Metaphoric Criticism In The Philosophy Of Rhetoric

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In this paper, it will cover an analysis by using metaphoric criticism.
The definition of the metaphor is that “a metaphor is an expression, often found in literature, that described a person or object by referring to something that is considered to have similar characteristics of that person or object. In the Philosophy of Rhetoric by I.A. Richards, he described that “a metaphor has two parts: the tenor and the vehicle.” The tenor is the topic that people want to present; the vehicle is the medium that used to represent the tenor. Moreover, there is some people use the general terms ground and figure to call tenor and the vehicle. The line between the metaphor, analogy and simile is kind of vague for some people. A metaphor is a skill that …show more content…

One goal of using Metaphoric criticism is to define the tenor and vehicle in a specific artifact. Another goal of doing metaphoric criticism is to collect the metaphors from a specific artifact to determine how these specific metaphors are not coincidental, but serve as symbols to construct reality. In Foss’s book, it clearly stated the procedure for the method of metaphoric criticism is as follows: (1) selecting an artifact: choose an artifact that contains some explicit metaphors, so that it can be analyzed through metaphor criticism. (2) Analyzing the artifact: examine the context from the artifacts, isolate the metaphors form the artifacts, sort the metaphors into groups and discover an explanation for the artifact. (3) Formulating a research question: decide what is your main focus when writing the explanation of the artifact: feature in tenor or vehicles. (4) Writing the essay: the essay should include an introduction, a description about the contexts and the artifact itself, a description of the research method, which is the metaphor criticism, a metaphor analysis, a report of the findings and the discussion of the summary conclusion, implication, limitations or the future