Metaphor

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In language, a metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin) is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison or cross mapping across two or more seemingly unrelated subjects. In a metaphor, a first concept is described as being or precisely equal to a second concept. Thus, the first concept can be economically described because implicit and explicit attributes from the second concept are used to enhance the description of the first. This device is exploited in literature and especially in poetry, where with few words, emotions and associations from one context can powerfully be associated with another, different subject.

In classical (particularly Aristotelian) rhetorical theory, metaphor comprises a subset of analogy and closely relates to other rhetorical concepts such as comparison, simile, allegory and parable.

In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is often seen as a basic cognitive function, that humans naturally see common traits in subjects which are factually distinct, and such behavior may be required for comprehension and learning, indeed the very nature of language itself relies on metaphor in which essentially artifical, but agreed, symbols (in the form of words) cross map to the experiential sense world of those that share a particular language. Termed a conceptual metaphor, this trait is exploited in psychotherapy using a therapeutic metaphor where stories unrelated to the patient are used to teach lessons about the patient's situation. Though the word metaphor in linguistic or cognitive areas are analogies, such use falls outside the literary definition of metaphor.

Contents

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Aspects of metaphor

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Scope and definition

In common parlance the word 'metaphor' describes a figure of speech used to paint one concept with the attributes normally associated with another. Literal and figurative language contains several broad categories of figurative speech which are classified as metaphorical.

In his book, "Guru: Metaphors from a psychotherapist", Sheldon Kopp states:

Generally, a metaphor is defined as a way of speaking in which one thing is expressed in terms of another, whereby this bringing together throws new light on the character of what is being described. (p.17)
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Parts of a metaphor

A metaphor, according to I. A. Richards in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), consists of two parts: the tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the subject from which the attributes are borrowed.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances; — (William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7)

This well known quote is a good example of a metaphor. In this example, "the world" is compared to a stage, the aim being to describe the world by taking well-known attributes from the stage. In this case, the world is the tenor and the stage is the vehicle. "Men and women" are a secondary tenor and "players" is the vehicle for this secondary tenor.

The metaphor is sometimes further analysed in terms of the ground and the tension. The ground consists of the similarities between the tenor and the vehicle. The tension of the metaphor consists of the dissimilarities between the tenor and the vehicle. In the above example, the ground begins to be elucidated from the third line: "They all have their exits and entrances". In the play, Shakespeare continues this metaphor for another twenty lines beyond what is shown here - making it a good example of an extended metaphor.

The corresponding terms to 'tenor' and 'vehicle' in George Lakoff's terminology are target and source. In this nomenclature, metaphors are named using the convention "target IS source", with the word "is" always capitalized; in this notation, the metaphor discussed above would state that "humankind IS theater".

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Types of metaphor

  • An extended metaphor, or conceit, sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. The above quote from As you like it is a good example. The world is described as a stage and then men and women are subsidiary subjects that are further described in the same context. This can be extended to humorous lengths, for instance: "This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you've got a moment, it's a twelve-storey crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying 'This Is a Large Crisis.'" (Black Adder)
  • A mixed metaphor is one that leaps, in the course of a figure, to a second identification inconsistent with the first one. Example: "He stepped up to the plate and grabbed the bull by the horns," where two commonly used metaphors are confused to create a nonsensical image.
  • A dead metaphor is one in which the sense of a transferred image is not present. Example: "to grasp a concept" or "to gather you've understood." Both of these phrases use a physical action as a metaphor for understanding (itself a metaphor), but in none of these cases do most speakers of English actually visualize the physical action. Dead metaphors, by definition, normally go unnoticed. Some people make a distinction between a "dead metaphor" whose origin most speakers are entirely unaware of (such as "to understand" meaning to get underneath a concept), and a dormant metaphor, whose metaphorical character people are aware of but rarely think about (such as "to break the ice"). Others, however, use dead metaphor for both of these concepts, and use it more generally as a way of describing metaphorical cliché.

