Intergrated Language Skills 1 Introduction to Textual Analysis Lesson 6 December 8, 2017
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Literal language and figurative language ď Ž
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The first meaning for a word that a dictionary definition gives is usually its literal meaning. The literal meaning of the word tree, for example, is a large plant.
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However, once we start talking about a tree in the context of a family tree for example, it is no longer a literal tree we are talking about, but a figurative one.
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The literal use of the word tree refers to an organism which has bark, branches and leaves. A family tree shares some of these qualities— graphically, a plan of a family and a representation of a tree can look similar, and in a way they are both a process of organic growth, so we use the same term for both. But when we use the term for a plant it is a literal usage, and when we use the term to describe our ancestry, it is a figurative usage. 4
Trope ď Ž
Another word for the figurative usage of language is trope, which refers to language used in a figurative way for a rhetorical purpose.
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To illustrate a trope, consider one of the most famous pieces of rhetoric in English Literature, Mark Antony’s speech from Julius Caesar:
Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears…
Lend me your ears is a trope, used figuratively for rhetorical ends in order to make more impact than a literal variation such as listen to me for a moment. 6
Simile ď Ž
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A simile is a way of comparing one entity to another, or explaining what one entity is like by showing how it is similar to another entity A simile explicitly signals itself in a text, with the comparative subordinators as or like. 7
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The phrase as cold as ice is a common simile; the concept of coldness is explained in terms of an actual concrete object. The word as signals that the trope is a simile.
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Example: O, my love’s like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June: O, my love’s like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune. (Robert Burns) 9
Explanation:
The first line of the poem above, O, my love’s like a red, red rose, is a simile. To communicate his feelings, the poet invites the reader to perceive in his sweetheart some of the properties of a rose. Properties this might include are beauty, freshness, scentedness, specialness and rarity. Greenfly, thorns or blight, also common properties of roses, are less likely to seem appropriate points of comparison, bearing in mind what we know of the context. 10
Metaphor ď Ž
This process of transferring qualities from one entity to another is fundamentally how another type of trope, metaphor, works too.
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There is a formal difference however, in that the subordinators like or as do not appear. Since they are not explicitly signalled in the text, metaphors can be more difficult to identify.
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Definition of Metaphor ď Ž
Metaphor is another linguistic process used to make comparisons between the attributes of one entity (thing/person) and something else.
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Metaphor as transport
In the earlier example of the Robert Burns poem, the process of transferring qualities from one object to another, from a rose to a person, was discussed. The concept of a ‘transfer’ is actually embedded in the etymology (i.e. the linguistic background) of the word metaphor, which is Greek for ‘transport’. 14
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Perceiving a metaphor as a kind of transport draws attention to the way a metaphor transports a concept from where it is normally located, to somewhere else where it is not usually found. Thus a metaphor allows you to create correspondences in the world which did not exist before, and allows new meanings to occur. 15
Example: ď Ž
To look at this process in a text, consider this poem by Emily Dickinson:
The Clouds their Backs together laid The North began to push The Forests galloped till they fell The Lightning played like mice The Thunder crumbled like a stuff How good to be in Tombs Where Nature’s Temper cannot reach Nor missile ever comes. 16
Explanation: ď Ž
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At one level, the poem is an observation of the shelter which the grave provides from the ferocity of the forces of nature. The aggression and violence of nature is communicated by means of metaphors and similes.
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Explanation:
Applying the idea of metaphor being a kind of ‘transport’ to the line The Forests galloped till they fell, you might say that the word gallop is more usually found in the context of horses, and it has been ‘transported’ to the context of forests. A consequence of ‘transporting’ a word from its usual context is that the reader may connect the word not only with its new context (in this case, forests) but also with its old context (in this case, horses). 18
Explanation: ď Ž
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Thus reading the word gallop may introduce into the reading of the poem other qualities the reader associates with galloping horses to the context of the forests. The reader may attribute the forest of the poem with the movements, strength and wildness of galloping horses, creating for the reader an image of trees tossing wildly, apparently no more rooted to the ground than horses are.
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Different readers do of course have different backgrounds and different ways of reading poetry. No one can predict what every reader will do.
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Collocation
Another useful term for discussing metaphors is collocation, which refers to words which are associated with each other. The word green for example, is often found next to other words: green with envy, green politics, or village green. The word green is colocated with these other terms, that is, they are found in the same places. 21
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More generally, you could make a list of words which broadly collocate with the word green, for example, you might come up with grass, trees, countryside and so on, because a text which contained the latter three words is quite likely also to contain the word green.
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On the other hand, depending on how you interpreted the word green you might equally come up with a list of words from contemporary politics— consumer, global warming, ozonefriendly, bio-degradable.
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One list of words might be described as drawn from the context of rural images, the other from the context of environmental concern.
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Metaphors occur when a word is taken, or ‘transported’, from the area in which it is usually located to a new context. An effect of this is that the word can still remind us of all the other words it usually collocates with, as the word gallops in the Dickinson poem is able to remind us of horses. 25
Vehicle, Tenor and Ground ď Ž
Another way of describing how metaphors work is to use the terms of vehicle, tenor and ground, which were coined by I.A.Richards, a literary scholar who taught at Cambridge in the 1930s.
