Understanding Metaphor

This unit gives students practice in the core skills of the course: reading and analyzing literature and other texts, discussion, collaboration, and presentation. The unit can serve as a general introduction to one of the major elements of literature and to thinking beyond the literal. It’s also designed to show students that metaphor is not limited to literature. As such, it should probably be taught near the beginning of the year.

STAGE 1
Why is there metaphor?
What is metaphor and is it real?
Do they have practical uses?

• Understand metaphor beyond the simplistic definition of a comparison between two unlike things

• metaphor is pervasive in our language and culture.


• Introduce students to the defining relationship between culture and metaphor.
• Create metaphors for real-life contexts.
• Elucidate a variety of metaphors through close reading of poems, ads, TV programs, and architecture.
• Demonstrate an ability to apply metaphors to one’s life and thinking
• Work collaboratively to produce and defend a product

Sylvia Plath, “Metaphors” ; Archibald Macleish, “Ars Poetica” ; Wallace Stevens, “Anecdote of the Jar”
Marge Piercy, “Barbie Doll”
Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
Strategies used in reading and analyzing literature
Collaboration in a small group
Writing and speaking persuasively
Oral defense
Audience awareness
Rudimentary graphics ability


STAGE 2
Metaphors That Sell

In teams of three to six (depending on class size) students will serve as representatives of advertising agencies trying to win the contract to promote a new product. They have been asked to create five to six ads centering around one metaphor or they may come up with a different metaphor for each ad. They will present their portfolio to the company’s board of directors, which will consist of the teacher, the school’s public relations director, and a local business representative familiar with advertising and promotion. Together, the teacher and students will come up with the product. At the beginning of the process, the studetns will be given the assessment criteria—a rubric‚ which the board will use to evaluate their portfolio. Using the board’s initial assessment of the portfolio, the students groups will revise the ads and resubmit. The revised portfolio will be used as evidence of achievement of content and performance standards. The same rubric will be used to assess the second version of the portfolio.



As a culminating performance to assess your understanding of metaphor, you are to find a metaphor in a medium of your choice (literature, TV, film, art, architecture, etc). First, describe the metaphor. Next, elucidate its meaning as we have done together over the past few weeks. Finally, read back over your response to the question “What is a metaphor” which you wrote at the beginning of the unit. Record how your understanding of metaphor has developed and changed as a result of the work we’ve don/ Minimum length: 1-3 pages.

The Task: Metaphors in Advertising.

Students will serve on a three-person committee representing an advertising firm which is trying to win the contract from a company introducing a new product. They have been asked to propose a metaphor to represent and promote the product—a metaphor around which the upcoming promotional campaign can be organized. In competition with other firms, they will present their metaphor and accompanying rationale to the company’s board of directors.

In preparation for that task they will be introduced to the nature of metaphor by comparing generally dissimilar objects and entities, discussing the usefulness of the comparison. They will then experience the use of metaphor in a variety of contexts, from the literary to the personal. They will also have the opportunity to create their own metaphors and to discuss particular metaphors as they appear in popular culture.


STAGE 3

Day One: Introductory Activities
a. Students write a definition of what they think metaphor is and keep it in their notebooks throughout the unit.
b. Teacher holds up a pair of unrelated objects; students brainstorm for likenesses between the,.
c. Talk about where sports team names come from; is Michael Jordan a “bull”?
d. Using the book Metaphors We live By as background, teacher introduces, and class discusses, one of the basic metaphors that underlies our thinking, such as “argument is war,” or “America is a melting pot” (choose your context here, large or small: the school, the community, the United States, the Western World, etc.).

Days Two and Three: Metaphors in Different Media
On the first day, class looks at and discusses metaphors both explicit and implicit in various print and TV ads. On the second day, the class takes a walk around the school, campus, or town, and looks for metaphors in the local architecture. The second activity may also be done with photographs of skyscrapers, the Vietnam War Memorial, etc.

Days Four and Five: Metaphors in Poetry
In groups or as a whole class, studetns discuss metaphors in the above-listed poems. During these days, the teacher may introduce the standard literary definitions of metaphor, and talk about the guises that literary metaphor assumes: simile, symbol, metonymy, etc.

Days Six, Seven, and Eight:
1) Quiz: Check for understanding. Studetns are given another poem and asked to identify and elucidate its metaphorical content.
2) INtroduce the “self-knowledge” writing assignment. Using the exercise on pages 36-37 of Peter Elbow’s Embracing Contraries as an example, the teacher designs a series of prompts that allow students to think of themselves in metaphorical ways. For homework that evening, students write a one- or two-page piece in which they explora a single metaphor for their outlook on life; i.e., “I am a...” On the third day, students share these pieces with each other. Note: This is an assignment that could be repeated later in the year to examine how students’ self-perceptions have evolved.

Days Nine and Ten:
Students will watch the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Picard is marooned on a planet with the captain of a ship from a world whose inhabitants communicate solely through metaphor. Picard must figure out the significance of the stories and tropes the alien uses in order to understand what the captain is trying to tell him, and to make peace between their peoples. After watching the episode, the teacher will begin to talk about the episode in metaphor; i.e., as the alien captain talks. Students will show understanding by picking up on the teacher’s lead and respoinding in the same fashion. This could move into a general discussion of the relationship between metaphor and culture.