphors do not work the way the objections assume . 23 As sceptical as I am about the container and conduit metaphors of communication as seen from a perspective of communication theory, the argument Eubanks makes still seems to be a valid one in the light of metaphor theory, 20 Stuart Hall, with his model of ‘encoding/ decoding,’ obviously argues that there indeed are different ways of using texts to generate (individual) meaning. Thus, the architecture of his model is still based on a concept of transmission of mass communication; however, different ways of decoding would not be regarded as ‘misreadings’ or misunderstandings, but rather as productive and possibly subversive, forms of decoding. 21 Joe Grady, “The ‘Conduit Metaphor’ Revisited: A Reassessment of Metaphors for Communication,” Discourse and Cognition: Bridging the Gap, ed. Jean-Pierre Koening (Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1998) 205-18. 22 Philip Eubanks, “Understanding Metaphors for Writing: In Defense of the Conduit Metaphor,” College Composition and Communication 53.1 (2001): 92-118. 23 Eubanks, “Understanding Metaphors” 93. M ARTIN Z IEROLD 218 and it holds true not only for the case of metaphors of communication, but for the analysis of metaphors in general. Eubanks puts forward two main objections to current criticism of the conduit metaphor. First, he argues that most critics have so far ignored that metaphors hardly ever come on their own, but that they are instead part of networks and relations of metaphorical systems. Joe Grady makes the same point and suggests that the idea that meanings are objects might simply be one form of a more basic metaphor which suggests that “constituents are contents,” as we do not only talk about the message in a letter, but would also accept sentences like “There are seven days in a week” or “Oranges are full of vitamins.” 24 In this context hardly anybody would argue that these expressions suggest that a week is a mere container of days or an orange a container of vitamins. It is rather that days are constituents of weeks, and vitamins constituents of oranges, but this is expressed by using the metaphorical concept that constituents are contents. Seen in this light, the container metaphor is part of a more basic metaphorical concept and it could be argued that to ask about the message ‘in’ a letter does not primarily distinguish a letter as a container and an isolated message therein, but regards the message as one constituent of a more complex concept, i.e. the letter. Eubanks, on the other hand, does not look for a more basic metaphor, but tries to relate the conduit metaphor to other metaphors of communication: Conceptual metaphors operate most commonly as part of larger conceptual systems. We cannot, therefore, gain important insights into a single metaphor without also considering the metaphors that support it and to which it responds. Accordingly, the Conduit Metaphor is part of an interrelated, dynamic conceptual system that includes the metaphors Language is Power, Writing is Conversation, Ideas Are Products, Argument is War, Truth Is Light, Understanding is a Journey, and surely others. 25 Eubanks makes a strong point that common criticism of the conduit metaphor is short-sighted, as it usually simply analyzes the metaphor in isolation. Instead metaphors should be considered as functioning within a network of metaphorical concepts and thus need to be critically considered with regards to their position within a metaphorical field. The second objection to traditional criticism of the conduit metaphor Eubanks makes comes from a different direction: Most of the critics regard the conduit metaphor as making only an ontological assertion about the way communication works. However, Eubanks stresses that metaphors usually combine an implicit (or supposed) ontology and ethical idealism. 26 Regarding 24 Grady 212ff. 25 Eubanks, “Understanding Metaphors” 94. 26 This idea is supported by focus-group interviews Eubanks led about the conceptual metaphor “Trade is War.” Participants did consider the ontological implications of this Metaphors We Communicate By 219 communication, one productive aspect of the conduit metaphor could lie in a productive concept not of how communication actually works, but possibly how communication should work. Eubanks claims that the metaphor proves helpful for everybody teaching communication and writing skills. Seen in this light, the conduit metaphor could be used to formulate rules for how a transmitter should ‘pack’ his message so that it can be easily ‘unpacked’ by the recipient. As an ethical or at least pragmatic guiding metaphor, the conduit metaphor can be seen as advocating receiver-oriented communication which is supposed to be clear, direct and accessible, and thus the metaphor might be used to support sticking to the classical maxims of cooperation in communication which Grice has tried to describe. 