8.1 Simile
8.1A Simile的含义和形式
1） Simile一词源自拉丁语的similis，意思是like（像），通常译作“明喻”，亦称“直喻”，它是就两个不同类对象之间的相似点进行比喻。例如：
New China is like a red sun rising in the east.
（本体）（比喻词）（喻体）
从结构上看、明喻包括“本体”（subject或tenor），“喻体”（reference或vehicle）和“比喻词”（indicator of resemblance或simile marker）。本体指被比喻的对象，喻体指用来作比喻的对象，比喻词like用在本体和喻体之间起连接介绍作用。
2） 明喻中除用like作比喻词以外，常用作比喻词的还有as, as if, as though, as ... as, （just） as ... so, similar to, to bear a resemblance to等。
例如：
Records fell like ripe apples on a windy day.
（E. B. White）
It is with words as with sunbeams — the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
（Leuthey）
She spoke hurriedly, as if her heart had leaped into her throat at the boy's words.
（Hardy）
3） 许多以as为比喻词组成的明喻，如fresh as a rose, brave as a lion, cunning as a fox, proud as a peacock等等，已成为习语，虽然生动形象，但人们用得多了，已失去新鲜感。
4） 除上述明喻结构外，有时比较级结构、介词短语及其他某些词语搭配也可构成明喻。例如：
He has no more idea of money than a cow.
（Galsworthy）
With the quickness of a long cat, she climbed up into the nest of cool-bladed foliage.
（Lawrence）
The process of gaining or losing weight can be explained by comparing your body to your car ... And just as your car uses more energy when the engine is racing than when it is idling, so does your body use more energy when you are working hard than when you are resting.
（Kirszner）
8.1B Simile的使用
明喻具有丰富的修辞功能，尤其适用于描写和说明。
1） 用于描写时，明喻能形象、生动地勾画出各种不同的形状、动作或状态等，如形容女孩清瘦，说她“长得像绿豆芽似的”，说某人的行动“慢得像蜗牛爬一样”，说天气“热得如汤煮”，屋子里“冷得像冰窟窿”等等，十分形象生动，使人如同耳闻目睹或身临其境一般。明喻能使人对熟悉的东西感到新意，对陌生的东西产生熟悉感。例如：
Mother was short and plump and pretty. Her eyes were blue, and her brown hair was like a bird's smooth wings ...
（Wilder）
The mothers stayed back in the kitchen washing and drying, putting things away, recrossing their traceless footsteps like the life time journeys of bees, measuring out the dry cocoa for breakfast ....
（Knoxville）
下面是Annie Dillard对黄鼠狼（weasel）的一段描写：
He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruit-wood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hair's width, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more than you see a window.
2） 用于说明时，明喻能使深奥的哲理变得浅显易懂，如把积累知识的艰难比作针尖取土，把开展批评与自我批评的必要性比作天天需要洗脸和扫地，把个人与祖国的亲密关系比作孩子与母亲，等等，生动、深刻，有很强的启示和感染作用。下面一个例子是以细线结成粗绳索的过程说明人的习惯一旦形成就难以改变的道理：
Habit may be likened to a cable; every day we weave a thread, and soon we cannot break it.
科普文章中常常通过比喻把人们不易认识的自然现象解释成看得见摸得着的东西。如果要问激光和普通光束有何区别？只要想象一下军训时正步前进和人群涌向足球赛球时的混乱情景就有数了：
So compared with any ordinary beam of light, the laser beam is a very orderly affair indeed. It's like a military march — everyone in step. In an ordinary beam, the waves are like the people in a crowd going to a football match, justling and bumping into one another.
（Cooley）
8.2 Metaphor
8.2A Metaphor的含义和形式
1） Metaphor为“隐喻”，亦称“暗喻”。它同明喻一样，也是在两个不同类对象之间进行比喻，区别在于：明喻把本体和喻体说成是相似的，而隐喻则干脆把两者说成是一致的；明喻中有“比喻词”，而隐喻中不用了，故隐喻也被称为“压缩了的明喻”（Condensed simile），试比较：
明喻 隐喻
The news is as a dagger to his heart. The news is a dagger to his heart.
Joe fought like a lion. Joe was a lion in the battle.
Learning may be likened to climbing up a mountain. Learning is climbing up a mountain.
The gossip was like a net that strangled her. She was strangled in the net of gossip.
