A metaphor's only cause of death is the acceptance of its poetic meaning into
the normal vocabulary of the host language.
It is difficult to clearly distinguish the living metaphor from the dead
because a language is dynamic, and individualistic - and therefore never a
singularity. If one has never heard a given word in a specific metaphorical
context, they will more likely see it as a living metaphor; where one who
has accepted the use of this word in this same context as normal, will not
likely identify
it as a metaphor at all.
All too often I would find myself learning a new field, and with it,
the metaphors that were new and living to me, but so long dead to people already in
the field, that I would find humor among the words that was totally baffling to them.
This was because the metaphors that were new (and punishable) to me,
were not at all treated as metaphors by them. This strong contrast between each of
our respective treatments of this same metaphor - one clearly as living,
the other clearly as dead - led me to recognize that our perspectives had
set the value, and not the definition of the word itself.
This, in turn, led to the following criteria for distinguishing living from
dead metaphors: Only when one can no longer see evidence of
life, can a metaphor be officially declared dead: but a metaphor - living
or dead - is always new and alive to someone hearing it for the first
time. Thus this distinction seems far more scholastic than practical.
Furthermore, a metaphor that is considered dead in one language or culture is
not necessarily dead in another. There is much debate surrounding whether the
metaphors of the Bible are living or dead, for example, with this
distinction having a dramatic effect on the resultant interpretation of its
teachings.
Here is an exercise that will help you explore the difference between living
and dead metaphor. It's taken from a list of five questions submitted to me by a
student, presumably seeking help with their homework. Naturally, I wouldn't give
him easy answers - instead, I echoed each question with another question, aimed
at bringing forth the very meaning of the first from his perspective.
This website
is dedicated to the proposal that the metaphorical relationships drawn
between any two disciplines are, in fact, universal, being
isomorphic mathematical derivations of the Unified Field Theory. Further, that this symmetric
aspect of
metaphor is extrapolatable both linearly and laterally, thus may be harnessed to mathematically
predict missing knowledge
and invention in all
other disciplines: an interdisciplinary Rosetta stone of
universal scope.
"The
metaphor reminds us that the universe is full of cousins." -
J.D. Casnig
Copyright John D. Casnig. Permitted
use only. Work should be cited as:
Casnig, John D. 1997-2008. A
Language of Metaphors. Kingston, Ontario, Canada: Knowgramming.com
