How to spot whether something is a metaphor or not: your metaphorometer
Metaphor. It’s everywhere. We’re using about six metaphors a minute in ordinary English. At a conscious and semi-conscious level, we’re constantly telling stories – to ourselves and to other people – comparing this thing to that, this experience to that one.
And it’s happening at an unconscious level, too: our bodies think in metaphor. Our gestures, our movements and our facial expressions can be metaphorical.
The metaphors we can hear in everyday language are a side-effect of the metaphors in our unconscious thoughts. They spill out, unbidden, and splash themselves through everything we say.
I’m often asked, “How can you tell whether something is a metaphor or not?” It turns out to be a very interesting question.
The definition of “metaphor” I use is a simple one. A metaphor compares one kind of thing to another kind of thing. This definition incorporates sub-categories like analogy, parable, story, metonymy and a bunch of others you learned about in school. If it compares one kind of thing to another, it’s a metaphor.
It’s not a metaphor if it is literally true.
Fair enough, when the metaphor has been carefully chosen. When Shakespeare compares Juliet to the sun in carefully-crafted words, it’s an obvious metaphor.
How can you tell? Because Juliet is not literally a burning ball of gas many millions of miles away, even though she may brighten everyone’s day.
But beyond that, things get greyer.
So, in the previous sentence, “greyer” is a fairly obvious metaphor. It’s suggests that metaphor-itude can be measured on some kind of scale from black to white, with shades of grey in between. That’s not literally true.
What about “beyond”? Metaphorically, it might suggest that “Juliet is the sun” represents some kind of boundary, which things can be beyond, or ahead of.
Not everyone will agree in every case – and the grey areas will expand as you become more and more aware of metaphors. You’ll develop your own personal metaphorometer.
Context is key! In the following examples, ask yourself, “In what circumstances could this be literally true?”
He pushed himself through the wall
She broke through the glass ceiling
He was under the weather
She fell in love
He broke his duck.
How do you decide if something is a metaphor? Please comment below.
Comments from original on judyrees.co.uk
Felix Thissen
17 November 2014
Hi Judy,
What a beautiful place you created here
and thanks for this lovely Blog post.
—
“How do you decide if something is a metaphor? Please comment below.”
After finishing school, I didn’t really consciously decide what was a metaphor and what wasn’t. Maybe with the exception of the discussion about metaphors in therapy, which wasn’t a long one for me.
Now, after your post, you got me curious.
So I was looking at my definition of “metaphor”.
As for me, every single word is a metaphor.
Your definition: “A metaphor compares one kind of thing to another kind of thing.”
My thoughts: Every word (one kind of thing) is used to compare to something else (another kind of thing).
—
Tree.
The Word is composed of four letters.
Letters, in this case made up of digital dots.
This construct is supposed to point to a certain thing.
A thing that we call tree.
To me “tree” doesn’t look like the actual thing.
It doesn’t smell like it and (probably) doesn’t taste like one.
(I never licked the word tree before)
Also “tree” points to different kinds of trees.
And to several of the same kind.
I can have a very intense experience of a tree,
but my experience of the word is very different.
And the latter is a very different one,
as soon as my believed definition of it changes.
Thanks for your inspiration, ƒelix.
JR
18 November 2014
Hi Felix, Glad you enjoyed the post – and many thanks for your comment.
David Grove sometimes used to get clients to write down the thing they were working on, and ask Clean questions about things like the spaces between the words, the shapes of the letters, even the dots of the Is.
It’s not far from here to “it’s metaphor all the way down”. Hold onto your hat!
Nina Brien
29 March 2022
is this a metaphor? my fist was another lantern
Judy Rees
30 March 2022
Yes – your fist wasn’t literally a lantern, was it? I don’t know what it’s intended to mean, though. What kind of fist? what kind of lantern?
Silke Gebauer
21 November 2014
Thanks for this post. It comes at a time where I am leaning towards considering almost any WORD as a metaphor when facilitating either myself or a client. And Felix’ line of reasoning seems to point to why this usually works. By the time we use a word so much experience and unconscious processing has gone into the word which makes it very potent.
Also, I am intrigued by metaphors hidden even WITHIN a word. Encouraged by the examples of how David Grove pushed the boundaries of what bit to ask questions about I played around with “exposed” the other day: What kind of ex, what kind of pose. The client clearly enjoyed the emerging great insights especially in the context of the sessions – one of those where you just have to pause and wonder what just happened.
Question: Could a definition for Metaphor in clean language context be: “a phrase or word for some meaning”?
Paulah
23 November 2014
I was driving to an event recently, when I just had the urge to play with clean language & metaphor. I turned down the music and threw out a seemingly random thought to put through some clean questions. What came out was so interesting and enlightening…and low and behold, when I got to the event, the moment I stepped out of the car, the very scenario actually played out for me in real time!!! Luv it! 🙂
James Lawley
24 November 2014
While all words ‘point to’ the experience they are referencing and are therefore not-the-thing itself, I think there is value in distinguishing between literal and metaphorical pointings.
For example, I would not regard “My fingers are moving as I am typing” as metaphorical since those words are describing what I am doing right now, and there is no ‘second domain’ involved.
Whereas “Typing is letting ideas pass through my fingers and out into the world” is metaphorical since it points to two domains simultaneously: the physical domain of me doing what I am doing, and a second domain where ‘ideas are moving objects’.
While I can ask Clean Language questions of both statements, as a facilitator I model to them differently. When a client said to me “I’d like to cut you in half”, I needed to be pretty sure whether he was talking metaphorically or not!
And this is one way to recognise a metaphor. They always have a ‘two-ness’ to them.
James Lawley
24 November 2014
Oh, and by the way, nice blog post Judy. Being able to intuitively recognise implicit metaphors in real-time is something I had to work at developing. It is a fundamental skill of a symbolic modeller. Once it is second nature you can put more attention on modelling other aspects of another person’s words and behaviour.
temi
28 October 2021
is “everything that might be hurt drawn in” a metaphor
Judy Rees
10 November 2021
@Temi there are probably a bunch of metaphors there. The most obvious candidate is “drawn in” – are things really being physically dragged or pulled? “Hurt” might be literal or metaphorical, depending on the context.
Claire Gilbert
3 November 2022
Would you call this a metaphor?
‘It was on a day Ruth was wearing sea-blue’
Judy Rees
4 November 2022
Which bit? ‘On’ is metaphorical: ‘it’ wasn’t actually ‘on’ a day. ‘Sea-blue’ compares the kind of blue to the sea, so it’s metaphorical, too.
But if this is a school quiz, my guess is that the ‘correct’ answer would be no.