Saturday, July 2, 2016

Exploring the Metaphor

Some preliminaries:

Language, by its nature, is symbolic. Thus begins the long relationship with metaphor.


As mentioned in a previous blog: Letters represent sounds. Put letters together and you have a word. The word represents an idea. Put the words together in a comprehensible string and you have a complete thought. These are all symbolic in nature.

Among the complete thoughts you can have is a metaphor.

A metaphor takes two unlike things and smashes them up together in a comparison to create deeper meaning.

We don't put any two random things together in a metaphor. They are two things thoughtfully connected to create greater understanding.

Two random things connected is a non-sequitur.

Examples: Non-sequitur = Babylonian Tupperware.
                  Metaphor = Ship of State.

One is nonsense (and often the basis for humor), the other is quite useful in understanding how things work or feel.

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