A metaphor is a meaty rib you can’t stop eating.

Language is Metaphor

Ferdinand de Saussure [semiotics]

A sign is (dyadic)

Signifier

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Signified

Charles Sanders Peirce

semiotic elements= triadic

Jacques Lacan

le non du père (the no of the father)

le nom du père (the name of the father)

What happens when we don’t know the true “nature” of our father: (Father= person, laws,

mores, systems etc…)

Plato’s concept of IDEA:Idea:ideaBED:Bed:bed

“The Treachery of Images”The Following Two Images Are

By Scott McCloudfrom

Understanding Comics

Aristotle’s view of a word or idea deals with

schema or classification

•Boy•Man•Teacher•Professor

Every word has a denotative (dictionary) and connotative (associative) role. When we describe one thing in terms of another we create a metaphor.

Metaphor is the application to one thing of the name belonging to another. We may apply (a) the name of a genus to one of its species, or (b) the name of one species to its genus, or (c) the name of one species to another of the same genus, or (d) the transfer may be based on a proportion

Aristotle- Poetics (335 B.C.)

Metaphor is a strategy in which a word or expression is shifted from its normal uses to a context where it evokes new meaning.

Context

An artist must be aware of his audience otherwise a metaphor may

go unnoticed or misunderstood

Tone: a metaphor can be funny, insightful, objective, or serious.

Mr. Herzfeld is Benson from The Regular Show

But Mr. T. WHO is Benson?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcDFFIuVUS0

Like Benson on The Regular Show, Mr.

Herzfeld is a manager.

well he’s more than that, but for this experiment let’s focus on one

aspect of his job

Mr. Herzfeld Manager

Tenor Vehicle

•Disciplined•Vigilant•Cautious•Forceful•Organizes•Expectations

Cop CarSchool BusClown CarHotwheel

Tenor Vehicle

•?•?•?•?

Purpose: there are different purposes

for metaphors:

Pragmatic-memeticAesthetic-vivid/interesting

Cognitive-different/delayedRhetorical-persuasive

Pragmatic: conveying meanings concisely

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At FVHS Mr. Herzfeld is Benson: The Boss and adult figure in Regular Show

Aesthetic: making expressions more vivid or interesting

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Often at FVHS Mr. Herzfeld is Batman trying to defuse a bomb.

Cognitive: providing words to describe things that

have no literal name or rendering complex

abstractions easy to understand through concrete analogies.

OR creating new meanings, forestalling

meaning or forcing meaning to be seen in the context of the whole piece of artwork.

Since seniors graduate and are replaced every year by thirteen and fourteen year old freshmen, Mr. Herzfeld’s job to turn kids intowell intentioned adults is truly Sisyphean.

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Mr. Herzfeld is a well organized box of apples.

(This is another example of a cognitive metaphor)

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Theoretical Critic Forest Thompson: “the worst disservice a critic can do to poetry is to understand it too soon.”

Theoretical Critic Shklovsky says “the purpose of new metaphors is not to create meaning, but to renew perception by “defamiliarizing” the world.

Cleanth Brooks- The essential structure of a poem is resembles that of architecture or painting: it is a pattern of resolved stresses. from “The Heresy of Paraphrase.”

I am the Walrus- The BeatlesI am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.I'm crying.

Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday.Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob.

An entire work can be a metaphor

Kneeling at the Pipes

Princely cockroach, inheritor,I used to stain the kitchen wall with your brothers,flood you right down the basin.I squashed you underfoot, making faces.I repent.I am relieved to hear somebodywill survive our noises.Thoughtlessly I judged you dirtywhile dropping poisons and freeways and bombson the melted landscape.I want to bribe youto memorize certain poems.My generation too craves posterity.Accept this dish of well aged meat.In the warrens of our rotting cititeswhere those small eggsround as earth wait,spread the Word.

Marge Piercy

Metaphors can be rhetoricalin nature- they can persuade,

they can move an audience to thinkin a new or particular way.

Persuasive Metaphor: A gumball machine doesn’t work until you put a coin in it. Like Benson, Mr. Herzfeld’s kind heart is what drives his every action.

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The world of politics is

filled with persuasive metaphor. Let’s get familiar with some background/context first…

2008 Presidential Race: Obama

• Young

• Intellectual

• Inexperienced

• Cultured

• Sophisticated

• Articulate

Joe Biden

• Older

• Wiser

• Brash

• Talkative

• Old School

• Acceptable

• 2nd fiddle

P. Candidate John McCain

• Maverick

• Too Old

• Out of Touch

• Independent

• Brave

• Experienced

• Surprising

VP Candidate Sarah Palin

• Inexperienced

• Different

• Sassy

• Non-intellectual

• Out of her league

• Motherly

• Independent

• Fighter

ACTIVITY: Now you try it. Make a metaphor matrix with your choice of one of the following:

● Local Food Sources: Restaurants, Home, Vending Machines, Cafeteria etc….

● Types of Candy● Musical Artists● Animals or Insects (Famous or otherwise)● Cartoon or Comic Characters