Untangling the Metaphor Stew .

ROLCAM · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 12:27 pm Post subject: Untangling the Metaphor Stew .

Untangling the Metaphor Stew .

"Pfizer Game Plan Unleashing Whirlwind." This ambitious newspaper headline manages to cram three metaphors into just five words, whisking us energetically from sports to runaway dogs to meteorology. Whee!

"This isn't just a mixed metaphor," wrote Henry McNulty of Cheshire, Conn., who mailed it to me. "It's a veritable metaphor stew, if I may add to the mix by borrowing from the language of cookery."

A stew it is, but a tasty one at that. As much as I know I should be condemning mixed metaphors for their illogical juxtapositions, I can't help admiring the headlong exuberance of their creators.

Something about the world of business seems to "spark torrents" of these clashers. People who wear carefully matched suits in the office suddenly pair polka dot shirts with striped pants in their prose. "This proposal," said one corporate executive, "puts orthodontic pressure on the issue. We're still waiting to see the other shoe drop." That's called putting your foot in your mouth.

When a financial writer wanted to stress the importance of examining a company carefully before acquiring it, he hopped from miners to movers to millers: "Research will perhaps never again be seen as the province of those panning for gold, but as today's movers and shakers show, it can still put bread on the table." Come to think of it, prospectors do shake their pans.

By my count there are FIVE competing metaphors in this lead sentence from a newspaper's business section: "The world's largest spice producer, insulated by an armor of takeover safeguards adopted this summer, is sitting comfortably on the sidelines awaiting the fallout from the takeover free-for-all embroiling the nation's food industry." In one sentence we're whirled from medieval knights to football to nuclear weapons to barroom brawls to cooking.

And a business metaphor doesn't have to be mixed to turn sour. Sometimes writers fail to recognize illogical extensions of a single metaphor: "For any young company, capital is like mother's milk, the sustenance needed for growth. A captive audience of attentive financiers offered hope for a long, cool drink." Ugh!

I've saved one non-business metaphor for the end, quite literally. The co-founder of a modern dance troupe was describing the group's early years when she said, "We were truly naive and just shooting from the seat of our pants."

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Roland Camilleri

Moderator

Sydney , Australia.