Metaphor and Metonymy

from the Nilsens

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METAPHOR & METONYMY
by Don L. F. Nilsen and
Alleen 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.

9. 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?

11. 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.”

13. 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.)

15. 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.

17. 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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18. 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

20. 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.”

25. 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.”

27. “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.”

33. 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.”

35. 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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