Metaphors & Fully Understanding Them
Metaphors can mean so much or so little to different individuals depending on how much they interpret it; which shows how much they paid attention to the topic. Depending on the knowledge an individual knows about the topic is how well they will understand the metaphor. For example, If the speaker, writer, or reader begins to explain the topic in more depth they usually tend to use metaphors only because they want to get their audience to receive a good image of what he/she is trying to get us to understand. In the article, “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musing for College Writing Students” the author, E. Shelley Reid, uses metaphors to explain to college students, like myself, how easy it can be to write an essay or a response to an essay question on an exam . By doing this he is teaching college students indirectly. He states a metaphor which is then followed by his own example or interpretation of the metaphor. In my opinion, I believe I learn more when my professors are teaching me indirectly rather than directly. For example, In math class anyone can sit at a desk and read the textbook; understand what I have read because I’ve gone over it more than once. But if a classmate were to ask me for help when he would get stuck on a problem I would not be able to help him; only because I had not had much experience with those problems. Therefore, I would not be aware of short cuts or how we received certain numbers. In some weird way this explains why teachers/professors/adults try to teach us by showing examples, visuals, and videos. The author, Reid, explains how important it is to explain the thoughts in your head well enough for your ideal audience to understand.
He says, “The Little Green Ball and Some People: Doing Right” (p. 6).
He explains this metaphors in his example by pointing out how broad of a statement that is. Once you realize how much of a broad statement it is, you begin to ask yourself little questions that allow us to think critically. For example, I ask myself what is “little” and “light green or dark green”. Soon enough I found myself understanding why this is an important aspect to keep in mind while when writing. The audience is unaware of what is going on in your brain therefore as a writer it is our job to explain in detail to get a full idea of what our “thesis statement” or “the main idea.” As a writer it is also our job to be aware of who our primary audience will be; so we know what style is in their interest. Shelley Reid, the author of this article, also explains how as a writer we need to be aware of who will be reading our piece of work.
He says, “Lost Money And Thank-You Notes: What’s In An Audience” (p. 8).
One might be thinking “what does money have to do with keeping our readers interested in our writing.” The two things correlate because the style of writing we use depends on who our audience is. As writers we should target a certain audience and keep our ideal audience in mind as we are writing our essays. By keeping our ideal audience in mind throughout the process of writing hopefully at the end our ideal audience understands our thoughts. Once again, it depends how well you explain or describe your thoughts so the readers are able to see your personal point of view on topics. For example, in politics when election time is coming around politicians who are running keep the people’s self interest in mind in order to receive an electoral vote. Therefore when they are giving a speech, their main goal might be to persuade citizens to vote for them so they talk about the citizen’s self interest. This is what catches their attention and eventually convinces citizens to vote for them. Again, proving that we should keep our ideal audience in mind while we are writing. Another thing we should keep in mind as writers our goal is to not lose our audience half way through our essays. We need to keep reminding our readers what our thesis statement is in some way throughout essay without being too annoying. The author also talks about this in his article.
He says, “Pink Houses & Choruses: Keeping Your Reader With You” (p. 10)
When I first read this metaphor I was so confused to what the author meant but the more I read the more I understood it. It is obvious that this metaphor means way more than what is says. The author uses this to show an example on how easy it is for readers to wonder off which does not allow us understand their point. The author will just be ranting at that point. Personally, as a writer, I ask myself multiple times what the point of me writing my essay is. This allows me to be aware of how easy it is to get distracted, I mean we are only human. For example, when I read long articles for research sometimes I forget what I am reading because I have been reading for a long time but as I continue reading it suddenly makes sense. This is because the author does not allow me to wonder off for too long since they are constantly repeating their main idea indirectly. In order to repeat our main idea indirectly we need to be specific with arguments and examples we use throughout our essay. The author uses the metaphor,
He says, “Fruit Jell-O: Balancing Arguments & Examples” (p.12)
He uses Fruit Jell-O as an example because any fruit jello can taste good as long as one uses the correct ingredients. The same concept can be used while writing an essay. When I am writing, I state my argument to back up my main idea and as I am typing examples come to mind subconsciously. This is where my fifth grade teacher constantly reminding my classmates and I to choose arguments and examples wisely pays off. She said our essays will not make sense unless our examples some how correlate. For example, I can show many random facts and examples in my writing but I would only be able to use about one or two of them in my essay. We can not use all of the examples that come to mind because it will just throw the readers off which does not allow them to make connections with previous sub-points in our essays. As readers, overtime we learn to identify what paragraphs in articles are important and which ones are just extra facts and examples. The author explains this in his article as well.
He says, “Wash-And-Wear Paragraphs” (p.14)
This metaphor simply means, that we will repeat certain points, especially our main one throughout our paragraphs. The main idea isn’t suppose to be a one time explained example; it is meant to be repeated to get the idea wrapped around the readers brain. Reid referred to “wash and wear” because we wash and re-wear clothes in different styles each time. This makes it seem as if we have so much clothes when in reality your closet is half empty. It all depends on how many different ways we are able to explain our main idea. For example, in lower level math classes we learned about probability. How many different combinations I pull out of the bag with a red marble. It all depends on how many different color marbles are in the bag along with how many marbles of each color there are. One can figure this out by multiplying the number of each different type of color in the bag. This resembles to this metaphor because we have to repeat our main ideas multiple times in different ways.
When you are writing and are stuck or are not full sure if what you wrote will catch our ideal audience’s attention and satisfy them. Remember this blog post and keep in mind how to improve your writing at least a little. While writing always remember to keep your ideal audience in mind, do not get side tracked in the middle of your essay, use examples that have a correlation with your topic, and keep repeating your main idea but not in an annoying way.
Work cited
Reid, E. Shelley. “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students”. Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 2. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2011. 3-23. Writing Spaces. Web. 17 Feb. 2016
