Last updated on December 17th, 2017 at 05:15 pm
A metaphor is a figure of speech that references one concept, object, or action, by identifying it with another, when that identification is not literally accurate. Metaphors help us understand and experience one thing, with which we might be unfamiliar, in terms of another, with which we are more familiar [Lakoff 1980].
For example, “my son’s room is a war zone,” identifies my son’s room as a war zone, when it is not literally a war zone. We mean by this that his room might be messy and disorganized, but we do not mean to imply that military ordnance or troops are involved. More examples:
- True friends stab you in the front. — Oscar Wilde
- A squirrel is just a rat in a cuter outfit. — “Carrie Bradshaw,” played by Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex in the City
- A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. — variously attributed to Robert Frost, Mark Twain, and others
In these examples, Oscar Wilde is not saying that friends actually stab anyone; “Carrie Bradshaw” is not saying that squirrels are rats, or that they wear clothing; and Frost or Twain are not saying that banks actually lend umbrellas. Nevertheless these three statements do literally imply stabbings, squirrel clothing, and umbrella distribution. These metaphors make their points by being literally inaccurate. The literal but untrue assertion is the hallmark of the metaphor.
The fundamental structure of metaphors is “A is B.” Borrowing terminology from cognitive linguistics, A, the main entity referenced, is called the target of the metaphor; B, the entity alluded to, is called the source. Thus, the squirrel is the target; the rat in a cuter outfit is the source. The bank is the target; the perfidious umbrella lender is the source. For the technical debt metaphor, the needed technical work is the target; financial obligation or financial debt is the source. Metaphors serve to aid us in applying what we understand well in the domain of the source, to what we understand less well in the domain of the target.
| Definition | A metaphor is a figure of speech used to convey understanding of one concept, object, or action by identifying it with another that is well understood, even though the identification is not literally accurate. The well-understood concept is called the source. The less-well-understood concept is called the target. The metaphor is thus a statement that “<Target> is <Source>.” Although the identification of target with source is literally invalid, it provides a means of understanding some aspects of the target in terms of some of the properties or behavior of the source. |
Because metaphors compel our minds to accept the identification between source and target in toto, they can cause us to make errors of thought. Those errors create risks for the enterprise as we attempt to manage technical debt. The risk arises because we begin to regard technical debt as a form of financial debt, when in reality it is not. This misidentification is an acceptable risk, if it is properly managed and understood, but that risk is often unrecognized, and therefore it remains unmitigated. A significant source of this risk is our inability to control which attributes of the metaphor’s source the reader or listener chooses to associate with the metaphor’s target. We can call this phenomenon unintended association.
Some of the unintended associations of the technical debt metaphor cause real problems for organizations as they try to manage their technical debt. We explore the unintended associations of the technical debt metaphor next time.
References
[Lakoff 1980] George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.
The classic and fundamental study of metaphor. Order from Amazon
