Metaphor and Reconciliation

The Discourse Dynamics of Empathy in Post-Conflict Conversations

Lynne Cameron, Lynne J. Cameron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415956758
• eBook ISBN: 9781136872907
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Sixteen years after her father was killed by an IRA bomb, Jo Berry had her first conversation with the man responsible. She had made a long journey, 'walking the footsteps of the bombers' as she put it, determined not to give in to anger and revenge but to try to understand his motivations and perspective. Her preparedness to meet Pat Magee opened up a path to empathy that developed through their conversations over the following years. This book studies their growing understandings of each other by focusing on the rich networks of metaphors that appear in their conversations, and how these evolve in the process of reconciliation. The innovative research method, reported in a rigorous but accessible style, together with the rich and often poignant data, make this book a valuable addition to the study of metaphor and discourse. In uncovering the development of empathy between these two extraordinary people, Cameron illuminates the moral necessity, and the potential rewards, in trying to imagine the world and mind of the Other. Implications are drawn for how mediators in reconciliation contexts might make positive use of metaphor in supporting the dynamics of empathy.

1
Coming Together

Background to the Conciliation Process

and I saw very clearly.
that the--
the end of that journey,
would be,
sitting down and,
talking to the people who did it.

—Jo Berry (second meeting with Pat Magee, 2000)

In this book you will read about two people who reach across pain and loss to make sense of one day in history and its consequences, a pivotal day when a bomb exploded and a family lost a father; when a paramilitary operation targeting a member of the British government was successfully carried out by a member of a politically motivated movement. His action— her father’s killing. Fifteen years later, the two met and talked to share their stories, although when we look closely we find that these are more than stories, and that they can never actually be fully shared. Through a brave and difficult struggle towards understanding, Jo Berry and Pat Magee arrive at new perceptions of themselves and each other.

The histories of Jo Berry and Patrick Magee first intersected on the day that Jo’s father was killed in the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, along with several other members of the British government. From this point, their paths diverged. Jo Berry began dealing with the grief of her loss, determined to learn more about the situation that had led to the bombing. Pat Magee was arrested and imprisoned, until a political settlement between the British government and Irish republicans in 1999 led to his release. Fifteen years after the bombing in Brighton, they met and sat down together across a table, each ready to talk and to listen.

As an applied linguist and metaphor scholar, I was privileged to be given access to recordings made at some of their meetings, to be funded to investigate how they used metaphor in their talk, and to meet Jo Berry and, later, Pat Magee. This book is a report of my study of their talk together, and the result of trying to resolve issues that arose in doing the research. Empirical research begins with a dataset; here the data came as recordings of conversations, a trace of the original human interaction. Combined with discourse analysis, metaphor analysis offers useful, although always partial, access to how participants are thinking about what they are saying, as they say it. Analysis pulls the talk to pieces in many different ways to try to understand it more deeply or more fully. But, knowing that the whole is more than can be ever revealed through analysis, what is gained from minute attention to detail must be balanced with thoughtful interpretation and synthesis. This book reports what I found out, about metaphor in talk, and about the need to push the limits of existing methodology, but, most importantly, about the effortful process of reaching an understanding of another human being who could well have been a bitter enemy. Pat Magee’s act of violence created for Jo Berry the need to understand the people and politics of Ireland; she tried to bridge the gap between them and he came to meet her.

THE CONCILIATION PROCESS

How to label the process that Jo Berry and Pat Magee engage in is complicated. One of the goals of the research set out in this book is to understand more about the nature of this process. Jo often describes it metaphorically as a journey, as in the extract of data that opens the chapter. The title of the book uses the term ‘reconciliation’; here, we need to adjust that slightly and select a label for the process that the book documents.

‘Reconciliation’ is not entirely suitable because it suggests an initial conciliated position, lost through conflict and then regained; this was not the case for Jo Berry and Pat Magee. Even to posit a single process that could be labelled may be inappropriate. Each participant engaged in multiple processes: Jo was dealing with the grief around her father’s death, with knowing this was a politically motivated and violent death, and with the impact of meeting Pat face-to-face. Pat was also coping with the impact of meeting, while reflecting on his motivations as a younger man, and the implications of accepting responsibility for Jo’s father’s death. The separate processes were complemented by the shared process of engaging in discourse. The dynamics of the discourse changed with each meeting, including how words and phrases came to stand for ideas or events and the kinds of things that they felt comfortable introducing to the talk.

The term ‘conciliation process’ will be used as an overarching label for the evolving discourse between Jo Berry and Pat Magee as they try to understand more about each other across a divide caused by violence. The term is intended to encompass both the processes that each person separately engaged in and the shared processes in their meetings, recognising that people operate at the same time both as individuals and as a dyad (Poland, 2007).

When they met in the early years after Pat Magee’s release from prison, the participants themselves were not sure where the conciliation process would take them, whether they could reach some understanding, whether each meeting would be the last one or there would be sufficient reason to meet again. After ten years, their conciliation process must be considered a success. Jo Berry and Pat Magee have continued to talk with each other, in public and in private, over the time since they first met. They work separately and together to encourage other people to engage in conciliation, to repair lives torn apart by violence. They have found ways to understand each other that enable empathy while not denying the horror and moral trespass of what happened. Throughout their conversations, Jo Berry and Pat Magee reflect on the conciliation process as it happens. Their own understandings of the process evolve alongside their evolving understanding of each other.

METAPHOR AND RECONCILIATION

Most of us do not, thank goodness, have such a weight of sorrow to deal...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in Linguistics
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• Transcription Conventions
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Coming Together
• 2 The Discourse Dynamics Approach to Metaphor and Empathy
• 3 Metaphor Analysis
• 4 Conciliation as JOURNEYS OF UNDERSTANDING and LISTENING TO STORIES
• 5 Metaphor Clusters and Absences
• 6 CONNECTION and SEPARATION in Conciliation
• 7 Becoming Involved in Violence
• 8 The Impact of Violence
• 9 Appropriating the Other’s Metaphors
• 10 Metaphor, Reconciliation and the Dynamics of Empathy
• 11 Images of Empathy
• Appendix Using Metaphor in Reconciliation: Implications for Mediators
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index