Recent encounters with metaphors

I hope the mere mention of the word 'metaphor' doesn't give you unpleasant flashbacks of high school Senior English class.   Why did Ms. Fiddich keep harping on the difference between metaphors and similes anyway? Her worksheets requiring us to identify sentences with M for metaphor and S for simile were truly annoying.  So much more can be said for the role of metaphor in language.

"The greatest thing by far to be is a master of metaphor" - Aristotle

                                                         

First, let's get the difference between a metaphor and a simile out of the way.  A simile is a type of metaphor that generally contains a comparison word (typically 'like' or 'as').  One description I read explained that a simile "hits you over the head."  A metaphor uses one thing to mean another and thus is often stronger and subtler.  Metaphor is more direct than simile because it transfers the sense of one word to another.

Last Sunday, as I listened to political pundits on NBC's "Meet the Press," I became so fascinated by the use of metaphor in the discussion that I honestly forgot what they were arguing about. Metaphor can be a powerful persuasive tool, a perfect choice for politicians on television with a limited amount of time to score points.  I jotted down three of their metaphors I recognized as commonly used ones.

(1)    "Under the radar, " - doing something without  attracting notice. This metaphor originated in the 1950's when airplanes would fly under the radar in order to avoid detection.

(2)  "Low-hanging fruit" - something that is obtained with little effort

(3)  "Cherry-picking" - choosing the best that is available or (in a more negative sense) choosing the easiest task

When metaphors become widely used, they can turn into clichés.  For example, I would say that the metaphor "at the end of the day" to mean something similar to "when all is said and done" is on its way to becoming an hackneyed phrase.

Metaphors can also, after widespread and prolonged use, become "dead metaphors" when the original comparison is lost.  Many idioms (chunks of language that derive their meaning from the whole rather than individual words) have their origin as dead metaphors. An example would be "the committee shot her ideas down."

But one fresh metaphor (in simile form) used by a Sunday-morning panel member was "stampeding like wildebeests."  Hum, I wondered.  Just exactly what is a wildebeest?  I understand stampeding cattle or buffalo, but a wildebeest?  I didn't even know how to spell the word correctly. A quick Google search turned up the information that wildebeests are also known as gnus and are native to eastern and southern parts of Africa.

 "Wildebeest" was an unusual choice of animal that quite possibly would not be understood by all listeners,  but  the fact that the "beest" part of the name is a homonym with "beast" was enough to communicate the concept to me.

Later, on some  unidentified radio podcast,  I heard another fresh metaphor - "the goal is not to become unthinking Vulcans."  As all trekkies know, Vulcans are a race of extraterrestrial humanoids from the planet Vulcan, made famous by "Star Trek" and Mr. Spock.

In order to understand the metaphor, the listener would have to know that Vulcans make decisions on reason and logic, not emotions. I like this metaphor.  It made me feel proud that I "got it."

Metaphors are an essential rhetorical tool for communicating well.  They can turn a complex idea into a simpler one, make a controversial topic more acceptable, and tease meaning from the more mundane items in life.  I'm going to make the attempt to create fresh metaphors in future blog posts.

Ms. Fiddich would be proud! 

Mountain climbing and language learning

Quora, a question and answer website, recently featured a post that caught my eye - "What works the best when learning a new language?" by Gruff Davies.

I'm a real sucker for any information that has to do with learning a new language.  And the opening sentence promising a trick to learning languages made me immediately jump into the information.

In truth, the trick was not one trick but rather numerous tricks explained by the author.  That's okay, because otherwise I would probably write him off as a crank, I know there is no silver bullet for learning languages.    

Gruff Davies effectively uses the metaphor of climbing a mountain for the journey of acquiring a second language.  He reminds us how important it is to understand the task we are undertaking and especially the length of time it will require.  And there's the rub.  Technology has made our modern lives go by in a flash of instant messages, news updates, and life complexities that beg for quick solutions.  How can we squeeze one more activity into our lives?

I'm reminded of an ambitious young professional I met once who informed me with great confidence that he was going to learn Spanish next summer.  My first thought ( which I did not share with him) was that maybe he could begin learning Spanish in three months; however, he would need many more summers in order to learn Spanish to a useful level.  I wish I would have reminded him that, as Gruff Davies states, "Learning a language isn't hard.  It's just LONG."  Be realistic, he cautions.

I decided to apply that advice to my study of Irish Gaelic on Duolingo.  For English speakers, Irish Gaelic is at approximately the same difficulty level as Arabic or Russian.

So when Davies estimates that it takes 600 hours or more to reach fluency in French (an easier language for English speakers), I would have to revise that number upward for Gaelic.  Here's the math.  If I study Gaelic at my current rate  of about 20 minutes a day, 365 days a year, I will have racked up 122 hours in a year.  At that rate, even if it took me only 600 hours for fluency, my journey up the Gaelic mountain would be about five years.

So Davies' message for me is to be realistic about my Gaelic study and to be kind to myself if I don't see instant progress.  I feel better!   

I am never ceased to be amazed at the interest the public still demonstrates in acquiring other languages. Quora frequently has comments related to language acquisition, and Duolingo discussions on language reveal a world full of people desiring to conquer new languages. Google Translate, although often very useful, must not be fulfilling our human desires for communication and the cognitive satisfaction of learning and using a new language.