Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Metaphor |
MetaphorNoun1. A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "metaphor" was first used: 1533. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Conceptual metaphor: In cognitive linguistics metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain, e.g. one person's life experience versus another's. A conceptual domain is any coherent organization of experience.This idea and detailed examination of the underlying processes was first explored in detail by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors we live by
Mappings
A conceptual metaphor consists of two conceptual domains, in which one domain is understood in terms of another. Metaphorical linguistic expressions are words or other linguistic expressions that come from the language or terminology of the more concrete conceptual domain. Conceptual metaphors underlie the metaphorical expressions. They tend to be pre-linguistic and make basic assumptions regarding space, time, moving, counting, controlling, and other core elements of human experience.
Source domain: the conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical expressions.
Target domain: the conceptual domain that we try to understand.
Conceptual metaphors typically employ a more abstract concept as target and a more concrete or physical concept as their source. For instance, metaphors such as 'the days (the more abstract or target concept) ahead' or 'giving my time' rely on more concrete concepts, thus expressing time as a (more concrete) path into physical space or as a substance (that can be handled and offered as a gift). Different conceptual metaphors tend to be invoked when the speaker is trying to make a case for a certain point of view or course of action. For instance, we associate 'the days ahead' more with leadership, and 'giving my time' more with bargaining (if time is a substance, clearly, it should be traded for things of substance, and this metaphor makes that more obvious than the path metaphor). Selection of such metaphors tends to be directed by a subconscious or implicit purpose, in the mind of s/he who chooses them.
The principle of unidirectionality states that the metaphorical process typically goes from the more concrete to the more abstract but not the other way around. Accordingly, abstract concepts are understood in terms of prototype concrete processes. An extreme version of this view is expressed in the cognitive science of mathematics, where it is proposed that mathematics itself, the most widely accepted means of abstraction in the human community, itself reflects a cognitive bias unique to humans, and prototype processes, e.g. counting, moving along a path, that are understood by all human beings through their experiences.
A mapping is the systematic set of correspondences that exist between constituent elements of the source and the target domain. Many elements of target concepts come from source domains and are not preexisting. To know a conceptual metaphor is to know the set of mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing.
Language and culture as mappings
This knowledge is presumed to be largely unconscious and to emerge in language acquisition. Quine and others influential in the recent philosophy of mathematics have argued that each natural human language reflects an assumed ontology which makes certain conceptual metaphors easy to employ, and others more difficult or complex, and thereby less convincing. If so, each natural language becomes one 'mapping' from the concrete experience of early human life to the more abstract and socially-prescribed 'source domain' of culture. A consequence of this would be great difficulty in learning a new natural language in adult life, which does seem to be the case.
Some basic conceptual metaphors discussed in Lakoff, Johnson, 1980, are:
Each of these invokes certain assumptions about concrete experience and requires the reader or listener to apply them to the much more abstract concepts of love or organizing in order to understand the sentence in which the conceptual metaphor is used.
- LOVE IS A JOURNEY
- SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS ARE PLANTS
- LOVE IS WAR
There are numerous ways in which this process of assuming and applying metaphors have been said to manipulate human perception and communication, especially in mass media and in public policy:
Propaganda
Noam Chomsky, another linguist, proposed (with Edward S. Herman) a propaganda model consisting of media filters which prevent news or opinions that violate the basic conceptual metaphors of the listeners from being heard in the public arena at all. In his view, the basic human capacity to acquire language and believe metaphor is abused by restricting, in the mass media, the range and type of metaphors to which the citizen is exposed.
Specifically, mappings that emphasize the security of property or the fear of conflict with authority would tend to be emphasized in a private-corporate-controlled mass media, and mappings that tended to emphasize the risk of conflict over resources or fairness would tend to be de-emphasized, or censored altogether.
Family roles and ethics
A less extreme but similar claim is that made by George Lakoff (in 'Moral Politics') that the public political arena necessarily reflects a basic conceptual metaphor of 'the family', and accordingly 'right wing authority' father figures and 'left wing nurturing' mother figures are only to be expected, and cannot be fundamentally altered by any direct opposition or struggle. Two basic views of political economy arise from the desire to see the nation-state act 'more like a father' or 'more like a mother'.
The urban theorist and ethicist Jane Jacobs made this distinction in less gender-driven terms by differentiating between a 'Guardian Ethic' and a 'Trader Ethic'. Guarding and trading being two concrete activities that a human being tended to learn to apply metaphorically to all choices in later life. In a society where guarding children was the primary female duty, and trading in a market economy was the primary male duty, Lakoff's two supposed roles would come into being, and be assigned to mother and to father respectively, in the child's own cognition.
