I chuckle internally whenever I hear the word “sunbathe”
English is not my first language, OK?
In primary school in India, we had a biology lesson where we learnt about rickets, a childhood disease caused by lack of sunlight. The teacher said the treatment was for the child to sunbathe.
For the next 40 years – including 30+ years as a medical student / doctor – I carried a mental image of a boy, having a bath, sitting in a bathtub, outside in the sun.
I only recently realised that sunbathing was about being exposed to the sunlight, as if you were bathing in the sun’s rays. Not actually literally having a bath in the sun.
No-one told me!
Which brings me on to what will probably be a whole (nightmare) section in my PhD thesis: how to deal with dead metaphors like sunbathing: non-literal terms which were once metaphors, but are now completely “ordinary” words.
In my rhetorical density research, I want to count how many metaphors and other literary devices there are in different types of texts. Should I count “sunbathing” as a metaphor or not? And why? Its a conundrum that has racked my brain for months! (Don’t worry, I have a cunning plan… I made an algorithm!)
Languages are full of dead and nearly-dead non-literal expressions, usually hidden in plain sight. When someone says they’re going for a bite to eat – it’s non-literal i.e. not literally one bite. But the diminutive “a bite” suggests it’s a small snack rather than a 5-course feast.
Or if someone calls you round for coffee – again, non-literal. They don’t mean you should drink your coffee then immediately leave. But by referring to the “coffee” they’re actually inviting you for the whole package of coffee + cake + chat + catch-up + gossip + talk business, etc.
How about, “The country is going to war“? Again, non-literal – the country’s not literally going anywhere. But this personification, like a soldier going to war, makes it easier for the listener to visualise what’s going on.
And one of my pet peeves – “I’m running late” – a metaphor which compares you to a train that’s running behind its published schedule! The implication is that you are the passive victim of some uncontrollable external factor – like leaves on the line, being behind a slow-running train, or a signalling fault – that has caused you to be late despite your very best intentions of being perfectly on time.
These non-literal expressions are called “dead” because we no longer know their origin. However, what you may have noticed is that they are very much alive and kicking, and they are influencing our daily interactions without us even noticing.
When your work colleague says they’re going for a bite to eat, they’re reassuring you that they’ll be back soon (…even if they’re not). “Let’s go for coffee” may mean “I won’t necessarily share my agenda for the meeting beforehand.” The country “going to war” feels completely normal and noble, because it’s the duty of a solider to go to war. This obfuscates the horrors and destruction a war can cause. “Running late” defuses any accountability for your lack of punctuality by externalising the root causes. Even “dead” expressions can have high stakes.1
So, keep your ears pierced (Aha!!!) and your eyes open (hmm, hmm) for more of these non-literal expressions, and you may appreciate how fascinating language – and language research – can be.
And that’s A Deeper Thought!
By the way, there is a name for this field of linguistics which studies how context contributes to meaning. It is called pragmatics.
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