Heli Tissari, University of Helsinki
Oskari Koskela, University of Jyväskylä
Kai Tuuri, University of Jyväskylä
In a classic article, Johnson and Larson (2003) suggested that we conceptualize music through the MOVING MUSIC, MUSICAL LANDSCAPE and MOVING FORCE metaphors. Their focus was on describing how we experience compositions, which they illustrated with sentences such as: “The melody rises up ahead. At measure 4 the horns enter.” (Johnson & Larson 2003: 71.) But what if we ask people to reminisce their fond experiences with music, like Gabrielsson (2011)?
We asked Finnish and British people about fond memories of the music of digital games, and received 183 autobiographical texts from Finns and 389 from Brits. They contain comments such as “…the music seemed to understand me, as if it were a friend of mine who comforted and encouraged me to endure a stressful time.” (A Finnish writer). As the example indicates, the focus in the stories is not necessarily in describing dynamic episodes of musical experiences, but they often describe the nature of relationship with the music in question.
We have analysed the Finnish data and suggest that there are eight main categories of metaphors there. We have labelled them AGENCY, FORCE, SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS, VEHICLE, MEDIATOR, CONNECTION/JOINT, OBJECT and FEEL. Johnson and Larson’s (2003) MOVING FORCE metaphor is close to VEHICLE, and they talk about agency and objects. However, they have not identified such metaphors as CONNECTION/JOINT or FEEL. To put it simply, our metaphors seem to be more static. The question is, does this relate to the fact that we are talking about memories of music, or to the fact that we are talking about the music of digital games?
Our aim for this talk is to proceed to analysing the British data, so that we can present findings concerning both sets of data and make comparisons. Our tentative finding so far is that several of the metaphor categories are shared between the two data sets but that there are some expressions that are typical of one or the other. For example, Finnish people often talk about storing the music in their minds or heads. In the British data, music is often a bringer of something: “I recently heard the music on a YouTube video I was watching and it brought back memories of myself and my younger brother playing the game on the weekends.”
References
Gabrielsson, Alf. 2011. Strong experiences with music: Music is much more than just music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, Mark L. & Steve Larson. 2003. ”Something in the way she moves”– metaphors of musical motion. Metaphor and symbol 18(2), 63-84.