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Social Semiotics
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An exploratory comparative analysis of
the use of metaphors in writing on the
Internet and mobile phones
Rowan Wilken
a
a
Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of
Technology Hawthorn, Australia
Published online: 30 Oct 2012.
To cite this article: Rowan Wilken (2013) An exploratory comparative analysis of the use of
metaphors in writing on the Internet and mobile phones, Social Semiotics, 23:5, 632-647, DOI:
10.1080/ 10350330.2012.738999
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2. An exploratory comparative analysis of the use of metaphors in writing
on the Internet and mobile phones
Rowan Wilken*
Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology
Hawthorn, Australia
(Received 20 January 2011; final version received 10 March 2012)
Scant attention has been paid to the use of figures of speech in describing mobile
telephony and how it is used. While there are isolated cases, as yet there is no
study of metaphor use across a larger corpus of mobile phone research. This
article addresses this gap by developing a preliminary survey, or mapping, of the
use of metaphors and other discursive figures and tropes in the available literature
on mobile phones. It does this by using metaphors in Internet literature as a
springboard for comparative analysis, as a comparable communications medium.
Both for their general role as communications technologies and their specific
historicized position as ‘‘new media’’, and with their capacities increasingly
overlapping, mobile phones and the Internet form a useful counterpoint. The
article summarizes the key findings from earlier work mapping and critiquing the
use of metaphor in the critical and popular writing on the Internet. It then
compares and contrasts these Internet-based metaphors against those in the
mobile literature. The paper concludes with a discussion of the perils and the
promise of metaphor use in writing on communications technologies.
Keywords: metaphor; mobile media; mobile phone; Internet
Introduction
This article is part of an ongoing project that is motivated, at least in part, by a
commitment to the important task of paying due attention to the workings of new
media discourse, which I mean in the specific sense of the language used to describe
and debate new media technologies1
and in asking certain questions of the texts that
are produced about these media. In the present article, I am especially interested in
metaphor and what drives the selection and use of these particular figures of speech
in writing on the Internet and mobile phones. What, for instance, is carried by (or
perhaps ‘‘buried’’ within) the metaphors that appear in the literature on the Internet
and mobile phones? What might be revealed through a (comparative) analysis of
their usage and through the usage of other rhetorical and discursive strategies?
Moreover, what are the implications of these choices and strategies? How do they
shape the way that particular technologies and media platforms are imagined,
conceived and debated in the past, present and future? Such questioning, which
involves an ‘‘opening of media analysis to literary, hermeneutic, and rhetorical forms
of study’’ (Real 1996, 120), is productive in so far as ‘‘texts employ specific forms and
*Email: rwilken@swin.edu.au
Social Semiotics, 2013
Vol. 23, No. 5, 632647, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2012.738999
# 2013 Taylor Francis
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3. conventions to give shape and purpose to our media experience’’ (120), and attentive
reading of these texts can explore and reveal those devices.
In their now classic book, Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 3)
argue that ‘‘metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in
thought and action’’ and that, in fact, ‘‘our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of
which we both think and act, is thoroughly metaphorical’’. In this sense, metaphor is
inescapable, all pervasive, and the study of it is important if we are to grasp fully the
way we experience and make sense of the world especially that which we take to be
‘‘new’’, novel, or which evades apprehension (the seemingly ‘‘unknown’’). In the case
of writing on the Internet, critically examining metaphor use has proven instructive
for revealing how this particular technological form has been understood (both in
terms of its promise and its potential perils), particularly as a ‘‘spatial’’ realm, and
including the possible regulatory implications these metaphorical selections might
carry. It is in this sense that metaphors have been seen as playing a crucial role in
writing on the Internet, not just in informing but also in actively shaping popular and
critical understanding of this technology. The premise of this article is that an
examination of metaphor use in the available literature on mobile media is likely to
prove instructive for grasping how these media especially mobile phones are
presently understood. Thus, a key aim of this examination is to grasp how debate
concerning present and future uses (and possible regulation of these uses) of mobile
phones and mobile media is framed and shaped by particular metaphor selections.
In this way, it is valuable to ask: if metaphor is fundamental to conceptualize and
understand the Internet and its use, how does it function in understanding and
analysis of mobile phones? Given the continuities between the two fields in the
sense that both are important contemporary information and communication
technologies that increasingly provide access to the same data services (hence the
description of the mobile phone as the ‘‘Internet in your pocket’’), and they also
often share the literature generated by many of the same researchers and analysts,
who migrate over time from the Internet to this new form of communication it is
worth asking whether there are similar metaphors at work in the writing on mobile
phones and, if so, what are the likely implications of these metaphor selections for
our conception of and engagement with mobiles?
