METAPHORS OF MONEY LOREDANA FR IL *

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1 STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABE -BOLYAI, PHILOLOGIA, LIII, 2, 2008 METAPHORS OF MONEY LOREDANA FR IL * ABSTRACT. The article tackles the issue of the linguistic and visual metaphors of money, focusing on interpreting them as cognitive instruments and as elements that may manipulate one s attitudes, opinions, feelings and behaviour. Key words: metaphors of money, linguistic metaphor, visual metaphor, cognitive tool, manipulative force 1. Introduction Metaphors are pervasive in our daily lives most obviously in language, but nevertheless present in our actions and thoughts, so that they transgress the boundaries of a linguistic phenomenon and affect the way we think and act in the world. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then, the way we think, what we experience and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1984: 3). In other words, not only does language rely on metaphor to convey meaning, but metaphorical concepts systematically structure our understanding. By using metaphors, we activate previous experiences with things and phenomena in order to explain, interpret and understand new ones. Besides being cognitive tools, metaphors are, undoubtedly, triggers of attitudes and feelings. Depending on the type of implicit association between the source and the target domains, certain emotional reactions that cannot be ignored are brought fore by metaphors. The present paper aims at investigating, against this dual background, the metaphors of money selected from the 2007 issues of Capital, a Romanian weekly business newspaper alongside six visual metaphors (images of money with a metaphorical value), available online. 2. Lexical metaphors of money 2.1. Money as a creature Quite frequently in Capital, (in fact, so frequently that we may consider it a systematic metaphor, a metaphor we live by), money is talked about as if it were a living creature, human most of the times, but, though more rarely, non-human as well. * Babe -Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. loredanafratila@yahoo.com

2 LOREDANA FR IL The anthropomorphic metaphors take shape as part of the business as fighting scenario, itself pervasive in the discourse of economics (a topic I enlarged upon in a previous paper, Fr il, forthcoming). They may be classified into antonymic groups, according to which aspect is highlighted, to whether money is the winner or the loser of a battle. The former category may be illustrated by quotations such as: Now the leu has its glorious days The match is not over yet, and its perspectives are even brighter. The euro smashes the dollar on the European markets. The leu, this Rocky of the financial domain has recovered in about the tenth round, and it has become a champion in the last two years. (Mugur Isarescu, the Governor of the Romanian National Bank) In 2005, the winner of the credit will be appointed: it will be either the leu or the euro, while examples in the latter include: The dollar has taken painful punches. The blow was so strong that the dollar could not get off the floor for three consecutive days. After three attempts at breaking the threshold of 1.45 for a euro, the finishing blow was given to the dollar by China. After this last battle, the king leu is singing his swan song. Outside the frame of the general conceptual metaphor business is war, money is implicitly compared to a child: We are carefully monitoring the evolution of the lei credit, which has grown too big for his boots As a responsible parent, M. Isarescu says that in the beginning we were happy at his evolution but we have to take double care especially after his recent bold growth. For the moment, the cheeky child won t be punished severely, he will be warned only. In the future, things might change The small sanctions we have given him so far haven t had a very strong effect. Describing money in terms of its being human takes other forms as well, including that of an ill person, sometimes embodied in what Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 15) call orientational metaphors (born out of our basic experiences of human spatial orientation, on a physical basis: when our health is dramatically affected, we are forced to lie down, while, when we are perfectly healthy, we are up): The National Bank of Romania has launched on the market the antidote needed by the leu to recover The antidote has appeared, and the fever of the leu went down, but the feverish state didn t. The leu is sinking fast. The health of the leu is declining. The leu is flat on its back with a serious illness. The non-human metaphors are prompted by the name of the Romanian currency, which, in translation, is the equivalent of lion. Based on this correspondence, images such as the following are created: 204