27 III Liquid Times, Liquid Metaphors? — The Dynamics of Metaphors of Communication Even though some ‘classic’ metaphors of communication seem to be very dominant and persistent, we have also seen that metaphors do change over time. Developments in the field of communication technology can lead to changes in the field of metaphors of communication as well, and these dynamics will be my main focus for this investigation. 28 However, it is important to note that other aspects of cultural and social change can also stimulate dynamic changes of metaphors of communication: Social and economic processes of globalisation, commoditization and the marketization of social spheres might lead to new metaphors of communication or give new strength to older metaphors. At the same time, philosophers as well as communication and media studies scholars have tried to introduce new metaphors of communication which in their view are more adequate than established traditional metaphors. For example, researchers such as Marshall McLuhan or German media philosopher Friedrich Kittler have tried to put a stronger emphasis on the technical aspect of mass communication. McLuhan’s famous claim ‘the medium is the message’ can be seen as an attempt to enforce a new metaphor of concept by commenting on whether they thought the metaphor to be a valid description of trade. But, in addition, they also made ethical statements about the implications of the metaphor, reflecting not only on the question whether trade ‘is’ war, but also whether trade should be war — or rather not. See Philip Eubanks, A War of Words in the Discourse of Trade: The Rhetorical Constitution of Metaphor (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000). 27 See Eubanks, “Understanding Metaphors” 112ff. 28 A similar co-evolution of media technology and metaphors can be found with regard to metaphors of human memory; see Douwe Draaisma, Die Metaphernmaschine: Eine Geschichte des Gedächtnisses (Darmstadt: Primus-Verlag, 1999). M ARTIN Z IEROLD 220 mass communication, arguing that media technologies dominate the communication process rather than simply being a ‘container’ or ‘channel’ for content. 29 The same goes for Kittler and his thesis that all culture consists of electronic circuitry. 30 Again, this metaphor tries to highlight only those aspects which traditional metaphors mask, changing the perspective from the ‘invisible’ transmission of content to a dominance of solid electronic circuits over the irrelevant ‘software’ and arbitrary ‘signals’ therein. Constructivist philosophers such as Paul Watzlawick, Siegfried J. Schmidt, and Gebhard Rusch have also tried to overcome classical container, conduit and transmission metaphors of communication, arguing for epistemologically more valid concepts for human communication. Constructivists’ approaches to reform concepts of communication were highly productive and successful in the development of complex and convincing theories of communication processes, 31 or the concept of ‘understanding’ in interpersonal communication. 32 However, it might be that their main advantage, i.e. their degree of complexity and self-reflexivity, was also their main disadvantage. The terms these concepts introduce 33 are highly developed as theoretical terminology but appear abstract and lack the almost visual and intuitive persuasive power classical metaphors have. This could be the reason why constructivist concepts of communication have become very powerful (at least in ‘mainstreamed’ versions) in academic and theoretical contexts, but never really succeeded in altering exactly those everyday-language metaphors which they tried to attack. 29 See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994). 30 Kittler develops this argument in his collection of essays “Draculas Vermächtnis”; see Friedrich Kittler, Draculas Vermächtnis: Technische Schriften (Leipzig: Reclam, 1993). 31 See Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin-Bavelas, and Don D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes (New York: Norton, 1967). 32 See Siegfried J. Schmidt, Kognitive Autonomie und soziale Orientierung: Konstruktivistische Bemerkungen zum Zusammenhang von Kognition, Kommunikation, Medien und Kultur (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996) 150ff.; for more details see Gebhard Rusch, Erkenntnis, Wissenschaft, Geschichte: Von einem konstruktivistischen Standpunkt (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1987) 148ff. and Gebhard Rusch, “Kommunikation und Verstehen,“ Die Wirklichkeit der Medien: Eine Einführung in die Kommunikationswissenschaft, eds. Klaus Merten, Siegfried J. Schmidt, and Siegfried Weischenberg (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994). 