Metaphors and other figures of speech are common in our everyday engagements
with mobile media devices in both Anglophone settings and other cultural contexts.
In Japan, for instance, the mobile handset is commonly referred to as a ‘‘keitai’’
(roughly translated as, ‘‘something you carry with you’’ Ito 2006, 1). While in
Germany, the pseudo-English word ‘‘handy’’ has been adopted as the most common
colloquial term for a mobile phone. Despite this everyday usage, scant critical
attention has been paid to the use of metaphors and other figures of speech in
describing mobile telephony and how it is used. There are isolated cases, such as one
study, for instance, which notes the use of visual metaphors in advertising campaigns
and mobile phone content ‘‘in order to represent the experience derived from their
consumption’’ (Aguado and Martı́nez 2008, 7), and another which notes the
persistence of POSTAL metaphors in SMS use (Hjorth 2005). As yet, though, there is
no study of metaphor use across a larger corpus of mobile phone research. This
Social Semiotics 633
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4. article addresses this gap by offering an exploratory analysis of the use of metaphor
in writing on mobile phones.
One approach to the study of metaphor that has exerted a profound impact is
cognitive linguistics (or cognitive semantics), pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson
(1980), Talmy (2000a, 2000b) and Langacker (1987, 1991), among others. As Steen
(2008, 215) explains, ‘‘their most important theoretical claim is that metaphor in
language is based on conventional mappings between conceptual domains
in thought, such as ‘love’ and ‘journey’, or ‘time’ and ‘money’’’ which help us make
sense of phrases such as ‘‘love is a journey’’ and ‘‘time is money’’. What characterises
this work (as well as that to be found in the parallel but distinct field of
psycholinguistics see Ortony 1979; Hoffman and Honeck 1980) are very detailed
linguistics-based analyses of metaphor structure and operation. Such an approach is
not the intention here. It is also beyond the scope of this article to offer a
comprehensive analysis that accounts for all the various socio- and geo-political, and
cross-cultural and inter-generational differences in metaphor take-up and use.
Rather, the aim here is rather more modest: to develop a preliminary survey, or
mapping, of the use of metaphors in the available English-language literature on
mobile phones. It does this by using metaphors in Internet literature as a springboard
for analysis, as a comparable communications medium. Both for their general role as
communications technologies and their specific historicized position as ‘‘new
media’’, and with their capacities increasingly overlapping, mobile phones and the
Internet form a useful comparison and counterpoint. Summarising the key findings
from earlier work mapping and critiquing the use of metaphor in the critical and
popular writing on the Internet, the article then compares and contrasts these
Internet-based metaphors against those in the mobile literature. The article then
concludes with a discussion of some of the perils and the promise that attend
metaphor use in writing on communications technologies.
In taking up these concerns, a research project was developed to undertake an
exploratory analysis comparing the use of metaphors in the available popular and
critical literature on the Internet with those that appear in scholarship on mobile
phones. This involved a two-step process. First, literature explicitly addressing
metaphor in relation to the Internet and mobile phones was gathered using search
databases (primarily Google Scholar and EBSCOhost). Second, the literature yielded
by these means was supplemented by more general academic writing on mobiles and
their sociocultural uses especially that which was published as research
monographs or in scholarly edited collections (of which there are many). A key
reason for this approach was in order to capture what Steen (2008, 227) refers to as
both conspicuous and inconspicuous, or deliberate and non-deliberate, metaphors.
That is to say, this dual approach enabled the capture of critical reflection on
metaphor, unconscious use of or appeals to metaphor, as well as more strategic
applications of metaphor, either in ‘‘framing’’ (offering ‘‘conceptual frameworks for
concepts that require at least partial indirect understanding’’ Steen 2008, 231) or in
realising ‘‘perspectival change’’ [‘‘to produce an alternative perspective on a
particular reference or topic’’ (231)].
I begin this analysis by revisiting earlier work on the use of metaphor in the
critical and popular writing on the Internet.
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5. Metaphor in the Internet literature
Metaphors proliferate in the literature on the Internet from the 1980s to 1990s.
Considerable critical attention has been given over to identifying the most prevalent
of these metaphors and detailing the difficulties and shortcomings associated with
their use (Adams 1997; Graham 1998; Wilken 2007). However, much less critical
attention has been paid to examining the same concerns in the available literature on
mobile phone use.
