Re: Offensive Language(metaphors)

[Tim Altom <taltom -at- IQUEST -dot- NET>]

At 10:31 AM 9/22/97 -0700, you wrote:
>At 11:14 AM 9/22/97 -0400, Beth Agnew wrote:
>
>><Aside: There is a really good Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where
>>the Enterprise encounters the "incomprehensible" Tamarians. Picard and the
>>Tamarian Captain are isolated on a planet and must figure out how to
>>communicate because their lives are at risk. Picard finally figures out
>>that the Tamarian language system is based on metaphor.>
>>
>There must be more to the program than this summary. What language system is
>*not* based on metaphor? Except for the inhabitants of one of the worlds in
>_Gulliver's Travels_ who "talk" about things by actually displaying the
objects.
>--Wayne

Not much more, unfortunately, except that the Tamarians took it to an
extreme in that almost everything they said beyond "Ugh" was related to some
old myth or story. It would be as though we said "cleaning house" by stating
"Hercules, his task at the stables". Poetic, to be sure. Literally a
language of epic proportions.

Interestingly, I had a course in college (in religious studies, at that!)
that included a section on metaphors in speech. One of the books for the
course was "Metaphors We Live By", authored by somebody I can't now recall.
The book's premise was the same as Wayne's, that we communicate by metaphor
far more than we realize. I've had to ponder that truth many times as I
readied materials for editing or translation.

As the book points out, for example, we have a "container metaphor"...we say
"in trouble," "out of the country", "falling in love", and so forth. In none
of these cases are we actually entering or leaving, but only using the
common in/out concrete concept to express abstract ideas. The problem is
that other cultures than North American/Anglo-Saxon don't have the same
metaphors. It's sometimes tough for me to recognize a too-blatant
metaphorical allusion even in my tightest writing.



Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
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