33 An example for these abstract terms might be the productive, yet counter-intuitive differentiation between ‘understanding’ (‘Verstehen’) on a social level and the cognitive production of meaning each participant in communication processes constantly undertakes, which Rusch and Schmidt call ‘Kommunikatbildungsprozesse’ (Schmidt, Kognitive Autonomie 150ff). For a brief introduction into constructivist concepts of communication see Ansgar Nünning and Martin Zierold, Kommunikationskompetenzen: Erfolgreich kommunizieren in Studium und Berufsleben (Stuttgart: Klett, 2008) 49ff. Metaphors We Communicate By 221 Many more metaphors of communication and media technologies can be studied in the history of communication and media theory and philosophy. Just like constructivist concepts, they might not have travelled too well into everyday language and its metaphors and implicit concepts of communication, but a history of communication and media theory should always also be a history of metaphors, as the brief notes above have indicated. 34 If advances in media and communication theory usually prove unable to change our everyday talk about communication, we might still expect that matters might be different with communication technology. During the 15 years since Krippendorff published his account of metaphors of communication, communication technology and practice has changed fundamentally with the rise of the World Wide Web, mobile media, social network sites, user-created media content, the continuing commercialization of communication and more. If it is true that communication technology in the past has brought about new metaphors of human communication in general like the transmission metaphor, it seems quite likely that our present-day ‘new’ digital technologies of interpersonal and mass communication could again lead to a dynamics of metaphors of communication — either in the specific context of these technologies or even for human communication in general. However, at the moment it seems hard to find any valid empirical data that would suggest this is the case on a broad level, at least not in any sense which might suggest that these new metaphors could play a dominant role in our everyday language: The established metaphors of communication like the container and the conduit metaphor quite obviously are still being used widely and shape our concepts of communication in many ways. We are still talking about the content of an e-mail or a text message sent with a mobile phone, and we are willing to consider websites as containing information. Thus I can only state some hypotheses as to which aspects of communication new metaphors derived from emerging and new media technologies probably are starting to stress and highlight and which could play a more important role in the future. Referring to Vilém Flusser it might be argued that our process of learning how to handle new media technologies will take us centuries to come — and so might the development of new metaphors that 34 For example, Rüdiger Zill has contributed an inspiring analysis of Cassirer’s metaphor of the ‘refracting media’ (‘brechende Medien’). Cassirer argues that media and symbolic forms serve as the only access to reality, where each medium functions as a lens with its own radius and thus its own productive function in visualizing aspects of reality, while at the same time masking others. See Rüdiger Zill, “Gebrochene Strahlen, zersplitterte Spiegel: Zur Partikularisierung der Weltbetrachtung,” Philosophie und Weltanschauung, Dresdner Hefte für Philosophie 1, ed. Johannes Rohbeck (Dresden: Thelem, 1999) 179- 96. M ARTIN Z IEROLD 222 evolve in the context of these technologies. 35 So any guess we make today might look strange and implausible in some years — however, it might be worth a try. As digital media still are quite commonly associated with ‘the virtual’ as opposed to the supposedly more ‘real’ experience in encounters that do not make use of digital media devices, it seems plausible to take a look at the metaphors the discourse about ‘the virtual’ is shaped by . . 36 Ulrike Schultze and Wanda J. Orlikowski from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have analyzed common metaphors of virtuality 37 in journals directed at business managers who want to make use of digital technologies in order to organize work in their companies, such as virtual teams working from home offices using intranet platforms, and business websites on the internet etc. 38 While there were a number of different metaphors in use, five tendencies were very common to metaphors of the virtual as opposed to metaphors used to describe organisation and organisational communication in the socalled real world: 39 1. Virtuality was associated with liquids, fluidity, and continuous change rather than solid or stable states of the real world; 2. Virtuality was associated with an undefined ‘space’ rather than an identifiable ‘place’; 3. Virtuality was associated with active and responsive customers/ recipients rather than passive or unresponsive customers/ recipients; 4. Virtuality was associated with community rather than competition; 5. Virtuality was associated with trust rather than control. 