Preview

Metaphors For Research Paper

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
421 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Metaphors For Research Paper
Language Essay

Metaphors enliven ordinary language. People get so accustomed to using the same words and phrases over and over, and always in the same ways, that they no longer know what they mean. When a child looks up at the sky and does not know the word “star” he or she is forced to say, “Mommy, look at the lamp in the sky”. Metaphors give maximum meaning with a minimum of words, they create new meanings; they allow you to write about feelings, thoughts, things and experiences freely. “Critical thinking is the ability to be in control of one’s thinking. It includes the ability to consciously examine the elements of one’s reasoning, or that of another, and evaluate that reasoning against universal intellectual standards - clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, and logic” (Brookfield, 1989). People who present their reasoning to one another are engaged in a kind of competitive struggle. The point is to win, as judged by convincing others to believe as you believe. Reasoning, therefore, is judged successful by reference to the goal of persuasion forcing people to believe what you want them to believe, especially if they do not want to believe it and resist doing so. The goal is to prove who is the most skillful thinker.
…show more content…
We use them because they feel right, and that feeling of rightness is based on our experience of the world. On the other hand, our attitudes and feelings influence our experiences in the world. So, attitudes and experiences are mutually influencing. Assumptions are a particular kind of attitude; they generate expectations, which sometimes are self-justifying. Since metaphors are one way we reveal our assumptions, they are useful to people into critical thinking. I think metaphors are wonderful for revealing personal assumptions and attitudes, but for logic-language we need to use words literally and not

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Two-track Mind

    • 791 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Metaphors are more common than many people think. If you look up the origin of almost any word in the dictionary, you will find a metaphor if you go back far enough. Some psychologists suggest that all of our thinking comes from metaphors, based on how our senses allow us to perceive everyday experiences.…

    • 791 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Use of Metaphors

    • 3201 Words
    • 13 Pages

    A metaphor is where you show how two unrelated things are similar. For example by saying "Love is a roller-coaster.” A key aspect of a metaphor is use a specific transference of a word into another context. The human mind creates comparisons between different things. The best writers use metaphors. Like poetry, a metaphor will express a thousand different meanings all at once, allowing the writer to convey much more content than they could do otherwise. More than playing simple word games, the use of metaphors in your writing can elevate your stories to a place next to the greatest authors in the world.…

    • 3201 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Phl458 Week One

    • 600 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Ruggiero, Vincent R. (2009). The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought…

    • 600 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The metaphors Charlotte makes for her mother and Miss Hancock are very accurate. Charlotte compares her mother to a “white picket fence” with “thorny bushes and barbed wire” on the other side (72). Charlotte’s mother is a very beautiful person on the outside. She has great hair and a great figure, but deep down she is not that good of a person. She is a very emotionless and stern woman. In the last few paragraphs of the novel she tells Charlotte that Miss Hancock’s death was her own fault. On the other hand, Miss Hancock is compared to a cake. The cake “was frosted by someone unschooled in the art of cake decoration” but the inside of the cake “was rich and soft and very delicious” (80). Miss Hancock looks quite unattractive on the outside because of her age, clothing, and excessive amounts of makeup, but she is a great person. Her students all really care for her and even decides to get her a trophy. She teaches with great enthusiasm and use a lot of emotion. She is also more of a mother to Charlotte than her actual mother is. Charlotte’s metaphors tells us much about the truths of these two characters.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Refining Solutions Paper

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Ruggiero, Vincent R. (2009). The Art of Thinking-- A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought (9th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    For instance, many rarely appreciate that they are speaking metaphorically when saying things such as, “I’ve never won an argument,” and “He shot down all of my arguments.” These phrases support the conceptual metaphor that Argument is War (Lakoff and Johnson 454). Lakoff and Johnson also identify the terms of source domain and target domain. The source is the term that is concrete, which is used to better understand the other phrase, being war in this instance. The target is the abstract term, or one that needs to be understood by another term or phrase, which would be “argument” in this case. Metaphor is typically present in all forms of rhetoric and discourse to persuade the audience and allow it to see one side of an issue in a certain…

    • 3303 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. In order to argue effectively, the arguer must first set a personal goal, and then play an active role in setting the goals of the “audience”.…

    • 1800 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    EPS 511 Metaphor Paper

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages

    As a teacher dedicated to consider how children think, feel, and understand their world, I am like a good book. Like a good book, once you get started and really get into it, you start thinking about it when you are not even reading it. I want to become the main focus point of my students’ attention. I want them to always be interested in what they are about to learn, but also very excited about what is coming next. A good book helps people solve problems they might be having and inspire people to do great things both academically and personally.…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Max Black build his ideas on Ivor’s assumptions and tried to bring the phenomenon to a more comprehensive and detailed investigation. Black on one hand, criticized the Aristotelian argument of ‘substitution’, on the other hand he elaborated on the ‘comparison’ perspective. Black’s main contribution is the refinement of Ivor’s ‘interaction’ views (Black 1962). The interaction view was first advocated by the literary theorist Richards (1936) and was subsequently developed by the philosopher Max Black (1962) both theories have two central claims: first, metaphors have an irreducible ‘cognitive content’, and that this cognitive content is produced by the ‘interaction’ of different cognitive systems. Interactionists generally claim that the ‘cognitive contents’ of metaphors can be true, even though they are not amenable to literal expression.…

    • 313 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alexie uses metaphor to illustrate his experience of reading and writing. As an Indian, he reads a large number of English books to expand his knowledge. He recollects how he becomes enthusiastic about reading when he attempts to the learn new vocabulary “paragraph”, then he begins to brainstorm and states that, “I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words……Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States“(16). Alexie describes that a paragraph is like a fence or a barrier to restrain or hold the surrounding things. In this case, it shows his wide and deep thinking during reading while other Indian boys struggle with basic reading. He is involved in the process of reading and it reveals his confident to make a different. On the other hand, Alexie’s metaphor indicates that he tries to break through the fence of education. He refuses to fail, and his attitude toward reading explains his aspiration to success.…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The essay highlights the importance of verbal skills in critical thinking. Frye states that schools and teachers play an inevitable role in developing a student’s thought process. He says that a student should be taught on how to think and how to put it in words. He states that thinking is a matter of practice and everyone should take enough time to think. That is the only way in which one can articulate the thoughts, without which, it is meaningless.…

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Metaphors can also be used when discussing descriptive and prescriptive views of a relationship. A descriptive view states how a person or group sees the relationship as it currently is while a prescriptive view defines how that person or group believes the relationship ought to be. Using metaphors with descriptive…

    • 207 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Metaphors merge two superficially incompatible concepts to create symbolism. Metaphors have entailments through which they highlight and make coherent certain aspects of our experience. (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980:132). Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action.…

    • 85 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Two-track Mind

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Metaphors are more common than many people think. If you look up the origin of almost any word in the dictionary, you will find a metaphor if you go back far enough. Some psychologists suggest that all of our thinking comes from metaphors, based on how our senses allow us to perceive everyday experiences.…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Spivey, N. N. (1997). The constructivist metaphor: Reading, writing, and the making of meaning. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.…

    • 3066 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays