Towards a cultural psychology of metaphor a holistic development study of metaphor use in an institutional context

Article Towards a cultural psychology of metaphor: A holistic-development study of metaphor use in an institutional context Culture & Psychology 2015, Vol 21(4) 515–531 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1354067X15606376 cap.sagepub.com Thomas Sønderby Christensen and Brady Wagoner Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark Abstract This article asks the question how we interpret the role of metaphors in human life, from the perspective of cultural psychology Taking inspiration from two articles by Carlos Cornejo, which outline a holistical-developmental theory of metaphor in contrast to the dominant cognitive-linguistic paradigm, we provide a case study of metaphor use in relation to organisation change The case is part of a larger study of structural changes enforced within the Danish religious organisation, Indre Mission Case extracts from two different interviews with the same employee, in which the same metaphor is used with different meaning, are analysed in relation to context and development (on both micro- and ontogenetic levels) This analysis leads to the conclusion that a metaphor is understood through the particular complex situation in which it is used In other words, rather than a conceptual interaction, this article proposes seeing metaphor use as a situated act of imagination in which the person experiences certain properties of the metaphor Keywords Metaphor, holistic-developmental approach, organizational change, imagination, microgenetic analysis How can we understand the role of metaphors in human life? In psychology this question has typically been answered with different kinds of interaction between relatively stable concepts in the mind We draw on two key articles about metaphor Corresponding author: Brady Wagoner, Aalborg University, Kroghstraede 3, Aalborg 9220, Denmark Email: wagoner@hum.aau.dk Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 516 Culture & Psychology 21(4) by Cornejo (2007; Cornejo, Olivares, & Rojas, 2013), to argue that in order to understand metaphor use, we must consider the developmental nature of human life, in which persons, environments and meanings of metaphors are constantly feeding into one another, transforming their relations In this paper, we aim to (1) further advance this framework with recent theories in developmental cultural psychology and (2) provide a longitudinal single case study, dealing with employees’ reactions to organizational changes, to develop a methodology for exploring metaphorical expressions in their contextualised use This study thus provides both theoretically and methodologically challenges to existing approaches to metaphor: namely, to include an understanding of the situation in which the metaphor is used and to focus on the experience of the person as he or she imagines the metaphor Two approaches to metaphor Metaphor use has long been a subject of great interest in psychology as well as other social sciences (see e.g Ortony, 1993), but it has been approached in considerably different ways Cornejo (2007) identifies two paradigms of studying metaphors: the cognitive-linguistic and the holistic-developmental The cognitivelinguistic is characterised by a focus on how concepts interact in cognition, making metaphors primarily a matter of thinking (Koăvecses, 2005, p 8) By contrast, the holistic-developmental approach is concerned with the phenomenological experience of the situation where the metaphor is used (Cornejo et al., 2013) A central work in the cognitive-linguistic approach to metaphors is that of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), whose book Metaphors we live by is widely cited They attempt to move away from understanding metaphors as merely linguistic expressions, claiming instead that metaphors structure thoughts through systematic metaphorical conceptualisations The idea is that an abstract target phenomenon such as time, love or happiness is conceptualised in terms of a more physically graspable source domain such as a container, a journey or a physical direction Through the familiar bodily experience of the source domain, certain aspects of the target domain are highlighted, as they correspond to each other through a mapping of aspects from source to target One famous example from the authors is that of ARGUMENT IS WAR They argue that certain aspects of the domain of war are conceptually mapped on the domain of argument This is apparent in expressions such as to defend one’s position, be on target or win the argument (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p 4) Through the structuring function of metaphorical concepts, metaphors often become an unnoticed part of language However, it is possible to expand the metaphors through inferences where more aspects of the source domain are mapped on the target (Lakoff, 1993) Cornejo and others have criticised the cognitive-linguistic view in its understanding of metaphors as being basically conceptual While acknowledging the attempt to include bodily experiences into the realm of cognitive psychology, he also argues that it is an unnecessary and imprecise abstraction to talk of metaphors in terms of concepts He uses the example of the metaphorical expression ‘can’t see the forest Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 Christensen and Wagoner 517 for the trees’, which through the theory of conceptual metaphors will become TO KNOW IS TO SEE This, he argues, does not capture the rich meaning of the metaphor