{"id":173,"date":"2006-03-09T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T04:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=173"},"modified":"2006-03-09T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-09T04:01:00","slug":"vossler-on-the-metaphorical-character-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2006\/03\/vossler-on-the-metaphorical-character-of-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Vossler on the Metaphorical Character of Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From K. Vossler, <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Positivismus und Idealisms in der Sprachwissenschaft<\/span> (1904). Quoted by Polanyi in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0226672883\/sr=8-1\/qid=1141874757\/ref=pd_bbs_1\/102-7531473-2054560?%5Fencoding=UTF8\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Personal Knowledge<\/span><\/a> (p. 102):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">The true artists of speech remain always conscious of the metaphorical character of language. They go on correcting and supplementing one metaphor by another, allowing their words to contradict each other and attending only to the unity and certainty of their thought.<br \/>  <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think this is right, provided one is clear that good artistic writers do not <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">actually contradict<\/span> themselves. A contradiction that exists at the level of words is merely an apparent contradiction, not a real one. Real contradictions exist at the level of thought and destroy its &#8220;unity and certainty&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It can be an enlightening exercise to reflect<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"> <\/span>on the pervasiveness of metaphors in language. Try expunging all metaphors and you&#8217;ll have a tough<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"> <\/span>time saying much of real significance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From K. Vossler, Positivismus und Idealisms in der Sprachwissenschaft (1904). Quoted by Polanyi in Personal Knowledge (p. 102): The true artists of speech remain always conscious of the metaphorical character of language. They go on correcting and supplementing one metaphor by another, allowing their words to contradict each other and attending only to the unity\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2006\/03\/vossler-on-the-metaphorical-character-of-language\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}