Idioms and Metaphors

What is an Idiom?
An idiom is group of words that has a special meaning, which is different from the meanings of all or
some of the individual words. Idioms are typically used in a fixed and definite way.
Example: Ryan is out to lunch ≠ Ryan has gone out to lunch
To say someone is talking or behaving strangely, we would say that he or she is out to lunch - this is an
idiom that indicates that this person’s mind is somewhere else. But saying, they have gone out to lunch
would be incorrect - this is not an idiom and simply tells us that the person has literally gone to eat
lunch. Although many multilingual speakers think that using idioms will help their spoken English
sound more “natural”, idioms are often used incorrectly, and an overuse can have the opposite effect
and make one’s spoken English sound less natural. It is important to have an understanding of what
idioms mean and how and when they are used, but use idioms with caution when speaking.

What Is a Metaphor?
A metaphor is a way of describing something, by referring to it as something different.
Example: Jacky is a cold person ≠ Jacky is feeling cold
When someone is being unfriendly, insensitive, or rude towards you, you may describe them as being cold
- this does not mean that they are feeling cold physically.

Identifying Idioms
• Pairs of Words: Many idioms are a pair of words, which are separated by
the word and. NOTE: It is important to remember that the order of these two words cannot be
changed. Changing the words in an idiom (by adding, removing or rearranging words) often
changes the meaning of it.
Example: Our new computers are already up-and-running.
The idiom up-and-running means to be operational (a technological process) and to be ready to
use.

• Similes: A simile is an adjective phrase that uses as or like. Some similes have become
idiomatic.
Example: That crossword puzzle was as easy as pie.
The idiom as easy as pie means that something is very easy to do.

• Sayings: Some idioms come from common sayings. Often, only part of a saying is used. This is
because the listener is usually able to anticipate what is coming next, without having to hear the
entire saying.
Example: Don’t count your chickens (before they’ve hatched).
The complete idiom don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched means that you should
not assume that all outcomes will be good, i.e. a lot can happen between now and then – just
because you have 10 eggs, does not mean you’ll have 10 chickens. Because many people are
familiar with this idiom, it is usually not necessary to say: before they’ve hatched.

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 • Metaphorical Actions (that represent a feeling or type of behaviour). Some idioms describe
an imaginary action, which represents a specific feeling or type of behaviour.
Example: It broke her heart to see him lose the race.
The idiom to break someone’s heart means to make someone feel very sad or disappointed – this
is figurative and not literal, i.e. her heart would not really break.

• Variable Idioms: Normally, idioms are used in a very fixed and limited way. However, English
speakers often play with idioms by making up their own versions of them.
Example: Sometimes, my little brother drives me bananas.
There are many ways of saying that something or someone annoys you. Notice that all these
idioms start with the word drive:
• drives me crazy
• drives me nuts
• drives me mad
• drives me up the wall
• drives me bananas

Source: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003.). Longman Pearson.

Difference Between Metaphor and Idiom

This is just a brief guide to the difference between idiom and metaphor, something which shows up
very often as a source of confusion.

The Cambridge dictionary offers this definition of idiom:

"a group of words whose meaning considered as a unit is different from the meanings of each word
considered separately."

and Cambridge gives us this definition of metaphor:

"an expression that describes a person or object by referring to something that is considered to
possess similar characteristics."

Very often, an idiom has no association to metaphor, being simply a phrase that becomes adopted
by language as if a single word. These idioms are not readily confused with metaphor, though there
are times when an idiom is also a metaphor or metaphor system. A good example is the "carrot and
stick".

The "carrot and stick" idiom refers to the use of enticement and punishment to motivate a horse or
donkey. The carrot was dangled before the animal as a lure, while the stick was used to reprimand
stubbornness. Without knowing the relationship between carrot and stick, the group of words seem
out of place in a sentence, which is central to its identification as an idiom.

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However, in its common use, this idiom makes metaphorical equations, such as this one:

Iran: West's carrot & stick method failed

Here, the West is seen as making the following equations:

1. Iran is equated to a donkey, being stubborn and unwilling to change its position.
2. Trade incentives are equated to the carrot, aimed at luring Iran from its current position.
3. U.N. sanctions are equated to the stick, used to force a change in Iran's position.
4. The West is equated to the farmer, and is assumed by this model to own or control Iran.

