All language is composed of metaphors that we endlessly repurpose

Evidence

Because metaphor is always retreating into language, all language is tainted and influenced by metaphor (2007). Language is a set of mutually suspending claims to meaning, as each word relies upon its connection to others. It is a fabric woven through endless “play” (1967), a polyseme that indicates (among other things) the constant creative (semi-competitive) repurposing of language and meaning, and also the inherent malleability or plasticity of language. In other words, your ability to understand my metaphoric use of “disappear” relies upon a whole variety of linguistic metaphoric relationships – we can never trace language back to its “real” root. If all language is metaphoric, our ability to use and understand language is not simply our comprehension of the meaning of each word and their syntax; it is our involvement or participation in living language, our constant use of and innovation within language. This demands that we constantly reinvent metaphor. We are constantly delving into the trove of language to invent new meanings and repurpose old words like “delve” and “trove” or “invest.” — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 78

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how the word ‘invest’ spans emotional commitment, financial speculation, and moral concern without any of these uses being ‘original’.
• XREF: connects to: Language preserves fossilized worldviews within its living metaphors — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1599; Attempts to purify language of metaphor are doomed and futile; Even abstract thought is built from physical and sensory metaphors — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 728 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Language preserves fossilized worldviews within its living metaphors #corroborates (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1599
• Attempts to purify language of metaphor are doomed and futile #expands (0.80)
• Even abstract thought is built from physical and sensory metaphors #exemplifies (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 728
• No higher language could exist without the fiction that dresses abstractions as real #expands (0.75) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 398
• Language enables meanings rather than passively carrying them #corroborates (0.72)