Instead, he proposes a pragmatic view on metaphor where metaphors are seen as a type of language use, which insinuates rather than explains: When considered as a language use phenomenon, metaphor is not a mapping Mappings suppose static cartographies to be related But, psychologically interpreted, metaphor is a contextualized, ongoing process of meaning development that has reality in the phenomenological experience of the person (Cornejo, 2007, p 484) In short, the cognitive-linguistic approach implies a rather mechanistic view of metaphors as consisting of semantic units interacting in mind and language as a system that can be described in logical terms On the contrary, a psychological interpretation is concerned with the experience of the person as he or she intentionally uses a metaphor Therefore, for the psychologist, metaphors ‘should be studied in real human beings’ and include tensions between the said and the unsaid, as opposed to in an abstract virtual place called ‘mind’ (Cornejo et al., 2013, p 487) Cornejo has picked up the distinction between logical and psychological interpretations of metaphors from German psychologist Heinz Werner (1919), who was one of the core developmentalists of the 20th century (see Valsiner, 2005; Wagoner, 2013) Werner’s holistic-developmental approach shifts the emphasis from the semantic to the expressive or ‘physiognomic’ dimensions of metaphor use Physiognomic was Werner’s term to describe the expressive and dynamic qualities of things, which were left unaccounted for from a description of shape and form (Wagoner, 2015) Like the perception of facial expression, physiognomic qualities are perceived at a preverbal level and thus go beyond the use of objective description Werner extended the idea to language comprehension, making the understanding of metaphor perceptual matter rather than conceptual (Werner, 1927/ 1978) One example is that of a ‘galloping cancer’ which, it is argued, is not a case of conceptual interaction between the domain of horseback riding and the domain of severe illness, but rather a perception of the bodily experience of something becoming increasingly out of hand (Cornejo et al., 2013, p 500) The present study aims to address the glaring gaps in the literature on metaphor use as identified by Cornejo and others, thus contributing to a truly psychological interpretation of metaphors, one that includes both the personal experience and the sociocultural context of the metaphor user In line with the analytic focus of cultural psychology, this study implies that the function of the use of a metaphor cannot be understood from analysing just the inner world of the person or just his sociocultural environment, but always the relation of the two at the given time for a specific purpose Moreover, we also want to highlight that the use of metaphors is an imaginative process More than just filling the gaps of the unknown, imagination is an expansive process in which a person’s experience is interrupted by something that is away from the here and now on the three scales of temporality, generalization and fiction (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015) From this perspective, imagination Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 518 Culture & Psychology 21(4) creates a new or developed meaning when returning to the concrete situation in which it occurs (Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013; Zittoun & De Saint-Laurent, 2014) In what follows we will provide a concrete contextualised case to further the holistic, developmental and cultural approach to metaphor Making meaning of metaphors in organisational change In order to study metaphor use, we have chosen two specific examples from a broader study on employees’ reactions to structural changes at work These examples will be analysed on several parameters taken from the theoretical background outlined above and will help shed light on metaphor use from a psychological perspective The examples we will focus on are taken from interviews done on two different occasions with the same person, who we will call Luke In these excerpts, he uses the same metaphor, which nonetheless takes on a completely different meaning in each occasion However, to understand the analysis, we will begin by presenting further background information on the social setting of the organisation and the changes they are undergoing at the time of the interviews The study was designed as a longitudinal case study of the Danish religious organisation, Indre Mission (IM), with a mix of different methods of data collection, over 15 months before and after the implementation of a new organisational structure The main data sources are semi-structured interviews with four team members on three different occasions.1 Additionally, the first author observed team meetings, looked through the recent archives of IM’s weekly magazine and conducted a questionnaire survey among employees on the perception of the changes early in the process IM regards itself as a conservative movement within the Danish evangelicalLutheran national church The core of the organisation is the 331 local communities of varying size spread around the country2 where members engage in Christian activities such as Bible studies, praying and worshipping as a supplement to services in the church In addition, IM has over 400 children’s clubs or other communities specifically for children or young people plus a range of national activities and conferences IM employs 91 people mainly concerned with assisting the communities or working in specific projects such as language