Of the Greek μεταφορά, metaphorá, with the clean direction, Transport, i.e. a transposition of direction. The process of language known as metaphor concerns the Linguistique and the Rhétorique. A metaphor is a figure of direction (Trope, or Métasémème in the terminology of the Groupe µ), in which a word which has usually a direction has is used with a direction B (in other words, it is the substitution of a semantic Trait by another, the direction has not being never completely different from the direction B). This substitution is done on the basis of property common to both terms (the metaphor always supposes an implicit comparison). But the interest of the metaphor is to allot to the direction B certain nuances, and not any, which belong at the end A.

One will not confuse the metaphor with the comparison, where the operation of association of the concepts is explicit ( crafty one like a fox ), and leaves intact the contents of each word.

Attempt at clarification

It is very difficult to distinguish the processes said, according to the authors, “metaphor” or “Analogie”. This article thus treats the question with a rather general level “ use of an existing word to indicate something again ”.

Metaphor and principle of economy

Lucien Jerphagnon, in his Histoire of great philosophies (1980) stresses the importance of the principle of economy for the philosophers. The simplest stating of this principle being “ one should not multiply the beings without need”.

André Leroi-Gourhan on his side observes that when men create a new “machine” there is simultaneous appearance of words.

This creation of news Désignation will be done according to the principle of economy: if an already existing word can “Représenter” the new element, then it is employed rather than to forge a new word.

The construction of a “word to say such new thing” is made different manners according to the situations. Before considering the metaphor, let us see its context of evolution.

Processes other than the metaphor (short recall)

Processes first

Example 1: zip, clash, whip, slap, breakage, rain, claw, crack, purring, jappe, language.

All that makes noise is indicated by a word to which its product by the mouth is close to what is indicated: Onomatopoeia. Example 2: swell

If a thing resembles the form which then takes the face at the time of the pronunciation of the word the word is used for the thing.

The “erudite” process

Example: metaphor, analogy, economy, construction, hippopotamus.

Two words known as “root S” are put side by side to constitute a third of it.

The anthropomorphic process

Example: “the head of the nail”.

The nail is created, instead of inventing a word ex nihilo, one compares the nail with the body of a man and one says that it has a “head”.

The same process is used when one speaks about the feet and the arms of the armchair, of the mouth of sewer, the eyes of the bubble, the nose of the plane, the shoulder of a relief, Strut and Mainstay.

The process zoomorphe

Example 1: “the wing of the plane”.

The word used is taken among the words available to before indicate a “part” of living being. The words hearing, scales, nozzle, feather, horn, tail, shoe, etc are used to indicate a whole pallet of human creations. Example 2: the swordfish

It is the opposite process. A Espadon is initially a large sword - spada - before indicating the nozzle of a fish.

To say the abstract with concrete word

The restrictive definition of the metaphor is “ Dire the abstract with concrete word ”.

Example: it swept the arguments of the adversary.

Just as in the processes described herebefore, there are two terms in a metaphor.

There is the term which exists front. Julian Jaynes proposes to indicate this qualifier by the term of “Métapheur”. It corresponds more or less well to the Degré conceived of the Groupe µ.

At a given time, an human being wants to indicate an action or the abstract effect of an action which, hitherto, had not been indicated.

The principle of economy is used which makes him seek an already existing word which represents sufficiently qualities of the thing to be qualified. Julian Jaynes names this element to qualify “Métaphrande”. It corresponds more or less well to the Degré perceived of the Groupe µ.

In our example, the metaphor “to make use of a brush” is used to indicate the métaphrande “to make that the arguments disappear, are eliminated”.

It is seen immediately that one cannot differently indicate the métaphrande than by a metaphor (to break, destroy, eliminate, etc arguments).

In this example, the métapheurs belong to two groups with crossing gradients of violence: to sweep, break, destroy, eliminate. One passes from the domestic activity of cleaning to the criminal activity.

Coherent units métapheurs

One observes coherent units métapheurs in the description of a scientific Théorie, in the description of an abstracted technical system, etc

Example 1: “network” “fabric” “Net” “Web” “Dreamweaver”

These métapheurs all are in the same field of “primitive” human activity of the Tissage or the Nouage of nets. Qualities of the indicated métaphrandes (computers and cables which connect them) are to be like “tied, woven, braided”. Thanks to this Laps physical, the Internaute S “weave bonds” economic, political, in love, etc. Like any set of métapheurs, this one knows limits of its capacity to be expressed what occurs. Other métapheurs are thus needed.

