Weaving Metaphors

Long time ago I read about some observation that stick with me for over decades now. I couldn’t find where I read it directly, but from my hazy memory I think it came out of Rupert Sheldrake or Terence McKenna or someone other from such post-hippie milieu. It probably had something to do with McKenna’s stoned ape idea. I was always sceptical about suggested reason behind that observation, but I think there’s something interesting in observation itself.

Observation was that there is a lot of words or common idiomatic phrases that connect telling stories with weaving, sewing, embroidery or generally traditional textile making and clothes. We talk about interwoven or intertwine threads in a complicated story. Story takes many twists and turns. Crafty writer unravels mystery at the end. Or maybe you think that it is more tangled web. You could say it is coming apart at the seams. Unless there are just loose ends for potential sequel. Spin doctor spins the narrative for his political patron. You can wonder if someone stretch the truth with his self-appraisal. Did you hear someone’s spinning a yarn?

Speaking of stretch, there is more examples that could fit, but maybe you think there’s holes in my arguments. In the end, textile making is one of our oldest craft. Maybe most people today don’t have contact with this craft directly, but in older times it was understandable by everyone. Metaphors borrowed from it crop up in many other domains as well. But I found some article that point at weaving language used as metaphor for communication (which could be interpreted as same what I called “storytelling”)¹.

This connection doesn’t seem to be limited to English. Apparently it was common in Ancient Greek too². Word “text” comes from Latin “texere” which means “to weave”. “Clue” initially meant “strand of yarn”. In fact, many of the same connections as in English exists in my native Polish and I read about it for the first time in Polish translation and translator noted in footnote that it works same in both languages (as a teenager I wasn’t able to read English). I don’t know if those similarities exists out of common Indo-European origins or more recent borrowings, but I doubt it’s accident.

Here are some Polish examples:
“Opowieść jest grubymi nićmi szyta” — literally: “The story is sewed with thick threads”, metaphorically: “It is easy to see that someone’s lie”.
”Zaplątał się we własnych kłamstwach” — literally: “He tangled himself in his own lies”, metaphorically: “He is inconsistent, he is lying”.
”Naciągana opowieść” — literally: “Stretched story”, literally: either untrue or only partially true story.

To harper with yet another example, ink³ is markup language for creating interactive fiction which was used by many games. Ink embraces fully textile metaphors and uses such terms like knots, diverts, stitches and weaves. Of course, ink was created by particular people, in opposition to organic growth of language over centuries as in other examples. But it still points at potency and potential undercurrent of textile language and I don’t think it is accident that ink creators choose them by chance.

Interesting thread to follow from this article could be how weaving can be medium of storytelling in its own way [^4]. It is not what I’m focused here though and the topic deserves its own investigation.

Language as a metaphor

Connection between domain of storytelling/communication and textile-making could be interesting, even whimsy fact. But it was when I realized that there are more such category pairs that it got me thinking. If you want to see more, think about how vision is common metaphor for thinking or understanding. We say that we see when we understand something, we focus, our thoughts are scattered, something can be clear. Pay attention and it could be fun mind game to find such other connections.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m not the first one who made this more general observation. When I investigated the topic, I learned about classic book Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff & Johnson from 1980. They actually made even stronger point and claimed that metaphors are not only fundamental building blocks for languages, but also basic processes for conceptualizing and understanding⁴. Their ideas stirred discussion to come in linguistic and cognitive sciences for decades to come. They also claim that there are common mappings between some cognitive domains that are shared between languages, pointing at some underlying human neural mapping. There are various criticism of their ideas, especially more specific and stronger claims. Even though, if we relax our main point we can simply observe that metaphors crop up everywhere in our language.

As I mentioned earlier, sometimes I play that game with myself to find those conceptual domains that connect to each other. I look how they work in English and Polish, what is the difference between both languages. I hope to look at this aspect in any language that I want to learn. What those mappings tell me about character of particular language. If you wish to try it yourself, just keep in mind that language is fuzzy and not everything will “fit”. Sometimes you will notice that you can make your domains broader or narrower. That one domain can map to other domains that you didn’t think at first. First example I used, namely “textile” domain came out to be even more potent than I initially thought. It seems there is a lot of “textile” metaphors in English and Polish, not only relating to communication. Those nuances can undermine my thesis. Fortunaly, I don’t think I have any strong thesis here, it’s something to play with only. For stronger thesis we can look up at Lakoff & Johnson and works that came afterwards.

This note will potentially contain fanciful list of those potential connections between domains I noticed.