Primary metaphor is a term named by Joseph Grady for the basic connection that exist between subjective or abstract experiences such as good and concrete experiences such as up. These two concepts usually correlate in experience, and form the primary metaphor good is up. Likewise there is a correlation between seeing and knowing forming the primary metaphor seeing is knowing. Two such primary metaphors are used when understanding an expression such as glass ceiling.
An example of a primary metaphor could be that of Shakespeare's 'As You Like It', where life is depicted as being similar to a theater. Therefore, 'LIFE' relates to a conceptual experience, and 'THEATER' represents a concrete experience. Thus forming the primary metaphor; LIFE IS THEATER.
Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or metaphor:
“Wilful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement.... No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)
“If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)