Simile or mixed metaphor (legless donkey)?

Koobie · Oct 14, 2013

Hello there. I'm wondering if perhaps you can help me out with this one. I've been having an argument with a young man on a different internet forum (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away), and I'm rather curious to see which one of us you think is right.

This is the sentence:

Talking to you is like talking to a legless donkey; it's an exercise in futility.

My argument is that it is a simile because:

The sentence compares a person with a legless donkey in order to emphasize stubbornness & hopelessness and it uses the word "like" which disqualifies it from being a metaphor.

His argument is that it is not a simile because:

English has an idiom to refer to the sort of unnatural thing - a mixed metaphor. Our metaphors depend on having a certain internal logic that might not be featured in other languages. You'd never talk to a donkey, legless or not, so you'd never compare talking to someone to talking to a donkey... English has no phrase like 'mixed simile'. In English, all of these things are simply called 'mixed metaphors'.

What do you think?

Osulagh · Oct 14, 2013

As far as I know...

It's a simile. A mixed metaphor is still a metaphor, it just takes a different route that is sometimes combined with a figure of speech.

Merriam-Webster defines a mixed metaphor as:

Mixed Metaphor. noun
: a metaphor that combines different images or ideas in a way that is foolish or illogical

Full Definition of MIXED METAPHOR:
: a figure of speech combining inconsistent or incongruous metaphors

Examples of MIXED METAPHOR:
“If we want to get ahead we'll have to iron out the remaining bottlenecks” is an example of a mixed metaphor.

Maryn · Oct 14, 2013

Yeah, what Osulagh said. It's a simile.

Maryn, who sometimes spends hours talking to a legless donkey...

Koobie · Oct 14, 2013

Thanks. That's pretty much what I thought.

Maryn · Oct 14, 2013

We believed in you all along, of course. Just don't let your sparring partner see how smug you feel, being right and all.

Maryn, grinning

Wilde_at_heart · Oct 14, 2013

Koobie said:
Hello there. I'm wondering if perhaps you can help me out with this one. I've been having an argument with a young man on a different internet forum (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away), and I'm rather curious to see which one of us you think is right.

This is the sentence:

Talking to you is like talking to a legless donkey; it's an exercise in futility.

My argument is that it is a simile because:

The sentence compares a person with a legless donkey in order to emphasize stubbornness & hopelessness and it uses the word "like" which disqualifies it from being a metaphor.

His argument is that it is not a simile because:

English has an idiom to refer to the sort of unnatural thing - a mixed metaphor. Our metaphors depend on having a certain internal logic that might not be featured in other languages. You'd never talk to a donkey, legless or not, so you'd never compare talking to someone to talking to a donkey... English has no phrase like 'mixed simile'. In English, all of these things are simply called 'mixed metaphors'.

What do you think?

I put someone who argues that kind of way (on another forum) on ignore.

Yes, you are correct.

Chase · Oct 14, 2013

I agree the donkey comparison is a simile, a specialized class of metaphors.

However, Koobie's friend is way off base at what constitutes a "mixed metaphor." It's (usually) an unintentional merging of two unrelated metaphors:

To be a success, a person should apply a shoulder to the grindstone. (The shoulder is usually applied to "the wheel," while a nose is what goes close to "the grindstone.")

Another:

No credit in this mercantile. Everyone must pay cash on the lock, stock and barrel-head.

(The mix above is a barrel-head is a flat surface often found in a general store where coins may be left. But "lock, stock, and barrel" is a gun metaphor meaning everything.)

MookyMcD · Oct 14, 2013

Chase is right on the money. Even if the comparison word were taken out and it were turned into a metaphor, it still isn't mixed because there is no other metaphor mixing with it -- it's just a metaphor with exposition explaining the metaphor (which should be some horrible class of metaphor itself, since it defeats the purpose of using a metaphor in the first place).

Koobie · Oct 15, 2013

Thank you for the rather nice examples of mixed metaphors, Chase.

Wilde_at_heart said:
I put someone who argues that kind of way (on another forum) on ignore.

Yes, you are correct.

Hey Wilde_at_heart; that's nothing compared to all the personal insults the said (relatively) young man kept flinging at me for no apparent reason...

You should've seen his arguments about how The Elements of Style is a complete waste of time and how I'm an idiot (to say very lightly) to recommend it to anyone.

Suffice to say, I've quit that forum altogether.

Wilde_at_heart · Oct 15, 2013

Koobie said:
Thank you for the rather nice examples of mixed metaphors, Chase.

Hey Wilde_at_heart; that's nothing compared to all the personal insults the said (relatively) young man kept flinging at me for no apparent reason...

You should've seen his arguments about how The Elements of Style is a complete waste of time and how I'm an idiot (to say very lightly) to recommend it to anyone.

