open scratch http://www.etymonline.com

1. open scratch • http://www.etymonline.com

2. Pétur hjá Tolla 1 Oct 2008 Metaphor

3. Lakoff and Johnson • There is no painless way to get inflation down. We now have an excellent foundation on which to build. • Her career was in ruins.

4. Lakoff and Johnson How do they define ‘metaphor’? Source and target? Ever heard of a mixed metaphor?

5. Lakoff and Johnson : … why they annoy me! • Literal vs. figurative language? Lock (below) says: ‘All language is troped, which is to say that no word has precisely one “literal” meaning.’ The traditional approach: (Etymonline): ‘Technically, in rhetoric, [a trope is] a figure of speech which consists in the use of a word or phrase in a sense other than that which is proper to it.’

6. Lakoff and Johnson : … why they annoy me! The traditional standpoint: • There is ‘literal’ language which really means what it says, AND WHICH IS ORIGINAL AND PRIMARY • and there is ‘figurative’ language, which is derived from ‘literal language’, and is ‘poetic’ and ‘secondary’.

7. Lakoff and Johnson : … why they annoy me! ’s approach: • If anything, it’s the other way round: troped, poetic language is primary, ‘literal’ language derived. • But Lock says: ‘All language is troped, which is to say that no word has precisely one “literal” meaning.’ • We´ll come back to this.

8. Lakoff and Johnson : … why they annoy me! • Literal vs. figurative language? • Dead metaphors?

9. Dead metaphors? Lakoff and Johnson seem to have decided that “dead metaphors” are no longer metaphoric – no longer tropes. (Tolli Handout 1) Following Barfield, Lock, Lecercle and others my contention in this lecture will be that an understanding of what ‘dead’ metaphors are is fundamental to our understanding of figurative language.

10. Dead metaphors? ‘ … one of the first things that a student of etymology… discovers for himself is that every modern language … is apparently nothing, from beginning to end, but an unconscionable tissue of dead, or petrified metaphors.’ (Barfield, see below) • Dead metaphors (catachresis) seem to constitute the material of living language.

11. All these terms are dead metaphors: metaphor dead metaphor literal figurative fact and fiction trope verse

12. metaphor - translation • Gk. metaphora "a transfer," especially of the sense of one word to a different word, lit. "a carrying over," from metapherein "transfer, carry over," from meta- "over, across" (see meta-) + pherein "to carry, bear" • transfero, I transfer, -tuli –(t)latum • PIE *tel-, *tol- "to bear, carry" Atlas "the Bearer" of Heaven;" L. tolerare "to bear, support," latus "borne;" O.E. þolian "to endure;" Icel. þola

13. From Lock’s Key to Readinghttp://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf Linguistic Tropes All language is troped, which is to say that no word has precisely one ‘literal’ meaning.

14. The meaning of ‘literal’?

15. From Lock’s Key to Readinghttp://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf Linguistic Tropes All language is troped, which is to say that no word has precisely one ‘literal’ meaning.

16. From Lock’s Key to Readinghttp://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf Linguistic Tropes The ways in which meanings deviate can be classed under two broad headings: Metaphor and Metonymy.

17. From Lock’s Key to Readinghttp://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf Metaphor works on the principle of likeness; Metonymy works on the principle of contiguity – no necessary likeness. The Crown. England collapses. A particular form of metaphor is the simile, indicated by the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’. Simile is explicit metaphor. Most metaphor is implicit: the face of the clock, and its hands.

18. From Lock’s Key to Readinghttp://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf Metaphor works on the principle of likeness; Metonymy works on the principle of proximity. A common form of metonymy is synecdoche, or the proximity of containment (whether container for contained, part for whole, or vice versa): pass the bottle, pass the salt; lend us a hand; use your head; a grin without a cat.

19. From Lock’s Key to Readinghttp://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf A large amount of metaphor works by personification (prosopopoeia), the comparison of the inhuman to the human: body, corporation, legs, chest, trunk, head and foot (capital, pedestal).

20. From Lock’s Key to Readinghttp://englishstudies.ku.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Lock's%20Key%20to%20Reading%2009-2006.pdf Most of the time metaphor and metonymy pass unnoticed. This, the daily waking slumber of the communicating mind, we call catachresis. When our attention is drawn to a trope, we are enjoying literature, and attending to language.

21. catachresis kata-khresis = abusio “The use of a word in a context that differs from its proper application.” This figure is generally considered a vice; however, Quintilian defends its use as a way by which one adapts existing terms to applications where a proper term does not exist. http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/

22. catachresis Catachresis is usually interpreted as abusio, the misuse or abuse of metaphor; but Lock and other writers today use the term in its meaning “make full use of, thoroughly employ”. This usage is in accordance with the etymology of the word:

23. catachresis kataa-khresis, from kata-khraomai, make full use of, apply, use to the uttermost, use up, misuse, abuse kata down, from above. Khrao, to furnish what is needful. kata-khresis = ab-usio > ‘abuse’

24. Owen Barfield, 1898-1997 “The first and last Inkling” J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams “He towers above us all.” (C.S. Lewis)

25. Owen Barfield, 1898-1997 • Poetic Diction: A Study In Meaning (Faber & Gwyer 1928) • Romanticism Comes of Age (1944) essays • This Ever Diverse Pair (1950) as G. A. L. Burgeon • Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960's (1963) • Saving the Appearances: a study in Idolatry (1965) • Unancestral Voice (1965) • The Silver Trumpet (Eerdmans 1968)[1] • Speaker's Meaning (1971) c.1967 • History, Guilt, and Habit (Wesleyan University Press, 1981) • What Coleridge Thought (1971) • The Rediscovery of Meaning, and other essays (1977) • History in English Words (1985) with a foreword by W. H. Auden • Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis (1989) edited by G. B. Tennyson

