My confusion on speaking metaphorically.

[QuickTwist]

This is a common question on MBTI test: Do you tend to speak more metaphorically as opposed to literally?

Many of the tried and true INTPs from this site do not at least write metaphorically, so what gives? The question is suppose to measure between sensing and intuition, but I see very few people who actually use metaphysical dichotomies on a frequent basis. What gives?

 

[Hadoblado]

Metaphors are the medium for a thought that surpasses one's ability to express it, or a listener's ability to understand it. On the forum we've got time and online resources to help express precisely what we mean, or to understand what is meant. Thus we have less need for them.

 

[QuickTwist]

I should have asked about speaking figuratively? I still don't understand why people don't do it hardly at all. Forum or no forum, I just don't see people talking like that very often.

 

[Sinny91]

I'm a very literal person. Is all I can say. I second B, in regards to using metaphor, when my own linguistic skills fail me.

 

[Happy]

Metaphors are the medium for a thought that surpasses one's ability to express it, or a listener's ability to understand it. On the forum we've got time and online resources to help express precisely what we mean, or to understand what is meant. Thus we have less need for them.

Yeah, this is pretty spot on.

I like to think my own thoughts on this forum are pretty literal and comprehensible, but IRL, I'm often barely comprehensible to all but the native english speaker due to my potential over-use of metaphors and idiomatic English. That, and my ludicrous rural Australian accent.

 

[Grayman]

Questioning my INTPness is like questioning my manhood. I could whip it out and prove it to you but it wouldn't be very polite.

 

[Pyropyro]

I'm looking at the maker's perspective on the question.

metaphors, are nebulous and dramatic which may cater more to N and P

literal statements needs less imagination and straight to the point which may cater more to S and J

Perhaps the better question would be: Which type of explanation do you prefer? literal & straightforward or flowery & metaphorical?

 

[nanook]

i do use a lot of metaphors but more importantly i recognize that anything, all worldviews are merely metaphor, as concepts are only vaguely related to reality. i agree that having a special jargon (words like transcendence) make many awkward metaphors redundant. common sense language has too little words to describe the world of process, which is what intuition is concerned with. i notice, that i use even more metaphors, when i express more emotion, which is rare for me, but i have written 100 line long poems in my teenage years (weed might have been involved), that were nothing but a single coherent metaphor, from beginning to end, for instance a story of a stork (the bird who brings babies, remember) who, in my story wouldn't simply bring the baby but carry it through life and age along with it, representing the higher self. so i think metaphors are more of an NF and Ni thing. they are needed to express the most subjective things. intp avoid talking about specific subjective experiences directly, as opposed to analytically and generally.

 

[EditorOne]

Perhaps it's even simpler and has more to do with INTPs seeing in terms of the larger picture rather than the detail:

" metaphor is a figure of speech that identifies something as being the same as some unrelated thing for rhetorical effect, thus highlighting the similarities between the two."

"Rhetorical effect" might seem gratuitously dramatic, but if you said "identifies something as being the same as some unrelated thing in order to explain and make it understood" you'd have the INTP context, I think. An INTP says "I see where this fits together and how it works." A sensor approaches from a more contained, literal direction.

Just tossing it out there.

 

[Ex-User (8886)]

I speak literally when it comes to emotions, feelings, but I talk figuratively when I want to describe my thoughts, theories.

 

[Death Wizard]

Many bridges have been burned Speaking metaphorically with SJ types.

 

[QuickTwist]

OK, so from what I am understanding is that it is easier to communicate an idea/theory in a more big picture/figurative dichotomy irl as opposed to doing it in text. I get the sense that since most people here are intuitives that it is easier to communicate the actual thought process as opposed to mystical interpretation here since it is likely that people will know what the person is talking about hence no need for, in lack of a better term, "searching" type of dichotomy because there is a kind of intuitive understanding here, as well as the time to think what you are going to say through and communicate in a way that is easily recognisable.

Am I close?

 

[FlorisV]

This is a common question on MBTI test: Do you tend to speak more metaphorically as opposed to literally?

Many of the tried and true INTPs from this site do not at least write metaphorically, so what gives? The question is suppose to measure between sensing and intuition, but I see very few people who actually use metaphysical dichotomies on a frequent basis. What gives?

I tend to speak more literally. I often try and fail to find good metaphores. I'm very good at laying bare the flaws of metaphores. While creative, the INTP is also very critical and analytical and metaphores can be poor in precision or misunderstood. Typically I would stick to a small number of solid, tried and true ones, like the idea of walls around people, or masks that they use.