Re: Using METONYMS; was: O Duty (Was: "If")

Sally Caves wrote:

> Hi Ed.
>
> Ed Heil wrote:
> >
> > I think that Geroge Lakoff would say it only ought to be a "surprise"
> > to followers of the cult of "objectivism" as he calls it. :)
> >
> > I've read a bit of Owen Barfield lately, and I highly recommend him.
> > One of the things that he insists on is that it is only fairly
> > recently, in historical terms, that we even had to start calling it
> > "metaphor."  Before that it was just that concepts were deeper; they
> > had inner and outer meanings that were part and parcel of each other;
> > distinguishable only with some effort.  ...
>
> Hmmm.  Interesting, but I tend to doubt that.  The classical writers
> and certainly the medievalists were highly aware of what they were doing
> rhetorically... check out Geoffrey of Vinsauf and all the books on
> Rhetoric.  If the term wasn't "metaphor," then it certainly was "imago."
> But "metaphor" came in a while ago from the late Greek.  The Renaissance
> poets were also completely aware of metaphors, _anargia_, _exemplum_ and
> "conceits."  So what is this "it" that Barfield says we started calling
> "metaphor," and so recently?
Oh, I'm afraid that most of my response to your post will be "I've
dreadfully oversimplified and misstated Barfield and beg you to read
him yourself; he's both a much better writer and much better arguer
than I am."

I think Barfield would say that the move from "original
participation" to "non-participation" (which he would want to push
forward from into "final participation," a future participatory
universe which is not innocent of the insights that have been gained
by our move into a non-participated world)... Um, that the move from
"participation" to "non-participation" began as early as Aristotle,
and that it was a gradual process.

I think we might have to work out more precisely what we mean by
"metaphor" before I address your question further.

>
> > Barfield insists that many people find the personifications (Love,
> > Virtue, Peace, etc) of the middle ages and renaissance uninteresting
> > because we have thrown off a 'participatory' style of thinking, in
> > which abstractions were very real and living and interpenetrated with
> > everyday reality in ways that seemed as obvious to them as the
> > interpenetration of the theories of physics (electricity, and so on)
> > with reality seem to us.
>
> And that's precisely what I want to restore in Teonaht.  Interesting.
I hereby adjure you to read some Barfield then. :)

>
> > He says that artificially stripping reality of its "participation" in
> > higher realms, the divine, the ideal, the mana-filled, has made
> > possible modern science and the major religions... but that it is
> > founded on a lie, because in fact the world we experience *is*
> > participatory -- but it participates not in a divinity that is beyond
> > it and wholly separate from us, but in our humanity (and perhaps also
> > in divinity communicated through humanity).
>
> Hmmm.  I'm not clear about this here.  How has this stripping made
> possible the "major religions"?  I would think quite the opposite.  It
> may have made modern science possible, but the major religions I see
> on the other side of the fence in this argument.
Well, I oversimplified there.  Perhaps rather than 'major religions'
I should have said something like 'religions of the book'; it is
Barfield's contention that an essential feature of Judaism was
*refusing* to see most of the universe as the direct face of divinity
as a pagan would, and confining, concentrating the participation to
the Divine Name and, as an extension, the Torah.  In Judaism and in
Christianity and (as best I know it, which is not well) Islam, there
is a tension between seeing the world as the sacramental face of God,
and the Areopagite's _Via Negativa_, where God is known only from what
He is Not.  Or to put it another way, between God-In-The-World and
God-Against-The-World.  The former shades away into paganism; the
latter into abstruse philosophy.  In any case, it all involves some
interesting spins on Original Participation, if not an abnegation of
it.

> > That the world around us is not merely 'objective' but crucially
> > arises from the interface between an inaccessible 'objective' reality
> > and our consciousness is *also* what George Lakoff was trying to prove
> > in _Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things_!
>
> A book I've often seen on the shelves and resisted buying for some
> reason.
> Partly because Lakoff was getting some bad press.  Should I reconsider?
Most decidedly.  I'm curious what bad press Lakoff got?  he's one of
my favorite linguists/philosophers.

> > I doubt he's read Barfield, and I think the convergence of their
> > conclusions is really interesting.
> >
> > Anyway, I think you'd find Barfield's work (if you haven't already
> > read it) very interesting; a lot of what you've said about
> > personifications resonates with what he's written (and I'm sure I
> > haven't adequately expressed it in this message).
> >
> > I only know two of his books well enough to recommend them: _Saving
> > the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry_ and _Speaker's Meaning_.  The
> > latter is a bit more linguistically oriented and a lot shorter.
> >
>
> I'll give it a try.  But I hoped, actually, that my initial post would
> inspire other conlangers to fess up:  how much do any of you consciously
> use personifications and metaphors in the everyday parlance of your
> languages?
I'm afraid I've not got far enough on a conlang to say....  I've just
got a few interesting beginnings.

>
>        "QuchwIj Dayachqang'a' bang?"
> >         (KHOOCH-widge da-YATCH-kang-a BANG?)
>
>         I'm glad to know somebody else does this for pronunciation
guidance!

:)

Ed Heil -------------------------------- edheil@postmark.net
             "QuchwIj Dayachqang'a' bang?"
        (KHOOCH-widge da-YATCH-kang-a BANG?)
       Klingon for "Want to stroke my forehead, babe?"
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