Metaphor

Hello everyone, I’m Hamidreza Ahmadi with Lingophoenix. How do you describe things? Well, I guess a lot of IELTS candidates would say that a good description should be rich in vocabulary, probably have a lot of collocations, some big less-common vocabulary, and so forth. But, this only partly is true. How about sounding natural which can give your speech and writing some style. If someone asks you to describe your ideal vacation what would you say? Seriously, think about it for a few seconds. Saying that you would take a long walk along the beach as the sun sets is all good. However, there are more creative ways of doing this that help your listeners embark upon the journey with you. This can easily be done by using different figures of speech. Literary devices or آرایه های ادبی help personalize your experiences as you can interpret anything that happens to you the way you feel them. Today, let’s get familiar with metaphor or استعاره. A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn't literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison. ... It equates those two things not because they actually are the same, but for the sake of comparison or symbolism. In the book ‘A Glossary of Literary Terms’, Abrams says, “ After twenty-five centuries of discussions of metaphor by rhetoricians, grammarians, and literary critics – in which during the second half of the twentieth century they were joined by many philosophers – there is no general agreement about the way we identify metaphors, how we are able to understand them and, what (if anything) they serve to tell us.” Please don’t be alarmed by the introduction. I know many aren’t, but for those who may be, metaphors are a lot more common than we are aware of. In one of my classes a few days ago, this question was being discussed, ‘do you usually prefer to be alone or have company?’ One guy said that he feels more of himself when alone; and that he can contemplate more easily in his cave of loneliness. The metaphor here is how he uses the word cave. When you are in a cave, there is nobody there; there is also nothing there, so the sound echoes reaffirming your solitude. The feeling of being lonely seems distant and disconnected as is a cave in the heart of a jungle. This, as a result, induces a feeling of sadness in most people’s hearts, not literally in our hearts but, you know, metaphorically, you know what I mean. Cave goes well with loneliness because in this example loneliness is the forming element of his cave. When learning a foreign language – at times even in our mother tongues, it can be relatively challenging for language learners to make use of metaphors. However, we have expressions, idioms, and proverbs in our arsenal to effectively practice metaphors. Metaphor is the defining characteristic of many hyperbolic statement. Listen to these! ‘When Jamal heard that he was going to have a baby girl he was in seventh heaven; he literally hugged everyone he saw, and had a big smile that extended from ear to ear.’ See, Jamal is happy, very happy as if he is in heaven. Not a usual heaven though, the highest in order. You can see two literally devices at work here; one is hyperbole as we talked about before and of course metaphor. It is clear that the speaker of this sentence knows Jamal is not in seventh heaven, in the company of حوریs in tents and stuff, but it is the closest picture in their mind to describe how happy he was. Metaphors can add some color to your language. I’m sure you’ve heard this, couch potato. A person who constantly sits on a couch and watches TV. They don’t get much done, so much so that they can be replaced by a potato, and hence the word couch potato. Or when you say I’m snowed under a lot of work, you’re not freezing in the cold with snow blocking your movement from every direction, but I know too much work can be such a pain. I like the next one. If you’re the black sheep of your family, you don’t fit in, you’re iconoclastic, and you’re usually rejected by them. I love black sheep, though. Now let’s look at a few examples of metaphor in poetry. This one is by Shakespeare which is probably the most famous example for metaphor: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances. See, Shakespeare thinks that the world is a stage on which a play is being performed. He sees all men and women as actors in this play who come in the story one day and then get out. Listen to the next poem by Langston Hughes. Look how metaphor takes over to define dreams: Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow. There is so much to say about metaphors, and I guess it’s all fun and educational, so don’t hesitate to read more about it. Last but not least, you can trail metaphor’s footprints in some other literary devices like Allegory, Personification, symbols and so on which I hope I can talk about in future podcasts. Also there are some metaphors used in my text, find them and enjoy your genius, you midnight-oil-burners. If you ever wanted to share your comments about our podcasts, email us at podcast@lingophoenix.com. Thank you very much for listening, may the light of understanding light our paths in life.

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Metaphor is an episode from Lingo Phoenix's Podcasts.

This episode is 00:05:40 long.

This episode was published on Jun 20, 2021.

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