Application
Metaphoric criticism focuses on analysis of texts that use metaphors effectively or ineffectively as part of their argument structure. For example, in an article entitled "Five Years After 9/11: Drop the War Metaphor," George Lakoff and Evan Frisch analyze how President Bush’s adoption of a "war" metaphor in order to discuss his approach to dealing with terrorism as opposed to a "crime" metaphor provides a barrier from critics for him to move forward with the War in Iraq. Lakoff illustrates the power of the "war" metaphor: "The war metaphor defined war as the only way to defend the nation. From within the war metaphor, being against war as a response was to be unpatriotic, to be against defending the nation. The war metaphor put progressives on the defensive."" Rhetorical critics would not only make these observations in their own criticism, but would also relate to the effect on the audience, and how the metaphor either enhances or challenges the audience’s worldview.
Critics examining metaphor have in recent years also started to examine metaphor in visual and electronic media. For example, metaphors can be found in rhetorical presidential television ads. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan’s campaign sponsored a commercial showing a grizzly bear as posing a potentially large threat to the United States. The USSR is never named in that ad, however the assumption of the campaign was that Americans would clearly recognize the "enemy" that the bear represents.
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Famous quotes containing the word application:
“The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.—Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little application to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“There are very few things impossible in themselves; and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)