Metaphors in Umpasa of the Toba Batak Wedding Cermony

Umpasa is defined as a poem of Batak Toba which is used as a
means of deivering ideas, attitude, and cultural values (Simbolon
et.al, 1986:14). Along the ceremony of Toba Batak wedding, there
are a lot of utterances that are used to express the speaker’s ideas
that implies advices, hopes, and suggestions to the bride and
bridegroom. Next, the words of Umpasa are also used to express
the speaker’s attitude towards the marriage like giving the bride
and bridegroom blessings. In addition to delivering ideas and
attitudes, Umpasa is also used to present the cultural values of
Batak Toba that keep the kinship among family members. Words
arranged in umpasa in terms of poetic values, contain philosophies
of life, politeness ethics, laws and society. Toba Batak tribe is a
closed society so to say something cannot be directly but must be
coated with words that make its meaning disguised but easy to
understand. The objectives of this study were to describe the kinds
of metaphor, to explain the realization of metaphors, and to
elaborate the reasons of using metaphors in Toba Batak wedding
ceremony. This study followed the theory of Lakoff and Johnson
(2003:14) which divided metaphor into three categories, such as:
(a) structural; (b) orientational; and (c) ontological metaphor. The
data of this study were the sentences from Umpasa that
represented metaphor. This study revealed that there were three
types of metaphor such as: structural (20%), orientational (10%),
and ontological metaphor (70%). Metaphors in Umpasa were
realized in two stages of Toba Batak wedding ceremony, they were
Marunjuk and Marhata Sinamot. In addition to the types and the
realization of metaphor, the reasons for using metaphor were to
give advice, motivation, directions or guidance, and blessing