Speech technique No.2 - the Unifying Metaphor

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The Unifying Metaphor:

As opposed to a simile which compares two objects using a specific linguistic form, eg. the man was as brave as a lion, a metaphor compares two objects by equating the one with the other, eg. he was a brave lion.  Literally the man was not a lion, but figuratively he was.  This figure of speech is used in literary works of all kinds, including poems and news articles.

The Unifying Metaphor aims to unify people.  An example of an American metaphor is the Camel man.  He is healthy, strong and tanned, and he can survive in the wild bushveld with merely a pocketknife and a piece of string.  He drives a 4x4, and he works hard all day.  This is the image of the Camel man – please correct me if I’m wrong.  The logic and truth behind this image may elude us, but what unifies us is what Elgin (1980: p. 227) calls the consensus perception.

As a unity, we have reached consensus about the perception of the Camel man.  The theory reminds of the Jung’s collective unconscious.  With this consensus, we save ourselves from having to spell out everything.  We can say “Camel man” and we see him driving his 4x4, the sweat dripping down his face, and we think of adventure and courage.

What Elgin suggests is that a positive metaphor is good to use in speeches because it creates confidence in the audience (The Gentle Art of Self Defense 1980: 228).  People like to see the road before them.  They do not like to be plunged into the dark.  We don’t particularly like learning either, if it means we have to change what we think.  We’d prefer someone to confirm our thoughts, as though that confirmed our standing.

John F. Kennedy used the New Frontier as his unifying metaphor to get people to vote for him.  “The message was approximately ‘Follow me, and once again, the bad guys will always lose, there will always be more of everything, women will never small bad…’ (p. 228)

Just as reason, logic and common sense do not win an argument, according to Elgin, neither do these things make you a charismatic speaker.  Choosing a metaphor whose presuppositions are positive, like the Proud Ship Sailing, Rugby World Cup 1995 and a South African braai, unify us.  A negative one, however, can have the opposite and therefore devastating effects.

A good lesson my English teacher Mr McKonky taught me was never to mix your metaphors, or else you lose your audience.  Finding such a metaphor in the first place is challenging, so if you find one, write it down, work on it and follow it through.

 

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