Metaphor

Template:TOC-right A metaphor is a comparison in literature that does not use any transitional words to indicate a comparison is taking place (such as a simile uses "like" or "as"), but instead relies on specific imagery and description to provide a context for the subject being described.

Metaphor as style in speech and writing

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish-a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. — George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Viewed as an aspect of speech and writing, metaphor qualifies as style, in particular, style characterized by a type of analogy. An expression (word, phrase) that by implication suggests the likeness of one entity to another entity gives style to an item of speech or writing, whether the entities consist of objects, events, ideas, activities, attributes, or almost anything expressible in language. For example, in the first sentence of this paragraph, the word ´viewed´ serves as a metaphor for ´thought of´, implying analogy of the process of seeing and the thought process. The phrase, "viewed as an aspect of", projects the properties of seeing (vision) something from a particular perspective onto thinking about something from a particular perspective, that ´something´ in this case referring to ´metaphor´ and that ´perspective´ in this case referring to the characteristics of speech and writing.

As a characteristic of speech and writing, metaphors can serve the poetic imagination, enabling William Shakespeare, in his play "As You Like It", to compare the world to a stage and its human inhabitants players entering and exiting upon that stage; enabling Sylvia Plath, in her poem "Cut", to compare the blood issuing from her cut thumb to the running of a million soldiers, "redcoats, every one"; and, enabling Robert Frost, in "The Road Not Taken", to compare one´s life to a journey.

Viewed also as an aspect of speech and writing, metaphor can serve as a device for persuading the listener or reader of the speaker-writer´s argument or thesis, the so-called rhetorical metaphor....

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