Example 2 For the Francophone S in particular, the fabric becomes an ocean carrying Internaute S which use a software navigator. For the english-speaking, the fabric becomes a meadow: the software that we have just evoked is a broutor (Browser).

Example 3: Our company is a gaining team which has the wheel in motion to carry the challenge. The new director took over. He defined the new targets. The teams are in the starting block S.

The author leads us on the sporting ground-métapheur to describe to it métaphrande-company with work.

For Dr. Jacob Bronowski, high level Mathematician, mathematics represents the most colossal conceivable metaphor.

• " Dr. J. Bronowski among others has pointed out that mathematics, which most off custom see ace the most factual off all sciences, constitutes the most colossal metaphor conceivable, and must Be judged, aesthetically ace well ace intellectually, in terms off the success off this metaphor.” (Norbert Wiener, “The Human uses Human Beings off. Cybernetics and Society”, p. 129, Avon Books, New York, 1971).

Rhetoric

The metaphor is a implicit Stylistic device. It was often described like a Comparaison without tool of comparison. But it is an error: whereas the comparison makes a rational relationship between two semantic units which it leaves intact, the metaphor induces an impossible new correspondence in reality. Thus, the metaphor replaces a word has by a word (or a short expression) b:

• has and B have a common point.
• but has is not clarified (has disappeared: it is replaced by B).
• the common point between has and B is not clarified.
• it has no function word announcing there the comparison.

The metaphor is thus not always immediately comprehensible: the reader must guess the relation which the author established; blow, the reader discovers the manner of seeing of the author. The metaphor plays with the language and it is thanks to an effort of interpretation that the reader perceives a resemblance between his two terms. For example, in the following sentence of Norge: “The dawn is a horse (which branning itself, drives out with far the crows)”, the dawn and the horse are respectively compared and comparing it.

Twice two forms of the metaphor

• the metaphor in præsentia , or announced metaphor. It is characterized by the fact that the two terms are present in the statement; compared the and comparing it , are grammatically dependant.

Example: “I bathed in the poem of the sea” (Arthur Rimbaud).

• the metaphor in absentia or direct metaphor. Compared is not expressed explicitly in the statement (and of this fact the passage from one reality to another is not formulated directly).

Examples: “And the thermometers themselves regained the shade while couinant”, " the covered black coat of diamants" or “of the curly hands ran with all shares on snow”.

One can speak in these two cases about specific metaphor : the textual extension of the latter is that of the word or the phrase. the long-drawn-out metaphor is opposed to the specific metaphor in this that it developed with the length of a statement (syntagm, sentence member, even whole text); it is thus a sequence of metaphors (either in præsentia or in absentia) generated by a principal metaphor. Example: “the dismounted sea shook the black hills furiously” (" black the collines" : the waves with the dark colors illustrates the black aspect of the hills).

When a metaphor passes in the language running, one speaks about fixed metaphor , which is a Catachrèse. The word or the expression takes a new direction then, the metaphor is lexiconized. Thus in the dictionary the definition of the " will be found; pied" of a piece of furniture or " aile" of a plane.

The metaphor, law of the language of the unconscious one

For Lacan, the Meaning premium on meant. This crossing of the bar enters meant and Meaning would be done for him by the play of meaning between them, at each individual, with ceaseless slip of meant under meaning which is carried out in Psychanalyse by the formulas of the metonymy and the metaphor, that it names “ laws of the language” of the Inconscient. “The Latin language being the old stock, it was one of its kids who was to flower in Europe”. This metaphor of Antoine Rivarol introduces the second stylistic device by which Lacan understands the play and the function of the Meaning S: “The formula de la' métaphore' gives an account of condensation in the Inconscient”. A Word for another, a concrete word for an abstracted word, a transfer of direction by analogical substitution, such is the definition of the metaphor, stylistic device more frequent and more suited to poetry. " The root of the evil, the tree of knowledge, the forest of symbols, the garden of the idleness, the hank of time, the autumn of the idées" , " flowers of Mal" of Baudelaire are metaphors. Lacan dissociates linguistic saussurienne: “the unconscious one knows only the elements of the meaning ”, it “is a chain of meaning which is repeated and insisted”. Lacan raises the mode according to which the unconscious one operates, as Freud had detected it by the production of condensations and displacements along the words “without taking account of meant or the acoustic limits of the syllables”. In Entendre the words which tell to the evils (2006) Doctor Christian Dufour shows that the metaphor cannot be explained why by the existence of units Meaning are Inconscient are often geometrical, suited to the analogy.

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