Shall I Compare Thee…?
Humans make meaning by comparing and contrasting: by making metaphors.
We’re doing this all the time. We can’t stop ourselves. And mostly, it’s happening outside our conscious awareness.
The metaphors that spill out in our language (at the astonishing rate of about six per minute) are usually a side-effect of this unconscious metaphor-making process.
But of course, we can also create metaphors consciously.
Writers, artists, politicians, teachers and advertisers are doing that all the time. So are the best web designers and user experience experts.
I was lucky enough to see Shakespeare’s Henry IV at my local cinema recently: a lovely film of a production at the Globe Theatre. Of course, I noticed that the script was packed full of carefully-chosen metaphors, many of them very, very funny. I shan’t give examples here* – the web is awash with articles about Shakespeare’s metaphors.
The thing was that in Shakespeare’s day, apparently, the making of metaphor was regarded as absolutely central to the writer’s craft.
I also have a couple of lines of a current-ish pop song running round my head (it gets played a lot in my local gym). “She’s nothing like a girl you’ve ever seen before. Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood whore. I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful…”
Obviously a carefully crafted set of metaphors there, designed to elicit a particular response. I find myself wondering what would happen if the Sexy Chick ever heard it. Is an insult intended? Or might she take it as a compliment
Nowadays we can all write online, or make videos, without the kind of careful crafting that used to have to go into a work of art.
What difference does that make to the metaphors we use? What have you noticed? How would you respond to not being compared to “your neighborhood whore”? Please comment below.
Comments from original on judyrees.co.uk
Judy
2 August 2011
*Oh, go on then…
All from Henry IV, Part 1 (via the invaluable Shakespeare’s Insults by Hill and Ottchen):
– [You] old white-bearded Satan
– [You] are a shallow cowardly hind, and you lie
– Whoreson caterpillars!
– Bacon-fed knaves!
– Ye fat chuffs!
– [You] leathern-jerkin, crystal-button, knot-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish pounch!
– Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!
– You starveling, you ell-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish… you tailor’s-yard, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!
… and finally
– [You] mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms!
Laurie Morgen
5 August 2011
A rather bizarre description, there. What is most perplexing is the songwriter uses a negative comparison. ‘Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood whore?’ So what would his comaprison be? A high class, £300 a night whore? Or no whore at all. I try to avoid metaphors like that. Perhaps anyone listening to the description of the girl had never even thought of whores but now they are because somebody said not to. It’s a bit like that elephant thing, isn’t it? Think of anything you like but don’t think about elephants. Of course, then, we can’t stop thinking about large, grey, pachyderms.
Maybe I should listen to the rest of the song for the fuller, more flattering metaphors.
Mike
10 August 2011
Maybe sameness and comparing or contrasting (and logic and wiki and etc) and being lazy jedi ‘using’ than making? 🙂
Andy
10 August 2011
Here are some of my Yorkshire metaphors, please note they’re not particularly PC and you don’t hear them much these days. They are ways of describing women, which is pure coincidence may I add.
“She has more edge on her than a broken piss pot!” I think you get the point “ouch”
“She is all fur coat and no knickers”
One for the gents “He is a dead horse and donkey buyer”