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Metaphor: The Forge of Creation
Jay Jasper
Guitar, AP Music Theory, Music History, and Freshman Boys’ Choir
Noblesville High School
Inquiry Question:
How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating original
metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
Rationale and Significance:
In high school music classes kids feel cheated when I say the words, “Get out a piece of paper
and a pencil.” They took my class to get away from reading and writing for at least one block
during the day. But, writing gives students the opportunity to create and use higher order
thought processes. So writing is a necessity if I am to get them to create using higher order
thinking skills.
Curriculum has been pushed towards trudging through the required material in time for the
students to be ready for the standardized tests. So creativity often gets put on the back burner for
those concepts that are more objectively assessable.
Creativity is precisely what our students require so that they will be competitive in a 21st
Century world. Far too often we only prepare students for analytical thinking and neglect their
creativity. For students to be capable of abstract thought necessary to be competitive thinkers in
the 21st Century, we need to focus in greater depth on synthesis.
Without spending large amounts of class time in the music classroom, how do we get to the heart
of synthesis? Colliding two ideas to create a new third idea is the process of metaphor. This is
the way we, as humans, create. It is my hope that teaching my students to create metaphor in
short lessons, over the course of several brief writing sessions, I can give my students practice in
synthesis and increase their creativity.
Assessment:
This process will begin with the students working on creating metaphors in a somewhat random
manner. As the process continues, they move from an accidental creation of metaphors to a very
thoughtful construction of metaphor. I plan on using Debono’s 6 hats to assess their metaphors
they write in the beginning of the lessons and at the end. If I am right about my assumptions, the
early metaphors should seem a bit forced and random, but by the end of the process, the
metaphors they create should be more detailed and elegant.
Timeline for Implementation:
I usually begin songwriting in the second semester, but I would like them to have facility with
metaphor before they begin the songwriting process.
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• From the start of the school year, I will mention occurrences of metaphor in the songs
that we play in guitar class.
• After the first concert is when I’ll begin introducing metaphor on a more concrete level.
1. I will have students identify metaphor in “Pink Bullets” by the Shins.
2. We’ll use the Kiki/Bouba test to illustrate the way that we have a shared set of
metaphors that help us frame our world. Even if we don’t seem them at work,
metaphors help us identify that which is familiar to us.
3. We’ll discuss genre/style and see how it is an implied metaphor to help us
identify the differences in music without hearing it.
4. We’ll discuss cliché and how it is really a metaphor that is overused to the
point that it no longer helps the audience draw new conclusions.
• At first the metaphors we will create will be at random by combining two lists of words
together and looking for combinations. See my demo PowerPoint for more explanation.
• Begin creating qualifying metaphors. These are metaphors that contain a noun
and an adjective or a noun and a verb. We will focus on noun/verb collision.
• Next we’ll move on to verbal metaphors. This is a collision of a subject and it’s
predicate.
• Next will be expressed identity metaphors. This is a collision of two nouns.
• The more demanding steps that should yield stronger metaphors and drive deeper into
the heart of synthesis are what follows. (each example below is a lesson for the students)
5.Choose 5 interesting adjectives and then find 1 interesting noun to go with each
one. This time go for a quality metaphor. Take hours. Take days if you have to.
Write the list on the cover of your notebook, on your hand, in an email and send it
to yourself, or any other way that you can think of that would have you thinking
about these words in the back of your mind consistently for days until they really
make sense. (at school their assignment would be to come up with 3 thought
provoking metaphors by the next class. Rotating blocks) Remember you can
come up with vivid adjectives by adding -ed or -ing to a verb. This is called a
participle.
6.Now choose 5 nouns and over time choose 1 terrific verb for each one.
7.Now choose 5 verbs and come up with 1 great noun for each. Starting with
verbs will be a different process and might give you strange and interesting
results.
8.Choose 5 nouns and find an interesting adjective for each. This is the reverse of
step 1. Don’t forget that participles make great adjectives.
9.Choose 5 nouns and find a great noun to pair with each. You may find
expressed identity metaphors are more difficult. If so, decide what characteristics
your noun has and then think of another different noun that has the same
characteristics, but is not similar in nature.
Annotated Bibliography:
I used a modified use of the Q.A.D. format to evaluate the resources that I was reviewing for my
annotated bibliography. So as I evaluated each resource, I used my inquiry question as the filter that I
sifted my information through.
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Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating original metaphors that
would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: would be how the author’s writings would answer my question. D: would be how I could use the
information found in the text and what ideas it would inspire for my demo.
Aristotle. The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle. Introduction by Edward P.J.
Corbett. New York: Modern Library, 1984.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: Aristotle maintained that the only way for humankind to create was through the
process of metaphor. “Strange words simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey only
what we know already. It is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something
fresh." (Aristotle 251)
D: When someone complains that there is nothing new under the sun, it’s partially
true. All of human creation stems from the metaphorical leap that occurs when we
find the connection between two things that already exist. This shouldn’t be a worry,
however. This has always been the case.
Corradi Fiumara, Gemma. The Metaphoric Process : Connections Between
Language and Life. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: The book is a weighty text on the linguistic philosophical implications on metaphor
in Plato, Aristotle, Wittgenstein.
