A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some
point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object. It is a figure of speech
comparing two unlike things without using either "like" or "as". It is not to be mistaken
with a simile which does use "like" or "as" in comparisons. Metaphor is a type of analogy
and is closely related to other rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects
via association, comparison or resemblance including allegory, hyperbole, and simile.
One of the most prominent examples of a metaphor in English literature is the All the world's
a stage monologue from As You Like It:
This quotation contains a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage. By figuratively
asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses the points of comparison between the
world and a stage to convey an understanding about the mechanics of the world and the lives
of the people within it. The Philosophy of Rhetoric by I. A. Richards
describes a metaphor as having two parts: the tenor and the vehicle. The tenor is the
subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the object whose attributes
are borrowed. In the previous example, "the world" is compared to a stage, describing
it with the attributes of "the stage"; "the world" is the tenor, and "a stage" is the
vehicle; "men and women" is a secondary tenor, "players" is the secondary vehicle.
Other writers employ the general terms ground and figure to denote tenor and the vehicle.
In cognitive linguistics, the terms target and source are used respectively.
Etymology The English metaphor derives from the 16th-century
Old French métaphore, which comes from the Latin metaphora, "carrying over", in turn
from the Greek μεταφορά, "transfer", from μεταφέρω, "to carry over", "to
transfer" and that from μετά, "between" + φέρω, "to bear", "to carry".
Comparison with other types of analogy Metaphors are most frequently compared with
similes. The Columbia Encyclopedia explains the difference as:
a simile states that A is like B, a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A.
Where a metaphor asserts the two objects in the comparison are identical on the point
of comparison, a simile merely asserts a similarity. For this reason a metaphor is generally considered
more forceful than a simile. The metaphor category also contains these
specialised types: Allegory: An extended metaphor wherein a story
illustrates an important attribute of the subject.
Catachresis: A mixed metaphor used by design and accident.
Parable: An extended metaphor narrated as an anecdote illustrating and teaching such
as in Aesop's fables, or Jesus' teaching method as told in the Bible.
Pun: Similar to a metaphor, a pun alludes to another term. However the main difference
is that a pun is a frivolous allusion between two different things whereas a metaphor is
a purposeful allusion between two different things.
Metaphor, like other types of analogy, can usefully be distinguished from metonymy as
one of two fundamental modes of thought. Metaphor and analogy both work by bringing together
two concepts from different conceptual domains, whereas metonymy works by using one element
from a given domain to refer to another closely related element. Thus, a metaphor creates
new links between otherwise distinct conceptual domains, whereas a metonymy relies on the
existing links within them. Common types
A dead metaphor is one in which the sense of a transferred image is absent. Examples:
"to grasp a concept" and "to gather what you've understood" use physical action as a metaphor
for understanding. Most people do not visualize the action—dead metaphors normally go unnoticed.
Some people distinguish between a dead metaphor and a cliché. Others use "dead metaphor"
to denote both. A mixed metaphor is one that leaps from one
identification to a second identification inconsistent with the first. "I smell a rat
[...] but I'll nip him in the bud"—Irish politician Boyle Roche. This form is often
used as a parody of metaphor itself: "If we can hit that bull's-eye then the rest of the
dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate." — Futurama character Zapp Brannigan.
Uses outside of rhetoric
The term metaphor is also used for the following terms that are not a part of rhetoric:
A cognitive metaphor is the association of object to an experience outside the object's
environment A conceptual metaphor is an underlying association
that is systematic in both language and thought A root metaphor is the underlying worldview
that shapes an individual's understanding of a situation
A nonlinguistic metaphor is an association between two nonlinguistic realms of experience
A visual metaphor uses an image to create the link between different ideas
Metaphors can also be implied and extended throughout pieces of literature.
Conceptual metaphors
Some theorists have suggested that metaphors are not merely stylistic, but that they are
cognitively important as well. In Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
argue that metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but also in thought
and action. A common definition of a metaphor can be described as a comparison that shows
how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in another important way.
They explain how a metaphor is simply understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms
of another. The authors call this concept a "conduit metaphor". By this they meant that
a speaker can put ideas or objects into words or containers, and then send them along a
channel, or conduit, to a listener who takes that idea or object out of the container and
makes meaning of it. In other words, communication is something that ideas go into. The container
is separate from the ideas themselves. Lakoff and Johnson give several examples of daily
metaphors we use, such as "argument is war" and "time is money". Metaphors are widely
used in context to describe personal meaning. The authors also suggest that communication
can be viewed as a machine: "Communication is not what one does with the machine, but
is the machine itself.". Nonlinguistic metaphors
Metaphors can also map experience between two nonlinguistic realms. In The Dream Frontier,
Mark Blechner describes musical metaphors, in which a piece of music can "map" to the
personality and emotional life of a person. Musicologist Leonard Meyer demonstrated how
purely rhythmic and harmonic events can express human emotions.
Art theorist Robert Vischer argued that when we look at a painting, we "feel ourselves
into it" by imagining our body in the posture of a nonhuman or inanimate object in the painting.
For example, the painting "The Solitary Tree" by Caspar David Friedrich shows a tree with
contorted, barren limbs. In looking at that painting, we imagine our limbs in a similarly
contorted and barren shape, and that creates a feeling in us of strain and distress. Nonlinguistic
metaphors may be the foundation of our experience of visual, musical, dance, and other art forms.