Other types of metaphor have been identified as well, though the nomenclatures are not as universally accepted:

  • An active metaphor is one which by contrast to a dead metaphor, is not part of daily language and is noticeable as a metaphor. Example: "You are my sun."
  • An absolute or paralogical metaphor (sometimes called an antimetaphor) is one in which there is no discernible point of resemblance between the idea and the image. Example: "The couch is the autobahn of the living room."
  • A complex metaphor is one which mounts one identification on another. Example: "That throws some light on the question." Throwing light is a metaphor and there is no actual light.
  • A compound or loose metaphor is one that catches the mind with several points of similarity. Example: "He has the wild stag's foot." This phrase suggests grace and speed as well as daring.
  • An implicit metaphor is one in which the tenor is not specified but implied. Example: "Shut your trap!" Here, the mouth of the listener is the unspecified tenor.
  • A submerged metaphor is one in which the vehicle is implied, or indicated by one aspect. Example: "my winged thought". Here, the audience must supply the image of the bird.
  • A simple or tight metaphor is one in which there is but one point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle. Example: "Cool it". In this example, the vehicle, "cool", is a temperature and nothing else, so the tenor, "it", can only be grounded to the vehicle by one attribute.
  • A root metaphor is the underlying association that shapes an individual's understanding of a situation. Examples would be understanding life as a dangerous journey, seeing life as a hard test, or thinking of life as a good party. A root metaphor is different from the previous types of metaphor in that it is not necessarily an explicit device in language, but a fundamental, often unconscious, assumption.
    Religion provides one common source of root metaphors, since birth, marriage, death and other universal life experiences can convey a very different meaning to different people, based on their level or type of religious conditioning or otherwise. For example, some religions see life as a single arrow pointing toward a future endpoint. Others see it as part of an endlessly repeating cycle.
    An individual's political affiliations provide another source of root metaphors. In the United States, both conservatives and liberals assume a 'family' metaphor for the nation. However, as George Lakoff has shown, in Moral Politics, they have very different ideas about what a family comprises and how it should function. Many conservatives believe in a "strict father" type of family whilst a lot of liberals see the family as a nurturing and educating social institution.
  • A dying metaphor is a derogatory term coined by George Orwell in his essay Politics and the English Language. Orwell defines a dying metaphor as a metaphor that isn't dead (dead metaphors are different, as they are treated like ordinary words), but has been worn out and is used because it saves people the trouble of inventing an original phrase for themselves. In short, a cliché. Example: Achilles' heel. Orwell suggests that writers scan their work for such dying forms that they have 'seen regularly before in print' and replace them with alternative language patterns.

The category of metaphor can be further considered to contain the following specialized subsets:

  • allegory: An extended metaphor in which a story is told to illustrate an important attribute of the subject
  • catachresis: A mixed metaphor (sometimes used by design and sometimes a rhetorical fault)
  • parable: An extended metaphor told as an anecdote to illustrate or teach a moral lesson
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Etymology

Originally, metaphor was a Greek word meaning "transfer". The Greek etymology is from meta, implying "a change" and pherein meaning "to bear, or carry".

In modern Greek, the word metaphor also means transport or transfer.

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Metaphor and Simile

Metaphor and simile are two of the best known tropes and are often mentioned together as examples of rhetorical figures. Metaphor and simile are both terms that describe a comparison: the only difference between a metaphor and a simile is that a simile makes the comparison explicit by using "like" or "as." The Colombia Encyclopedia, 6th edition, explains the difference as:

a simile states that A is like B, a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A.

According to this definition, then, "You are my sunshine" is a metaphor whereas "Your eyes are like the sun" is a simile. However, some describe similes as simply a specific type of metaphor (see Joseph Kelly's The Seagull Reader (2005), pages 377-379). Most dictionary definitions of both metaphor and simile support the classification of similes as a type of metaphor, and historically it appears the two terms were used essentially as synonyms.

Despite the similarity of the two figures, and the fact that they have historically been used as synonyms, it is the distinction between them which is normally focused upon when the terms are introduced to students. Ironically, "not knowing the difference between a simile and a metaphor" is sometimes used as a euphemism for knowing little about rhetoric or literature. Of course, someone truly versed in rhetoric understands that there is very little difference between metaphor and simile, and that the distinction is trivial compared to, for example, the difference between metonymy and metaphor. Nonetheless, many lists of literary terms define metaphor as "a comparison not using like or as", showing the emphasis often put on teaching this distinction.