schools for asylum seekers In 2013, the central board and the general secretary decided to implement a new organisational structure, which is depicted in Figure In the process, the employees were informed and asked about changes, but it was principally the management that made the decisions We have adopted the terminology used in IM of the old structure and the new structure The circle at the top is the main board, whose position as the highest authority remains unchanged The circles at the bottom are the different regular employees who, up to this point, have worked relatively independently in smaller areas Widely regarded as the biggest change, these employees will in the new structure be organised in five regional teams (represented as the rectangle) in order to work together on assisting the whole region In the old Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 Christensen and Wagoner 519 Figure Structural change in IM, January 2014 structure, the employees working with the main communities, often referred to as missionaries, answered to the general secretary and vice general secretary (circle just below and to the left of the Board) as their formal leader with the regional secretary (orange circle) as more of an inspirational leader in the daily work The employees who worked with more specific groups, such as young people, had a national leader specifically working with this area (circle below the Board to the right) With the introduction of regional teams, this role is reduced to an inspirational leadership role, while the new position as regional team leader takes over the formal leadership This role is circle above the bottom circles in the scheme During the process of restructuring, it was announced that the three regional secretaries would fill three of the five new positions as team leaders The four interview participants are three members of the same team and their team leader In January 2014, a few weeks after the implementation of the new structure, the first author sent out a questionnaire to the employees and got 49 responses One of the questions was ‘which of the changes in the new structure will in your eyes have the biggest consequences?’3 As mentioned, most of the answers were concerned with different aspects of the new team structure, including team work, the team leader and the new regional focus Interestingly, 16 of the 49 answers are mainly negative or concerned, while only answers show a positive attitude on this question The rest were either short and formal or nuanced This indicates that the process is complicated and that the changes have met a certain amount of opposition among employees This impression is backed in the interviews in December 2013 and May 2014 when talking about the general attitude among colleagues Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 520 Culture & Psychology 21(4) In the first interviews, the focus was not explicitly on metaphors, but we noticed a wide variety of more or less elaborate metaphors and images in the interviews and during observations from domains like sports, eyesight, vegetation and sailing The variety of metaphor discovered in this research could be grouped in a number of ways – for example, structural metaphors (e.g containers, buildings or frames) versus processual metaphors (e.g journeys or phases) A study of this distinction could be interesting from the perspective of organisational psychology However, for the present purpose, we consider it more useful to work with an in-depth analysis of concrete comparable cases of metaphor use Microanalysis: Throwing balls in the air On this background, we will turn to a microgenetic analysis (Wagoner, 2009) of the two sequences where Luke uses the metaphor that balls have been thrown in the air These are the only two instances across the data set where this metaphor is used The focused case study is conceptualised within the individual–socioecological reference frame (Valsiner, 2014) This reference frame is a cultural psychological alternative to the two classical frames, the intra-individual (studying phenomena within a person) and the inter-individual (where persons or groups are compared) Both frames lack the cultural and contextual aspect of human life, which is central to the individual–socioecological frame It has four main aspects: the person (or system) relating to the world; the world relating to the person; the person’s attitude or intention towards this relation and finally the attitude or intention towards the relation from significant others or institutions (pp 10–12) For the analysis to fit within this frame, we have chosen to include a description of the context of the interview and the context of the quote within the interview This is also a way of strengthening the quality of the analysis in what Gaskell and Bauer (2000) call ‘thick description’ of the data, which is considered a marker of both confidence and relevance Moreover a dialogical analysis of the institutional voices implicit in the interview (Hermans, 2001; Wertsch, 1993) provides a deeper understanding of the situation of the metaphor use, including institutional processes The power of a microgenetic analysis, comparing two instances from the same person on two different occasions, is to be able to study ontogenetic change contextualised within comparable social frames At the same time, an analysis like this avoids the often-committed ergodicity error, where differences between individuals at one point of time are mistakenly treated like development over time within an individual (Molenaar, Huizinga, & Nesselroade, 2003) In order to make the analyses of the two excerpts comparable, we will answer the following questions: What is the organisational context of the interview? What is the practical and relational context of the interview? What is the context of the quote within the interview? Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 Christensen and Wagoner 521 What is the metaphorical expression and is it linked to other images? Which aspects of the metaphor are highlighted? What is the temporal orientation of the metaphor use? How is the user’s voice and intonation in the sequence? Is there development within the sequence? Is there an implicit dialogue in the sequence? After each extract is analysed individually through these questions, we will weave together the analyses and discuss the results with the existing perspectives presented above December 2013: Looking with fresh eyes Before presenting the first passage, we will answer the first three questions to give an idea of the situation, in which the sequence takes place The interview takes place a few weeks before the official instalment of the new structure a period of time described by many in the organisation, including Luke, as a waiting period or a vacuum In the interview in May, Luke described this period as strange because for a few months everybody knew more or less what was going to happen, but they had to wait for the management and administration to become ready Luke describes mixed reactions among his colleagues with quite some scepticism towards the decisions and the management, something that he senses has surprised the leaders In this sequence as well as a few others in the interview, it becomes evident that he also is quite sceptical particularly of the process around the hiring of the regional leaders, where three were transferred from positions as regional secretaries, while one through an open competition was promoted from his current position as a regular employee The interview takes place during working hours in the meeting room in the building where he also shares an office with some of his future team members The room is quiet and undisturbed The relation is positive, even though we have not met before The first author’s personal engagement with IM elsewhere in the country might be a confidence-inspiring factor, as IM is sometimes represented in a negative way in the general public The question, to which the passage is Luke’s full reply, is a follow-up to the question ‘Would you call this a big change?’ where Luke answered no, except from the fact that eight people were fired, and the change of personnel responsibility to the regional leader Before this, he has stated that he is anxious about the team and the new team leader, whom he has not worked with before Later in the interview, he mentions the process of hiring the team leaders again as an unfortunate process At this point, metaphor use was not the topic of interest and thus it was not specifically prompted Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 522 Culture & Psychology 21(4) Interviewer: Could you have wanted even bigger changes? Luke: [laughing] Ehm, that depends on which level you’re kind of looking on I actually think that, how to put it, the structural changes that has been made by going over to a regional way of thinking and a bigger team focus is actually a big change and I didn’t really necessarily see the need for much bigger changes in the purely structural, the way of thinking us employees, I actually think the management has hit something really good I think that I could want bigger changes, as I just mentioned, in the hiring of the regional leaders, ehm, and I don’t say that to, to question the competence of the people who happen to be hired, but more so because I think, ehm, that what is dangerous is that now is the opportunity to throw up all the balls and look with fresh eyes, because now this new structure comes, now is the opportunity to kind of say ‘okay, we’re here now, how is it then that we want to think Indre Mission moving forward?’ Ehm, and I kind of fear that this opportunity isn’t seized as well as it could have been, given that internal people were hired Ehm, so, so I actually think that the structures and the changes, I actually think they are good and big enough and it is a big step and I don’t think you could have done much more without completely losing, ehm, the employees, ehm, and perhaps also the support base, if the changes had been much bigger, but the fact that you choose not to make bigger changes when it comes to the leaders, that, that annoys me a bit, because I think it could have been exciting with, well two or three new faces coming in and saying ‘So!’’ Well, came in with fresh eyes and kind of saw, ‘‘now I have this team, I don’t exactly know what you’ve done before or how you’ve done it, feel free to tell me that, but I really want to talk about, how we’re going to it now.’’’ Now four persons have been hired4 who know how it has always been done and also know a lot of the employed and what they have worked with and with which tasks and of course I’m convinced that they can look at it with fresh eyes and also, ehm, are willing to, to new thinking, but it’s just much harder when you’re part of all the old Ehm, so on that point I could have seen bigger changes, and I could have seen the exciting in bigger changes, ehm, yes I will now continue to analyse this passage through answering the remaining questions from above: The metaphorical expression of interest is the one highlighted in bold in the extract It is to throw up all the balls In this instance, Luke uses it in connection with another metaphor, which is to look at something with fresh eyes Throwing up all the balls in this case means roughly initiating a process of change The expression is only used once; however, ‘looking with fresh eyes’ is repeated twice Through the connection of the two metaphors, it is obviously considered a positively desired thing if the balls were thrown up He stresses the exciting aspect of the opportunity for something new to happen and also warns that it might be dangerous not to seize this opportunity Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 Christensen and Wagoner 523 The temporal orientation of this metaphor is that of an alternative present or future through, a description of how the world could have been if other decisions were made by others in the last six months or so Unfortunately, at the time of the interview, the first author was not aware of the exciting advantages of video recording when analysing metaphor use psychologically, so the voice will have to In this passage, Luke does not have more pauses, self-disruptions or rephrasings compared to the rest of the interview, which gives a sense of determination He is quite well formulated which could point to the fact that this is something he has said or thought before His voice is not particularly emotional, even if some criticism of the management can be sensed There is not much development within the passage as his argument remains the same throughout However, he seems to become a bit more certain In line 7, he formulates himself a bit more trying as he says ‘I think that I could want’ compared to his last statement where he ends up answering the question with a clear ‘yes’ (line 30) One way to approach the metaphor use contextually with an eye to the intentionality of different actors is to look for implicit dialogue in the sequence As this is a criticism of decisions made from the national management that is the direction I will look His initial answer gives credit to general dispositions in the new structure, which might be a way of taking some of the harshness away from his criticism It is well known as a good way of criticising to start out with something positive and might also be a way of remaining fairly loyal or thoughtful This is repeated in lines 16–19 where he answers his own criticism from the perspective of the management before reiterating it (lines 20–21) with the emotional additions that ‘it could have been exciting’ and ‘that annoys me a bit’ (alternatively: that is a shame) Moreover, he twice states that he thinks the persons hired in the positions are competent (lines 9, 27–28) possibly to nuance or soften his critique or to avoid insulting his new leader He says that it will be difficult for them to look at the situation with fresh eyes opposed to an outsider who could ‘come in with fresh eyes’ (line 22) May 2014: Waiting at the roulette table Now, we turn to the second extract from the same participant a few months later This interview is held in May 2014, approximately five months after the first interview and four months after the official implementation of the new structure Across the interviews, it is evident that there is some frustration in the organisation at the moment with the process, the other team members, the team leader and the national management In the first interview, when asked when the new structure becomes everyday life, Luke expresses a hope that it would make sense Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 524 Culture & Psychology 21(4) after six months, but that for certain aspects like the teamwork it would probably take a bit longer The physical conditions for the interview are similar to those of the first interview The relation is probably a bit stronger due to a few encounters in the meantime The passage is the full reply to the question, which marks a shift to a new topic in the middle of the interview This is the first time the first author introduced his interest in metaphorical depictions of the organisation The first question in the interview is ‘how is the new structure going?’ to which Luke’s response is mostly positive, although he adds that there are still a number of areas where they are still under way When asked about his biggest surprise in the process, he answers that he is surprised how undramatic the process has been, although it has also been a negative surprise that certain things have not been under control The same pattern is expressed here, however, with a bigger focus on the negative aspects Interviewer: I would like us to turn to talking about different metaphors and different ways of talking about the situation First I’ll ask you, which image or which metaphor you think describes the situation in Indre Mission right now in the best way? Luke: Ehm, the situation in Indre Mission [laughing]that is Well, ehm, a metaphor that, an image that has been used several times, ehm, at the moment and John as a leader also has pulled to the front, ehm, is this of building the ship while we’re sailing It, well it’s trite in many ways, but never the less I think that, at least you just look at our region and the situation we’re in, it’s an image that describes the situation quite well, that, that there’s something new, ehm, it’s new as of January 1st, but it’s definitely not finished, ehm, and the aim is then that we sail on anyway and carry on with the good work while something new is going on, ehm, I think that’s a picture, which, which describes the situation we have at least very locally with this team, ehm Well, other metaphors and images, ehm [12 s pause] I also