Editing Metaphor (section)

==Parts of a metaphor==

''The Philosophy of Rhetoric'' (1936) by [[rhetorician]] [[I. A. Richards]] describes a metaphor as having two parts: the tenor and the vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed. In the previous example, "the world" is compared to a stage, describing it with the attributes of "the stage"; "the world" is the tenor, and "a stage" is the vehicle; "men and women" is the secondary tenor, and "players" is the secondary vehicle.{{cn|date=May 2025}}

Other writers{{which|date=June 2019}} employ the general terms ''ground'' and ''figure'' to denote the tenor and the vehicle. [[Cognitive linguistics]] uses the terms ''target'' and ''source'', respectively.{{cn|date=May 2025}}

Psychologist [[Julian Jaynes]] coined the terms ''metaphrand'' and ''metaphier'', plus two new concepts, ''paraphrand'' and ''paraphier''.<ref name="JJpdf">{{cite book | last=Jaynes | first=Julian | author-link=Julian Jaynes | title=The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind | publisher=Houghton Mifflin | orig-year=1976 | year=2000 | isbn=0-618-05707-2 | url=http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/Julian_Jaynes_The_Origin_of_Consciousness.pdf | access-date=24 October 2019 | archive-date=7 August 2019 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190807100304/http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/Julian_Jaynes_The_Origin_of_Consciousness.pdf | url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book
|chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=t6blAAAAMAAJ
|title= Rhetorical Criticism and Theory in Practice
|last= Pierce|first= Dann L.|date= 2003
|publisher= McGraw-Hill|isbn= 9780072500875
|language= en|chapter= Chapter Five
}}</ref>
''Metaphrand'' is equivalent to the metaphor-theory terms ''tenor'', ''target'', and ''ground''. ''Metaphier'' is equivalent to the metaphor-theory terms ''vehicle'', ''figure'', and ''source''. In a simple metaphor, an obvious attribute of the metaphier exactly characterizes the metaphrand (e.g. "the ship plowed the seas"). With an inexact metaphor, however, a metaphier might have associated attributes or nuances – its paraphiers – that enrich the metaphor because they "project back" to the metaphrand, potentially creating new ideas – the paraphrands – associated thereafter with the metaphrand or even leading to a new metaphor. For example, in the metaphor "Pat is a tornado", the metaphrand is ''Pat''; the metaphier is ''tornado''. As metaphier, ''tornado'' carries paraphiers such as power, storm and wind, counterclockwise motion, and danger, threat, destruction, etc. The metaphoric meaning of ''tornado'' is inexact: one might understand that 'Pat is powerfully destructive' through the paraphrand of physical and emotional destruction; another person might understand the metaphor as 'Pat can spin out of control'. In the latter case, the paraphier of 'spinning motion' has become the paraphrand 'psychological spin', suggesting an entirely new metaphor for emotional unpredictability, a possibly apt description for a human being hardly applicable to a tornado.
Based on his analysis, Jaynes claims that metaphors not only enhance description, but "increase enormously our powers of perception...and our understanding of [the world], and literally create new objects".<ref name="JJpdf" />{{rp|50}}