A Critical Review of Implicit Metaphor in Rhetorical Works

One of the controversial issues related to metaphor is implicit metaphor. There is no evidence of this metaphor in the first rhetorical works. Later, Jurjani discussed this type of metaphor but didn’t give a name to it. Since this term was coined, there were argues whether it is right or not. Some did not accept it as a metaphor; some recognized it
as a kind of implicit simile, and some just repeated other’s views. Some researchers tried to solve the issue by considering it a kind of personification. However, they have finally admitted that the implicit metaphor is broader and more inclusive than personification. In
addition to studying and reviewing this term chronologically in rhetorical works, in this paper, it is shown that rhetoricians were more interested in lexical aspects of this term rather than the definition of metaphor and focus on the implicit metaphor from a terminological aspect. While based on the definition of Sakkaki and some other rhetoricians, this structure is considered "metaphor", terms such as being “imaginative” can not be accepted. Personification, submerged metaphor, and animism must be recognized as branches of the implicit metaphor, not as alternatives for it.