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Some metaphors are dead in the water

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Written by Harrison Scott Key

June 30, 1:26 PM

Reading this article at Slate made me think of this much older, and much more educational, article by George Orwell. The Slate article references popular “catchphrases” in American culture (also called, by people who like the English language, “metaphors”) and how the get born and how they die. I hear one particular catchphrase all the time on reality shows, and it makes me want to hurt people: “Step up to the plate.” As in, “Johnny needs to step up to the plate and __________ or he’s going to get voted off!”

Metaphors, once overused to the point where the analogical power of the phrase ceases to suggest anything analogical, become clichés. The article discusses some others, too, including throwing someone under the bus (another popular reality show phrase), my bad and it’s all good (which are metaphors in a very, very loose sense), and others. If you use these clichés too much, or if you’re not sure if your conversational metaphors are dead or still alive, you might like to read “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell, the E.B. White of English letters.

Topic: Culture, WorldMagBlog

Keywords: Culture, language, literature

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back to top17 Comments to “Some metaphors are dead in the water”

BY Sawgunner 06.30.08 AT 1:48 PM

Personally I think we should avoid cliches like the plague.
I’ve had bosses utilize sports analogies as motivational hooks. Ironic when you consider many of the listeners would’ve been better served with terminology from cricket or half-time dance squad.
When we as a nation have so many (flabby?) kids who dont participate (enough) in sport at school can we count on sports metaphors?
I once had a commander who described the relationship between a Cdr and a Command Sergeant Major as being like a good marriage. Looking around I realized so many of that man’s audience whom I knew had experienced parental divorce before they were 10. Comparing anything these days to a successful marriage (ie “Bride of Christ”) must be somewhat irksome to those who’ve not witnessed/benefitted from any type of marriage.
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BY metanoia 06.30.08 AT 2:06 PM

I think that we need to think outside the box and give 110% to providing good comments on this thread.

It has great potential!
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BY SteveG 06.30.08 AT 2:13 PM

I think “weigh in” is one that is way overused. I once saw an online chat about healthy diet and exercise habits, and the host said to almost every commenter, “thanks for weighing in.”

Even in cases where it’s not horribly thoughtless, as the above, it’s a cliche.
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BY Frank in Phoenix 06.30.08 AT 2:19 PM

I’m sorry to have to do this, but I must:

Orwell’s piece brought into a whole new light our political leaders’ (and the right-wing echo machines’) use of the term “Islamic Fascism.”

The issue came to a head last year when Ron Paul rightly refused to use the term, and Tom Bevan subsequently accused Dr. Paul of “malpractice.”

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/43645.html

Daniel Larison on “Term Limits”:

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_11_19/editorial.html

Old metaphors are one thing.

Politically-loaded, imprecise and inappropriate terminology is something else.
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BY Spinoza 06.30.08 AT 2:25 PM

Love the six rules!

They really cut through the ice like butter to get to the meat of the problem.
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BY momoffour 06.30.08 AT 2:32 PM

This is my pet peeve phrase–”stay true to yourself.” Or “I need to stay true to myself.” GAG!!!
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BY Amphipolis 06.30.08 AT 2:57 PM

I used to despise the Southern California sounding “heads up.” Then I found myself using it.
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BY RR 06.30.08 AT 3:21 PM

More along the lines of buzzwords than metaphors, I’m really hating on biz-speak:

“Bandwidth” (any time it is used outside of its technology context)

“Customer-focused solution” (a perfectly wretched example of unspeak)

“win-win.”

Any use of the term “architecture” when the subject is not, you know, buildings or landscape. Example: “enterprise architecture.” Yecch.

Calling yourself a “coach” when you’re trying to sell your consulting services.

There’s more; much, much more. But you get the idea.
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BY llama 06.30.08 AT 3:24 PM

#4 Frank,

The correct term is Islamofascist. Yeah, I know people don’t like to be called what they are any more than liberals like to be called that or socialists, or progressives, etc. But it is what they are and being PC avoiding the real word is ‘Losing Proposition”

Sometimes people don’t even know they are using a cliche like ‘Personally I think we should avoid cliches LIKE THE PLAGUE.’
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BY Chas 06.30.08 AT 4:35 PM

Everyone does it, but it irritates me every time.

A person will come to the lectern to address a large group of people and say: “How y’all doing?” “How is everone?” I realize “Hi”, “Howdy,” etc. are derived from that. But it irritates me when someone addresses a crowd of people that way.