think like, ehm, for me it’s also a situation right now in IM in general also, where, ehm, where a lot of balls have been thrown up in the air and right now we’re then figuring out around the organisation which ones to catch, ehm well, and, ehm, I still experience like a, I still experience an, an insecurity and an uncertainty and there’s still a, ehm, well we’re still not fallen into place, ehm, there are still many who, who are anxious of the new, both employed and volunteers, and there’s still, ehm, we’re still in this, ehm, thing where things haven’t really fallen into place, ehm I kind of imagine this, ehm, we’re each still waiting there at the roulette table to see where the ball ends up ehm, we’re a lot who, ehm, whose tasks as employees or like the whole structure as an association, it has kind of been, this ball has kind of been put into motion, and now we’re kind of anxious to see, where does it land, can I, ehm, will I be happy with where it lands and can I settle as an employee where it lands? Ehm, so I still think this, there’s still like an extra, well insecurity sounds negative, but this, ‘‘we haven’t calmed down’’ feeling, ehm, we’re still alert and still kind of, is it, how and why, questions are still unanswered So this Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 Christensen and Wagoner 525 feeling of the many balls which, which are in the air and we’re kind of waiting to see where is it, what is it that we catch, and what we not catch and what will the consequences be for me? I think that’s also the feeling I have, ehm And that might be a little unusual, ehm, in a movement which, as I sense, for many people has been experienced as a very calm and steady movement which builds on a large history and a large tradition and then some people become really, for whom it’s experienced very strange to experience a situation where there’s more uncertainty and there’s more, there are many more things in play and a lot of changes at once, ehm, that’s kind of a new situation In this passage, Luke uses three images First, building a ship while sailing Secondly, throwing many balls up in the air, and finally, waiting for the result at the roulette table Again the metaphor of throwing balls in the air roughly means initiating a process of change While the immediate meaning of the metaphor (‘balls in the air’) is similar to the first incident, the highlighted aspects are different The focus is on the unpleasant uncertainty of waiting and not knowing which balls will be caught The temporal orientation is on his experience of the present, which is also what he was asked about His voice and formulations seem more hesitating and searching than in the first passage with more ehms and rephrasings, possibly indicating either that he has not put these words onto this before or that he does not want to sound disloyal There is an interesting development in the sequence His first response is an iteration of an image used by his own leader as well as the national management After partly rejecting this image, he has an extraordinarily long pause (line 16) before he comes up with the image of throwing up the balls After unfolding this image a bit, he allows his imagination to wander and uses the third metaphor of standing at the roulette table and waiting for the ball to land (line 24) After talking about this feeling of waiting, he returns to the metaphor of the balls in what looks like a conclusion from line 32 However, this time there is a small change In the first instance in line 18 he says that ‘we’ are actively figuring out which to catch, but in the conclusion, this has become that ‘we’ are waiting to see what is caught and what is not The pit stop at the roulette table that focused on waiting thus added this component to the metaphor of throwing and catching and turned the metaphor into a passive one Thus, we can trace a clear microgenetic development of the image in imagination The development might be connected with the ongoing implicit dialogue in the passage It is probable that the images represent a movement further away from the official language from the management The first image is directly a repetition of the leader’s own words, which the idea that ‘we’re figuring out around the organisation which to catch’ might also be in some way, because that is what the management wants, but not what Luke experiences, which is more of a Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 526 Culture & Psychology 21(4) waiting period before somebody else – probably the management – catches some of the balls This is also indicated by the fact that he uses the first person I more and more as the passage unfolds Wrapping up the analysis We will argue that the two excerpts are powerful illustrations of (1) microgenetic change in the meaning of the metaphor ‘throwing balls up in the air’ for this particular person, (2) ontogenetic development of the participant over time as they build on previous experiences and (3) a demonstration of the fact that a metaphor does not have a meaning in itself for a person but only gets its meaning from the situation in which it is used and how it expresses personal experience there In the first case, Luke imagines an alternative future that is perceived as more exciting and promising than the actual, but which will not happen as the change process was not initiated The metaphor is perceived as the right thing to do, giving it a normative function without any notion of a troubling process involved The troubling thing would be not to change In the second case, Luke describes his current situation using the