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Vehicle, Tenor and Ground
Tenor is the term he uses to describe the subject of the metaphor—in the example above this would be the forests. Vehicle is the term he uses for the ‘transported’ part—in this case, the horses. Ground is the common properties of the two concepts or objects—the properties of movement and power and wildness. 27
Simile versus Metaphor ď Ž
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There is a literary argument that similes and metaphors are fundamentally different. Because a simile explicitly says something is like something else, it is clearly establishing a comparison. A metaphor, on the other hand, according to this argument, draws attention to one or two features shared by two (very) dissimilar things.
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We could easily claim that there are no categorical differences between similes and metaphors except for the very straightforward formal linguistic differences. To us, the difference really seems as simple as the fact that similes contain markers like or as while metaphors don’t.
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Explicit and embedded metaphors ď Ž
One aspect of metaphors which can create confusion is the difference between explicit and embedded metaphors.
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Explicit metaphors are often easier to identify than embedded ones. Explicit metaphors take the form X is Y, as in the examples below. In these, the tenor (the subject of the metaphor) and the vehicle (the thing or person introduced for the purpose of comparison) are in bold; they are both nouns. The tenor comes first in each sentence: 31
Explicit Metaphor Examples: You are my knight in shining armour You are my sunshine You are a pain in the neck He is the apple of her eye She was my worst nightmare The house will be paradise That pudding was an absolute dream You’re a brick! 32
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In all these examples, something or someone is being compared to something/someone else through a construction using the appropriate part of the verb to be (i.e. am, are, is, was, were, will be). Other verbs are also possible, as long as the person/thing being compared and the person/thing they are being compared to are explicitly stated. 33
Examples: The children made pigs of themselves. My angel of a father said he would help (the vehicle—angel—comes before the tenor—father—in this sentence)
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In contrast, embedded metaphors are far less predictable. Sometimes the tenor and/or the vehicle are not actually stated.
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Embeded Metaphor Example: The cash machine ate my card
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The cash machine in this example is the tenor, the thing about which the comparison is being made. It is being compared to something which is not explicitly stated, by means of the verb ate (the ground of the metaphor, i.e. the attribute which the vehicle and the tenor have in common). Since machines do not usually eat but animals do, this metaphor compares the cash machine to an animal which devours things, via the verb not the noun, as was the case with the explicit metaphors.
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Another example of an embedded metaphor is a description of the pop singer Björk given in a music review in the Guardian newspaper, which described her as pixieing around on stage. The reviewer has invented a word, the verb to pixie, to describe Björk’s actions. Björk is the tenor, and pixie is the vehicle. The ground of the comparison are the properties Björk allegedly shares with a pixie, such as being small, looking extraordinary, and having fierce, spiky, energetic movements.
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The writer has turned the noun pixie into a verb in order to make the sentence more interesting. A simile such as Björk moves around on stage like a pixie would have been less unusual, as would an explicit metaphor, such as Björk is a pixie on stage.
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Activity 1 ď Ž
The poem below by Sylvia Plath is full of explicit metaphors, but it also contains some similes. (1) Identify the metaphors, and their ground, tenor and vehicle (2) Identify the similes (these also can be explained in terms of ground, tenorand vehicle).
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You’re Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, Trawling your dark as owls do. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth Of July to All Fools’ Day, O high-riser, my little loaf. Vague as a fog and looked for like mail. Farther off than Australia. Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn. Snug as a bug and at home Like a sprat in a pickle jug. A creel of eels all ripples. Jumpy as a Mexican Bean. Right, like a well-done sum. A clean slate, with your own face on.
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Activity 2
‘The Snowstorm’, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, contains some good examples of embeded (implicit) metaphors. (1) Identify the embeded metaphors in the text. (2) Decide what the vehicle, tenor and ground might be in each of them. 42
The Snowstorm Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north wind’s masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian1 wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall, Maugre2 the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate, A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow. NOTE 1 Parian=as if made from fine white marble from the Greek island of Paros 2 maugre=in spite of
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Activity 3
Read the text below and identify figures of speechs (focusing on meatphors). Identify tenor, vehicle and ground in each case.
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Activity 3
"The city was rancid, pregnant with squalor behind its immortal veil. From his room on Kurzbauergasse, Egon looked onto the boulevards for hours on end, watching the carriages roll up and back, listening to the horses’ hooves rattling off the cobblestones and onto the gravel paths, to the piercing clicks of ladies’ clicks. He looked down on the tall hats of the landed gentry and the stubby caps of workers, learning to differentiate the confident strides of the doctors from the sedate strolling of lawyers. Clerks, valets and housekeepers would rush down the street, reach for their master’s elbow, pose a question and then scurry away with the answer. In the slice of Vienna below his window, Egon learnt to know mankind in all its colours and classes." (Lewis Crofts, The Pornographer of Vienna) 45
Activity 4
Write a similar description of a place of your own choice. Focus on sound and colour in your description. Use explicit and embeded (implicit) metaphors to make the description as “audible” and as “visual” as possible. 46