Thursday, October 06, 2011

Identifying Metaphors

From Wikipedia.org: "In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "prices are rising"). A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience. The regularity with which different languages employ the same metaphors, which often appear to be perceptually based, has led to the hypothesis that the mapping between conceptual domains corresponds to neural mappings in the brain."

I thought the above quote was fascinating. The idea that conceptual metaphors are inherently understood by all cultures is interesting to me.

 For my verbal metaphors, I found that companies used a lot of metaphors in their advertising.They're often referred to as slogans.
"Dodge. Grab life by the horns."

In this case, life is the conceptual domain we from which we draw metaphorical expressions, or the source. The horns is the conceptual domain that we try to understand, or the target. The company wants you to believe that if you buy their product you will feel more powerful, as if taking "the bull by the horns".
"Open happiness."

In the case of this 2009 Coca-Cola slogan, happiness would be the source whereas opening would be the target. The company wants you to believe that you can experience happiness in a bottle of their product.
 "Love is a battlefield."

In the case of Pat Benetar's 1983 single, "Love is a Battlefield", the battlefield is the source and love is the target. This is a fairly basic metaphor expressing the idea that love is a brutal and emotionally taxing experience.
"Saturn. Like always. Like never before."

This one is interesting because it's more than one metaphor. Perhaps Saturn is the target while "like always" and "like never before" are the sources. I think the intention is to give the customer the sense of reliability and safety while also providing the excitement of a new experience.
 "Took My Love"

"Took My Love" is from Pitbull's album Planet Pit. I choose this because it is another metaphor that deals with the materialization of love. Love is the source while the action of taking is the target. The metaphor attempts to create the idea that love is a physical object that can be held, thrown, and stolen.

Now we'll move onto visual metaphors.


"Lying About Your Health"

I suppose this is a metaphor...with health being the source and the act of lying about is being the target. I also think this image is both of fusion and juxtaposition. Pinocchio in the doctor's office as juxtaposition while the combining of the story of Pinocchio and the thermometer being fusion.
 
"Castle of Lies"

Here is another series about lying. I'll talk about the last image specifically. We'll go with the idea of "castle of lies", with lies being the source and the castle being the target. The image uses fusion, combining the speech bubbles to make a kind of card castle.
"Distraction through Devices"

I'm not entirely sure what to say about this one. It's possible that it's not using a metaphor. I mean, it is pretty straightforward but I chose this image because of its use of allusion. It's referencing Apple's popular iPod commercials.

"Preservation of Technology"

This illustration uses technology as its source and preservation and the target. It uses juxtaposition and replacement to relate its target and source.
"Imprisoned by Liberty" 

This illustration uses liberty as its source and imprisonment as its target. It uses fusion to relate its source and target.
"Capturing Nature"

I chose this piece because I thought it used a particularly cliche metaphor with nature being the source and the act of capture being the target. It uses juxtaposition and fusion equally, I believe.

"Mess of Humanity"

This painting uses humanity as its source and mess as its target. It uses fusion to relate its source and target.





















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