Metaphiers eventually become their own words over time
Language is constituted by metaphor, yet it is not always obvious that metaphor has played this allimportant function. This is because the concrete metaphiers become hidden in phonemic change, leaving the words to exist on their own. Of course we are not conscious that such concepts derive from their metaphorical roots. Abstract words are ancient coins whose concrete images in the busy give-and-take of talk have worn away with use.
Because in our brief lives we catch so little of the vastnesses of history, we tend too much to think of language as being solid as a dictionary, with a granite-like permanence, rather than as the rampant restless sea of metaphor which it is. if we consider the changes in vocabulary that have occurred over the last few millennia, and project them several millennia hence, an interesting paradox arises. For if we ever achieve a language that has the power of expressing everything, then metaphor will no longer be possible. The lexicon of language, then, is a finite set of terms that by metaphor is able to stretch out over an infinite set of circumstances, even to creating new circumstances thereby.
References
- Jaynes, Julian. (1976). The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Chapter 2 Consciousness (Epub p. 60). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Psychology / Linguistics Status:☀️