It is possible to be systematic in your approach to learning how to spot and analyse metaphors. The best way to become adept at spotting a metaphors is to practice analysing them. Sometimes a metaphor can be difficult to spot, too. Metaphors are often easy to spot, but hard to describe. In the cases of writers such as Shakespeare, it is impossible to understand the text without constantly unpacking metaphors. Literary texts are typically dense in metaphor.
Instead, we are using the tactile metaphor of holding something (the vehicle) to describe our relationship with the idea of understanding trigonometry (the tenor). That would be both absurd and impossible. Many of our popular idioms, that is, our day-to-day expressions, rely on metaphor to convey information.įor example, when we talk about “grasping the idea of trigonometry” we don’t mean that we physically hold the concept of trigonometry in our hands. Metaphor is one of the most fundamental figures of speech, and indeed aspects of language itself. This process allows the speaker to say something innovative or useful about the tenor – the object that is described.įor example, in a metaphor when a poet compares love with a journey, she is suggesting that like a journey, a relationship has its ups and downs, or that like a journey, all loves come to an end. So, too, is “live life as a journey.” However, “life is a journey” is a metaphor, because it is saying one thing, “life”, is something else “a journey”.Ī metaphor compares two objects in order to apply the attributes of one of the objects (in metaphor theory, this is known as the ‘vehicle’) to the other (the ‘tenor’). Rather, a metaphor states that the thing is something else.įor example, “life is like a journey” is a simile. In contrast, a metaphor is not suggesting something is like something else. We are saying explicitly that one object is similar to another. Thus, when “like” or “as” are used the comparison is an explicit one.
For example, in the sentence “the boy was in the bath”, “In” tells us where the subject, “the boy,” is located in relation to the object, “the bath” – he is “in” it. Remember, a preposition is a word which relates nouns to one another. “Like” and “as” often work as prepositions. Similes rely on words such as “like” or “as” to make the comparison. Similes compare two things by likening them to one another.
Use the free textual analysis planner to develop your study notes and keep track of your possible arguments.Ī metaphor is a literary technique where one thing is compared to another by stating they share the same qualities. Want to make analysing the metaphors in your texts easy? Most idioms were once metaphors, but we hear them so often we take their ingenuity for granted. Paying for expensive things with body parts would be a poor economic model in the long term, but we understand that the expression means the cost is onerous. Metaphors are widespread in society – really powerful metaphors become so widespread in usage that fall into popular idiom (day-to-day speech).įor example, when we see something expensive we say that it “costs an arm and a leg.” It doesn’t really. Metaphors are useful techniques to discuss in essays where you analyse texts. While metaphors are common, they are difficult to develop and carry a lot of meaning. Metaphors are an important and effective means of representing ideas in a text. In this post, we explain what metaphors are, how they represent meaning, and walk you through a step-by-step process for writing about them in your responses.ģ. How do I explain what a metaphor actually does?.How do I analyse texts for techniques like metaphor?.What is the difference between a metaphor and what is a simile?.This post gives a detailed explanation of one of the many techniques you can find in our Glossary of Literary Techniques for analysing written texts.īelow are some commonly asked questions about metaphor: Welcome to our glossary of Literary Techniques METAPHOR post.