{"id":3980,"date":"2015-02-06T05:57:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T10:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3980"},"modified":"2015-02-20T07:27:33","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T12:27:33","slug":"let-there-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3980","title":{"rendered":"Let there be . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"birthday

(photo: pixabay)<\/p><\/div>\n

This week Orin Hargraves posted an illuminating essay on his Visual Thesaurus blog<\/a> in tribute to the designation of 2015 as International Year of Light.<\/a> Light, says Hargraves is \u201cone of the most productive concepts for metaphor in English.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metaphors about light relate not just to our dependence on light for seeing (\u201clight of day\u201d; \u201cleave a light on for me\u201d), but, more profoundly, on light as a fount of understanding (\u201cshed light,\u201d \u201cputs a new light on the matter,\u201d \u201cI see, . . .\u201d). By contrast, dark suggests not just not seeing, but also not understanding (\u201cin the dark,\u201d \u201cunenlightened,\u201d \u201ca cloudy perception\u201d). No surprise, then, that the original meaning of \u201cobscure\u201d was \u201cdark, opaque, gloomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

I picked up my copy of Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s Metaphors We Live By, <\/em>then found Hargraves consulted them on this matter, too. The two linguists cluster these and many similar metaphors under the rubric \u201cUnderstanding is seeing; ideas are light sources; discourse is a light-medium.\u201d Their examples include \u201cWhat is your outlook on that? I view it differently. Now I\u2019ve got the whole picture. It was a murky discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relevant metaphors extend from direct references to light and dark to more indirect ones (\u201cpoint of view\u201d; \u201ca transparent argument\u201d; \u201clamp of knowledge\u201d; \u201cit dawned on her\u201d; versus \u201csomeone not too bright\u201d; \u201che\u2019s a dim bulb\u201d) and once you start looking for them, you find them embedded everywhere. In fact, Hargraves says, \u201cthere is hardly a noun, verb, or adjective in English with a core meaning arising from light and vision that cannot be used in metaphoric extension to depict knowledge and understanding.\u201d And, to a great extent, the obverse. The full essay is a great read. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

A random closing thought, but is it possible that birthday candles are a subconscious but resonant metaphor for the accumulation of understanding gained with each passing year?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week Orin Hargraves posted an illuminating essay on his Visual Thesaurus blog in tribute to the designation of 2015 as International Year of Light. Light, says Hargraves is \u201cone of the most productive concepts for metaphor in English.\u201d Metaphors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Let there be . . . Illumination! Understanding! That is, LIGHT! Light as hard-working metaphor.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[185,104,51],"tags":[310,414],"class_list":["post-3980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-the-morgue","category-words","tag-metaphor","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-12c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3982,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions\/3982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}