3 METAPHORS OF MONEY The strong leu (lion) roars at the exporters profits. The population has profited by the leu (lion) which bites the euro. The foreign currency credits start showing their fangs. The opposite of the metaphor of money as a lion is that of money as a jade, a linguistic device which expresses the intended meaning more concisely than a prolix non-metaphorical equivalent: The leu is a jade artificially sustained by the fact that the investments funds worldwide speculate the exchange rate. M. Isarescu pretends he is an illusionist and shows us how strong the jade called leu is. The above ways of picturing money establish similarities that do not exist independently of the metaphors. Besides adding dramatic effect to the narrative (Cortazzi 1991), the metaphor-induced equivalences mentioned serve an explanatory purpose successfully. They function properly at a cognitive level, since they help the readers understand the unfamiliar in the world of business in terms of what they are supposed to be very well acquainted with, they themselves, a pretty common wild animal such as the lion and a jade, a thin horse that has not been taken care of and feed properly. On the one hand, we have all been in a situation of winning or losing a battle and have been confined to bed by a severe illness once in a while. On the other, we must have heard a lion roaring (in films or on tapes if not in a real life context) and know what a frightening effect this may have. We, most probably, have all seen a jade. Some of the metaphors quoted might, however, be part of a journalistic strategy. They may serve as a sort of subliminal advertising tool meant by the authors of the articles to attract their readers attention (most of the metaphors are used in the titles) and ease the selling of a newspaper which the average, non-professional audience would not probably buy on a regular basis. Admittedly or not, we have developed an appetite for reading stories of terminal illnesses, of violence, of who won a war and who lost it. Such stories are even more captivating when the main hero is a well-known Hollywood film character Rocky Balboa. Thus, the Governor of the Romanian National Bank made an inspired choice when he idiosyncratically spoke about the evolution of our national currency as if it had been the evolution of a boxer in the ring. His choice of the money child metaphor was equally inspired, though the effects created are different. When a public person as important as the head of a country s bank describes himself as a caring father, supervising his child s every move so as to keep him on the right track, he cannot but be admired and trusted (though, an informed reader, knowing that the governor s orders have not always had positive consequences, may frown on this description and the effect of the metaphor is reversed) Money as an object There are two inanimate vehicles of the topic money in the corpus analyzed. One occurs in the metaphor money is a car (illustrated in a) and the other in the metaphor money is a liquid (exemplified in b)). 205

4 LOREDANA FR IL a) The dollar speeds up. The exchange rate rams the sector of big machinery. b) The euro has frozen at the level of 3.52 lei. The leu melted by 0.3% in June. Besides these two metaphors, I selected one more from the articles of Capital. The creation of the Governor of the Romanian National Bank, it does not refer to money itself, but to a process involving it. However, I consider it worth mentioning here, together with its wider context: If, for example, two million euros flow in, the interest will fall and the exchange rate will appreciate. At a certain level of the exchange rate, however, potential investors are discouraged to invest. On the other hand, if outflows are bigger than 2 billion euros, even as little as 200 million matter because the interest rises and the exchange rate depreciates. The monetary basis is an advantage for the moment, but it may be a disadvantage as well. That is, for small amounts, variations may be big. It is the metaphor of a one hundred coaches train pulling at a platform which is five coaches long only and everybody wants to get off, in the field, in the mud or they simply cannot get off. In the case of the first two metaphors, the cognitive function is obvious. They are used to explain an unknown situation based on what is grounded in our experience. In the case of the train metaphor, however, the cognitive role seems to be unclear. Readers in general, expect metaphors to clarify particular aspects of the topic, which does not happen here, at least not to the full extent. As an unskilled person in the world of business, I found it difficult to find the similarities between fluctuations in cash in and outflow, the evolution of the exchange rate and the longer train pulling at a shorter platform. Therefore, my opinion that the aim of this particular metaphor is not primarily cognitive may be justified. I may not be wrong in saying that what the Governor aims at when uttering such words is to make an ambiguous situation, for which he has no explanations, appear pretty clear. 3. Visual metaphors of money Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6

