Metaphors in Life

“…in simile, bodies are compared to horses, in metaphor, those bodies have become horses”.

- Gabrielle Rico, 1983

  Literature today focuses our attention on the fact that because our own naïveté impedes understanding of existence—poems, novels, and metaphors fill our expectations.

And while metaphors could convey truths or falsehoods about our existence, still, they could not provide anything more than a literal meaning.

The language user’s option for a metaphor often emanates from his desire to expand the social relationships that exist between him and the reader (or society). This desire, moreover, is achieved by creatively connecting images to something that literally cannot be; and  as dissimilar entities are fused into one image, the metaphor creates tension and excitement by producing new connections and reveals a truth about the world the reader has not previously recognized. The connections created, in this case, give language its power and richness by involving our senses in the experience.

Furthermore, by associating metaphors with something that appear or sound illogical, a psychological truth is revealed and sheds light on the qualities of images or connections presented. Thus, metaphors do not just substitute the ordinary meaning presented, but they also add to those meanings by articulating our perceptions and blocked expressions (Rico, 1983).

On the other hand, metaphors are confusing and ambiguous. By incorporating metaphors, writers or speakers often mean more than what they actually write or say; and although metaphors could sometimes be necessary and appropriate for the context where they are found, they could also sometimes be a clumsy way of saying what might be said more simply.

According to Davidson, moreover, “the attempt to give literal expression to the content of the metaphor is simply misguided...and, the theorist who tries to explain a metaphor by appealing to a supposed hidden message is fundamentally confused” (Davidson, 1978).

In a sense then, their use and interpretation beyond literal meaning could often constitute a pragmatic choice determined by contextual factors that might include knowledge of social role or status, spatial and temporal location, formality level, the medium, subject matter, and register among other things (Lyons, 1977). Contextual factors, in this case, are correlative with the social and psychological world in which the language user operates at any given time (Ochs, 1979).

Finally, as expressions of good omen, these mild, indirect, or vague substitutions in place of offensive, harsh, and blunt words or phrases are alternatives to dispreferred expressions used to avoid possible loss of face—a key factor to understanding the author’s intentions and subsequently the lexical correlates in his or her writing. Lastly, their emotive nature, metaphors are thought to be unsuited to serious, scientific or philosophic discourse because the philosophical demand for the adequacy of the expressions used rests on their ability to provide analysis and that every explication must be a precise definition or its logical equivalence     (Grice, 1975).

Reference:

Black, M. (   ). How Metaphors Work: A Reply to Donald Davidson. Afterthoughts on Metaphor, 181-192.

Davidson, D. (1978). What Metaphors Mean. On Metaphor, 29-45

Farghal, M. (1995). Euphemism in Arabic: A Gricean Interpretation

Grice, P.H (1975). Logic and Conversation

Lyons, 1977 cited in Farghal, 1995. Euphemism in Arabic: A Gricean Interpretation

Ochs, 1979 cited in Farghal, 1995. Euphemism in Arabic: A Gricean Interpretation

Rico, G. (1983). Writing the Natural Way: Using Right-Brain Techniques to Release Your Expressive Powers. Los Angeles: JP Tarcher, Inc.