Some things you just can't speak about
New episode: "Show and Tell: Metaphors" out now!
Taylor Swift’s superpower is being able to convey very specific emotions to millions who may or may not have ever experienced those emotions before. (Yes, we have been listening to “You’re Losing Me” on repeat this week!) How does she make her songs universally relatable? Metaphor!
Not only does she use metaphors in her lyrics, sometimes the songs are metaphors. In this show & tell episode, we each bring a song in which the whole song seems to be a metaphor for something else.
Today’s extra credit brought to you by Maansi
If you’ve followed along with our episodes until this point, you may be starting to notice that we like to play with different kinds of themes. Sometimes our themes are more aligned with AP Lit classes, discussing literary theories like Marxist theory or Eco-criticism, or topics that literature is written about, like toxic relationships. Sometimes our themes align with English literature, like Alice in Wonderland. Today’s theme aligns more closely with AP Language.
American students are typically first introduced to metaphors in their Language Arts classes in elementary school, often when learning about poetry. They may continue to learn about metaphors in more advanced English classes when they learn more about grammar and rhetoric. I know I learned about metaphors and similes quite early, always screaming “similes use like or as!” when asked the difference between the two. It was only when I got older that I started to really appreciate the power of metaphor, and how complex metaphors can be.
Metaphors are the accelerators that allow writers to take the car an extra 10 miles. Metaphors are the polish that allow pieces of silver to shine more clearly—do you catch my drift? I don’t have anything to back up this claim, but I would say that metaphors are one of the most commonly used rhetorical devices (at least they’re one of my personal favorites!) because of how effective they are in helping people understand what one is talking about.
Let’s start with a definition. Quite simply, a metaphor is a comparison between two things, a kind of analogy. In this episode, we mention that similes are a type of metaphor - a whacky idea that I did not learn until my master’s program! But there are other kinds of metaphors as well. I went digging through my trusty list of Rice’s Rhetorical Strategies that I was given in my own AP Lang class in 10th grade, which mentions extended metaphors and controlling metaphors.
By this definition, the metaphors we were primarily interested in for this episode were controlling metaphors, where the entire poem (or in this case song), revolves around one idea. In “Clean,” the controlling metaphor is the act of being being cleansed, by water, that is being compared to the ending of a relationship. The entire song is built around this analogy. In '“Getaway Car,” the getaway car represents a relationship that was convenient and doomed from the start. “epiphany” is actually slightly different in that we have two the two things that are being compared blatantly listed out in the song - Taylor first sings about soldiers, and then uses almost the same lyrics to describe doctors or first responders during the pandemic. The controlling metaphor here could be people who serve being compared to heroes throughout the entirety of the song.
Metaphors can also be direct or indirect. The examples we discuss on the show are mainly indirect metaphors. Jenn breaks down the two parts of a metaphor in this episode: the tenor and the vehicle. In indirect metaphors, the tenor isn’t clearly stated, it’s implied. We think “getaway car” is about a hasty relationship, but we can’t be sure, because it is not explicitly stated anywhere. Taylor does not say “our relationship was a getaway car,” it is implied through the other clues throughout the song, but open for discussion. Indirect metaphors can feel more poetic because they can be open to more interpretations - they require the readers to do more legwork and more guesswork., which is also why the make for great podcast discussion topics! Taylor seems to be a fan of the indirect metaphor, which adds more complexity to her music.
Metaphors are highly effective in communicating an idea because they allow the writer to take something or some experience that the audience may not be familiar with and compare it to something else that the audience will definitely be familiar with. With a controlling metaphor specifically, they can build on that metaphor to further clarify the many different aspects of that unfamiliar thing they’re describing. Why use a simple metaphor for one emotion or one very specific moment in time when you can build an entire extended metaphor throughout every lyric of a song? Her mastery of this rhetorical device is what makes her music so compelling and so universally relatable.