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Examples Of Animal Metaphors

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Metaphors are used to paint a picture of reality. These statements of reality can be grouped with a certain coherence according to the topic they refer to. In order to do this grouping we need to employ cultural understandings of what constitutes a topic. These metaphors have to be interpreted using categories and beliefs that exist in South Asian culture. There were five possible categorizations in this small pool of waggish coquetries that relate to beliefs or understandings relevant to South Asian cultures:
1. ‘Women are like pets’,
2. Women are like farm yard animals,
3. ‘sex is like fire’,
4. ‘ sex is eating’ and
5. ‘ sex is conquering’.

The people are animals metaphor
Human beings use their knowledge of the natural world in constructing a meaningful social existence and the “people are animals metaphor” is a good …show more content…

The rationale for such a metaphoric theme is that within the binary opposition human/animal what distinguishes the former from the latter is his rational capacity, in other words, his ability to control his behavior. According to this dichotomy, there is an animal inside each person and civilized people are expected to restrain their animal instincts, letting their rational side rule over them. The metaphors human behavior is animal behavior (Kövecses, 1988), anger is animal behavior (Nayak & Gibbs, 1990), passions are beasts inside us (Kövecses, 1988), a lustful person is an animal (Lakoff, 1987) or control of an unpredictable/undesirable force is a rider’s control of a horse (MacArthur, 2005) conceptualize extreme behaviour. Nevertheless, although being a lower form of life, animal names are suitable vehicles for describing undesirable habits and attributes. A closer look at metaphorical animal identifications can show that this is not always the case, for certain animal metaphors do capture the positive characteristics of

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