Metaphor is traditionally understood as a linguistic structure that implies
similarities between two ostensibly dissimilar things. The ‘‘essence of metaphor’’,
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980, 5) explain, ‘‘is understanding and
experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another’’ one of which is familiar, the
other usually less so. For writers and readers, the power of metaphor rests in the fact
that the familiarity of the ‘‘known’’ domain can offer initial guidance to investigate
and to plumb the ‘‘unknown’’ domain.
The ability of metaphor to illuminate the seemingly ‘‘unknown’’ explains the
appeal of and appeal to metaphor in Internet scholarship. It is the reason
metaphors have been central to early imaginings of cyberspace (such as Gibson’s
Neuromancer, which draws heavily on ARCHITECTURAL metaphors in its representa-
tion of the ‘‘space’’ of cyberspace), especially the many anecdotal accounts of
cyberspace which ‘‘resemble the old ‘travelers’ tales’, accounts of adventurous trips
from the civilized world to newly discovered, exotic realms’’ (Wellman and Gulia
1999, 170). Metaphor proliferates in these accounts (Milne 2000), a way of
familiarising the ‘‘unknown’’ (or ‘‘abstract’’) via comparison with the ‘‘known’’
(and ‘‘concrete’’). The relative unfamiliarity of cyberspace and computer-mediated
communication is made comprehensible via comparison with more familiar notions
and experiences, such as SURFING, NAVIGATION, EXPLORATION, FRONTIERING, SETTLE-
MENT, TRANSPORTATION, HIGHWAYS, SITES, the DESK, OFFICE and HOME, and ARCHI-
TECTURE and URBAN PLANNING. Obviously, this list is by no means exhaustive; a
comprehensive inventory and detailed discussion of all metaphors employed to make
sense of cyberspace is beyond the scope of this paper (see Adams 1997). From my
analysis of the Internet literature, I was able to identify three recurrent types of
groups of metaphors, which I have categorized as follows: NAVIGATION and TRANS-
PORTATION metaphors, PIONEERING metaphors and ARCHITECTURAL metaphors. Each
of these has proven popular in terms of use, yet each has also proven contentious.
These metaphors often hold considerable initial appeal. This appeal tends to mask,
at least for a time, fuller recognition of the inherent shortcomings and difficulties
associated with these metaphors.
It is often forgotten that the prefix ‘‘cyber’’ is derived from the Greek root
kybernan, which means ‘‘to steer or guide’’ (Tofts and McKeich 1998, 19). In the
literature on cyberspace, the most literal use of this root meaning is in the metaphor
of NAVIGATION, where, ‘‘this nautical figure is [considered] appropriate for a world
imagined as a bit-stream of information flows’’ (19). The way that we ‘‘NAVIGATE’’
these flows the multiple pathways and hyperlinks of the Internet and the reported
addictive nature of this activity, often pursued as an end in itself, has also invited
comparisons with ‘‘SURFING’’ a metaphor which is said to be ‘‘suggestive of [the
Internet’s] dynamism and hedonism’’ (Tofts 1999, 23).
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6. As for TRANSPORTATION metaphors, one of the more influential has been the
description, from the early 1990s, of the Internet as an ‘‘INFORMATION SUPERHIGH-
WAY’’. Generally attributed to then US vice-president Al Gore, the INFORMATION
SUPERHIGHWAY metaphor reached its peak in 1996, declining ever since (Blavin and
Cohen 2002, 271). Recourse to TRANSPORTATION or CONDUIT (Reddy 1993)
metaphors is not surprising in this context given that communication and
transportation are inextricably linked (Carey 1989).
What troubles some commentators about this metaphor is that it strongly
describes the Internet in regulatory terms. For instance, it has been noted that, ‘‘if the
Internet is a highway, then government can regulate it for the safety of those who
pass on it’’, in much the same way as conventional highways are ‘‘subject to state and
(indirect) federal regulation’’ (Blavin and Cohen 2002, 269270). For those
attempting to make sense of the social spaces of the Internet, this metaphor is of
limited appeal. It ‘‘connotes a transfer of information’’, not social interaction and
habitation (Blavin and Cohen 2002), and it privileges one aspect of the medium and
not the many possible uses and users of this medium (Jones 2001, 54). Put another
way, any metaphor inevitably closes off particular interpretations of the target
domain in favour of others; this is an issue that will be returned to at the end of this
article.