2） 隐喻不仅不用“比喻词”，直接把本体说成是喻体，而且有时句中仅仅出现喻体，而没有写出本体，因此含义较含蓄，需要读者根据上下文去领会。例如：
J. T. Adams有句名言：
Money is the lens in a camera.
为什么说金钱是一部照相机的镜头？照相机的镜头能反映出一个人的不同面貌，金钱则能检验出一个人的不同品质，故而两者有共同之处。
又如美国总统Lincoln曾把南北战争比作家庭纷争，主张南北统一，共建国家。为陈述分裂和内战的危害，他使用了一个发人深省的隐喻：A house divided against itself can't stand.我国古代有位老人用一根筷子易断而一打筷子难折的比喻教导他的孩子们搞好团结，两个隐喻有异曲同工之妙。
8.2B Metaphor的使用
1） 隐喻和明喻具有同样的修辞功能，不论在描写、说明或论述等各种文体中都得到广泛的使用，因而Jevans说：
We should often be at a loss how to describe a notion, were we not at liberty to employ in a metaphorical sense the name of anything sufficiently resembling it.
由于隐喻不直接将本体与喻体相比，而是巧妙地通过人们熟悉的形象、特征、动作或哲理去暗示人们尚不熟悉或不易把握的对象，表面上看来不像比喻，实际上在暗中打了个比喻，而且往往是比明喻更进了一层的比喻，显得更加简炼、贴切、生动、含蓄。试比较：
A1） The machine-gun shot down the enemy like a mower cutting down the grass.
A2） The machine-gun mowed down the enemy.
B1） The parks of our city are like human lungs.
B2） The parks are the lungs of our city.
上述A1和B1都是明喻，A2和B2都是隐喻，前者固然生动明了，但不及后者简洁有力。当然这并不是说在任何情况下隐喻总是比明喻好一些，何况有时还只宜用明喻，例如：
Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light ...
（Henry David Thoreau）
总之，明喻和隐喻各有千秋，关键在于用得恰当，做到明喻明而不俗，隐喻隐而不晦，使之配合使用，相得益彰。
2） 有些通过隐喻构成的词语使用多了，逐渐失去了原有的新意和生动感，人们习以为常，不再视作隐喻，于是成了“Faded（或Dead） metaphors”，如table-leg, bottleneck, running brook, square shooter （原与shooting iron有关）等。研究词源的人会对这种现象感兴趣。例如：“magazine”一词，人们通常只知道它指“periodical （publication）”，实际上，它的阿拉伯语原意是指“a store house”，为此，我们有“powder magazine（火药库）”，“magazine of a rifle （弹仓、弹匣）”这样一些短语。
8.3 Simile和Metaphor用法中的两个问题
关于明喻和隐喻的使用，除上一节提到的以外，再着重说明两点，即注意本体和喻体的合理性和比喻的民族特色。
8.3A 本体和喻体的合理性
明喻说本体“像”喻体，隐喻说本体“是”喻体，但要注意它们都是指不同类对象之间的相似点，既有别于语法上同类对象（如两个人、两部汽车）之间的比较，又要把握本体和喻体间“相似点”的合理性。例如：
A） Paul looks very much like his brother.
B） The boy is more than intelligent.
C） My car runs as fast as the train.
D） I have an old photograph of the drug store, taken in 1894; it shows my grandfather and two clerks standing behind showcases, as if waiting for customers, and my grandmother sitting at the switchboard, surrounded by wires. She looks like a fish struggling in the net, and my grandfather and the clerks, though they smile bravely, are captives, held by invisible strands.
上述A句指同类对象之间的比较，B句是带强调含义的系表结构，C句中的car和train都是机动交通工具，也算同类对象，所以这3句都不是修辞上的比喻。D句摘自Richard Armour的文章Grandmother and My Grandfather，其中斜体部分原来是“... looks like a spider spinning a web ... are captive flies ...” 其中包含一个明喻和一个隐喻，但被改之后，明喻缺少合理性，隐喻也成了一般的系表结构。
下面几个句子原是改进后（划线部分）的学生习作（括号内是原文）：
Life was like a journey full of pitfalls.
（... studded with ...）
Not all pretty girls are paper flowers.
（... tigers.）
A real friend is like a mirror that can help you see any dirt on your face.
（... your mistakes clearly.）
Exams are the harvest season of a student.