same metaphor, only now he is perceiving the balls from underneath so to speak and not in front of him It turns out balls were thrown after all, although not the ones he hoped in the first instance This time there is no mention of what is positive in the change, only a description of the unpleasantness of waiting Luke has shifted from being the agent throwing the balls (in the first case) to patiently observing the high number of ‘balls in the air’ (in the second) This indicates different physiognomic reception of the metaphor on the two occasions, producing different behavioural dispositions (Cornejo, personal communication, 17 July 2015) Thus, metaphor is not just used conceptually, but perceived from somewhere and someone in an imaginative process (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015) It is important to attend to where the subject is situated within the metaphor, the temporal orientation of the metaphor and also which implicit and explicit dialogue it is part of in the situation In addition to the microgenetic change of metaphor meaning, an ontogenetic development in Luke’s life course can also be traced from eagerness towards bigger changes to a feeling of uncertainty due to the changes He uses the same metaphor, but with a new meaning and a new intention To follow a landscape metaphor from the theory of epigenesis, the rolling ball is in a different place and the environment surrounding it has changed, as has his perception of it It is not, however, possible to establish a causal relationship between the two, such as saying that his change of attitude is caused by the new circumstances or that his personal development has caused the development of the context There is, however, the possibility that instead of a development from some kind of progressive state or quality to a more conservative one, the second instance is either just a different way of expressing a displeased impatient attitude towards the management or influenced from a Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 Christensen and Wagoner 527 recent experience of frustration on a bad day The latter is made less likely, given that the question is on the general state of the organisation and that he spends a lot of time coming up with this image The impatience is probably a consistent aspect of both sequences, but there is still a development from the wish for something new and unknown to the wish for things to be settled and known Hence, apart from the obvious microgenetic development of the meaning of the metaphor, there are reasonable indications of ontogenetic development as well One way to understand the development process between the two instances and within the second one is to look at it through the idea of bricolage Bricolage, a notion introduced to developmental psychology by Zittoun et al (2013, p 49), means to build from what is at hand at the moment The idea is that much human development happens this way rather than through careful intentional planning The meaning–development of the use of the metaphors was probably not planned or intended by the participant, but it fits his purpose: to make sense of the alternative future and the experienced present, respectively, and to express this in an interview This development could only happen through a spontaneous imaginary combination with two other metaphors, which helped him develop the first metaphor Especially in the second case, it is clear that he perceives the roulette– metaphor in his imagination on the background of his perception of the balls in the air To follow Zittoun and De Saint-Laurent’s (2014) terminology, this is a case of a loop within a loop where the roulette loop changes the balls loop The spontaneousness of the metaphor use is also backed by the fact that in the third interview, 10 months later in March 2015, when the first author asked Luke if he remembered the answer he gave in the second passage above, he did not He acknowledged the metaphor as representative of that time, but went on to describe his current situation with another metaphor, that of a sports car with the brakes on, without returning to the metaphor of throwing balls in the air To sum up, the result of the analysis is that these cases provide an example of microgenetic and ontogenetic changes, as the same metaphor clearly has different meanings and is used by the participant to express different attitudes or states of emotion in these two instances This indicates both a microgenetic development in the meaning of the specific metaphor and an ontogenetic development of the person and his relation to his work place during these five months Moreover, in the second excerpt, a microgenetic process unfolds as the metaphor gets connected with a second metaphor through an imagination loop Discussion We will conclude the article by discussing the following question: What made this a psychological interpretation and not just a logical one, and how can it contribute to theory and methodology on metaphors moving forward? From the cognitive-linguistic perspective, the analysis of this specific metaphor would probably be that the concept of change interacts with the concept of playing, where throwing corresponds with initiating the process, while catching or seeing the Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 528 Culture & Psychology 21(4) balls land corresponds to finishing the process in another state than before This logical analysis, however, does not justice to the actual incidents, as it is clear that the metaphors have two different meanings for the user in these instances even though the