40 35 See Vilém Flusser, Medienkultur, ed. Stefan Bollmann (1992; Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008) 27. See also Rüdiger Zill’s contribution to this volume for a more detailed discussion of Flusser’s work. 36 However, there are various other equally plausible paths one could pursue in looking for possible directions of future developments with regard to metaphors of communication. Metaphors focussing on visuality and performativity like the theatre metaphor, which have already been well researched in the context of computer technologies (see e.g. Peter Matussek, “Performing Memory: Kriterien für einen Vergleich analoger und digitaler Gedächtnistheater,” Pragrana: Internationale Zeitschrift für historische Anthropologie. 10.1 (2001): 303-34.), seem particularly relevant, in addition to the metaphors connected to notions of ‘virtuality’ analysed here. 37 See Ulrike Schultze and Wanda J. Orlikowski, “Metaphors of Virtuality: Shaping and Emergent Reality,” Information and Organization. 11.1 (2001): 45-77. 38 They chose these kinds of publications as a source for their analysis because they assumed that the constructive and structuring function of metaphors is very likely to play a prominent role in magazines aimed not primarily to present complex theories, but to offer easy-to-use advice to be put into practice. 39 Schultze and Orlikowski 53. 40 Just as an aside, I would like to note that some of these are tendencies which sociologists like Bauman (see Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, Metaphors We Communicate By 223 Regarding metaphors of communication, in my opinion, all of these tendencies can be seen as working against a container metaphor of communication, as the container metaphor stands for a rather ‘solid’ or static concept of linear communication with passive recipients. Thus, one might argue that digital communication will be in need of other metaphors than the container metaphor. New metaphors that take up these notions of virtuality and which help shape a new concept of communication would not highlight the idea of fixed messages as identifiable objects with a set location in a set place (i.e. a concrete text that has the form of an object), which only allows the reader to ‘take out’ meaning and not respond and thus renders communication a means of control and competition rather than communal practice. But there is still no dominant or even convincing metaphor for the actual process of communication (rather than for the organisational forms that emerge out of digital communication like ‘networks’ or ‘communities’) that could replace the container metaphor in everyday language. However, in particular fields of online communication, new specific metaphors seem to be playing an increasingly important role. Indeed, the metaphors of communities and networks which are often used for digital forms of organisation and communication tend to focus on other aspects of communication than the static container metaphor does. And looking at online chatting it might well be that some ideas which resemble the metaphor of communication as a form of dance and ritual will play a prominent role in shaping the concept of online chatting or activities as “gruscheln” — a compound made of the German words for greeting and cuddling 41 —, when members of networks can send each other messages without any content, which simply symbolize a cuddle. I do not want to suggest that digital forms of communication are forms of communication that ‘in reality’ are indeed free of control, ideology or competition. However, this seems to be what a dominant discourse about certain forms of online communication suggests, and it will be one thing for future communication and media scholars to do empirical research on these dis- 2000)) or Beck, Giddens, and Lash (see Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, eds., Reflexive Modernisierung: Eine Kontroverse (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2007)) see as key aspects of late modern societies in general — though without the optimistic undertone often implied by protagonists of ‘virtual culture’ —, and it seems striking that metaphors for the virtual in discourse on digital technology resemble the metaphors in use for the analysis of present-day societies in general like that of ‘liquidity’ which Zygmunt Bauman has so prominently made his major metaphor to describe and analyse late modernity. 41 The term ‘gruscheln’ has been introduced by the German Facebook-clone StudiVZ and is now rather common in online communication in Germany. It is the equivalent to the ‘poke’-function on Facebook. M ARTIN Z IEROLD 224 courses and their metaphors, and a second just as important step to analyse these metaphors in the form of a critique of the underlying ideologies. 42 IV Metaphors of Academic Communication and Practice As a final step for this article, I want to take a look at metaphors of academic communication. Just as society and culture are constantly changing and metaphors change with them, the system of science and the academia is constantly developing, and at the moment it seems that this is happening with ever accelerating speed. Herbert Grabes and Sean Franzel have presented two impressive accounts of conceptual metaphors shaping the idea of communication within the academia. 