Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007
10.1 Types of figurative language: metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, apostrophe
Unit 10 Metaphor and figurative language
Section 3 Attributing meaning
The recognition and analysis of figurative language, or figures of speech, depend upon a general distinction between literal and figurative uses of language. It should be stressed that the notion of literal meaning does not depend on the idea that each word has only one meaning. In fact, the word ’literal’ itself has several meanings. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the term derives its original meaning from the Old French or Latin for ’letter’, and one of its primary meanings is ’Of or pertaining to letters of the alphabet’ or ’expressed by letters’. In this sense, all writing is literal. A related meaning appears in the theological notion of interpreting the Christian scriptures according to the letter - that is, ’taking the words of a text, etc., in their natural and customary meaning, and using the ordinary rules of grammar’. In this sense, literal is distinguished from the mystical or allegorical interpretation of scripture. This meaning and distinction is related to the way we will be using the term here: literal is ’applied to taking words in their etymological or primary sense, or in the sense expressed by the actual wording of a passage, without recourse to any metaphorical or suggested meaning’. But what we are not concerned with here, however, is the recent tendency to use the term ’literally’ as an intensifier. As Collins’ English Dictionary notes, this usage either adds nothing to the meaning (as in ’the house was literally only five minutes away’) or results in absurdity (as in ’the news was literally an eye-opener to me’). Such usages should be avoided altogether in literary criticism.
Literal, then, tends to be defined in opposition to ’metaphorical’ or ’figurative’. The term ’figurative’ also has several meanings. One of its meanings is related to the representation of figures in visual art: ’Pertaining to, or of the nature of, pictorial or plastic representation’. An alternative meaning relates to language use: ’Of speech: based on figures or metaphors; metaphorical, not literal’ (Shorter OED). In literary criticism, figurative language is a general term for a variety of non-literal uses of language. Although ’metaphorical’ is also used as a general term in this way, ’metaphor’ is also a name for a particular type of figurative language (as we will see below). Thus it is better to use ’figurative’ as the umbrella term and to restrict ’metaphorical’ to its specific meaning. (As the use of ’umbrella’ in the previous sentence indicates, figurative language appears in all discourses or language uses - including student textbooks.) Figurative use of language, then, can be defined as the use of words or phrases whose literal meaning (1) does not make sense, or (2) cannot be true, or (3) should not be taken as true, but which implies a non-literal meaning that does make sense or that could be true. Thus it is not literally true to say that ’figurative language is an umbrella term’ (a piece of language cannot be an umbrella, since an umbrella is a device that we take cover under to keep out the rain), but the phrase does make sense - as we will see below.
10.1 Types of figurative language: metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, apostrophe
The analysis of figurative language has a long history that goes back at least as far as the analysis of rhetoric in ancient Greece and Rome. Classical rhetoric, which was largely concerned with the art of persuasion, identified a large number of different kinds of figurative language, each with its own name. In literary studies today, critics and theorists tend to focus on just a handful of figurative devices: metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, allegory, apostrophe and a few others. We will be analysing irony in the following unit. In the present unit, we will concentrate on the others in this list.
10.1.1 Metaphor
The word metaphor comes from a Greek word metaphora, ’to transfer’ or ’carry over’. Metaphor occurs when a word or phrase in one semantic field is transferred into another semantic field in order to talk about one thing as if it were another quite different thing. For example, in a phrase like ’to live a quiet life was the summit of his ambition’, the term ’summit’ has been transferred from the semantic field to do with mountains into a sentence concerning a man’s life aspirations. The highest point of the man’s ambition is talked about as if it were the top of a mountain. Metaphors work on the basis that there is some similarity between the two ideas that have been brought together, as can be seen in the similarity between ’highest point’ and ’summit’ (the highest part of a mountain). To interpret the metaphor, we look for the element of similarity between the non-literal word or phrase (here ’summit’) and the implied idea (highest point) and transfer it into the new context. We also register the implications of the dissimilarity between the two ideas. In the metaphor we are looking at, there may be an ironic criticism in the perceived disparity between the ambition involved in climbing a mountain and the implied lack of ambition in the desire to lead a quiet life.