In historical linguistics In historical onomasiology or, more generally,
in historical linguistics, metaphor is defined as semantic change based on similarity, i.e.,
a similarity in form or function between the original concept named by a word and the target
concept named by this word. ex. mouse: small, gray rodent → small, gray,
mouse-shaped computer device. Some recent linguistic theories view language
as by its nature all metaphorical; or that language in essence is metaphorical.
Historical theories of metaphor Metaphor as style in speech and writing
Viewed as an aspect of speech and writing, metaphor qualifies as style, in particular,
style characterized by a type of analogy. An expression that by implication suggests
the likeness of one entity to another entity gives style to an item of speech or writing,
whether the entities consist of objects, events, ideas, activities, attributes, or almost anything
expressible in language. For example, in the first sentence of this paragraph, the word
"viewed" serves as a metaphor for "thought of", implying analogy of the process of seeing
and the thought process. The phrase, "viewed as an aspect of", projects the properties
of seeing something from a particular perspective onto thinking about something from a particular
perspective, that "something" in this case referring to "metaphor" and that "perspective"
in this case referring to the characteristics of speech and writing.
As a characteristic of speech and writing, metaphors can serve the poetic imagination,
Sylvia Plath, in her poem "Cut", to compare the blood issuing from her cut thumb to the
running of a million soldiers, "redcoats, every one"; and, enabling Robert Frost, in
"The Road Not Taken", to compare one's life to a journey.
Viewed also as an aspect of speech, metaphor can serve as a device for persuading the listener
or reader of the speaker or writer's argument or thesis, the so-called rhetorical metaphor.
Metaphor as foundational to our conceptual system
Cognitive linguists emphasize that metaphors serve to facilitate the understanding of one
conceptual domain, typically an abstract one like "life" or "theories" or "ideas", through
expressions that relate to another, more familiar conceptual domain, typically a more concrete
one like "journey" or "buildings" or "food". Food for thought: we devour a book of raw
facts, try to digest them, stew over them, let them simmer on the back-burner, regurgitate
them in discussions, cook up explanations, hoping they do not seem half-baked. Theories
as buildings: we establish a foundation for them, a framework, support them with strong
arguments, buttressing them with facts, hoping they will stand. Life as journey: some of
us travel hopefully, others seem to have no direction, many lose their way.
A convenient short-hand way of capturing this view of metaphor is the following: CONCEPTUAL
DOMAIN IS CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN, which is what is called a conceptual metaphor. A conceptual
metaphor consists of two conceptual domains, in which one domain is understood in terms
of another. A conceptual domain is any coherent organization of experience. Thus, for example,
we have coherently organized knowledge about journeys that we rely on in understanding
life.
Lakoff and Johnson greatly contributed to establishing the importance of conceptual
metaphor as a framework for thinking in language. In recent years many scholars have investigated
the original ways in which writers use novel metaphors and question the fundamental frameworks
of thinking implicit in conceptual metaphors. When considering the role conceptual metaphor
plays in the worldview of the community, the problem becomes twofold. From a sociological,
cultural, or philosophical perspective, the question becomes, to what extent ideologies
maintain and impose conceptual patterns of thought by introducing, supporting, and adapting
fundamental patterns of thinking metaphorically. To what extent does the ideology fashion and
refashion the idea of the nation as a container with borders? How are enemies and outsiders
represented? As diseases? As attackers? How are the metaphoric paths of fate, destiny,
history, and progress represented? As the opening of an eternal monumental moment? Or
as the path to communism? Though cognitive scholars have made some attempts
to take on board the idea that different languages have evolved radically different concepts
and conceptual metaphors, they have on the whole remained tied up in the somewhat reductive
concept of worldview which derives from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The true source of
ethnolinguistics and the thinker who contributed most to the debate on the relationship between
culture, language, and linguistic communities was the German philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt.
Humboldt remains, however, little known in English-speaking nations. Andrew Goatly, in
"Washing the Brain" does take on board the dual problem of conceptual metaphor as a framework
implicit in the language as a system, and the way individuals and ideologies negotiate
conceptual metaphors. James W. Underhill, in Creating Worldviews:
Ideology, Metaphor & Language, considers the way individual speech adopts and reinforces
certain metaphoric paradigms. This involves a critique of both communist and fascist discourse.
But Underhill's studies are situated in Czech and German, which allows him to demonstrate
the ways individuals are both thinking "within", and resisting the modes by which ideologies
seek to appropriate key concepts such as "the people", "the state", "history", and "struggle".
Though metaphors can be considered to be "in" language, Underhill's chapter on French, English
and ethnolinguistics demonstrates that we cannot conceive of language or languages in
anything other than metaphoric terms. French is a treasure, for example. English is a "tool"
for liberating minorities engaging in debate in the global world. Underhill continues his
investigation of the relationship between worldview and language in Ethnolinguistics
and Cultural Concepts: Truth, Love, Hate & War. See also
Notes
References This article incorporates material from the
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42: 163. Retrieved 11 October 2013. External links
History of metaphor on In Our Time at the BBC.
A short history of metaphor Audio illustrations of metaphor as figure
of speech Top Ten Metaphors of 2008
Shakespeare's Metaphors Metaphor Examples
List of ancient Greek words starting with μετα-, on Perseus