Suffice to say, I've quit that forum altogether.

And the mods didn't toss him??

Even on a lot of splinter 'freedumb' forums where even the Admins are trolls, there are still a handful of posters who get thrown out on sight, IP-banned and the rest.

Koobie · Oct 17, 2013

It wasn't that kind of forum, Wilde_at_heart.

Ken · Oct 17, 2013

Koobie said:
You should've seen his arguments about how The Elements of Style is a complete waste of time and how I'm an idiot (to say very lightly) to recommend it to anyone.

... many here detest Elements of Style, too,
and might call you worse if they found out you like it.
As to me, it's my favorite book on writing! Shh ;-)

With the internet in general many just like to throw their weight around,
to make themselves feel important.
Not worth the bother.
Just tell them they're great and wonderful.
That's all they essentially wanna hear.

Dawnstorm · Oct 17, 2013

Koobie said:
What do you think?

I think I'd like to hear the other side of the argument. For now, it looks like you're both talking past each other, really.

First, it's most definitely a simile, whether or not it is also a "metaphor". If you're talking strictly "figures of speech"/rhetorics, it is not a metaphor, because the comparison is stated. But the term metaphor has a broader meaning, outside of rhetorics. People in semantics, pragmatics, philosophy etc. are sometimes interested in what goes on in people's minds, and they sometimes call the sort of comparison they're interested in a "metaphor", regardless of whether it is, rhetorically, expressed as a simile or a "metaphor (figure of speech)". Random example.

The person you were talking to does have a point when he says that there is no such thing as a "mixed simile". People who use metaphor in a non-rhetoric context usually don't make a distinction between simile and metaphor, because what they're interested in runs deeper than rhetorics. (However, why you express said comparison rhetorically as a simile or metaphor is an interesting topic in its own right; I'm not sure whether experts talk about that at all; I certainly don't know how they name that difference. A "simile" would - in that terminology - be a metaphor with the fact of it being a comparison being explicit; with a "metaphor", the comparison would be implicit. But that's an awkward and confusing way to state it.)

Ultimately: if he says it's not a simile, he's wrong. If you say it's not a metaphor, you can be either right or wrong, depending on context. The concept of a "mixed metaphor" can be approached from multiple angles, so that's not really helpful in that case. The broader concept of "metaphor" definitely makes sense, though.

Is there a reason why this is important, or were you both just trying to be right? If it's the latter, you win, but you didn't dominate the match as clearly as you may have thought. If it's the former: what were you talking about?

Koobie · Oct 17, 2013

>>I think I'd like to hear the other side of the argument.

The gist of his argument was that it wasn't a simile because "people don't talk to donkeys," specifically that "it has the basic structure of a simile but it is a meaningless statement."

>>Is there a reason why this is important, or were you both just trying to be right?

The latter, although I can only speak for myself.

Dawnstorm · Oct 17, 2013

Koobie said:
The gist of his argument was that it wasn't a simile because "people don't talk to donkeys," specifically that "it has the basic structure of a simile but it is a meaningless statement."

Well, that makes no sense. People not talking to donkeys is sort of the point that makes the comparison work (except that I think plenty of people do talk to their donkeys, and I sort of wonder what the lack of legs has to do with anything).

So what about: "He sleeps like a rock"? Does that mean he's awake, because rocks can't sleep? That's what you get when you try to be hyperlogical. Which is a more plausible interpretation:

a) He sleeps in the way a rock sleeps.
b) He sleeps in a way that reminds me of rocks.

When you talk about cognition rather than language (and you can talk about both), you'll be more likely to use the term "metaphor", even if it's expressed as a simile. But that doesn't change that the metaphor (cognition) is expressed as a simile (rhetorics) and not as a metaphor (rhetorics).

The latter, although I can only speak for myself.

I may have underestimated the margin by which you win.

evilrooster · Oct 18, 2013

Ken said:
... many here detest Elements of Style, too,
and might call you worse if they found out you like it.

Not twice, they won't. If anyone calls anyone names over choices of style manuals, and I catch them doing it, they will be very, very sorry.

The post-reporting button is there for a reason. Please feel free to use it.

BethS · Oct 18, 2013

Koobie said:
Talking to you is like talking to a legless donkey; it's an exercise in futility.

That is a simile, because you are comparing one thing (talking to you) with another (talking to a legless donkey) using "like" to make the comparison.

It is, however, a poor simile, since talking to a donkey with legs would also be an exercise in futility, so the state of the creature's limbs really has nothing to do with the comparison being made.

Torgo · Oct 18, 2013

BethS said:
That is a simile, because you are comparing one thing (talking to you) with another (talking to a legless donkey) using "like" to make the comparison.

