in the making of speech and language the spirit is continually "sparking" between matter and mind, as it were, playing with this wondrous nominative faculty. behind every abstract expression there lie the boldest of metaphors, and every metaphor is a play upon words. thus in giving expression to life man creates a second, poetic world alongside the world of nature. – Johan Huizinga
metaphor is a literary deviceliterary device
a literary device is a technology inside language or literature that accomplishes some effect.
which imbues one thing, the tenor, with a sense of another, the vehicle. for example, in "all the world's a stage," the world is the tenor and stage is the vehicle.
metaphors have been discussed by aristotlearistotle
aristotle was a disciple of plato who wrote on physics, biology, metaphysics, literature, logic, rhetoric, etc.
and borgesborges
siempre imaginé que el paraíso sería algún tipo de biblioteca.
it is enough for me to say that if I am rich in anything, it is in perplexities rather than in certainties. a colleague declar.... in metaphors we live by, george lakoffgeorge lakoff
george lakoff is a linguist and philosopher. he has done work on the concept of the metaphor.
An individual's experience is framed through language.
and mark johnson argue that far from being just a literary device, metaphor is core to how languagelanguage
language is a system and activity of speech or text to communicate information. generally, we think of it as a human activity.
steven pinker breaks down language in terms of a lang... operates. (i believe steven pinkersteven pinker
steven pinker is a scientist at harvard who works on language. he also thinks of himself as part of the enlightenment tradition.
has a similar thesis).
lakoff & johnson use metaphors to drive a wedge between the binary that either there is absolute truth or people have just their personal truth. in fact, they say, metaphors seem to capture aspects of both. good summary here.
other observations about metaphors are
- A metaphor has to have the right distance between the tenor and vehicle. If the objects are too close, the metaphor doesn't bring out any insight. If they are too far away, it feels contrived.
- A metaphor is usually not reversible. You can say "life is a highway," but "a highway is life" sounds strange.
reading list
examples
a nice list of metaphors in man pages here. I've recorded most of the examples Lakoff and Johnson use below:
Argument is War; {An Argument is a Journey; A Journey Defines a Path; The Path of a Journey is a Surface}; An Argument is a Container; Time is Money; Time is a Limited Resource; Time is A Valuable Commodity; Conduits {Ideas (Or Meanings) are Objects; Linguistic Expressions are Containers; Communication is Sending}; {Happy is Up; Sad is Down}; {Conscious is Up; Unconscious is Down}; {Health and Life are Up; Sickness and Death are Down}; {Having Control or Force is Up; Being Subject to Control or Force is down}; {More is Up; Less is Down}; Foreseeable Future Events are Up and Ahead; {High Status is Up; Low Status is Down}; {Good is Up; Bad is Down}; {Virtue is Up; Depravity is Down }; {Rational is Up; Emotional is Down}; {Unknown is Up; Known is Down}; Understanding is Grasping; Finished is Up; Bigger is Better; {Active is Up; Passive is Down}; Inflation is an Entity; Inflation is a Person; Inflation is an Adversary; The Mind is a Machine; The Mind is a Brittle Object; Visual Fields are Containers; Time is a Moving Object; Time is Stationary and We Move Through It; Theories and Arguments are Buildings; Ideas are Food; Ideas are People; Ideas are Plants; Ideas are Products; Ideas are Commodities; Ideas are Resources; Ideas are Money; Ideas are Cutting Instruments; Ideas are Fashions; {Understanding is Seeing; Ideas are Light-Sources; Discourse is a Light-Medium}; Love is a Physical Force; Love is a Patient; Love is Madness; Love is Magic; Love is War; Love is a Journey; Wealth is a Hidden Object; Significant is Big; {Seeing is Touching; Eyes are Limbs}; The Eyes are Containers for the Emotions; Emotional Effect is Physical Contact; Physical and Emotional States are Entities Within a Person; Vitality is a Substance; Life is a Container; Life is a Gambling Game; Labor is a Resource