Piling on metaphors

Steven Pinker

We don't just mix metaphors; we pile them on top of each other. There, that is an example.

Steven Pinker argues in The Stuff of Thought that we cannot think, let alone speak or write, without metaphors. They help us give shape to our thoughts, then help others understand what we are thinking. Pinker compiles many of the common phrases used by those in romantic relationships, all suggesting that love is a journey. Among them:

Our relationship has hit a dead-end street.

We're at a crossroads.

We may have to go our separate ways.

This relationship isn't going anywhere.

We're spinning our wheels.

Our marriage is on the rocks.

I'm thinking of bailing out.

He compiles a similar list suggesting that argument is war:

Your claims are indefensible.

His criticisms were right on target.

He attacked every weak point in my argument.

She shot down all my arguments.

We use, hear and read metaphors so frequently that we are usually unaware that they even are metaphors.

I thought of Pinker when I read the following sentence in Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Notice the metaphors, one after another:

The course which these adventures shape out for themselves and imperatively call upon the historian to observe, now demands that they should revert to the point they attained previous to the commencement of the last chapter, when Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride were left together in the house where death had so suddenly reared his dark and heavy banner.

Dickens tells us, metaphorically, that adventures both shape out a course and call upon historians. Then they demand that we return to a previous chapter where two characters were left together and where death had reared "his dark and heavy banner." That's a lot of metaphor packed into one long sentence.

Try explaining anything — how you spent your day, what's wrong with your car, what you think about President Trump — without using at least one metaphor. You may be able to do it, but it would be a challenge. It also may not be as clearly expressed or nearly as interesting as it would have been with a few metaphors piled into it.