Spatial Metaphors

Definition

Spatial metaphors name the observation — central to Shirley Ardener's chapter — that "much of social life is given shape" through spatial terms: "The extended use of such spatial terms is firmly embedded in the language in which this is written. Obvious cases would be 'high society,' 'wide application,' 'spheres of interest,' 'narrow-mindedness,' 'political circles,' 'deep divides of opinion.'" Such usage "assert[s] a correspondence between the so-called 'real' physical world and its 'social reality'" — a correspondence that then runs both ways, since "appreciation of the physical world is in turn dependent on social perceptions of it." The claim is grounded in two social-scientific sources: Goffman's microecology — "the division and hierarchies of social structure are depicted microecologically, that is, through the use of small-scale spatial metaphors" — and Edwin Ardener's proposal of a semiotic system "that depended, in the absence of the power of speech, upon the apperception by the human participants of contextually defined logical relations among themselves in space," from which people "jockey for position" knowing their fellows may "read" their social importance — or, as Hall put it, space speaks. Metaphor here is not ornament but medium: the spatial register is how social order is thought, negotiated and enforced.

De Certeau's "Spatial Stories" adds a second, active sense: the metaphor that moves. "In modern Athens, the vehicles of mass transportation are called metaphorai. To go to work or come home, one takes a 'metaphor' – a bus or a train." Stories "could also take this noble name: every day, they traverse and organize places; they select and link them together; they make sentences and itineraries out of them. They are spatial trajectories." Where Ardener's metaphors depict social order (the state of being mapped), de Certeau's metaphorai operate spatial order — narrative structures as "spatial syntaxes" that regulate "changes in space (or moves from one place to another)," passing through epistemological, alethic and deontic 'modalities'. The metaphor is no longer a term borrowed from space to describe society; it is the vehicle that carries bodies (and stories) through space, "organizing walks… before or during the time the feet perform it" (see narrative-space, practiced-place).

Key Thinkers

• Shirley Ardener — the catalogue of spatial terms and the two-way correspondence thesis (pp. 15–16).
• Michel de Certeau — the metaphorai: Athens's buses named "metaphors," and stories as vehicles that "traverse and organize places" — the metaphor that moves rather than depicts (pp 78–79).
• Edwin Ardener — the speechless semiotic system of spatial position; "Time-systems occupy spaces which are generated by and with the physical and social space" (p. 20); not yet paged (see log).
• Erving Goffman — microecology and the "imprint" of persons and objects (Gender Advertisements, 1979); not yet paged (see log).
• Edward T. Hall — "space speaks": proxemics as communication; not yet paged (see log).
• Ferdinand de Saussure — the semiological background (note 9): sign systems, and value as "negative presence."

Related Concepts

• Space — the physical register from which the metaphors are drawn and to which they return.
• Semiotics — spatial position as sign system; the architecture-and-language analogy's anthropological base.
• Partition of Space — metaphors as the cognitive instrument of partitioning.
• Structuralism — meaning from relations, not positive terms: the logical ground of "negative presence."
• Ground Rules and Social Maps — the map is itself a spatial metaphor for social structure.
• Narrative Space — stories as spatial operators: the metaphorai link between the metaphoric register and narrative space.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The Partition of Space (Ardener 2006) — the catalogue ('high society'…'deep divides of opinion', pp. 15–16); Goffman's microecology (p. 16); Edwin Ardener's semiotic system and "space speaks" (p. 16); Goffman's objects that "strew indications, leave an imprint" (p. 17); Saussure's "negative presence" (p. 17).
• Spatial Stories (de Certeau 1984/2006) — the active-metaphor register: "In modern Athens, the vehicles of mass transportation are called metaphorai"; stories as metaphorai — "every day, they traverse and organize places… they make sentences and itineraries out of them. They are spatial trajectories"; narrative structures with "the status of spatial syntaxes" and their epistemological/alethic/deontic modalities of passage (pp 78–79). See narrative-space, practiced-place.

Open Questions

• If social hierarchies are "depicted microecologically," is interior design in the business of authoring spatial metaphors — and can a designed metaphor fail (be read against its intended social meaning)?
• The catalogue runs from 'high society' to 'deep divides' — is there an architecture of these metaphors (the mezzanine, the sunken court, the threshold), or do built forms merely borrow the language afterwards?
• Goffman's objects "impress a part of themselves… not dependent on being attended" — does this give the designed object a metaphoric agency independent of both designer and occupant (cf. the atmosphere debate's "latent effect")?