It is, however, a poor simile, since talking to a donkey with legs would also be an exercise in futility, so the state of the creature's limbs really has nothing to do with the comparison being made.

There might be some intended reference to 'talking the hind leg off a donkey', there. It would be futile to try to do that with a legless donkey. But it's a poor simile, yes.

Koobie · Oct 18, 2013

BethS said:
It is, however, a poor simile, since talking to a donkey with legs would also be an exercise in futility, so the state of the creature's limbs really has nothing to do with the comparison being made.

I see what you mean, but wouldn't talking to a legless donkey be even more useless (if by talking to it we assume that we would like it move from point A to point B -- donkeys certainly can't talk back, so what else would we expect them to do)? That was my line of thought, at least.

kborsden · Oct 19, 2013

This type of thing/question is tackled a lot in the poetry sub-forum. Hence this thread: a generic (but very useful) resource for figurative devices. Scroll about halfway through the first post and there's a greyed section comparing simile and metaphor.

Ken · Oct 19, 2013

evilrooster said:
Not twice, they won't. If anyone calls anyone names over choices of style manuals, and I catch them doing it, they will be very, very sorry.

The post-reporting button is there for a reason. Please feel free to use it.

... was being a bit rhetorical, regarding insults.
Elements, itself, doesn't have much love among some.
That's fine, though I differ.

Regarding the report-posts button I'd always feel like
a bit of a rat if I used that. Never have as yet.
That's just me though. I don't knock others for using it.
It's got is function. The fault if any probably lies with me.
Button aside, you Mods do do a fine job maintaining
order and keeping threads focused, etc.

Thnx!

kborsden said:
This type of thing/question is tackled a lot in the poetry sub-forum.

Good to know. I clump metaphors, similes, and analogies together,
even though I know they mean different things.
Probably not a good way to go,
especially on a writers board !

BethS · Oct 20, 2013

Koobie said:
I see what you mean, but wouldn't talking to a legless donkey be even more useless (if by talking to it we assume that we would like it move from point A to point B -- donkeys certainly can't talk back, so what else would we expect them to do)? That was my line of thought, at least.

If that's the idea behind the simile--that one would normally talk to a donkey to get it to move and therefore talking to a legless donkey would be futile because it can't move--then there are more accurate ways to express it. For one thing, it's not a given that talking to a fully ambulatory donkey will get it to do anything at all. That's really where the simile breaks down, or so it seems to me.

Koobie · Oct 22, 2013

BethS said:
If that's the idea behind the simile--that one would normally talk to a donkey to get it to move and therefore talking to a legless donkey would be futile because it can't move--then there are more accurate ways to express it. For one thing, it's not a given that talking to a fully ambulatory donkey will get it to do anything at all. That's really where the simile breaks down, or so it seems to me.

My intellectual (and I use this word lightly) opponent appears to share exactly the same sentiment.

One wouldn't normally talk to a donkey I suppose, but one would't talk to a brick wall, either. So I don't think it's any worse than the idiom, "Talking to you is like talking to a brick wall." The wall won't listen, neither will it budge, right? And IMO the chances of a legless donkey reacting to somebody talking to it are even slimmer than a donkey with some legs to its name.

That was the idea, anyway. Originally the argument was that he thought that the expression is not a simile because of this and I posted here just to double check that it is, in fact, a simile. I do agree with you that there was probably a better way to express my thoughts; there's usually a better way for everything.

Cheers!

Sonsofthepharaohs · Oct 28, 2013

It's definitely a simile, but it is a bit of a weird one, and here's why:

Why would talking to a legless donkey be any more futile than talking to a donkey with legs? surely both are equality unlikely to answer you back

Now, if you had said a deaf donkey, I might have got the irony, because whether it is deaf or not, it's still not going to answer back, but the joke is that if it wasn't deaf at least it could hear you, but a deaf one you really have no chance

Yourg · Nov 7, 2013

Great thread. Very helpful.

It's not like I'm in love with the donkey simile example. But, I think the legless part can work. I mean, I was thinking of the donkey being a beast of burden. And I imagined someone who might have had to interact with a donkey, maybe back in the olden days, maybe during one of the gold rushes. So, if you imagine the possibility of the speaker being a prospector, or having had the experience of prospecting, and having a donkey to carry his gear and whatnot around for him, then talking to a donkey might prove useful if it coaxes the donkey to move -and to carry- the prospector's gear to point B. But, donkeys are notoriously stubborn, right? So there's that obstacle which we're probably all familiar with, at least in popular mythology. But then, try talking a stubborn donkey which has no legs into moving and carrying your gear around for you! Not only do you have the difficulty of talking a stubborn donkey into doing your bidding, but it's not going to do you any good even if you can get it to comply because it's not capable of executing the action.

=)

Simile or mixed metaphor (legless donkey)?

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