5 METAPHORS OF MONEY The visual metaphors of money are quite diverse, as it can be seen in the pictures above, selected from the ones available online. In Figure 1, the visual metaphor which represents money as weights on a pair of scales, corresponds to the metaphor of the fight between currencies, illustrated by some of the examples above. Figure 2 stands for the idea of money laundry, of washing dirty money. Figure 3 suggests the fact that money is a life saving element, it is like a bubble of oxygen for somebody who needs to breathe underwater. In Figure 4, money becomes the leaves of a tree, while in Figure 5, it is the devil. Finally, in Figure 6, it replaces eye patches that obscure vision. Out of a specified context, as I had access to them, the visual metaphors above have a pretty obvious cognitive function, their role as triggers of emotional reactions or particular attitudes or as manipulative devices not being clear in these cases, though it may be speculated upon, at least in some of the instances. As such, just like the linguistic metaphors discussed in the previous section, they structure the concept money partially only, in the sense that they cover a number of the aspects of the implied comparison, but not all. They highlight some characteristics of money, while leaving others unexplored. Thus, the balance in Figure 1 shows that the winner in the fight of currencies is the dollar, it is more powerful than the euro, the strength of the currency being thus emphasized. In Figure 2, the stress falls on the illegal way in which the money has been earned, while Figure 3 makes us think of how necessary money is in borderline cases. In Figure 4, the quantitative element of the implied comparison is highlighted money is as numerous as the leaves of a tree. The negative characteristics of money (whichever they are) are pointed at in Figure 5, not only by the drawing, but by its colour as well (this visual metaphor bears obvious similarities with the very frequently used metaphor in money is the devil s eye ). The same type of characteristics are brought to the fore by the metaphor in Figure 6, since money prevents one from seeing, it cannot be but a bad thing. Further interpretation of this metaphor prompts the idea that, blinded by money, one may lose one s mind and no longer be capable of straight judgment. The metaphor in Figure 1 is quite helpful in making the rapport between the two currencies clear. Depending on the situation and on personal experiences, this visual representation may bring joy or sadness, it may trigger one kind of actions or another (for example, if one has savings in euros, that person might feel happy, since s/he is favoured by the rapport indicated, if, on the contrary, one s savings are in dollars, that person might suffer losses in the context illustrated, and therefore look at the situation pictured with bitterness, etc). Figure 2 might, unfortunately, encourage the thought that money that has been earned illegally can be turned into clean money, while the visual metaphor in Figure 3 might increase one s desire to have money, since it is so useful in a crisis situation. My own reaction at Figure 4 remained within cognitive limits. I understood the allusion at a considerable quantity of money, but did not have any emotional reaction to it. Neither did I think of acting in a specific way. The metaphors of money as the devil and as the eye patches, in Figures 5 and 6, unlike 207

6 Powered by TCPDF ( LOREDANA FR IL that in Figure 3, might determine one to think twice when turning the making of money into one s number one priority. 4. Conclusions The metaphors of money analyzed are pretty diverse, ranging from very frequently used ones, such as the metaphor of money as a fighter in the business war, as the weights on a pair of scales or the leaves of a tree, to less familiar, quite unexpected implied comparisons such as the parallel between money and Rocky or that between the longer train pulling at a shorter platform. They cover a range of roles as well. The most evident of these is that of a cognitive instrument, serving to explain what is unclear or unknown by relying on what previous experiences have turned into familiar things. They also add dynamism and flavour to the narratives in which they are used as attention grabbing elements and have manipulative effects, in that they trigger particular emotions, beliefs and attitudes. REFERENCES 1. Cortazzi, M Primary Teaching, How It Is: A Narrative Account, London, David Fulton. 2. Fr il, Loredana. Fighting the Business War. Forthcoming, paper presented at the 9th International Symposium on Interdisciplinary Regional Research, The University of Novi Sad, Serbia, June Lakoff, G. And M. Johnson Metaphors We Live by, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. Corpus selected from: 1. Capital (2007), published weekly by Ringier Romania, Bucharest (linguistic metaphors)