PIONEERING and SETTLEMENT metaphors proliferate in those texts that conceive
of cyberspace not so much as pure information space but as a rich social space. A key
reason for this, Adams (1997, 160) suggests, is that, while pioneering is no longer a
familiar aspect of daily life, it has traction as a metaphor, especially in a North
American context, because ‘‘the image of the frontier is well worn in the mythology
of American culture’’, not to mention histories of the American technological
sublime (Nye 1994; Marx 2000). In this way, the notion of the electronic frontier
works by ambivalently suggesting ‘‘a theme from the past and a whole new kind of
space, because the electronic frontier did not in fact exist before the act of
settlement’’ (Adams 1997, 160). Indicative of such texts is Howard Rheingold’s
(1994) Virtual Community. Originally released in North America with the subtitle,
‘‘Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier’’, Rheingold’s text has been a key vehicle
in the early promulgation of the COMMUNITY metaphor (which is a subset of the
PIONEER metaphor) (for detailed discussion, see Wilken 2011). The FRONTIER as the
promise of community is also evident in John Seabrook’s book Deeper:
The landscape of the Net was not the great wide-open landscape of buffalo herds and
antelope, although I had imagined it was in the first year of my travels. The frontier was
more communal now. The frontier lay inside the group. (Seabrook 1997, 131)
For writer Douglas Rushkoff, on the other hand, the metaphor’s metaphysical
possibilities are of greatest appeal. Rushkoff (1994) conceives of cyberspace as ‘‘the
next dimensional home for consciousness’’, a ‘‘timeless dimension’’, a ‘‘boundless
territory’’ known as ‘‘Cyberia’’ (16). All three examples support Gregory Ulmer’s
(1994, 2631) suggestion that the FRONTIER metaphor has dominated understandings
of digital media.
The basic difficulty with the PIONEERING metaphor, and the tropes of ‘‘HOME-
STEADING’’ and ‘‘FRONTIER’’, is two-fold. On the one hand, it is argued that both feed
a nostalgic, pastoralist myth of community (Bell 2001, 98; Wellman and Gulia 1999,
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7. 187). On the other hand, it is argued that they perpetuate western colonialist
narratives, particularly of possession, oppression and dispossession, as well as the
imposition of private property conceptions upon cyberspace (Hunter 2003; Rennie
and Young 2004; Olson 2005; Sardar 1996). As one source puts it, ‘‘SPATIAL
metaphors become not merely useful tools for making the revolutionary changes
of the information age less strange and unsettling, but a ready mechanism through
which to manage and regulate the alien phenomenon’’ (Gumpert and Drucker
1996, 32).
The third, and most prolific, metaphor type in writing on the Internet is
ARCHITECTURAL. ARCHITECTURAL metaphors have proven immensely popular in
computer interface design (most notably, Microsoft Windows and its associated
‘‘DESKTOP’’ iconography for detailed discussion, see Fauconnier and Turner 2002),
and in the design of the graphical user interfaces of many virtual communities
where users inhabit ‘‘ROOMS’’ or frequent various ‘‘AGORA’’, ‘‘CAFÉS’’, ‘‘BARS’’, and
other social spaces the use of ARCHITECTURAL and URBAN PLANNING metaphors
has been widely documented (Mitchell 2000). These metaphors, too, have attracted
criticism. In interface design, ARCHITECTURAL metaphors have been labelled non-
intuitive, restrictive and conservative (Johnson 1997, 61). Their usage in computer-
mediated communications research more generally is also resisted on the basis that it
promotes exclusion and forecloses alternative ways of conceiving of the social space
of computer-mediated communications.
Having provided this overview of earlier work on the use of metaphor in the
critical and popular writing on the Internet, discussion now turns to the use of
metaphor in academic scholarship on mobile phones. As previously stated, this
analysis is exploratory. That is to say, given the continuities between the two fields
Internet research and mobile telephony/media research and given concerns about
the larger role that metaphor plays in shaping discursive engagement with new media
technologies and knowledge in general (concerns which will be taken up and
addressed at the end of this article), it is worth asking whether there are similar
metaphors at work in the writing on mobile phones.
From Internet to mobiles
In examining the literature on mobile phone use, there are clear consistencies evident
in the way that metaphors have been employed in earlier writing on the Internet
and in more recent writing on mobile phones. While ARCHITECTURAL metaphors are
all but absent in writing on mobile telephony, NAVIGATION, TRANSPORTATION and
PIONEERING metaphors are all identifiable in the mobile phone literature. This is not
all that surprising given the wealth of literature that argues for clear continuities
between older and newer (or even just different) forms of media (see Bolter and
Grusin 1999; Chun and Keenan 2006; Gitelman 2008; Gitelman and Pingree 2003;
Marvin 1988; Milne 2010 Sconce 2000; Tofts, Jonson, and Cavallaro 2002; Tofts and
McKeich 1998). For instance, echoing the much earlier work of Marshall McLuhan
(McLuhan and Fiore 1989), Bolter and Grusin (1999) write that, ‘‘each act of
mediation depends on other acts of mediation’’ and that ‘‘media need each other in
order to function as media’’ (55). Reproduction of other media forms they suggest
and also, I would argue, the tropes used in written engagements with these forms is
‘‘integral to media’’ (55).
