Mixed Metaphor: mix them
like something that you can’t mix
George Orwell disparages mixed metaphors in his famous essay, Politics and the English Language, but
we don’t have to regard the man who wrote Animal
Farm and 1984 as someone who
knows what he is talking about. After all, he was English, and therefore way
too strict on our poor tongues—he wanted English to remain English and not
become American. Well, this is America, and we will do what we want. Including mix
our metaphors all we want, until they are all slushed up like cookie-dough. (We
really don’t want to be British. I used to be an Anglophile and, then I became
friends with a young Brit, who admits that people still say “Low-born” in
England when referring to someone who isn’t tasteful. Horrifying.) Anyway, what
is Animal Farm if not one very long mixed-up metaphor?
I say all this because there was an earlier post on this
very blog claiming that mixed metaphors are bad. The post claims that Obama
said in his inaugural speech “As we
consider the road that unfolds before us…” and that this is wrong. I have to
ask, how many people were listening to that speech, and thought, “Yes, yes, yes, OH WAIT! A
mixed metaphor! That does not make sense! I’m so hung up on that, it is
detracting from my speech-listening experience.”
The thing about
mixed metaphors is often they are silly, but just as often they have a place. What could
Obama have said in the speech instead? The previous posts suggests “1. Our country’s future is like a road that we
will follow,” or “2. Our country’s future is like a map that is unfolding,”
so as not to mix metaphors—but that would have distracted me, and I believe
most colloquial listeners from the speech even more. It’s so formal that it
sounds clunky. What’s with that—the future like a map? I can’t imagine it
because I, like most people, live in linear dimensions of time and space, and
maps are not linear. Or are we supposed to follow a road that doesn’t exist yet?
It is much easier for me to imagine a road literally unfolding before me, and
leading the way—there are enough movies that make these seemingly impossible
mixed metaphors quite easy to see (for example Inception, or car commercials).
Anyway, speeches meant for the general public are meant to
be accessible more than they are meant to make sense. Anyone who follows
politics knows this. I once made a hobby of listening to the greatest speeches
of all time—and they are great—but hardly make any sense. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech has many mixed
metaphors, but it is still considered by many (including me) to be the greatest speech of all
time. In the speech King mixes metaphors like a blender mixes soup. For example he says, "Seared
in the flames of withering injustice." Technically, you can't both sear and wither anything at the same time, but it is very strong language and it does the job better than "Seared in the flames of injustice" would do by itself. (King also says "rise to a path" in a very similar mixed-metaphor to Obama's.)
The thing is, is that while the psychical does not mix metaphors (nothing withers and sears),
the human brain does. Most people have some degree of synesthesia which makes me think the word lollipop is purple and sounds like exactly what
it is. Synesthesia might explain why we humans make any metaphors to begin with
(Vladimir Nabokov had intense synesthesia, which partially explains why his
writing is so lush) so why should we restrict our naturally mixed-up brains and
thought?
Metaphors don’t need to be like lame superheroes who only
get one power. They don’t need to be like
that speeding bullet guy, or that guy who talks to fish (so lame I don’t even
remember their names) instead they can be like the greatest superhero of all
time, who is both a bird, and a plane: Superman.
If that hasn’t convinced you, read Alice in Wonderland, if you hate it, okay, that’s fine, but you are
never allowed to say anything “Looks delicious!” again. Instead you will have
to say, (with a British accent) “That looks, good sir and/or madam, as if it
will taste quite palatable upon my taste-buds.”
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