The weekly column

Article 94, April 2002

The Case for Metaphoric Intelligence

By Michael Berman

Jeannette Littlemore makes a case for there being a Metaphoric intelligence in her article published in the March 2001 edition of the electronic newsletter www.hltmag.co.uk "Metaphoric intelligence and foreign language learning" produced by Pilgrims. The term is also used in the book "Ways of Doing" Davis, P et al. published by CUP in 1999.

Littlemore points out that metaphors fall into two categories, "frozen" metaphors and "novel" metaphors. Frozen metaphors are those that are in common use in the language and which are often thought to be treated as single linguistic units by native speakers. Novel metaphors are ones in which ideas are combined in new or unusual ways. Effective communication in a second language involves the ability to use both novel and frozen metaphors. It is estimated that the average speaker of English uses over 3,000 novel metaphors per week (Hoffman 1983). Furthermore, what is a frozen metaphor to a native speaker is a novel metaphor to a language learner when he or she encounters it for the first time.

She also makes the point that those who engage more readily in divergent thinking are more likely to display metaphoric intelligence. (Divergent thinking is a relatively old concept, proposed by Guilford in 1967. He described the convergent thinker as a person who finds it easy to deal with problems requiring one conventional correct answer, clearly obtainable from the information provided. The divergent thinker, on the other hand, is better able to solve problems requiring the generation of several equally acceptable answers where the emphasis is on the quantity, variety and originality of responses).

However, from the most recent evidence it would seem that the ability to produce novel metaphors, if it requires divergent thinking and the combination ideas in new or unusual ways, is much more likely to be indicative of SQ (Spiritual Intelligence).

According to Danah Zohar, author of "Spiritual Intelligence The Ultimate Intelligence" published by Blomsbury, the indications of a highly developed SQ include a tendency to see the connections between diverse things and being 'field-independent' - possessing a facility for working against convention.

Gardner's work at the Boston University School of Medicine lead to the identification of eight criteria for the existence of intelligence types: potential isolation by brain damage, the existence of prodigies such as autistic savants, an identifiable set of core operations, a distinctive developmental history along with a definable set of expert end-state performances, an evolutionary history, support from experimental psychological tasks, support from psychometric findings, and susceptibility to an encoding symbol system. There is no evidence to indicate that Metaphoric Intelligence fulfills any of these criteria. Consequently, it would seem that there is little case for the inclusion of Metaphoric Intelligence in MI Theory. In fact, there is much stronger case for the inclusion of SQ, as Gardner himself points out in his book "Intelligence Reframed".

According to Danah Zohar, SQ is what we use to develop our longing and capacity for meaning, vision and value. It allows us to integrate the intrapersonal and the interpersonal, to transcend the gap between self and other.

There is believed to be a built-in spiritual centre located among neural connections in the temporal lobes of the brain. On scans taken with positron emission topography these neural areas light up whenever research subjects are exposed to discussion of spiritual or religious topics. Neurobiologists have now dubbed the area of the temporal lobes concerned with religious or spiritual experience the 'God spot' or the 'God module'.

The brain's unitive experience emanates from synchronous 40 Hz neural oscillations that travel across the whole brain. According to Zohar, the 40 Hz oscillations are the neural basis of SQ, a third intelligence* that places our actions and experience in a larger context of meaning and value, thus rendering them more effective. Our spiritual intelligence grounds us in the wider cosmos, and life has purpose and meaning within the larger context of cosmic evolutionary processes.

*When Zohar calls SQ 'a third intelligence', she is referring back to IQ (Binet's Intelligence Quotient tests) and EQ (Goleman's Emotional Intelligence).

References

Berman M. "ELT Through Multiple Intelligences" (www.netlearnpublications.com 2001)
Davis P, Garside B & Rinvolucri M "Ways of Doing" (CUP 1998)
Gardner H. "Frames of Mind" (Basic Books 1983)
Gardner H. "Multiple Intelligences - The Theory in Practice" (Basic Books 1993)
Gardner H. "Intelligence reframed" (Basic Books 1999)
Littlemore J. article in Humanising Language Teaching (Pilgrims March 2001)
Zohar D. & Marshall I. "Spiritual Intelligence The Ultimate Intelligence" (Bloomsbury 2000)

About the author

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