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8. Nevertheless, despite clear continuities between older and newer forms of media,
the transference of metaphor from one to the other is not necessarily always
successful. For example, one study investigates consumer experiences in accessing the
Internet via mobile handsets (Isomursu et al. 2007). As part of this study, the authors
quizzed users on the applicability (or otherwise) of Internet metaphors for capturing
their experiences of interfacing with the mobile Internet. Findings revealed the
limited applicability of Internet metaphors. As the authors note, the transfer of
metaphors from the ‘‘fixed Internet’’ to the ‘‘mobile Internet’’ ‘‘creates false
expectations towards the mobile Internet and poor understanding of its possibilities
and constraints’’ (Isomursu et al. 2007, 260). If these metaphors are to have ongoing
currency, they argue, significant amendments are required if they are to remain
pertinent to users who seek to access the Internet via mobile handsets.2
In writing up their findings, the authors explore a number of metaphors for the
mobile Internet that incorporate these figurative adjustments. NAVIGATIONAL
metaphors, and more specifically NAUTICAL metaphors (or what Isomursu et al.
2007 refer to as the idea of the ‘‘INTERNET AS OCEAN’’), are refined to distinguish
between ‘‘SCUBA DIVING’’ (the immersive experience associated with Internet
searching) and ‘‘SNORKELLING’’ (the surface skimming they claim is more closely
associated with mobile where the ‘‘user’s attention often is divided or can be
interrupted at any moment’’ (262)). As for the HIGHWAY metaphor, the authors argue
that a distinction should be made between the Internet as a ‘‘BRANCHING ROAD’’ and
the mobile Internet as a ‘‘STRAIGHT ROAD’’ ‘‘with specific destinations in mind’’ (263).
Finally, in terms of SETTLEMENT metaphors, the authors argue the Internet as a social
space akin to a CAMPFIRE a comparison first made by Rheingold is a useful
metaphor for capturing the social dimensions of mobile use in the Web 2.0 era (263).
Drawing on the work of Thornburg (2001), the authors expand this metaphor to
distinguish three separate internal components: CAMPFIRE (where people gather),
WATERING HOLE (where people share information) and CAVE (where people can isolate
themselves) (Isomursu et al. 2007, 264).
In the above case scholarship on mobile Internet user experience there are
clear continuities with the metaphors employed in writing on the Internet (both make
use of NAVIGATIONAL/NAUTICAL and SETTLEMENT metaphors), but also subtle
differentiations for this changed context (such as breaking down the SETTLEMENT
metaphor into various subcategories that are more characteristic of mobile Internet
use).
Metaphors to capture techno-social complexity
Beyond the above examples, the presence of metaphors is decidedly more fugitive in
the available (Anglophone) literature on mobile phones than is the case in writing on
the Internet. There are a number of possible explanations for this, but here I would like
to address one key reason, which has to do with the history of the telephone. Despite
its rocky early reception, and the long and halting path it had to take to achieve
widespread social acceptance (Fischer 1992), the telephone has now become, ‘‘literally,
a fixture of everyday life’’ for millions worldwide (Katz and Aakhus 2002, 1).
The widespread acceptance of and familiarity with the telephone despite the
novelties associated with its more recent transportability suggests that metaphor is
not so crucial in understanding mobile phones as a technological artefact (Fortunati
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9. 2005b). As the telephone is to some extent a ‘‘known’’, there is seemingly less need to
explain the ‘‘unknown’’ via reference to a metaphorical figure of speech as was
required with the advent of the Internet (‘‘cyberspace’’). Indeed, BEING ON THE
PHONE, BY THE PHONE, HANGING ON THE LINE and so on are all common figures of
speech.
Those additional metaphors that are discernible in the mobile literature, and that
do not rehearse or rework those used to describe and understand the Internet, tend
to be employed less for explaining the medium itself and more for making sense of
the sociocultural and socio-technical complexities associated with this medium’s use.
For example, this is the context in which critics have employed the BIOLOGICAL
metaphor of an ECOSYSTEM as a way of making sense of the manifold industry-
related conflicts affecting mobile marketing (Wilken and Sinclair 2008, 2009).