A radio talk show host tells someone he’s on. The seventeenth person of the day will start out, “How you doing?”
“All of a sudden, I got this great headache, Buster, and you’re causing it.”
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BY Harris 06.30.08 AT 5:35 PM

I would second the Orwell suggestion; it is a fine essay.
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BY adios 06.30.08 AT 6:10 PM

Amphipolis,

I’ve never understood why people yell heads up at a baseball game when what you really want the person to do is duck.
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BY Rostin 06.30.08 AT 9:11 PM

RR,

You might already know (or be interested to learn) that even in its “technology” context, the current, common usage of the word bandwidth was considered to be sloppy and technically incorrect just a few years ago.
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BY Rostin 06.30.08 AT 9:12 PM

I think this might not be quite the same thing, but I hate, hate, hate when people say that “The Future is Now” or that we can have “Tomorrow’s Technology, Today.”
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BY Frank in Phoenix 06.30.08 AT 9:43 PM

llama (9): The correct term is Islamofascist. Yeah, I know people don’t like to be called what they are any more than liberals like to be called that or socialists, or progressives, etc.

Frank: It’s not the “Islamofascists” that object to the term — they couldn’t care less what we call them.

Rather, it is old-school, “paleo” conservatives (as opposed to the “neo-conservatives,” who are little more than recycled Marxists) who have objected to the misapplication of the term “fascist” to Islamic radicals.

Paul Mulshine explains it quite well in “The rise of the clueless neoconservative”:

… the term “fascist” does not really fit the modern Islamist movement. Historically, fascists have been neither totalitarian nor particularly ideological. Fascists have been better known for the ideologies they suppressed than for any ideology of their own. Think of Franco in Spain or Pinochet in Chile. And fascists generally rule as authoritarians rather than totalitarians, as conservatives liked to point out back in the Reagan era.

That was certainly the case with Saddam Hussein. Here we encounter a key problem with the term “Islamofascist”: The only true fascist in the Gulf region was not an “Islamofascist,” at least not in the eyes of the guy who coined the term. Far from advancing totalitarian Islam, Hussein suppressed it even more viciously than Franco suppressed totalitarian Marxism. If Bush had titled his war the “War on Radical Islam,” Saddam would have been seen as a more likely ally than enemy, as was the case when the U.S. employed Pinochet as a bulwark against communism in Latin America.

Tacking “fascist” onto “Islamo” is just the neo-cons’ incredibly lame way of trying to convince us all that the Islamicists are the next Nazis.

Now if you really want to talk about somebody who doesn’t the name people use to describe them, it’s the neoconservatives. (Well, a good number of them, anyways.)

Only problem is, that’s the name Irving Kristol — great-grandaddy of the neo-cons — came up with himself to describe the movement!
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BY Frank in Phoenix 06.30.08 AT 9:50 PM

Read the Orwell piece, llamer:

Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.”

~ George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946)
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BY Frank in Phoenix 06.30.08 AT 9:55 PM

Daniel Larison unpacks it quite a bit:

… Like the pejorative term from which it derives, Islamofascism means whatever the person deploying it wants it to mean. It is ultimately not an attempt at description or explanation but a demon word designed to generate visceral, irrational reaction. This is precisely the opposite of the careful, deliberate, and informed responses we need to cultivate. And since it obscures the actual nature of jihadism, it is not simply a crime against the English language but a dangerous source of misunderstanding.

As Marxists once used the term “fascist” to vilify everyone to their right as a means of wielding influence, [David] Horowitz and his allies use “Islamofascist” to group together the many regimes and groups they wish to cast as a cohesive, united enemy, conflating mutually hostile forces into a single, undifferentiated mass.

The campus protests against Islamofascism Awareness Week have been no less absurd, with critics flinging charges of racism and “Islamophobia.” As intellectually vacuous moral bludgeons go, “Islamophobia” is almost in a class by itself. Those deploying the term try to make any attempt to criticize any aspect of Islam taboo. Like “Islamofascism,” the charge is meant to confuse listeners, chastise opponents, and end discussion.

“Islamophobia” is a word favored by both jihadist apologists and the conventional enforcers of “tolerance” and opponents of “hate speech.” Attributing acts of violence to Islam, criticizing practices in Islamic countries, or even associating the name of Islam with crimes carried out in its name draw the charge. It, like other thought-policing labels, is a tool for defining the limits of speech and shutting down critical thinking while securing select groups from reasonable inquiry and political opposition. The term implies irrational fear and loathing and classes an entire perspective as nothing more than hatred, denying to critics of jihadism their rationality and so denigrating them as being less than fully human. Control of debate, indeed, control over whether there will even be a debate, is the goal.

The proper use of names and words is essential to rational argument, and the proliferation of nonsense terms and thought-policing labels is fatal. Use of propagandistic terms like “Islamofascism” and “Islamophobia” is an attempt to wield power through confusion and intimidation: they aim to mislead about the nature of our actual enemies on the one hand and invent new heresies against “tolerance” on the other. The debasement and cheapening of language are assaults on the quality of thought and discourse, and they are intended to prevent the proper, sober understanding of the realities of the Islamic world and our policies overseas.

~ Daniel Larison, “Term Limits,” The American Conservative November 19, 2007
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