Extending this further, the West may accuse Iran of "digging in its heels" as a way of protecting its
position. For example, since the stick equals sanctions of some kind, say, cutting grain shipments to
Iran, Iran may "dig in its heels" by stockpiling current grain supplies in preparation. The donkey of
this metaphor system has as many parts as we choose to give it.

The way to spot those times when an idiom behaves as a metaphor is to look for signs of an
equation being made, then check to see if the equation can be extended, as you see in the above
example. There may even be times when you discover that it never really was an idiom after all. It's
only natural - cases of mistaken identity are very common among idiom, metaphor and simile.

Conceptual Metaphors/ Generative metaphor

What is a Metaphor?
The word metaphor in Greek meant "carry across" or "transfer", and is normally used to refer to the method of
comparing two different items based on resemblance or similarity. For instance, "her eyes were ponds", "she
carried her guilt", and "my brother is a plague", are all examples of metaphoric language use.

Metaphors play a significant role in our lives. We use them daily in our lives. They shape our lives. No one can
deny the importance of language in terms of our existence on earth and metaphors are a major part of our
language. We are so habitual of making use of metaphors that we do not even ponder over their meanings.
Eaglestone explains about metaphors and their meanings in detail. This article elaborates the meaning of
metaphors and the related concepts.

Metaphor roughly means “to transfer”. They transfer meaning by using a term to describe something else.
George Lakoff and Mark Turner argue that metaphors transfer meaning from one conceptual structure to
another and this develops our understanding as we are able to consider one domain in terms of another. For
example, ‘life is a game of chess’ is a metaphor, which allows us to think about life as a game of chess. As we
have to secure ourselves from losing in the game of chess, similarly we have to secure ourselves in our life. As
in playing chess, we are to beat the obstacles that come in our way; same is the case with life. Metaphors also
affect our lives as we use them unnoticeably in our daily routine.

Metaphors make us think as sometimes they are used in an unfamiliar style. Sometimes, we take metaphors for
granted as they are used so much that we forget that they are metaphors. The metaphors, which make us think
are those, which use language in a disturbing or surprising manner. It means that a metaphorical sentence can be
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interpreted not only in one perspective but in many as L.P. Hartley uses the metaphor, ‘the past is a foreign
country: they do things differently there’. Now, Hartley’s metaphor is quite questionable. It can be interpreted
as we are not aware of our past or as our past does not accept us as it’s parted or we try not to accept our past as
our own part. So, this metaphor is quite confusing. Such metaphors make us think. It is this quality of de-
familiarising that makes us think.

As, we use so many metaphors in our daily lives, we are able to make some meaning of the new ones. The
metaphors that we use without noticing are called ‘dead metaphors’. They appear to be true as people use them
without thinking what they mean. We take their meaning for granted.

Lakoff and Turner have coined a term, ‘basic conceptual metaphor’, which means the underlying metaphoric
idea that generates a whole series of metaphors. For example, the metaphor, ‘life is a journey’ has generated the
metaphoric ideas of something reaching crossroads, life’s road, stones in the pass way, getting sidetracked,
turning points of life, doing things in round about ways, obstacles in one’s way and green signal for one’s life.
This basic conceptual metaphor transfers meaning from one domain, our experience of journeys to another, our
experience of life.

The literary texts use the basic conceptual metaphor in new de-familiarising ways. They draw new ideas from
old models and use language in an unusual, or in other words in a metaphorical way. These metaphors have the
power to change the way we think about the world. For example, the metaphor, ‘life is a journey’ makes one
believe that he will have obstacles in his life, will be allowed to make choices like crossroads and finally, he is
going to reach a destination after his long journey of life. If anyone tries to divert him from his own thought
choice, he will consider him or her his obstacle. Moreover, everyone does not have choices to make, sometimes;
we have to accept what comes our way. According to Eaglestone, the metaphors we choose in order to interpret
the world in fact shape how we interpret the world. He adds that we think in metaphors and they grasp our
minds. Jacques Derrida describes the way metaphors grasp our mind as ‘metaferocity’. According to the
concept of ‘metaferocity’, we do what metaphors make us to do.

