To comminucate in the new space we still use ancient language tools.
Let' come closer to the metaphor. Why is it so importante to find a
metaphor to understand how the thing are around? Let's consider the theory
of metaphor and metonymy developed by Roman Jacobson.
It seems enough useful: 1) because in both operations we have
explicit difference between the real and the virtual world
2) because Jacobson's theory based on language distortions
represented in aphasia.
Jakobson has classified aphasia on the basis two
mechanisms of speech distortions: selection or combination.
In those instances where a selection defect is observed, the
context of the message is very important for the speaker,
s/he groups words on the basis of spatial and temporal
contiguity. A substitution performed according to the principle
of contiguity within a single context is called metonymy.
According to Jakobson it is precisely this rhetorical figure
that is widely used by aphasics whose selection capability
has been destroyed. As an example Jacobson gave
the metonymic substitution by an aphasic of the adjective
"black" with the noun "the deceased". When a combination
defect is present, the contextual fabric of the sentence is destroyed.
The connection between two or more elements in a real linguistic
series is hindered and signs are combined not according to contiguity,
but according to the degree of similarity between them.
Approximate identities of a metaphorical nature are used in speech.
As a typical example Jakobson cites the quasi-metaphorical
utterance: "telescope" instead of "microscope".
To make a kind of analogy (if not to be afraid of the demon of analogy
which frightened Roland Barthes) we could consider the multystructured
space of our discusion about the 'space' as a schizofractured (Guattari)
and
discontinuous one. In this space it is rather difficult to search for the
contiguity
of 'signs'. Floating messages unify themselves in the meta-speach according
to the various degree of similarity between them. Probably, metaphorical
way of
representation is originally determined 1) by the loosing of single context
2) by the impossibility to create united topological model.
In the situation of spatial and temporal 'disorder' the subsriber can
easily rise
from the grave. And metaphor can be very productive in the installing of
links between various spheres of knowlege.The metaphor becomes one from the
technologycal prothesis in the process of creating what we could call (by
using
one more metaphor) Golem of Con-Sciousness.
Olessia Tourkina & Viktor Mazin