43 Seen from our present-day perspective, it seems striking that most of the metaphors on offer which shape our concepts of academic communication are about producing and sharing knowledge — starting from the ‘mirror’ metaphor up to the romantic idea of an academic dialogue even within monological texts like published lectures. I want to make a tentative attempt to draw attention to two other source fields of metaphors for academic practice in addition to those of enquiry and acquisition of knowledge: politics and economy. These are without doubt traditionally quite closely connected to the realm of knowledge: Knowledge, as we say, is power; and power usually is linked to money. 44 However, even in the light of a long interwoven tradition of the metaphoric fields of economy and power with that of knowledge, we can observe some changes in the way academic communication is described today, as both of these fields play a growing role in the daily practice of academic work. Today, the University of Amsterdam tells its students to consider themselves not primarily to be independent researchers, but ‘entrepreneurs’ 45 — a metaphor coming from the field of economy that would have been heavily 42 Ansgar Nünning’s contribution to this volume can serve as an example of a critical analysis of metaphors and their implicit ideologies, in this case the metaphor of ‘crises.’ 43 See their respective contributions within this volume. 44 Dick Pels offers a concise overview of the interconnected analyses of knowledge, power, and property, sketching a history of the theory of knowledge which constantly oscillates between the two poles property/ economics and power/ politics; see Dick Pels, “Mixing Metaphors: Politics or Economics of Knowledge? ” Theory and Society. 26.5 (1997): 685-717. 45 As many other universities, the University of Amsterdam encourages its students in all departments to take part in courses about entrepreneurship; it also prides itself in ‘producing’ more successful entrepreneurs than any other Dutch university (see University of Amsterdam Press Office, “Successful Dutch Entrepreneurs Highly Educated: UvA Produces Successful Entrepreneurs,” Amsterdam 2007. 26 Feb 2009 <http: / / www.fee.uva.nl/ english/ object.cfm/ 6833B8AD-F283-41B6-B3F3D728F7D43BC A/ 8F7A8AB7-1321-B0BE-68F4991B9D650C29>. Metaphors We Communicate By 225 protested by students only a few decades ago and today is embraced by professors making curricula including career services and students hunting for the next internship alike. Professors are supposed to be professional fundraisers, just as an emerging enterprise needs to find sponsors or ‘business angels’ (note the metaphor...) who are willing to give money. Seminars have to be evaluated just as new products are tested by market research. Universities need to have public relations offices just as any business does. Research foundations need to have lobbyists close to the political decision-makers; and while this might not be so new, the fact that it is actually called ‘lobbying’ just as the tobacco industry subscribes to the term certainly is a rather recent development. Once more, for the time being I do not want to make any judgement about these changes in metaphors that conceptualize our ideas of academic practice and especially of academic communication. I am certainly all for career services and legitimizing academic work by making it accessible to a wider public. However, I do feel that if we think about metaphors of academic work and academic communication, we should include those areas more thoroughly that have for ages not been seen as part of the core competences of scholars, but which today make up an ever-growing amount of time for anybody involved in a job inside the academia. And, yet again, a selfreflexive form of ideology critique (not cultural pessimism) seems to be needed. Summing up, I was hopefully able to show that metaphors are not only a means of communicating and making sense of the world, but they are also a means of making sense of the very concept of communication. I have taken a look at established metaphors of communication and the criticism especially the container and conduit metaphor has provoked, and also sketched positions that question this harsh criticism. As a next step, I have tried to at least suggest possible directions for future developments in the field of metaphors of communication which might shape our understanding of new communication technology and, at the same time, surely will be shaped by these technologies. Finally, I have tried to add a side note to the ongoing discussion about metaphors of academic communication. As a conclusion, I can only hope that this monologue of an article seemed a bit like a dialogue to my readers and will be opening up fruitful research and discussion on the changing metaphors of communication. Let’s dance, shall we? M ARTIN Z IEROLD 226 Works Cited Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, eds. 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