Language is always metaphorical relative to past civilisations’ meanings

Evidence

The question of the relationship between language and metaphor is far from simple. Language, moreover, is always metaphorical. If perhaps it cannot quite be said that all discourse is metaphorical in respect of the thing or material and sensible object referred to (or the abstract concept) so as not to widen the concept of metaphor excessively, it can however be said that present language is metaphorical with respect to the meanings and the ideological content which the words used had in preceding periods of civilisation. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1600

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci’s core claim that language carries sedimented ideological content from prior eras - key for understanding how concepts like ‘civilisation’ or racial categories drag inherited meaning.
• XREF: Connects to how Orientalism/Islamophobia words carry inherited medieval ideological content, as in Muslims in the Western Imagination. — connects to: All language is composed of metaphors that we endlessly repurpose — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 78; Language preserves fossilized worldviews within its living metaphors — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1599; Root metaphors combine into culturally inherited discourses and discursive practices — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 525 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Language preserves fossilized worldviews within its living metaphors #corroborates (0.90) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1599
• All language is composed of metaphors that we endlessly repurpose #expands (0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 78
• Attempts to purify language of metaphor are doomed and futile #corroborates (0.85)
• Root metaphors combine into culturally inherited discourses and discursive practices #expands (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 525
• Root metaphors are buried cultural assumptions reproduced unconsciously across generations #expands (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 514
• All utterances carry meaning shaped by irrecoverable social-historical context #expands (0.80) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 102
• Language is an authorless plastic formation through which speakers encounter an immemorial past #corroborates (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1158
• Histories and causal narratives persist buried inside the language used to tell them #expands (0.80)
• Heteroglossia makes every utterance’s meaning depend on its specific time, place, and conditions #expands (0.75)