Verbal and pictorial metaphor in advertisement

‘Metaphor is the rhetorical icing on the cake of language. ’

This sentence is a good example of ‘metaphor about metaphor’ and it describes in one sentence what is often called the classical view of metaphor. This theory goes back to the Aristotelian comparison view (cf. Malmkjaer 1991:351f) and remained commonly accepted by various other theorists (mainly philosophers and linguists) until the middle of the 20th century.

According to the comparison view, metaphor can be analysed in the following terms: the subject of the metaphor is called tenor or topic, and the part which describes the tenor is the vehicle. The similarities between the tenor and the vehicle are called ground. So for example in the metaphor “My love is a red rose”, ‘my love’ is the tenor, ‘a red rose’ is the vehicle and the similarities between both are the ground on which the two are compared. (cf. Malmkjaer 1991:352). The metaphor’s function is to present the already existing similarity between the tenor and the vehicle. In other words according to the comparison view there is no significant difference between saying “my love is a red rose” and “my love is like a red rose”1.

In the classical view, metaphor is nothing more than an instance of language – a rhetorical figure of speech. It is classified as one of the tropes. Metaphor does not belong to the realm of everyday language but to figurative language (which is opposed to literal language):

“In classical theories of language, metaphor was seen as a matter of language, not thought. Metaphorical expressions were assumed to be mutually exclusive with the realm of ordinary everyday language: everyday language had no metaphor, and metaphor used mechanisms outside the realm of everyday conventional language.” (Lakoff 1993:202).

The distinction between literal and figurative language is essential to the theory. Figurative language merely has an ornamental and decorative function. Its purpose is to make language more interesting and to stimulate or challenge the reader. A writer or speaker uses metaphor in order to be thought-provoking. The reader or hearer has to ‘unravel’ the literal meaning of the metaphor. This implies that there must always be a literal meaning which can be decoded from its ‘pretty but unnecessary packaging’2 – the metaphor. And in fact it has to be decoded before true comprehension occurs. Thus, metaphor is merely a figurative substitution for a literal expression and the view is consequently called the substitution view (of which the comparison view is one sub case). The term “substitution view” was coined by Max Black in his article “Metaphor” (which I will refer to later on in more detail):