Eubanks #4: "Return of the Drug Company Payoffs"

One would not expect much figurative language out of a New York Times article, yet I found there to be more than expected in the editorial piece, “Return of the Drug Company Payoffs”. The author of this uses narrative to sway our opinion. He is trying to illustrate his views against brand-name manufacturers in the drug company who are paying off generic manufacturers to delay the marketing of their cheaper drugs. This is not very decorative or unnecessary language, but language that helps construct our understanding of his opinion. He refers to the brand name companies’ actions with figurative words such as “underhanded”, and metaphors like “It is a costly legal loophole that needs to be plugged by Congressional legislation.” He doesn’t literally mean, “plugged”, but this implies the urgency that one feels when you need to plug something up to keep it from leaking. He also says, “huge sums of money are at stake”. Obviously, pieces of money aren’t literally at stake, but with this metaphor the reader feels the seriousness of his argument. Other phrases he uses such as “waging a valiant fight”, “ ‘bright line’prohibition”, and “clear standard” all describe the generic companies and the people who he agrees with (the FTC). Therefore, these metaphors create the sense of hard fighting and good doing to fix the evil ways of the drug monopolies. Overall, the figurative language describing the sneaky ways of the monopolies and the more kid descriptions of the generic brands and the consumers really aid the author in creating a whole piece that clearly gets across his opinion.