Essay On Metaphors

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Brigitte Ghorayeb I- Metaphors: A. Definition: The word ‘metaphor’ comes from Greek ‘metapherein’ which means “to transfer” or “to carry over”. ‘Metaphor’ is a kind of analogy that uses figurative language to relate one thing to another to show how they are similar. The metaphor is used when the writer wants to implicitly highlight hidden similarities between two objects. It is not always simple to identify a metaphor because it is sometimes used to compare two ideas that have barely one characteristic in common, and other times it is really simple because the two ideas share a lot of characteristics. Another definition of metaphor is that it is an indirect comparison between two unrelated concepts to clarify that they are equal; it is similar …show more content…

2. Second type of metaphors: Visual metaphors. Visual metaphors are mostly used in advertisements. Visual metaphors are metaphors that represent an idea, a person, place or thing through a visual image that makes a certain analogy or association. For example, the metaphor that is commonly used: “Time is money”; the visual metaphor for this would be showing an hourglass that contains pennies that passes from the upper bulb to the lower one instead of sand. This visual metaphor illustrates an analogy between time and money. 3. Third type of metaphors: Conceptual metaphors. Conceptual metaphors is a type of metaphor that was developed in the field of cognitive linguistics and became well-known after the publication of the book Metaphors We Live By that was written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Their analysis of this type of metaphor changed the way we perceive metaphors and shows the big role that these metaphors play in our minds and in our lives. This is the type of metaphors that will be analyzed in this study and more specifically in Mahmoud Darwish’s