Diction, Syntax and Metaphor

Diction (also known as lexis) is the word we use to describe the careful choice of words by a writer. We can talk about “interesting diction”, “significant …”, “telling…” etc.

There are aspects of diction which you need to be aware of. Words can be chosen for a variety of reasons. Mostly, at A-level, the meaning is taken for granted. That is why you will get few rewards for discussing what a poem “means” at a straightforward level. (“Denotation”, in other words, is taken for granted.)

You may be rewarded for knowing about words’ connotations. With poetry, especially, words’ connotations are very much considered as part of the choice of diction.

You may also be rewarded for spotting ambiguity, or puns, so you need to think about these. Ambiguity is a funny thing: in serious prose, as a rule, ambiguity is considered to be a fault. Clarity is especially important in good prose, and ambiguity (except for comic effect, where it is more likely to be considered as “punning”) is often unhelpful.

In poetry, on the other hand, ambiguity can be important. Theoretically speaking, this may well be because poetry tends to be written where subject-matter is not straightforward, and therefore the exploration of ambiguity can be a valuable tool for cutting deeply into the layers of meaning presented by a suitable poetic subject.
Syntax

Syntax is another tool which has a great deal of significance in the construction of poems. You need to know about subjects, verbs, objects, phrases, clauses, word positions and so on. You need to know about types of sentence too. This needs to be done in class.

Metaphor

This is a huge subject, which needs careful thought. You need to know about the various common kinds of metaphorical language: simile, metaphor, including tenor and vehicle, analogy, personification, reification, synecdoche, metonymy.

Metaphor, according to I.A. Richards in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), consists of: the tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the subject from which the attributes are borrowed.

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players

They have their exits and their entrances”

This well known quotation is a good example of a metaphor. In this example, “the world” is compared to a stage, the aim being to describe the world by taking well-known attributes from the stage. In this case, the world is the tenor and the stage is the vehicle. “Men and women” are a secondary tenor and “players” is the vehicle for this secondary tenor. Most importantly a metaphor specifially states that two unlike objects are each other, without using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’.

The metaphor is sometimes further analyzed in terms of the ground and the tension. The ground consists of the similarities between the tenor and the vehicle. The tension of the metaphor consists of the dissimilarities between the tenor and the vehicle. In the above example, the ground begins to be elucidated from the third line: “They have their exits and their entrances.” In the play, Shakespeare continues this metaphor for another twenty lines beyond what is shown here – making it a good example of an extended metaphor.

Types of metaphor

An extended metaphor, or conceit, sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. The above quote from As You Like It is a good example. The world is described as a stage and then men and women are subsidiary subjects that are further described in the same context.

A mixed metaphor is one that leaps, in the course of a figure, to a second identification inconsistent with the first one. Example: “He stepped up to the plate and grabbed the bull by the horns,” where two commonly used metaphors are confused to create a nonsensical image.

A dead metaphor is one in which the sense of a transferred image is not present. Example: “to grasp a concept” or “to gather you’ve understood.” Both of these phrases use a physical action as a metaphor for understanding (itself a metaphor), but in none of these cases do most speakers of English actually visualize the physical action. Dead metaphors, by definition, normally go unnoticed. Some people make a distinction between a “dead metaphor” whose origin most speakers are entirely unaware of (such as “to understand” meaning to stand underneath a concept), and a dormant metaphor, whose metaphorical character people are aware of but rarely think about (such as “to break the ice”). Others, however, use dead metaphor for both of these concepts, and use it more generally as a way of describing metaphorical cliché.

An epic or Homeric simile is an extended metaphor containing details about the vehicle that are not, in fact, necessary for the metaphoric purpose. This can be extended to humorous lengths, for instance: “This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, it’s a twelve-story crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying ‘This Is a Large Crisis.’”

A synecdochic metaphor is one in which a small part of something is chosen to represent the whole so as to highlight certain elements of the whole. For example “a pair of ragged claws” represents a crab in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Describing the crab in this way gives it the attributes of sharpness and savagery normally associated with claws.

Other types of metaphor have been identified as well, though the nomenclatures are not as universally accepted:

An active metaphor is one which by contrast to a dead metaphor, is not part of daily language and is noticeable as a metaphor. Example: “You are my sun.”

A complex metaphor is one which mounts one identification on another. Example: “That throws some light on the question.” Throwing light is a metaphor and there is no actual light.

A compound or loose metaphor is one that catches the mind with several points of similarity. Example: “He has the wild stag’s foot.” This phrase suggests grace and speed as well as daring.

An absolute or paralogical metaphor (sometimes called an antimetaphor) is one in which there is no discernible point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle. Examples:
“The couch is the autobahn of the living room.”
“Six Flags is the aquarium of roller coasters.”

An implicit metaphor is one in which the tenor is not specified but implied. Example: “Shut your trap!” Here, the mouth of the listener is the unspecified tenor. In poetry, an Implicit metaphor is a metaphor implied by the text. Example: In John Donne’s “The Bait” there is an implicit fishing metaphor throughout the entire poem.

A submerged metaphor is one in which the vehicle is implied, or indicated by one aspect. Example: “my winged thought”. Here, the audience must supply the image of the bird.

A simple or tight metaphor is one in which there is but one point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle. Example: “Cool it”. In this example, the vehicle, “cool”, is a temperature and nothing else, so the tenor, “it”, can only be grounded to the vehicle by one attribute.

A root metaphor is the underlying association that shapes an individual’s understanding of a situation. Examples would be understanding life as a dangerous journey, seeing life as a hard test, or thinking of life as a good party. A root metaphor is different from the previous types of metaphor in that it is not necessarily an explicit device in language, but a fundamental, often unconscious, assumption.
Religion provides one common source of root metaphors, since birth, marriage, death and other universal life experiences can convey a very different meaning to different people, based on their level or type of religious conditioning or otherwise. For example, some religions see life as a single arrow pointing toward a future endpoint. Others see it as part of an endlessly repeating cycle. In his book World Hypotheses, the philosopher Stephen Pepper coined the term and proposed a theory of four ultimate root metaphors–formism, mechanism, organicism, contextualism.

A conceptual metaphor is an underlying association that is systematic in both language and thought. For example in the the Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the conceptual metaphor of “A Lifetime is a Day” is repeatedly expressed and extended throughout the entire poem. The same conceptual metaphor is the key to solving the Riddle of the Sphinx: “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at midday, and three in evening? –A man.” Similar to root metaphors, conceptual metaphors are not only expressed in words, but are also habitual modes of thinking underlying many related metaphoric expressions.
Because they both underlie more than just the surface metaphoric expression, root metaphors and conceptual metaphors are easily confused. For example: In the United States, both conservatives and liberals use ‘family’ metaphors for the national politics, though in different ways. Both types of usage would ultimately resolve to “organic” root metaphors in Pepper’s nomenclature, while Lakoff would distinguish between several different varieties of the “A Nation is A Family” metaphor.

A dying metaphor Coined in his essay Politics and the English Language George Orwell calls a dead metaphor one that has been worn out and is used because it saves people the trouble of developing original language to express an idea. In short, it is a cliché. Example:Achilles heel. Orwell suggests that writers scan their work for such dying forms that they have ‘seen regularly before in print’ and replace them with alternative language patterns.

Finally, the category of metaphor can be further considered to contain the following specialized subsets:

Allegory: An extended metaphor in which a story is told to illustrate an important attribute of the subject
Catachresis: A mixed metaphor (sometimes used by design and sometimes a rhetorical fault)
Parable: An extended metaphor told as an anecdote to illustrate or teach a moral lesson