So, metaphors have a strong impact on our lives. They make us think and we use those metaphors, which are
closer to our description of life to explain ourselves. Literary texts are the pioneers of the concept of metaphors
but we are all enslaved by them.

Language and culture as mappings

In their 1980 work, Lakoff and Johnson closely examined a collection of basic conceptual metaphors, including:

 LOVE IS A JOURNEY
 LIFE IS A JOURNEY
 SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS ARE PLANTS
 LOVE IS WAR

The latter half of each of these phrases invokes certain assumptions about concrete experience and requires the
reader or listener to apply them to the preceding abstract concepts of love or organizing in order to understand
the sentence in which the conceptual metaphor is used.There are numerous ways in which conceptual metaphors
shape human perception and communication, especially in mass media and in public policy.
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 Definition
A conventional metaphor in which love is represented as a journey, thus highlighting the aspects of
purpose, progress, and problems in the love relationship.
Examples
Here are some examples in English:
 We'll just have to go our separate ways.
 I don't think this relationship is going anywhere.
 It's been a long, bumpy road.
 Our marriage is on the rocks.
 This relationship is foundering.

Generic
A love-as-journey metaphor is a kind of
 What is a metaphor for love?

Examples and Observations:

"Basic conceptual metaphors are part of the common conceptual apparatus shared by members of a culture.
They are systematic in that there is a fixed correspondence between the structure of the domain to be understood
(e.g., death) and the structure of the domain in terms of which we are understanding it (e.g., departure). We
usually understand them in terms of common experiences. They are largely unconscious, though attention may
be drawn to them. Their operation in cognition is almost automatic. And they are widely conventionalized in
language, that is, there are a great number of words and idiomatic expressions in our language whose meanings
depend upon those conceptual metaphors."
(George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1989)

In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson mention these variations on the conceptual metaphor

TIME IS MONEY:

 You're wasting my time.

 This gadget will save you hours.
 I don't have the time to give you.
 How do you spend your time these days?
 That flat tire cost me an hour.

 I've invested a lot of time in her.

 You're running out of time.
 Is that worth your while?
 He's living on borrowed time.
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References: Eaglestone, Robert. (2002). Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students. London: Routledge.

The Traditional View

Traditional views of metaphor consider metaphor to be a feature of language rather than thought. Creative use
of language, such as in literary works, is often dismissed as being 'outside' the domain of linguistic theory. This
is because metaphor can be seen to be a 'violation' of normal linguistic rules, since it is non-compositional in
nature.

'Creative' metaphors are often contrasted with 'dead' metaphors. A dead metaphor is a commonly used metaphor
which has, over time, become a part of ordinary language, to the extent that speakers are normally unaware that
they are even using a metaphor.
The Cognitive View

The cognitive view of metaphors sees metaphors as cognitive instruments. Metaphors are a matter of cognition
as opposed to language, and are fundamental to conceptualising the world. Metaphor is a mapping across
conceptual domains, from source to target, and normally from the concrete to the more abstract.

Metaphor is considered to be absolutely central to our cognition, especially 'dead' metaphors. This is because
'dead' metaphors, which are automatic and unconscious, are more deeply entrenched in our cognition. Such
metaphors are therefore called Conceptual Metaphors, the extension of which leads to literary metaphors. The
traditional distinction between literal and figurative language is thereby dismissed

Motivations for the Cognitive Approach

What are the motivations for the cognitive approach to metaphor? Lakoff notes what he considers to be some of
the assumptions of the traditional approach which are demonstrably false:

All everyday conventional language is literal, and none is metaphorical.

