Criteria for a typology of comparisons using French 'comme' (as, like) are developed in an analysis of a variety of literary examples. Different combinations of concrete and abstract, real and impossible, and human and object among the members of comparisons reveal the complexity of simile and permit a differentiation between simile and metaphor. A bivalent referential relation is found, combining elements of deixis and anaphora, as comparison maintains a relation between language and the world of reference; metaphor suggests a more homogeneous referential attitude via the metalinguistic function. (Copyright 1996, Sociological Abstracts, Inc., all rights reserved.) (J. Hitchcock in LLBA 1996, vol. 30, n. 1)