（... death sentence to ...）
8.3B 比喻的民族特色
比喻是一种常见的修辞方法，其心理基础是对世间万物某些共同特点的联想。若以英语和汉语相比，我们会发现许多惊人的相似之处，如都以绵羊比喻温顺，以钢铁比喻坚强，用狐狸比喻狡猾等，还有不少成语和习语中的比喻简直不谋而合，如“火上加油”（add fuel to the flames），“晴天霹雳”（a bolt from the blue），“空中楼阁”（castles in the air），“滴水穿石”（constant dropping wears the stone），“轻如鸿毛”（as light as a feather），“坚如磐石”（as hard as a stone），“像狐狸一样狡猾”（as cunning as a fox）等；有些意思相符，但措辞稍有差别，如“寿比南山”（as old as the hills），“欢欣雀跃”（as cheerful as a lark），“船到桥头自会直”（you will cross the bridge when you get to it）等。
但是由于各个民族的自然环境、社会文化背景和风俗习惯不同，比喻各有特色。例如我们用“四面楚歌”来比喻处境孤立，而英国人没有这个历史故事，也没有这个比喻；反之，英语里却有meet one's Waterloo来形容遭到惨败，这样的比喻也不可能出现在汉语里。英语里说carry coals to Newcastle（比喻多此一举），汉语里讲“洛阳纸贵”（比喻著作风行一时），分别与各自的地名有关。英语里的have a Christian concern for others，汉语里的“立地成佛”，各与自己的宗教信仰相联系。凡此种种，都是比喻中不同民族特色的反映，需要我们在学习和使用中留意。
练习八 （Exercise Eight）
I. Preview Questions:
1. Can you tell a few words or phrases that can be used as simile markers （indicators of resemblance）?
2. Why is a metaphor also called a condensed simile?
3. Does simile have the same rhetorical functions as metaphor?
4. What metaphors are regarded as “faded metaphors”?
5. Can you cite examples to indicate similar similes or metaphors in English and Chinese?
II. Read the following passages and fill in each blank with one word chosen from those in brackets:
A simile is a （complicated, brief） comparison, usually introduced by the preposition “like” or the conjunction “as”, eg:
My words swirled around his head （like, as） summer flies.
The decay of society was praised by artists （like, as） the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.
（G. K. Chesterton）
A simile consists of two parts: tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the primary subject — “words” in White's figure, the “decay of society ... artists” in Chesterton's. The vehicle is the thing to which the main subject is compared — “summer flies” and the “decay of a corpse ... worms.”
Usually, though not invariably, the vehicle is or contains an image. An image is a word or expression designating something we can perceive with one or another of the senses. “Summer flies,” for example, is an image, primarily a visual one, though like many images it has a secondary perceptual appeal: we can hear the flies as well as see them.
Although generally （brief, complicated）, now and then similes may be expanded. Most often this is done by analyzing the vehicle into its parts and applying these to the tenor. Thus a historian, writing about the Italian patriot Garibaldi, explains: ... his mind was （like, as） a vast sea cave, filled with the murmur of dark waters at flow and the stirring of nature's greatest forces, lit （here and there, now and then） by streaks of glorious sunshine bursting in through crevices hewn at random in its rugged sides.
（George Macaulay Trevelyan）
III. Go over the passages and decide whether each of the statements is true （T） or false （F）:
A metaphor is also a comparison. The difference is that a simile compares things explicitly — that is, it states literally that X is like Y. A metaphor compares things implicitly. Read literally, it does not state that things are alike; it says that they are the same thing, that they are identical:
Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts ...
（Henry David Thoreau）
Thoreau writes “is,” not “is like.” We understand, however, that he is making a comparison — that he means the Cape resembles an arm, not really is an arm. The metaphor has simply carried the comparison a degree closer and expressed it a bit more economically and forcefully.
Metaphors have the same functions as similes. They are valuable in clarifying unfamiliar concepts and in translating abstractions into images that readers can intuit directly, as in this passage about science:
[Science] pronounces only on whatever, at the time, appears to have been scientifically ascertained, which is a small island in an ocean of nescience.
（Bertrand Russell）
Metaphors also enrich meaning by implying a range of ideas and feelings and evaluations. Consider all that is suggested by the term “idol” in this metaphor: We squat before television, the idol of our cherished progress.
“Idol” means a false god and thus questions the value of the progress television symbolizes and celebrates. The word implies also the unreason and subservience of those who worship it.
