Open-Ended Elaborations in Creative Metaphor - Computational Creativity Research: Towards Creative Machines - page 225

to nylon. Those within-pretence aspects are not paralleled in reality, even though the
overall nature of the strings is, as an unanalysed unit.
Consider also the following example:
And do you remember that one of the Vault's SPECIAL FEATURES was ADARK, DUSTY,
COBWEBBY CORNER WHERE UNWANTED THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS COULD
BE DUMPED? Well, that's where you can push the no-longer wanted, unrealistic and overly
negative thoughts too! 17
There is no need for an understander to find a parallel for the mentioned corner or
the qualities of being cobwebby, dusty and dark. Instead, these aspects of the pre-
tended scenario lead to within-pretence inferences about such matters as the relative
inaccessibility and hiddenness of the negative thoughts (metaphorically viewed as
physical objects) once the thoughts have been “pushed” into the “corner”.
The example is moderately novel not only in the notion of a “Vault” in the mind
but also in the use of “cobwebby” (whereas mention of pushing ideas, or of parts of
the mind such as corners and recesses, is common). This word may be unusual in
any mode of use, judging by the mere 29 occurrences in GloWbE. None of the uses
are similar to that in the example above, but a few uses of cobwebby corners, cellars,
etc. of the mind can be found in other sources. 18
The Anti-Analogy-Extension Thesis goes hand in hand with a form of holism
about the pretended scenarios and the metaphorical sentences leading to them. The
pretended scenario is to be regarded not as having a detailed analogy to a reality
scenario (or a scenario in some other sort of surrounding space) but rather something
that holistically conveys information about a reality scenario. This conveying is, to
be sure, done by the action of correspondences that pick on specific aspects of the
pretended scenario. But the ultimate intent here is to transfer information, not specify
an analogy. And any specific aspect of the pretended scenario that is grabbed by a
correspondence may be the result of inference over large amounts of information
within the scenario. In particular what this means is that there may be no specific
part of the metaphorical sentences that can be said to correspond to a given aspect
of the reality scenario (although this can happen in simple cases of metaphor). For
example, going back to (6), the fact that Mary lacks the belief that Mike is adorable
does not correspond to any one aspect of (6) but rather to the whole of (6).
Another work that emphasizes both frequent holism of metaphor and the lack of
need for (or indeed the frequent undesirability of) analogy-extension is Langlotz's
[ 32 ] treatment of idioms, including metaphor-based ones.
17 From excerpt found in http://books.google.co.uk of: Kate Collins-Donnelly (2014), Banish Your
Self-Esteem Thief: A Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Workbook on Building Positive Self-Esteem
for Young People , p. 127. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
18 For instance, three such uses in http://cardkiwi.com/words/cobwebby/cobwebby-sentence-
examples .