Both of these theories suggest that there may be a great deal of social conditioning and pressure to form specific cognitive bias. Anthropologists observe that all societies tend to have roles assigned by age and gender, which is evidence for this view.
Linguistics and politics
Lakoff, Chomsky, and Jacobs all devote a high proportion of their time to current affairs and political theory, which suggests that there is at least a tendency for respected linguists or theorists of conceptual metaphor to act out on these beliefs as activists. Indeed, if conceptual metaphors are as basic as all of them seem to think, they may literally have no choice in doing so.
Critics of this ethics-driven approach to language tend to accept that idiom reflects conceptual metaphors strongly, but actual grammar much less so (a claim that Chomsky accepts), and more basic cross-cultural concepts of scientific method and mathematical practice tend to minimize the impact of metaphors (a claim that Chomsky has strongly rejected). Such critics tend to see Lakoff and Chomsky and Jacobs as 'left wing figures', and would not accept their politics as any kind of crusade against an ontology embedded in language and culture, but rather, as an idiosyncratic pastime, not part of the science of linguistics nor of much use.
Partly in response to such criticisms, Lakoff and Raphael Nunez, in 2000, proposed a cognitive science of mathematics that would explain mathematics as a consequence of, not an alternative to, the human reliance conceptual metaphor to understand abstraction in terms of basic experiential concretes.
See also: metaphor, propaganda, ontology, cognitive science of mathematics, language acquisition, consensus
References
- George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, "Metaphors we live by", University of Chicago Press, 1980
- George Lakoff, "Moral Politics"
- Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, "Manufacturing Consent"
- Noam Chomsky, "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"
External links
- The Conceptual Metaphor Homepage is a catalog of a number of conceptual metaphors, and English usage that indicates them.
- Tony Veale's Metaphor Page discusses metaphor interpretation, generation, and analogical reasoning in relation to artificial intelligence.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Conceptual metaphor."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
There are broad categories of figurative language which are classified as metaphorical (see Literal and figurative language). The more common meaning of metaphor is a figure of speech that is used to paint one concept with the attributes normally associated with another. "X is a metaphor for Y" means that Y is painted with the attributes of X.
All metaphors can be analyzed and reduced to the equation "X equals Y." Examples in everyday languge abound.
The expression, "You are the sunshine of my life" equates someone's beloved with sunshine; something that is impossible in literal terms unless that person becomes a ball of nuclear fusion. The expression "candle in the wind" likens life's fragility to an extinguished candle.
"Life in the fast lane" (left lane of freeway = a fast and/or hectic pace), or "bowels of the ship" (intestines = the inner holds of a ship) or "drowning in money" (drowning = having too much), or "beating your head against the wall" (beating your head = taking ineffectual actions; the wall = the problem), or "he's still wet behind the ears" (baby in a bathtup with wet ears = him), or "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes" (sleeping where fish live = being dead).
In political discussions, a ship is often taken as a metaphor for an entire nation; the so-called "ship of state". This metaphor likens a nation to a ship. It implies that, just as a ship needs a captain to make decisions, give orders, and coordinate and control the ship's voyage, so a nation must have a government to coordinate and control the nation's business. Therefore, referring to a nation as a "ship of state," emphasizes the need that nations have for some kind of government.
Metaphor is usually distinguished from simile. Both compare two seemingly unrelated objects, but, in the latter, the comparison is made more explicit, usually through the use of the words "like" or "as". "Life is but a dream" is a metaphor, for example, while "getting money from him is like pulling teeth" is a simile.
Metaphor is one of the most common figures of speech and many words have their origin in metaphor. When a metaphor is so common that people usually take it for granted, it is called a dead metaphor. Understanding, for example, is a dead metaphor, having its origins in the idea that "standing under" something was akin to having a good grasp of it (another, slightly less dead metaphor) or knowing it thoroughly.
Metaphors are seen as very powerful tools because they allow for the expression of abstract principles by reference to concretes. They can also be dangerous to understanding, in that people may fail to recognize the figurative nature of a metaphor, and come to take it literally.
On the other hand, since so many, many words are dead metaphors, attempting to avoid them entirely would end in silence. For instance, consideration is a metaphor meaning "take the stars into account", mantel means "cloak or hood to catch smoke", gorge means throat, and so forth for thousands more.
