College Comp 9.1: Analogies (Metaphor and Simile)

Today’s Plan:

• Attendance
• Wednesday, Nov 9th: class cancelled
• Campus Climate Survey
• Extra Credit Opportunity: Writing Center MLA/APA workshop–Monday at 5 in Ross 0280
• Workshop Volunteers
• Metaphor
• Homework

Metaphor

In today’s class I want to focus on analogies (metaphors and similes).

First, let’s understand the parts of an analogy, the tenor and the vehicle. Let’s think about this analogy:

Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon.

How about:

“Regular” marriage and “gay” marriage are like bikini tops and bras.

To Shakespeare, sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

In this famous sonnet, Shakespeare composes three quatrains, with different vehicles, that all share the same tenor.

A few more examples from Presidential speeches (I want to look specifically at Reagan and Clinton).

What makes metaphors effective? They are rhetorical, enthymematic, interactive. They force the audience to complete the thought, to tease out the relationship between the tenor and vehicle. They surprise, and by surprise, potentially delight. For a bit more, let’s look to Wayne Booth’s 1978 essay “Metaphor as Rhetoric: The Problem of Evaluation.” (Pages 52-57)

What makes metaphors fail? Often, it is when a metaphor is trite and expected or asks the audience to do too little or too much.

So far I have addressed metaphor in terms of obvious artifice–metaphors that are crafted to draw attention, to stand out. But philosophers, rhetoricians, linguists, sociologists and others are also interested in less explicit metaphorical language. A famous work here is by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, called Metaphors We Live By. Let’s read and look at some examples.

Let’s talk about how this approach to underlying, structural metaphors, can be analyzed. Thanks George (RIP).

Homework

This week I want you to craft a metaphor in your writing. Please copy and paste the metaphor in the weekly report.