of metaphor accounts for this phenomenon in a more simple and convincing
fashion: it links perceptual schemata and metaphors of orientation.^12 Thus,
the ball is ‘behind’ the rock (which, unlike a car, obviously has no front or
back) because the rock is between my body and the ball. It is the outside of
the house that is painted brown because I perceive the house from the outside,
as a unified object, before entering it. The only universal feature we are dealing
with here is the experience of bodily orientation.
We can take our critique further. For Chomsky’s thesis is not even adapted
to the detail of linguistic phenomena. Consider the following two sentences:
(3) He painted the whole house brown.
(4) He painted the house off-white.
In these two instances, it seems to me that it is not so clearly the case that
we are dealing with the outside of the house. Another kind of reference to
experience, in the form of an encyclopaedia (i.e. the whole set of beliefs and
knowledge characteristic of a community of speakers in a given historical
conjuncture) is required. Sentence (3) might of course refer to the exterior of
the house. But, given that it is customary to paint the whole of the outside
of a house in a single colour (people rarely paint a house in the colours of
their favourite football team), unlike the inside, why does the sentence specify
that the wholehouse has been painted brown? Consequently, I shall construe
this sentence as referring to the interior of the house. The same is true of
sentence (4): ‘off-white’ is a colour for interior, not exterior, decoration: the
immediate interpretation of the sentence therefore concerns the rooms, not
the external walls. Naturally, this does not preclude me painting the outside
of my house mauve in order to upset the neighbours.
The conclusion is that the concept ‘house’ is definitely not ‘fixed’, but
historically and culturally determined by an encyclopaedia and a historical
conjuncture. Like all concepts, it bears within it the sedimented marks of a
history and various types of social practice.
It might be thought that my critique involves a misunderstanding. Chomsky
and I are not referring to the same thing. He is talking about an object
constructed by science – the I-language – whereas I am referring to a social
human practice. I am describing phenomena; he is furnishing their most
abstract structures. I am writing an ode to the setting sun; he is an astronomer.
26 • Chapter Two
(^12) See Lakoff and Johnson 1980.