The mixed metaphor entails using two living metaphors in obvious conflict, such as: "That wet blanket is a loose cannon"; "Strike while the iron is in the fire"; or (said by an administrator whose government-department's budget was slashed) "Now we can just kiss that program right down the drain". On the other hand, to refer to a photograph enlarged too much as "a grainy shot" is not a mixed metaphor, even though both the grain and the shot were originally metaphorical.
Many consider metaphor to be at the heart of poetry (or even to define in part what it means to be human): the figure of speech that links dissimilar objects for their resemblance. For example, Emily Dickinson uses "the white assassin" as a metaphor for frost. Ground may have a blanket of snow where blanket is a metaphor for cover.
Originally, metaphor was a Greek word meaning "transfer". The Greek etymology is from meta, implying "a change" and pherein meaning "to bear, or carry". Thus, the word metaphor itself has a metaphorical meaning in English, "a transfer of meaning from one thing to another".
Related topics
- Tertium comparationis
- Conceptual metaphor
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Metaphor."
Synonym: MetaphorSynonym: Allegory. (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Analogy | Metaphor. |
Metaphor | Phrase; figure, trope, metaphor, enallage, catachresis; metonymy, synecdoche; autonomasia, irony, figurativeness; Adjective: image, imagery; metalepsis, type, anagoge, simile, personification, prosopopoeia, allegory, apologue, parable, fable; allusion, adumbration; application. |
Substitution | Noun: subs commutation; supplanting; Verb: metaphor, metonymy; (figure of speech). |
Supposition | Association of ideas, (analogy) a; metonym, metonymy, simile (metaphor). |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Metaphor |
| English words defined with "metaphor": allegory ♦ banal ♦ commonplace ♦ dead metaphor ♦ frozen metaphor ♦ hackneyed ♦ Met- ♦ shopworn, stock, synesthetic metaphor ♦ threadbare, timeworn, tired, Tralatition, trite ♦ well-worn. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "metaphor": Bells, BLEEDING NEW, Break your Back ♦ Caraites, COCK-SURE ♦ Go on all Fours ♦ message passing ♦ neural model, neurally inspired model ♦ on the gripping hand ♦ Sorts, Strike while the Iron is Hot ♦ wizard hat. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | When you used to tell me that you chase tornadoes, deep down I thought it was just a metaphor. (Twister; writing credit: Michael Crichton; Anne-Marie Martin) It's a metaphor used by gardeners and landscaping people in general (North; writing credit: Alan Zweibel) What metaphor is that (North; writing credit: Alan Zweibel) ' I didn't know it was a metaphor! (Titus; writing credit: Karl-Heinz Käfer) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Quotation |
Georg C. Lichtenberg | A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | Not a metaphor, not an etymology of argot which does not contain its lesson |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | To use a simple metaphor, the growth-control pathway is like the gas pedal of an automobile. (references) | |
To explain this idea, scientists use the metaphor of a light that requires several switches. (references) | ||
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Metaphor" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 99.88% of the time. "Metaphor" is used about 865 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 99.88% | 864 | 8,194 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.12% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 865 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "metaphor": conduit metaphor ♦ dead metaphor ♦ frozen metaphor ♦ mixed metaphor ♦ simile metaphor ♦ synesthetic metaphor. Additional references. | |
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "metaphor": dead-metaphor, dream-metaphor. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "metaphor"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | beeldspraak, beeld (diagram, figure, image, picture, representation, statue). (various references) | |
Albanian | metaforë (image). (various references) | |
Arabic | مجاز (allegory, corridor, figure, image, imagery, passage, path, track, way), إستعارة (allegory, figure, image). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | метафора (figure, image). (various references) | |
Chinese | 隐喻 (metaphorical), "" (analogy, compare, comparison, draw a parallel, match), "喻 (analogy, figure of speech). (various references) | |
Czech | metafora. (various references) | |
Danish | generisk metafor (generic metaphor). (various references) | |
Dutch | metafoor, beeldspraak, beeld (diagram, figure, image, picture, portrait, representation, statue). (various references) | |
Esperanto | metaforo. (various references) | |
