Scholarly Commons @ UNLV Boyd Law Scholarly Works Faculty Scholarship 2011 The Lady, or the Tiger? A Field Guide to Metaphor & Narrative Linda L. Berger University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub Part of the Legal Education Commons, Legal Writing and Research Commons, and the Other Law Commons Recommended Citation Berger, Linda L., "The Lady, or the Tiger? A Field Guide to Metaphor & Narrative" (2011). Scholarly Works. 663. https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub/663 This Article is brought to you by the Scholarly Commons @ UNLV Boyd Law, an institutional repository administered by the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. BERGER_MACRO_FINAL 3/29/2011 1:03:25 PM The Lady, or the Tiger? A Field Guide to Metaphor and Narrative Linda L. Berger* We can no longer take language for granted as a medium of communication. Its transparency has gone. We are like people who for a long time looked out of a window without noticing the glass—and then one day began to notice this too.1 I. INTRODUCTION Metaphor and narrative reassure us that things hang together, providing a sense of coherence to the patterns and paths we employ for perception and expression. Without the metaphorical process that allows us to gather them up, group them together, and contain them, our perceptions would scatter like marbles thrown on the ground.2 Without the ability to tell stories that link discrete events together, place them into a storyline with a beginning and end, and compose a coherent accounting, our lives would be constructed of “One Damn Thing After Another.”3 In this field guide, I hope to illustrate—with images and stories when possible—how better understanding of metaphor and narrative can guide those engaged in legal rhetoric and persuasion.