...A metaphor is any story or figure of speech implying a comparison. It includes simple comparisons or similes and longer stories. Metaphors communicate indirectly. Simple metaphors make simple comparisons: as white as a sheet, as pretty as a picture, etc. So the purpose of a metaphor is to pace and lead the client’s behaviour through a story. You can (1) plan out stories in advance or (2) determine what stories you tell (and tell well) and adjust these stories so they create the effect you want. What is critical are the order and sequence of the internal representations you lead the client through. The basic steps to generate a metaphor are as follows: 1. Identify the sequence of behaviour and/or events in question: This could range from a conflict between internal parts, to a physical illness, to problematic interrelationships between the client and parents, a boss or a spouse. 2. Strategy analysis of client: Is there any consistent sequence of representations contributing to the current behavioural outcome? 3. Identify and determine the desired new outcomes and choices: This may be done at any level of detail. It is important that you have an outcome to work for. The metaphor will be the story of the journey from the present state to the desired state. 4. Establish anchors for strategic elements involved in this current behaviour and the desired outcome. For instance, in one knee you might anchor all of the strategies and representations that stop the client from...
Words: 756 - Pages: 4
...How we're herded by language Metaphors can persuade us to war or bring us back from the brink. We must try to be more aware of them ------------------------------------------------- Sarah Bakewell, The Guardian, Friday 6 September 2013 ‘The present meaning of the word poodle seems a world away from what the original breeders must have had in mind when they bred the Pudelhund to be a water retriever.' …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Here come the old metaphors again – and some new ones, too. In the last few days we have heard Barack Obama flooding the zone so as to urge strikes in Syria, within time windows, but without boots on the ground, because of the crossing of a red line which, back in May, threatened to box in the president, or even turn into a green light for Bashar al-Assad, who himself says that "the Middle East is a powder keg, and today the fuse is getting shorter". John Kerry calls people who hesitate "armchair isolationists," which suggests useless snoozers by the fireside rather than thoughtful opponents. Meanwhile, the media dubs France "America's poodle". So vivid are British memories of that taunt that the very thought of it may have accelerated the quick decision this time to reject military involvement. Metaphors are powerful. They can herd us to war or hold us back from the brink (these being metaphors too). Yet meanings shift. Whole theses could be written on the history of armchairs and poodles. Indeed, in a discussion of the...
Words: 891 - Pages: 4
...Black by asserting a radical view on metaphor: “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”48 In this discussion of interaction views, there are some insightful notions with respect to metaphor. First, metaphor highlights certain features while hiding others.49 Second, metaphorical coherence between ostensibly inconsistent metaphors serves to share common entailments.50 In other words, each different metaphor interacts together coherently to highlight multiple aspects of the concept. For Richards, Black, Lakoff and Johnson, commonplaces are culturally determined and culturally specific, attention must be given to the associated commonplaces of...
Words: 1299 - Pages: 6
...Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language Author(s): George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 77, No. 8 (Aug., 1980), pp. 453-486 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025464 Accessed: 23/01/2009 17:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jphil. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR...
Words: 14829 - Pages: 60
...The Use of Metaphors in Poetry Rachel Kleinholter World of Texts 9 October 2012 The use of metaphor in poetry is one of the most important aspects of poetic style. Metaphor is defined as figure of speech in which a thing is referred to as being something that it resembles. For example, a fierce person can be referred to as a tiger or a lion. In this way, metaphors are used in poetry to explain and elucidate emotions, feelings, relationships other elements that could not be described in ordinary language. Poets also use metaphor as a way of explaining or referring to something in a brief but effective way. Metaphors have many uses within poems, making them have deeper meaning than what the surface words can convey. Imagery may sometimes be visualized through the use of metaphor. The effect this has on the reader is that it functions primarily to increase stylistic colorfulness and variety. There is not a rulebook for poetry claiming that poems must have metaphors in order to be considered “good”. Yet, we consistently see the use of metaphors in many of the poems that we read today. Poets gravitate towards using metaphors in their poems because it creates a new element of understanding that a simple statement could not do. For example, in the poem “Doesn’t he realize”, the narrator could have just stated that she should not have to be expected to bend completely to the will of her lover. However, by comparing herself to the seaweed the reader gets a much better...
