Linguistics & Semantics

Lesson 5: Semantics

Other Conceptual Relation: Metaphor

Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to an object: it may designate only by implicit comparison or analogy’. Metaphor belongs to daily language. It is a typical linguistic phenomenon and concerns our way of thinking because it is our own thought that is metaphorical.

Conventionalized metaphors belonging to the system language are the basis to understand original and new metaphorical expressions. An example of conceptual metaphor is given by the following expression ‘time flies’ where the abstract dominium of time can be led back to a more concrete dominium of the verb ‘to fly’.

This metaphor does not refer exclusively to a single expression of a language, but we must locate it to a superior level in order to motivate a series of locutions. [‘Time → flies, persons → birds, time that flows → fly, persons’ aspiration → destination of fly, difficulties → obstacles caused by the fly]. The success of metaphor, used today mainly in advertisements and in propaganda in general, depends on the novelty of the invention, by unforeseeable discover of a relation between two terms whose meaning is completely different.

There are verbal metaphors that attribute non pertinent tracts to a name through the anthropomorphisation of inanimate objects: ‘the dish cries, time flies, the moon smiles, etc.’. Metaphor is originated by the need of exteriorizing emotional and ideal contents for which denotative language doesn’t contemplate adequate terms. Men want to create metaphors not only to express their interiority but also to go beyond certain boundaries, to look at the world from their own dimension.

The preference for the ‘concrete’, for the ‘particular’ is deeply and firmly rooted in the human mind. In a following example ‘ there is a hell of a wind’ the metaphor employed to explain the strong wind adds force ad vigour and has some relation with the thinness of detail and the concreteness of the expression.

Let’s suppose we are strangely happy and we want to express our feelings. We can say ‘I am happy’ or try to find a more accurate word capable of defining this special and particular sentiment: pleased, glad, delighted, blissful, cheerful, gay, merry etc. There are many synonyms that may replace the word ‘happy’ that have light nuances as we have already noticed by looking at a dictionary.

‘Ecstatic’ suggests a sublime ecstasy, ‘gay’ suggests, on the contrary, cheerfulness gaiety, brio, light-heartedness. Rarely we find an adjective that exactly expresses our feelings. For this reason we recur to the daily use of metaphors such as ‘I am as merry as a lark or as a cricket’, or ‘I am as pleased as Punch’, ‘I feel as a millionaire man’, ‘I am in the seventh heaven’.

So metaphors become a strong mean of communication and enrich our thought and lexicon. To be able to discern a metaphor in a piece of literature depends on one’s own ability to make a connection between two seemingly unlike objects finding their common aspects.

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