So language fools us into thinking its not even there. And “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.” Of course, the ‘things’ in question are always other words. We don’t even notice that these sorts of activities are metaphorical. We fall in love, offer food for thought, try not to waste time, and build theories.
The way this works in daily life is by our inevitable and pervasive use of metaphors to describe the world and what we’re doing in it. This is a difficult idea to hold onto, mainly because it suggests that none of us really knows what we might be talking about. The conspiracy of language becomes obvious as soon as one recognizes the fact that words are defined solely in terms of other words, never in terms of things outside of language. But language is crafty it seems to have its own interests more than ours at heart. It looks like something neutral, a tool for doing things, some good, some not so good depending on its user. This classic from the 1970’s shows why this is so in an entertaining and convincing way.
All that business about grammar and figures of speech is actually essential for getting on in the world quite apart from speaking proper. It turns out there were really good existential reasons for paying attention in primary school English.
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