2. English metaphor
Metaphor is a figurative phenomenon, an important tool in language communication; what’s more, it has a closed relationship with many subjects,P1 such as Literature, Aesthetics, Sociology, Philosophy, Logic and so on, for metaphor can permeate into one’s subjective thinking and concept of aesthetic. One’s personality, including philosophy, culture, standard of aesthetics and so on, will be reflected through the metaphor one uses. Therefore, metaphor should be studied from a more profound and higher level.
2.1 Authoritative Definition
Various definition of metaphor have been proposed and some of them are quoted below.
i ) metaphor: (example of the) use of a word or phrase to indicate something different from (thought related in some way to) the literal meaning, as in ‘I’ll make him eat his words’ or ‘she has a heart of stone’. ( Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Diction the fourth edition )
ii) metaphor: a way of describing something by comparing it to something else that has similar qualities, without using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’, ‘the sunshine of her simile’ is a metaphor. ( Longman Dictionary of Contemporary 1995 )
iii) metaphor:隐喻(一种修辞手段如 drowning in money, food for thought 之类). ( The English-Chinese Dictionary 1993 )
iv) “By metaphor .I mean any figurative expression: the transferred sense of a physical word; the personification of an abstraction; the application of a word or collocation to what does not literally denote, i.e, to describe one thing in terms of another”. Peter New Mark P123
v) metaphor: a figure of speech containing an implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another. ( Web’s Now World Dictionary )
2.2 Structure in English metaphor
Metaphor comes from the ancient Greece words ‘meta’ and ‘pherein’ ‘meta’ means ‘across’, ‘pherein’ means ‘change’; Therefore the basic function of metaphor is to transform something from one place to another.P1 From semantic view, there are three basic factors composing a metaphors: the tenor, the vehicle, the ground, not all of which need to be presented in a metaphor, that is, some of them may be hidden. Therefore, it is very important to distinguish three factors from each other when facing a metaphor.
(5) All the world is a stage, and all the men and women are merely players. (Shakespere)
(6) I have seen the mermaids riding seawards on the wave. (T.S.Eliot)
In example (1) ‘stage’ is the vehicle, its literal meaning is the raised floor on which plays are performed in a theatre which exit in our real life, while ‘world’ is the tenor, and the ground of this metaphor is that both are full of illusion and absurdity. In (6) ‘riding’ is the vehicle, which literally means an action to travel long controlling and sitting on a horse, and the ground is the situation that the mermaids floating on the waves lightly. However, not all vehicles and tenors in metaphors refer to the reality in our life just as example (5) and (6) do, they may refer to the abstract concept implied in the context, and also they may refer to some kinds of quality or condition qualities. There are some examples.
(7) The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. (Tomas Jefferson)
(8) Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
(9) His reply was smooth.
In (7) the vehicle, ‘liberty’, refers to an abstractive concept, which the tenor, ‘tree’ is a material object, and the ground implies that liberty cannot be achieved or defeated without the shading of the blood of both the defenders and oppressors of the liberty in a violent struggle. On the other hand, blood (manure) nurtures liberty. Words in example (8) as ‘tasted’, ‘swallowed’, ‘chewed’, ‘digested’ literally means different ways of eating foods, which are the vehicle, and the tenor is ‘reading books’, so obviously the ground is the condition that books could be read in various ways as foods could be eaten in different method. ‘smooth’ in example (9) means have an even surface without points, lumps, pump; not rough; which is the vehicle, and the tenor is ‘reply’. So the ground is that her reply is tactful and shrewd just as the same satisfactory character or condition of smooth.
From syntactic view, the application of metaphor is always flexible and multiple, for in the sentence structure, the vehicle may be implied in the subject, the predicate, the object, the predicative, the attribute or the adverbial modifier; What’s more, the vehicle can be a single word, a phrase, a sentence, or even a paragraph. However, three basic structure patterns are commonly used in English metaphor.
Pattern I: the tenor and the vehicle are connected by the words such as: be, become, turn into, ect., and the vehicle mostly acts as the predicative.
(10) Jane’s Uncle is an old fox, up to all kinds of evils.
(11) Hollywood, California, was the film capital, a magnet for the talented, the greedy, the beautiful, the hopeful and the weird.
(12) After that long talk, Jim became the sun in her heart.
In example (10)(11)(12), the tenors are respectively ‘Jane’s Uncle’, ‘Holly wood’, ‘Jim’, the vehicle, ‘an old fox’, ‘a magnet’, ‘the sun’, which are the predicative in the sentences. This pattern is the most basic type.
Pattern II: the preposition ‘of’ is used to connect the tenor and the vehicle, indicating the appositive relationship, such as,
(13) Mirage is the bloom or blight of all men’s happiness.
(14) But in a country where rice farmers have spent nearly 50 years in a comfortable cocoon of government protection.
In the example (14)(15) the metaphor is in a phrase consisting of the tenors and the vehicle and the preposition ‘of’. On the other hand, the vehicle and the tenor are the appositive, that is, ‘happiness is the bloom or blight; government protection is a comfortable cocoon’.
Patten III: verbs and adjectives are applied to transfer the metaphor, that is, words used to describe the special quality of one thing are adopted to describe the other thing to which the special quality are transferred. There are still many cases in this pattern.
(15) From the burning look in his eye, I knew he was angry with me.
(16) Toby’s fears had evaporated.
The word ‘burning’ actually is used to describe the state of the fire, while in example (15) it is transfer to describe ‘look’. Reader could immediately experience such situation. ‘evaporate’ is a Verb which expresses the particular quality of the gas, while it is used in the case (16), the abstractive concept ‘fear’ are transferred to a concrete image likes the gas. This pattern is greatly used in the press and the literature as rhetoric devices to strengthen the author’s opinion and to impress readers deeply.
