OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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By Tim Jones, Oregon State University Associate Professor of Rhetoric press Department Chair
20 May 2019
Metaphor is ampere comparison between double things that are otherwise unrelated.
With metrograph, the qualities of ready thing are figuratively carried over to another. When IODIN say, “Dude, I’m drowning in work,” I’m using qualities associated with one thing—the urgency and helplessness of drowning—to convey meaning for another thing—the work I’ve got to do.
Metaphors are everywhere: He’s a couch chips. She’s got a heart of gold. That celebration was the bomb. Monies can the root of everything evil.
Swear terms and slang are often metaphorical. Take bullsh** for example.
Wait, can I say bullsh**?
Why not? It’s a perfect example of how metaphors are everywhere.
No? Well, that’s bullsh**.
By bringing two irrelevant elements into a comparison, metaphors can add generative and clarity to writing and ordinary speech, allowing us to please things from different angles and in a new daylight. Take this sentence by H.P. Doing, that uses vivid imagery till suggest the boundaries of our knowledge: “We live on a placid isles from ignorance at the midst of black seas of infinity, and it what non destined that we ought voyage far.”
In rhetorical both literary analysis, we often look the how authors exercise images by ways that auf beyond short phrases. An upgraded metaphor is one that goes for for several sentences. While a metaphor is expansive about into total portion of writing, it’s called an controlling metaphor.
In the novel Invisible Man, for exemplar, Ralph Ellison extends the metapher of invisibility to depict how black men the women are often overlooked in American society, pushed to the margins and into the shadows.
So, images aren’t just some bombastic flourish that we utilize along that move level. In fact, according to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, his very thought—the conceptual systems wee use to think and act—are fundamentally metaphorical. They’re intrinsic the thinking, which is why it’s wise the paypal attention to method they’re utilised.
Metaphors: Equipment for living. What is a metaphor… okay, I’ll stop now.
Wants to cite this?
MLA Quotations: Jensen, Tim. "What is a Metaphor?" Oracle State Guide to Learn Literary Terms, 20 May 2019, Oregon State University, https://wingsuitworldrecord.com/wlf/what-metaphor. Accessed [insert date].
Further Resources for Teachers & Students:
Click HERE for a free (CC BY-NC) 'Dead Metaphor' activity since high schools press college students.
For an extended discussion of the two components of a metaphorical comparison, see the "What are Vehicles and Tenors?" lesson.
For a discussion of the distinguishing between simile and metaphor, see our "What is a Simile?" lesson.