Farsi | کنایه (Allegory, Allusion, Dig, Innuendo, Jest, Lampoon, Quibble, Quip, Squib), تشبیه (Comparison, Simile), صنعت استعاره , استعاره (Conceit, Simile). (various references) | |
Finnish | kielikuva. (various references) | |
French | métaphore, image. (various references) | |
German | Metapher. (various references) | |
Greek | μεταφορά (carriage, conveyance, freightage, portage, traction, traffic, transfer, transference, transport, transportation, truckage). (various references) | |
Hebrew | מטפור" (image), ת"מית (image, mock up, model, template), שם מושאל, "משל" (analogy, control), "ורא" שאול", "שאל" (lending). (various references) | |
Hungarian | szókép (image, schema, schemata, trope), metafora, hasonlat (image, semblance, simile). (various references) | |
Indonesian | metafora, kiasan (allegory, allusion). (various references) | |
Italian | metafora. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 喩 , 譬喩 (simile), 譬え (allegory, simile), メタクリル樹脂 (metafiction, metafont, metal, metal frame, metal tape, metal wood, meta-level, metallic, metallic color, metallic skis, metamorphose, metaphysical, metaphysics, metasequoia, methacrylic resin, methane, methane gas, methanol, methanphetamine), 暗喩 , 暗ゆ , "喩 (simile), 喩え (allegory, simile). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | たとえ (allegory, although, even if, example, if, simile, though), メタフォール , メタファー , メタファ , ひゆ (allegory, parable, simile), い"ゆ (allusion, cause), あ"ゆ. (various references) | |
Korean | 은 . (various references) | |
Pig Latin | etaphormay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | metáfora. (various references) | |
Romanian | metaforã. (various references) | |
Russian | метафора (image). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | metafora. (various references) | |
Spanish | metáfora, lenguaje figurado. (various references) | |
Swedish | liknelse (comparison, image, parable, simile). (various references) | |
Thai | การใช้คำหรือสำนวนเปรียบเทียบขั"แย้งกันแต่ทำให้ตลกขบขัน (mixed metaphor). (various references) | |
Turkish | mecaz (figurative expression, simile, trope), istiare. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | метафора. (various references) | |
Welsh | trosiad (translation). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Greek | 700 BCE-300 CE | metaphora. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "metaphor": metaphoric, metaphorical, metaphorically, metaphors. (additional references) | |
Words containing "metaphor": nonmetaphorical. (additional references) | |
| |
"Metaphor" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Mastophora, Matahari, mataphor, medaphor, Metaflow, metafor, metahpor, metaohor, metapher, metaphopr, metaphora, metaphore, metaphour, metapor, metephor, methaphor, methphor, metsphor, mtaphor, mteaphor, mutahhar. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| Words rhyming with "metaphor" (pronounced 'Met"a*phor'): Lithophosphor, Phosphor. (additional references) |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-e-h-m-o-p-r-t" | |
-1 letter: apothem, phorate, teraohm. | |
-2 letters: hamper, mother, pother, protea, tamper, tephra, teraph, thorpe, threap, trompe. | |
-3 letters: amort, aport, apter, armet, earth, ephor, harem, hater, heart, herma, homer, hoper, mahoe, mater, metro, moper, morae, morph, oater, opera, orate, other, pareo, pater, peart, prate, proem, ramet, raphe, rathe, remap, repot, tamer, taper, tempo, tharm, therm, thorp. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-e-h-m-o-p-r-t" | |
+1 letter: metaphors. | |
+2 letters: amphoteric, atmosphere, camphorate, homopteran, macrophyte, metaphoric. | |
+3 letters: atmosphered, atmospheres, atmospheric, camphorated, camphorates, champertous, gametophore, homopterans, hymenoptera, hypothermal, hypothermia, macrophytes, metamorphic, metanephroi, metanephros, misanthrope, thermograph. | |
+4 letters: aromatherapy, atmospherics, cephalometry, chemotherapy, dermatophyte, enantiomorph, gametophores, hymenopteran, hypothermias, magnetograph, metamorphism, metamorphose, metaphorical, misanthropes, mythographer, overemphatic, parathormone, pneumothorax, thermographs, thermography, tomographies. | |
+5 letters: amphiprostyle, anthropometry, cephalometric, chromatophore, cinematograph, dermatophytes, enantiomorphs, hermaphrodite, hymenopterans, hypermetropia, hyperromantic, immunotherapy, magnetographs, magnetosphere, metallography, metamorphisms, metamorphosed, metamorphoses, metamorphosis, misanthropies, moderatorship, mythographers, mythographies, parathormones, petrochemical, plethysmogram, pneumatophore, rapprochement, spermatophore, spermatophyte, thermographic, thermoplastic, xerophthalmia, xerophthalmic. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Quotations: Familiar 8. Quotations: Fiction | 9. Quotations: Non-fiction 10. Usage Frequency 11. Expressions 12. Expressions: Internet | 13. Translations: Modern 14. Translations: Ancient 15. Derivations 16. Rhymes | 17. Anagrams 18. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