2.3 The categories of English metaphor
Since the study on metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle, the first one who studied metaphors systematically. There has been a history of more than two thousand years study on metaphor, up till now numerous people make their great efforts to research on metaphor from various angles; therefore, metaphor can be classified in many ways according to the angles it was studied from.
2.3.1 Classifications at the rhetoric level
I ) The dead metaphor and the live metaphor
From its rhetoric effect, metaphor can be sorted into two categories: one is the genuine metaphor or the live metaphor, and the other is the trite metaphor or dead metaphor. As we know, the basic function of metaphor mentioned before is to transfer a special quality from one thing to the other to make much more concrete, impressive, profound images. However those which were used from time to time with its rhetoric effect declining gradually to zero would be regarded as the common expression, melting into the language, and then they would become out-of-date expressions, which is what we called the dead metaphor, such as ‘the bonnet of a car’, ‘a coat of pain’, ‘the teeth of a saw’, ‘the apple of one’s eyes’, ‘rain cats and dogs’. On the other hand, the live metaphor refers to those with freshness and originality and effect. However, the disadvantage of this kind of classification is that it is too vague and difficult to define the boundary between the live metaphor and the dead metaphor. For example it is hard to decide to sort ‘the heart of China, Beijing’ into the dead metaphor or the live metaphor.
II) Peter Newmark’s classification
From Peter Newmark’s view A Textbook of Translation, ‘I have suggested elsewhere that there are four types of metaphor: fossilized, stock, recently created and original’. P46
From the beginning, the fossilized, the name itself is a metaphor. It literally means to become a fossil; actually it means the trite, our-of-date, merely used. In a sense, it is just the same as the dead metaphor in the first classification. Take ‘rain casts and dogs’ as an example. Nowadays those who used this metaphor are regarded as the people who live in the generation before the grandfather. The stock refers to the metaphors that have been taken in the dictionaries for the usage of metaphorical meanings and are still frequently used in daily life. Here are some examples of the stock about the metaphorical usage of the word ‘flood’.
(17) She was in a flood of tears.
(18) The corridors were flooded with girls.
(19) Strawberries flooded the market and prices dropped down
(20) Beer flooded from the glass
There are the recently created metaphors which have not yet been adopted in the dictionary but can be accepted the common people with a feeling of refreshness. In Hamiton’s Rescue of A Newborn there are sentences P47 as follows.
(21) I focused on a small blob in the mud amid the columns of legs and trunks.
(22) I suddenly came upon a wall of feeling elephants.
(23)…grabbed their lost baby and tugged her gently into a stockade of legs
In the above three sentences, ‘columns’ and ‘wall’, ‘stockade’, have double functions. They function as the measure words with the metaphorical meanings, which has not yet been adopted in any dictionary. However, three metaphors have a common characteristic -- they belong to the structure Pattern II (the preposition ‘of’ links between the tenor and the vehicle which has been recorded in the dictionary, such as ‘a hand of bananas’).
The last one, the original are regarded as the product from the inspired thought of the men full of wits and knowledge, and can hardly be seen before, let along have been recorded in dictionary. A Promise of Spring by American modern writer Jeff. Rennike begins in this way:
(24) Nothing, no tracks but my own are stitched into the dusting of fresh snow, white as birch bark, that fell during the night, no flittering shadows in the trees, not a silver of bird song in the air. P47
The word ‘stitch’ belongs to those that are rarely used in English, and its most impressive usage is in the idiom ‘A stitch in time save night’. While floated out of the pen of Jeff Rennike, it was shining with the beauty of the original metaphor.
In some senses, Peter Newmark’s classification, the fossilized, the stock, the recently created, the original can be seen to be the small branches deriving from the categories of the dead metaphor and the live metaphor.
III) Classification according to the emergence of the tenor, the vehicle, and the ground
According to the three basic components in metaphor structure, four categories could be sorted out.
The first type is both the tenor and the vehicle emerge in the metaphor, such as,
(25) If the father lard is sound, my personal troubles are only a flea bite.
This type is the most common one, for the ground of metaphor is easy to understand. Factually Patten I mentioned above belongs to this type.
Second type is the metaphor in which the tenor is implied, such as,
(26) Investments in restructuring companies involve substantial risks, and deciphering the details of a company’s finances and plans for re-emergence is akin to penetrating a legal jungle.
The third type is the metaphors in which the vehicle is implied, and sometimes the ground is also implied, leaving the tenor alone. This category together with the second type construct the PattenⅢ in metaphor structure. There are lots of typical examples such as,
(27) She wished she could stop time and freeze this day so that it would never end.
Moreover, example (8)and (9) belong to this categories.
The last type is that the tenor, the vehicle and the ground all emerge in the metaphor, which are common to see. There is a typical example.
(28) My life is one long curve, full of turning points.
Obviously ‘my life’ is the tenor, ‘curve’ is the vehicle, and the shared common is ‘full of turning points’, which is the ground.
2.3.2 Classification at the cognitive level
From Lakoff’s view in Metaphors We Live By, metaphors are classified according to different concepts about metaphors. Only three of them will be mentioned for they helps the cognition of metaphor: structural metaphor, ontological metaphor and orientational metaphor.P96
The structural metaphor refers to metaphors in which one concept was adopted to illustrate or compose the other concept. What’s more, there are two components and two conditions that are essential to compose a structure metaphor. The tenor and the vehicle are the two components that must be two different concepts, which satisfies the first condition. The second condition requires that the two unlike concepts should have something in common which the structural metaphor adopts from the vehicle to illustrate and comprehend the concept of the tenor. For example,
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