Metaphor
As an expression in language, a metaphor describes one entity — e.g., object, event, thought, concept, activity, attribute — to imply comparison with another without the help of transitional words to indicate the act of comparison (such as "like" or "as" used in simile), relying instead on specific imagery and description to provide context for inferring the target of comparison.
Metaphor as style in speech and writing
|
Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish-a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. — George Lakoff and Mark Johnson[1] |
Viewed as an aspect of speech and writing, metaphor qualifies as style, in particular, style characterized by a type of analogy. An expression (word, phrase) 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 (vision) 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, enabling William Shakespeare, in his play "As You Like It", to compare the world to a stage and its human inhabitants players entering and exiting upon that stage; [2] enabling 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";[3] and, enabling Robert Frost, in "The Road Not Taken", to compare one´s life to a journey. [4]
Viewed also as an aspect of speech and writing, metaphor can serve as a device for persuading the listener or reader of the speaker-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'. [1] [5] Food for thought: we devour an article 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 (A) IS CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN (B), 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. [1] [5]
References and notes cited in text as superscripts
|
Most citations to articles listed here include links — in font-color blue — to full-text. Accessing full-text may require personal or institutional subscription. Nevertheless, many with do offer full-text, and if not, usually offer text or links that show the abstracts of the articles, free without subscription. Links to books variously may open to full-text, or to the publishers' description of the book with or without downloadable selected chapters, reviews, and table of contents. Books with links to Google Books often offer extensive previews of the books' text. |
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lakoff G., Johnson M. (1980, 2003) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. New paperback printing with 2003 Afterword by authors. ISBN 0226468011.
- Publisher's Synopsis: The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"-metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them....In this updated (2003) edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.
- Author Biographies by Publisher: George Lakoff is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of, among other books, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and Moral Politics, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Mark Johnson is the Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Body in the Mind and Moral Imagination, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Johnson and Lakoff have also coauthored Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought.
- Table of Contents: Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Concepts We Live By; 2. The Systematicity of Metaphorical Concepts; 3. Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding; 4. Orientational Metaphors; 5. Metaphor and Cultural Coherence; 6. Ontological Metaphors; 7. Personification; 8. Metonymy; 9. Challenges to Metaphorical Coherence; 10. Some Further Examples; 11. The Partial Nature of Metaphorical Structuring; 12. How Is Our Conceptual System Grounded?; 13. The Grounding of Structural Metaphors; 14. Causation: Partly Emergent and Partly Metaphorical; 15. The Coherent Structuring of Experience; 16. Metaphorical Coherence; 17. Complex Coherences across Metaphors; 18. Some Consequences for Theories of Conceptual Structure; 19. Definition and Understanding; 20. How Metaphor Can Give Meaning to Form; 21. New Meaning; 22. The Creation of Similarity; 23. Metaphor, Truth, and Action; 24. Truth; 25. The Myths of Objectivism and Subjectivism; 26. The Myth of Objectivism in Western Philosophy and Linguistics; 27. How Metaphor Reveals the Limitations of the Myth of Objectivism; 28. Some Inadequacies of the Myth of Subjectivism; 29. The Experientialist Alternative: Giving New Meaning to the Old Myths; 30. Understanding; Afterword; References.
- ↑ "As You Like It": Entire play From: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
- ↑ "Cut" by Sylvia Plath From: The Sylvia Plath Forum
- ↑ "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost From: Bartleby.com: Great Books Online
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Zoltán Kövecses. (2002) Metaphor: a practical introduction. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 9780195145113.