[PREV - LIKE_A_STAR]    [TOP]

MIXMASTER

                                              December 17, 2006

    I was saying in
    STRUCTURAL_FAILURES

       "There's no way
        for the flight
        of fancy to
        run aground."

Here the ship of metaphor would
appear to have run afoul of the     Or perhaps it's not too big
murk from the mixture of two        a stretch -- when reaching
streams of meaning.                 for the sky -- to talk about
                                    planes as well as boats
                                    "running aground"?

  The doctrine is that one must
  avoid "mixed metaphors" because
  they're a sign of unclear thought.

         Your cliches must be
         compatible with each
         other when converted     Though no one really
         into a mental image.     does that unless they're
                                  pedantically checking
                                  for mixed metaphors.

                                                The way I think it
   I find that if I actually                    really works is that
   make an effort to write                      a metaphor becomes
   that way it seems like                       a cliche, then "an
   a joke.                                      expression" then just
                                                another phrase.
   It is, for example, no great
   trick to string together                     The original imagery
   nautical cliches for an                      drops away, leaving
   entire paragraph -- it's                     a ghost of a
   like doing a long series of                  connotation at most.
   "cat" puns.
                                                A quirk of derivation
         (When you say                          for etymologists to
          "string" as                           chuckle over.
          opposed to
          "series",        If I cite                     DEAD_METAPHOR
          are you          Gernsback
          necessarily      as a source             Linguistic
          invoking a       of SF, am I             standards are often
          physical         mapping a               argued for simply
          image?)          stream                  on the grounds that
                           through                 they are *a*
                           imaginary               standard.  Any
                           cities?                 standard at all can
                                                   facilitate wider
                                                   communication.

   The obvious re-write:                           But then by
                                                   definition the
      There's no way                               evolution of the
      for the flight                               language will be
      of fancy to                                  ceded to its most
      crash to earth.                              ignorant users.

   This bothers me in some                         In linguistic usage,
   way I have trouble                              change always bubbles
   putting into words.                             up from below.

   In the first version                                (Spraying from the
   the figure of speech is                             carbon filter,
   played with, in the                                 tickling the
   second it's taken                                   angel fish,
   seriously, it's no longer                           a burble of white
   undermined...                Words                  noise for when
                                under                  the TV has buzzed
                                siege.                 it's last.)





--------
[NEXT - CHAIN_LUBE]