METAPHOR%20

1
METAPHOR METONYMY

• by Don L. F. Nilsen and
• Alleen Pace Nilsen

2
TYPICAL METAPHOR SOURCES

• They are common, old, prototypical, simple, and
  concrete.
• BODY PARTS, ANIMALS, PLANTS, WEATHER, CONTAINERS,
  UP/DOWN, JOURNEY, HOT/COLD, BUILDINGS, NUTRIENTS,
  WAR

3
TYPICAL METAPHOR TARGETS

• They are abstract, complex, and new.
• TECHNOLOGY (COMPUTERS), SOCIAL CHANGE, RELIGIOUS
  CHANGE, EXPLORATION, INVENTION, DISCOVERY,
  MACROCOSM, MICROCOSM, LIFE, WAR, LOVE, HAPPINESS,
  TIME, IDEAS, THEORIES, MORALITY, MIND, ANGER,
  FEAR, POLITICS, SOCIETY, COMMUNICATION, RELIGION

4
THE NATURE OF GROUND

• KIDNEY BEANS Same color and shape different
  size, texture and taste
• A HEAD OF LETTUCE Same size and shape different
  color and Intelligence
• ELBOW MACARONI Same shape and color different
  size and taste

5
BULWER LITTON FICTION CONTEST

• Winning entries in the annual Bulwer Lytton
  Fiction Contest, which honors the best of the
  worst from some 10,000 bad book beginnings,
  often include overdone or confused metaphors as
  in this 1990 winning sentence written by Linda
  Vernon

6

• Delores breezed along the surface of her life
  like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth
  water, rippling reality sporadically but
  oblivious to it consistently, until she finally
  lost momentum, sank and, due to an overdose of
  fluoride as a child which caused her to suffer
  from chronic apathy, doomed herself to lie
  forever on the floor of her life as useless as an
  appendix and as lonely as a 500-pound barbell in
  a steroid-free fitness center.

7
CATCHING ONTO A METAPHOR

• Catching onto a metaphor is like catching onto a
  joke. For both, people must see the item being
  referred to (the goal) in relation to the basis
  of the comparison (the source) and then they must
  figure out the nature of the grounding, which is
  what the source and the goal have in common.
• Powerful metaphors result in a sudden insight
  that resembles catching onto a joke. In
  writing about this thrill, Ralph Waldo Emerson
  said the following

8
Literal and Metaphorical Face
9

• When some familiar truth or fact appears in a new
  dress, mounted as on a fine horse, equipped with
  a grand pair of ballooning wings, we cannot
  enough testify our surprise and pleasure.
• It is like a new virtue in some unprized old
  property, as when a boy finds that his
  pocketknife will attract steel filings and take
  up a needle.

10
CLOSURE

• Youre the cream in my coffee.
• My love is a rose.

11
COMIC METAPHORS

• With metaphors created for comic effect,
  listeners have to engage in an extra level of
  mental gymnastics or they will miss the point.
• On Welcome Back Kotter, Gabriel Kaplan said,
  When you walk through the cow pasture of facts,
  you are bound to step in some truth.

12

• The following newly coined metaphors from the
  field of business provide vivid mental images
• Jell-O Principle The ability of an organization
  to survive meddling and intervention. (When an
  object is placed into and removed from moderately
  set Jell-O, the Jell-O will flow back to its
  original shape.)
• Kangaroo Strategy A company trying to increase
  its inadequate holdings. (Sometimes the
  companies with the emptiest pockets are the ones
  that take the greatest leaps.)

13
CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS

• Metaphors give people a way to talk about the
  unknown through references to the known.
• Many of the cute things that children say are
  original metaphors created because the speakers
  do not know the standard way of expressing an
  idea.
• Adults create metaphors for the same reason, but
  they are more aware of what they are doing.

14
Queen Bee Syndrome

• When a powerful woman strictly limits the
  development of her female subordinates.
• In a swarm of bees, only one superior bee is
  allowed to lay the eggs.

15
Mouse Milking

• A venture that has reached the point of
  diminishing returns.
• Because of a mouses size, milking it would be an
  intricately challenging operation producing very
  little milk.

