What is it about?
When describing music, we cannot help but use metaphor: music can go up and down, reach a climax, or plod along. Such motion metaphors are extremely common (and unavoidable) when describing music. The book explores how motion descriptions of Western classical music are motivated by fundamental patterns in thought (such as understanding time and progress in terms of motion) but also by the specific communicative setting of describing music for a certain audience (detached from a real-time experience of the music).
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Why is it important?
The book brings together aspects of general cognition (e.g. the importance of motion metaphors for more abstract thinking) and more specific communicative aspects of metaphor use in a specific technical discourse such as the description of classical music in music criticism. It also highlights the what we perceive as metaphor may depend on our background knowledge. In a rating study, it is shown, that musical motion metaphors are perceived as less metaphorical by musical experts, who are more familiar with such expressions, than by laymen.
Perspectives
The book demonstrates the importance and the pervasiveness of metaphor in everyday as well as scientific writing. It also shows that what is perceived to be a metaphor (or not) lies in the eye of the beholder.
Nina Julich-Warpakowski
Universitat Erfurt
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This page is a summary of: Motion Metaphors in Music Criticism, November 2022, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/milcc.10.
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