All subject matter can be comprehended literally, without metaphor.
The concepts used in the grammar of a language are all literal; none are metaphorical.
These metaphorical structures pervade our thought and dictate our language. In many cases what had been
analysed as literal, ordinary language, can be shown to be metaphorically based. These conceptual metaphors
also exhibit large generative capacity, manifesting themselves in a large variety of different ways and
highlighting different features of the same source metaphor. They therefore cannot be thought of as deviant or
outside the scope of traditional study.
Examples of Conceptual Metaphors
Conceptual metaphors are metaphors which are considered to be deeply entrenched in our cognition. So far,
many such metaphors have been documented, two of which shall be briefly documented here.
'Life Is A Journey' Metaphor

The 'Life Is A Journey' metaphor is descended from the Event Structure Metaphor, taking its conception of a
long-term and purposeful activity as a journey. Culturally we consider of life as purposeful, with a beginning
and end. Goals in life are destinations, and difficulties in life are impediments to that motion. This metaphor
inherits all the features of the Event Structure Metaphor, mapping from the source domain of space to the target

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domain of life. This domain is a part of our cognition, and exhibits itself in our language and thought. Examples
from English include:

He got a head start in life.

He's without direction in his life.
I'm where I want to be in life.
I'm at a crossroads in my life.
He'll go places in life.
He's never let anyone get in his way.
Hierarchical organisation, as mentioned, is a prominent feature of conceptual metaphors. The higher structurally
the metaphor, the more widespread it tends to be. The Event Structure Metaphor is considered to be almost
universally exhibited in languages around the world, whereas the 'Life Is A Journey' metaphor is culturally
restricted
Origins of Conceptual Metaphors

If metaphors are a cognitive tool for understanding one domain by reference to another, there must be some
grounding i.e. concepts that are not understood via metaphor. Cognitive linguists have posited the existence of
Image Schemas which serve as this grounding. These Image Schemas are based on the physical, bodily
experience of being in the world.

For example, there are several conceptual metaphors with an up-down orientation, and these are argued to have
developed from an Up-Down Image Schema. This Schema is, in turn, said to have developed from our bodily
experience of being vertical when awake and well, and horizontal when asleep, ill, or dead. Some examples of
conceptual metaphors with this up-down relation

HAPPY IS UP;
SAD IS DOWN
I'm feeling up. My spirits rose. You're in high spirits. I'm feeling down. I'm depressed. He's really low these
days. My spirits sank.

HAVING CONTROL OR FORCE IS UP;

BEING SUBJECT TO CONTROL OR FORCE IS DOWN
I have control over her. He's at the height of his powers. He's in a superior position. He ranks above me in
strength. He is under my control. He fell from power. He is my social inferior.

A Problem Is a Body of Water:

Source Domain : body of water

Target Domain :problem

Investigating Problem Is Exploring Water

-- 1 He dived right into the problem.

-- 2 He really immersed himself in the problem.

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 Difficulty In Solving Is Difficulty In Exploring Water

-- 1 The problem itself is murky.

-- 2 The murky waters of the investigation frustrated him.

Trying To Solve Is Looking For Object In Water

-- 1 He'd been fishing for the answer for weeks.

-- 2 He kept coming up empty.

Solving Is Finding Object In Water

-- 1 Finally the answer surfaced.

The Solution Is An Object In Water

-- 1 The answer's just floating around out there.

Anger Is Heat

Source Domain:;heat
Target Domain :anger

- 1 She's a real hothead.

ANGER IS HEAT and BODY IS CONTAINER FOR EMOTIONS

- 1 You make my blood boil.

- 2 Let her stew.

- 1 She got all steamed up.

- 2 He's just blowing off steam.

- 1 He erupted.

- 2 He boiled over.

- 3 She felt her gorge rising.

- 1 He blew his top.

- 2 He exploded.

- 3 I can't keep my anger bottled up anymore

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Emotions Are Forces

Source Domain :forces, causes, motion

Target Domain ;emotions

Emotions Are Physical Forces

- 1 I was moved by the poem

- 2 I was pushed into depression

- 3 She was carried away by the song

- 4 He was struck by anger

Emotions Are Electromagnetic Forces

- 1 She felt charged up with anxiety

- 2 I discharged my anger on him

- 3 I can feel the good vibrations

- 4 He's got a lot of negative energy

Love Is Magic

- 1 The magic is gone.

- 2 She is bewitching.

- 3 Enchanted.

- 4 I was entranced.

- 5 She charmed him.

