Years ago I read--and friend, if you have not, you should read as well--George Orwell's essay
"Politics and the English Language". The passage that most stuck with me, that stuck close and tight, was Orwell's discussion of "dying metaphors", which I reproduce in its entirety here:
DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.
What resonated with me and stuck with me (as it has, I know, for many; this is a famous and oft-referenced essay) was Orwell's distinction between the three things:
(1) "newly invented metaphors": evocative, novel, imaginative. Orwell doesn't say it, but it's clear from here and elsewhere in the essay that he means
apt,
specific,
successful "newly invented metaphors";
(2) "dead" metaphors which have become "ordinary" words because we don't even notice them as metaphors anymore, we just say them (Orwell uses "iron resolution"; a favorite example of mine in this vein is "mainstay"), and
(3) the "dying" metaphors: "huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves."
It's (3) that really makes Orwell's distinction between (1) and (2) so valuable, and that's so resonant. We have so many ways of talking about this kind of writing; we call it "sophomoric" (using a metaphor that's become an ordinary word) and--rightly, I think--can be hardest on the unimaginative middle-brow patterings of people who clearly have read a couple of books but lack either the dedication, self-knowledge, or imagination to not simply parrot these semi-metaphors for whatever craven reason they have for wasting their own words and, therefore, our attention therein.
And I'm fascinated by this because it comes back to my main fascination these days,
i.e., execution. The "dying" metaphors convey the
idea of a metaphor ("I'm using a metaphor; I'm using language; I'm saying a thing") without actually
doing anything that a metaphor is meant to (being evocative; making the reader see/feel/hear/experience the thing being described in a more vivid, immediate way). I'm totally with Orwell on this, and have been since the first time I read this like two decades ago.
BUT THERE IS A BIG PROBLEM. I was thinking about it because I was thinking about memes of language on the internet and social media; not the
blah demotic shareable nonsense of "
memes", which as a category I'd put squarely into (2) and then forget forever if I could. Memes like freaking the
first meaning here: patterns of culture that get passed around; in this case usage and figures of language. And these elements of culture/language spread and flare and then, often, die away; a good example is
this thing on Twitter where people are cutting off their tweets to comic effect. I like this thing! I think it's funny. And what's happened with it, as happens with these things, is that a someone thought of it and did it and then a few thought-leadery Twitter-leadery people did it and then it proliferated wildly and now it's a whole thing so people are going to (rightly?) pause before using it, using "that thing" that everyone's doing, so it will have had its moment of usage and spiked and then it will be gone.
And we won't get to have the automatic, reflexive, "dead" metaphor version (the Orwell's category (2) version) of the linguistic figure that I'll name "Tweet gets cut off mid-word [to comic effect]". And that's a shame! I wish we would! I wanna hold onto that one.
So then, here is the big problem:
Someone invents something and it's a category (1) -- a novel and evocative metaphor (I know that the Twitter thing isn't a metaphor; I'm lumping "figures of language usage" together here); they use it, other people respond to it well, a few other people adopt it, it spreads...
And there we go. Because here, discernment kills the fragment of linguistic invention in question. Because in order for the invention to lock in, to get to Orwell's category (2) and become a "dead" metaphor--meaning an automatic and obvious part of language that we can all use unfussily--it has to walk the long, hard, tacky road through category (3). And that means that
a lot of people have to be willing to use it in a way that sounds played-out, hackneyed, and clichéd, for
quite a long time.
And look I know: this is all subjective. And sure fine a sniffy Arugala-eater who blogs about this kind of $hit in the first place might be snowflake-sensitive about what is and is not cliché; many of these people might go on using it because they lack the resources (familiarity with language; time; attention; discipline) that would even provide the discernment that might prevent them from doing so. Flipside:
I might be one of those people! Certainly, I'm way less formally imaginative or "out there" in my writing--
all of my writing;
any of my writing--than some people. But I'd still argue that, whatever the spectrum of tastes we are talking about is, it is basically shaped like a bell-curve, meaning basically there is a fat middle portion of people who are not
that different from myself and who perceive these figures of language in a similar way that I do: who see category (3)s in the same places that I do, and with something like the same distaste. Which leads me to the question:
How do we transform novel linguistic turns of usage into standard "dead" parts of the language? Because I don't think "dead" is bad here. It's good to go on inventing things, you can't have too many category (1)s.
But it's fine for the best of the (1)s to pass into usage; in fact, it's more than fine! It's a gift! It's a structure on which our shared language builds and evolves -- just as (METAPHOR COMING OH I HOPE IT'S A (1))
eons of dead foraminifera stack one on the other to make some beautiful things, so too these "dead" metaphors
etc. etc.
But for them to
die, for a category (1) (new! evocative!) to reach category (2) (dead. unfussy standard language building-block) it has to go through (3), and--again--that means a lot of people have to use it past the point of novelty, through the point where they sound silly using it,
still more through that point where
despite that fact they are using people are using it using it till it just becomes standard usage, till we are numbed to it and no one any longer judges anyone for its use.
It's like the vernacular language equivalent of being a sin-eater or something: huge #s of people just
taking the hits of sounding like clunky knobs over and over and over and over for a really really long time until finally the metaphor is dead and a language brick with which we all build, baked in, fascinating and surprising when we're reminded of where it even came from ("mainstay", I say again, friend).
And I think I find this problematic--wherever my usage of language registers on your sensitivity spectrum, friend, or yours does on mine--because I buy
both the judgment inherent in Orwell's categorization
and the benefit inherent in having categories (1) and (2). So I am, therefore, to some extent
judging people (or, let's not be too hard on me, here: judging their sentences/writing) that is in fact, in the long-view, serving me. Because every dumb usage, every category (3) usage, is part of the process that further kills what was once a category (1) thing (which can't last, definitionally) and brings it into easy use as a category (2). I
need category (3)s, in terms of their function, but I despise them. They're lame! They evince, at best, carelessness; at worst a simultaneous pretension and lack of focus/ability! I sure try to avoid them, even in emails and stuff. I'm guilty of them sometimes, I bet. But I
avoid them, definitely.
So I want to have my cake and eat it, too
⇐ category (2)! see??? How many times did people have to say that in a unimaginative, imitative way for it to become just this super-standard thing that I can say and you won't bat an eye because it's not like I'm even trying to sound smart or imaginative, it's basically just like I'm using the word "hypocritical" with some topspin on the ball ⇐ category...I dunno. (1), but not so great? Is that a (2), yet? "spin on the ball"? I think not. Just not a (3). Just tell me it's not a (3). end digression ⇒ I want a rich language of usage built on the dead language blocks of the imaginative past; blocks that sure now are dulled with use, "dead", but nonetheless enriching and useful: it's great that we can say 'have your cake and eat it too' instead of some long-ass bespoke sentence or a single word that might not capture the same meaning as well. But I'm STILL being all sniffy about category (3)s; I need them, but I despise them: and so generations of sentences must be sacrificed on the alter of corny clunky ham-fisted Internet "smart-not-smart" awkwardness to build the rich language we all surely deserve.