concepts might be the same, showing the need for a much more developmental and contextual approach To borrow the idea of physiognomic properties, it makes sense to think of the first example as a case of experiencing someone entering the room with a fresh look and the other case an experience of waiting powerlessly for a result, expressed clearly in the roulette table metaphor, and carried over to waiting for balls to be caught Hence, the empirical analysis backs the proposition of Cornejo and colleagues that the psychological interpretation of experiencing the metaphor is richer and more accurately fits reality than the logical interpretation of interacting concepts in the mind This is particularly the case due to the microgenetic change of meaning identified between and even within the two examples Cornejo, Olivares, and Rojas (2013) mentions that metaphors should be studied in real human beings with a phenomenological focus, but they not comment further on a methodology for studying metaphor use or present empirical data A longitudinal study like the one presented here with a strong focus on the institutional environment, as it is perceived by the participant, other participants and the researcher, allows for a deeper understanding of the situation in which the metaphor is used and also of the person using it With the understanding that metaphors are always said by a certain person, in both implicit and explicit dialogue with others, with a more or less well-defined intention and that all these factors are constantly developing, a thick description of a rich data set is essential for understanding the metaphor psychologically An even better understanding of the phenomenological experience of saying and listening to the metaphor could be obtained with the help of visual as well as auditory analysis (e.g as used in gesture studies – McNeil, 1992; Levy & McNeil, 2013) One thing to watch is the language of using a metaphor This phrase might reinforce the idea of metaphors as stable non-developmental entities that always mean the same and which a person at a given time can collect from his metaphor storage and use This is of course not our intention Instead, the term is meant to highlight the active intentional aspect of the practice of using metaphors in line with the idea of bricolage A person can take an image at hand and use it and develop it for this specific situation in a spontaneous, creative process This use can be both reflective and non-reflective (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010) and the two excerpts might even provide examples of both cases The second case is clearly an example of a reflective use of a metaphor, as the participant after a long pause explicitly says that he imagines this metaphor with the intention of describing his experience of the situation in the organisation In the first excerpt, the metaphor emerges in a flow of speaking and is said only once, and thus, it is not clear whether the user is reflective about this use It might exactly be one of the problems with the cognitive-linguistic approach that it ignores the reflective intentional use of a metaphor Lakoff and Johnson Downloaded from cap.sagepub.com at Aalborg University Library on January 27, 2016 Christensen and Wagoner 529 (1980, p 54) define metaphors as conceptual and state that they are not interested in singular metaphorical expressions However, if metaphors are reduced to often unnoticed hints and phrases in the language governed by a conceptual system, then the psychological importance of metaphors as resources in the development of life is lost, as is the rich interpretation of the person’s perception of the metaphor, his experience of imagining metaphorically and the situation in which the metaphor is used Indeed, these are exactly the parts needed for a psychological understanding of the microgenetic use of metaphors along the ever-developing life course Conclusion In this article, we asked the question: How can we in psychology understand the role of metaphors? Through a combination of cultural psychological theory and a focused single-case analysis, we reached the conclusion that in order to psychologically interpret metaphors, it is crucial to understand that it is always used in a situation by a person with a meaning-making purpose and neither of these can be isolated Rather than being an interaction between stable concepts in the mind, metaphors seem to emerge in a process of imagination, which can be understood through the idea of bricolage, a microgenetic process in which new meaning is created from the background of the existing Metaphor is perceived and experienced in the moment of use rather than being planned and logically understood Thus, the same metaphor can take on dramatically different meaning across situations even for the same person Declaration of conflicting interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was funded by a grant given by Danmarks Grundforskningsfond (the Danish National Research Fund) Notes Eight interviews audio recorded and transcribed in December 2013 and May 2014, and two interviews video recorded in March 2015 Two participants were not unable to participate in the last interviews due to illness and parental leave, respectively All interviews were held in Danish and the quotations in this text are translated for this purpose All numbers are from IM’s own website www.indremission.dk/organisation/fakta-og-tal Translated from Danish: Hvilke af forandringerne i den nye struktur vil i dine øjne fa˚ størst konsekvenser? 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