Recourse to the DRAMATURGICAL metaphor of the theatre stage famously first
developed by Erving Goffman (1990) can be understood in similar terms: as an
attempt to make sense of the many nuances and ambiguities attending mobile users’
negotiations of publicprivate tensions (see Cumiskey 2005; Fortunati 2005a; Julsrud
2005).
From the review of the available mobiles literature, two further recurrent types of
metaphor emerged which have been deployed as a way of shedding light on the
sociocultural and socio-technical complexities of mobile use. The first of these is the
metaphor of DOMESTICATION, first developed in studies of home technology
consumption and then extended to mobile phone use. The second type are MAGICAL
and MYTHOLOGICAL metaphors, particularly Arnold’s (2003) reference to the two-
faced Roman deity JANUS to explain the many contradictions associated with mobile
phones.
Domestication
Roger Silverstone and Leslie Haddon (1996) developed the DOMESTICATION metaphor
or approach originally as a way of making sense of the ‘‘intimate relations’’ that
characterize the ‘‘production and consumption of a new media and information
technology’’ within the domestic home (54). As they conceive of it, DOMESTICATION
involves a double process. On the one hand, new technologies (such as computers,
DVD players and mobile phones) are considered exciting but also potentially
threatening and in need of being brought ‘‘under control by and on behalf of
domestic users’’ (60). On the other hand, as soon as they are ‘‘DOMESTICATED’’,
through ownership and appropriation into the culture, and through flows and
routines of family, household and everyday life, these technologies are ‘‘CULTIVATED’’.
That is to say, as they become familiar, or as they are placed alongside or replace
existing technologies, the uses of these technologies change and are redefined (60, 68).
Silverstone and Haddon summarize this as a process that involves a ‘‘taming of the
wild and a cultivation of the tame’’ (60). While originally used in British studies of
more-or-less fixed ICTs in the home, the metaphor of DOMESTICATION has
subsequently been applied to studies of mobile phones (Haddon 2003; Hjorth
2007; Morley 2003). For example, David Morley (2003) extends the domestication
model by drawing out the contradictory dynamic or tension between processes of
technological domestication that occur within the family home, and other practices
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10. of everyday life by which mobile phone use ‘‘dislocates’’ (in the sense of a relocation
rather than a supplanting of) domesticity.
The DOMESTICATION metaphor can be read as a further example of the translation
of PIONEERING or SETTLEMENT metaphors from Internet to mobile scholarship
especially given the explicit use of such language by Silverstone and Haddon. In this
context, again, amendments have been necessary in order for this translation to
work. Yet, Morley’s extension of the DOMESTICATION metaphor to the study of
mobile phones is perhaps more significant when read as an attempt to account for
the complexities and contradictions by which mobile use continues to be implicated
with and bound to more established sites of technology consumption, like the
domestic home. Possible limitations to this metaphor might include a restricted scope
due to its domestic setting, and a lack of serious consideration of the gendered
implications associated with the metaphor.
Magic and mythology
MAGIC has formed a further key trope in writing on mobiles (Isomursu et al. 2007,
265) as a way of making sense of the numerous complexities of mobile phone use. For
instance, Katz and Aakhus (2002, 11) developed the concept of Apparatgeist, a
portmanteau term, which bridges the machinic with the cognitive and the spiritual,
as a way of explaining the metaphysical qualities associated with mobile use. In later
work, Katz (2006) deploys MAGIC as an overarching metaphor for understanding
mobiles because ‘‘magic is one of the salient characteristics of the technology as it is
first experienced by many people’’ (6). He also uses it as a way of drawing attention
to the ‘‘too often overlooked spiritual, psychic and religious uses of the mobile
phone’’ (7) that is to say, how mobile phones are ‘‘increasingly embraced as
spiritual emissaries and are even imputed to have spiritual powers themselves’’, as
well as more specific practices which include, among other things, ‘‘the astrological
services that are available via SMS, the way churches use ICTs for spiritually
connecting with their members, and the magical powers ascribed to some mobile
phone numbers’’ (Garmendia 2008, 3).
Like MAGIC, classical mythology, too, is a key source of metaphors in the mobile
literature. One of the more productive examples is Michael Arnold’s (2003) use of the
JANUS metaphor to explain the phenomenology of mobile phones. As Arnold
explains, ‘‘Janus is a Roman deity cursed and blessed with two faces, and cursed and
blessed with no option other than to look in different directions at once’’ (233).