Usually, similes and metaphors could easily be interchanged. For example remove the word 'like' from William Shakespeare's simile, "Death lies on her, like an untimely frost," and it becomes "Death lies on her, an untimely frost," which retains almost exactly the same meaning. However, at other times using a simile as opposed to a metaphor clarifies the analogy by calling out exactly what is being compared. "He had a posture like a question mark" (Corbett, Classical rhetoric for the modern student (1971), page 479) has one possible interpretation, that the shape of the posture is that of a question mark, whereas "His posture was a question mark" has a second interpretation, that the reason for the posture is in question. At other times use of a simile rather than a metaphor adds meaning by calling to attention the process of comparison, as in "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" (Irina Dunn). The point is not to compare a woman to a fish, but to ask the reader to consider how the woman is like the fish. Finally, similes are often more convenient than metaphors when analogizing actions as opposed to things: "Wide sleeves fluttering like wings" (Marcel Proust) does not translate easily from simile to metaphor.

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Metaphors in literature and language

Metaphor is present in written language back to the earliest surviving writings. From the Epic of Gilgamesh (one of the oldest Sumerian texts):

My friend, the swift mule, fleet wild ass of the mountain, panther of the wilderness, after we joined together and went up into the mountain, fought the Bull of Heaven and killed it, and overwhelmed Humbaba, who lived in the Cedar Forest, now what is this sleep that has seized you? - (Trans. Kovacs, 1989)

In this example, the friend is compared to a mule, a wild ass, and a panther to indicate that the speaker sees traits from these animals in his friend.

The Greek plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, among others, were almost invariably allegorical, showing the tragedy of the protagonists, either to caution the audience metaphorically about temptation, or to lambast famous individuals of the day by inferring similarities with the caricatures in the play.

Even when they are not intentional, parallels can be drawn between most writing or language and other topics. In this way it can be seen that any theme in literature is a metaphor, using the story to convey information about human perception of the theme in question.

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Metaphors in cognitive linguistics

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Conceptual metaphor

Template:Main Conceptual metaphors are a subject within cognitive linguistics. Workers in cognitive linguistics generally define metaphor as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain, e.g. one person's life experience versus another's.

Two influential figures in modern use of metaphor are: George Lakoff, one of America's foremost linguists, and Milton Erickson, the creator of conversational hypnosis and founder [in 1957] of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, which is presently the largest U.S. organization for health and mental health care professionals using clinical hypnosis. Both emphasized strongly the crucial place that metaphor holds in human communication, conceptulization, consciousness and experience.

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Therapeutic metaphor

Template:Main A therapeutic metaphor is an extended metaphor, used in psychotherapy. It involves a story or other parallel to an entire aspect of a situation. An example would be if a therapist were told about the untimely death of a loved one and they responded by describing two roses in a garden, one of which is dug up. The purpose of this is to highlight to a person, in an effective way, some aspects and lessons that otherwise they might not be able to perceive as clearly in their current situation, or to suggest new outlooks on it.

Therapeutic metaphors aim to exploit the links between a personal and an impersonal conceptual domain to teach lessons relevant to the first domain, while avoiding the issues associated with personal perspective.

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See also

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References

  • Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. I. Bywater. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. (1984). 2 Vols. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
  • Max Black. (1962). Models and Metaphor. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
  • Donald Davidson. (1978). "What Metaphors Mean." Reprinted in Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation. (1984). Oxford, Oxford University Press.
  • Jacques Derrida. (1982). "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy." In Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
  • Milton Erickson Any of the many books by, or about, ME, who was a dedicated user and creator of therapeutic metaphor. (See that article for bibliography)
  • David Gordon Therapeutic Metaphors (1978)
  • Stevan Harnad. (1982) Metaphor and Mental Duality in Simon, T. and Scholes, R., Eds. Language, mind and brain, pages pp. 189-211. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum. Creativity: Method or Magic?
  • George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, Chicago University Press.
(1990). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago, Chicago University Press.
  • Andrew Ortony, Ed. (1993). Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
  • I. A. Richards. (1936). The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
  • Paul Ricoeur. (1977). The Rule of Metaphor. Trans. Robert Czerny. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
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External links


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