Metaphors

• It's useful to see the concept of metaphor as part of a scale which runs from the literal to the non-literal use of language.

• A literal statement is one which refers to the actual material world in plain terms. For instance — This table is made of wood'.

• At the other extreme, and in the words of a popular song, we find the statement:

'The sun is a big yellow duster, polishing the blue, blue sky'

• This makes a much bigger demand on our imagination and on our willing­ness to step outsiae the rational, literal world.

• This metaphor can be analysed as follows. The sun is being compared to a duster. This idea is interesting because dusters are often yellow like the sun. Further, just as the sun appears to move in the sky, removing grey clouds, a duster moves to polish a surface and clear it of dust. In the con­text of a pop song, the idea is witty and entertaining in a lighthearted way.

• Contrast this more serious metaphor:

Now does he feel

His filthy murders sticking on his hands

• This is from Macbeth. The image is extremely vivid as the murderer's sense of guilt is conveyed to the audience by combining the abstract guilt and the material sticky blood.

• Metaphor is extremely economic communication. Several layers of mean­ing can be conveyed at the same time.

Advertisers make effective use of metaphor and other images because they have a restricted amount of space, and this space is very costly. A phrase such as 'the sunshine breakfast' is more effective than a state­ment which might read: 'Have our cereal for your breakfast and you'll enjoy it. It will give you energy and nutrition because the corn's been grown in a sunny climate.'

If a metaphor involves likeness between inanimate and animate objects, we deal with personification, as in "the face of London", or "the pain of the ocean".

Metaphor, as all other SDs, is fresh, orginal, genuine, when first used, and trite, hackneyed, stale when often repeated. In the latter case it gradually loses its expressiveness becoming just another entry in the dictionary, as in the " leg of a table" or the "sunrise", thus serving a very important source of enriching the vocabulary of the language.

Metaphor can be expressed by all notional parts of speech, and functions in the sentence as any of its members.

When the speaker (writer) in his desire to present an elaborated image does not limit its creation to a single metaphor but offers a group of them, each supplying another feature of the described phenomenon, this cluster creates a sustained (prolonged) metaphor.

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