VI. Language Series: PowerMetaphor™
One of the most powerful tools of language is the metaphor. Most people think
that metaphors (or its sibling, the simile) are devices for poets, but, in
fact, all of us use metaphors and similes everyday to enhance our written and
spoken English.
A metaphor is simply a comparison that uses something known to describe
something unknown or less knowable. One object -- the more easily
comprehended one -- stands in for another.
Some examples of metaphoric expressions:
Make your money work for you.
The sea chewed up the ship and spit out the pieces.
He talks like a house on fire.
She’s a shark with competitors.
My concept of powermetaphor™ is a special kind of stand-in object -- one
that, because of its tremendous appropriateness and visual power, catalyzes a
quantum jump in understanding in a vast number of people.
The ‘information superhighway’ is a perfect example of a powermetaphor™. It
appeared at a time when the world wide web (not a bad metaphor itself) and
the Internet were first being ‘discovered’ by a larger group of users. But
the beauty of calling the Internet and the WWW the information superhighway
is that every person in the western industrial world has driven a car on a
freeway. So whether you have any knowledge of computers or not you have a
visual image of what the Internet might be like.
The metaphor -- information superhighway -- created a visually accessible
name that so accurately described the Net that rather quickly it became a
communications phenomenon. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have happened without
that name, but I strongly believe that the powermetaphor™ propelled the
concept of the web and accelerated its acceptance in the general public. It
gave the media a buzzy handle for the IT revolution; it even allowed
politicians to talk about technology as if they knew what it was.
More next week on the use of metaphor in business.
