Definition of Metaphor Metaphor is a figure of speech makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two things or objects that

are poles apart from each other but have some characteristics common between them. In other words, a resemblance of two contradictory or different objects is made on a single or some common characteristics. Explanation of Metaphor In simple English, when you portray a person, place, thing, or an action as being something else, even though it is not actually that something else, you are speaking metaphorically. He is a black sheep of the family is a metaphor because he is not a sheep and is not even black. However, we can use this comparison to describe association of the black sheep with that person. Black sheep is an unusual animal and typically stays away from the herd, and the person you are describing shares similar characteristics. Furthermore, a metaphor develops a comparison which is different from a simile i.e. we do not use like or as to develop a comparison in a metaphor. It actually makes an implicit or hidden comparison and not an explicit one. Common Speech Examples of Metaphors Most of us think of a metaphor as a device used in songs or poems only, and that it has nothing to do with our everyday life. In fact, all of us in our routine life speak, write and think in metaphors. We cannot avoid them. Metaphors are sometimes constructed through our common language. They are called conventional metaphors. Calling a person a night owl or an early bird or saying life is a journey are examples of common conventional metaphors commonly heard and understood by most of us. Below are some more conventional metaphors we often hear in our daily life: 1. My brother was boiling mad. (This implies he was too angry.) 2. The assignment was a breeze. (This implies that the assignment was not difficult.) 3. It is going to be clear skies from now on. (This implies that clear skies are not a threat and life is going to be without hardships) 4. The skies of his future began to darken. (Darkness is a threat; therefore, this implies that the coming times are going to be hard for him.)

5. Her voice is music to his ears. (This implies that her voice makes him feel happy)

Literary Examples of Metaphors

Metaphors are used in all type of literature but not often to the degree they are used in poetry because poems are meant to communicate complex images and feelings to the readers and metaphors often state the comparisons most emotively.Here are some examples from famous poems. 1. She is all states, and all princes, I. John Donne , a metaphysical poet, was well-known for his abundant use of metaphors throughout his poetical works. In his well-known work The Sun Rising, the speaker scolds the sun for waking him and his beloved. Among the most evocative metaphors in literature, he explains she is all states, and all princes, I. This line demonstrates the speakers belief that he and his beloved are richer than all states, kingdoms, and rulers in the entire world because of the love that they share. 2. Shall I Compare Thee to a summers Day, William Shakespeare was the best exponent of the use of metaphors. His poetical works and dramas all make wide-ranging use of metaphors. Sonnet 18,also known as Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day, is an extended metaphor between the love of the speaker and the fairness of the summer season. He writes that thy eternal summer, here taken to mean the love of the subject, shall not fade. 3. Before high-pild books, in charactry / Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain, The great Romantic poet John Keats suffered great losses in his life the death of his father in an accident, and of his mother and brother with the tuberculosis. When he began displaying signs of tuberculosis himself at the age of 22, he wrote When I Have Fears, a poem rich with metaphors concerning life and death. In the line before high-pild books, in charactry / Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain, he employs a doublemetaphor. Writing poetry is implicitly compared with reaping and sowing, and both these acts represent the emptiness of a life unfulfilled creatively.

Functions
From the above arguments, explanations and examples, we can easily infer the function of metaphors; both in our daily lives and in a piece of literature. Using appropriate metaphors appeal directly to the senses of listeners or readers, sharpening their imaginations to comprehend what is being communicated to them. Moreover, it gives a life-like quality to our conversations

and to the characters of the fiction or poetry. Metaphors are also ways of thinking, offering the listeners and the readers fresh ways of examining ideas and viewing the world.

Introduction When people have to deal with anything else than their concrete body and theirphysical environment, they need abstract categories. Abstractions are typically thoughtof as categories labelled time, thoughts, emotions or relations. However, the directexpression of abstractions is not the only way to conceive of abstract thought. Abstractions are also constructed in indirect ways, via metaphor, metonymy, andsynecdoche. Metaphor, in particular, has turned out to be a conceptual mechanism by which specific and operational knowledge about more concrete phenomena andexperiences is projected onto a wide range of more abstract ones. Thus we typically conceptualize of time as space, of love, or more generally emotions, as natural forces,of thoughts as objects that can be manipulated, or organizations as plants or machines. This projection from concrete to abstract knowledge structures works via analogy,similarity, and comparison between elements of distinct conceptual domains, andnaturally contributes to the formation of many abstract categories. Metaphor is henceone of the very few basic mechanisms for abstract categorization, which in turn isfundamental for human cognition, communication, and culture. The conceptual use of metaphor can be observed in science and education, but alsoin the arts and literature, and in religion. It can be found in more mundane domainstoo, such as business and organization, politics and government, health and care, andentertainment and leisure. In all of these areas, metaphors can function in three ways: asmodels of thinking, as language for expressing those thoughts, and as rhetorical devicesfor communicating metaphorical models in interesting ways. Metaphor is ubiquitous inall spheres of human activity.From this perspective, metaphor also has phenomenal potential for application. Itcan be exploited for different types of interventions in peoples verbal and non-verbalbehaviour, either to make them aware of how they appear to see the world and appearto act upon those perceptions, or to demonstrate alternative ways of seeing to them. Itis the aim of this paper to raise and describe some of the central developments inresearching and applying metaphor today in order to show that metaphor is a centraltopic for

applied linguistics in all sorts of domains. That we need good fundamental research before we can do the right kinds of applied work can be shown by the findings of a small study held at the Anla confer-ence at which a different version of this paper was presented. The study was informaland should not be taken too seriously, since less than half of the audience returned theirresponses. But when participants were asked what percentage of words in discourse is