The previous commentary on metaphor touched on its basic structure of pattern mapping from concrete to abstract. Cognitive metaphor functions as a pattern-noticing faculty that generates linguistic representations across perceptual and conceptual domains: what we perceive around us and what we conceive in the mind gets distilled into speech. Another symbolic principle that we’ll call vertical processing works within the cognitive metaphorical faculty as a kind of sub faculty.
The basic idea of vertical processing is that we perceive identities (including both static and dynamic identities) from lower, fundamental elements up through their chain of aggregating components into their whole, which then participate in a purpose. The purpose of an identity exists within the domain of relationships and meaning beyond the material frame. Taking a truck, for example, the basic idea of its vertical process would be the fact that we perceive the truck at a lower level in terms of the component parts of tires, drive shaft, engine, lights, cabin, etc. Together, the component parts are perceived unitively as the make and model of the truck. We vertically process an identity presented as a whole made up of parts and give it a name.
Moving higher in the vertical process, we enter a domain in which the truck as a whole identity operates as a participant in a given surround. How it’s used, for example, is one way of defining the truck’s purpose, along with how it functions as a cultural symbol or how the owner is perceived for having one. In other words, the truck is made of component parts, materially, but also exists beyond the material frame within the larger frame of its purpose. The entire range of the truck’s identity is captured within vertical processing as a function of human perception.
The basic idea of vertical processing can thus be boiled down to our perception of the through-line holding an identity together along a spectrum from basic, material parts (components) up to its unitive identity (its composition or wholeness) and culminating in its relationship to the surround of other interrelated identities or its manner of participation in that surround (it’s meaning or purpose). This triframe structure of components-identity-purpose offers the basic outline of the vertical process, although different terms can be used to describe the same idea. For example, other ways of laying out this symbolic principle might be: parts-whole-use (a car, a fridge); or: information-composition-production (film, symphony, videogame); or: facts-conclusion-application (physical laws, scientific principle, argument); or: members-body-person (also, body-soul-spirit—John, Jill). The list goes on. The structure of the vertical process applies at multiple levels in multiple domains ranging from concrete to abstract; e.g. a truck is concrete, a person is abstract. All exist as iterations of the vertical process as a triframe fractal pattern.
For the sake of clarity of terms, it bears noting that vertical processing describes an aspect of the cognitive function of pattern-noticing, which I see as a sub-function of the larger operation of cognitive metaphor. The pattern which is noticed by our vertical processing faculty is the vertical process. Similarly, a metaphor is a pattern noticed by the cognitive metaphorical faculty. We’ll flesh this out in future articles.