Time Is A Changer

- 1 Time heals all wounds.

- 2 Time will make you forget.

- 3 Time had made her look old.

- 4 Time had not been kind to him.

- 5 The ravages of time.

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HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? [6.12.09]
By Lera Boroditsky

For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often
simply wrong. Research in labs at Stanford University has helped reopen this question. According to the
collected data from around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia.
People who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can
profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being
human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding Humans
communicate with one another. Do the languages we speak shape the way we see the world, the way we think,
and the way we live our lives? Do people who speak different languages think differently simply because they
speak different languages? Does learning new languages change the way you think? Most questions of whether
and how language shapes thought start with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And
a lot!.Clearly, languages require different things of their speakers. Does this mean that the speakers think
differently about the world? Do English, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish speakers end up attending to,
partitioning, and remembering their experiences differently just because they speak different languages? For
some scholars, the answer to these questions has been an obvious yes. Just look at the way people talk, they
might say. Certainly, speakers of different languages must attend to and encode strikingly different aspects of
the world just so they can use their language properly.

Scholars on the other side of the debate don't find the differences in how people talk convincing. It's possible
that everyone thinks the same way, notices the same things, but just talks differently.

Believers in cross-linguistic differences counter that everyone does not pay attention to the same things: if
everyone did, one might think it would be easy to learn to speak other languages. Unfortunately, learning a new
language (especially one not closely related to those you know) is never easy; it seems to require paying
attention to a new set of distinctions. People's ideas of time differ across languages in other ways. For example,
English speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial metaphors (e.g., "The best is ahead of us," "The
worst is behind us"), whereas Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for time (e.g., the next month is the
"down month" and the last month is the "up month"). So do Mandarin speakers think about time vertically more
often than English speakers do? Even basic aspects of time perception can be affected by language. For
example, English speakers prefer to talk about duration in terms of length (e.g., "That was a short talk," "The
meeting didn't take long"), while Spanish and Greek speakers prefer to talk about time in terms of amount,
relying more on words like "much" "big", and "little" rather than "short" and "long" Our research into such
basic cognitive abilities as estimating duration shows that speakers of different languages differ in ways

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predicted by the patterns of metaphors in their language. An important question at this point is: Are these
differences caused by language or by some other aspect of culture? Of course, the lives of English, Mandarin,
Greek, Spanish speakers differ in ways. How do we know that it is language itself that creates these differences
in thought and not some other aspect of their respective cultures?

One way to answer this question is to teach people new ways of talking and see if that changes the way they
think. In our lab, we've taught English speakers different ways of talking about time. In one such study, English
speakers were taught to use size metaphors (as in Greek) to describe duration (e.g., a movie is larger than a
sneeze), or vertical metaphors (as in Mandarin) to describe event order. Once the English speakers had learned
to talk about time in these new ways, their cognitive performance began to resemble that of Greek or Mandarin
speakers. This suggests that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we think.6
In practical terms, it means that when you're learning a new language, you're not simply learning a new way of
talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new way of thinking. Beyond abstract or complex domains of
thought like space and time, languages also meddle in basic aspects of visual perception — our ability to
distinguish colors, for example. To test whether differences in color language lead to differences in color
perception, we compared Russian and English speakers' ability to discriminate shades of blue. In Russian there
is no single word that covers all the colors that English speakers call "blue." Russian makes an obligatory
distinction between light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). Does this distinction mean that siniy blues look
more different from goluboy blues to Russian speakers? Indeed, the data say yes. Russian speakers are quicker
to distinguish two shades of blue that are called by the different names in Russian. For English speakers, all
these shades are still designated by the same word, "blue," and there are no comparable differences in reaction
time.

Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make Russian speakers think of chairs
as being more like men and beds as more like women in some way? It turns out that it does. For example, when
asked to describe a "key" — a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish Look at some famous
examples of personification in art — the ways in which abstract entities such as death, sin, victory, or time are
given human form. How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be painted as a man or a
woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is
predicted by the grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language. So, for example, German
painters are more likely to paint death as a man, whereas Russian painters are more likely to paint death as a
woman. Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape
the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.

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