D: If I wanted to get a deeper linguistic philosophical tone, I might want to look more
into Wittgenstein.
Dethier, Brock. From Dylan to Donne: Bridging English and Music. New Hampshire:
Boynton/Cook Publishing, 2003.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: This book focuses mostly on how to use songs in English class.
D: Might be a good book to reverse engineer music history lessons that utilize writing.
Doesn't really focus on metaphor and meaning as much as connections with
literature.
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Geary, James. "Metaphorically Speaking." TED Talks:. TEDGlobal 2009, filmed Jul
2009; Posted Dec 2009. June 28, 2011.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_geary_metaphorically_speaking.html.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A:
Understand Metaphors:
1. Pattern Recognition
"Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns."
2. Conceptual Synethesia
"The experience of a stimulus of one sense in another sense organ."
Bouba/Kiki test
"And many of the metaphors we use everyday are synesthetic. Silence is
sweet. Neckties are loud.Sexually attractive people are hot. Sexually unattractive
people leave us cold. Metaphor creates a kind of conceptual synesthesia, in which we
understand one concept in the context of another."
3. Cognitive Dissonance
"Stroop tests have been done with metaphor as well.The participants had to
identify, as quickly as possible, the literally false sentences. They took longer to reject
metaphors as false than they did to reject literally false sentences. Why? Because we
cannot ignore the metaphorical meaning of words either."
"Metaphor matters because it opens the door to discovery. Whenever we solve a
problem, or make a discovery, we compare what we know with what we don't know."
D: Bouba/Kiki test: May be a good way to illustrate the way we frame our world
through our metaphorical context.
Geary, James. I is an Other. New York: Harper Collins, 2011.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: See the TED Talk note. His talk is the distillation of what is in the book.
D: The Bouba/Kiki test might be a good illustration for how we all almost
automatically utilize metaphor when we are examining things which we are unfamiliar
with.
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Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambhala, 1986.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: In the chapter entitled "The Action of a Sentence", Goldberg out lines an activity
similar to my demo from Pattison. Her goal for the exercise is to get more active
verbs involved in the writing process. She doesn't mention metaphor in the chapter,
but what is being created is a verbal metaphor.
D: One interesting twist to her activity is that you get the list of verbs by thinking of an
occupation. Once you have your occupation chosen you list 15 verbs that go with that
profession.
Keyes, Dixie K. "Sunshine and Shadows: Opening Spaces for Creativity, Metaphor,
and Paradox in Teaching and Teacher Education." Cultivating Curious and Creative
Minds. United States: Rowman and Littlefield: 2011.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: This book goes further into the application of W.J.J. Gordon’s Synectics. It also
has some interesting insight into the metaphorical significance into the characters in
the film, Little Miss Sunshine.
D: Now that I understand more about synectics and it’s use in creativity and
metaphor, I should go back and read this article again.
Koch, Kenneth. Rose, Where Did You Get Your Red?. New York: Vintage Books,
1974.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: Koch has his students mimic famous poems to increase their understanding of
poetry, and to compose poems as well. William Blake's "Tyger, Tyger" is the first
poem in the book. Koch asks his kids to ask nature a question.
D: This is a metaphoric leap. When children write a poem asking something in nature
a question that would normally be asked of a person, they are seeing the thing in
nature as something else. Maybe I should have my students mimic famous songs?
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Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2003.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: Metaphor is how we understand the world. (basic summary)
D: This is the first source that anyone should look at when studying metaphor.
Almost every other source that I’ve found on the subject of metaphor points to this
source. It is a bit comprehensive and if you’d like a more conversational source, try
the Geary.
Noden, Harry R. Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing.
New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1999.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: Specific language makes writing more interesting. He sites Natalie Goldberg
(1986) as a poet who combined a list of ten nouns with ten verbs to find interesting
word combinations. This is quite similar to the demo that I used from Pat Pattison.
D: It is a more simplified process than what I used in my demo, but it might be
interesting to see if Pat got the idea from Golberg, vice versa, or neither. This book
would be an interesting resource for anyone looking to take my metaphor demo in the
direction of using the brushstrokes to add to their students' writing.
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Pink, Daniel. A Whole New Mind. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: In a 21st Century world, that relies on a more creative professional, metaphor is
essential.
D: The thrust of where we are headed at Noblesville High School is a focus on
creating students of the 21st century. For us to do this, our students will have to
acquire a strong facility with metaphoric thinking. Pink talks of an ability of Metaphor
Quotient. MQ as opposed to IQ. He proposes examining metaphor on a regular
basis to improve the MQ, which is vital in the 21st Century thinker.
If creativity is the paradigm for education, since metaphor is the essence of creation,
teaching metaphor, is teaching creativity, which is the most important aspect in
creating 21st century scholars.
Steinhart, Eric Charles. The Logic of Metaphor. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 2001.
Q: How can I have my students engage in higher order thinking skills by creating
original metaphors that would enable them to write more interesting lyrics?
A: Analysis can show the logical leaps of metaphor in any metaphor by using the
properties of advanced logic blended with calculus.
D. I think this text over analyzes the nature of metaphor and hence creates a
mathematical equation for how a speaker/writer makes a metaphor and the listener
interprets it. Definitely too analytical for my usage. I’m striving to have students be
creative with metaphor, rather than clinical and analytical.