All metaphors work like this, and can be analysed in the way described. When Paul Simon sings ’I am a rock’ we are unlikely to think that he is made of stone or wonder how a rock can sing. Rather, we select those aspects of a rock that might characterize how the singer may feel or want to represent himself and then transfer them to the new context. The metaphor that results vividly describes psychological or emotional experience by transferring our associations of rock - such as hardness, isolation or imperviousness - to the singer. At the same time, the obvious differences between a human being and a rock may suggest to us that the singer’s emotional condition is not to be envied or admired. In the same way, in the statement ’by the year 2010 manufacturing will be dominated by industries now at an embryonic stage’, the word ’embryonic’ does not initially appear to fit in a discussion of industry and manufacturing (because literally it is a term for the offspring of an animal before birth or emergence from an egg). To make sense of ’embryonic’ in this unusual context, we select those parts of its meaning that allow us to interpret the word in a discussion about industry. ’At an embryonic stage’ becomes a metaphorical way of saying that the industries of the future are at a rudimentary level of development. The idea of natural gestation is also transferred into the new context, however, and we are therefore invited to see the development of industry as in some way a natural process; this, perhaps, offers us a reassuring sense that the new industries are to be welcomed. In this way, metaphor can significantly affect how we perceive or respond to what is being described.
10.1.2 Simile
Simile is a subdivision of metaphor in that, as its name suggests, it draws attention to a similarity between two terms through words such as ’like’ and ’as’. Simile does not, strictly speaking, always entail figurative language, since both terms of a simile can often be understood literally. The simile ’the sky is like a polished mirror’, for example, invites the listener or reader to imagine how the sky might actually appear like a polished mirror. The difference between simile and metaphor in this respect can be demonstrated by turning the simile into a metaphor. If we say ’the sky is a polished mirror’ this formulation can no longer be understood literally: we know that the sky is not really a polished mirror, though it might look like one, and therefore ’polished mirror’ has to be read metaphorically. But simile is included in figurative language because there are many similes that cannot be taken literally. In his ’To a Skylark’ (1820), for example, Shelley describes the skylark through an extraordinary catalogue of similes, including the claim that the bird is ’Like a cloud of fire’ (8) - a simile that cannot be understood literally.
10.1.3 Metonymy
Metonymy (Greek for ’a change of name’) is distinguished from metaphor in that, whereas metaphor works through similarity, metonymy works through
other kinds of association (cause-effect, attribute, containment, etc.). The sentence ’Moscow made a short statement’ makes sense only if we understand it figuratively, taking ’Moscow’ to stand for the Russian government. This figure is possible not because of any obvious similarity between the government and the city, but because they are associated with each other (the government is based in the city). Metonymies can be formed through many different kinds of associative link. Typical dress, for example, can be used metonymically to stand for those who wear it: if someone says ’a lot of big wigs came to the party’, we understand ’big wigs’ to refer to ’important people’ (a metonymy that probably derives from the fashion among the upper classes in earlier centuries in Europe of wearing elaborate wigs in public - a practice still followed by judges and barristers in court).
10.1.4 Synecdoche
Synecdoche (Greek for ’taking together’) is a sub-branch of metonymy. It occurs when the association between the figurative and literal senses is that of a part to the whole to which it belongs. ’Farm hands’ is a common synecdoche for workers on a farm; ’a new motor’ comes to mean ’a new car’ by using one part of the car, its engine, to stand for the whole. (Note that the ’big wig’ is not a part of the person to which it belongs, and so would not be called synecdoche.)
10.1.5 Allegory
The term allegory comes from the Greek for ’speaking otherwise’. An allegory ’is a narrative fiction in which the agents and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived to make coherent sense on the “literal,” or primary, level of signification, and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of agents, concepts, and events’ (Abrams, 1993). Allegory, then, differs from the other kinds of figurative language we are looking at, since an allegorical story makes sense at the literal level as well as indicating that it needs to be understood at a second allegorical level.
10.1.6 Apostrophe
Apostrophe has been described (by Abrams, 1993) as a rhetorical figure rather than as a figure of speech. Whereas figures of speech involve describing things in terms of other things, a rhetorical figure is a modification of normal usage in order to achieve a rhetorical effect. Apostrophe is one of the most important rhetorical figures in poetry. One of the first things to do in understanding a poem is to work out its speech situation - i.e. who is speaking to whom. An apostrophe is a special variant on the poetic speech situation in that it involves the speaker addressing either someone who is not there, or even dead,
or something that is normally thought of as unable to understand language or reply (e.g. an animal or an object). Thus, in ’To a Skylark’, Shelley apostrophizes the skylark: ’Hail to thee, blithe spirit’; in ’Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) Keats apostrophizes a Greek urn and the figures in its design. One of the consequences of apostrophe is that it personifies the thing that is addressed and thus works, in a way, like personifying metaphor (see below). Apostrophe also typically (but not always) involves the use of an archaic second person pronoun and its associated verb form:
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
One of the consequences of this archaism is that it elevates the thing being apostrophized, partly because of the association of this pronoun and verb form with the Bible and with the mode of addressing God in Christian prayer: ’Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name’.