Making meaning clear through comparison of one thing to another

making meaning clear through comparison of one thing to another

Writing which contains unfamiliar words fails to call up complete and definite images. It is often difficult to form the correct mental picture, even though the words in themselves are familiar. Definitions, explanations, and Descriptions may cause us to understand correctly, but our understanding usually can be improved by means of a comparison. We can form an image of an object as soon as we know what it is like.

If I wished you to form an image of an okapi, a lengthy Description would give you a less vivid picture than the statement that it was a horselike animal, having stripes similar to those of a zebra. If an okapi were as well known to you as is a horse, the name alone would call up the proper image, and no comparison would be necessary. By means of it we are enabled to picture the unfamiliar. In this case the comparison is literal.

If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, our language becomes figurative, and usually takes the form of a simile or metaphor. Similes and metaphors are of great value in rendering thought clear. They make language forceful and effective, and they may add much to the beauty of expression.

We may speak of an object as being like another, or as acting like another. If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, and is directly stated, the expression is a simile. Similes are introduced by like, as, etc.

He fought like a lion.

The river wound like a serpent around the mountains.

If two things are essentially different, but yet have a common quality, their implied comparison is a metaphor. A metaphor takes the form of a statement that one is the other.

"He was a lion in the fight. "

"The river wound its serpent course. "

Sometimes inanimate objects, abstract ideas, or the lower animals are given the attributes of human beings. Such a figure is called personification, and is in fact a modified metaphor, since it is based upon some resemblance of the lower to the higher.

This music crept by me upon the waters.

Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he is worth to season.

Nay, he ’ s a thief, too; have you not heard men say, That time comes stealing on by night and day?

Shakespeare.

Use of Figures of Speech.

The three figures of speech, simile, metaphor, and personification, are more frequently used than are the others.

EXERCISES
Are the images which you form made more vivid by the use of the figures in the following selections?

The harmless storm was ended;

And as the sunrise splendid

Came blushing o ’ er the sea—

Heels over head, to his proper sphere—

Heels over head and head over heels,

Dizzily down the abyss he wheels,

So fell Darius.

J. T. Trowbridge.

Hawthorne.

Hawthorne.

George Eliot.

8. A sky above,

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

Lowell.

Macaulay.

Macaulay.

Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men,

Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain,

And labor. Each was like a Druid rock,

Or like a spire of land that stands apart

Cleft from the main and wall ’ d about with mews.

Tennyson.

On glassy water, drove his cheek in lines.

Tennyson.

Mill.

Determination of Meaning Requires More than Image Making.

The emphasis laid upon image making should not lead to the belief that this is all that is necessary in order to determine what is meant by the language we hear or read. Image making is important, but much of our language is concerned with presenting ideas of which no mental pictures can be formed.

This very paragraph will serve as an illustration of such language. Our understanding of language of this kind depends upon our knowledge of the meanings of words, upon our understanding of the relations between word groups, or parts of sentences, and especially upon our appreciation of the relations in thought that sentences bear to one another.