Finding Metaphors

This issue we will be looking at a procedure for finding metaphors.

There are three components of a metaphor, often called by the strange names: tenor, vehicle, and ground. The tenor is the thing you are trying to make clear or vivid, the thing you are describing with the metaphor, the thing you are equating to the very different kind of thing. The vehicle is the "different kind of thing" to which you are equating the tenor. The vehicle is the word being used non-literally. Since the metaphor equates the tenor to the vehicle, the hearer will mentally replace the tenor by the vehicle. The ground is something the tenor and vehicle have in common.

To remember these terms, imagine the tenor is Luciano Pavarotti, the vehicle is a Mack truck, and the ground is a dirt road that they both are on. HONK! SPLAT! The tenor is no longer visible. You only see the vehicle.

How do you find a metaphor? You need the metaphor to have all three parts: the tenor, the ground, and the vehicle. You can start with any one or two and find the others. Usually you start with the tenor.

As with all creative activities, you want to select the best out of a number of candidates. That means you will have to generate a bunch of possible metaphors, not just jump magically to the one right one. You will need to make lists of mental associations, to "brainstorm," so to speak.

As an example, let's hunt for metaphors for SLEEP. The following diagram illustrates the process I went through:

You can find good candidates for metaphors by asking three questions:

1. Given the tenor, ask "What associations do I have for the tenor?" List these associations. Those associations are candidates for the ground.

With SLEEP, I associated dreams, night, refreshment and reinvigoration, inactivity and not working, and unconsciousness. With dreams, I associate stories and images and sights. With night I associate darkness.

2. For each candidate for the ground, individually, ask "What other things have this association?" List them. Each such thing is a potential vehicle. The reason you ask this about each individual association is that if you ask it about more than one, you will actually be making the list of possibilities from one attribute while pruning it by checking against the others. The problem with that is that brainstorming lists is a different mental activity than checking that items have other attributes. Checking as you go along will get in the way of doing a good job of listing.

I associated images and sights with MOVIES, and then realize that MOVIES also are associated with stories, darkness, refreshment and not working.

Not working I associated with VACATIONS, and VACATIONS are also associated with seeing new sights, getting new stories to tell, and reinvigoration.

Darkness I associated with CAVES, FORESTS, WINTER, and DEATH. CAVES I associated with cave paintings which I further associated with images and sights. WINTER I associated with not working, which makes sense if you have Seasonal Affective Disorder or are a farmer. DEATH I associated with inactivity and with unconsciousness.

3. For each potential vehicle ask, "Does this vehicle bring anything useful with it?" That is, does this potential vehicle have any associations that would help understand the tenor? For example, in the metaphor, LIFE IS A STORY, both life and story share a major number of features. Both have beginnings, middles, and ends. Both have characters and actions. If that was all, though, there wouldn't be much point to the metaphor. An extra thing a story brings is that a story has a meaning, and using this metaphor, we reason that a life has a meaning. This is, alas, a tired metaphor, but it can still be made exciting by giving it a twist as Shakespeare did in Macbeth: "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing."

Here are metaphors I got for SLEEP:

• I'll go see what's playing at the Bijou theater of my mind.
• I'm going into the cave of my mind for my nightly tribal initiation.
• I'll take my daily vacation from life's cares.
• I'm huddling down for the winter of the day.
• Our daily little death.
• That child must think sleep is death, he resists it so hard.

Knowing that you need all three parts of a metaphor, you have a procedure for finding metaphors. Metaphors are one of the most powerful ways to give people ideas that they will be unable to forget.

Where To Look For Vehicles

When you are trying to find metaphors, you need to consider potential vehicles, things that have the same associations as your tenor. You may not find it as easy to go from attributes to things as from things to attributes. There are a number of areas that frequently provide fruitful metaphors. Here are some to rummage through:

• Stages of life: birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age, death.
• Family relationships: husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister...
• Light/dark.
• Dawn, day, evening, twilight, night.
• Wealth/poverty.
• Spring, summer, autumn, winter.
• The weather, sunny, cloudy, storms.
• The mountains, prairies, ocean.
• Games: chess, bridge, poker, Monopoly...
• Sports, individual and team, winter and summer.
• Jobs.
• The arts.
• Plants, animals, the struggle for existence.
• A Journey
• War

These areas have proven fruitful for metaphors. Their major risk is that the metaphors may be trite. Consider that when choosing one and consider giving the metaphor a twist to make it fresh, as in Macbeth's "tale told by an idiot."

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