Words: 1204 - Pages: 5
...Cognitive Linguistic and Idioms General considerations about cognitive linguistics Cognitive linguistics is a new approach to the study of language which emerged in the late seventies and early eighties and interprets linguistic knowledge as part of general cognition and thinking. This new contemporary study that argues that language is governed by general cognitive principles, rather than by a special –purpose language module, is therefore associated with semantics, but is distinct from psycholinguistics, which draws upon empirical findings from cognitive psychology in order to explain the mental processes that underlie the acquisition and storage of speech. The most influential linguists working along these lines and focusing on cognitive principles were Charles Fillmore, Wallace Chafe, George Lakoff, Dirk Geeraerts, Roland Langacker and Leonard Talmy. The most important assumption shared by all these researchers is that meaning is so central to language that it must be a primary focus of study. Linguistic structures serve the function of expressing meanings and thus, the mapping between meaning and form are a prime subject of linguistic analysis. In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, Dirk Geerates stated : “ Cognitive Linguistics is the study of language in its cognitive function, where cognitive refers to the crucial role of intermediate informational structures in our encounters with the world. Cognitive Linguistics is cognitive in the same way that cognitive...
Words: 2560 - Pages: 11
...City Life: The City as a Metaphor What is a metaphor? Metaphors are words or phrases that make comparisons between two things that are usually very different. They are used every single day by every single person in the world. They can be utilized in regular normal speech or in sophisticated literature. In the context of cities, historian Lewis Mumford had introduced a few metaphors to describe the city and how it runs on a daily basis. He gave cities definitions, by saying that one: cities could be magnets and how it could exert a type of pull, two: cities could be containers of many different things, or three: cities were transformers that could change people, places and things in many different ways . These definitions will be exemplified by showing them through two of the historical types of cities of our time, the Medieval City and the Suburban City. Metaphors can give everything, like cities, a completely different meaning. They can give people different...
Words: 1680 - Pages: 7
...7 What do Internet metaphors reveal about the perception of the Internet? 1 Denis L. Jamet, University of Lyon (Jean Moulin – Lyon 3) (denis.jamet@univ-lyon3.fr) Abstract The objective of this article is to throw light on what Internet metaphors – i.e. the metaphors used every day by English and French native speakers – reveal about their perception of the Internet. Within the framework of cognitive linguists such as Lakoff & Johnson, Sweetser, Turner, etc., I will analyze Internet metaphors to bring out the conceptual metaphors generating the various Internet metaphors, in English and in French. The main aim of this paper is to examine Internet linguistic metaphors a.k.a. Internet metaphorical expressions used to conceptualize the Internet, and try and see what conceptual metaphor(s) structure(s) the everyday metaphors we use to refer to the Internet, as well as the changing perception we have of it. Dieser Artikel untersucht Metaphern, mit denen die Technologie des Internet durch englische und französische Muttersprachler konzeptualisiert wird. Theoretischer Ausgangspunkt ist die kognitive Metapherntheorie, die von Lakoff & Johnson entwickelt sowie von Sweetser und Turner weiterentwickelt wurde. Ziel der Untersuchung ist es, die unterschiedlichen sprachlichen und konzeptuellen Metaphern aufzudecken und zu analysieren sowie Überlegungen dahingehend anzustellen, inwiefern ein konzeptuell metaphorischer Wandel im Zusammenhang mit einem Wahrnehmungswandel...