Applied to our experience of mobile phones, the JANUS metaphor is valuable in
placing paradox at the centre of our understanding of this particular technology:
‘‘The mobile phone is facing each and every way, it is always and at once pointing in
different directions’’ (234). Arnold then puts this metaphor to work in a careful
explication of the seemingly endless structural ambiguities attending mobiles and
their uses the way they facilitate independence as well as co-dependence; lead to a
greater sense of vulnerability while also providing reassurance; facilitate social
proximity at the same as allowing greater geographical distance; blur the public and
the private; make us both increasingly busy and also available, important and not so
important; and so on. The JANUS-FACE breaks from the existing suite of Internet-
based metaphors and is an isolated instance of a metaphor developed independently
of the Internet in order to make sense of mobile phones.
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11. Arnold’s use of the JANUS metaphor shares certain similarities with Castells’s
deployment of the NETWORK metaphor in his work on globalisation. Anne
Wallemacq argues that Castells’s application of the NETWORK metaphor is often
‘‘more incantative than analytical’’, providing the means by which to ‘‘express some
properties sometimes contradictory (despatialization and respatialization), or puz-
zling (the end of the notion of contiguity)’’ (Wallemacq 1998, 607). In this way,
Wallemacq suggests, the NETWORK metaphor ‘‘should not be seen as a descriptive
concept’’, but rather as ‘‘a kind of ‘totem’ a method of thinking, a paradigmatical
figure’’ (608). The same holds for the JANUS metaphor. Its force comes primarily
from providing a ‘‘method of thinking’’ about the contradictions and puzzlements of
the mobile phone and their uses.
Conclusions: tantalising possibilities and risks
The image of the JANUS-FACE concludes this preliminary survey of metaphors in the
mobile literature. As stated at the outset, the intention is not to provide a
comprehensive account of metaphor in writing on mobile phones but, rather, to
develop a preliminary survey, or mapping, of the use of metaphors in the available
English-language literature on mobile phones, which were examined in comparison
to the use of metaphor in the earlier literature on the Internet. Further research in
this area will both broaden and deepen the analysis, to include, for instance,
discussion of the ‘‘WALLED GARDEN’’ (Netanel 2007) and ‘‘MOBILE COMMONS’’
(Goggin 2011, 157175) metaphors in communications policy, as well as careful
consideration of tropes that circulate in the wider literature on globalisation and ICT
use, all of which have a direct impact on our understanding of mobile phones. Key
among these is the continuing need to challenge the ‘‘folk framing’’ of mobile phones
as ‘‘devices that will liberate individuals from the constraints of their settings’’ (Katz
and Aakhus 2002, 7). In addition, future work can also embrace analysis of the
impacts and existing critiques of the NETWORK metaphor (Knox, Savage, and Harvey
2006; Nas and Houweling 1998; Wallemacq 1998), the MOBILITY metaphor (Favell
2001; Wolff 1993), the notion of CLOUD COMPUTING, and what seems to be the
metaphor du jour, that of ‘‘CONVERGENCE’’ (Jenkins 2006; Wirth 2006; Wood 2008).
Having gestured towards possible future work, then, I wish to close by offering
some comments on why metaphors matter.
Software and other forms of technological device design have long made recourse
to metaphors, both as a way of problem solving and as a way of explaining technical
capabilities to future users (Coyne 1995). This tradition has not been without
criticism, however. For at least one critic, it is a ‘‘perilous’’ process as it ‘‘firmly nail[s]
our conceptual feet to the ground’’, forever limiting the power of the device, how it is
understood and its likely future uses (Cooper 1995).
The same general criticisms can be extended to broader uses of metaphor in the
literature on mobile phones. Metaphor selection is never free of complication, and
any comparison intended to clarify also has the capacity to obfuscate (‘‘certain
aspects are illuminated, others shadowed over’’ Brown 1976, 172). Ill-chosen
metaphors even if they do not initially appear as such can prove particularly
detrimental in that they can determine in advance how we are likely to imagine and
use particular technologies and have the potential to confuse rather than clarify, thus
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12. failing to fulfil the very function these metaphors were employed to perform in the
first place.
What is more, in so far as metaphor is intertwined with rhetoric, metaphor is
never innocent, and the rhetorical uses of metaphor always influence and shape the
meanings that are generated by, and the meanings which accumulate around, a given
metaphor. In short, metaphors have the potential to orient research setting the
terms of reference of and agenda for research and to fix results (Derrida 2001, 17).
Steen refers to the sorts of metaphors that fall into this category as ‘‘deliberate
metaphors’’. According to Steen, deliberate metaphors (which he tentatively aligns
with metaphor in communication as opposed to metaphor in thought) involve ‘‘a
distinct rhetorical strategy that senders utilize to achieve a specific discourse function
by means of a metaphorical comparison’’ (Steen 2008, 224). Metaphors of this type,
he argues, are ‘‘deliberate in the sense of consciously being selected to achieve a
particular communicative, and especially rhetorical, effect’’ (224).
