Source–Target Mapping Note¶
Analysis artifact — instantiates Literal-vs-Figurative Boundary Preservation
A working ledger that maps each source feature to "transfers / does not transfer," recording which resemblances a comparison invites and which it must fence off — and which rival sources were rejected.
The Source–Target Mapping Note is a private analytical ledger the author keeps while designing a comparison — something the audience never sees. Down one column go the features of the source domain; against each, a verdict: transfers (and is meant to), does not transfer (and must be fenced off), or partial. Alongside it records the candidate sources that were considered and rejected, with a one-line reason. Where a published clause states one bounded comparison, the mapping note is the reasoning that produced it: the full map of correspondences from which a safe subset was deliberately chosen. Its defining move is completeness of analysis, not of presentation — it exists to make the dangerous non-transfers visible to the author before the audience discovers them.
Example¶
An architect is about to tell her team "our new event log is like a database table." Before writing any documentation she keeps a mapping note. Source = a SQL table. Rows↔events: transfers. Columns↔fields: transfers. UPDATE-in-place: does not — the log is append-only. DELETE: does not. Transactional rollback: does not. Guaranteed ordering: partial. Alternatives she weighs and records: "like a ledger" (better on append-only, weaker on the query intuition), "like a spreadsheet" (rejected — it screams edit-in-place, the single worst non-transfer). The ledger makes the danger legible: the word "table" imports mutability, exactly the property the log does not have. She switches the doc to "like an append-only ledger" and the mutability misconception never ships. The note itself is thrown in the design folder as rationale for the next engineer who asks why.
How it works¶
The method is enumerate-then-classify. List the salient features of the chosen source; tag each transfers / does-not / partial; list at least two rival sources with a one-line tradeoff each; then pick the source whose dangerous non-transfers are fewest or most easily fenced. The output is not prose for a reader but a decision plus its audit trail. It is upstream of every reader-facing mechanism: it decides what the comparison should be, leaving the wording to a clause template and any published caveat to a disclaimer.
Tuning parameters¶
- Enumeration depth — how many source features to list before stopping. Deeper enumeration surfaces more hidden non-transfers but risks false completeness and effort.
- Alternative breadth — how many rival sources to score. More candidates lower the chance of settling on the first-thought source, at the cost of analysis time.
- Partial-transfer handling — whether "partial" features are promoted to explicit fences or left implicit. Promoting them is safer but crowds the eventual clause.
- Persistence — throwaway scratch versus archived design rationale. Archiving pays off when the comparison will be reused or contested later.
When it helps, and when it misleads¶
Its strength is that it drags the non-transfers into the open before the audience trips on them, and it turns source choice from instinct into an evidence-backed decision with a paper trail. Its failure mode is false completeness: you cannot enumerate every feature of a rich source, and the one you miss is often the one a reader imports — every analogy leaks somewhere.[n1] It can also invite analysis paralysis, and, being private, it protects nothing on its own: if the published clause drops the fence the note prescribed, all its work is lost. The classic misuse is treating the ledger as exhaustive proof of safety. The guarding discipline is to keep it a bounded decision aid, cap the enumeration, and hand its verdicts to the mechanisms that actually reach the reader.
How it implements the components¶
source_target_comparison_pair— the ledger is organized around one explicit source and one target; naming both is its first row.shared_feature_selection— the "transfers" column is the selection step: it identifies which features are meant to cross.non_identity_boundary— the "does not transfer" column enumerates exactly where target and source diverge, the boundary the rest of the machinery must protect.comparison_alternative_set— the rejected-candidates list records the rival sources weighed, so the choice is defensible and revisable.
It does not implement explicit_figurativeness_marker or transfer_scope_constraint — the Like/As Clause Template writes those into the reader-facing clause; the note is analysis, never published prose. Nor does it gather any interpretive_feedback_signal (the Comprehension Backcheck).
Related¶
- Instantiates: Literal-vs-Figurative Boundary Preservation — the note is the design-time analysis behind a bounded comparison.
- Sibling mechanisms: Like/As Clause Template · Non-Literality Disclaimer · Figurative Language Review Checklist · Simile Scaffold Prompt · Comprehension Backcheck · Contractual Figurative-Language Scrub · Translation Marker Preservation Instruction
Editorial Notes¶
Form Classification¶
Form family: Analysis, Modeling & Optimization
Rationale: Source Target Mapping Note operates by classifies source features by transferability, compares rival sources, and computes the least-dangerous match. That concrete deployed or enacted form is Analysis, Modeling & Optimization under the frozen taxonomy.
Nearest alternative: Record, Log & Register — Although Record, Log & Register can support this mechanism, the frozen evidence makes its operative form the act that classifies source features by transferability, compares rival sources, and computes the least-dangerous match; the alternative is therefore secondary rather than defining.
Review outcome: Adjudicated after independent review; high confidence.
Origin Attribution¶
Primary origin: Rhetoric
Origin pattern: Convergent development
Present-day reach: Universal
Rationale: A ledger of what transfers and does not transfer from source to target makes an analogy's warrant and limits explicit. Gentner's structure-mapping theory distinguishes relational correspondences from nonmapped attributes; rhetoric governs audience-facing use.
Related originating lineages:
- Cognitive Science — Structure mapping explains correspondence and misleading feature transfer.
- Communication & Media Studies — Communication and media research supplies a parallel or contributing lineage for the mechanism's defining operation: a working ledger that maps each source feature to 'transfers / does not transfer,' recording which resemblances a comparison invites and which it must fence off — and which rival….
- Education & Pedagogy — education_pedagogy contributes education, assessment, and instructional practice to this mechanism's defining operation—A working ledger that maps each source feature to 'transfers / does not transfer,' recording which resemblances a comparison invites and which it must fence off — and which rival sources were rejected—without displacing the selected primary historical lineage.
- Linguistics & Semiotics — Conceptual metaphor maps source-domain relations onto target meaning.
- Literature & Literary Theory — literature_literary_theory contributes literary comparison, source domains, narrative sequence, and textual interpretation to this mechanism's defining operation—A working ledger that maps each source feature to 'transfers / does not transfer,' recording which resemblances a comparison invites and which it must fence off — and which rival sources were rejected—without displacing the selected primary historical lineage.
Review resolution: The blind reviewers disagree on primary lineage (literature_literary_theory versus rhetoric). Authoritative or primary research supports rhetoric as the best historical origin: A ledger of what transfers and does not transfer from source to target makes an analogy's warrant and limits explicit. Gentner's structure-mapping theory distinguishes relational correspondences from nonmapped attributes; rhetoric governs audience-facing use. The cited Gentner, Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy directly supports the mechanism's defining operation. All independently supported contributing domains are retained without an arbitrary cap. origin_mode=convergent records lineage, while domain_reach=universal records later applicability separately from provenance.
Encyclopedia synthesis: The exact catalogued form synthesizes established practice rather than reproducing a single standard historical label.
Review outcome: Researched adjudication after independent review; high confidence.
Sources consulted:
Notes¶
The mapping note is deliberately an input to the reader-facing mechanisms, not one of them. Keeping the analysis separate from the published clause is what lets an author improve the comparison — find a missed non-transfer, swap the source — without re-editing the delivered text each time, and gives the Contractual Figurative-Language Scrub a ready map of what a retained figure would license.
[n1] The law of leaky abstractions — every simplifying model eventually exposes a detail of the thing it abstracts. For a comparison, the corollary is that no source is a perfect stand-in; the mapping note is where you deliberately find the leaks first instead of letting a reader find them. ↩