16
CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS

• LIFE IS A JOURNEY (TIME, PLACE, PROGRESS)
• ISRAEL/AMERICA/SALT LAKE CITY IS THE PROMISED
  LAND
• LOVE IS A CAR TRIP
• ANGER IS HEAT

17

• MORE IS UP (CT. CAPITALISM WITH RELIGIOUS
  DEPRIVATION)
• ARGUMENT IS WAR
• LIFE IS A GAMBLE
• ANGER IS HOT
• FEAR IS COLD
• HAPPINESS IS UP
• SADNESS IS DOWN

18
DEAD METAPHORS

• Dead metaphors are ones that have been in the
  language so long that speakers take them for
  granted.
• BODY METAPHORS head of cabbage, shoulder of a
  road, arm of the government, foothills, mouth of
  a river

19
Some Horse Metaphors
20

• However, body metaphors can be funny if there is
  something to attract readers or listeners
  attention to contradictory images in a metaphors
  source and goal.
• A virgin forest is defined as one in which the
  hand of man has never set foot.
• Virgin territory is described as being
  pregnant with possibilities.

21

• S.J. Perelman startled his readers with this
  mixed metaphor
• The color drained slowly from my face, entered
  the auricle, shot up the escalator, and issued
  from the ladies and misses section into the
  housewares department.

22

• Kick the bucket is a dead metaphor.
• To commit suicide, a person would tie a rope
  around his neck, stand on a bucket, and then
  kick the bucket.

23
MAPPING

• The source and the target of a metaphor have
  something in common, the ground.
• Usually the source and the goal have many things
  in common. In the life is a journey metaphor
  both life and a journey have a beginning, an end,
  a path, a bunch of episodes, etc.

24
METAPHORS AND LIFE EXPERIENCES

• Ones whole life experience goes into creating
  and understanding metaphors.
• Cynthia Ozick wrote in a May 1986 Harpers
  article, Metaphor is what inspiration is not.
  Inspiration is ad hoc and has no history.
  Metaphor relies on what has been experienced
  before it transforms the strange into the
  familiar.

25
METAPHORS IN THE DICTIONARY

• Editors of Websters Unabridged Dictionary said
  that of the 100,000 new words added to their 1961
  edition, nearly half came into the language
  through metaphorical processes (most of the
  others were the result of blending).

26
SIMILES VS. METAPHORS

• Whenever a metaphor uses like or as it is
  sometimes called a simile. Unlike metaphors,
  similes are always literally true.
• The pure or true metaphors, as when Emerson
  wrote that a fact appears in a new dress, and
  that a fine horse is equipped with a grand pair
  of ballooning wings.

27
SIMPLIFICATION OF METAPHORS

• Anthony Judge said, simplifying reality to
  simplify the decision process is a dangerously
  unsustainable way forward.
• Jacob Mey said, The inherent danger of metaphor
  is in the uncritical acceptance of a
  single-minded model of thinking and its
  continued, thoughtless recycling, leading to the
  adoption of one solution as the remedy to all
  evils.

28
Some Metaphors and Puns
29
SYMBOLS VS. METAPHORS

• Symbols are trite
• Dead metaphors are trite theyre used for
  reference and could be called linguistic
  metaphors.
• Literary metaphors are fresh but they can become
  trite, as in Somethings rotten in Denmark.

30
Metonomy (Association)Here is a visual similarity
31
UTILIZATION, HIGHLIGHTING, AND HIDING

• CONTRAST HALF-BAKED IDEAS STEWED IDEAS
• NIXON ADMINISTRATION
• IN FAVOR Be a team player.
• AGAINST Theres a cancer in the White House.

32
WAR METAPHORS

• Metaphors are very important in times of war.
  Discussing the US military action against Iraq in
  January of 1993, the U.S. press used the
  following punishment metaphors
• U.S. warplanes punish Iraq.
• A slap on the wrist for Saddam Hussein.
• Saddam receives spanking.

33
SKELETON METAPHORS
34
METAPHOR METONYMY WEB SITE

• BIBLIOGRAPHY OF METAPHOR AND METONYMY (JOHN
  BENJAMINS)
• http//www.benjamins.com/online/met/topbar.html