Meaning and Play: Metaphor

Abstract

Metaphor is a specific form of figurative language, which we covered in the previous chapter. It is a universal aspect of human communication and, as you should now have realised and predicted, is not confined by any means to literary language. We use metaphor every day. It is often said that metaphor is used to describe something that we don’t fully understand in the language of something that we do understand. Think of the proliferation of metaphors used to describe loneliness, mystery, love or violence. In this chapter, we will home in on the function of metaphor and explore ways of improving our use of metaphor in our writing. First, we will explore the topic from the perspective of cognitive stylistics in an attempt to define metaphor rigorously and explain how it works. Then, we will look at the universality of metaphor as a fundamental aspect of human communication, and also, briefly, at the ways in which cultural context also plays an important role. After that, some of the pitfalls of writing metaphor as well as guidelines for directing and improving the ‘internal logic’ of your metaphors will be explored, before we put these ideas into our creative practice at the end of the chapter.