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METAPHOR & METONYMY

by Don L. F. Nilsen andAlleen Pace Nilsen

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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

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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

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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

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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:

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• 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.

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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:

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• 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 attract a needle.

Literal and Metaphorical Face

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CLOSURE

• You’re the cream in my coffee.

• My love is a rose.

• Consider the different ways that the following metaphors can be closed.

• In other words, what features of coffee cream and roses are also features of your lover?

Coffee-Cream and Rose Metaphors

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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.”

Cow Patty Metaphor

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• 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.)

Jell-O Principle and Kangaroo Strategies

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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.

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.

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Mouse Milking:A venture that has reached the point of diminishing returns.

Because of a mouse’s size, milking it would be an intricately challenging operation producing very little milk.

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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

The Yellow Brick Road:A Journey Metaphor

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• 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…

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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

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SKELETON METAPHORS

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• However, body metaphors can be funny if there is something to attract readers’ or listeners’ attention to contradictory images in a metaphor’s 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.”

Some Horse Metaphors

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• 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.”

“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.”

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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.

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METAPHORS AND LIFE EXPERIENCES

• One’s whole life experience goes into creating and understanding metaphors.

• Cynthia Ozick wrote in a May 1986 Harper’s 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.

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METAPHORS IN THE DICTIONARY

• Editors of Webster’s 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).

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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.”

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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.”

Some Metaphors and Puns

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SYMBOLS VS. METAPHORS

• Symbols are trite

• Dead metaphors are trite; they’re used for reference and could be called “linguistic metaphors.”

• Literary metaphors are fresh; but they can become trite, as in “Something’s rotten in Denmark.”

Metonomy (Association)Here is a visual similarity

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UTILIZATION, HIGHLIGHTING, AND HIDING

• CONTRAST HALF-BAKED IDEAS; *STEWED IDEAS

• NIXON ADMINISTRATION:– IN FAVOR: “Be a team player.”– AGAINST: “There’s a cancer in the White

House.”

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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.

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