Words: 9616 - Pages: 39
...Conflict Meaphor Gaming the Conflict Gaming the Conflict In Western culture, sports metaphors are ubiquitous, and this includes language involving conflict. Use of sports language can cut through a lot of verbiage to convey easily understood concepts. This works well when the other parties in conflict are mutually acquainted with the culture and language of sport. If a metaphor cannot be understood by all parties it is inappropriate to accurately frame the conflict or concept (Emery, 2010). Sports metaphors often have the following characteristics: • Assumes a defeat for one of the parties involved in the conflict. • Implies working within a well-understood set ground rules for engagement. • Presumes strategic planning or finesse can accomplish objective(s). To assume a defeat for one of the parties in conflict can preclude the possibility of a win-win option. While sports metaphors are generally used in the context of a winner and a loser, they can also impart an implied opportunity (Wilmot & Hocker, 2014). Competing for position or ideas can also include the possibility for a satisfactory resolution for all parties. At The United States Institute of Peace Sports and Peacebuilding Symposium, participants explored sports contributions to peacemaking efforts and the effectiveness of sports metaphors. It was recognized that “Sports speaks a language of its own that can be translated seamlessly from one culture to another”...
Words: 724 - Pages: 3
...The Everyday Life of Metaphors “To be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once called ‘pedestrian poetry.’ ” --David Brooks When having a conversation with family, friends, or a colleague, are you aware of what you are saying? Are you aware of the devices that you use to shift the conversation in your favor or even to make your point more relatable? Contrary to popular belief, metaphors are a part of our everyday life; they are ubiquitous. We use them in everyday conversations more often than we may realize. Metaphors are powerful devices; often times we use them subconsciously, but they still manage to deliver the same validity. The aim of this paper is to bring the metaphors in our everyday life to light, by showing their explicit and implicit use in different areas of our daily life. Metaphors go beyond literature and transcend to other realms such as storytelling, spoken art, government, and advertisement. Before examining the everyday life of a metaphor, it is important to present its meaning and history to best explain how it became such an important part of our speech. Aristotle was the first to provide a scholarly treatment of metaphors and gives a detailed definition of the term ‘metaphor.’ He reports that a metaphor ”consists in giving...
Words: 1571 - Pages: 7
...Metaphors Essay Angelica Encalada PHL/251 July 20, 2015 Deeadra Albert-Green Metaphors Essay The metaphor vs plain language. There are so many thoughts going through your mind can you really explain it in your own words? This is where metaphors come to place. Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. (Google) Metaphors can help explain something to make it more understanding. For example, my cousin is the black sheep of the family. He really is not black nor is a sheep. A black sheep is an unusual animal that you do not usually see with the herd. My cousin is never around and when he is, he stays behind. He and the black sheep share the same characteristics, therefore, I use the metaphor, and he is the black sheep in the family. Another type of metaphor is called a conventional metaphor. These types of metaphors are sometimes constructed through our common language. Another example, someone who loves the nightlife would be referred to a ‘night owl’ versus someone who is the first one up in the morning and can take on the day with no coffee would be referred to being an early bird. Plain language unlike metaphors is clear. The language is designed for the reader to understand complete and clear as possible. Some people refrain from using plain language since it would be out of their comfort zone so they use metaphor to make their statement more understanding. The metaphor...
Words: 337 - Pages: 2
...Metaphor as a Cognitive Process Iordache Delia Master: Limba engleza. Studii teoretice si aplicate Anul II. Sem. I Introduction From the perspectives of construction, poetic and cognitive function and working mechanism, this paper makes a comprehensive analysis of metaphor as a cognitive process, where metaphor is constructed from human perceptual experience and is extended through imaginative processes An important feature of cognitive stylistics has been its interest in the way we transfer mental constructs, and especially in the way we map one mental representation onto another when we read texts. Cognitive linguists have consistently drawn attention to this system of conceptual transfer in both literary and in everyday discourse, and have identified important figures of speech, through which this conceptual transfer is carried out. Conceptual Metaphor, also called Cognitive Metaphor, was developed by researchers within the field of cognitive linguists. It became widely known with the publication of Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson, in 1980. Conceptual metaphor theory has since been developed and elaborated. Definition and Construction of Metaphor As we know, metaphor is a type of figurative language in which one thing is described in terms of some other thing. The word metaphor comes from Greek ‘metapherein’ which means carry over. Another translation is transference, a term more familiar to us from psychoanalytic...