An alternative (and perhaps more positive) take is that metaphor aims to
concentrate our attention on what ‘‘emerges in the interplay of juxtaposed
associations’’ (Brown 1976, 181) and, at its best:
It provides a new way of understanding that which we already know, and in so doing it
reconstitutes from these materials new domains of perception and new languages of
thought. (185)
In light of these ‘‘twin faces’’ of metaphor (to continue Arnold’s earlier example),
I suggest that two interconnected endeavours are required.
The first is to undertake an ongoing critique of metaphor, which involves a
certain ethics of reading (as Derrida might say), a commitment to close reading
which is attentive to the shaping force of language and metaphor, and which
interrogates the ways by which metaphor operates through language (Derrida 2001,
1718). In such a process, it needs to be recollected that it is only possible to critique
metaphor from within, by working with and against metaphor, recognising its limits
and working at these limits. Using such an approach to analyse in detail each of the
metaphors surveyed here will shed considerable light on the nature and direction of
mobile studies.
It is in this context that Janet Wolff (1993, 235) suggests that an effective critical
strategy might be the reappropriation rather than the avoidance of existing
metaphors. Equally, as Lisa Gitelman (2008, 2) notes, ‘‘it pays to be careful with
language’’. We ought to think carefully about our choice of vocabulary, being
especially cautious of terminology that is liberatory in some ways but restrictive in
others (235). In other words, as Donna Haraway (1991, 150) would say, there is merit
in taking ‘‘pleasure in the confusion of boundaries, and for responsibility in their
construction’’.
The second endeavour is the need for the invention and selection of new
metaphors. Just as it is important to read backwards (asking, among other things,
‘‘How is this history of metaphor possible?’’ Derrida 2001, 17), it is equally
important to read forwards, probing what futures and future metaphors are possible.
This is to acknowledge that metaphors are not static (Wolff 1993, 235). It is also to
recognize the vitality of metaphor (with ‘‘vitality’’ intended here in a double sense,
suggesting importance to and animation of discourse with the latter suggestive of
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13. how metaphor feeds and gives life to new media discourse) and the ongoing
relevance of metaphor to understanding technologies and the techno-social.
Neither of these tasks is easy, however. On the one hand, ‘‘to unmask metaphors
requires negative insight and circumspection’’ (Brown 1976, 176). On the other hand,
‘‘to create new metaphors is a leap of the imagination’’ (176). The ‘‘pivotal point’’,
though, as Brown makes clear, is that metaphor must ‘‘retain its consciously ‘as if’
quality [. . .] for on it turns the difference between using metaphors and being used by
them’’. It is this sense of the continual ‘‘as if’’ that must be carried with us as we
engage with metaphor and other figures of speech in our critical dealings with mobile
phones and all socio-technical interactions.
Acknowledgements
This article is an output from a program of research under Australian Research Council
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, DE120102114, ‘‘The Cultural Economy of
Locative Media’’, funded 20122014. I gratefully acknowledge the ARC’s financial support.
I also wish to thank Anthony McCosker and Esther Milne for their input and suggestions.
Notes
1. It is worth noting here the following remark by M.H. Abrams (1953, 31 quoted in Fishelov
1993, 5): ‘‘The task of analyzing the nature and function of metaphor has traditionally been
assigned to the rhetorician and to the critic of literature. Metaphor, however, whether alive
or moribund, is an inseparable element of all discourse, including discourse whose purpose
is neither persuasive nor aesthetic, but descriptive and informative.’’
2. A similar argument is made by Richardson in relation to the ‘‘body metaphors’’ we employ
when moving from desktop computers to mobile screens. ‘‘If we are to understand the
technosomatic specificities of contemporary screen engagement,’’ she writes, ‘‘we need to
develop a more nuanced or granular interpretation of such experiences, with particular
insight into the altered somatic, haptic and facial relations to emerge from our engagement
with smaller and sometimes portable screens’’ (Richardson, 2010; see also, Richardson,
2005).
Notes on contributor
Dr Rowan Wilken holds an Australian Research Council funded Discovery Early Career
Researcher Award (DECRA) in the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne
University of Technology, Melbourne. His present research interests include locative and
mobile media, domestic media consumption, digital technologies and culture, old and new
media, and theories and practices of everyday life. He is the author of Teletechnologies, Place,
and Community (Routledge 2011) and co-editor (with Gerard Goggin) of Mobile Technology
and Place (Routledge 2012).
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