Such a metaphor not only complicates an idea, it also implies judgment. In the next example the judgmental quality of the metaphor is even more pronounced. Speaking of ancient Romans, a writer remarks:
They were marked by the thumbprint of an unnatural vulgarity, which they never succeeded in surmounting.
（Lawrence Durrell）
Statements:
1. Both the simile and the metaphor are used to make comparisons.
2. Russell's image of a small island （scientific knowledge） in a wide and lonely sea （the vastness of all we do not know） is a memorable expression of the relationship between knowledge and ignorance.
3. Not only can a metaphor complicate an idea, it can also imply judgment.
4. The image of a greasy thumbprint, like one left on a china or a white wall, is a graphic signature of crudeness.
5. Similes and metaphors are identical because they are both comparisons and have the same functions.
6. A most valuable function of a metaphor and a simile is to clarify an unfamiliar idea or perception by expressing it in more familiar terms or turn something abstract into an image that people can see or hear.
IV. Identify the similes and metaphors in the following; then convert the similes into metaphors or expand the metaphors into similes, if possible.
1. He is a wolf in sheep's skin.
2. The parks are the lungs of our city.
3. His voice sounded like a thunder in the hall.
4. Money is a lens in a camera.
5. Lottie staggered on the lowest verandah step like a bird fallen out of the nest.
6. We tore through the black-and-gold town like a pair of scissors tearing through brocade.
7. The machine-gun was shooting down the enemy like a mower cutting down grass.
8. Slim canals crept like green snakes beside the road.
9. Applications for jobs flooded the Employment Agency.
10. Hitler's attack on Poland in 1939 was like lightning.
V. Study and improve the following sentences:
1. Life was like a journey studded with pitfalls.
2. Not all slim girls are paper tigers.
3. A real friend is like a mirror that can help you see your mistakes clearly.
4. Examinations are the death sentence to students.
5. Jack's house was destroyed by fire. Jim went to comfort him and asked him to contact the insurance company. “Cheer up, my friend,” he said. “Your insurance claim will be proceeding like a house on fire, I'm sure.”
VI. Translate the following into Chinese:
1. Their data processing is going on as slow as a snail.
2. Every man has a fool in his sleeve.
3. The brains don't lie in the beard.
4. Two heads are better than one.
5. The exception proves the rule.
6. An ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory.
7. Variety is the soul of pleasure.
8. Caution: Frenemies Can Be Bad for Your Health.
第九章 ANALOGY, ALLEGORY, METONYMY和SYNECDOCHE等四种比喻性辞格
9.1 Analogy和Allegory
9.1A Analogy和Allegory的含义与形式
1） Analogy译作“类比”，Allegory译作“讽喻”，两者都是便于阐述事理的修辞格，即用人们熟悉的事例说明较深的道理，或通过具体形象阐明抽象的概念。
2） 类比是就两种本质上不同的事物之间的共同点加以比较。从结构上看，它常常既有带比喻的明喻（8.1A），又有直接把本体说成喻体的隐喻（8.2A）；它是通过比喻手法的综合运用来说明道理或情况。例如Alexander Pope曾用类比说明人们的想法、看法何以千差万别：
It's with our judgments as with our watches; none go just alike, yet each believes his own.
上例表明，类比在形式上很像明喻（有比喻词as），但区别在于：作者还进一步说明了产生差别的道理，而不像明喻或隐喻那样把具体情况统统留给读者去想象。
下面是Budora Weity在How I Write中所用的一个生动类比：
The inspiration for a story is like “a pull on the line ... the outside signal that has startled or moved the creative mind to complicity and brought the story to active being ...”
作者把小说创作灵感的产生同水中的鱼拖动钓线相类比，说明具有创造性的头脑受到外部信息的触动、启发，产生共鸣，并把小说创作出来。
3） 讽喻也叫寓意，是一种比隐喻更为委婉的比喻，其基本形式是以具体形象说明抽象概念，通过具体形象或浅近事实，给人以启发，引导人们去认清事物的本质或深邃的哲理。例如：
There's no rose without a thorn. 玫瑰都有刺——有快乐就有苦恼。
It's time to turn swords into ploughs. 是该把剑变成犁的时候了。（说明应以和平代替战争。）
9.1B Analogy的使用
1） 在阐述事理时，把抽象概念具体化，把深奥的哲理浅显化。例如：
Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.
明智的赞扬对于孩子的作用，就像阳光对于花朵的作用一样。
An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.