26. Owen Barfield, 1898-1997 • Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928) • Saving the Appearances: a study in idolatry (1965) • History, Guilt, and Habit (1981) • What Coleridge Thought (1971) • The Rediscovery of Meaning, and other essays (1977) • History in English Words (1985) with a foreword by W. H. Auden

27. Owen Barfield, 1898-1997 • Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928) • Saving the Appearances: a study in idolatry (1965) • The Rediscovery of Meaning, and other essays (1977) • ‘The Rediscovery of Meaning’ • ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’

28. Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928) Chapter III Metaphor Chapter IV Meaning and Myth

29. Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928). Chapter III Metaphor … one of the first things that a student of etymology… discovers for himself is that every modern language … is apparently nothing, from beginning to end, but an unconscionable tissue of dead, or petrified metaphors. 63

30. Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928). Chapter III Metaphor If we trace the meanings of a great many words … about as far back as etymology can take us, we are at once made to realize that an overwhelming proportion, if not all, of them referred in earlier days to one of these two solid things – a solid, sensible object, or some animal (probably human) activity. 63-4

31. Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928). Chapter III Metaphor abstract – abs trahere “afdraga” centre L. centrum "center," orig. fixed point of the two points of a compass, from Gk. kentron "sharp point, goad," from kentein "stitch," from PIE base *kent- "to prick" (Etymonline) goad, broddstafur til að reka naut

32. Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928). Chapter III Metaphor Look up abstract terms in http://www.etymonline.com inspiration nature pleasure circle idea truth

33. Does it make sense to say that “circle” is an abstract term? Eric Havelock, A Preface to Plato 1963

34. Poetic Diction: a study in meaning (1928). Chapter III Metaphor Anatole France L’âme possède Dieu dans la mesure où elle participe à l’absolu The soul possesses God to the extent that she participates in the Absolute Le souffle est assis sur celui qui brille, au boisson du don qu’elle reçoit en ce qui est tout délíé The breath is seated on something shining, in the container of the share it receives in what is completely untied.

35. example genos in Homer = “family, race” Plato also “sex, gender” Xenonphone use the word to mean “type” genus, genetic, kyn, kind, konr, kona etc

36. example SKIP: • genus • (pl. genera), 1551 as a term of logic (biological sense dates from 1608), from L. genus (gen. generis) "race, stock, kind," cognate with Gk. genos "race, kind," and gonos "birth, offspring, stock," from PIE base *gen-/*gon-/*gn- "produce, beget, be born" (cf. Skt. janati "begets, bears," janah "race," jatah "born;" Avestan zizanenti "they bear;" Gk. gignesthai "to become, happen;" L. gignere "to beget," gnasci "to be born," genius "procreative divinity, inborn tutelary spirit, innate quality," ingenium "inborn character," germen "shoot, bud, embryo, germ;" Lith. gentis "kinsmen;" Goth. kuni "race;" O.E. cennan "beget, create;" O.H.G. kind "child;" O.Ir. ro-genar "I was born;" Welsh geni "to be born").

37. SKIP: • Trojan War 12th or 13 cent ?if factual • Homer 9th or 8th cent • Hesiod around 700 • Socrates 469 -399 • Plato 428-347 • Xenophon born ?431, historian, Memorabilia (defence of Soc). • Aristotle 384-322

38. Summary so far • Abstract words seem to have concrete original meanings • The further we go back in time, the more ‘alive’ these ‘dead’ metaphors seem to be. • In other words, the older the language, the more figurative it seems to be. • Isn’t there a paradox here somewhere?

39. paradox • We assume a time when mankind was a thinker of simple material thoughts, and had no figurative language. • Then suddenly, humans started thinking abstract thoughts and became poets to express these thoughts. • Isn’t there a paradox here somewhere?

40. Homer Plato Long, long, long long ago Still very long ago Universal Metaphor Index (!) High Low

41. paradox • The paradox occurs when we make a distinction between literal and figurative language. • This distinction leads us to assume that metaphor is derived language, • and that non-metaphoric, ‘literal’ language is original and fundamental

42. ‘literal’ language without metaphor Cf Lock (above): All language is troped, which is to say that no word has precisely one ‘literal’ meaning. Barfield, Lock, Lecercle, etc,. question the existence of literal language.

43. Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays Barfield: ‘The Meaning of "Literal”’

44. Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays I.A Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1936 • vehicle (literal or surface meaning) • tenor (the figurative meaning) • To what extent do these terms correspond to L and J’s “source” and “target”?

45. Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays • Dead metaphors (Lock: catachresis) • Repeat: Following Barfield, Lock, Lecercle and others my contention in this lecture will be that an understanding of what ‘dead’ metaphors are is fundamental to our understanding of figurative language.

46. Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays ‘Etymologically, we find a kind of graduated scale in the relationships between vehicle and tenor’ in the following 4 words: (35) • outsider • noble • gentle • scruple v and t clearlydistinguished the v ‘rank’ still in use the v ‘rank’ hardly in use the v ‘sharp stone’ (scrupulus) has disappeared

47. Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays The traditional view: 4 stages 1. literary meaning → material object 2. concomitant meaning → vehicle and tenor 3. substituted meaning → the vehicle is vanishing 4. final stage → new (altered) literal meaning

48. Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays Barfield: • ‘born’ literal • ‘achieved’ literal

49. Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays Examples: pneuma → anima →âme ‘breath …. soul’ spiritus ‘wind’→ spirit

50. Barfield: ‘The Meaning of “Literal”’in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays ‘Tens of thousands’ of such abstract words. Progress, tendency, culture, democracy, liberality, inhibition, motivation, responsibility - these are ‘now just “literal” words – the sort of words we have to use, when we are admonished not to speak in metaphors.’ (38)