Metaphor

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Lecture 21

• Metaphor

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Traditional Literary Criticism

• In traditional literary criticism, metaphors are
  distinguished from similes
• A metaphor states that something is equivalent to
  another thing which is not usually associated
  with it.
• A simile states that something is like another
  thing which it is not usually associated with.

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Metaphor Simile Examples

• 'The man is a lion' is a metaphor, while
• 'The man is like a lion' is a simile.

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I. A. Richards tenor, vehicle and ground (a)

• Tenor is the thing that the metaphoric word or
  phrase refers to.
• Vehicle is the metaphoric word or phrase. In the
  example above,
• 'he' is the tenor, whilst
• 'lion' is the vehicle.

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I. A. Richards tenor, vehicle and ground (b)

• Ground is the quality that one refers to when
  using a particular vehicle in relation to the
  tenor for example,
• the vehicle of the lion indicates that the tenor
  ('the man') possesses a quality or qualities that
  one associates with the lion, such as braveness,
  fierceness, having a voracious appetite, etc.

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Common in Everyday Language

• Metaphors -- quite common in language in general.
  
• However, many metaphors in everyday use are
  described as dead metaphors, as they have been
  used so frequently that their metaphorical
  character has become less apparent.

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Metaphors in Everyday Language

• When one describes one's feelings as
• 'up' or 'down' or,
• when one describes oneself as
• 'fuming mad' or as 'bubbling with enthusiasm',
• one is using dead metaphors.

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Figure of Speech

• As you may know, a metaphor is a figure of
  speech.
• Other figures of speech
• metonymy and
• synecdoche.

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Metaphor Metonymy

• Almost as much as the distinction between
  metaphor and simile, metaphor is quite often
  distinguished from metonymy
• A metonymy involves the association of one thing
  with another which often occurs with or near it.
  For example,
• when one says that one wants to be away from
  one's books for a while, it may indicate that one
  wants to keep away from one's studies for a
  while.

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Synecdoche

• Synecdoche involves the substitution of a part
  for the whole, or the whole for a part. As such,
  it has a connection to both meronymy and
  hyponymy (which are dealt with in the 18th
  lecture).

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Example of Synecdoche

• Taken from the Graham Greene story 'The Basement
  Room'
• We see the character Philip Lane viewing 'the
  legs going up and down beyond the railings',
  which indicates that he sees people rather than
  disembodied legs moving up and down beyond the
  railings, although the description here also
  indicates that his vision is limited to their
  legs rather than their whole bodies.

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Meronymy Hyponymy

• Graham Greene example has a relationship to
  meronymy.
• In relation to hyponymy, we have an example of
  synecdoche when someone says, instead of
• 'John had gone into the room and drank the only
  bottle of Coke that I had', ?
• 'A living being had gone into the room and drank
  the only bottle of Coke that I had'.

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Halliday's Approach

• What is not metaphorical -- congruent.
• Historical factor

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Metaphors of transitivity (1)

• Quite productive in stylistic analysis eg.
• In the Marianne Moore poem which was analysed in
  an earlier lecture, the mind which 'walks along
  with its eyes on the ground' is quite clearly
  metaphorical, as one refers to the (mental
  process) act of seeing rather than the actual
  (material process) act of walking.

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Metaphors of transitivity (2)

• Another example -- Judith Wright poem
• The 'flame of light in the dew' and the 'flame
  of blood on the bush' which 'answered the
  whirling sun' (my italics).
• It is clear here that the act of answering (a
  verbal process) can only be performed by a being
  who is capable of using language, and if the
  'flame of light' and the 'flame of blood' do
  this act, then the word answer, in relation to
  transitivity, is used metaphorically.

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Metaphors of transitivity (3)

• In the extract from Peter Carey's Oscar and
  Lucinda --
• The word 'lodged' in the idea 'that lucinda
  herself had lodged in his head' and
• The verbs 'make' and 'stick' in 'she had done
  everything possible to make the idea stick',
• Are metaphorical in relation to transitivity, as
  they are supposed to be material processes when
  viewed congruently, but are apparently not used
  as such in the passage.

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Lexical Density

• Usually productive in one's interpretation in
  stylistic analysis when it touches on the broad
  distinction between written and spoken language.
• Definition the number of words per sentence
• The more lexically dense a text is, the more
  number of words there are in each sentence.

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Lexical Density Usefulness

• You may find lexical density quite useful in your
  interpretation if it is considered together with
  nominalisation (the conversion of another
  lexical category to a noun).

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Lexical Density Usefulness, Example

• The following text
• I considered the option. I didn't take it I was
  uncertain if it would benefit me.
• is converted to the following more lexically
  dense written version
• The option was a consideration, but I did not
  take it because of the uncertainty of its benefit
  to me.

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Interpersonal Metaphors (1)

• According to Halliday, one way by which the
  interpersonal features of language may be
  metaphorised is by 'dressing the modality
  feature up as a proposition' (p. 333, 355).

