Construct · 1 fields · 1 citations

conduit: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

● anchor · a standalone construct Nearest construct by meaning·not indexed
conduit1 CONSTRUCTConduit metaphorREDDY · META-LANGUAGE

A single standalone construct; nearby constructs are located against it in the Collider. Tap a field for its definition, unit, and measures.

Linguistics

The metaphor that treats language as a pipe for meaning

In linguistics the conduit metaphor is Reddy's name for the deep pattern in English that frames communication as sending meanings through a channel: speakers "put" ideas "into" words and listeners "get" them "out," as if language were a pipe carrying thought from one mind to another. Reddy argued this framing is misleading because it hides the active reconstruction a listener must do, and it became a founding case for how ordinary metaphor shapes thought. The referent is a conceptual-metaphor pattern in language about language, sharing only the word with a magma pathway or a blood vessel.[1]

Unit
The recurring metaphoric frame of meaning-as-transferred-object in language
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Analysed by cataloguing the English expressions that encode the frame and the inferences they license

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Nearby constructs

vent2 fields · 2 citationsjingle · one word, two constructsvessel1 fields · 2 citationsanchor · a standalone constructbubble4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four constructs

References

  1. Reddy, M. J. (1993). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 164–201). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1979) ISBN 9780521405614

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