Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Mixed metaphor of the day

From Public Radio International's otherwise excellent The World:

With so many pressing issues on his plate, Mr. Obama is engaged in an astonishing juggling act.
Related reading
All metaphor posts (via Pinboard)

comments: 6

T. said...

Maybe their metaphoric plates were spinning on the tops of poles in a KIND of juggling act...?

I shouldn't talk, of course, after my "quagmire" fiasco...

Logan said...

Maybe he is on a giant plate representing America, juggling issues on smaller plates which also have smaller Obama's also juggling issues which are on plates, ad infinitum.

Mariana Soffer said...

AS I wrote in a friends site little ago.

Here there are to interesting scientific theories about metaphors:

1."Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature."

2."metaphor IS a fundamental mechanism that allows us to apply Stone Age ways of thinking to abstract subject matters"

Language is so wierd (and also complex).

Michael Leddy said...

T. and Logan, I looked for a clip of the plate-spinning acts that used to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, but no luck. Those guys had nothing on their plates. I like the plates upon plates upon plates idea, as in "Turtles all the way down."Mariana, I would agree that metaphor is indeed fundamental to sense-making and world-making.

Michael Leddy said...

Though I've tried four times, I cannot get Blogger to put a blank line between down and Mariana's name. So please imagine a new paragraph there.

j said...

This raises mixing metaphors almost to an art form. I'd say it's (at least) the equivalent of a limerick.