Metaphors and elisions and the ethics of language
Metaphors and elisions and the ethics of language
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License.
- all content © Megan Clayton, 2003-11
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
When people use words with highly emotionally charged connotations in contexts that mock the evocation, I have always thought it exposes either an emotionally shallow person or an unimaginative intellect. Either that or they just can’t use the language well. So it doesn’t anger me so much as wonder at the audacity we had in naming ourselves the sapient species.
It strikes me that in daily life a lot of people don’t distinguish (and have no reason to distinguish) between when they’re using metaphors and when they’re speaking literally. Given that so much literal language in English is made up of dead metaphors, when people want to add emphasis, they do it with live metaphors, ignoring the fact they still carry two sets of meanings.
This is all to say that I agree with you on both counts: people use live metaphors to add emotional force in ways that are inappropriate, and don’t see it as being a particular problem. It’s as if there are occasions on which the listener is supposed to set aside the vehicle and focus on the tenor, yet there are times when this just won’t do.
Ah, this links, I think, to my dis-ease when I read some of my 20 yr old cousin’s Facebook entries. Words that carry a very specific – and negative – emotional charge for me are used in ways that (I hope!) indicate a shift in meaning/intent…
I get taken aback at times even when walking through the corridor in which students are talking! Life as a young person is more of a closed community, I think, than when we are older (even a little older!). Members of the group assume no offence will be meant and then they’re off. Sadly, I think, this only enforces insularity, but peer pressure is a conservative force.