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Interpersonal Metaphors (2)

• Meaning of 'dressing the modality feature up as
  a proposition'
• Projection is involved when the interpersonal
  feature of language is metaphorised.
• The projecting clause involved usually has a word
  or proposition which signifies belief,
  likelihood, certainty, etc. -- connection with
  modality.

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Interpersonal Metaphors (3)

• Halliday's example,
• 'probably that pudding never will be cooked'
• is congruent, whilst
• 'I don't believe that pudding ever will be
  cooked'
• is metaphorical, as the feature of modality is
  found in the main clause.

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Interpersonal Metaphors (4)

• In the following sentence, the two hypotactic
  clause complexes linked by the conjunction 'but'
  are metaphorical, as they involve the word
  'think'
• I do not myself think that this will happen in
  the next war, but I think it may well happen in
  the next but one, if that is allowed to occur.

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Another Type Of Interpersonal Metaphor (1)

• Associated with speech acts
• (Austinian) perlocutionary acts or (Searlean)
  illocutionary force of a proposition
• Halliday's example is the statement
• I wouldn't do this if I was you,
• which does seem to have the congruent force of an
  imperative
• 'Don't do it!'.

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Another Type Of Interpersonal Metaphor (2)

• In literary works, a rhetorical question is quite
  often a metaphorical question which serves the
  congruent function of making a declarative
  statement. For example, Shakespeare's
• 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day . . . ?'
• can be congruently translated to a conditional
  declarative clause 'If I compare thee to a
  summer's day'

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Shakespeares Sonnet no. 56

• Sweet love, renew thy force be it not said
• Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
• Which but today by feeding is allayed,
• Tomorrow sharpened in his former might.

Vocative Love is not an abstraction has human
qualities
Use of second person pronouns again, personifies
love
Transitivity metaphor
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Another vocative
Use of second person pronouns again, personifies
love

• So, love, be thou although today thou fill
• Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with
  fullness,
• Tomorrow see again, and do not kill
• The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.

Love now has a face
Imperatives Implication that the poem is
addressed the (personified) 2nd person
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Simile

• Let this sad interim like the ocean be
• Which parts the shore where two contracted new
• Come daily to the banks, that, when they see
• Return of love, more blest be the view
• As call it winter, which being full of
  care
• Makes summer's welcome thrice more wished,
  more rare

Transitivity metaphor
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Extract from Dickens Our Mutual Friend

• Little Miss Peecher, from her little official
  dwelling-house, with its little windows like the
  eyes in needles, and its little doors like the
  covers of school-books, was very observant indeed
  of the object of her quiet affections. Love,
  though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a
  vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on
  double duty over

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• Mr. Bradley Headstone. It was not that she was
  naturally given to playing the spy -- it was not
  that she was at all secret, plotting, or mean --
  it was simply that she loved the unresponsive
  Bradley with all the primitive and homely stock
  of love that had never been examined or
  certificated out of her. If her faithful slate
  had had the latent

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• qualities of sympathetic paper, and its pencil
  those of invisible ink, many a little treatise
  calculated to astonish the pupils would come
  bursting through the dry Peecher's bosom. For,
  oftentimes when school was not, and her calm
  leisure and calm little house were her own, Miss
  Peecher would commit to the confidential

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• slate an imaginary description of how, upon a
  balmy evening at dusk, two figures might have
  been observed in the market-garden grounded round
  the corner, of whom one, being a manly form, bent
  over the other, being a womanly form of short
  stature and some compactness, and

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• breathed in a low voice the words, ''Emma
  Peecher, wilt thou be my own?" after which the
  womanly form's head reposed upon the manly form's
  shoulder, and the nightingales tuned up. Though
  all unseen and unsuspected by the pupils, Bradley
  Headstone even pervaded the school exercises. Was
  Geography in question? He

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• would come triumphantly flying out of Vesuvius
  and Atna ahead of the lava, and would boil
  unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland, and would
  float majestically down the Ganges and the Nile.
  Did History chronicle a king of men? Behind him
  in pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his
  watch-guard round his neck. Were copies to be
  written? In capital B's and H's most of

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• the girls under Miss Peecher's tuition were
  half a year ahead of every other letter in the
  alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic, administered by
  Miss Peecher, often devoted itself to providing
  Bradley Headstone with a wardrobe of fabulous
  extent fourscore and four neck-ties at two and
  ninepence-halfpenny, two gross of

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• silver watches at four pounds fifteen
  andsixpence, seventy-four black at eighteen
  shillings and many similar superfluities.

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• The vigilant watchman, using his daily
  opportunities of turning his eyes in Bradley's
  direction, soon apprized Miss Peecher that
  Bradley was more preoccupied than had been his
  wont and more given to strolling about with a
  downcast and reserved face, turning something
  difficult in his mind that was not in the
  scholastic syllabus. Putting

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• this and that together -- combining under the
  head "this," present appearances and the intimacy
  with Charley Hexam, and ranging under the head
  "that" the visit to his sister, the watchman
  reported to Miss Peecher his strong suspicions
  that the sister was at the bottom of it.