As We May Speak:
Metaphors, Conceptual
Blends, and Usability
Charles Hannon

[e-mail] | Washington & Jefferson College.

[1] For a treatment of blends as a design principle, see Manuel Imaz and David Benyon. Designing with Blends: Conceptual Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

May + June 2009

[ 2] Fauconnier, G. and
M. Turner. The Way
We Think: Conceptual
Blending and the Mind’s
Hidden Complexities.
New York: Basic Books,
2002.

In 2006 Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens infamously described the Internet as a “series of tubes.” He spoke in opposition to the concept of network neutrality, instead supporting the argument that large cable and telecommunications companies should be allowed to charge a premium to Amazon, Netflix, eBay, and other Internet businesses that require reliable Internet service. His comments quickly went “viral” and he was mocked by Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and many others. Ironically, “tubes” is not a bad metaphor for some aspects of the Internet. Experts often use “pipes” to describe connections between computers and routers, and liken different pipes’ diameters to the varieties of network bandwidth. As we all know, this is how simple metaphors work: We use a familiar or shared concept (pipes) to help our listeners understand something new (bandwidth).

What got Stevens into trouble was relying on the metaphor for further details about how information moves across the Internet. His comments demonstrate his understanding of the pipes metaphor, but they reveal no grasp of the concept of a data packet or the process

of packet switching. He said (rightly) that “the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.” And then (wrongly), “if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled, and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material.” As an example, Stevens referred to an email (he called it an “Internet”) that allegedly took several days to reach his office. He seemed unaware that the principle of network neutrality, against which he was arguing, would eliminate network bias and ensure that everyone’s “Internet” got delivered equitably. But what was most frustrating to many of us listening to these remarks was the knowledge that one more metaphor would have helped the senator immensely: the postal metaphor, according to which Internet traffic is broken into a numbered series of “envelopes,” sent down that series of tubes, and reassembled in the correct order once delivered to our computers.

Conceptual blend theory can help explain what went wrong for Stevens [1]. Whereas the common definition of metaphor

suggests a single input source that helps explain the target (pipes help explain bandwidth), the theory of blends holds that figurative language draws from multiple input sources to create a new, blended space. The blended space selectively borrows properties from each input source to create new meaning. An example in the work of Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier describes a newspaper account of a catamaran in 1993 that was trying to beat a San Francisco to Boston sailing record set by a clipper in 1853 [ 2]. The newspaper reported that as it went to press, the catamaran was “barely maintaining a 4.5-day lead” over the clipper. This is an example of a blend because it presents something that never existed (a race between the catamaran and the clipper), and it does so by selectively borrowing properties from each of the two inputs (from 1853 and from 1993). It also recruits structure from the frame of a “race” that never occurred; the frame is perfectly understandable to the reader because of prior experiences with such contests. The theory of blends helps us understand that when we use metaphor to convey meaning, we often are dealing with multiple input