SPeak Performance

Chapter 6

Metaframing: Structuring Metaphors

Bye, bye, Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee

But the levee was dry

Them good ol’boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye

Singing “this’ll be the day that I die

This’ll be the day that I die.”

—“Miss American Pie,” Words and Music by Don McClean, 1971

I’m not sure whether, before reading this book, you’ve ever thought much about metaphors. The entire 1970s song “Miss American Pie,” was a series of metaphors that brought forth a message of simpler times gone by. We use metaphors all the time when we say things such as, “This rain is worse than a hail of bullets,” or “Life is going to be clear sailing from now on.” The first compares a driving rainstorm using the imagery of bullets flying and the ...