Words: 2068 - Pages: 9
...The Bridge Between the World and Cognition: A Comparison of the Use of Metaphor in Professional, Popular and Pedagogic Science Introduction: “Metaphor was defined as a conceptual-linguistic mapping between a source and a target domain” (Aliskan, 2005), which is used when people want to talk about a concept, object or process unconventionally. It often acts as a bridge to associate abstract ideas or concepts with something that is close to people’s life, so that people can understand the idea or concept better. In the use of a metaphor, the comparison of two things is usually involved. Although the two things are not necessarily alike as a whole, they always have some specific similarities. Technically, those abstract ideas and concepts are called “vehicle”, the things closed to our life is called “topic” and their similarities “grounds”. It is widely acknowledged that science is an area full of abstract processes, concepts and ideas, thus the use of metaphor makes it much easier for scientists and science learners to understand scientific theories and be understood, which makes it very important and interesting for a science student to have a deep look at the use of metaphor in science, because it will help science students have a better idea of the metaphor used in science and furthermore, help them improve their learning. In this essay, the similarities and differences of the use of metaphors in professional, popular and pedagogic sciences will be carefully checked. Their similarities...
Words: 2217 - Pages: 9
...Ty Scott Professor Domingo Literary Heritage March 5, 2014 “Metaphors” is a poem written by Sylvia Plath that uses a metaphor in each line. A metaphor is a statement that has an underlying meaning that usually addresses an association between the statement and the underlying meaning. After reading the entire poem, it is not difficult to understand the subject matter of Sylvia’s poem; a pregnant woman. In order to figure out the metaphor, one must break down each line, because each line is a metaphor describing the pregnant woman and her baby. The first line reads, “I’m a riddle in nine syllables.” A metaphor is somewhat like a riddle in which one must find out the meaning of both. The nine syllables refer to a woman being in her pregnancy usually for nine months. Also, each line in this poem has nine syllables. Line two reads, “An elephant, a ponderous house.” An elephant is a huge animal that is very slow and somewhat clumsy. That brings us to the word ponderous which means unstable, slow, or clumsy. This line refers to the woman’s body that is holding the baby. A woman holding a baby in the womb has an extremely large belly and cannot move about easily. Next line reads, “A melon strolling on two tendrils.” This could possibly refer to the baby being a melon that has intertwined and connected to the woman’s body. A tendril is a vine that curls around an object that it is growing next to. Line four reads, “O red fruit, ivory, fine timber!” Red fruit could be talking about...
Words: 508 - Pages: 3
...Personal Metaphor Writing Assignment Overview: For this assignment, you will be examining yourself and selecting an object that serves as a personal metaphor for you. Then, you will explain in what three ways this object represents you. Purpose: To introduce yourself to me as a writer and student To begin recognizing strategies you use as a writer Form: This is an essay that should take the form of three different parts. You should have a beginning, middle (development of ideas), and end that totals at least three paragraphs. Altogether, this assignment should be at least one page typed and double-spaced. Special Considerations: • You will complete this essay primarily out of class. For future essays, you can anticipate time in class to work on the essay. • You will need to have the essay typed and printed at the beginning of next class. You will not have time to do that when class begins. • You will be assessed to determine where your skills are at this point. You will not be awarded points on the rubric; however, you will be awarded points based on formatting and reasonable best effort standards. Procedure: • Begin this assignment by thinking of an object that could best represent you metaphorically. (Ex- rubber band) • Then, brainstorm a list of ways that this object could represent you. (Ex- flexible, well-rounded, has many purposes, not easy broken, common object, everyone needs one) • Compose at least three paragraphs detailing what object you...
Words: 302 - Pages: 2
