Chapter 7: The Earth, Olympus, and The Commuter Bus

I mostly agree with the main thesis of L. D. Ritchie in his chapter, namely that nonpropositional aspect of language use is critical to understand the role of speech in promoting social change. Consequently, I will not try to raise criticisms of what seems to me is true in essence. Instead, I will extend Ritchie’s thesis by providing a philosophical framework to better understand the primacy of propositional language in modern psychology. From this framework, the consequences of the point of view he defended will be more evident.

Let me first summarize the arguments presented in his paper. By means of real life examples taken from public discourses, Ritchie convincingly shows that metaphor, stories, and other nonpredicative forms of using language have a strong influence in promoting social change. Metaphors would invoke “perceptual simulations” (in the sense of Barsalou, 1999) more clearly than literal language, often with emotionally intense commitment. Although “conceptual metaphors” (in the sense of Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) are part of perceptual simulations, these include many other semantic and experienced contents. Moreover, argues Ritchie, metaphors have the potential to activate dynamic schemas, invoking partial or incomplete simulations of familiar stories. It is not only an underlying support—conceptual or perceptual—of what is activated by the metaphor, but also a general setting to generate new associations and entailments not directly indicated by the expression. Usually, the activated dynamic story is socially shared and emotionally charged, contributing to reinforcing a feeling-based bond that unites people of a certain community. Ritchie underscores that social transformations induced by metaphors and stories operate simultaneously at personal and social levels: possibilities of perception and action induced by given language uses are experienced individually, as well as being observable within communities.